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370     THE COMMUNIST

of the Farm Bloc. Thus our Party, the party of the proletariat, instead of exposing the attack on the proletariat inherent in the McNary-Haugen Bill, furtively championed that bill and, without consideration that the "relief" demanded by the Farm Bloc would only further enslave the poor farmers to finance capital, merely demanded that such "relief" be twice that figure wanted by the Farm Bloc. Likewise, our Party has spread the use of confusing terms in its programs, such as "working farmers" or "dirt farmers," as though even such millionaire farmers as Governor Lowden of Illinois could not easily be classified among the oppressed "working" farmers, as if any and all farmers, rich, middle or poor, owner, tenant or so on, can be anything else but "dirt" farmers. By such terms a blanket of fog is thrown over class differences. By such confusionism our Party has helped to conceal the ruthless exploitation of the farm proletariat, and hence has done not one thing to reach it - the greatest group of proletarians in any single American industry.
   The UFEL is organizationally weak, because its basis is limited wholly to the grain area, ignoring, for example, the whole inferno of the South. The Party, of course, "disposed of" the whole question by making an "Agrarian District" of the Party in the Dakotas, shutting its eyes to agriculture everywhere else! This is, certainly, opportunist blindness. The remedy for it is to turn resolutely to the left, to penetrate the agricultural masses, basing our work's greatest weight on the farm proletariat.
   The growth of the crisis increases the necessity of Communist work in agriculture. The bourgeoisie, the reformists, the government and all forces of fascism are already busy. The neglect of the Party and the growing crisis already have caused our comrades who wish to take advantage of the opportunities, who assuredly wish to follow the Party line, to propose, in the absence of any Party line, measures containing the germ of serious deviation. It is necessary that this be clarified now to avoid later mistakes of others. These comrades proposed as an "essential" point that a "committee be democratically selected by a conference or convention of Party comrades at a Party Agrarian Conference or Convention." Further, that such conference "should not be a sectional conference of the Party, but be national in scope," and that "as many comrades as possible in the various sections be induced to take an active part in  building the agrarian section of the Party, locally, and on a sectional or national scale." We have here a proposal that the Communist Party should build another party, composed of agrarian elements, within itself, a party of farmers who, however poor they are, tend