In Honor Of The 95^th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International-Take Seven-The Long Road Home

 

 

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, a cubbyhole really with papers, booklets, and stray paraphernalia strewn all over the place left by some wayward party neophytes meeting until all hours the night before and leaving the place a mess in disregard of all security precautions, at American Communist Party headquarters just outside of Union Square in old haunted New York City. Jack on seeing the mess, on seeing, more importantly, the breach of security, had just declared himself tired of this whole situation. That declared part was something of an inside joke with the old-timers around the office what with all the internal party squabbles of late and everybody declaring, or being forced to declare, for or against something, so he was declaring himself tired. Not that Jack 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 to good party functioning or one of the twenty-one conditions, or something and no paycheck. And no paycheck would put him back on cheap street where he had been resident long enough to not want another stay.

All Jack knew was that he was beginning to rue, rue to it to himself as usual, 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, indirectly and through third parties at that point). At that time, in association with the big-time organizer William Z. Foster, they had lost some Chi town strikes, most famously the meatpackers strike broken under the pressure of the racial divide that separate joint struggle more than any other obstacle, as the bosses dug in their heels (using the race card as their forward position), dug them in deep and he was in need, desperately in need of a job. Funny that friend, Jake Armor (party name), had subsequently 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. Jake had sided with the under-grounders and headed to Mexico. (Jack had heard later that that Jake had surfaced around Diego Rivera and his arty crowd a couple of years before, some much for underground conspiracies around those flamboyant Mexico flame-throwers).

 

Moreover Jack 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 subsequently with some foul Trotskyite painter a couple of years back, 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 have gotten him into trouble with Moscow since they 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 when the red flame of revolution beat in his breast, that of his kindred and many of those that he worked with. 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 who had been made 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 …