Opinion ID: 106268
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: evidentiary challenge.

Text: Only in rare instances will this Court review the general sufficiency of the evidence to support a criminal conviction, for ordinarily that is a function which properly belongs to and ends with the Court of Appeals. We do so in this case and in No. 9, Noto v. United States , post, p. 290our first review of convictions under the membership clause of the Smith Actnot only to make sure that substantive constitutional standards have not been thwarted, but also to provide guidance for the future to the lower courts in an area which borders so closely upon constitutionally protected rights. On this phase of the case petitioner's principal contention is that the evidence was insufficient to establish that the Communist Party was engaged in present advocacy of violent overthrow of the Government in the sense required by the Smith Act, that is, in advocacy of action for the accomplishment of such overthrow either immediately or as soon as circumstances proved propitious, and uttered in terms reasonably calculated to incite to such action. See Yates v. United States, supra, 318-322. This contention rests largely on the proposition that the evidence on this aspect of the case does not differ materially from that which the Court in Yates stated was inadequate to establish that sort of Party advocacy there. In Yates the Government sought to use the Communist Party, or at least the California branch of the Party, as the conspiratorial nexus between various individuals charged, among other things, with a conspiracy to engage in illegal advocacy. Upon reversal here for error in the trial court's charge on the nature of the advocacy proscribed by the Smith Act, this Court, in the exercise of its powers under 28 U. S. C. § 2106, [22] went on to consider the adequacy of the evidence for the purpose of determining as to which defendants an acquittal should be ordered, and as to which ones the way for a new trial should be left open. In the process it was stated that the Government's Party-conspiratorial-nexus theory was unavailing because the evidence fell short of establishing that the Party's advocacy constituted a call to forcible action for the accomplishment of immediate or future overthrow, in contrast to the teaching of mere abstract doctrine favoring that end. 354 U. S., at 329. At the same time, however, it was found that the record reflected certain episodes which, it was considered, might permissibly lend themselves to an inference of illegal advocacy by particular Party members (see id., at 331-333). It was concluded, however, that these and similar episodes were too sporadic and remote ( id., 330) to justify their attribution to the Party, possibly casting its abstract teaching of the Communist classics in a different mold. Accordingly, the Court directed an acquittal of those defendants who had not themselves been connected with such episodes. We agree with petitioner that the evidentiary question here is controlled in large part by Yates. The decision in Yates rested on the view (not articulated in the opinion, though perhaps it should have been) that the Smith Act offenses, involving as they do subtler elements than are present in most other crimes, call for strict standards in assessing the adequacy of the proof needed to make out a case of illegal advocacy. This premise is as applicable to prosecutions under the membership clause of the Smith Act as it is to conspiracy prosecutions under that statute as we had in Yates. The impact of Yates with respect to this petitioner's evidentiary challenge is not limited, however, to that decision's requirement of strict standards of proof. Yates also articulates general criteria for the evaluation of evidence in determining whether this requirement is met. The Yates opinion, through its characterizations of large portions of the evidence which were either described in detail or referred to by reference to the record, indicates what type of evidence is needed to permit a jury to find that (a) there was advocacy of action and (b) the Party was responsible for such advocacy. First, Yates makes clear what type of evidence is not in itself sufficient to show illegal advocacy. This category includes evidence of the following: the teaching of Marxism-Leninism and the connected use of Marxist classics as textbooks; the official general resolutions and pronouncements of the Party at past conventions; dissemination of the Party's general literature, including the standard outlines on Marxism; the Party's history and organizational structure; the secrecy of meetings and the clandestine nature of the Party generally; statements by officials evidencing sympathy for and alliance with the U. S. S. R. It was the predominance of evidence of this type which led the Court to order the acquittal of several Yates defendants, with the comment that they had not themselves made a single remark or been present when someone else made a remark which would tend to prove the charges against them. However, this kind of evidence, while insufficient in itself to sustain a conviction, is not irrelevant. Such evidence, in the context of other evidence, may be of value in showing illegal advocacy. Second, the Yates opinion also indicates what kind of evidence is sufficient. There the Court pointed to two series of events which justified the denial of directed acquittals as to nine of the Yates defendants. The Court noted that with respect to seven of the defendants, meetings in San Francisco which were described by the witness Foard might be considered to be the systematic teaching and advocacy of illegal action which is condemned by the statute. 354 U. S., at 331. In those meetings, a small group of members were not only taught that violent revolution was inevitable, but they were also taught techniques for achieving that end. For example, the Yates record reveals that members were directed to be prepared to convert a general strike into a revolution and to deal with Negroes so as to prepare them specifically for revolution. In addition to the San Francsico meetings, the Court referred to certain activities in the Los Angeles area which might be considered to amount to `advocacy of action'  and with which two Yates defendants were linked. Id., 331-332. Here again, the participants did not stop with teaching of the inevitability of eventual revolution, but went on to explain techniques, both legal and illegal, to be employed in preparation for or in connection with the revolution. Thus, one member was surreptitiously indoctrinated in methods . . . of moving `masses of people in time of crisis' ; others were told to adopt such Russian prerevolutionary techniques as the development of a special communication system through a newspaper similar to Pravda. Id., 332. Viewed together, these events described in Yates indicate at least two patterns of evidence sufficient to show illegal advocacy: (a) the teaching of forceful overthrow, accompanied by directions as to the type of illegal action which must be taken when the time for the revolution is reached; and (b) the teaching of forceful overthrow, accompanied by a contemporary, though legal, course of conduct clearly undertaken for the specific purpose of rendering effective the later illegal activity which is advocated. Compare Noto v. United States , post, at 297-299. Finally, Yates is also relevant here in indicating, at least by implication, the type and quantum of evidence necessary to attach liability for illegal advocacy to the Party. In discussing the Government's conspiratorial-nexus theory the Court found that the evidence there was insufficient because the incidents of illegal advocacy were infrequent, sporadic, and not fairly related to the period covered by the indictment. In addition, the Court indicated that the illegal advocacy was not sufficiently tied to officials who spoke for the Party as such. Thus, in short, Yates imposes a strict standard of proof, and indicates the kind of evidence that is insufficient to show illegal advocacy under that standard, the kind of evidence that is sufficient, and what pattern of evidence is necessary to hold the Party responsible for such advocacy. With these criteria in mind, we now proceed to an examination of the evidence in this case. We begin with what was also present in Yates, the general evidence as to the doctrines, organization, and tactical procedures of the Communist Party, exposited by Lautner, the Government's foundational witness both here and in Yates. Together with documentary evidence, Lautner's testimony, based on high-level participation in Party affairs from 1929 to 1950, furnished the necessary background in Party theory and terminology which is crucial to the proper appreciation of the tenor of Party pronouncements, for these pronouncements, taken out of this larger context, might appear harmless and peaceable without in reality being so. The distinction that was drawn in Yates between theoretical advocacy and advocacy of violence as a rule of action is of course basic, but when the teaching is carried out in a special vocabulary, knowledge of that vocabulary is at least relevant to an understanding of the quality and tenor of the teaching. Lautner's testimony, having covered the pre-war history of the Party, passed to the 1945 reconstitution of the organization. Prior to that time the Party, as the Communist Political Association, had adhered to the position that the change to a Communist society could be achieved through peaceful, democratic means. The reconstitution, which was finally approved at a National Convention in July of 1945, involved a return to the principles of Marxism-Leninism. As found in the so-called Communist classics, the adoption of a program of industrial concentration, the increased effort among Negroes, especially in the South, the complete repudiation of the former Party leader, Browder, and his doctrine of revisionism, all signified, so Lautner testified, that the United States was henceforth to be regarded as no exception to the teachings of Lenin that communism could only be achieved in an industrialized nation such as this by resort to violent revolution, and that a belief in peaceful means was foolishness or treachery. Lautner testified that the industrial concentration program, as well as the emphasis on the Negro minority, was an articulation of this doctrine, in that it involved a concentration on those elements in society which the Party believed could do most damage, in time of crisis, to the existing social fabric in relation to their numbers, and that victory at the polls was not its concern. Lautner testified that it was further resolved at the 1945 National Convention that in order to implement the principles of the reconstitution, a program of thorough re-education of the whole Party membership should be undertaken, and Lautner himself was charged with the duty of carrying out this re-education as a District Organizer and State Chairman. The balance of Lautner's testimony was devoted to a detailed description of the elaborate underground apparatus which he and others were charged with setting up in the various portions of the country assigned to them. Mrs. Hartle testified as to her activities in the Party, primarily in the Pacific Northwest area, from 1934 to approximately 1952. Mrs. Hartle confirmed, in many respects, Lautner's testimony as to Party teaching and doctrine throughout this period. After the 1945 reconstitution she was sent to the National Training School in New York, where thirty officers and functionaries from various parts of the country were re-educated in accordance with the decisions and resolutions of the 1945 Convention. She was taught about dialectical materialism, and the theory of struggle between the capitalist class and the working class. They were taught and reference was made to a quotation . . . that it is the duty of a revolutionary not to try to gloss over this class struggle or to try to compromise it, but to unravel it, to allow this class struggle and help this class struggle to unfold, the clash to proceed. The class was told that it is the duty of a Marxist-Leninist to be a revolutionary and not a reformist. They were further instructed that the United States . . . was objectively at the stage for Proletarian revolution, that the time for the proletariat revolution would come when the objective conditions of political or economic crisis coincided with the subjective condition of a Communist Party which was large enough, with enough influence among the working classes, to give the necessary leadership to lead to the seizure of power. Much of the testimony summarized so far may indeed be considered to relate to the mere theory of revolution, abstract advocacy. However, the teaching at the National Training School also descended to a lower level of generality. Mrs. Hartle was told that the role of the Communist Party was preparing the workers and the people to be ready to be able to take power, to know how to take power when a revolutionary situation arose. At that time, the plan and program of the Party would be to lead the working class to seize power and to smash the Bourgeois state machine. With respect to this latter task, the class was told: . . . the Bourgeois state machine is not smashed after the seizure of power, but in the course of seizing power that the armies, the police, the prisons have to be dealt with and smashed up and rendered inoperative in the course of the seizure of power, that other matters, that some other matters in replacing the, a state, such as the, some of the administrative apparatus and some other matters would take a longer period of time, but the forcible elements of the capitalist state must be smashed in the course of taking power, but some other things like reorganizing the banking system, or some matters like that, could be done in a somewhat longer process. In pressing toward the fulfillment of the subjective conditions necessary for such action, Mrs. Hartle was taught that the struggles and activities of the Communist Party prepare the working class for this act of seizure of power, and the history of the Russian Communist Party and Revolution was taught in the school and the events and principles of this history were constantly related to contemporary conditions in the United States. Thus, for example, the class was told that the coalition of workers and peasants which had proved so successful in Russia should have its counterpart in America in a coalition of workers and Negroes, especially in the South. Following her classes at the National Training School, Mrs. Hartle returned to Washington, where she helped to recruit and organize in underground fashion the employees of the Boeing Aircraft Plant in that State. At the same time, Mrs. Hartle was active in Party schools in her area. She testified that she had both been instructed and had herself taught: . . . the means by which the ultimate goal might be attained was that those means would be forcible. The teaching was that any teaching, any theory of a peaceful road to socialism, or a growing over from capitalism to socialism was a betrayal of the working class and that the Communist Party leading the working class would have to arm it in the first place with the theory that the workers must know and must be prepared to know that they can only take power forcibly. ..... The action that Communist Party members should take in preparing for the ultimate goal that I was taught and that I taught, were to build the Communist Party as the vanguard party of the working class, a theoretically equipped party, equipped with the theory of Marxism-Leninism, a highly organized party that could act as a unit, as a monolithic whole, with democratic centralism, the principle guiding it . . . and that the Communist Party should be the connection between the vanguard and the working class millions in this preparation by working with and winning the confidence of the working class and allies of the working class, such as, the Negro people, the poor farmers, other national groups, and in this way, in the course of struggle, constant struggle taking the forms of strikes and demonstrations and picket lines and marches and various kinds of activities to train the working class and the people for revolutionary battle. The witness Duran, who attended a Party School in Los Angeles in 1951, described what he had been taught by one Moreau, a member of the National Education Commission of the Communist Party: He divided in his explanation the . . . Proletariat. . . as being divided into two groups. Those in industry that would lead the revolution, and those in agriculture that would follow, and speaking about the revolution. Professor Moreau stated to the class in a very emotional manner that he could see himself carrying a gun against the capitalist S. O. B.'s and explained to the class it was all based on the science of Marx and Lenin. ..... In discussing the Proletarian Revolution more thoroughly Professor Moreau explained throughout the school that the Proletarian Revolution would only come about if a Bolshevik rank and file, the sincere Communists, would get out and teach, and teach the people, the desirability of changing the system and the necessity of changing them, and in doing that, we had to teach the people that you cannot change the capitalist system to a Socialist system, to socialism successfully, the peaceful way; it had to be erupted from, and had to be taken away by force and violence, away from them and the entire state machinery of the Bourgeoisie smashed, the F. B. I., the courts and the Army and the Navy, whatever was on it, whatthe entire instrumentality of the Bourgeoisie had to be smashed and substituted by the Proletarian machinery. . . . and during the period of the revolution the transition, the violent transition, we had to make mass work to get the masses away from the Bourgeoisie so they would not join a counterrevolution movement. It meant after the people of the Communist Party, the vanguard, had become satisfied, that the Bourgeoisie machinery was smashed, and they were in control, then they also had to collect guns from the people and control the people themselves. Q. Do I understand, Mr. Moreau [ sic ] that during this period of revolution the people, that is, the masses of the people, would be carrying guns? A. Yes, sir. Q. And after the revolution do I understand that the Party would go around and collect these guns and take them away from the people? A. Yes, sir; take them away from those that helped them overthrow the capitalist system in order to assure the revolution itself. . . . Immediately after the overthrow of the capitalist system and establishment of the dictatorship of the Proletariat, it became necessary for a Communist to establish Red Army in this country, not only to secure and maintain the dictatorship of the Proletariat, but control the people as well, and those people that did help overthrow the Government would not have any civil rights whatsoever, no voting rights, or anything; they would be dished out to them according to the way they felt, way they fell in with the Communist office by the dictatorship. Q. Now, Mr. Duran, what, if anything, did Mr. Moreau teach you in this school about the role that would be played by the Communist Party during this period of revolution when the Government would be overthrown by force and violence? A. The role of the Communist Party, and specifically within the Communist Party, the Bolsheviks was to play a vanguard role, a leading role; that is explained scientifically in that so that first we teach the people the desirability of overthrowing them and teach them the, it could only be done through the Proletarian Revolution, and then when the time is ripe we could stampede them against the capitalist class. Duran also testified to what he had been taught by Art Berry, District Organizer for seven States, in a Colorado school in 1952: . . . we were discussing the scientific application of Marx and Lenin to the transition period between capitalism and socialism, and he demonstrated this with the kettle of water, that you could put a quantitative amount of water in a kettle and set it somewhere, nothing would happen, just like the masses, nothing does happen. . . . [he] said, however, if you get that same amount, same kettle with the same amount of water in it, and put fire underneath it, then you begin to get quantitative changes, and eventually it reaches a nodule point to where it has a qualitative and abrupt transition into steam. He continued, same applied to the development of the revolution in this sense, the American people will not and cannot make a successful change over from capitalism to socialism by themselves, like the fire underneath the water, the Communist Party teaches and leads them to where when the society reaches that nodule point, the Communist people teaches the people before and then leads them to make that abrupt change into the society of socialism. ..... Substantially, within the same explanation of violent overthrow of the Government . . . he stated that not only would it be that, but that we would have to set up barricades, establish a central point from where we would participate from; he stated the `we' literally speaking `we', would have to have a central point because during the revolution it may become necessary to ebb, retreat in certain battles, and we would have to learn to retreat in an organizational way and a correct way. It was essential to learn to ebb as it was to flow on the revolution. In the ebbing we were to see that we ebb before the enemy wiped everybody out. Ebbing to the central point that had been barricaded, reorganization, and then at the correct time start flowing forward in the revolution. The witness Obadiah Jones testified concerning a Party Training School in St. Louis which he attended in 1947. Jones was taught that the only way the national problem could be solved would be in connection with the Proletariat Revolution. Jones was also instructed as to the nature of a Communist army: A. He said general staff of an army was different from the Communist Party . . . general staff of an army operated from a safe spot from behind the line and led the army from a far distance, and that the Communist Party went forth and fought with the workers. Q. Did he say anything with reference to the techniques? A. Yes, he said that you couldn't be a good leader without knowing all of the techniques of fighting. Q. Did he say anything with respect to carrying out instructions? A. Yes, sir. Q. What did he say in that connection? A. He said that capitalists in the army did not carry out the instructions in full, but the Communists did, regardless of what the cost would be, they would carry out instructions completely. At the final session, the students were required by the instructor to take a pledge: The pledge was each of us are Communists or members of the Party and each of us have a responsibility and we must carry out our responsibility and work for the interests of the Party and its recipients and carry out the full will of the Party even though it meant to fight and to kill, we must carry out the demands of the Party and all of them. The witnesses Clontz, Childs, and Reavis testified primarily as to their dealings with petitioner Scales. We regard this testimony, which finds no counterpart in the Yates record with respect to any of the defendants whose acquittal was directed, as being of special importance in two ways: it supplies some of the strongest and most unequivocal evidence against the Party based on the statements and activities of a man whose words and deeds, by virtue of his high Party position, carry special weight in determining the character of the Party from the standpoint of the Smith Act; and it appears clearly dispositive as to the quality of petitioner's Party membership, and his knowledge and intent, when we come to consider him not as a Party official but as the defendant in this case. [23] In 1948 Ralph C. Clontz, Jr., then a student at Duke Law School, undertook to furnish the F. B. I. with information he had gained about Communist Party activities in North Carolina, and to volunteer his services in attempting to penetrate the Party to acquire further information. As a result, in September of that year, Clontz sent a postcard to petitioner, informing him that he was a law student and that he was interested in communism. Petitioner replied by sending Clontz a large cardboard box filled with Communist literature. An accompanying letter, headed Carolina District Communist Party U. S. A. with the notation Junius Scales, Chairman, explained: Under separate cover I have already sent you a rather varied sample of our literature. I hope you will give it close attention. If I can discuss any matter relating to my Party and its program with you in person, I will be glad to do so. Several days later Clontz went to visit petitioner and thus began a relationship which was to bring him into intimate contact with the Communist Party, its teachings, purpose and activities. At an early meeting between the two, petitioner told Clontz that it was impossible for the Communist Party to succeed to power through educating the people in this country and gaining their votes at the polls, but that a forceful revolution would be necessary. At a later meeting, the discussion was not limited to the theoretical inevitability of revolution, but went beyond the theory itself to an explanation of basic strategy which the Communist Party was using to give concrete foundation to the theory, i. e., to bringing about the revolution: The defendant [petitioner] explained that basically their strategy was bottomed on a concept that there were two classes of people in this country, that could be used by the Communist Party to foment a revolution. The first class he termed the working class or Proletariat, working class, he said, had as its natural born leaders or vanguard, the Communist Party. The second class, he described, in this country was what he termed the Negro nation. The Negro nation he described as a separate nation in what he termed the Black Belt, including thirteen Southern States, and the strategy of the Communist Party was to bring the working class, led by the Communist Party, and what he termed the Negro nation, together, to bring about a forceful overthrow of the Government. Now Scales and the Communist Party taught that the basic strategy of the Communist Party would never change, but that tactics might be altered as the situation changed. On petitioner's invitation, Clontz joined the Communist Party on January 17, 1950. He was not assigned to a particular group but became a member at large, in order to continue his instruction under petitioner. In the course of this instruction, petitioner repeatedly told Clontz of the necessity for revolution to bring about the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Scales analogized the situation in the United States to that in Russia prior to the 1917 Revolution. He pointed out that revolution would be easier in this country than it had been in Russia: that while in the Soviet Union there had been no one to help the Soviet Party, that in this country when the revolution started, we would have the benefit of the help from the mother country, Russia, in bringing about our own revolution, because part of the purposes of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union was international in scope and that we naturally would continue to receive help in all circumstances from the Soviet Party when the revolution was started here in this country. Petitioner explained that the Soviet Union could not be expected to land troops to start a revolution here. A similar procedure had been unsuccessful in China. Rather, he said that we Communists in this country would have to start the revolution, and we would have to continue fighting it, but that the Soviet Union would aid the Communist Party in this endeavor by furnishing it with experienced revolutionaries from Russia. [24] He added that if the United States declared war on the Communists in their revolution, then the Soviet Union would land troops, and he said that would be a bloody time for all. When asked by Clontz when all this would occur, Scales noted that a depression would greatly accelerate the coming of the revolution if the Communists used it properly to prepare the masses of the people. Petitioner arranged for Clontz to be awarded a scholarship to study in New York at the Jefferson School of Social Science, an official Communist Party School, during the month of August 1950. Because Clontz arrived at a time when few scheduled courses were being offered, the bulk of his training at the school was received in private instruction from Doxey A. Wilkerson, the teacher with whom petitioner had communicated in arranging Clontz' scholarship. [25] Wilkerson, like petitioner, told Clontz, that the Communist Party recognized and expressed to themselves that the only kind of means would be proper means, which would be forceful means, that no longer was there any even pretense among intelligent Communists that any voting system or any people's election could bring this government. He also stated, as Scales had, that the revolution basically would come about by combining the forces of what had been already identified as the Negro nation and the working class as the vanguard. In line with this strategy, Wilkerson advised Clontz that he should not let his membership in the Communist Party become known, that by remaining under cover he would be much more helpful to the Party when the revolution came. As part of his undercover activity, Clontz was directed to attempt to infiltrate various organizations of the working class in order to achieve a background of respectability and to be able to lead such organizations toward the goal of the Communist Party, . . . the undermining of the Government and overthrowing the Government, bringing communism in the United States. But Clontz was not to lose contact with the Party, for if he got isolated without Party direction . . . [his] efforts would be pretty largely wasted. In connection with these instructions, Wilkerson mentioned one of the things that frightened the United States leaders was they knew that not only did they have to contend with China and the other Communist-dominated countries, but that also in every capitalist country the working class party, the Communists, would be working from within. When Clontz returned to North Carolina, he reported to petitioner on his activities at the Jefferson School. He also informed petitioner, under instructions from the F. B. I., that he wished to move to New York. Petitioner arranged for Clontz to remain under his direction and to pay dues to him, while in New York, rather than effecting a formal transfer. Clontz moved to New York in March of 1951. While there Scales directed him to get in with the A. C. L. U. organization to report on what value they might have in the coming struggle . . . . Clontz had also been advised by an associate of petitioner to infiltrate. . . the Civilian Defense setup. The witnesses Childs and Reavis also testified to their relationship with Scales, who among other things arranged for their attendance at Party schools where their instruction followed much the same pattern as that described by Clontz. [26] In 1952 Childs attended a Party Training School of which petitioner was a director. The school was given for outstanding cadres in the North and South Carolina and Virginia Districts of the Communist Party. It was held on a farm and strict security measures were taken. The District Organizer of Virginia instructed at the school. He told the students that the role of the Communist Party is to lead the working masses to the overthrow of the capitalist government. With respect to the preliminary task of gaining the broad coalition necessary to achieve this task, he stated that, . . . the Communist Party has a program of industrial concentration in which they try to get people, that is, people who are Communist Party members, into key shops or key industries which the Party has determined or designated to be industrial concentration industries or plants. This is so that the Communist Party members in a particular plant will be able to have a cell, or a Communist Party group in which they will be able to more effectively plan for such things as attempting to control the union in that particular plant. And, in a compulsory recreation period, this same instructor gave a demonstration of jujitsu and, explaining that the students might be able to use this on a picket line, how to kill a person with a pencil. According to Childs' testimony, what he showed us to do was to take our pencil, . . . just take the pencil and place it simply in the palm of your hand so that the back will rest against the base of the thumb, and then we were to take it, and the person, and give a quick jab so that it would penetrate through here [demonstrating], and enter the heart, and then if we could not do that, we just take it and grab it at the base of the throat. Reavis attended the Party's New York Jefferson School in 1942. In a course on Negro History the students, drawn primarily from the South, were taught that . . . the Negro people was the only revolutionary group within the United States that we could align themselves [ sic ] with, and hope to reach their [ sic ] gains through the avenue of force and violence, by overthrow of the Government, by Proletariat faction . . . . Reavis was later advised to seek employment at the Western Electric Plant in Winston-Salem. He stated: I bumped into Mr. Scales at Harvey's home and Ithe report said . . . the advice I'd been getting was confirmed by him. I advanced the question on what I should do in case I did get employment there at Western Electric, and I knew it was a, Government work, what I should do in case I was asked to sign certain papers, and I was told to do the same, that they had when signing a Taft-Hartley affidavit, to go ahead and sign them, that before they did, the defendant asked me if I had signed any papers that might be used as proof that I was in the Party, and I didn't remember any. We conclude that this evidence sufficed to make a case for the jury on the issue of illegal Party advocacy. Dennis and Yates have definitely laid at rest any doubt that present advocacy of future action for violent overthrow satisfies statutory and constitutional requirements equally with advocacy of immediate action to that end. 341 U. S., at 509; 354 U. S., at 321. Hence this record cannot be considered deficient because it contains no evidence of advocacy for immediate overthrow. Since the evidence amply showed that Party leaders were continuously preaching during the indictment period the inevitability of eventual forcible overthrow, the first and basic question is a narrow one: whether the jury could permissibly infer that such preaching, in whole or in part, was aimed at building up a seditious group and maintaining it in readiness for action at a propitious time . . . the kind of indoctrination preparatory to action which was condemned in Dennis.  Yates, supra, at 321-322. On this score, we think that the jury, under instructions which fully satisfied the requirements of Yates, [27] was entitled to infer from this systematic preaching that where the explicitness and concreteness, of the sort described previously, seemed necessary and prudent, the doctrine of violent revolutionelsewhere more a theory of historical predictability than a rule of conductwas put forward as a guide to future action, in whatever tone, be it emotional or calculating, that the audience and occasion required; in short, that advocacy of action was engaged in. The only other question on this phase of the case is whether such advocacy was sufficiently broadly based to permit its attribution to the Party. We think it was. The advocacy of action was not sporadic (cf. p. 226, supra ), the instances of it being neither infrequent, remote in time nor casual. [28] It cannot be said that the jury could not have found that the criminal advocacy was fully authorized and condoned by the Party. We regard the testimony of the witnesses, whose credibility, of course, is not for us, as indicating a sufficiently systematic and substantial course of utterances and conduct on the part of those high in the councils of the Party, including the petitioner himself, to entitle the jury to infer that such activities reflected tenets of the Party. The testimony described activities in various States, including the teaching at some seven schools, among them the national Party school. The witnesses told of advocacy by high Party officials, including that of leaders of the Party in nine States. Further, there was testimony that the Party followed the principle of democratic-centralism whereby a position once adopted by the Party must be unquestionably adhered to by the whole membership. The conformity of the views expressed and the terms employed in advocating violent overthrow in such States as Washington, North Carolina, Missouri, Colorado and Virginia could reasonably be taken by the jury as a practical manifestation of democratic-centralism. Another concrete illustration of this principle could have been found in the circumstance that in almost every instance where a speaker engaged in advocacy of violent overthrow, he not only advocated violence to his audience but urged others to go out and do likewise. All of these factors combine to justify the inference that the illegal individual advocacy as to which testimony was adduced was in truth the expression of Party policy and purpose. The requirement of Party imputability is adequately met in the record. (See note 18, supra. ) The sufficiency of the evidence as to other elements of the crime requires no exposition. Scales' active membership in the Party is indisputable, and that issue was properly submitted to the jury under instructions that were entirely adequate. [29] The elements of petitioner's knowledge and specific intent ( ante, p. 220) require no further discussion of the evidence beyond that already given as to Scales' utterances and activities. Compare Noto v. United States , post, at 299-300. They bear little resemblance to the fragmentary and equivocal utterances and conduct which were found insufficient in Nowak v. United States, 356 U. S. 660, 666-667, and in Maisenberg v. United States, 356 U. S. 670, 673. We hold that this prosecution does not fail for insufficiency of the proof.