The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-06-03
PRE-CONVENTION DISCUSSION
Search Out and Defeat Opportunism
in Our Day to Day Work

majority of the working class by assuring the
working class of our good intentions while D
failing to perform the duties required of us
by objective conditions and the given needs of
the working class. A member who merely
carries Party card but fails to engage prop
erly in the work Of the Party, is expressing
good intentions, but substitutes word for deed.
This is right wing opportunism. If we con-
slider how many members of each unit are
active how many attend meetings regularly
and carry out the tasks assigned to them as
well as the manner in which the tasks are per-
formed, we have another means of determln-
ing the extent of the right danger IN every
unit of the Party. That the danger is great
can be seen from the fact that even during
the most intensive period of the May Day pre-
parations, only an average of 60 per cent of
the membership attended unit meetings and a.
of these only about half actually participated 4
in the work.
While it is true that we still have some
members who merely carry cards @sometlmes
without dues stamps) this situation cannot
be ascribed to the members but responsibility
must be placed upon the leadership of the dis
trct, section and units who fail to provide
functioning bureaus for each unit that will
plan the work and assign tasks to each MEM
Der and then check up to see if the tasks as
signed have been properly performed. Many
of the most serious shortcomings of the work
of the Party can be traced to this failure to
provide functoning unit bureaus. The present
poor social composition of the Party could, for
example, be improved if all the workers who
applied for membership were admitted and
kept in the Party, yet the very section that
suffers most as result of bad social COM
position, kept over 200 applications in the
pockets of the section organizer and other
+iopariar for months after the membership
drive was concluded (Section s..
Attendance at fraction meetings and parti-
cipation in the work and struggles of the
unions is another test At a time when i'm
portant questions of policy are to be discussed
about 200 of the 800 or more members of the
Party who should attend needle trades frac-
ton meetings appear. In the building trades
fraction 70 of $50 comrades respond to
call for fraction meeting. The comrades
who absent themselves from fraction and union
meetings not in opposition to the policy.
Oh, MOI They agree with the policy, so they
say But it were better that they disagreed
and thus make clear to every member who
really accepts and applies the policy the need
for struggle against those who formally ac-
cept but sabotage Party policy by their apathy
and inactivity.
Opportunism in Our Trade Union Work.
Here we have more open advocates of OPP
portunism. The leading comrades in the Shoe
Workers Union who fought and resisted the
policy of the Party for broadening the recent
strike to the large shops that include the large
masses of unskilled and poorly paid workers
gave expression to the illusions and prejudices
of the more skilled workers of the small shops
who could not understand the need for a
struggle against piece work and for the five
day forty-hour week. Similarly the comrades
IL IL. To- H.
spontanety of the workers and thus fail to
make preparations for struggle; who failed to
carry out the Party policy in the recent fake
strike organized by the company union who
resist the drawing in of forces into the
leadership of the union and fail to develop
| rank and file strike and organization commit
tees I'm the latter case some improvements
have been made of late). In the building
trades comrades who capitulate before the
fascist bureaucrats and fail to develop the
! struggle despite the widespread revolt among
the building trades workers who see them
selves betrayed by the bosses agents in con-
| troll of their union.
| One might enumerate scores of errors such
as the above all arising out of the fact that
! our Party is not yet bolshevized and fails to
draw organizational conclusions from the poll
teal line which we all agree with and accept.
wing policy and practice, which to be
! found in all divisions and units of the Party
| it is manifestly impermissible to take the view
! that we cannot criticize.
Our Party must either find means for utiliz-
| ing the present favorable objective situation
/ and for developing the necessary struggles of
! the working class, admit that it has failed
! to perform its duty a Communist Party.
Our Party will not fail because under the
! leadership of the Communist International we
| will develop the necessary self-criticism which
| will search out the basis for our failure and
| proceed vigorously to self-correction. Only
those who will neither criticize nor correct
themselves, will fail in their duty. These We
| must eliminate from ranks in which only
those have place who not only express good
revolutionary intentions, but also engage in
| consistent devoted revolutionary work.