Mr. Dennett. Well, the leaders were held responsible to see to it that they did make such an effort. It wasn’t so easy to do so among the ranks of the members who didn’t hold any official position, but any person who held an official position, such as a unit organizer or a section organizer or an agitprop director or a trade-union organizer or a fraction secretary, in any of those positions a person was expected to carry the Communist Party line. If he didn’t, he was certainly subject to discipline.
Mr. Tavenner. The committee from time to time has heard a great deal of evidence about the organization of Communist Party cells or branches or units which have been variously termed neighborhood groups and street groups. There has been an effort made in some instances to make it appear that such groups had very little part to play or very little function in the overall picture and purposes of the Communist Party, although they testified that in the instances where Communist Party branches were organized within factories and within industry generally that they had a more definite purpose.
Will you tell the committee about the formation of neighborhood groups of the Communist Party, or what we call sometimes street groups, and explain what part those organizations played in the overall Communist Party program?
Mr. Dennett. Well, first of all, it is necessary to understand one principle of organization that the Communist Party adopted, and that is, that the form of the organization had to satisfy a need, and that the form itself was subordinate, the form was not the principal question.
The principal question was the function that they were to serve.
So the Communist Party adopted a very flexible attitude on this. In some of the early Communist Party literature it refers almost exclusively to Communist cells. And cells are generally thought of as some very small unit that is sort of hidden away. Actually it was Lenin’s instruction to the party that they should make every factory a fortress for Communist activity.
And the directives of the Red International of Labor Unions always held forth that as an objective.
Now they found that in some countries such factory cells were impractical forms of organization. They just didn’t work out. And it was particularly true in the United States of America because most workers in most of the factories had very little opportunity to discuss political business while they were at work.
In some of the other countries workers did engage in that kind of effort and activity. So shop units and shop cells were possible of organization and were effected. In fact, they were openly known.
In the united States the Communist Party adopted the practice of adapting its basic organization, the elementary part of the organization, to whatever circumstances they found themselves in.