We must bear in mind with regard to the internal organization of
the work of factory cells that in all countries some members of
the Party working in the enterprises, do not wish to be members
of factory cells and do not wish to carry on Party work in the
factory. For example, in the documents of the Central Committee of
the Czechoslovakian Party on the preparation for the campaign for
the 6th March 1930 there is information from all districts that
when practical questions of the preparation for the demonstration
for the 6th March were put before the meetings of factory cells,
in many factory cells voices were raised to the effect that it was
impossible to do any work in the factory, and at a place called
Laza in Moravia, one responsible worker of a factory cell even put
the question in this way: “If the Party will guarantee material
help after I have been thrown out of the factory for taking
part in the demonstration, but if the Party cannot guarantee my
family and myself then I will not carry on Party work in the
factory.” Such moods among Communists working in the factory are
to be observed on all sides. There are Party members who agree
to pay membership dues, agree to come to a meeting once every
fortnight or once a month, in order to hear a report on the world
proletarian revolution, and vote for the platform of the Comintern
against the liquidators, the Trotskyists and all other renegades,
but are not willing to carry on recruiting work among the workers
of their enterprise, do not wish to prepare strikes in their
own enterprises, do not wish to call out the workers of their
enterprises to demonstrations, and so on. Every Party Committee
has to fight with such Party members in their enterprises. What
should we do with them? The most important task of the Party
committee consists in organizing all Party members working in
enterprises into factory cells and drawing them into the day to
day work of the factory. With regard to Party members who do not
wish to take part in the work of factory cells, the most attentive
and stubborn explanatory work must be carried out. But if somebody
or other all the same, categorically refuses to work in a factory
cell, that comrade must be told that nobody is keeping him in
the party. (The Communist Party is a voluntary organization, but
every worker who voluntarily joins the ranks of the Communist
Party accepts iron party discipline. If that discipline seems
very hard to him, even unbearable, then the Party should not shut
its doors upon him.) In this regard we must bear in mind that
Party members who do not wish to work in factory cells are not
necessarily traitors to the working class. In some organizations
Party workers, proletarians, who have refused to carry out
difficult tasks in their enterprises, have been cleaned out of
the Party as alien elements. There are alien elements in the ranks
of the Communist Party, including direct provocators, agents of
the police and the employers, who specially creep into the Party
for the purpose of carrying on disruptive work in the ranks of the
Party. The Party must strictly observe each one of its members,
verify in the most careful way every suspicious Party member, and
if it is established that he is an alien element and even more a
provocative agent, then of course, there is absolutely no reason
to beat about the bush with him. But in the ranks of the Communist
Parties there are a large number of proletarians who sincerely
sympathize with Communism but who at the same time are not strong
enough to fulfill all the demands of Communist discipline. With
regard to such proletarians, if they are not capable of being
members of the Communist Party there is no need to keep them
in the Communist Party, but at the same time there is no need
to throw them out of the Party like a dirty rag; they must be
organized round the Party as sympathizers as members of non-Party
mass organizations, in the Red Trade Unions, in the I. L. D., the
W. I. R. and so on. In these organizations no such discipline is
demanded as in the ranks of the Communist Party and they can work
here in a suitable manner. At the present stage of development of
the Communist movement, when the Communist Parties are ceasing to
be organizations for propaganda and agitation of the Communist
idea, and are turning into fighting organizations, preparing
and leading revolutionary actions of the proletarian masses
against the organized forces of the employers, police, State and
Social-Fascists, some members of the Party are showing themselves
incapable of fulfilling the new fighting tasks of the Communist
Party. But without doubt such Party members can be useful to the
Party as sympathetic elements, and even as leading active elements
in different mass organizations, as for example, in the ILD,
Tenants’ Organizations, W. I. R., and so on. Factory cells must be
composed of proletarians who are really the advance guard of the
workers of a given enterprise, devoted to the cause of Communism,
ready to carry out the directions of the Party, grudging neither
health nor strength, nor life, not being afraid if Party
interests demand it to carry out such work in the enterprise as
may cause the employer to throw them out of the factory, perhaps
the police to arrest them, and the courts to condemn them to
heavy punishment. In fact, only factory cells composed of such
proletarians can do great revolutionary work even though they
be very small. In one of the mining districts of Czechoslovakia
in 1930 there was such a case. The Social-Democrats organized a
meeting of miners. Only one Communist took part in the meeting.
Different questions which the Social Democrats brought forward
were considered. After a discussion in which the Party member
present at the meeting took the most active part, the meeting
decided to join up in the Red Trade Union. The Czechoslovakian
comrades will remember another case which took place in 1930 in
Prague. When the famous social traitor Vandervelde came there, the
Social-Democrats organized a big meeting at which about 30 active
Party members were present. Vandervelde delivered a long speech
pouring dirty water on the Communist International, the U. S. S.
R., and the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, nevertheless, not
one of the 30 Party members present at the meeting and there were
members of the C. C. amongst them, opened his mouth in protest
against the counter-revolutionary speech of the Social-Fascist
leader. It is perfectly clear that with activists like the
“activists” of the Prague organization, who were present at
Vandervelde’s meeting, the Czechoslovakian proletariat will not
win power but the Communist Party will be a shameful laughing
stock in the eyes of the proletariat and the proletariat, quite
rightly, will not listen to such “activists” and will not support
Party organizations which keep such “activists” in leading Party
work.