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.)