The basic organization of the Communist Party in the 1930s was the Unit, geographically or workplace defined, with several Units, again geographically or workplace defined, making a Section, and a number of Sections making a District, which were large geographic areas. Here, a small Unit in Queens, New York appraises the failures in their work, investigates their location, and reorients. From the Party’s internal bulletin.

‘How a Unit Analyzed and Improved Its Work’ by M. Stein from Party Organizer. Vol. 6 No. 5. May-June, 1933.

UNIT 2, Section 10 was a territorial Unit which included Long Island City, Woodside, Jackson Heights, Corona, Flushing, College Point and Bayside. On record, we had nineteen members. The attendance at Unit meetings varied from twelve to as low as seven.

At the meetings, the Unit would discuss directives from the Section and District, make assignments and there would be a discussion on whatever topic the Section would assign. Meetings started late and lasted long. There were efforts to sell the Daily Worker, organize an Unemployed Council and concentration on a shop. But the reports from these committees were very unsatisfactory. The Daily Worker Agent had the usual complaint that comrades don’t call for their bundles and that the D.W. is stacking up. The Shop Committee did not seem to be getting anywhere. The Committee for unemployed work was groping in the dark, working hard, but getting nowhere. The Unit Buro was not functioning regularly nor properly.

Discuss Reasons for Inactivity

As a result, the spirit of the Unit was low, enthusiasm was lacking, discipline was very lax. Unit 2 was another one of those Units which was going around in a circle getting nowhere. Finally we decided at one of the meetings that we have the subject of the discussion the Unit itself. “What is wrong and how can the Unit improve its work?” This discussion proved to be the turning point of the Unit. The discussion brought out the following facts:

1. That the Unit was not acquainted with its own territory.
2. That we were not part of the life of the workers in our territory.
3. That there was entirely too much laxity.
4. That we were very mechanical in our efforts.
5. That there was no plan.
6. That our political discussions were abstract and were in the main disconnected from the work we were trying to do. No efforts were made to concretely apply the lessons of the discussion to our work.

We were doing no work in the very neighborhood in which the comrades lived.

Take the First Steps to Overcome Weaknesses

On the basis of this analysis we decided to take action at once and to reorganize the Buro by electing the best comrades for leadership in the Unit. This was done.

The Buro at its first meeting took up the following subjects:

1. Drafting a one month’s plan of work.
2. Organization of the Unit on the group basis.
3. Registration of the available time for Unit work by each member.
4. Meetings to start not later than 8:15 and adjourn not later than 10:45 P.M.
5. Assignment of tasks to each and every comrade according to time available.
6. Strict enforcement of the rule that no one is exempt from Unit work. Comrades assigned to mass organizations to give at least one night to Unit assignments.
7. Strict check up.
8. Unit organizer to meet with committee to show them how to carry out their work and train them for leadership in their particular task.
9. Thorough study of our territory and its problems.
10. Concentration upon one shop and one neighborhood

These questions were discussed by the Buro and the Unit and when adopted the Buro began to carry them into effect.

Discuss Plans of Work

We drafted the following plan of work for one month:

1. To increase membership by 10.
2. To secure new Daily Worker readers.
3. To build one more International Labor Defense branch.
4. To organize one Unemployed Council.
5 To organize a Women’s Council.
6. To organize a shop committee.
7. To register 90 per cent attendance.
8. To register 90 per cent dues payments
9. To have 5 functioning groups.

Unit Grows in Members and Influence

We elected committees for the various tasks. Other comrades were assigned to the Buro.

In getting new members, we began to show our members how to select and concentrate upon the most promising comrades in the International Labor Defense; how to search out, approach and contact workers at open air meetings and affairs; how to approach and propagandise friends and acquaintances. This was done by personal conversation with the comrades. The result was that we have recruited not ten but 16 new members among whom was one Negro woman worker, the first Negro to join the party in the whole section. This process of recruiting continues. Seven weeks after the plan was introduced, 41 comrades attended the Unit meeting and the Unit is now divided in two.

The Committee in charge of the Daily Worker secured 30 new readers through personal canvassing of the International Labor Defense members and their friends. The paper is delivered to their doors.

The building of another I.L.D. branch was assigned to the I.L.D. fraction comrades, who were instructed to involve the existing I.L.D. branch in this task. The Negro territory of Corona was previously selected by the I.L.D. and this was also made our concentration point. The I.L.D. arranged a Scottsboro mass meeting jointly with the local of the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People in a church. A Scottsboro Defense Committee later developed out of this meeting. This Committee then gave a dance. The I.L.D. was popularized and the Committee soon turned into an I.L.D. branch which now has 125 members mostly Negroes (5 have since joined the Party in the new Unit.)

Decide on Developing Struggle for Lower Rents

The question of unemployed work was one that gave the unit the most trouble. One comrade has been making desperate efforts long before in this work without success. The Committee given this responsibility, now met to decide what can be done. It analyzed the local situation very carefully which brought out the following facts:

1. That within the last two years there has been only one actual eviction.
2. That bourgeois ideas are widespread in the ranks of the workers, that they will not openly acknowledge their suffering.
3. That 56 per cent of the population is a home owning people of the white collar workers and others who have made fairly high wages at one time.
4. That unemployment is not as prevalent as in other parts of the country, but wage cuts have effected the workers very seriously.

On the basis of this analysis we decided that what is actually needed at once is a struggle for lower rents and in behalf of the worker-home-owner who was in great danger of losing his home. It was just about this time that we have first learned about the already existing Sunnyside home owners association which has since created so much publicity in the press and which is under the leadership of the mortgage concerns which are using these home-owners in trying to get the government to guarantee the mortgages to them. Because the work was new and correct policies had to be worked out, plans had to be formulated and comrades had to be trained, we have not succeeded to organize the home-owners nor the tenants in the time allotted, but a good start was made.

We have failed to organize the Women’s Council.

We have failed to organize the shop committee because of lack of experience, but we have made quite a number of contacts who are already convinced of the necessity to organize.

Our dues payments and attendance has reached 80 per cent.

Party Members Work With Enthusiasm

Although the plan has failed in some respects, we have accomplished more than our quota in some, but the morale of the comrades has been raised tremendously and the results have inspired them to much bigger aims.

The discipline of the comrades has been raised greatly, not through burocratic orders or punishment, but through political explanation of the importance of the tasks assigned, consideration for each comrade and his abilities, understanding and development, and through very close check up on work given out. The Unit Buro has before it at all times when members are available and thus assignments are made to fit-in with the comrade’s time. Sunday is set aside as a day of relaxation or for very special work. One evening a week of study is compulsory.

At no time is an assignment made unless the comrade has a clear understanding of why he is to do the work and how to do it. The organizer meets with the committees that need this information until the committee is able to proceed by itself.

What Unit 2 has done can be done by any other unit. Plan your work, understand the political content of your tasks, know the methods to be used, practice proletarian discipline and proletarian democracy, analyze shortcomings, popularize achievements, create responsibility, enthusiasm and self-confidence within each comrade. These shall be uppermost before the Unit Buros and the Units can become the leaders of the toiling masses within their spheres of operation.

Shop Work Still Lags Behind

The main shortcomings of the Unit are that we have failed. to materialize sufficiently in the most important tasks of the plan–shop work and the tenants’ committee, and there has been insufficient mass work. While the Unit has been holding open air meetings and was doing considerable work in the Scottsboro case, we have not yet developed local struggles. In the next plan of work, the Buro should concentrate upon final realization of a shop committee and a tenants’ committee, and at the same time develop struggles of the tenants, small home owners and in the shop upon which we are concentrating.

The Party Organizer was the internal bulletin of the Communist Party published by its Central Committee beginning in 1927. First published irregularly, than bi-monthly, and then monthly, the Organizer was primarily meant for the Party’s unit, district, and shop organizers. The Organizer offers a much different view of the CP than the Daily Worker, including a much higher proportion of women writers than almost any other CP publication. Its pages are often full of the mundane problems of Party organizing, complaints about resources, debates over policy and personalities, as well as official numbers and information on Party campaigns, locals, organizations, and periodicals making the Party Organizer an important resource for the study and understanding of the Party in its most important years.

PDF of issue: https://archive.org/download/party-organizer_1933-02_6_2/party-organizer_1933-02_6_2.pdf