The practice of the Y. C. L. has recently given rise to the method
of so-called shock groups or brigades. This method of shock
brigades could be usefully carried over into the practice of the
Party. The term “shock brigade” is not in itself very good. Shock
brigades are organized in the factories in the U. S. S. R., the
Communists working in the factories organizing shock groups around
which non-Party workers are gathered. But the Communist Party is
the advance guard of the working class, i. e., it is in itself
_the_ shock group of the working class; to create within this
shock advance guard of the working class yet other shock brigades
is of course at bottom not correct. But this is what IS correct.
In the Party organizations of capitalist countries, numbers of
Party members are not drawn into the everyday work. Every Party
member belongs to a cell, which meets once a fortnight or once a
month, and in between these meetings Party members do not perform
much Party work, in many cases, in fact, have no Party tasks at
all. This happens because in the given cells at the given time,
there is not much internal work, while other sectors of Party work
may at the same moment have important militant tasks before them.
It is for the Party Committee to keep on combining Party members
into different groups for the concentration of forces upon the
most important sectors. Having performed a given task such groups
or brigades are broken up or reconstructed into other groups
for taking up new work. The general aim in creating such groups
should be the strengthening of Party work in the big enterprises
of the most important sections of industry. Here, on this problem
the full attention of the leading Party organs must be sharply
directed in the near future.