The daily worker., 1930-03-27
BURNING PROBLEM OF NEW
FORCES; SOME SUGGESTIONS

ulSIrlcC must make careful canvass of the
new members with view to finding out what
work each is best fitted for. Glasses will be
established, of course, and the clements of
Communist theory taught them at once. But
this is not enough
am of the opinion that to all Party district
committees should be assigned certain num-
ber of new members, at first not actually men,
bers of these committees perhaps, but who
snail attend all meetings, take part in the dis
cussion and in this way learn by experience,
and not merely academcally, how a Commu-
mist Party works.
Some Measures To Be Taken.
Furthermore, in the daily work of the Party
the development of new leadership must not be
allowed to take the normal course Every
Party official should be instructed categori-
caIy to watch carefully for comrades who
show signs of ability above the average and
report such comrades with recommendations
for their assignment to the proper committees
There must be more specialization in the
training courses of our Party. We cannot af-
ford to waste time training comrades for trade
union or inner Party organization work who
may be exceptionally good agitators, but en-
tirely untitled for carrying out tasks demand
ing much organization ability. This must not
smean that the theoretical side of training is to
be neglected but it will mean that comrades
who show ability for specific tasks shall be
given special training for these tasks.
Mobilize Our Technicians.
Another point:
Many of our best Party comrades-comrades
who are especially good organizers and mass
workers, and this applies with added emphasis
to many of the new members-have little tech
nica ability. The drafting of leaflets the issu-
ing of statements, the writing of reports, the
composing of news stories for our press, if
they are not actually terrified by these tasks,
find that acquiring by themselves the mechan-
ical ability for these technical tasks is often
harder than acquiring the political ability.
Much valuable time is lost by forcing, because
of lack of technical help, capable organizers
to spend the most of their time in mechanical
office work.
There has been somewhat of an exodus of
Party office workers from Party office work
in the last year or So They must be brought
back and assigned to definite tasks. There is
no reason why discipline should not be applied
in this field as everywhere else 1t is the
sheerest nonsense that comrades charged with
responsible work should be compelled to learn
typewriting and mimeographing before they
can begin to function as mass workers. A cap
able organizer who is pounding typewriter
getting out routine reports and letters is so
much dead loss. Mobilize the technicians!
On the other hand, if technical office work
er can be developed into Communist leader
no time should be lost in assigning such COM
rade to responsible work.
No Underestimation of the Problem
We all know the tremendous problem of de-
veloping new corps of leading comrades which
the Bolsheviks faced just previous to and after
the conquest of power in November, 1917, what
great importance Lenin attached to this and
how much he wrote about it.
1t would be carrying the analogy too far to
say that our problem is as serious. Neverthe-
less, it must be emphasized again that unless
we able, within the next few months, to
bring forward new forces, to strengthen nu-
merically the leading committees of the Party,
from the district committees down to the units,
and especially in such important districts as
Cleveland, Pittsburgh Buffalo, the anthracite
and the South we will confront a very critical
situation
In this connection we must also take into
consideration the probability of many of our
leading comrades being arrested and imprison-
ed and the further weakening of our forces as
the offensive Of the government sharpens to
meet the offensive of the masses.
Communist Apprentices.
In addition to the measures proposed above,
the requisite notifications, the system of ap-
prentices used by the old guilds-Communis
apprentices. That is, to all leading comrades
in addition to the general assignments to COM
mttees-should be assigned some promising
rank and file comrade for whose training he
shall be responsible over a certain period
This, of course, means a complete break with
all traditions of the past which dictated that
leaders should initiate no run-of-mine comrades
into the work of direction and instruction ex-
cept in the most formal manner
OF one thing we must be careful-that we
do not narrow the gap between membership
and leadership by lowering the general political
level of the leadership This, however, is not
the main danger now.
The main danger is that by approaching too
cautiously the whole problem of discovering
material and training new leadership we con-
tinue to be unable to meet the demands made
on us for teachers, organizers, writer's and
agtators by our class.