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From Labor Action, Vol. 12 No. 31, 2 August 1948, pp. 1 & 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
In a move calculated to serve a three-fold purpose in its timing, a federal grand jury last week handed down indictments against twelve top Stalinist leaders on charges of conspiring to overthrow the United States government as defined in the provisions of the infamous Smith Act.
Though Assistant United States Attorney John F.X. McGohey denied direct administration pressure, he refused comment when asked if the indictments had been requested by Attorney General Clark. The circumstances of the indictments, and the subsequent arrests, cast a sharp light on administration responsibility. There is no indication that the grand jury, which has been hearing evidence in the case for over a year, had anything more to go on last week than a year ago.
Everything about them suggests that the indictments were timed:
Whichever of the three was uppermost in administration calculations, the special shoddiness of the move is revealed throughout. Whether inspired by international policy considerations, or more narrow domestic elevation purposes, the Truman administration is clearly ready to make civil liberties a victim of its objectives. The menace that underlies this move, is underscored by a recent statement of the Civil Liberties Union which notes the deterioration in civil liberties in 1946 and 1947.
That the servants of a totalitarian master are involved in the case, namely the leaders of the Communist Party, does not in any way mitigate the blow delivered at civil liberties by the indictments. The more so as it makes use of a despicable instrument, the Smith Gag Act, which has already once been used against genuine socialists (as distinct from Stalinists!) in the famous case of the Minneapolis teamsters union officials and the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party, and is certain to be used again against others in the labor movement – socialists, anarchists, militant liberals – if the precedent is upheld anew.
The terms of the indictment are so worded as to reveal an unmistakable threat to the socialist movement. Were the Stalinists leaders being charged with acts of espionage on behalf of their Kremlin master, their indictment would not at all be the concern of the labor movement. Espionage is the business of imperialist governments, a business in which every imperialist government – American as well as Russian – engages. Similarly the apprehension of spies. Spies operate according to the rules of their own “trade,” and face punishment, if caught, according to the same rules.
Like every Communist Party in the world, the United States CP acts under the ultimate direction of Stalin’s dictatorship and his secret police, the GPU. The GPU works through the Communist Party, and outside the Communist Party. Thus, it is an ARENA for GPU activity, as distinct from a simple agency of espionage. It is a political party. Its principal purpose is to promote the political needs of Stalinism, primarily through winning support among the working class. It is this which makes it particularly inimical to labor because It subverts the needs of the working class to those of the Kremlin despots.
(The leaders of the CP in the U.S. take their orders from Moscow, from the GPU. That goes without saying. But to think that the GPU would assign such a one as William Z. Foster, national chairman of the CP, to some such thing as stealing atom bomb designs is to credit the GPU with lots less of acumen than it deserves – and to credit the accusers with much more intelligence than they possess. The GPU has many agents at its disposal, and it distributes its tasks. Foster’s job is political – to curry favor with American imperialists or to build opposition to them according to the dictates of Russian foreign policy.)
That the working class must deal with Stalinism in its own way, by driving its influence out of the labor movement, and that it cannot permit the capitalist government to perform this job for it, are facts again demonstrated by the indictments. The indictments do not charge specific acts of espionage. They constitute a political indictment resting exclusively on the Smith Gag Act (passed under Roosevelt in 1940 – Wallaceites, note!) which virtually makes reading of the Communist Manifesto a major criminal offense.
The Smith Act was first used against the Trotskyist leaders, who were sentenced to terms up to eighteen months in the Minneapolis case. At the time, the nation’s outstanding authorities on civil liberties named the act as a base violation of civil rights, notably of free speech. The defense cited Justice Holmes’ opinion that “imminent danger” had to be proved; that is, that speaking for views, or distributing literature for these views, regardless of what the government might think of these views, were protected by constitutional right so long as concrete acts of violence could not be proved.
According to the Smith Gag Act distribution of the classic documents of socialism which argue for the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a workers’ world, is a crime carrying penalties up to ten years in prison and $10,000 in fines for each count in an indictment. Thus the tepid Socialist Party, which is accepted as respectable by such pillars of capitalism as the New York Times, could be indicted because its book stores sell the Communist Manifesto.
As we note elsewhere in this issue, there is an especial irony in that the Stalinist leaders are indicted under the Smith Act. The Stalinists applauded its use against the Trotskyists. Now, it is quite probable that the very same “evidence” used against the Trotskyists will be used against the Stalinists. There is an important difference in this use. The Trotskyists were unconstitutionally railroaded, but the charges had, at least, this much veracity – they did genuinely speak for the socialist doctrine which they were accused of spreading. The Stalinists may distribute the literature cited, but that is all their connection with Marxist-Leninist doctrine (as named in the grand jury indictments) consists of.
There is idiocy in the charge that the Stalinists represent Marxism-Leninism, but much more than that too. The Stalinists are the greatest enemies of Marxism-Leninism in the world. No other force, no other, has done so much damage to Marxism-Leninism as have the Stalinists – precisely because they pretend to speak in its name while outraging with the greatest violence every aspect of Marxist-Leninist thought.
Whether the grand jury realized that to be so, or not, is beside the paint. The brain of a McGohey may find some association between Marxism-Leninism and Its opposite, Stalinism. But the text of the indictment is implicit repudiation of that canard against socialist thought. It is as well itself an indictment of the hypocrisy of the administration, proof that it yields nothing in chicanery, duplicity and venality to the Stalinists.
The indictment against the twelve CP leaders charges that in 1945 the defendants created the Communist Party, from which time on they are presumably guilty of seeking to overthrow the United States government. The date, 1945, is significant. Before that, for several years, the Communist Party was the Communist Political Association. Perhaps the gentlemen of the grand jury were stupid or merely uninformed. But every child knows, or should know, that the difference between the Communist Political Association and the Communist Party is exactly nil. It is certain that Attorney General Clark knows this. The Communist Party became the Communist Political Association when Stalin ordered it to, and became again the Communist Party when Stalin so ordered. In both cases, the order corresponded to the interests of the Kremlin.
What was the difference? From a June day in 1940 to 1945, Russia and the United States were allied in war. The Communist Party was altered then to fit the requirements of supporting that war. Roosevelt knew it. Even Harry S. Truman should knew that. The CP was as much an agent of a foreign power in 1943 as in 1945 when the change in international relations was followed by a change in the orders to the Communist Party. The difference lies in that in serving Stalin before 1945 It also served American imperialism. Thus, If the CP has nothing in common with communism or with Marxism, the administration has nothing in common with decent consistency or honesty.
So too it is quite likely that the administration understands very well that the last thing the Communist Party seeks to do today is to overthrow the government. Ultimately, it is the aim of the Communist Party to replace the capitalist system here with an image of the totalitarian system imposed by Stalin on Russia. But it is ridiculous to even imagine that the Communist Party with its feeble forces in this country, and with the international situation what it is, would have any such object as a practical objective for its current policy. That policy is rather designed to embarrass, harass and otherwise bring pressure against the policies of the United States. And that happens not to be a crime.
In the process the CP misuses, misleads and deludes the workers whom it influences or tries to influence. That is a crime against the working class. But it is no justification of the infamous Smith Act, and it is no justification of the indictments. We repeat, the working class will have to tend to the CP in its own way – as it has in the National Maritime Union, in the auto workers union and elsewhere – without benefit of the vicious assistance of the administration or its Republican rivals.
Much is involved here, there are many angles to consider: the objectives of the administration, for one thing; the nature of Stalinism and its parties as opponents of capitalism AND the working class; and the broad issue of civil rights. To these we will return in subsequent issues of Labor Action. In the meantime we must note the essentials of the case.
The Communist Party is a foul instrument working AGAINST the working class INSIDE the working class. Precisely for that reason is it particularly important that we estimate clearly the issues of civil rights, even as they effect the totalitarian bandits of the Communist Party, that are involved. In the final analysis it is the labor movement generally, and the socialist movement in particular, which has most to lose in any assault on civil rights. Especially is this so when the arguments used are such as those in this case.
It is, for example, unlikely that the Smith Gag Act would be used against fascists (and even if it were so used, we would be no more for it than we are now); and it is certain that fascists would not be charged with the literature of socialism. That the Stalinists use such literature, though they have no more honest connection with it than a Gerald K. Smith would have, is something we must consider by way of fully understanding the machinations of Stalinism. The Stalinists commit daily outrages against socialism. The Truman administration is out to commit an outrage against civil liberties. We must do what we can to permit neither.
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