Albert Appeal
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
November 25, 1952
Argued September 30, 1952
John J. McDevitt, 3rd, with him Jay B. Leopold, for appellee.
OPINION PER CURIAM, November 25, 1952:
The judgment of the court below is affirmed on the opinion of Judges CRUMLISH and SLOANE.
Albert Appeal.
Mortimer B. Lesher, Solicitor, with him Niles Anderson, Assistant Solicitor and Oscar G. Peterson, for Board of Public Education of School District of Pittsburgh, appellee.
Robert L. Kunzig, Deputy Attorney General, with him Robert E. Woodside, Attorney General, for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, intervenor, appellee.
A. Harry Levitan and Witt and Cammer, of New York, for Teachers Union, Local 555 and Local 556.
OPINION BY MR. CHIEF JUSTICE HORACE STERN, November 25, 1952:
Miss Dorothy Albert, a professional employe of the School District of Pittsburgh, taught English at the Taylor-Allderdice High School; she had been a teacher for approximately eighteen years. Dr. Earl A. Dimmick, Superintendent of Schools of Pittsburgh, preferred charges against her, alleging that she was a Communist; he requested that her contract of employment be terminated for “advocation of or participating in un-American or subversive doctrines” in violation of section 1122 of the
Section 1122 of the
There is no question of the right of free speech involved in this case. Miss Albert is not being penalized in her capacity as a private citizen because of any political, economic or social views she may entertain or any expression she may care to give to those
The
According to the testimony before the Board of Public Education Miss Albert was, unquestionably, a member of the Communist Party. Her chief complaint, however, on this appeal, is that the Board not only took judicial notice of the fact that the Communist Party advocates the overthrow of the United States government by force or violence, but it refused to allow her to present testimony to the contrary. This court has definitely decided that judicial notice may
There remains for consideration the final contention of appellant that, even though she be a member of the Communist Party, and even if that Party does advocate the overthrow of the United States govern-
on notice that the plans and policies were illegal;-having all those things in mind it would certainly strain the limits of credulity to believe that she did not know what she was doing and did not knowingly and consciously advocate and participate in the subversive doctrines of the Communist Party organization. To hold that in order to prove her personal complicity it would be necessary to produce affirmative evidence of what she actually saw, heard and discussed at any particular meeting of the Party would be to make utterly impossible the enforcement of the section of the
The order of the court below dismissing the appeal of Dorothy Albert from the order of the Superintendent of Public Instruction is affirmed; appellant to pay the costs.
The Pittsburgh Chapter of the Civil Rights Congress has filed a brief amicus curiae characterizing the proceedings against Dorothy Albert as a “witch hunt,” a device to control thought and a means of suppressing a political party-all accomplished in a period of “hysteria and passion.”
The term “witch hunt” in this connection represents loose thinking and irresponsible language because we know that witches have no existence except in a disordered imagination, and we know also that Communism is a reality with potential dangers to mankind that imagination cannot exaggerate.
Dorothy Albert was not charged with any supernatural offense. Her offense was a very earthy one. It was nothing less than advocating, through the Communist Party of which she is or was a member, the overthrowing of our government not by broomsticks but by bomb, bullet and bayonet, as exemplified by Communist history ever since Lenin in 1917 achieved his bloody revolution in Petrograd, Russia.
Dorothy Albert was afforded every opportunity to deny the charges made against her, but she preferred to remain mute. In the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County the witness stand was hers upon which to refute, deny, explain and amplify; the great power of subpoena was within arm‘s reach to summon witnesses in her behalf and to demonstrate that to her knowledge the Communist Party did not advocate violence, if that is her contention. How can she now argue, as she does through her attorney of the Civil Rights Congress that she has been denied due process of law? While a Court may not comment adversely on the refusal of a defendant to testify in a criminal trial, that prohibition does not attach in a civil procedure such as the one before us. Therefore, the appellant‘s silence,
It is a paradox of the Communist mentality that when it is beyond the reach of a court‘s jurisdiction it will vociferously assert the right to freedom of speech, voicing doctrine and plan in vigorous and acrimonious opposition to our form of government, but when it stands before representatives of the law it prefers the silence of the tomb. Of course, there is an explanation for this seeming anomaly and the explanation is that in a court of law the witness‘s oath to tell the truth seriously shortens the range of a Communist‘s denunciation, for he knows that beyond a very clearly provable line of acceptable fact he steps into the territory of perjury where prosecution is not hampered as it is in the field of elastic interpretation of what constitutes freedom of speech.
The appellant, Dorothy Albert, was a teacher in the schools of Pittsburgh for eighteen years. She was no inexperienced illiterate, duped or deceived into accepting an ideology which, upon a later and mature reflection, she might wish to repudiate. She voluntarily joined an organization whose teachings must have quickly revealed to her a criminal purpose, she studied from books outlining a change of government through violence, she associated and conferred with individuals committed to that program of violence.
And then when, at last, the curtain of secrecy behind which she thought she was operating, was torn aside and she was discovered in the midst of equivocal circumstance, she was still not without a vehicle of exculpation, if she wished to employ it. The great
In the country which formulated the ideology she has embraced, this opportunity to explain would not be forthcoming. A stone and iron cell, a summary adjudication based on a possible forced confession, and a flinging into the torture and oblivion of a slave camp, a distant Siberian exile, or worse, would be the fate of anyone disloyal to the dictatorship of the proletariat holding the people in a vise of absolutism never surpassed in the sorrowful history of man‘s domination over man.
The argument advanced by counsel for amicus curiae that the appellant is a victim of “thought control” is another illustration of the loose thinking and irresponsible language which go into the brief before us for consideration. Any Communist in the United States can mentally entertain plans for assassinating the president and his whole cabinet, destroying the capital and poisoning the water reservoirs of the nation, but unless those thoughts are expressed into words or deeds, government has no way of ascertaining them, much less punishing them.
Of course, we are aware that there was a time in the melancholy chronicle of man‘s struggle toward freedom when belief itself was subject to persecution, but the so-called ascertainment of that proscribed belief
It is asserted in the brief of amicus curiae that “every school board is left to steer for itself in an uncharted sea with no guide or compass.” That sea is far from uncharted and no compass is lacking, either for the school board or for the school teacher. The
Before the appellant Dorothy Albert could be held accountable for entertaining un-American or subversive doctrines it was necessary that she advocate them, and there can be no advocacy through sealed lips, a penless hand or an immobilized body. But the appel-
In every attempt made by the United States Government to curb the disloyal activities of the Communist Party, its attorneys have complained that this constituted an infringement on the rights of a political party. But the Communist Party is not a political party. It is conceded that the primary objective of Communism is the achievement of governmental power. That power can be attained either by election or by force. A careful and meticulous reading of Lenin‘s “State and Revolution,” the guidebook to Communist power, will fail to disclose one passage or reference to the attainment of power via the ballot box. One, however, will have no difficulty in finding statements such as the following:
“The bourgeois state can only be ‘put an end to’ by a revolution.”
“The replacement of the bourgeois by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution.”
“The overthrow of the bourgeois rule can be accomplished only by the proletariat, as the particular class, which, by the economic conditions of its existence, is being prepared for this work, and is provided both with the opportunity and the power to perform it.”
The companion and guide to “State and Revolution” and unquestionably the most important, popular and formidable item in the armory of Communist literature, is the “Communist Manifesto“, which proclaims:
The most succinct and authoritative utterance on this subject was made by United States Supreme Court Justice JACKSON in the case of American Communications Assn., C.I.O. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 429: “In not one of the countries it now dominates was the Communist Party chosen by a free or contestable election; in not one can it be evicted by any election. The international police state has crept over Eastern Europe by deception, coercion, coup d‘etat, terrorism and assassination. Not only has it overpowered its critics and opponents; it has usually liquidated them. The American Communist Party has copied the organizational structure and its leaders have been schooled in the same technique and by the same tutors.”
The very written constitution of the Communist Party of the United States makes no assertion that it will seek power through duly constituted popular elections.
And if there are left any doubts about the violent intentions of the Communist Party in the United States, those doubts must melt before the revolutionary fire of William Z. Foster, national chairman of the Communist Party of the United States, who said:* “No communist, no matter how many votes he should secure in a national election, could, even if he would, become President of the present Government. When a communist heads a Government of the United States,
* This statement was originally made in 1928 and Foster has confirmed it several times since.
In practically every prosecution of, or inquiry into the activities of Communists in the United States during the last decade or so, the cry has always been raised that the prosecution or inquiry was caused by the “hysteria” of the times. That approximately one-third of the land surface and one-fifth of the earth‘s population should be under the domination of a power intent on subjugating the entire world is something that is bound to wrinkle the nation‘s brow and bend the national back over the anvil in fashioning the weapon of collective defense. But this is far from saying that hysteria has captured the American people. Some of the Communist trials in the federal and state courts have lasted for many months and, with the appeals, have consumed years of time. The basic legislation under which the appellant was made to answer was placed on our statute books in 1941. She thus was aware of its existence for nine years before she was called to account. Nor was there any precipitate disposition of her case after she was first notified of her violation of the school law.
On March 14, 1950, Dorothy Albert was publicly named as a Communist by Matthew Cvetic, an undercover agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. On March 28, 1950, the Board of Public Education adopted a resolution terminating her contract of employment. A formal hearing was held on April 12, 1950, and from the adverse results of that hearing, she appealed to the Superintendent of Public Instruction, who granted a hearing on January 18, 1951. When the Superintendent confirmed the dismissal, Miss Albert appealed
As appellant‘s counsel has sought out a medieval age for some of his phraseology in criticism of this case, so has he also in his arguments of the law drawn from decisions which, in the present state of juridical development on the subject, must be regarded archaic. Counsel depends much on the famous Schneiderman case (Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U. S. 118.) But that case is no longer law. It was quite definitely overruled by Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494, and C.I.O. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382.
In my opinion the Schneiderman case was never good law. The majority opinion there declared: “A tenable conclusion from the foregoing is that the Party in 1927 desired to achieve its purpose by peaceful and democratic means, and as a theoretical matter justified the use of force and violence only as a method of preventing an attempted forcible counter-overthrow once the Party had obtained control in a peaceful manner, or as a method of last resort to enforce the majority will if at some indefinite future time because of peculiar circumstances constitutional or peaceful channels were no longer open.”
This, in spite of the “Communist Manifesto” and “State and Revolution,” from which we have already given quotations, and other Communist manuals such as “The Statutes, Theses and Conditions of Admission to the Communist International,” and “The Theory and Practise of Leninism,” written by Stalin, all of which spell out revolution as clearly as red flags flying over street barricades which are aiming cannon at the capitol dome.
The majority opinion in the Schneiderman case was written by Justice Murphy and concurred in by Justices Douglas, Rutledge and Black. Justice Jackson did not participate in the decision because the Department of Justice, under his administration as Attorney General, had conducted some of the proceedings against Schneiderman.
What Justice Murphy said in the statement above quoted is that the Communists would enforce the majority will when, because of peculiar circumstances, constitutional or peaceful channels were no longer open. How would they determine the “majority will“? We know that in every country where Communists have seized power they have stated that they were enforcing the will of the people, and they said further that constitutional and peaceful channels were not open. That is what they said when they seized Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary, Rumania, China and so on. That was their cry when they invaded South Korea.
The theory which the Communists advance, and which the Schneiderman case gave a color of tenability to, is that they do not advocate violence in itself. It is the “capitalists” who cause trouble by refusing to give up property which belongs to the proletariat. In other words, it is not the robber who precipitates violence. It is the victim who declines to surrender his
Even if the Communists were to acquire power through non-violent methods, it is admitted that their first move would be to change our form of government from a representative republic to a dictatorship of the proletariat, and that transformation, of course, could only be one of violence. Our constitution specifically guarantees to every State a republican form of government. Joseph Stalin in his book, “Foundations of Leninism,” specifically declares that dictatorship of the proletariat does not consist in a “mere change of personalities in the government,” but “a revolutionary power based on the use of force against the bourgeoisie.” He also explains that this involves “the smashing of the bourgeois state machine, the bourgeois army, the bourgeois bureaucratic machine, the bourgeois police.”
The utter untenability of Justice Murphy‘s “tenable conclusion” becomes appalling when one reflects that smashing the state machine is certainly not the constitutional manner in which to amend our constitution.
In Kjar v. Doak, 61 F. 2d 566, the Communist there involved insisted that his party intended to acquire
The minority opinion in the Schneiderman case was written by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Chief Justice Stone, who, dealing in realities, and not academics, said: “The evidence shows and it is not denied that the Communist Party organization at the time in question was a revolutionary party having as its ultimate aim generally, and particularly in England and the United States, the overthrow of capitalistic government, and the substitution for it of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Further: “... it is not questioned that the ultimate aim of the Communist Party in 1927 and the years preceding was the triumph of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the consequent overthrow of capitalistic or bourgeois government and society.”
Chief Justice Stone quoted from the book, “The Statutes, Theses and Conditions of Admission to the Communist International“, which Justice Murphy found innocuous: “... ‘The class struggle in almost every country of Europe and America is entering the phase of civil war. Under such conditions the Communists can have no confidence in bourgeois laws. They should create everywhere a parallel illegal apparatus, which at the decisive moment should do its duty by the party, and in every way possible assist the revolution.‘”
This Communist manual urged that in addition to ” ‘systematic unlawful work,’ ‘it is especially necessary to carry on unlawful work in the army, navy, and police.‘”
Further: “From the beginning, and during all times relevant to this inquiry, there is evidence that the Communist Party organizations advocated the overthrow of capitalistic governments by revolution to be accomplished, if need be, by force of arms.”
Answering the proposition that Communists only intended to use violence when capitalists refuse to give up their property, Chief Justice Stone said: “We need not stop to consider the much discussed question whether this meant more than that force was to be used if established governments should be so misguided as to refuse to make themselves over into proletarian dictatorships by amendment of their governmental structures, or should have the effrontery to defend themselves from lawless or subversive attacks. For in any case the end contemplated was the overthrow of government, and the measures advocated were force and violence.” (Italics supplied)
Justice Murphy saw nothing dangerous in the teachings of Marx and Engels, the architects of the Commu-
The Chief Justice quoted further from the Communist literature in the case which the four-justice majority passed over as innocuous: “‘That which before the victory of the proletariat seems but a theoretical difference of opinion on the question of “democracy,” becomes inevitably on the morrow of the victory, a question which can only be decided by force of arms.’ ‘The working class cannot achieve victory over the bourgeois by means of the general strike alone, and by the policy of folded arms. The proletariat must resort to an armed uprising.’ ‘To say that the revolution can be achieved without civil war is to say that a “peaceful” revolution is possible. . . . Marx was a believer in civil war—that is, the armed struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeois. . . . The teachers of Socialism took the revolution very seriously. It was clear to them that the proletariat could not convert the bourgeoisie, and that the workers would have to impose their will upon their enemies through a war carried on by guns and bayonets.‘”
“The aims of the Communists could be achieved only by ‘the annihilation of the entire bourgeois governmental apparatus, parliamentary, judicial, military, bureaucratic, administrative, municipal,’ and it was necessary for the Communists ‘to break and destroy’ the ‘apparatus.’ The annihilation of the existing po-
In concluding his opinion, in which he was joined by Justice Roberts and Justice Frankfurter, Chief Justice Stone said: “It would be little short of preposterous to assert that vigorous aid knowingly given by a pledged Party member in disseminating the Party teachings, to which reference has been made, is compatible with attachment to the principles of the Constitution.” [of the United States.]
And, thus, in the case before us it would be little short of preposterous to assert that the aid given by Dorothy Albert to disseminating the teachings of the Communist Party would be compatible with loyalty to the United States Constitution and the school code of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
In pressing the Schneiderman case, counsel for the appellant argues that there can be no guilt by association. It would indeed be unfair and unjust to declare that because a Mr. B happened to be walking along the street when a white-sheeted procession went by that he is guilty of Ku Klux Klanism. But if Mr. B steps along in the procession itself, wearing a hood and robe, and later is observed firing a cross on a hill, it would not be unfair to assume that he was approving of the policies of the Ku Klux Klan, and it would not be too much to expect that he should explain how he happened to be involved in activities in which innocent people do not ordinarily participate. It might be fantastic to visualize, but in the realm of sheer possibility it would be possible for Mr. B to be free from guilt on the basis that he thought the hooded procession was a circus affair, that he wore the KKK paraphernalia in the spirit of Halloween fun, and that when he arrived at the hill he thought a Fourth of July celebration was in progress and believed the cross to be a
Dorothy Albert was not dismissed from her teacher‘s position on the basis of guilt by association but guilt by participation. She cannot sit back, as in the hypothetical KKK case, and assume the attitude that she has been grossly misunderstood when she refuses to explain the culpable circumstances which envelop her so overwhelmingly.
Why should the appellant not answer the charge of disloyalty? Why should anyone who receives pay from the pockets of American taxpayers not be required to state whether he or she is loyal to the United States and has a due regard for the security of those who are his or her employers?
The American people today are carrying the heaviest tax burden in history. These crushing levies are due to the staggering sums required to maintain a military establishment that would never have been necessary were it not for the Communist threat against the very life of the nation. American boys are being taken from school to be made into soldiers and to prepare for all the hazards which a soldier confronts. Peacetime conscription, so contrary to American traditions, has become an absolute and almost permanent necessity—all because of Communism. And yet, it is argued before us that government authorities must not ask a person who deals with Communists, lives with Commu-
The United States Congress, the Supreme Court of the United States and the appellate courts of Pennsylvania have declared that the Communist Party is committed to the overthrow of the government of the United States and that of Pennsylvania by force and violence. Every Communist, therefore, must be presumed to carry with him tools which can be used in gaining the ultimate objective of the Communist Party. Whether he will actually use these implements or whether he has repudiated the scope and purpose of his Party is something that he knows better than anyone else. Is it not incredible, then, that he should demand immunity from questioning as to what he intends to do with these tools which aim at destruction and not construction?
The resources of America are being strained and its treasures can face exhaustion in order to fight the world-wide menace of sovietized revolution. Would it not be absurd to spend billions of dollars to keep Communists out of Europe, if they were to be allowed to operate untrammeledly in the schoolhouses on this continent? Would it not be the height of tragic folly to expend American blood to keep Communists out of South Korea and then allow them to ply their nefarious trade in American cities, factories and public places of every description?
The conflict with Communism and Communists is the most vital and decisive wager of battle which has ever engaged the brain and heart of America. No war has threatened the homes, the future, the very survival of the American people like this one. The population of America continues with its daily tasks, always striving to elevate even higher the standard of living which has no equal in the world. The symphony of in-
That bomb can be averted and the plane which would carry it here can be stopped in flight if the fifth column in America is eliminated. In all their madness, the rulers of Russia would never direct an atomic bomber to America without having accomplices here to preadvise on strategic targets and strategic courses and without their having confederates here to refuel the plane‘s engines and care for its crew, if necessary.
But Soviet martial and criminally imperialistic expansion would cease at once if no fellow-conspirators were waiting in the country to be invaded—prepared to open the gates to the invaders.
Revelations during the last ten years on infiltration of Communists into the American scheme of life have been nothing short of appalling. Congressional investigations, court trials and voluntary confessions have disclosed that Communists have stolen state secrets and the awesome bomb secret; they have penetrated into the Department of State and other departments of the United States Government; they have entered into the Armed Forces; they have taken over labor unions employing workmen engaged in building submarines, radars, electric machinery and other equipment vital to the nation‘s defense; they have precipitated strikes to cripple defense programs; they have polluted the literary, artistic, radio and cinematic streams; they have published periodicals which twisted and distorted data and news to favor Soviet propagandistic purposes. May they now be allowed to poison
There have been more inquiries—federal, state and otherwise—more cases decided, and more books written on Communism than any other phase of American history having to do with defense of our fundamental liberties, with the possible exception of the slavery question prior to the Civil War. All this investigation, research and litigation has resulted in one undeviating finding, namely, that Communism consists of an ideology inimical to the American way of life and is committed to a violent overthrow of the government which protects the American way of life.
Is it to be supposed that everyone is familiar with this but the school authorities of Pennsylvania? They perhaps more than anyone else know what are the dread potentialities of unabated Communism. Nearly every day newspapers carry stories on the traitorous acts of Communists of America. These stories very frequently go into news columns paralleling the casualty lists from Korea where Americans are being shot down by Communist bullets. Is a school district, aware of the intentions of Communists to betray America to Russia whenever possible, to allow a benighted teacher, consciously or unconsciously, to introduce her ideological darkness into a schoolroom?
The Communist Party is one. It is international. It is global. If Dorothy Albert is a Communist, she is an international Communist, and the plans of the international Communist Party are to create dissension, disunion, strife and civil war all over the world. They are trained to sabotage every orderly procedure
Every Communist is a potential Russian spy. The House Un-American Activities Committee reported (Union Calendar No. 1134, House Report No. 3249, Jan. 2, 1951): “The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer the independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war. With the Armed Forces of the United States actually pitted in conflict against the legions of international communism, the Communist Party of the United States can no longer be viewed passively as a group of mere political and ideological dissidents, but must be looked upon with all seriousness as a military fifth column actively aiding our enemies.”
Communists in America seek to turn this country into a Russian Soviet colony, not because they believe the Communist State is a superior form of government, but because they hope and anticipate that with the coming of a proletarian dictatorship they will share in the Lucullean feast of absolutism. A grave responsibility rests on American officialdom to avert that banquet by withholding from the expectant diners the food of opportunity to betray.
Government department heads, school officials, labor leaders, professional societies, publishing houses, radio and television supervisors—all have the solemn duty of vigilance to destroy the Trojan horse before it opens its treacherous flanks.
Counsel for amicus curiae, who, like the Communist leader Vishinsky, has already demonstrated himself not to be lacking in strength to twist cast iron fact into pretzelled fiction, states in his brief: “Despite overwhelming proof of the commission by the Nazis of the most monstrous crimes in recorded history, the Inter-
I happened to have the honor of being a member of the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg and so have personal knowledge of the decisions promulgated there. That appellant‘s counsel is in error with regard to the statement just quoted is of little consequence because he has proved himself in error so much, but in the interests of truth let it be recorded that Article 10 of the Charter of International Military Tribunal provided, inter alia: “In cases where a group or organization is declared criminal by the Tribunal, the competent national authority of any Signatory shall have the right to bring individuals to trial for membership therein before national, military or occupation courts.”
In accordance with the mandate in this Article, the International Military Tribunal, after hearing evidence on the subject, declared that the activities of the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the Gestapo and SD, and the SS were so notoriously illegal, inhuman and cruel and those activities were so well known, that all those belonging to those organizations were declared prima facie aware of the criminalities thereof.
In view of this documented fact, one sees how devoid of fairness and how abysmally disrespectful of American honor is the statement of counsel when he mordantly declares: “If American, not Nazi justice is extended to Nazis, it is doubly ironic to extend Nazi, not American, justice to Americans.”
Inspired and influenced as was Dorothy Albert by atheistic, communistic ideology, no one can evaluate the harm she visited upon the brain, heart and soul of the children who passed through her classes during the eighteen years she was a teacher in the Pittsburgh
Despite the appellant‘s proved betrayal of the trust placed in her as a school teacher and as a citizen of the United States, she is still a free citizen and is not hampered in her enjoyment of American bounty. No one expects gratitude for this American generosity because it is simply the American way. But to have this American big-heartedness, kindness and tolerance branded as “Nazi justice,” is indeed adding grievous insult to boundless injury.
However, this miserable characterization by counsel in the case is but a drop in the ocean of calumny which international Communist calumniators have splashed over this great nation. But the United States still replies with logic and forbearance because only in the tribunal of unlimited patience and never-ceasing advocacy of reason can we expect the final adjudication which will produce the permanent peace for which mankind has yearned through the ages.
And, despite all black signs to the contrary, I believe that with continued good will between nations dedicated to truth and honor, world tranquility can yet come within humanity‘s grasp.
Notes
It was said by Mr. Justice JACKSON in American Communications Association, C.I.O. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 432; “The [Communist] Party is a secret conclave. Members are admitted only upon acceptance as reliable and after indoctrination in its policies, to which the member is fully committed. They are provided with cards or credentials, usually issued under false names so that the identification can only be made by officers of the Party who hold the code. Moreover, each pledges unconditional obedience to party authority. Adherents are known by secret or code names. They constitute ‘cells’ in the factory, the office, the political society, or the labor union. For any deviation from the party line they are purged and excluded.”