Men Without Faces-Louis Francis Budenz-1950

“On October 2, 1935, the Daily Worker publicly announced that I had joined the Communist party. I had signed my application for membership the previous August, but had been kept waiting until Earl Browder’s return from Moscow, when the decision was made whether I should function openly or as a concealed Communist. Several of the Red leaders thought that I should take advantage of my wide acquaintance in the labor movement to act as an undercover member of the party. I did not favor this, and Browder and the Communist International representative, Gerhart Eisler, agreed with me. The immediate reason I became a Communist party member was the adoption of the People’s Front policy at the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, held in Moscow in the summer of 1935. I had previously read Lenin and other Communist authorities, and had accepted the Communist viewpoint some years prior to this time; but my experiences in the labor movement, which had been rather extensive, had led me to insist that the Communists’ labor tactics and subservience to Moscow were wrong. I favored what I called the “American approach.” However, when Georgi Dimitrov, speaking for Stalin at the Seventh Congress, stated that the Communists in each country should have due regard for their respective national traditions, I became converted to the necessity of joining the party.”

Download Men Without Faces-Louis Francis Budenz-1950