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Communist International Front Organizations: Their Nature and Function

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Bernard S. Morris
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Extract

IT was once suggested that the basic trait of psychological warfare—and, incidentally, the greatest asset to those that practice it—is its lack of known positive results.1 No satisfactory method has yet been developed to measure the effects of a propaganda campaign on its chosen audience. This characteristic is at once the greatest weakness of propaganda and psychological warfare (how does the operator know whether his effort was well spent or not?) and their greatest strength (if there is no reliable evaluation of the effort, it had better be continued, or even intensified, lest ground be lost).

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , October 1956 , pp. 76 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1956

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References

1 Sereno, Renzo, “Psychological Warfare, Intelligence, and Insight,” Psychiatry, XIII, No. 2 (May 1950), pp. 266–73.Google Scholar

2 “What Is To Be Done?” in Lenin, V. I., Selected Works (2 vols.), Moscow, 1946, 1, p. 235.Google Scholar

3 “The Trade Unions, the Present Situation and the Mistakes of Comrade Trotsky,” in Lenin, V. I., Selected Works, IX, New York, 1943, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar Also, “'Left-Wing' Communism, An Infantile Disorder,” in Lenin, , Selected Works (2 vols.), op.cit., 11, p. 592.Google Scholar

4 “The Foundations of Leninism,” in Stalin, J., Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1940, pp. 77–78.Google Scholar

5 “On the Problems of Leninism,” in ibid., pp. 131–32.

6 Selznick, Philip in his study, The Organizational Weapon (New York, 1952, pp. 114ff.)Google Scholar, suggests “peripheral organization” as a generic term for various types of front organizations. Although the term “peripheral” is an improvement over “front,” it is not clear in his text whether he distinguishes these organizations from the mass organizations, as Stalin depicted them, or includes them within the general category.

7 Carr, E. H., The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923, III London, 1953, p. 404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Muenzenberg, see also Fischer, Ruth, Stalin and German Communism, Cambridge, Mass., 1948, pp. 610–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Muenzenberg's, own Die Dritte Front, Berlin, 1930.Google Scholar

8 International Press Correspondence, VI, No. 28 (April 15, 1926), p. 429, “Report of the Commission for Work Among the Masses,” given at the Seventeenth Session of the Enlarged Executive Committee of the Communist International, March 11, 1926.

9 See, e.g., Koestler, Arthur, The Invisible Writing, London, 1954, pp. 194–212 and passim.Google Scholar

10 The more prominent Communist international front organizations are me World Peace Council, the World Federation of Trade Unions (including a number of trade union internationals organized along craft lines, paralleling the non-Communist International Trade Secretariats), the World Federation of Democratic Youth, its “autonomous affiliate,” the International Union of Students, the Women's International Democratic Federation, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the World Federation of Scientific Workers, the International Organization of Journalists, and the International Federation of Resistance Fighters.

11 E. H. Carr sets 1922 as the high-water mark of the Profintern's success in western and central Europe (op.cit., III, p. 459). He writes: “It continued from time to time to have its value as an instrument of propaganda: and its embarrassments in Europe were probably outweighed by its usefulness in Asia…” (ibid., p. 461), a characterization that has some validity for the WFTU today. Carr deals with the origins of the Profintern in ibid., pp. 398–401 and 459–462.

12 Foster, William Z., History of the Three Internationals, New York, 1955, p. 398.Google Scholar

13 World Trade Union Movement (the WFTU's monthly journal), No. 10 (October 1955), p. 6.

14 “Resolution of the Information Bureau of the Communist Parties,” For a Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy, November 29, 1949, p. 1.

15 Of necessity, each campaign was required to produce more signatures than its predecessor. Thus the World Peace Council claimed that by August 6, 1955, 655, 963, 811 signatures had been collected for the Vienna Appeal as compared with 612, 522, 504 for a Five-Power Peace Pact and 482, 482, 198 for the Stockholm Appeal. Bulletin of the World Council of Peace, No. 16 (September 1, 1955), p. 2.

16 Défense de la Paix, No. 20 (January 1953), p. 6.

17 “Recommendations on Organizational Problems of the World Peace Movement,” supplement to New Times, No. 49 (December 4, 1954), p. 11.

18 Hugh Seton-Watson, in The Pattern of Communist Revolution (London, 1953), devotes less than two full pages (pp. 327–29) to the international front organizations in his survey of international communism, on the grounds that most of them are of “little importance” and, at any rate, “… have little bearing on the social conditions and political systems that favor or hinder communist action, or on the methods used by communists to seize power, which are the subject of this book.” It is not quarreling with his conclusion to point out that he has not thereby provided a rationale for their existence.

19 For a psychological analysis of why Communists build front organizations, see Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, 1951, pp. 353ff.Google Scholar