I ask you why the Communist Party was interested, and why it made a fight to get its own members into these unemployed councils. What was the purpose of it?
Mr. Dennett. Our purpose was at that time to find some way of prevailing upon the unemployed organizations to adopt a program we were advocating.
At that particular time it consisted mainly in fighting for the adopting of the slogan of demanding unemployment insurance. And I think that that is a point which must be remembered by everyone.
Many people accept unemployment insurance today as a principle, but they don’t know that its origin in the United States, at least, came because the Communists seized upon that as a means of winning the support of the masses of unemployed people.
And any ordinary person should have known in that period, if you look back from now, they should have known that that was a necessary step to be taken. But at that time the resistance to it was terrific.
Mr. Tavenner. Are you saying it was the desire of the Communist Party, by these methods, to win support of the masses?
Mr. Dennett. Correct.
Mr. Tavenner. To win support in what way?
Mr. Dennett. To win them to an interest—I should say, first, an interest in the Communist Party; then to lead them along the path of struggling against the capitalist system which would ultimately, they hoped, result in the replacement of the capitalist organization of a Soviet form of society.
Mr. Tavenner. Would you say that the Communist Party made that type of effort in almost every form of our society?