The Red Spots

Are some of your best friends Commies? Are you sure? How can you tell a Commie from a non-Commie in the U.S. labor movement?

This week Manhattan's Research Institute of America, owned and edited by lawyer Leo Cherne and advertising man Carl Hovgard, undertook to answer these questions. It issued a report to over 40,000 U.S. businessmen on the Communist Party in U.S. Labor.

Said R.I.A.: American Communists, whose "one principle is Russia first," will do their utmost to foment "class warfare," force the leaders of non-Communist labor organizations into extreme positions, embarrass management and the Administration. "With our stiffening foreign policy toward Russia the hostility will increase. . . . The key to understanding Communist labor activity lies in the basic Party philosophy . . . that the end justifies the means."

The Disciplined Minority. With clinical thoroughness R.I.A. told how Commies work. "[They] have convinced many people that 'red baiting' is ... undemocratic. By identifying all criticism as 'red baiting,' they have gained almost complete immunity."

In their drive for control of labor unions, they rely on five basic types of workers: 1) the Party member (secret or avowed); 2) the fellow traveler (not a CP member but an ardent follower); 3) the sympathizer (in essential agreement with the Communist line); 4) the opportunist (who makes alliance with the militant CPers); 5) the liberal (fundamentally in disagreement but approving immediate demands).

Their mainspring is the disciplined minority. They have an "aptitude at balance-of-power politics." The influence of that minority may extend beyond the 'union. "It is comparatively easy for a few Communist-dominated unions to take control of the loose citywide organizations of a labor federation."

How can businessmen spot CPers? Said R.I.A.: read the New York Daily Worker for a sure guide to the Party line. Watch workers for their attitudes towards prominent anti-Communist labor leaders such as David Dubinsky, Walter Reuther. Read all the campaign material issued by both sides in plant elections. Characteristics of CP literature: violence of utterance; unreasonable criticisms; charges that the opposition is fascist; use of such CP jargon as "deviationist," "Lovestoneite," "revisionist," "capitalist contradiction," "dialectic," "mass base."

How to Make It Easier. R.I.A. warned, however, that none of these things were sure proof. Non-Communist labor leaders sometimes use the same tricks of the trade, sometimes even the same jargon. And "nothing plays into Communist hands so much as denouncing a non-Communist union official as a CPer." That makes it easier for Communists to conceal their own identities. They have encouraged the trend.

What can management do when red spots begin to show? Call a doctor--i.e., a labor relations man, who may or may not know what to do about it.

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