We must be specific

There is a general, overall sentiment for peace. This sentiment has grown in intensity as the weapons of war have increased in destructiveness. And as the balance of world forces has shifted, so have the moods and thinking of the mass of Americans shifted toward peace. It is this overall yearning and concern for peace that forms the foundation for a concerted mass crusade for survival. This crusade is, of course, of utmost importance, and we must devote our best energies and forces to it. However, this is not enough. Such a general crusade will not by itself secure lasting peace.

The fight for peace must be developed in more specific forms. Its mooring lines must be tied to the specific self-interest of specific sections of the people. The campaign for peace is directed toward saving our lives and our civilization from destruction. But it also brings with it certain immediate benefits for the people and-yes-for the industrialists it means immediate profits. It is in relation to this that we must develop the slogans and the campaign for total disarmament.

Cutting down on armaments is the only possible road to cutting down the ever-mounting burden of taxes. Only if we have a cut in arms production will we have a cut in prices. The building of the schools, roads, hospitals, parks, houses, and other things the people so badly need, is blocked by the spending of huge sums for the stockpiling of instruments of destruction. Surely, the problem of the huge farm surpluses, with the resulting impoverishment in many agricultural areas, is bound up with the opening of worldwide markets in a world free from armament burdens. These and many more are the mooring lines to which the fight for peace must be secured.

A generation of the American people has grown up in and made a livelihood from an economy that in large measure has been supported and souped up by war orders. War economy has been accepted as a normal and necessary part of our economic system. This stands as a roadblock to a full mobilization of the forces for peace. As Comrade Lumer's report will show concretely, this is a false conception. We have the task of removing this roadblock.

During these same years of the arms economy, a body of thought has developed to the effect that the Negro people can break down the bars of discrimination in industry, housing, and education only when our Nation is either at war or preparing for war. Unfortunately, there has been an element of truth in this. But we must show clearly how disarmament and peace can be conducive to an atmosphere in which this struggle can more readily be won. Wars and war tensions bring with them a growth of chauvinism and jingoism, while peace is conducive to an atmosphere of brotherhood and understanding. We must understand these special roadblocks to the movement for peace among the Negro people.

Many Negro workers are at the bottom of the seniority list. Therefore, any cutbacks in production means unemployment for them. This is a definite challenge to us in working out a substitute for military production.

Similarly, we need to deal with other specific problems affecting the young people, women, the handicapped, and the old workers. Generalities will not do. Hence, while we take part in the general crusade for peace, we must understand that specific groups, because of specific interests, will start from and rally around narrower issues involved in the fight for peace. With some, unrestricted trade with the socialist countries will be the starting point, with others it will be the dangers of fallout. For still others, disarmament will be the point of greatest interest.

We must see the fight for peace realistically in all its many-sided aspects. At this point, the need is not for starting a peace movement from scratch. Such a movement is here. It expresses itself in a thousand ways and at a variety of levels. At this stage, it is above all expressed through the existing mass organizations of the people.

In a nation like ours, where almost everyone belongs to one or more mass organizations, this is a firm and certainly a broad base. Here is where we should be working to help build and elevate the peace movement. While doing so, we should also have our sights on more concerted and united movements, conferences, and actions of various kinds of local, State, and national levels. If the central issue of peace is to give rise to the greatest, most persistent crusade of our times, what is needed is not one but a number of national centers to guide, prod, and organize it. Not only is this necessary with respect to specific issues but in addition, it seems to me, the youth, women, farmers, veterans, and other groups need such special centers of direction.

Problems on the home front

There is a close relationship between world developments and those on the domestic scene.

What is it that best describes our domestic situation as we enter the decade of the sixties? Is it tranquillity, stability? Are we moving on the path of unending growth and expansion? In spite of the present high level of production, these words do not fit the realities of life in our country. Rather, the state of affairs in our Nation is better described as one of instability, uneasiness, and hesitation.

What best describes the United States of the sixties is the growing catalog of serious problems, steadily becoming more aggravated, which are seeking solution. And what gives these developments such importance and seriousness is that they occur simultaneously with the developments on the world scene which we have described.

An outstanding new feature on the home scene is the development of automation, whose many ramifications and effects are now reaching into all aspects of our national life. Strictly speaking, automation is still an infant. But it is already throwing its weight around like a full-grown heavyweight.

A most striking evidence of its effects is the rise in unemployment in the successive postwar boom periods. In the peak boom year of 1953, following the 1948-49 slump, 2.9 percent of the labor force was unemployed. In 1956, the year of peak economic activity following the 1953-54 slump, the figure was 4.2 percent. In the present period, which follows the depression of 1957-58, unemployment has remained well above 5 percent of the labor force. In October 1959 it stood at 6 percent. Speaking on this question, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota had the following to say: "This is far too high for a dynamic economy, but its effect could be managed if it were spread evenly throughout the economy. The fact is that unemployment has reached disaster proportions in certain regions and for certain age, racial, and educational groups.”

What these figures show is a reemergence, since the war, of the industrial reserve army on a growing scale. And in this, the displacement of workers through automation is playing a constantly growing part.

Automation, and the determination of the monopolies to clear the way for more rapid automation, is also largely at the bottom of the current drive to undermine working conditions in steel, on the railroads, on the waterfront, and in many other industries. It serves also as an instrument used by big business for the destruction of its small competitors and increased concentration of ownership and control. The slogan of big business has become "Automate or die." And in the process, many do die.

Other reports will go further into the problems arising from automation. Here I want only to point out how different are its consequences under socialism. In a Socialist society all technological advances are welcome. The fruits of science and technology are no problem, but rather the foundation on which the economy will rapidly be built to new heights, the basis of the goal of surpassing our own standard of living. The rapid development of automation in the Socialist nations will serve to prod the development of automation here; but the benefits from automation to the workers in the Socialist countries will also serve to inspire our workers, helping them to see the need for socialism, and to struggle for the benefits of automation here.

We must work out definite plans and demands with the aim that at least part of the fruits of this technological advance will go to benefit the working people of our land. A proper examination of the questions growing out of automation is also the key to understanding the present big business drive against organized labor.

A second major feature of the home scene is the growing financial instability of the country. Our national debt is higher than it was at the end of the war, and is still rising. The taxpayers are saddled with a burden of interest now in the neighborhood of $9 billion a year and still going up. State and local debts have been going up by leaps and bounds and are at an alltime high. Private debt has multiplied several times during the postwar years. The burden of taxes has grown to impossible levels, yet Government debts continue to rise. Prices have risen greatly since the end of the war and the value of the dollar has been steadily shrinking. The Federal Government is experiencing increasing difficulty in financing the national debt and borrowing more money. As one observer has remarked, the credit of the U.S. Government, once considered the soundest in the world, is now becoming shaky. And because of this country's world role, these developments are having worldwide repercussions.

A third important feature is the chronic agricultural crisis. Farmers are being increasingly squeezed between shrinking farm prices and mounting production costs. Farm income is steadily declining, and is now at its lowest point in 17 years. Our storage facilities are being choked by the growing mountain of unsalable surpluses of farm products. There are growing areas of desolation in marginal farmlands, with farmers driven out in rising numbers thanks to the development of modern, mechanized farming in the more productive areas. All in all, America's farmers are in serious difficulties, which are having an effect on the entire country.

To these features, we may add the failure of our society to provide adequate housing, education, and health facilities, whose lack grows more acute from year to year. There is also the growing stench of corruption and moral decay, which is penetrating every corner of American life. As one person expressed it, “Everybody is on the gravy train of payola these days-except the working people."

Affected by all these things in the sharpest measure are in the first place the 18 million Negro people, as well as the 5 million Mexican-Americans and the million or more Puerto Ricans in the United States. The slum housing and the ghettoes to which they are confined are becoming not better but steadily worse. They are the most severely affected by the unfair system of taxation, by rising prices, by unemployment, and by the farm crisis.

This is the America we see as we enter the decade of the sixties. These are the realities of life on the homefront, corresponding to those in the world situation. It is these realities of life to which this convention must apply itself, and with which the party must deal.

Meeting the challenge

How does America react to these developments? What are the different currents which are emerging? In what direction are the different groups moving? In short, how is America meeting the challenge?

American monopoly capital is reacting to the world situation with attempts to readjust, reassess, and make changes in its foreign policy, to accommodate itself to present-day realities. This is most dramatically demonstrated by the proposal for the Eisenhower-Khrushchev exchange of visits. And this in turn has been one of the basic factors in opening up the new possibilities which now exist in the fight for peace.

Thus, we have on the one hand the beginnings of a readjustment of direction in the sphere of foreign policy. But, on the other hand, monopoly capital has reacted to the developments at home in an opposite manner. On this front, it is developing a most far-reaching, concentrated drive against labor, whose aim is to deprive the unions of all economic and political power and to place them under complete Government domination and control. The drive is marked especially by the passage of the Landrum-Griffin Act, by the attack on the steel union, and by a rash of proposals for additional antilabor laws, including the outlawing of major strikes. The scope of the attack is indicated by the fact that Adlai Stevenson, who seeks the Democratic presidential nomination, has added his voice to the demand for outlawing strikes. The fight against this drive is the central issue, and we must not permit it to be sidetracked by such peripheral issues as racketeering, corruption, and undemocratic practices, important as these are. Accompanying the antilabor offensive is a drive against civil rights and civil liberties. The forces of reaction have succeeded in bogging down completely the implementation of the Supreme Court antisegregation decision. They have wiped the names of a quarter of a million southern Negro voters from the registration lists. They have been able to intimidate the Supreme Court and to make it retreat from its position on anti-Communist laws and other repressive measures, affecting not only the rights of Communists but those of the entire American people. The situation has reached such proportions that a Harry Truman, who once had liberal pretensions, now makes speeches against liberalism.

The entire drive of big-business reaction is of such scope and nature as to make the overwhelming majority of Americans its victims. In this lies the key to our mass and united front policies.

The victims of this drive have begun to fight back, and to give expression to their protests, resentments, and demands. This is the basic feature of the situation, which we must recognize despite the confusion, the waverings and the ups and downs which exist.

In the labor movement, there are pressures and rumblings from below, of which sections of the leadership are being compelled to take note. The bankruptcy of the old policies of the labor leadership in the face of the new problems is becoming increasingly felt. A striking expression of the new moods developing among the rank and file is the militancy shown by the steelworkers during and since their strike.

The Negro people's movement has shown an upsurge in a number of fields. New independent political movements are making their appearance. New levels of organization and activity are developing among Negro trade unionists, as witnessed by the struggles they waged at the AFL-CIO and UAW conventions. Of major importance is the formation of the Negro Labor Committee on the initiative of A. Philip Randolph.

Among the youth, there are growing signs of rebellion against the lack of decent jobs and training facilities, against the McCarthyite intimidation which disgraces our educational institutions, against segregation, and against the corruption and lack of perspective emanating from the cold-war atmosphere and pressures. To a growing extent, youth are becoming active in the peace movement today.

And so it is, too, with other sections of the people.

The 1960 elections

All these movements and struggles are developing alongside of the peace movement, and are related and intertwined with it, so that the success of one is dependent on that in others. To give leadership and guidance to this complex of movements at their existing level is therefore the central mass task of the party. The multiplicity of forms and levels of the unfolding of the people's resistance must become our primary concern.

While these grow and are built around specific issues as they confront the people, in the direction of their movement and in their objective totality they are movements directed against monopoly. We want to participate in, organize, and lead the broadest of united front movements-on every level-in a thousand ways, in 10,000 places, on 100,000 issues-if possible, with 180 million people. Obviously, we cannot make an understanding of the antimonopoly character of these struggles on the part of others a condition for a united front. But we ourselves must at all times understand that this is their basic nature.

Our electoral policies and activities in 1960 constitute an extension of such a united front policy. In very specific forms, the American people must find ways, through candidates and campaigns, to advance the struggle for peace and peaceful coexistence and to halt the offensive of big business at home. Wherever possible, the gap between these two opposite directions of development should be bridged in candidates and programs. However, where this is not possible, we should not therefore limit our electoral activities. We must find ways of giving support to candidates who take a positive position on the peace issue, while opposing any support they may give to the big business offensive at home, and vice versa.

While giving priority to the peace issue, all the needs of the people must be fought for wages, jobs, labor's rights, civil rights and liberties, social security, housing, health, youth needs, etc. It is essential to show the direct relationship between the cold war and vast military expenditures, and the social and economic needs of the people.

On the basis of such movements and in connection with the election campaign, efforts must be made to forge broad electoral unity to oppose the chief candidates of reaction and the cold war and to promote the nomination and election of propeace, prolabor and procivil rights candidates for office at all levels, including trade unionists and Negro representatives. It is also necessary to nominate and elect representatives from other minority groups, Puerto Rican and Mexican-American.

Labor and the Negro people can no longer be satisfied by a small few from their own ranks in Congress and public office. This election must see a substantial number of labor and Negro candidates from the primaries through the final elections.

An imperative task is to make the Dixiecrats a major target of attack, to expose and isolate them and to defeat their reactionary Republican and Democrat Party allies in the North. In the Democratic Party, in the labor unions and Negro people's organizations, and in all organizations that support the Democratic Party, the demand often raised by liberal forces should be pressed with full force today, namely to oust the Dixiecrats from the Democratic Party.

The proposal of the Civil Rights Commission to establish Federal registrars must be applied in 1960 and guarantee the full right to register and vote to Negroes and others who are now denied that right by local restrictive practices of any kind.

The offensive of big business has given impetus and opportunity to advance independent political action on the part of the labor movement. By boldly moving into the apparatus of the two-party system, and by mobilizing and organizing an independent political force around this activity, the base for the future can be laid. Only through such activity will there emerge the understanding, the leadership and the personnel for a completely independent organization or party of the developing antimonopoly movement, headed by labor, in the period ahead.

II. THE PARTY

Our party has traveled a difficult path—and this not only since the 16th convention. The enemy has thrown wave after wave, both internally and externally, against us now for 10 years. We can say with just pride that the Communist Party, U.S.A. has come through the fires battered but intact. We have suffered defeats but in an overall sense we have matured, become steeled and tempered.

As we all know, a Marxist-Leninist party must not only base itself on the general truth but must gear itself to the specific surroundings and conditions in which it lives and works. So, if we are to reflect this maturity, we must in the quickest possible time gear ourselves to the new period ahead of us. One of the best guarantees that we will be able to meet this challenge is that we are now a united party. Therefore we can now turn all of our attention and energies to the mass tasks and political responsibilities we face. Because of this we can now put aside all one-sideness and hesitations.

Possibly it was unavoidable, but the fact is that we have now gone through a period that could be called a holding operation, an operation to stop the decline and deterioration of our party. I think it is realistic to say that we can now end all such concepts. We are no longer a holding operation but a live, growing organization. Many districts have already demonstrated their ability to move and grow, but this must now become a general rule for the whole party. In short, both the objective and subjective conditions are now ripe for our party to move into a position of becoming a serious factor in the life of our Nation, in the work of the trade unions, the Negro people, the youth, the farmers and other sections of the population.

End negativism

I will not attempt to go into all facets of the work of our party, as that will be done in separate reports, including a report on party organization. Therefore, I would like to limit my remarks to one or two specific questions.

I want to call your attention to one leftover of the past period that we must eliminate. Some of our cadre and a small section of our membership, and especially some of the friends and members who left our ranks, are afflicted by a disease one could designate as "negativism." Let me speak directly to you, comrades and friends, who are so afflicted.

This negativism or cynicism is not based on realities. There is no realistic political foundation for such an outlook on life in general, on the prospects of socialism, or on the immediate future. Your moods arise because you have permitted temporary subjective factors to overwhelm your better judgment. You should carefully assess the fact that you cannot remain on the side lines with a wait-and-see attitude without a slow, possibly unnoticed process of corrosion and deterioration setting in. Now let me say that in reading the following quotation from Dostoyevsky, I have nobody specifically in mind. But I do say that Dostoyevsky describes the final product if negativism and cynicism is followed to its logical conclusion. So, instead of presenting it as being descriptive of anyone I know, let us see it as a warning. Dostoyevsky writes:

"For all his intense sensibility he frankly considers himself a mouse and not a man. I grant you it is an intensely conscious mouse, but it is a mouse all the

same.

"Well, let us now have a look at this mouse in action. Let us suppose, for instance, that its feelings are hurt (and its feelings are almost always hurt), and that it also wants to avenge itself. *** A nasty, mean little desire to repay whoever has offended it in his own coin. *** At last we come to the business itself, to the act of revenge. The unhappy mouse has already succeeded in piling up-in the form of questions and doubts-a large num