This statement asks members to resist the attack on the Party and its illegality by openly fighting for democratic rights of all workers, including Communists was issued shortly after the arrest of many of its leaders. One of the last of the old, underground, Communist Party statements, it was addressed to a membership wracked by repression and division over how to respond to its situation. A fascinating document that identifies the U.S. government, and its repressive assaults on the workers’ movement, not the labor bureaucracy or the reformists, as the primary opponents of the class conscious proletariat. Coming off the Red Scare and Palmer Raids, with the international revolutionary wave receding, the movement was attempting to find its way back to mass work. The 1922 gathering just off Lake Michigan (which ended in the disaster) was formally the Second National Conference of the Unified Communist Party which had been formed the year previously. With many still in jail as the raids, arrests, and deportations took a heavy toll, legal vs. illegal work and organization was a very live issue. It was called, at the demand of the International, to reconcile continuing factionalism over the question of remaining an underground party (called the “Goose Caucus”) or ending it entirely in favor of a LPP, Legal Political Party, (the “Liquidators”). Before the issue could be decided, on August 22, 1922 a police raid against the convention of the underground Communist Party held in rural Michigan netted much of the top leadership of the movement, charged with criminal syndicalism and spend the next few years fighting prison terms. One of those ‘arrested’ was a federal agent, Francis Morrow. While the Bridgman convention had a small majority for remaining underground, the ‘Liquidators’, supported by the Comintern, were in the ascendancy and the illegal Communist Party of America would be formally disbanded on April 7, 1923.

‘Statement to the Membership: Basis of Our Policy for the Immediate Situation’ from The Communist (United C.P.). Vol. 1 No. 10. August-September, 1922.

I. General Policy.

We are face to face with a new situation. We are on the threshold of a momentous campaign of self-defense by the workers against the capitalist offensive. The Central Executive Committee therefore instructs all Party units vigorously to pursue the following plan of action.

1. The main campaign of our Party today is against the Government authorities rather than against the trade union bureaucracy and the yellow Socialists. The tensity and the wide scope of the immediate struggles of the workers are becoming ever more marked. The present situation demands maximum effective resistance to the vicious governmental onslaught on the most elementary rights of the workers and necessitates our pursuing a policy calculated to draw into these struggles the largest mass of workers possible, regardless of existing political differences.

2. In this campaign our members must persistently and systematically point out to the broad working masses that the attack on the Communists is only a prelude to and a deliberately planned part of the general attack on the whole working class.

The role of the Government in the present strikes affords ample proof of this.

3. The main slogan of our campaign shall be: Workers, demand the unrestricted right to organize, strike and picket and defend these rights by means of all industrial and political power you can possible command. Our membership must call upon the workers systematically and energetically to disobey the anti-strike injunctions and to carry on their strike duties in defiance of these injunctions.

Our rallying cries here are such as:

a) Down with injunctions in the labor struggles!

b) Away with the usurped power of the courts!

c) Down with the use of armed forces against the workers!

d) Down with government by injunction!

4. We must encourage the workers to demand and endeavor to take for themselves all the rights of the famous American democracy. The Communists are part of the working class; therefore the Communists must also have this democracy in fact–the unrestricted right to freedom of press, speech and assembly.

5. We must wage as powerful a campaign as possible for the guarantee of the civil and economic rights of the foreign-born workers. We should diligently work for removing the present restrictions on citizenship and the various anti-alien laws, for guaranteeing the foreign-born workers the unrestricted right to work, and for the enhancement of the general solidarity of the native workers with the foreign-born workers. This involves the Party’s taking the following concrete organizational steps.

a) Thru our Federations we must wage an energetic campaign to have the foreign-born workers join the labor unions.

b) The Federations must also wage an energetic campaign to have the foreign-born workers become citizens of the United States,–not for patriotic reasons but in order to draw them more into the political life of the country.

6. We should persistently and systematically propagate the idea of the workers’ independence from the Republican, Democratic, and other capitalist parties and the necessity of an independent working class political party.

II. The General Labor Defense Council.

1. There is about to be formed a General Labor Defense Council in which every member must take a most vigorous part. Organizationally this Council will be constituted on the basis of the complete unity of all working class bodies regardless of political differences.

a) It is understood that such organizations as the Workers’ Party, The Farmer Labor Party, the Socialist Party, the Proletarian Party, the United Toilers, the I.W.W., the S.L.P., various anarchist elements (many of which we do not control) will participate. Above all the Trade unions, Central Labor Councils, Trade Union Educational League, co-operatives and workers’ relief and social organizations are to be included.

2. This Council will contain various radical and liberal elements, not at all Communist, such as

a) The Civil Liberties Union.

b) Groups gathered about the liberal press like the Nation, the Freeman, and the New Republic.

c) Liberal and working farmers’ organizations like the Non-Partisan League and various Tenant and farmers’ associations.

d) Also men prominent in public life who are willing to co-operate; such as legislators, editors, clergymen, professors and lawyers.

3. Our members must everywhere be most active in this Council.

a) It is desirable that the directing committees shall contain representatives of as many co-operating organizations as possible, though they may not be Communists.

b) The main purpose of our participation in this General Labor Defense Council is to take a vigorous part in the waging of a campaign on a large scale, not only against the persecution of Communists, but also against the vicious offensive now being directed against the general mass of workers and their organizations.

c) Our activity in this campaign divides itself along two main lines.

(1) Activity in defense of all militant workers and their organizations. The Communists are a section of the working class, hence defense of the Communists as well must be carried on.

(2) Our members should as much as possible counteract the prejudice in participating in this work against the Communists prevailing in the ranks of the broad mass of workers–by using the following arguments.

(a) We should show that it is untrue that we want to break up the unions.

(b) That we are not advocates of acts of individual terrorism but of actions of the organized masses.

(c) That we do not represent any secret, “Russian” interests, but the interests of the whole American working class.

(d) That it is only the brutal persecution of the capitalist government that compels the Communists to be an underground Party, just as it has compelled the coal miners union, in certain sections of West Virginia, to be an underground organization, and just as the use of government injunctions may compel the whole trade union movement to be underground.

(e) All workers must have the rights of this “democracy”–freedom of speech, press, and assembly–whether they be Communists or any other kind of workers.

4. Our activity in this Council shall consist of

a) Organizing mass meetings and demonstrations.

b) Collecting money for the defense of all workers from the persecution of the capitalists.

c) Organizing a publicity campaign on a large scale.

d) Systematically adopting resolutions on a country-wide scale and sending deputations of militant workers to present demands on the various governmental bodies for the taking of such immediate concrete steps as the removal of the anti-syndicalist laws and the enactment of special legislation against the reaction.

5. Our nuclei in all unions and labor organizations, such as social, mutual aid, and educational societies, must wage an energetic campaign for their affiliation with the General Labor Defense Council, by means of

a) Systematic adoption of resolutions towards this end.

b) The appearance of our speakers before these bodies.

c) Keeping us fully informed as to the results achieved in this campaign.

III. Industrial.

1. Our members in all labor unions and labor organizations should systematically and persistently propagate the idea of the necessity of an independent workers’ political party. We must strive to secure maximum concerted action for the realization of this end by all those favoring it. The resolutions embodying this proposal should be circulated on a country-wide scale.

2. In carrying on this propaganda, our members should at the same time utilize the occasion to enhance the strength of the L.P.P. This must be done with the greatest care in order not to violate the very purpose of our whole agitation. That is, nothing should be done to this end which might tend to hurt the movement of the broad working masses towards independence from the capitalist political parties and the development of the idea of the necessity of an independent working class political party.

IV. Federations.

1. Our Federations must concentrate their activities in a huge campaign for the defense of the foreign-born workers, not from a nationalist point of view but on the basis of the actual situation at hand, that is, the foreign-born workers are the most oppressed workers.

2. Our Federations should everywhere establish connections with the trade union locals of foreign-born workers.

3. The Federations should lead and direct an extensive campaign for the unionization of the unorganized mass of foreign-born workers.

4. Wherever local conditions of persecution make impossible such a campaign of unionization, our Federations should lead and direct the organization of social, mutual aid, and educational associations of foreign-born workers.

5. The Federation press must be utilized to the utmost in this campaign.

V. Research Bureau.

1. In order to help the achievement of these policies, the Central Executive Committee is organizing a Research Bureau to keep the Party fully informed, through the CEC, as to the facts, figures, and documents pertaining to the political and industrial situation in America.

2. The membership must notify the CEC of all details of progress in their campaigns, such as the number and kind of meetings, resolutions, etc.

a) They should also send special reports on activities whenever occasion requires, these reports being for the sole use of the Party center.

b) All experiences, unsuccessful as well as successful, must be reported along with recommendations to the higher bodies whenever possible.

VI. Press.

1. Our editors must give the widest publicity possible to the Party’s Labor Day Manifesto to the American workers.

2. Our editors should treat the Bridgeman affair as a serious political question.

3. They should write regularly on this and related incidents along the following lines.

a) The arrest of Wm. Z. Foster, in a manner calculated to acquaint the masses with the Trade Union Educational League and its aims.

b) The various State anti-syndicalist laws–their purpose and role in the class struggle.

4. Our editors must write regularly and elaborately on the principles of Communism and the role of the Communist Party in a manner calculated to destroy the prejudice prevailing against the Communists in the ranks of the broad masses.

General Slogan.

We must so face the present situation as to develop amongst the working masses a deep consciousness of the need for their complete independence of and separation from all the capitalist political parties and to enhance the idea of the necessity of an independent working class political party.

Emulating the Bolsheviks who changed the name of their party in 1918 to the Communist Party, there were up to a dozen papers in the US named ‘The Communist’ in the splintered landscape of the US Left as it responded to World War One and the Russian Revolution. This ‘The Communist’ began in July 1921 after the “Unity Convention” in Woodstock, New York which created the Communist Party of America, Section of the Communist International uniting the old CPA with the CLP-CPA party. With Ruthenberg mostly as editor the paper acted as the Party’s underground voice, reporting official party business and discussion. The Toiler served as the mass English-language paper. This ‘The Communist’ was laid to rest in December, 1922 with the creation of the above-ground Workers Party. An invaluable resource for students of the formation of the Communist Party in the US.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thecommunist/thecommunist6/v1n10-aug-sep-1922-com-CPA.pdf