34
PARTISAN REVIEW
confusions propagated by the conscious and unconscious followers
of the Communist Party line must be pitilessly exposed. It is ironical
that although the Communists have captured central posts in the labor
movement, American workers by and large have escaped infection
by illusions of Sovietland. Whatever mass base the Communist Party
has
in
this country is to be found among the professionals and so–
called "intellectuals." This influence is reflected
in
the newspaper
columns, the radio commentaries, the periodicals and publishing houses
and other agencies of communication and education. When it goes
into action on a national scale, it can mold public opinion on many
vital issues. Some brilliant feats have been pulled off, for example,
the campaign for a second front, and the campaigns against Mihailo–
vich and Chiang Kai-shek. And no one is so high
in
American political
life that he cannot be tricked into joining a "front" organization.*
Third, a reconstituted liberal labor coalition
in
America must
reach out to embrace the co-operatives, teachers and public servants,
farmers, small businessmen, and all other individuals, irrespective of
their
~conomic
origins or status, who are more concerned about re–
taining the processes of democracy than about any specific advantage
they hope to win through them. The great weakness of American
labor is that it has permitted itself to be jockeyed into a position in
which it appears as arrayed against the population as a whole, and in
which its legitimate demands can easily be pictured as a selfish dis–
regard of the public welfare. Lewis may have strengthened the imme–
diate position of the coal miners-who have every moral right to
much better c9nditions than those Lewis has secured for them-but by
his fantastic public-relations policy, he has harmed American labor
more than Weir and Girdler. He has done what the most rabid open–
shoppers have failed to do-drawn the resentment of the American
public to labor. And he is not the only one.
There are some considerations, however, that must be added
*
It is not commonly known that the Communist League of American Wri–
ters, through the efforts of sympathetic intermediaries, even snared Franklin D.
Roosevelt as a member! It was only when, as Executive Chairman of the Com–
mittee for Cultural Freedom, I sent an inquiry to the White House that
his affiliation was confidentially canceled in order to prevent the Republicans
from making political capital out of it in 1940. The Communist Party fraction
was getting ready to publish the fact of the President's affiliation in order "to
prove" that the organization, whose founding plans were first laid in Earl Brow–
der's office, was not a Communist Party front. Mention of the President's mem–
bership slipped out in a speech by D.
0.
Stewart, reprinted in the League
Bulletin,
Vol. VI, No. 1, p. 11.
