Robert Minor on the major debate of the early Communist movement over the creation of a legal, above-ground Communist Party.

‘Legal and Illegal Activities’ by James Ballister (Robert Minor) from The Communist (Unified Communist Party). Vol. 1 No. 6-7. February-March, 1922.

It would be entirely useless, says the Communist International in effect, to quarrel over the question whether extensive or intensive methods are preferable in your Communist work. You must learn to make a practical combination of both these methods under all circumstances. All possibilities of both the legal and the illegal activities must be utilized by the Party energetically.

Nothing is more certain than that the Communist Party cannot have a legal existence in the United States at the present time. And yet there is now a legal possibility in the political field which we must utilize.

This legal possibility grows out of “certain indispensable accompaniments” of the highest developed form of capitalist society.

Modern Capitalism requires a proletariat that, in a certain automatic, sluggish way, co-operates in maintaining the State structure which is nothing but a jail wall around it.

Capitalism has been successful where it allows the working class to have (or to think it has) political parties of its own–parties wherein the thought is thoroughly policed but otherwise is allowed to pursue a warped and stunted existence within the stone sluice-walls of parliamentary reformism. Such a party’s puny cries for half-measures only assist the bourgeoisie to choose which illusions are best to be fostered in the working class. Through its social-reform parties the proletariat participates in finding the forms for its own enslavement. Capitalism has grown to depend upon this help. Capitalism can no longer afford, as a general rule, to do without working class reform parties.

A recent event has made critically necessary that Capitalism should allow the workers to think they can find expression in this narrow sluice, to think themselves free to operate with their own political parties within the parliamentary channel. The Russian Revolution placed before the workers in startling contrast the choice: “Parliamentary revolution” (which is a myth), or the violent overthrow of the State (which is reality). Capitalism must now persuade the workers to choose “parliamentary revolution,” and cannot refuse them the hobby-horse political party on which to ride in pursuit of the illusion.

But while, in most of the advanced countries it has become the first need of capitalist politics to allow the workers a certain latitude to form political parties,—at the same time the State polices and terrorizes those parties as much as possible to induce them to choose the way of “parliamentary revolution” which is no revolution at all. The State tries to make an exception of such parties as choose the effective means, the violent overthrow of the State and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, tries to crush them by force (where and when possible), or at least to exclude them from the public existence in which they and their methods would come to the attention of the masses of workers.

The tactics of the State are:

(1) to exterminate the revolutionary party if possible,

or

(2) to terrorize or corrupt it (especially its leaders) into subservience to capitalist law, to make it accept legalistic standards that would render it powerless as an instrument of revolution. But, if failing in these two respects, the State attempts at least

(3) to confine the revolutionary party’s operations to the narrow sphere that can be reached secretly, where it is likely to wither away as a propagandist sect.

TACTICS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

Communist tactics do not consist in moralizing about what the State’s tactics ought to be, nor in waiting for those tactics to change, but in meeting the tactics of the State.

First, the Communist Party must defeat the attempt to exterminate it; second, it must defeat the attempt to terrorize or corrupt it into accepting capitalist legalistic standards and must urge the workers to the violent destruction of the entire legal machinery. And the Communist International says:

It is equally the duty of a Communist Party to defeat by any means that may be necessary the Capitalist Government’s attempt to confine it to the underground channels in which it is even more concealed from the masses than it is from the Government.

How can we accomplish these tasks? Let us take them up as questions 1, 2 and 3, in successions.

(1) To prevent the revolutionary party’s being exterminated, it is necessary to keep the Party’s vital organs out of reach of the superior strength of the State. It is necessary to maintain the underground structure of the party.

This is a historically developed necessity and does not any longer depend in the least upon whether a Communist Party is permitted to exist legally or not. In the most “legal” and “easy” conditions, there is only one way to insure that the Capitalist State will not, during a crisis, suddenly strike down its mortal enemy, the proletarian revolutionary party. The idea of depending upon “legal conditions” or “laws” or “constitutions” that legalize the revolutionary party’s existence, is a piece of simple-mindedness that must be eradicated from a Communist Party at any cost, as a fatal disease.

Laws and constitutions (with a little camouflage) exist as no more than a formal statement of the foreseen needs of the capitalist business world. Wherever Capitalism has a need that is not in accord with this formal statement,–to hell with the form, they take the substance. For instance, as a formal rule, the even course of capitalist commerce requires that persons shall not be dragged out of hotels and slaughtered at night by privately organized bands; and this is written into the law. But when there is a real capitalist need for murdering Karl Liebknecht in Berlin or Frank Little in Butte, Montana, the form is disregarded in favor of the substance. The State fully approves and co-operates in the breaking of the skull, and the cracking of the neck. When no previously written rule conforms to the need to kill Sacco and Vanzetti, or Mooney and Billings,–Sacco and Vanzetti are killed anyhow and Mooney and Billings are handled with the greatest degree of ferocity that will not disturb the sleep of the masses of Labor. Not the law, but only the danger of the heaving masses of Labor, sets the limit of Capitalism’s ferocity.

To any working man with the slightest experience in the law, the idea that the Capitalist State will not strike down its enemies regardless of any law, appears as criminal folly. The Capitalist State will exterminate the revolutionary party whenever it safely can. The Communist Party must be protected by the permanent maintenance of the underground party machinery.

(2) For the second purpose–to prevent the Capitalist State’s corrupting or terrorizing the revolutionary party into subservience to capitalist law–the Party must maintain its power to hold conferences (and intercommunication between the entire party membership) free from police knowledge and regulation. For the moment we say nothing of the freedom to act without police knowledge or permission. We refer only to the need of keeping clear the party thought and understanding, free from the reservations and evasive expressions that are inevitable under police restriction. The Party must avoid having its thought shrink into the mould of police permits.

This, again, means that the Party must maintain its underground structure. Especially at a time when an unlegalized Communist Party may begin to operate through a “legal political party,” which necessarily avoids the direct and clear revolutionary expressions and conforms in outward appearance to capitalist law, the necessity becomes emphasized. The underground must be maintained to keep our thought from shrinking gradually into the forms and dimensions of what can be said legally.

(3) But a Communist Party faces the imperative necessity to defeat the Capitalist State’s attempt to confine it solely within the underground channels. To defeat this attempt we must resort to any means within our power. It is true that we cannot exist now in the open under our own name, as the Communist Party, Section of the Communist International. This is partly because of the peculiar present stage of Capitalism in this country, partly because of the long habit of non-solidarity of Labor in America, and partly because of the peculiar cowardice of the Socialist officialdom which, at the critical moment, prevented a united stand for revolutionary principles, leaving the revolutionists without an organization with which to withstand the onslaught in the open. In general it is because of our own weakness—that is, our lack of support among the masses. The early Communist parties attempted to stand in the open, but were unable to obtain mass support, and were attacked, partly destroyed and their remnants driven underground. But we do not intend to accept this as a permanent condition. We intend to fight for the right of a Communist Party to exist as such in the open with sufficient mass support to proclaim publicity its full revolutionary purpose as the American Section of the Communist International.

Finding the American party in its present condition, the Third Congress of the Communist International called the attention of the Communists of America

“to the fact that the illegalized organization must not only serve as the ground for collecting and crystallizing the active Communist forces, but that it is the Party’s duty to try all ways and means to yet out of the illegalized condition into the open, among the wide masses. It is the duty of the Communist Party to find the means and forms to unite these masses politically, through public activity, for the struggle against American Capitalism.”

And since the Third Congress, the Executive Committee has made numerous efforts, beginning somewhat informally, to induce the Central Executive Committee of the C.P.A. to carry out the decision of the Third Congress by constructing an instrument in the form of a legal political party. Later, messages came in a more official tone, reminding the C.E.C. that it must proceed immediately in this respect and declaring that no further delay could be permitted. Finally came the written, formal and peremptory command of the full Executive Committee of the Communist International, which carefully and laboriously explains to us the nature of the opportunity.

It is carefully explained to us that during the period when we cannot expose our party in the open, we must create a “legal political party” as an instrument which can be projected into the open.

A revolutionary party must evade being excluded from public existence by forming a machinery “for participating in the democratic elections and parliament;” but it must utilize this “legal” machine to expose the parliamentary institution as worthless and to gain the workers’ attention for the violent overthrow of the State. This is the opportunity the Communist International has told us we must seize.

COMMUNIST Croup aud Measles

But when we go to seize it, we find that we are afflicted with a whole nursery-full of children’s diseases. The order to form an open political party seems to precipitate a thousand quarrels as to whether the Party should be “underground or overground.” The assumption seems to be that members who have not yet been entirely cured of a former “it can’t be in two places at once.” A few of the party faith in “democratic institutions,” innocently want to obey what they think is an order to liquidate the underground “now that we are to come out into the open.”

Many poor lambs think that the order to form “a legal political party” means necessarily to form a legal Communist party; and these are having a great moral belly-ache at the suggestion of a legal party that would not be affiliated with the Communist İnternational or, in fact, a legal party that is not all that the illegal Communist Party is.

The moralistic, subjective-minded “pure” Communists are the most troublesome, because they are the most numerous among the sick. They just won’t for anybody come out into the open politically until they can do it as a 100 per cent Communist Party affiliated with the Communist International; and the thought has never been able to trickle into their minds that coming out into the open could mean anything but liquidating the underground Communist Party. They are so ‘pure” that, if the Communist International does not uphold them they will rip its American Section to pieces and expose Radek, Bukharin, Zinoviev and Lenin as turning yellow, or, at least, as Morris Hillquit says, expose them as “not understanding American conditions.”

None of these croup-stricken or measle-stricken types seem able to perform the mental labor of understanding that the Party must at all times maintain both the underground and the legal existence if possible by any means whatever.

OLD LESSONS NEVER LEARNED

It seems strange that the Communist International should have still to contend at this late date with such rudimentary troubles. For every phase of this dispute was definitely decided at the Second Congress a year and a half ago. It seems strange that a muddle-headed notion that a Communist Party’s ability at a given time to function as a legal party would alter the question of the need of the illegal party machinery, can still occupy the minds of men who claim to have read and accepted the theses and statutes of the Communist International.

Let us recall the practical language of Item Twelve of the Statutes of the Communist International page 8, American C.P. edition):

“No. 12. The general state of things in the whole of Europe and America makes necessary for the Communists of the whole world an obligatory formation of illegal Communist organizations along with those existing legally. The Executive Committee shall be bound to see that this is carried out everywhere.”

And the Theses of the Second Congress say (same edition (pages 18-19):

“12. For all countries, even the most free “legal” and “peaceful” ones in the sense of a lesser acuteness of the class struggle the period has arrived, when it has become absolutely necessary for every Communist Party to join systematically legal and illegal work, legal and illegal organization.

“In the most enlightened and free countries, with a most “solid” bourgeois-democratic regime, the governments are systematically recurring, in spite of their false and hypocritical assurances, to the method of keeping secret lists of Communists, to endless violations of their constitutions for the semi-secret support of White Guards and the murder of Communists in all countries, to secret preparations for the arrest of Communists, the introduction of provocators among Communists, etc. Only the most reactionary petty bourgeoisie, by whatever high-sounding “democratic” or pacifist phrases it might disguise its ideas, can dispute this fact or the necessary conclusion, an immediate formation by all legal Communist Parties of illegal organizations for systematic illegal work, (my emphasis) for their complete preparation at any moment to thwart any steps on the part of the bourgeoisie…”

To make sure that no one will think the Communist International has changed its mind about it, I quote now from the Third Congress’ Theses. After reviewing the bloody record of White Terror against workers by the Fascisti in Italy, the Orgesch in Germany, the American Legion, etc., the Theses say (page 60, American edition):

“In the struggle of the proletariat against the capitalist offensive, it is the duty of the Communists not only to take the advanced posts and lead those engaged in the struggle to complete understanding of the fundamental revolutionary tasks, but it is also their duty, relying upon the best and most active elements among the workers, to create their own workers’ legions and militant organizations which would resist the pacifists and to teach the “Golden Youth” of the bourgeoisie a wholesome lesson that will get them out of the Strike-breaking habit. (my emphasis)

“In view of the extraordinary importance of the counter-revolutionary shock-troops, the Communist Party must, through its nuclei in the unions, devote special attention to this question, organizing a thoroughgoing educational and communication service which shall keep under constant observation the military organs and forces of the enemy, their headquarters, his arsenals, the connection between these headquarters and the police, the press and the political parties, and work out all the necessary details of defense and counter-attack…”

THE SPECIALIST THEORY

Such instructions, addressed to legal as well as illegal parties, do not look much like permission to liquidate the underground structure as soon as a Communist party can exist and function in the open.

Then there are certain naive party members who imagine that the illegal functions of the Party can be relegated to an auxiliary department. They want to hand over the illegal work to a small crew of “roughneck” specialists who would relieve the more genteel party members of this disagreeable and “passing” duty, thereby, presumably, enabling the gentle ones to pursue only the gentle trade of making speeches in bourgeois talk-houses. As a matter of fact, Communist parliamentary representatives will have to take the lead in doing the most dangerous of the illegal work.

“4. A Communist representative, by decision of the Central Committee, is bound to combine legal work with illegal work. In countries where the Communist delegate enjoys a certain inviolability, this must be utilized by rendering assistance to the illegal organizations and for the propaganda of the party.

“6. In the event of labor demonstrations in the streets or other revolutionary movements, the Communist representatives must occupy the most conspicuous places–at the head of the proletarian masses.

“8. Each Communist representative must remember that he is not a “legislator,” who is bound to seek agreements with the other legislators’ but an agitator of the party, detailed to the enemy’s camp in order to carry out the orders of the party there. The Communist member is answerable not to the wide mass of his constituents, but to his own Communist party–whether legal or illegal.”

–Theses and Statutes (2nd Congress), American C.P. edition, p. 48.

The brand of semi-liquidator that we last described has a ridiculous similarity to the three leftist leaders. While he wants to divide the party into regulars and specialists and to set aside in the party a few specialist menials to do the illegal “dirty work,” the leftist leaders want to set aside a few specialists to do the legal “dirty work.”

The following from page 110-11-12 of the American edition of the Theses of the Third Congress ought to make the matter clear enough even for members suffering from that brand of political chicken-pox:

VII. LEGAL AND ILLEGAL ACTIVITY

“53. The Party must be so organized, that it shall always be in a position to adapt itself quickly to all the changes that may occur in the conditions of the struggle. The Communist Party must develop into a militant organization capable of avoiding a fight in the open against overwhelming forces of the enemy, concentrated upon a given point; but on the other hand, the very concentration of the enemy must be so utilized as to attack him in a spot where he least suspects it. It would be the greatest mistake for the Party organization to stake everything upon a rebellion and street fighting, or only upon condition of severe oppression. Communists must perfect their preliminary revolutionary work in every situation on a basis of preparedness, for it is frequently next to impossible to foresee the changeable wave of stormy and calm periods! and even in cases where it might be possible, this foresight cannot, in many cases, be made use of for reorganization, because the change as a rule comes quickly, and frequently quite suddenly.

“54. The legal Communist parties of the capitalist countries usually fail to grasp the importance of the task before the Party to be properly prepared for the armed struggle, or for the illegal fight in general. Communist organizations often commit the error of depending on a permanent legal basis for their existence, and of conducting their work according to the needs of the legal tasks.

“On the other hand, illegal parties often fail to make use of all the possibilities of legal activity toward the building up of a party organization which would have constant intercourse with the revolutionary masses. Underground organizations which ignore these vital truths run the risk of becoming merely groups of conspirators, wasting their labors in futile Sysiphus tasks.

“Both those tendencies are erroneous. Every legal Communist organization must know how to insure for itself complete preparedness for an underground existence, and above all for revolutionary outbreaks. Every illegal Communist organization must, on the other hand. make the full est use of the possibilities offered by the legal labor movement, in order to become, by means of intensive party activity, the organizer and 1eal leader of the great revolutionary masses.

(Note especially:)

“55. Both among legal and underground Party circles there is a tendency for the Communist organization activity to evolve into the establishment and maintenance of a purely military organization isolated from the rest of the Party organization and activity. This is absolutely erroneous. On the contrary, during the pre-revolutionary period the formation of our military organizations must be mainly accomplished through the general work of the Communist Party. The entire Party must be developed into a militant organization for the revolution. (my emphasis)

“Isolated revolutionary-military organizations, prematurely created in the pre-revolutionary period, are apt to show tendencies towards dissolution, because of the lack of direct and useful Party work.”

LIQUIDATION VALUES

Despite all of these unmistakable explanations, as soon as the concrete problem of forming a legal political party. organization was placed forcibly before the American party by the Executive Committee of the Communist International, there arose a whole lot of muddle-headed discussion of “liquidation.” There is too much inclination to make “liquidation” an epithet without looking into its meaning.

The Communist International requires that party members who persist in the view that the underground Communist Party should be liquidated, must be ruthlessly expelled from the Communist Party.

But before anyone takes this as an invitation to a general “witch hunt” against all persons except himself, he would better have a little earnest discussion and clarification. Many party members may be surprised to discover what their own views amount to, when examined.

It is easy enough to find the frank liquidators and to deal with them. But there are other kinds of liquidators who do not so frankly state or understand their own views. I have seen an example in the form of a resolution (never introduced before any party unit) which some party members fondly favor.

“Whereas the accusations were brought up again and again by the so-called leftists that there is danger of the liquidation of the underground Communist Party, we, the members of S.D. * * * District * * *, emphatically assert that we entertain no idea of liquidation until after the full program of the Communist Party can be advocated legally, and we hereby warn all liquidators high and low that we will fight any move in this direction to the bitter end.”

Is this the position of the Communist? No, I think it is the position of a dangerous type of liquidator–the one who thinks he is an anti-liquidator, because he favors the liquidation of the underground C.P. only “when the full program of the Communist Party can be advocated legally.”

If and when such a time comes during Capitalist rule, that we can advocate the full Communist program legally, should we then liquidate the underground machinery of the Party? He who thinks so is willing to trust the revolutionary movement again into the power of the Capitalist State to destroy it. After all his little excursion into the Communist party he really believes in “democratic free institutions” and in the permanence of any passing phase of “liberalism” in capitalist government. And, assuming that we could permanently advocate the Communist program, are we only going to advocate it? Can we put it into practice legally?

Not that I think we are going to overthrow the State secretly. We will leave the secret overthrow of the State to our leftist comrades. We believe in mass action, and mass action is public action. The overthrow of the State will be done openly. But the revolution is essentially an illegal process, and there are a thousand and one tasks leading up to the event of mass action, and relating to control, direction and communication during such actions, that can alone be accomplished by a secret organization. He who does not plan to act without the knowledge or permission of the police, is not planning for a revolution.

I notice another example of the same general kind of supposed “anti-liquidation” view as the one cited above. It is in a “Statement of the Three Minority Members of the C.E.C.” This statement, like the foregoing one, intends to be entirely against liquidation. But let’s see if it is:

“The question which the members must now decide is:

“Can a Communist Party, affiliated with the Comintern, exist and function as an open legal political party in the United States?

“If not–are our members ready to liquidate the C.P. (my emphasis) and join a new party which will be under the control and direction of known and outspoken centricts, with an opportunist policy and a program which will not conform to the Theses and Statutes of the Communist International ?”

This is very much the same sort of thing. Whether a Communist Party “can exist and function as an open, legal political party” is NOT the question upon which to determine whether the illegal Communist Party machinery should be liquidated.

The dangerous idea that “IF” the Communist Party could “exist and function as an open, legal political party,” then the question of liquidating the underground party might be different is the root of all the fifty-seven varieties of liquidationism. And the root is found always to grow in the same soil: The inability to conceive of doing BOTH the illegal work AND the legal work at the same time.

The words quoted here from the “Minority Statement” are written by a man who primitively thinks that to do either one means to give up the other kind of work. In that respect he is exactly like any other type of unconscious liquidator. But his rather admirable (if too simple) revolutionary instinct of the left-sick type tells him (truly) that the liquidation of the underground party would mean the liquidation of the revolutionary movement. So he fights desperately against the formation of a legal party. The Communist International orders him to form a legal party. It is possible that he may finally agree to obey reluctantly and fearful that it is “not yet time” for the liquidation of the underground–never once conceiving of doing BOTH the legal and the illegal political work. His subjective thinking has led him to conclude that the underground Communist Party CAN be liquidated “IF” a Communist Party “can exist and function as an open legal political party.”

He raises two other points in the same sentence and goes wrong on each of them. He speaks of (1) “the control and direction of known and outspoken centrists,” (2) “an opportunist policy and a [legal] program which will not conform to the Theses and Statutes of the Communist International.”

Allowing for a little overstatement in the heat of debate, he means that “known and outspoken centrists” PARTICIPATE in the control and direction of a legal party. If he would not die of appoplexy in hearing it, we would tell him that the Comintern fully intends that persons who are not Communists (and who therefore are at least centrists) should participate in the governing committees of such a legal political party, as long as the Communists have at least a majority on all important committees.

In regard to the second complaint that a legal party is planned to have “an opportunist policy,” etc.–let me say that none but a crazy man would expect an instrument constructed for the express purpose of reaching into the legal field, to announce the same policies and program that had already gotten the Communist Party itself outlawed. This boils down to a question of judgment as to whether any given legal party’s policy and program were so formed that they would OBJECTIVELY HAVE THE REVOLUTIONARY EFFECT upon the masses. Upon this point alone would the minority have a right to criticize. But the “Minority Statement” utterly and blindly misses this point. For it says, “an opportunist policy and program which will not conform to the Theses and Statutes of the Communist International”–!!

Who expects that a program of a legal party (expressly constructed for operating in a country where the Communist Party is outlawed for its own program) should conform to the Theses and Statutes of the Communist International as laid down for Communist parties? If the minority cannot think this out for themselves, let them at least learn that the Communist International has ordered, in effect, that a legal party that the Communist Party might construct in the United States at this time, SHALL NOT conform to the rules laid down by it for the real Communist Party itself. The Communist International says plainly that the program of such a legal party will have to be somewhat restricted, and refers to such a program as not stating the illegal Communist purpose, and as going at all times as far TOWARD the Communist program as is possible while maintaining a legal existence.

The Communist Party of America will go straight ahead and complete the task which is set before it, not only by the Communist International, but by all the circumstances of life as well.

We don’t make a dogma of the underground system. We don’t want it for its own sake, as a small boy wants a cave to play pirate in. The underground system was brought about by historic necessity; the need of it was proven by a record of destruction of our organizations and very realistic imprisonment and murder of our best human material.

And when CAN the Communist Party cease to have an underground (that is, concealed, illegal) machinery?

ONLY AFTER THE CAPITALIST STATE SHALL HAVE BEEN OVERTHROWN AND THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE WORKERS FIRMLY ESTABLISHED. And then the underground machinery–which will theretofore have protected and largely contained the directing power of the revolution–will not be “liquidated,” but will leave its concealment. The leadership of the revolution must be composed of men known to the masses of the workers. At alternating stages the Central Executive Committee operates from the complete concealment of the underground, or, again, is partly out in the open. The relative predominance in the Party of the underground or the overground machinery, fluctuates with these periods.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thecommunist/thecommunist6/v1n06-07-feb-mar-com-CPA.pdf