The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-09-14
III MISTAKES AND SHORT
COMINGS OF OUR PARTY.

Now for some mistakes and
A' shortcomings of our Party. | will
not enumerate them in the order Of
Importance, but merely recount them.
The Party has shown no capacity to
conduct election campaigns. Our cleo
ton campaigns are bad in every
sense Of the word. l speak Of this
not locally but nationally. We must
learn to participate as Communists,
as Communist Party should partici-
pate, in the election campaigns. We
must end our underestimation of the
Importance of election campaigns.
2. Secondly, there is an insufficient
organization capitalization of the
various political and trade union
campaigns of our Party. We go into
a strike like Passaic, OF we go into
another campaign--we go into
miners campaign; we go into a cam
paign for the protection Of the
foreign-born. Large masses have
thus been modified in struggle, but
our Party has not yet learned to gain
organizationally, to capitalize organi-
nationally, sufficiently and in proper
proportion the energy put into these
campaigns. We must pay more at
tention to this. Here is one of the
fundamental weaknesses of our Party.
3. Thirdly the Party did not re-
act quickly and well enough to the
British general strike. Our Party
could have done much more than it
did in. modelling masses for the
British general strike.
4. There is insufficient political
direction to the work of the youth. 1t
IS a sad commentary on our Party
organization, that the YWL is so
small compared with the membership
Of our own Party. The youth is not
to be blamed for it, but the Party
leadership. l speak of no group to bA
blamed. The Party as a Party must
correct this error.
5. In reorganization we have made
mistakes. On the whole, reorgani3a-
ton has been a success, a step fdr-
ward. However, We have made mis-
takes. nationally and locally. Natioh-
ally, in having too mechanical an an
proach; locally in approaching in thA
American Party-nineteen language
declarations to- reorganize, nineteen
Parties to be welded into one Boil
shevik Party. The mistakes we have
made have been costly. We have
| lost too great number of members.
In speaking of reorganization, we
must learn how to hold the new work
ers coming into our Party since re-
organization. We have increased our
membership by more than 5000 but
have not been able to hold all of
them. This is one of the worst short
comings of our Party. The costly,ex-
cessive turnover of our membership
must be ended quickly or the life of
our Party will be Slapped.
8. Further weaknesses: we have
a too weak basis in the trade unions.
True, we have made progress here,
but our trade union basis is still too
weak.
Z. We have an insufficient proper
ton of native elements in our Party.
l speak not in a deprecating sense of
our Party members, but we must. in
this country, if we are to Americanize
ourselves in a Bolshevik sense, we
must show bigger capacity to attract
native elements, the workers born in
this country, because our leadership
in this country depends largely upon
our capacity to draw such workers
into our ranks. In the past two
years we have drawn an increasing
number of such workers into our
ranks, but the Party as a Party is
still weak in this respect. The
theological level of our Party is low;
the number of efficient Communist
functionaries is too small.
8. The subcommittee of the
Party apparatus are not functioning
well, and this applies to the Geo as
much as to the subdivision of the
+Party apparatus.
9. Another weakness has been the
launching of too many campaigns
simultaneously. We start on one
campaign and before the Party mem
bership is ideologically prepared and
modified we launch another cam
paign. This is a weakness of the
Party, and the incoming Gee must
correct this. This diffusion of energy
must be stopped.
10. In Negro and women's work
there are weaknesses which must be
corrected
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