In
Honor Of The 97th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist
International-Take Seven-The Long Road
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From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Jack Smithfield (party name, real name James Gladstone, originally
from old Chi town) sat in his little closet of an office at American Communist
Party headquarters just outside of Union Square in old haunted New York City
and declared himself tired (that declared part was something of an inside joke
of late what with all the squabbles and everybody declaring, or being forced to
declare for or against something, so he was declaring himself tired). Not that
he would publicly declare such a condition, not these days, not being sure
which way the winds were blowing in the party. Who knows maybe being tired, or
the declaration of such tiredness, was in fact creating an unauthorized faction
and thus anathema and no paycheck.
All Jack knew was that he was beginning to rue the day ten
years before that he had taken up a friend’s friendly offer to come to New York
City and become a trade union organizer for the party (and the just-formed Communist International that was providing
the funding at that point) at a time when in, association with the big-time
organizer William Z. Foster, they had lost some Chi town strikes as the bosses
dug in their heels, dug them in deep and he was in need, desperately in need of
a job. Funny that friend, Jake Armor (party name), had left the party a couple
of years later when the big to-do over whether to be an underground or
aboveground party was a big deal and he had sided with the under-grounders and
headed to Mexico. (He had heard later that Jake had surfaced around Diego
Rivera and his arty crowd a couple of years back, so much for underground conspiracies
around those Mexican flame-throwers).
Moreover he had grabbed that train to New York and a job
with the specific idea of making enough dough to marry Anna, his hometown high
school sweetheart from back in the Division Street cold-water flat tenements.
And he had. She had come to New York with him as he began to organize the New
York garment workers. Moreover she had fallen in love with New York, the
Village (Greenwich Village for those not in the know), and with some foul Trotskyite
painter a couple of years back and had taken little Sarah and left him high and
dry in order to “find herself.” (The last he had heard, via Sarah, was that she
was with some Dadaist, whatever that was, poet, and at least not a known Trotskyite
which, who knows might get him into trouble since they had just expelled Jim
Cannon and his counter-revolutionary crowd).
Yes, Jack was beginning to rue that day as he sat in that
cubbyhole office trying to figure out what had happened to Jim Gladstone turned
Jack Smithfield since that fateful day in 1919. Some of it was fun, at least at
first anyway, the travelling part, going here and there for the party up and
down the East Coast. That Paterson textile strike was a beauty, great guns
blazing, although he was not really sure whether they had won or lost it in the
long haul (in the short haul, yes, they had won). And getting to go to the
first international conference of the Red International of Trade Unions in
Moscow where he met lots of other trade union organizers and found out that
they all had the same basic problems as he did in organizing the masses. Even
some of the whacky party fights around that previously mentioned
underground-aboveground battle, the fight over the labor party and who to
endorse, sending the party headquarters to Chicago to get out of stuffy New
York (ho, ho, what a laugh) and even the name of the party (there had actually
been two parties at one point, with crazy factions lined up to decide who was
king of the hill. The Comintern had to figure it out for them, jesus. But
lately, the last couple years the thing had kind of spiraled out of control.
Here’s the funny part. When Jack had mentioned his job offer
to William Z. (nobody ever called him Bill, not even his drinking buddies) back
in 1919 he had nixed it for himself saying that he publicly didn’t want to get
mixed up with radicals and reds. Well that was just a ruse. William Z. had already
been in contact with the party discreetly and had been using Jack as a “stalking
horse.” When William Z. did finally come out and join the party Jack and others
became part of his faction, gladly. And things went along okay for a while,
especially when Jim Cannon and his old Wobblie boys came along with the faction
(factions made necessary by all those fights in the party mentioned before).
But then, Jack was not sure when, things changed. Maybe when
Lenin died and Stalin took over in Russia and more Russian emissaries were
showing up at party headquarters with directions on what to do, or not to do.
Maybe when the old-time leaders like Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev started
wilting and falling out of favor. Or maybe it was more recently when Jim Cannon
and his crowd got booted out for being damn Trotskyites (and good riddance
since one of them was that bastard painter who “stole” Anna from him) and then
the next thing you knew Jay Lovestone and his crowd were taking the same boot
leaving Earl Browder, Christ, Earl Browder, William Z.’s assistant as party
leader. All Jack knew was that he was tired, undeclared tired in case anybody
from the party was asking, but he also knew times were tough and that he needed
that damn paycheck …
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