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-7- What can we Communists contribute? Our record offers an answer far better than our words. Communists courageously led the great hunger marches and struggles during the "Great Depression" which erected the "cushions" of unemployment compensation, social security, relief and welfare that restrain the present economic recession from bursting into another '29. They added militancy and stimulated rank and file struggle in the speedy settlement of job grievances and the fight for job conditions. They pioneered in the establishment of the recognition of white workers that it was in common interest of both Negro and white to fight for equal conditions and rights of their Negro union brothers. Their early struggle against racketeers in the unions is well known. At the same time, taking sober stock of ourselves, our relative strength and position in the trade unions and the changed conditions today, we realize it is not a simple matter to again play a role in the trade unions in the spirit of our great tradition. We frankly state the facts. The long period of persecution, our own errors which facilitated our isolation, the ravages of two years of bitter internal struggle have had their effects. We are much smaller, more isolated. Moreover, although McCarthyism received a serious setback, unlike its namesake, it is not yet quite dead. Faced with growing resistance on the part of labor and the people to the effects of the developing depression, big business is attempting to revive it. Nor will it be fully dead until labor itself spews out the last remnants of its virus from its own body- the anti-Communist clauses. Therefore, it is not "easy" for Communists to make their necessary contribution to labor's struggles. How can the obstacles which block us in making out contribution be overcome? The answer does not lie in ourselves alone nor is it our responsibility alone. The fundamental answer lies in the fact that the Communist Party is a product of the need of American labor, as it is of every working class. That, and not the fairy tale of Soviet subversion is why it is an international movement. The over-riding need of the Communist Party and of labor is for the Party to break out of its isolation and lend its rich experience, its capable and devoted membership to help labor meet the present serious economic situation. This will be achieved. We will learn from our mistakes as well as our great traditions, as will labor. The present developing depression, a result of capitalism's boom and bust cycle, will with increasing speed shatter the illusions of "permanent prosperity", dispel the atmosphere of class collaboration, and heighten the mood of militant struggle. Workers faced with worsening conditions will pressure their leaders (are already doing so) for more militant leadership and push from their ranks new dynamic forces. They will also seek and find militant, devoted, skilled leaders as the Communists and Left once provided and can again give. We Communists have no aim to capitalize on these moods to "seize control". We but desire to make our contribution to aid in adjusting the trade union movement to the grim days ahead, to putting it into "fighting trim". We can make a contribution far out of proportion to our numbers in reviving under new conditions the fighting, crusading spirit of the thirties. We can help stimulate rank and file activity and thus impel the labor movement forward to the new and greater goals it can and must attain. -to fight the growing depression -to win the 30 hour week at same pay -to complete the job of organizing the unorganized -to organize the workers, Negro and white, of the South
