Viewing page 23 of 56

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

                                                                       -8-

when they go out on Halloween with their UNICEF collection cans is anti-biotics needed for the treatment of yaws, a serious disease contracted by children in Asia and elsewhere.

It is my belief that we Communists have a special duty to organize our neighbors and fellow-voters in unremitting struggle against monopoly control of life-saving medicines which our scientists have made possible by their selfless research and devotion. A petition campaign or a drive for, say, a hundred letters to the local Congressman asking him what he can and will do to secure action in the Anti-trust Division of the Justice Department on the long-standing indictment against the Pfizer drug monopoly. It may help bring prices down, and your Congressman will no longer take you for granted.

Yes, a few anti-monopoly struggles in New York communities during the next several months may help slow down that Consumer Price Index which tells us every month what we already know -- the cost of living will probably reach the moon before our missiles do. And it will help put voters in fighting trim to do battle with any candidate in the primaries and the nominating conventions who hasn't enlisted in the campaign for price roll backs. 
  
We must have done with the situation where municipal budget hearings come and go, legislatures convene and adjourn, and our Clubs remain blissfully indifferent to the fact that we should be doing something among the people about them. Party spokesmen like Ben Davis, Esther Cantor, Evelyn Weiner and Arnold Johnson have done a fine job in the past year with their well-received and applauded presentations of the Communist Party's program before city and state legislative bodies. Back them up by organizing your club membership and friends to attend these important hearings. Your neighbors would really enjoy seeing former City Councilman Ben Davis in action. Tell them how he and Pete Cacchione introduced and fought for city-owned milk plants capable of providing milk 3 or 4 cents lower than the milk monopolies prices, against jim crow in housing and segregation in the schools, for the 5-cent fare and for dozens of other things which would have made life a little bit easier to live in New York City. Let's get people out to these important hearings and legislative sessions here and in Albany. It wouldn't hurt at all for hundreds of voters in our neighborhoods, organizations and trade union locals to see how Ben Davis and other Communists fight in defense of the rights of the people and in behalf of their living standards. It might give them an idea of how important it is that Communists must again be elected to the public office. And it will provide them with a very valuable yardstick against which they may measure other candidates who seek their vote.

Legislative, anti-monopoly coalition and election campaign -- all must go every County and Club agenda from now on in. The State Legislative Committe has files on legislation and local monopolies.  

* * *

NOTES ON THE DRAFT RESOLUTION 
By Mort (Buffalo)

The Draft Resolution does mark an important advance over the 16th Convention Resolution for one decisive reason: it clearly states the need for building the Communist Party--a party that is based on the science of Marxism-Leninism, the vanguard of the American working class. This in no way can be minimized, given the depth of the assault to destroy the entire foundation of the Party by the revisionists, both before and after the 16th Convention.

But we must say the effectiveness of the Draft is completely inadequate. Why? The central weakness of the draft is that it is not oriented toward the working class. If we believe that only the American working class can lead a successful fight for peace, democracy and socialism in the U.S., does it not stand reason that our resolution should in the first place be oriented toward the working class? 

What are the roots of this error? Henry Winston in his report to the 15th Convention explained the reason: "The basic reasons for this situation (i.e., failure to develop a consistent policy of industrial concentration) lie in the fact that we lack a full appreciation of the working class and vanguard role of the party...The fact that we do not yet fully grasp this essential truth-that it is the working class and in the first place the workers in basic industry who are destined to lead our people and our country-that explains why we did not stick to our formulated (concentration) policies."

Transcription Notes:
.