The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-09-23
Page Four
ON THE CARRYING OUT OF
THE 18th PLENUM DECISIONS
Changing Methods of Work to Help Make the
Turn to ShOp Work
BY JOHN WILLIAMSON.

THE 18th Plenum of the Central Committee
dramatized three major weaknesses in the
inner Party situation to be overcome inlme-
dately:
(a) Activity in shop at a standstilI-no pro-
gress in shop nuclei.
(b) Bureaucratic methods of work and for
NAL approach as obstacles to mass work and
mass Party.
tc) Too slow growth of the Party-need of
doubling membership,
All three of these weaknesses apply more or
less uniformly to all districts and on basis of
specific conditions in each district, must be
overcome.
The membership must understand that today
as never before, the emphasis of becoming rooted
in Shops is one of life or death for our Party.
Why?
az The bourgeosie is beginning a vicious
attack on the decisive sections of the American
workers-those still employed and in major in
dustries, such as steel packing coal, railroad.
etc.
(2) Leadership over the workers in resisting
these attacks cannot be supplied by Party from
outside the factory-at street meetings or dem
onstrations. To actually lead the workers in
defending their living standards, We must be
among them every day in the shops.
80 Failure to root ourselves among these
workers in the decisive shops or mills will re-
suit in one of three things: (a) unorganized,
Ieaderless resistance easily crushed; Cb) fake
leadership Of the A. F. of L. to strangle mill
fancy of workers; or Co defeat of workers in
these decisive industries without a struggle. De-
feat in either form will have its reverberation
st
unemployed, because it will show weakness in
our capacity Of leadership.
az Even today, as exempHfied in Chicago,
the bourgeoisie is ntensifying its terror against
us Each week an average of 100 workers are
arrested. Every street meeting is being broken
up now. The bosses know our weak spot, and
are concentrating to attack us there which to-
day is our major method of talking to the
workers
We have as a task-'War against paper de-
cisions," If there was any field where paper
decisions hold full sway in our Party, it is shop
work-from top to bottom In District 8, fol-
lowing are a few extracts of resolutions of the
last three plenums:
March 1929 1881: THE outstanding weak
ness of the Party in District still remains the
same-that we are not factor among the work
ers in the mines, factories railroads and mills;
our concentration on shops must have the
perspective to develop struggles and lead the
workers in these struggles on the basis of i'm
mediate demands.
May 30, 1881: g. Characteristic weaknesses
of the Party % failure to penetrate and lay
base in the shops either for unions or Party;
. 81 not being rooted in the shops we do
not participate in initiating and developing
strike struggles, but only enter them after they
are called. there is a definite theological
turn in appreciation of shop work which has
found a few organizatonal expressions (Rolling
Ndills-Excelsior r-Hurley-Rubber fac
Observation-Disclosures in st. Louis, etc. this
turn must find its daily expression by the entire
Party turning its attention to shop work"
July 1920, 1881: Although the last plenum of
the district placed the central task as the con-