National Affairs: No Dies

(3 of 3)

While New York Police Commissioner Valentine sent a special detective to investigate the charge against Detective Broderick, and Navy Yard officials announced calmly that they knew they had Communists among their 9,300 workmen, but watched them carefully, main interest in the Communist Party centred on Comrade Malkin's denunciation of Comrade Charles Dirba.

All old-line Party members well know Charles Dirba, a blue-eyed, stoop-shouldered, middle-aged Lett, conscientious, able, hard-working who for years has run the Communist Control Commission that passes on expulsions from the Party. When one comrade wishes to denounce another comrade, he writes out his charges, sends them to Comrade Dirba. Comrades may denounce each other as police spies, wreckers, Trotskyites, Lovestoneites, grafters, stool pigeons, for spreading stories about the central committee, for social fascism, for individualism, for anti-Party tendencies, for rotten liberalism, rotten intellectualism, conciliationism, for having personal relations with Trotskyites, for white chauvinism, for Zionism, irresponsible Bohemianism—for innumerable heresies whose very names sound weird in a democracy, but which operate to insure unquestioned obedience from members. These dread papers are pondered by Comrade Dirba in his office on the ninth floor of Party headquarters on 13th Street, Manhattan. His practice is generally to telephone the accused, usually around midnight, and say in a hollow voice, "Comrade, I would like to see you. . . ."

From quibbling about Krivitsky, Communists blandly went on last week to deny the existence of Dirba. These remarkable denials of reality reached a new high—in Washington a man brought suit against the Dies Committee, charging that the Dies Committee itself did not exist.* No Dies, no Dirba, no Krivitsky, no trade unions, no influence, no importance, no history, no Marx, no Lenin, no Stalin—to many an observer it seemed that the Communist Party was just about ready to declare that there was no Communist Party either.

Civil Liberties. Liberals fearing that exposures of Communist machinations might lead to a curbing of U. S. civil liberties assembled last week in Manhattan to ponder questions of censorship, trade unions, rights of foreign-born citizens. Doubters who lacked confidence in U. S. democratic institutions feared that action taken against Communists might extend to other minority groups. People who doubted the vitality of U. S. trade unions feared that the Dies expose might harm, rather than help, the U. S. labor movement. To these Attorney General Frank Murphy spoke soothingly, promised that civil liberties would be preserved while subversive, disloyal and treasonable activities were stamped out.