The Organizational Weapon by Philip Selznick

Author:Philip Selznick [Selznick, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics
Publisher: Quid Pro, LLC
Published: 2014-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

In this situation, the problem was not one of access—already available—but of finding a means to establish tight control over the organization once power had been captured. The large number of communist-controlled unions in the New York area made possible reliance on control of the ALP by the union representatives. At the same time, the middle-class liberals who might ultimately be able to recapture control of the party would be effectively neutralized.

As a rule, control of peripheral organizations will be maintained {167} by granting large powers to a secretariat, dominated by the communists, which is able to give decisions political import. The work of such permanent officials is not restricted to neutral administrative affairs. This was the case, for example, in the World Federation of Democratic Youth, established at a World Youth Conference at London in 1945. The permanent officers who controlled the secretariat held the real power in the organization. They settled questions of representation and procedure, made up the agenda, guided the discussion, possessed the knowledge upon which the infrequently meeting bodies of the WFDY would have to depend.[48] Moreover, the secretariat can busily turn out resolutions, sponsor delegations, and carry on factional activities against an existing or potential opposition. Its press can be used for partisan propaganda, and leading opponents can be forced out, either by arbitrary expulsion or by creating conditions which leave no alternative but resignation. It is interesting, in this connection, that in communist-controlled organizations the catalogue of crimes which merit expulsion includes any effort to organize an opposition to the existing leadership. The communists tend to carry over into their peripheral groups the opposition to internal factions which characterizes the party itself.

But it would be a mistake to conclude that Bolsheviks never deviate from the policy of seizing the organizational apparatus. This is uniformly the ultimate goal, but often any concession will be made, including temporary self-restraint in seizing key organizational posts, in order to gain access to the membership of a target group. Thus, in discussing the negotiations of the Trotskyists with A. J. Muste’s American Workers Party, Cannon pointed out:

We proposed that Muste should be National Secretary and that I should be editor of the paper. . . . We knew what it meant to them, with their overemphasis on purely organizational matters, to have the secretaryship because the secretary, theoretically at least, controls the party machine. We were more interested in the editorship {168} because that shapes directly the ideology of the movement. Similarly, with the posts of labor secretary and educational director. We proposed to take the latter and give them the former, or vice versa, as they saw fit.[49]

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