The Communists Organize For Battle

Abstract

THE POLITICAL CAMPAIGN OF 1928 had neither a beginning nor an ending for the Communist Party. The nominating convention in May was not its beginning. The counting of the votes in November settled nothing with finality. To a certain extent this is true of all parties; yet with the Communists the situation differed considerably. As William Z. Foster announced in his speech accepting the nomination for President:

We are not going into the national election campaign solely for the purpose of getting votes…. We also have other bigger objectives…. Our aim must be to arouse the class-consciousness of the masses in a political sense and to mobilize them for struggle on all fronts. Vote-getting is only one aspect of this general mobilization of the workers.¹