Figures Factory

From New International, Vol. I No. 1, July 1934, p. 32.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

ONE of the most detestable features of the Stalinist regime is deception – deception of the working class, and of its own ranks. The manufacture of falsehoods has attained levels that any industry might envy. The last convention of the Stalinist party at Cleveland was merely another occasion for big-scale lying.

“Since 1930,” reported Browder, “starting with a membership of 7,545, we had recruited up until February 1934, 49,080 members. If we had retained all the old and new members, we would have had in February, 56,595 members. Instead of this, we have dues-payments of only about 25,000. Two out of every three recruited members have not been retained in the party.” (Report to the 8th Convention, Communist Party, p. 91)

“In 1930,” he says elsewhere, “at the 7th Convention, our Party ... had only 7,545 clues-paying members.” (Ibid., pp. 80–81.)

Compare these assertions with the following, which have been conveniently forgotten: “The recent recruiting drive, during which over 6,000 new members, 85% of whom are industrial workers and 15% Negroes, almost exclusively from industry, was a real achievement for our Party.”(Thesis and Resolutions for the 7th National Convention of the Communist Party of USA, March 31–April 4, 1930, p. 88) “Of the present membership of approximately 15,000 only 1,189 members are in factory nuclei.” (Ibid., p. 64).

Ergo, 9,000 (not 7,545!) at the beginning of 1930, and 15,000 at the end of the first quarter. But –

“The Party itself has been cleansed of opportunists and liquidators (Lovestoneites and Trotskyites) and unified and consolidated on the line of the Communist International. As a result of this it grew from 7,000 members in 1930, to 23,000 weekly dues-paying members in 1934.”(Daily Worker, February 23, 1934, p. 5)

And in San Francisco, the Stalinists have still another figure for 1930, as they will have others for 1934 in a few months:

“The number of Communists now active in the Party exceeded 24,800 while it was but 8,000 in 1930.” (Western Worker, April 9, 1934, p. 1)

What accounts for this plain and fancy mathematics, so bewildering to one who learned his arithmetic in a bourgeois public school? A good hint is to be found elsewhere.

“The work of the Party fundamentally remains in the same groove. This is to be seen in the backwardness of factory work [etc., etc., etc., etc.] ... and in the 100% fluctuation of Party membership.”(Toward Revolutionary Mass Work, issued by Central Committee, CPUSA, p. 10)

And finally, the organizational secretary of the Third International himself:

“After this, it is not surprising that for the last five years we have had a total of 9,000 members in the [American] Party no matter how many new members – whether 10,000 or 15,000 – were admitted per year, the membership remained stationary just the same.” (O. Piatnitsky, Speech at the 12th Plenum of the ECCI, p. 72)

It is plain as a pikestaff: the workers are moving to Communism, but they will not stay in the party of corruption, bureaucratism, opportunism, degeneration, the party of Stalinism. Year in, year out – they vote against Stalinism with their feet! Nobody stays long with a corpse.

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Last updated on 25 February 2016