The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-01-28
smash Sectarianism Penetrate the Factories :!
,eec by Earl Broevder the Chicago Shop Conference jam

to explain all of our shortcomings
in the shop work on the grounds
that our Party members are afraid
to work in the shops, that they
are cowardly, they are not suff1-
GENTLY ready to sacrifice them
selves. This tendency tries to find
the answer to our weaknesses by
methods of shaming our Party
members and driving them into
more intense activities. That is the
wrong approach. The other and
opposite kind of wrong approach is
the conception that one must not
be active at all, one must conceal
oneself so thoroughly as to remove
all possibility of discharge and
thereby remove all activity and
possible influence in the shop.
These two wrong approaches are
opposites, but they both achieve the
same result. In the last case it
is clear nothing happens in the
shop. We have had many shops
where we had shop nuclei for the
past six or seven years. Nothing
ever happened there. The mem
bership of the nuclei have never
changed unless somebody died. No
new members were recruited, no
leaflets were issued, no shop papers,
and if there were any, it was some
thing written outside the shop and
the workers did not respond. Such
shop nuclei are worse than useless
because if we did not have them
we would recognize we would have
to find some new workers there,
and we would establish the new
nucleus that would live and grow.
But as long as we have this nu-
cleus on the records we refer the
shop questions to this nucleus.
Nor, is it any use to merely drive
our comrades into action. In most
cases we will find that the lack of
activities can be overcome by show
ing the comrades how to become
active and how to do the work.
And also, to show the comrades
that we do take seriously the ques-
ton of maintaining our unit in the
shop. When we do not take up
Geriously, with real Bolshevik seri-
BUSINESS the problem of safeguard
ing the unit in the shop, then we
achieve the same end as in shop
units which exist for years and do
nothing, since in such cases, our
unit is destroyed by Implanted
activity and lack of safeguard. One
can therefore say that in most
cases our best shop units are still
those that live the shortest length
of time, and those that live the
longest are the most useless, We
--','~t s~iTe this contradiction. We
must find some way to give our
oood ec5iue up'ts a lonrer life. 1t
is intolerable where we have condi-
tons that a shop unit has an
active life of one or two months.
AS soon as it begins to work it is
destroyed by the enemy. p
SAFEGUARDING OUR MEMBERS
IN THE SHOPS
We must learn how to safeguard
the existence of the shop nuclei, not
by stopping them from working,
but by giving them the correct
forms of work and giving them
safeguards. One of the worst
crimes is & careless attitude toward
he safeeusrdi,1r of our work. We
have to realize that we are Illegal
in the factories, even though we
till maintain certain lie al les in
the streets and elections. In the
factories we are absolutely illegal,
and it is entirely necessary to get
the same ds~res of attention to pre-
serve our units from destruction by
stool pigeons, shop spies, ETC., as
We rive to IRE met i'',r-''Y7--I
political questions of the Party.
We have to take it with the same
seriousr 7ss. tat We you'd y e
preparations for strike or other
major class battles We must
study and learn the methods of
conspiretive work in the shops. The
safeguarding of membership rolls,
the safeguarding of contacts and
learning the technique of hiding
our per-onrel from the boss With
out hiding the existence of our
organization from the workers. The
very worst thing is to hare a shop
unit desire ID not through is s!2cp
acti,5g bit merely through expos
ure5 By ssscol pigeons.
1t is quite true that the deeree of
spy systems in the factories is
greatly exaggerated. The spy sys-
TENS are much smaller than the
general popular idea gives them
credit for. And if we were correct
ly approaching the problem we