The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-06-28

cal unity and for developing a
healthy struggle against the right
danger in the Party. If necessary,
the C. I. will undoubtedly enforce
this Party unity by drastic organ
national measures against all those
who try to continue the fractional
struggle. Significantly, the Address
calls upon all workers of the Com
munist Party of the U. S. A. to Sc
cure the liquidation of all factions
and the cessation of factional work
and not to shrink ''from the appli-
cation in regard to factionalism of
the most severe disciplinary meas
ures, clear up to the expulsion from
the Party" The leading comrades
of both former groups will do well
to heed carefully this warning.
Unprincipled Factionalism.
One of the most difficult phases
of the C. l. Address for the comrades
Of both groups to accept, saturated
as we have been with factionalism,
is those sections of the decision
which castigate Majority and Minor
ity leaders for unprincipled faction
alism. The C. l. Address says:
''Neither of the groups has car
ried on a proper struggle against
these right tendencies in the ranks
of its own faction and the fac
tionalism of both groups has been
the greatest impeachment to the
development within the Party of
the necessary self-criticism and
the political education of the
Party members in the spirit of
Bolshevik steadfastness based upon
principle. A fractional lack of
principle which is, also an express
sion of opportunism, finds its ex-
preston in the fact that both
groups were putting the interests
of their faction above the inter
est of the Party"
The correctness of this criticism
is unquestionable. 1t applies de-
finitely to the former Minority as
well as to the Majority. AS one who
was a member of the former Minor
ity, / must admit that the unques-
tionable tendency was to set the in
terests of the faction before the
interest of the Party. This fractional
practice blurred the political line,
undermined the principle of Bolshe-
vik criticism, and generally tended
to prevent the Party's mobilizing
its full forces for the class struggle.
Let me illustrate this by few typi-
cal cases. Take for example the
question of Trotskyism. The c. l..
says that:
"The Minority of the Central
Committee was unable to dissoci-
ate itself at the right time from
Trotskyism and did not properly
struggle against it."
If the CT. has to make this sharp
criticism of us, it is not because the
Minority group as such had SYM
pathies with Trotskyism, but because
we wrongly permitted the fractional
considerations to weaken the init
alive that we should have properly
shown in the matter. The fear on
our part that the Majority group
were making or would make faction
al use of the Trotsky issue against
us by crippling our initiative in the
matter undoubtedly placed an obsta-
Gle in the way of mobilizing the
Party fully in the fight against
I'rotskyism. Such was the banefuI
result of the factional struggle.
The Minority showed a similar
unprincipled factionalism in connec-
ton with the California situation:
We should have been the very first
to criticize the right errors COM
mitted in the California district. But
typically of the factions in our Par
ty, we did not. We shielded those
errors. Such a wrong policy we
fell into through fractional consi-
derations of maintaining the group
solid, and with the factional argu-
ment that the Majority were cover
ing their right mistakes in other dis
tricts and making a goat out of
California because it was Minority
district. This was real fractional
blurring of the political line and it
is characteristic that it was carried
through by us under the slogan of
the fight against the right danger.
The C. I. Address sharply criti-
cizes the Minority where it declares
that we, as we'll as the Majority
were engaged in inadmissible, I'M
principled speculations with ques-
tions of the situation in the Commu-
mist Party of the Soviet Union in its
struggle against right deviations.'
This is true. Had there been a nor
NAL Party life it is certain that we
would not have precipitated the Rus
sian question in the manner that it
was done but would have worked in
close collaboration with the Com
intern with this extremely important
and delicate question. The net re-
suit of our fractional handling of the
whole matter was to make more diff
ficult the Qualification of both the
Russian and American questions.
One Of the very worst features Of
the unprincipled factionalism in the
Party has been, as the c. I. Address