Chapter II: Part 2

Mr. TAVENNER. Will you tell the committee, please, briefly, what that organization was?

Mr. DENNETT. Well, it was an effort on the part of the Communist leadership in this country to bring about the organization of unorganized workers. It had the idea that they should be organized in industrial unions. This is because its leader was William Z. Foster, and William Z. Foster had been an active leader in A. F. of L. unions. As a matter of fact, he was the leader of the great steel strike of 1919, and in the course of that strike he drew certain conclusions about the way it was conducted, namely, that it was next to impossible for the workers to obtain the kind of solidarity they needed to win when they were divided into so many different craft organizations.

So it was Foster who gave the greatest attention to this question of getting the maximum strength through organization of the workers in unions. And the Trade Union Unity League was an effort to organize these unorganized workers.

Now to the best of my knowledge some of the greatest success of the Trade Union Unity League occurred right here in the Northwest.

When I came into the district in 1932 there was a comparatively young fellow by the name of James Murphy who was the head of the Trade Union Unity League here. He was a lumberworker. He was a bona fide worker. He knew the language, he knew the habits, and he was able to get around the same as any “bindle stiff.”

For fear some might not understand the use of the term, in the old days loggers had to carry their own blankets when they went from place to place. And the way they carried them caused them to be called bindle stiffs.

These fellows were very adaptable. They were very skillful at traveling under adverse conditions, overcoming all kinds of physical difficulties. The stories of Paul Bunyon are not something out of the figment of the imagination entirely; they grew out of the huge efforts that the Northwest lumberworkers had to make in order to live.

So Murphy was a very successful organizer. He organized a very large number of people in the National Lumberworkers Union. He had an assistant by the name of Roy Brown who was almost equally successful. I do not recall the names of the others who were active in that organization, but I do know that they met with great success organizing miners here in the Northwest. They organized fishermen.

Mr. TAVENNER. What connection did those organizations have with the Trade Union Unity League?

Mr. DENNETT. They were all national unions in the Trade Union Unity League. And one of the greatest successful organizing drives was conducted among fishermen here in the Northwest.

A person who is now deceased, by the name of Emil Linden, was profoundly successful in organizing fishermen on the Columbia River and here in Puget Sound.

Mr. TAVENNER. Was he successful in the organization of groups affiliated with the Trade Union Unity League?

Mr. DENNETT. That is right.

The fishermen’s unions, as a matter of fact, had the distinction of having been organized and affiliated directly with the Red International of Labor Unions, which had a headquarters in Prague at that time.

Mr. TAVENNER. What do you mean by saying that the Trade Union Unity League was affiliated with or a part of the Red International of Labor Unions?

Mr. DENNETT. Well, they paid dues to an international organization, and this particular fishermen’s group which originated here were affiliated directly with the Red International of Labor Unions, and they paid dues directly to the headquarters in Prague.

Mr. TAVENNER. Did that make them virtually a part of the Red International of Labor Unions?

Mr. DENNETT. They were.

Mr. MOULDER. What period of time was that?

Mr. DENNETT. That was way back in about 1931 or 1932, or 1932 or 1933.

Mr. TAVENNER. Where was the seat of the headquarters of the Red International of Labor Unions?

Mr. DENNETT. At that time it was in Prague.

Mr. TAVENNER. Among the documents which you have turned over to the staff of the committee and which we have examined is one entitled “The Trade Union Unity League, Affiliated to the Red International of Labor Unions.”

Will you examine it and state whether or not you can identify it as one of the documents which you turned over to us?

(Document handed to the witness.)

Mr. DENNETT. If it has got my initials on it is mine; and it has.

Mr. TAVENNER. Will you return it, please?

Mr. Chairman, I think I should read into the record at this point several paragraphs which I see in this document.

Mr. MOULDER. Very well.

Mr. TAVENNER (reading):

The national center of the revolutionary industrial union movement
in the United States is the Trade Union Unity League, organized in
Cleveland, August 31, 1929. The TUUL coordinates and binds all the
revolutionary union forces into one united organization. It leads
and directs the general struggle of the new union movement. It is
the American section of the Red International of Labor Unions.

Is that just what you have been telling us, Mr. Witness?

Mr. DENNETT. Correct.

Mr. TAVENNER. I desire to read again from page 35 of this document.

In the event of an imperialist war it will mobilize the workers to
struggle against American imperialism and to transform this war
into a class war against the capitalist system itself.

Do you recall that as one of the objectives of the Trade Union Unity League?

Mr. DENNETT. Yes, of course, I do. It is very plain. It is in black and white. I think that it has to be admitted by anyone with any knowledge of the subject that that was the objective, that was the policy. That goes back a long way. That goes back to Lenin’s teaching. It goes back to the teachings of Marx. In fact, it goes back to the teachings of almost any of the philosophers, the idea that when a given set of circumstances becomes impossible to withstand it is to be expected that somebody is going to break the bonds somewhere.

Mr. TAVENNER. I find this following paragraph on the same page under the title “Defend Soviet Union”:

The Trade Union Unity League especially organizes and educates
the masses to fight in defense of the Soviet Union. The Soviet
Union is the stronghold of the world’s working class. It is the
cause of the workers in all countries. The overthrow of the Soviet
Union by the capitalists would mean not only the slaughter of
tens of thousands of Russian workers but would mark the beginning
of the worst period of reaction internationally that the world
has ever known. It would lead to widespread Fascist terrorism,
and wholesale destruction of workers’ economic, political, and
cultural organizations and the wiping out of conditions won by
the workers through a century of sacrifice and struggle. It would
throw back for decades the development of the world labor movement.

The workers must fight to the end in defense of the Soviet Union.

Is that paragraph in accord with what you understood at the time to be the objectives of the Trade Union Unity League?

Mr. DENNETT. Well, shortly after my induction into the Communist Party I, as recounted earlier this morning, became the district agitprop director. In that position at that time we had the special privilege of receiving the first issues of all new pamphlets or magazines or anything like that that were issued. At that time there came into my possession a document with the title “The 21 Conditions for Affiliation With the Communist International,” and among those conditions these points that are set forth in this document you have just read cover some of those conditions.

Mr. TAVENNER. In other words, was there a strict linking together through this organization and through the action of the Comintern, of the control of the Communist Party in this country by the international organization?

Mr. DENNETT. I think that has to be acknowledged by anyone who is familiar with the record at all.

However, there is one little addendum that should be inserted at this point, that at a later point in the history of the Communist Party in the United States--I believe it was about the time the Voorhis Act was passed--under the leadership of Earl Browder the Communist Party in the United States took steps by formal resolution adopted at convention to completely disassociate itself legally from any of this previous material. They attempted to satisfy and comply with the provisions of the Voorhis Act.

And in their effort to do so they adopted a resolution in which they repudiated all of this political statement and line that we are now talking about. That was a formal act.

Mr. TAVENNER. There was considerable testimony before this committee at the time it attempted to interrogate Max Granich and his wife, who were connected with a news facility which transmits from Europe to this country decisions of the Communist Party on an international level, and we heard a number of witnesses, including Louis Budenz, who was connected with the Daily Worker.

The testimony is very clear that that action you have spoken of was a device, not in good faith a severance or a disavowal of what had happened before. But it was a device, to keep the Communist Party from being liable under provisions of the Voorhis Act to which you have referred, of representing a foreign country.

Mr. DENNETT. Browder visited here in the Northwest during the time this action was being taken, and he explained it to our district bureau in this fashion, that the law was clearly aimed at putting the Communist Party out of business, and that the Communist Party was determined to not be put out of business, and it was going to comply with the act to the best of its ability, but that certainly did not mean that the Communist Party was going to disavow its sympathy with the working class throughout the world and the various sections of the Communist Party throughout the world.

There was great apprehension on the part of our district bureau about the action. We feared that perhaps the Communist Party was going nationalist on us, and we thought that was a heinous crime, that you should always be internationalists. And Browder was reassuring us that the Communist philosophy was still internationalist and would continue to be internationalist, but that the formal connection and the formal affiliations would have to be dispensed with.

He felt that the party was strong enough to travel along the road, as it needed to, without the direct intervention of the Comintern.

And, of course, it was shortly after that the Comintern itself was dissolved.

Mr. TAVENNER. How long did this organization, the Trade Union Unity League, remain in effect in this area? And when I say in effect, I mean in existence.

Mr. DENNETT. Until the organization of the CIO.

As the organization of the CIO approached or became clear that it was going to come in, the policy of the Red International of Labor Unions was modified by the international headquarters in Prague. It was modified because the 12th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International had reviewed the developing world situation, had noted with alarm the rise of fascism in Germany, and resolved that somewhere their policies were not being too effective and, therefore, they must make certain modifications and allow for a little more flexibility than they had before.

You must understand that one of the conditions which existed as a condition for organizing these Red trade unions was that those workers so organized were virtually obliged to declare their loyalty to the cause of the Communist Party. Now that did not mean that they had to be members of it, but it meant that they had to express their sympathy with the efforts of the Soviet people and they had to accept the idea that the objectives of the working class and of the Communist Party were the same.

Therefore, they didn’t meet with much success in the United States in organizing these Red trade unions because the average worker who was confronted with this choice would say, “The devil with you.” He wouldn’t make a choice of that kind.

Mr. TAVENNER. In other words, they realized they could not sell communism to the rank and file of American labor if it knew what they were buying.

Mr. DENNETT. They certainly couldn’t sell it under that label to the American worker. They rejected it.

Mr. TAVENNER. A label is for the purpose of describing an item; is it not?

Mr. DENNETT. I can accept your statement; I think you are right. I think that confirms our experience.

Mr. MOULDER. This was in a period, the conditions and circumstances of which offered a ripe opportunity for the exploitation of labor in this country by the Communist organizations.

Mr. DENNETT. That is very true. And you must understand that we met with an uneven success.

I have described to you that in the Northwest we did meet with great success among the lumber workers, among the miners, and among the fishermen. We did meet with great success there because a very large number of those workers originally had been with the Industrial Workers of the World. And they weren’t afraid of a Red label. Wherever you found workers who were not afraid of a Red label they could accept such organization in good faith. But in most of the industrial centers in the East except in places where desperation was at the breaking point they did not meet with success.

I am thinking now of the situation which obtained in the textile mills of Lowell, Lawrence, and Haverhill following the First World War. In those places the Industrial Workers of the World were successful in offering leadership to those workers. And it is true that in some parts of the South, contrary to the usual idea, in some parts of the South the Red leaders were quite successful in organizing.

I remember vividly the Gastonia strike, and that was completely Red leadership. There is no question about it. They were the only ones that had the tenacity to stay with it under such adverse circumstances. But they stayed with it and they met with great success. They organized thousands and thousands and thousands of workers.

Mr. TAVENNER. Would you say, generally speaking, the rank and file of labor would not accept the Communist Party if the Communist Party label were on it?

Mr. DENNETT. That is true. They wouldn’t accept even the red cards which were used.

It was a peculiar thing. It seemed as though it was a badge of honor to some people, but something of a shock and surprise to others that the membership cards very often were printed in a very deep red color in the various unions of the Trade Union Unity League. And, of course, some of the membership cards of the Communist Party at that time were in identically the same color. The only addition was the hammer and sickle was imposed upon it as well. And it would be a very easy matter to become mixed up or confused if you didn’t look carefully at some of those cards in that period of time.

But to complete the point that you are concerned with at this moment, it is true that the program as set forth by the Red International of Labor Unions did not meet with the uniform success which they hoped for in the United States. So in 1935--I believe it was in 1935, it may have been a little bit earlier than that--following the 12th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International’s decision that a sharp turn must be made in the mass work, that they must combat the rise of fascism by allowing greater flexibility to organize masses to resist the onrush of fascism, they took note of the situation in the United States and concluded that they could not prescribe the exact conditions under which to organize the workers in the United States.

That gave the opening which permitted the top leadership of the Communist Party in the United States to grant the request of most of the organizers in the Trade Union Unity League to dissolve their organizations and permit them to join the new rising organizations which were developing as industrial unions, and also to join the appropriate American Federation of Labor unions.

In other words, at the time of the split between the A. F. of L. and the CIO in the United States of America the Communist movement declared that it was logical and necessary to give up its own identity, which it did when it sacrificed the industrial unions that it had organized. And by 1935 they issued instructions that the industrial unions under the Trade Union Unity League must dissolve.

And I recall the regret which some of the fishermen had in having to give up their affiliation with the Red International of Labor Unions and go into what they call the “finky” organization, the International Seamen’s Union. They didn’t like it. They resented it. But nevertheless, as good soldiers, they obeyed the order. Later on it didn’t take them more than a couple of years when they were embarrassed whenever I would remind them that they had a Red origin. And the leadership there came to dislike me with a very firm resolve because I would never permit them to forget that they did have a Red origin and that I was ashamed of them being backward about taking progressive steps.

They caused me no end of concern because they were trying to be as conservative as the stanchest Republican when, in fact, they had a very, very Red origin.

Mr. TAVENNER. Mr. Dennett, would it be correct to analyze the situation you have described generally in this way: Beginning in 1935, and from then on, when the Red international of labor unions gave up the idea of having its own organizations within labor under its own label in this country, was the principal problem in dealing with the question of communism a matter of infiltration or attempted infiltration by the Communists into the leadership of all the unions in which they had a chance to gain leadership?

Mr. DENNETT. Well, I recognize that the term infiltration is used to imply generally that somebody did something with a secret purpose.

Now that may have been true. So far as my own knowledge is concerned, we took it in stride. We didn’t think that there was anything special about it. We declared our objective to be the organization of all the workers. And, of course, we were part of all the workers. And as long as we could maintain that philosophy we were satisfied that we were part of the organization.

Mr. TAVENNER. When you say part of the organization, what do you mean?

Mr. DENNETT. I mean that those members that were organized by the Communist Party in the Trade Union Unity League, when they gave up their identity as members of a Trade Union Unity League organization, such as the national lumberworker’s union or the fishermen’s union or the miner’s union or something of that kind, they had the opportunity to become members of the appropriate union which was organizing in that field. In the case of the Northwest it was at that time the woodworkers federation, which was organized, in part, under the leadership of the carpenters and joiners, but against the wishes of the top leadership of the carpenters and joiners.

The top leadership, especially Mr. Hutcheson (William), was fearful of these rebels from the Northwest. He was afraid that if they became organized strong that they might cause him some trouble in his organization. And he put in a great deal of effort to see to it that they didn’t succeed in that.

Well, it is true that these rough-and-ready lumberworkers were willing to take on all comers so far as opposition was concerned. And Mr. Hutcheson seemed to be no bother to them, no more than anyone else would be. They didn’t fear anyone. They just proceeded to organize as best they could. But they were so thoroughly indoctrinated with the old Wobbly notions, that is, the Industrial Workers of the World ideas, they were very strong individualists, and they didn’t take kindly to the kind of discipline which doesn’t explain why it gives an order, and, consequently, the Communists in the woodworkers had a great deal of trouble.

As a matter of fact, the organization of the woodworkers federation was punctuated with stormy upheavals at every convention. The various caucuses which were led by the Communists and led by some of the old Industrial Workers of the World and led by some of those who wanted their loyalty to the carpenters and joiners and some who wanted their loyalty to the new organization of the CIO, these various groups were unable to compose and resolve their differences. It was never completely resolved. To this day it is not completely resolved.

The result of it today is that, well, of course, I realize there is a new merger in prospect, but the lumber workers in the Northwest were divided between the A. F. of L. and the CIO to such an extent that they were unable to use their full strength to bring it to bear during negotiations with their employers, and they have suffered very, very much here in the Northwest.

Mr. VELDE. You are making a very fine story of the methods used by the Communist Party in infiltrating labor unions.

I want to ask you this: from your experience as a member of the Communist Party, which of the unions in this area were most successfully infiltrated by the Communist Party?

Mr. MOULDER. May I ask during what period of time?

Mr. VELDE. During the whole period of time since the Communists started infiltrating.

Mr. DENNETT. I think it would have to be said that it was lumber. Actually, to begin with, it was the marine unions. The organization of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific was something that was inspired by the Communist Party because the Communist Party called for the organization of industrial unions, industrial organization. And that was a result of Foster’s leadership.

Mr. VELDE. You think they were more successful in lumber than in the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union?

Mr. DENNETT. Yes, I do. I do for the reason that in the maritime unions at the outset the Communists furnished the aggressive leadership which initiated the organization of all of the maritime unions, but it didn’t take very long before those workers, upon getting together, found that they had differences with those leaders. And the sailors union particularly made a sharp break with the Communists early in 1935, not over the issue of Communists but over tactical application of policy.

The Communists at that time were opposed to Harry Lundeberg’s organization of the tanker strike. And Mr. Lundeberg felt that he had the right to go out and improve the conditions of a contract by a process known as job action.

Now the Communists couldn’t possibly condone a thing like that because that permits individual action, and the Communist philosophy and theory did not permit variations of that kind.

It is also true that the old conservative leaders in the labor movement likewise frowned upon such an action. So you will find that if you have familiarity with it you will very often find that the most conservative people and the most radical people, if you go to the point of referring to the Communists, you very often will find that they are in agreement more on policy and on discipline than other people in between. Because both extremes depend upon centralized authority in order to maintain their positions, whereas the other people in between are a little bit more apt to make their decision on the basis of the merits of the given situation--a little more flexibility.

Mr. VELDE. Before you get back to your story, let me ask you this:

The distinguished chairman was not present at our hearings here last June, but I am sure that counsel and our investigator and Mr. Dennett, too, recognize the fact that the great majority of the loyal labor unions in this area cooperated with this committee 100 percent last June. While our gratitude was expressed at that time, I again want to express gratitude to these local labor unions who cooperated with this committee and did everything within the bounds of reason to eliminate the Communist movement from this area.

Mr. DENNETT. Mr. Chairman, may I be privileged to just make one comment about that?

Mr. MOULDER. Yes.

Mr. DENNETT. I have conferred with Mr. Wheeler, and I have expressed the idea to Mr. Tavenner that I think that it is a mistaken idea to refer to me as a cooperative witness or to refer to another witness as an uncooperative witness. I am here to testify to facts that I know. And I think that the question of cooperation is sometimes subject to misconstruction.

And the reason I say that, is because the other day while I was conferring with Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Tavenner and my counsel, I received a phone call, and this phone call had a conversation of two words that came from the other end. A person said, “Rat--stool pigeon.”

I am sorry that people who have been my friends over the years cannot see that I feel that it is my duty and my obligation to testify as to facts. I am sorry that they feel as embarrassed or bitter as they do.

I suppose before these hearings are over I will probably have as many people hate me as people even know me. That is not my concern.

I recognize that we do have some major problems to resolve, and I am fully aware that the Congress of the United States has made efforts in many different directions, many of which I am not in agreement with.

But I think that I do owe the obligation to you gentlemen and to the Congress and to my fellow Americans, that to the best of my knowledge, I will give you the benefit of my knowledge and my experience, and we will just let the chips fall where they may.

Mr. VELDE. I don’t want to become involved in an argument with you.

Mr. DENNETT. I don’t either.

I wanted to take an opportunity to say that, so I said it.

Mr. VELDE. In my use of the word cooperate, and saying that the great majority of the labor unions cooperated with us, possibly I did misuse the term, but I wanted to again express my appreciation for the way they responded, let us say, to the evidence we produced here at the last hearings.

Mr. MOULDER. I would like to say I think you are entitled to be complimented, and to the respect of the Congress of the United States and fellow American citizens, for the sincere and conscientious manner in which you are now testifying as to the facts.

Mr. DENNETT. Thank you, sir.

Mr. VELDE. I think you will find, Mr. Dennett, that you will have a lot more friends now after you get through testifying in this area than you had when you relied on the fifth amendment and refused to answer questions at a previous hearing.

Mr. DENNETT. Without trying to prolong this, I would just say that I feel a keen obligation to one group of people, and that is the fellows that I work with on the job. The fellows that I have worked closest with have always had confidence in my integrity, and even when I have been under the sharpest attacks they have remained confident that my integrity would stand up.

Mr. MOULDER. You should have more of them now.

Mr. DENNETT. To them I feel the greatest obligation. And it is mainly for them that I am testifying here today, and I hope that it will be of satisfactory use to you.

Mr. Tavenner, for your benefit, during the recess I found something which I did not know that I could find, on this question of Mr. Stalin’s insistence upon iron discipline, and I found it in a little pamphlet: The Soviets and the Individual. I do not recall the year in which this was published. I will see if I can find a date on it. Well, this is an address that he delivered to the Red Army Academy, in the Kremlin, on May 4, 1935, and in the course of it he makes a remark like this:

Of course, it never even occurred to us to leave the Leninist
road. More, having established ourselves on this road, we pushed
forward still more vigorously brushing every obstacle from our
path. It is true that in our course we were obliged to handle
some of these comrades roughly. But you cannot help that. I must
confess that I, too, took a hand in this business.

Mr. TAVENNER. I believe that was after the first set of purges but before the second.

Mr. DENNETT. I read that to corroborate the oral information which was passed on to me from Alex Noral.

(The witness confers with his counsel.)

Mr. TAVENNER. Let us return at this point to that period of your Communist Party experience when you were assigned as agitprop or agitation propagandist in Seattle.

You have told us that you were relieved from that position. But how long did you serve in that capacity here?

Mr. DENNETT. My memory is a little indistinct as to how long. It was only a very few months. It seems to me that it was between April of 1932 and some time in the summer of 1932 because I am quite sure that I went to Bellingham as the section organizer late in 1932.

Mr. TAVENNER. The committee would be interested in learning the nature of your activities while engaged as an agitprop in Seattle.

Mr. DENNETT. Actually in that first assignment no one seemed to know exactly what my duties were. I was struggling to find out. In the process of it I learned that the head of an agitprop department had to do almost all of his work through the organizational apparatus of the party, and it was his responsibility to see to it that the organizational structure of the party became thoroughly indoctrinated with the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism, as it was called.

Now the main thing that they were concerned with was to spread the knowledge of the theory and tactics of the class struggle. And I believe from my own study that it must be acknowledged that Lenin was the greatest master of that because Lenin proclaimed that every act has a class character to it, and he contended that every act of the employer is a class-conscious act, every act of the bourgeois politician is a class-conscious act. That was his contention.

And it was his contention that it was necessary for the workers to become thoroughly conscious that this is the nature of our present-day society, and they must learn the methods by which to overcome the ruling class.

Now this stems from the teachings of Marx. Marx originally stated that the capitalist state is the executive committee of the ruling class.

That is an abstraction which is very difficult for the average person to comprehend. I used to think that the reason it was so difficult was because these people had not come into contact with the material experiences which would be convincing.

In later years, since my leaving the party, I have had to reflect upon that a little bit more carefully, and I am rather inclined today to believe that both Marx and Lenin were in error in trying to apply a uniform rule.

I think that it is foolhardy for anyone today to deny that there are many evidences of class warfare which do exist, but I believe that it is also foolhardy to think that those points of conflict are going to be resolved by engaging in class warfare because they lead ultimately to the destruction of either one or both participants in that combat.

Mr. MOULDER. May I interrupt you?

You made a very interesting and impressive statement a while ago, that both extreme radicals and extreme conservatives are inclined to assume a position of dictatorship.

In what year are we now on his associations here?

Mr. TAVENNER. We are still in Seattle during the period that he was agitprop here.

Mr. DENNETT. We are dealing with the question of the theory and tactics of the Communist Party in which it was the responsibility of the agitprop to make certain that it spreads through the ranks so that all the members understand it.

You see, there has been a great deal of effort put in to try to describe the role and function of the Communist Party. The leaders from time to time have gone to great lengths to explain it. But under Stalin’s leadership he resolved that question very firmly and very positively, that the members of the party were soldiers in the ranks, and they were obliged to obey the orders of their superiors. And he enforced that with a determination which I think is unequaled in history.

Mr. TAVENNER. Throughout your experience in the Communist Party did you observe instances of iron discipline to which you have referred?

Mr. DENNETT. Well, I have been told since my expulsion from the Communist Party that I had the reputation of being one of the worst offenders in the matter of enforcing that discipline. I was very vigorous, and I did try to insist that everyone I came in contact with follow the party line to the very letter. I was among the first to sense any deviation, and I was among the first to insist that steps be taken to correct such deviation. In doing so I thought I was following the party line.

Mr. TAVENNER. Let us proceed now to the period when you were transferred to another area.

Will you tell us about that?

Mr. DENNETT. I went to Bellingham, Wash., in 1932, and found a party membership, I believe, there of seven persons.

Unemployment was our greatest problem at that time. Everyone was unemployed. And, of course, the Communist Party policy then was to organize unemployment councils. And, of course, we had an unemployment council, and it consisted of seven members.

It was the exact duplicate of the membership in the Communist Party.

No one else would join it. No one else would have anything to do with it.

Mr. TAVENNER. In what capacity were you sent to Bellingham?

Mr. DENNETT. As section organizer.

I was in charge of the party. I immediately questioned the wisdom of the policy that they had been pursuing where they had two organizations consisting of the same people, doing exactly nothing.

So I began to take rather vigorous steps. I contacted people in the district center and advised them that this was a ridiculous situation and was very unrealistic.

Mr. TAVENNER. What do you mean by district center?

Mr. DENNETT. Seattle was the district headquarters of the party, and I was trying to win the agreement of Alex Noral to permit me to do something to get more members, at least in the unemployed council, in the hope that if I got them in the unemployed council I might be able to work upon them to win them to membership in the Communist Party.

But Noral was very adamant. He insisted that I must follow the exact directions which the national leader, Herbert Benjamin, had issued with respect to the policy of unemployment councils. And, of course, Herbert Benjamin had earlier outlined that the organization of the unemployed was one of the most important political tasks confronting the party because he called attention to the fact that the Russian revolution had obtained its greatest strength because it had organized the unemployed prior to the 1905 revolt, and that during the course of the 1905 revolt these unemployed organizations became Soviets, they became councils, and that when the 1917 revolution broke out these soviets had been reconstituted and the unemployed had comprised a very essential part of the organization to begin with, and therefore the masses of unemployed in the United States were looked upon as the elementary core around which it might be possible to develop a Soviet power in the United States.

Mr. MOULDER. To what period of time are you now referring?

Mr. DENNETT. That was in 1932.

We had another situation in Bellingham at that time. Noral had been there prior to my assignment. He wasn’t their section organizer, but he had been there on a visit as the district representative, and he had taken part in disciplining some people who apparently, prior to my arrival, had had ideas similar to my own, namely, that the people who were unemployed should be organized for the purpose of getting some assistance to solve their problems of hunger and housing and clothing, and that that should be the center of our attention.

But Noral was adamant with my predecessor as he was with me and had brought about the expulsion of a person there. A person who is known by the name of M. M. London.

Mr. London had adopted this name of London in honor of Jack London. It was not his real name at all.

But Mr. London was a very sharp-thinking person and very devoted to his neighbors and associates, and felt that the unemployed, the people who were suffering should be fighting for immediate relief whereas the unemployment councils had offered the slogan that the solution must be in the form of unemployment insurance.

Well, to the person who is hungry the hope of unemployment insurance, which required the adoption of legislation, which would take a longer period of time, wasn’t a very realistic thing.

But the demand for immediate relief was a very realistic thing. And the people in Bellingham flocked to the banner of London, and London organized what was known as the people’s councils.

He had as his able assistant a man by the name of George Bradley. George Bradley had had no connection with the Communist Party at that time or prior to that time. George Bradley at that time was an unemployed railroad worker. London, I believe, was an unemployed seaman at that time, who was actually living on a farm.

Mr. TAVENNER. What was London’s real name?

Mr. DENNETT. I do not know. I never have known. I think he took legal steps to have London established as his proper name. I think that is his legal name.

Mr. TAVENNER. Do you know in what court and at what time he took that action?

Mr. DENNETT. I have no knowledge of that. I say that I think that is true.

Mr. TAVENNER. Proceed.

Mr. DENNETT. In a county with a population of, at that time, about 40,000--there were, I guess, about 60,000 in the county, and there were about 40,000 in the city. London had succeeded, London and Bradley had succeeded in organizing the people’s councils until it actually had a dues-paying membership of over 60,000, and we were stewing around with 7 people. And we were trying to contend that our program was a better program than his.

I finally violated district discipline and joined the people’s councils myself. It caused great consternation in the district. The district leader, Mr. Alex Noral, threatened to have me expelled because I had violated discipline. The leaders of the people’s councils were fearful that I had joined to infiltrate their ranks.

So I was damned on both sides. It seems to have been my lot through the biggest part of my life.

It is immaterial to me, however. I think that my decision was correct because before the year was over we changed the situation until we had approximately 150 members in the Communist Party, and the unemployed movement was under the leadership of the people’s councils, and practically all of our people were in those people’s councils exerting an influence in them. It was not a decisive influence but it was an influence, and it did have a lasting effect because we recruited some people who later rose to great heights in the party, and they served the party very well and ably and as devotedly as they knew how.

Mr. MOULDER. Mr. Tavenner, we will resume the hearings after the noon recess. It is now 12 o’clock.

Congressman Velde, do you wish to make a statement before taking the noon recess?

Mr. VELDE. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think that most of us remember our hearings last June as a result of which two witnesses who appeared before us were cited for contempt.

I was very pleased and happy to learn that both of these witnesses, who were unanimously cited for contempt by the House of Representatives, were found guilty.

I want at this point to express my appreciation to Judge Bolt, to United States Attorney Moriarty, and United States Attorney C. E. Luckey for the promptness and efficiency and fairness exhibited during the trial of these two cases.

We all remember that the witness, George Tony Starkovich, was one of the most contumacious witnesses who has ever appeared before this committee in my experience.

I certainly hope that the Supreme Court, upon his appeal--while he certainly has the right of appeal--will affirm the decision of the United States district court.

Mr. MOULDER. Thank you, Mr. Velde.

Mr. Dennett, you will return promptly at 1:30. The committee will stand in recess until 1:30 o’clock.

(Whereupon, at 12 o’clock noon, the subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene at 1:30 p. m.)

AFTERNOON SESSION, MARCH 17, 1955

Mr. MOULDER. The committee will be in order.

Is Mr. Jerry O’Connell in the hearing room?

(There was no response.)

Mr. MOULDER. Will the officer standing at the door call for Jerry O’Connell in the corridor.

(There was no response.)

Mr. MOULDER. Proceed, Mr. Tavenner.

TESTIMONY OF EUGENE VICTOR DENNETT, ACCOMPANIED BY HIS COUNSEL, KENNETH A. MacDONALD--Resumed

Mr. TAVENNER. Mr. Dennett, you were describing to the committee the formation of the unemployed councils in Bellingham and the success which the Communist Party had in having its members become members of that organization. You also described for us in a general way the extent of influence that the Communist Party had in those organizations, in those councils, by reason of having its own members become members of the councils.

I ask you why the Communist Party was interested, and why it made a fight to get its own members into these unemployed councils. What was the purpose of it?

Mr. DENNETT. Our purpose was at that time to find some way of prevailing upon the unemployed organizations to adopt a program we were advocating.

At that particular time it consisted mainly in fighting for the adopting of the slogan of demanding unemployment insurance. And I think that that is a point which must be remembered by everyone.

Many people accept unemployment insurance today as a principle, but they don’t know that its origin in the United States, at least, came because the Communists seized upon that as a means of winning the support of the masses of unemployed people.

And any ordinary person should have known in that period, if you look back from now, they should have known that that was a necessary step to be taken. But at that time the resistance to it was terrific.

Mr. TAVENNER. Are you saying it was the desire of the Communist Party, by these methods, to win support of the masses?

Mr. DENNETT. Correct.

Mr. TAVENNER. To win support in what way?

Mr. DENNETT. To win them to an interest--I should say, first, an interest in the Communist Party; then to lead them along the path of struggling against the capitalist system which would ultimately, they hoped, result in the replacement of the capitalist organization of a Soviet form of society.

Mr. TAVENNER. Would you say that the Communist Party made that type of effort in almost every form of our society?

Mr. DENNETT. Well, the leaders were held responsible to see to it that they did make such an effort. It wasn’t so easy to do so among the ranks of the members who didn’t hold any official position, but any person who held an official position, such as a unit organizer or a section organizer or an agitprop director or a trade-union organizer or a fraction secretary, in any of those positions a person was expected to carry the Communist Party line. If he didn’t, he was certainly subject to discipline.

Mr. TAVENNER. The committee from time to time has heard a great deal of evidence about the organization of Communist Party cells or branches or units which have been variously termed neighborhood groups and street groups. There has been an effort made in some instances to make it appear that such groups had very little part to play or very little function in the overall picture and purposes of the Communist Party, although they testified that in the instances where Communist Party branches were organized within factories and within industry generally that they had a more definite purpose.

Will you tell the committee about the formation of neighborhood groups of the Communist Party, or what we call sometimes street groups, and explain what part those organizations played in the overall Communist Party program?

Mr. DENNETT. Well, first of all, it is necessary to understand one principle of organization that the Communist Party adopted, and that is, that the form of the organization had to satisfy a need, and that the form itself was subordinate, the form was not the principal question.

The principal question was the function that they were to serve.

So the Communist Party adopted a very flexible attitude on this. In some of the early Communist Party literature it refers almost exclusively to Communist cells. And cells are generally thought of as some very small unit that is sort of hidden away. Actually it was Lenin’s instruction to the party that they should make every factory a fortress for Communist activity.

And the directives of the Red International of Labor Unions always held forth that as an objective.

Now they found that in some countries such factory cells were impractical forms of organization. They just didn’t work out. And it was particularly true in the United States of America because most workers in most of the factories had very little opportunity to discuss political business while they were at work.

In some of the other countries workers did engage in that kind of effort and activity. So shop units and shop cells were possible of organization and were effected. In fact, they were openly known.

In the united States the Communist Party adopted the practice of adapting its basic organization, the elementary part of the organization, to whatever circumstances they found themselves in.

In the period of great unemployment people weren’t working in the factories. So we found them in the neighborhoods. And in the neighborhoods where we could recruit a half dozen Communists we made a neighborhood branch.

At first we called them units. In later years I understand they were called branches. But at the time when I was most active we always referred to them as units. And we would try to get each neighborhood branch to assume some responsibility for some factory or some industry, to carry on agitation and propaganda among the workers of a particular factory or plant for the purpose of trying to recruit those workers into the party and establish a shop unit or what later became known as a branch.

So the point that is of importance here, as I see it, is that the party was flexible in adopting forms of organization, but it was inflexible as to the purpose of those organizations. And their purpose certainly was always as far as I knew--and I was one of those who insisted that it must be kept foremost--to lead the working class to overthrow the capitalist class in political power.

Now I think that there is a great deal of misconception and misunderstanding as to just what that may involve.

The Communist Party went to great length to try to draw a distinction, particularly in the United States, between overthrowing the rule of a particular class and overthrowing the form of the particular government. And it was always the party’s claim in the United States that what they were trying to accomplish was to unseat the robber barons and the big business interests who had seized the seats of government in the United States, and the Communist Party always played down the problem of changing the form of government because nearly all liberal persons you come across will raise the point that one thing that America contributed which the rest of the world has never enjoyed is the right to individual freedom.

The preservation of the constitutional democratic form of organization in the United States governmental structure has always held a very firm appeal to any person who has made any study of governmental structures. The Communist leadership found it virtually impossible to convince anybody that is acquainted with that fact that this constitutional, democratic form of representative government should itself be changed. However, I think that it is a form of self-delusion, and I think that perhaps I have to admit my own in that connection because, among the principles that Lenin hammered away on was the necessity, once the workers seize power, of completely destroying the bourgeois forms of organization. And there is no question about it; there is plenty of literature to substantiate that that would include what was referred to as the constitutional democracies.

You must recall that in the history of the Russian Revolution when the Bolsheviks seized power they replaced a representative form of government, which had been completely unable to solve the economic, financial, and political problems that confronted the people in old Russia. So it was quite natural that the Bolsheviks should say we must sweep aside all these forms that are hindrances.

And I fear that the average person who attempts to transplant an arbitrary form or an idea which is erected in one part of the world because of a certain historical set of circumstances and arbitrarily transplant it to another part of the world under entirely different historical circumstances finds himself trying to solve an impossible problem. And I think that that is basically the problem which the Communist Party itself ran into.

There is no question about it: Lenin’s teachings and the teachings of the Communist Party call for the change of the form of the present so-called bourgeois democratic governments.

I don’t know how valuable or informative this line of response is for your committee, but I would just interject this part of my own thinking, that it is self-delusion on the part of those who think that it does not involve sweeping aside the present constitutional government.

I can see no explanation which would justify such a conclusion.

My own conclusion necessarily is that it does involve such a change, and for a long period of time I felt that such a change was justified because of the adamant refusal of people in high places in government to respond to the needs of the people. And that was particularly true in the depression period, in the unemployed period.

Mr. VELDE. I take it from your testimony that you feel the Communist Party of the United States never did teach the overthrow of our form of government by force and violence.

Mr. DENNETT. I would have to say to that that they did not emphasize that point.

I think it would be ridiculous to contend that that is the complete statement of it.

They relied and fell back on Lenin’s explanation of the question of force and violence. And Lenin’s explanation always was that force and violence occurs because the employers start it.

In the case of strikes Lenin always contended that it was the employers who started the violence by bringing in either strikebreakers or armed guards or police or something of that sort, and that the violence is started against the workers to begin with.

And then he taught that the workers must defend themselves.

Mr. VELDE. Did you have the feeling while you were in the Communist Party that the ultimate goal in case all peaceful methods fail was to use force and violence?

Mr. DENNETT. It is hard to give you a direct answer to the question as you are posing it.

Let me say it this way and see if this answers you:

This is the most delicate question that is before everyone on the subject, and I think that I would be unfaithful to myself if I were to give you a snap answer because a snap answer, I think, is inappropriate.