In view of the opening statement of the prosecution the defense is obliged to make sure that the jury fully understands just what the indictment charges and what it does not charge. The foreboding-sounding words "overthrow and destruction of the Government of the United States by force and violence" appear five times in the ten paragraphs of the indictment. But I call to your attention that not one of . . . these ten paragraphs charges that we Communist leaders at any time committed a single act, a single overt act of force and violence against the Government of the United States, or that we ever directly or indirectly advocated or attempted its forcible overthrow.
The alleged conspiracy as stated in the indictment limps only on three active verbs--to organize the Communist Party, to teach, and to advocate.
Since no overt criminal act is even alleged there is no X to mark the spot where it was not committed....
The allegation of crime rests on the charge that we Communist leaders used our inalienable American rights of free speech, press, and association, and sought to advance certain general political doctrines which the indictment falsely says teach and advocate the duty and necessity to overthrow the Government of the United States by force and violence....
We 11 defendants will prove that the very time when we allegedly began this menacing conspiracy we were in fact advocating and organizing all-out support to the Government of the United States....
We will prove that all of us . . . taught the duty of upholding the United States Government and of intensifying the anti-Axis war effort . . . and we defendants will put in evidence the honorable war record of the 15,000 American Communists who, in accord with what we taught and advocated, served with the armed forces in the military defense of our country....
We Communist leaders will show that in June and July of 1945 we thought that labor and the people could not rely on the Truman Administration to curb the greedy monopolists. We taught that, on the contrary, the people would have to resist the efforts of the administration and the bipartisan Congress, to scuttle FDR's progressive policies. We will also prove that we did not even consider, let alone teach or advocate, that the Government, headed by President Truman should therefore be overthrown by force and violence. We will establish that everything we did teach and advocate was in the interests of the American people and in accord with their understanding of achieving a Government of, by, and for the people....
.. . My co-defendants and I will show that we put into practice the real principles of Marxism-Leninism, by teaching that labor and the people should intervene to defend their living standards, their democratic rights, and world peace....
.. . We will show with what peaceful intent we taught and advocated, amongst other things, . . . to oppose American support to the unjust and criminal war against the Chinese people waged by the miserable Chiang Kai-shek, to oppose the civil war against the Greeks, waged by the monarchist-fascist puppet of the American masters, with the American people footing the bill, to oppose the Anglo-American oil lords against the new State of Israel, and the people of Indonesia, and to oppose the restoration of the German and Japanese monopolies and war potential under the new management of the American cartelists....
.. . I and my co-defendants will show, we will show that we publicly advocated that all peace-loving Americans should unite that the Truman Administration enter into direct negotiations with the U.S.S.R. and respond in good faith to its repeated disarmament and other peace proposals....
And to establish further the record of what we defendants actually have done in the period covered by the indictment, we Communist leaders will show that we have advocated defense of the people's living standards as an inseparable part of the struggle for democracy and peace....
[Note: Dennis then describes Marxism-Leninism as an evolving doctrine that will enable people to "make a better and happier life for themselves."]
.. . The defense will squarely meet and disprove the prosecution's charge that the principles of scientific socialism teach or imply the duty or the necessity to overthrow the United States Government by force and violence....
When the defense puts our Communist Party constitution in evidence, the jury will see that it speaks of the duty to organize and educate the working class, and declares that Socialism should be established, not by force and violence, but "by the free choice of the majority of the American people."
We defendants will prove that we have always taught that capitalism in America or elsewhere cannot be abolished by plots, or conspiracies, or adventures, or by power revolutions. We will put in evidence our teaching that this fundamental change can be brought about only when both of two conditions have been fulfilled, when capitalism has fully outlived its social usefulness and when a majority of the American people--I repeat, a majority--led by labor and the Communists resolve to get rid of a system of social production that has become destructive of their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness....
I have already indicated how we American Marxists will prove that we teach that Socialism is not an immediate issue in the United States today, but that the central issues, the central immediate issues confronting our people are peace or war, democracy or fascism....
You will see that our Communist Party Constitution acknowledges not only that we learn from Marx and Lenin but that we owe much to and learn from the teachings of men like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, William Sylvis, and Eugene V. Debs. . . .
.. . The prosecution asks this jury for what amounts to a preventative conviction, in order that we Communist leaders may be put under what the Nazis called protective custody. I ask the jury to weigh the prosecution's case against the proof we defendants will offer to establish that we have taught and advocated the duty and necessity to prevent the force and violence of Fascism, imperialists of war and Iynching and anti-Semitism. I ask you to weigh carefully our sincere offer of proof which demonstrates that we Communists are second to none in our devotion to our people and to our country, and that we teach and advocate and practice a program of peace, of democracy, equality, economic security, and social progress.
McGohey: Mr. Budenz, I show you Government's Exhibit 6 for identification and ask you if that is a copy identical to the copy of the book bearing the same name Foundations of Leninism [by Stalin] which you testified yesterday was given to you by Mr. Stachel, the defendant, at or about the time you joined the Communist party in the fall of 1935?
BUDENZ: Yes, sir, that is the same edition....
McGohey: And you used this book, did you, in your work as editor of the paper?
BUDENZ: Yes, sir, constantly....
CROCKETT: If the Court please, I observe that this book is copyrighted in 1932. I object to its admission in evidence on the ground that the contents in no wise support the charge in the indictment that my client between the period 1945 and 1948 conspired to advocate the overthrow of the United States Government by force and violence.
I object secondly because the use of this document under the circumstances indicated by this is protected so far as my client is concerned by the First Amendment of the United States....
THE COURT: Objection overruled.
GLADSTEIN: If your Honor, please, I object on behalf of my clients to the offer in evidence of this book... . I recognize the book as one somebody once gave me but I won't mention the name of the person who did it because he might get indicted.
THE COURT: Strike that out. I don't want any more of that impertinence.
McGohey: Mr. Budenz, I will read that sentence to you again, "The Communist Party of the United States is the political party of the American working class basing itself upon the principles of scientific socialism, Marxism-Leninism." What did you, in connection with these other Communists that you were working with there, understand that to mean? . . .
BUDENZ: This sentence, as is historically meant throughout the Communist movement, is that the Communist Party bases itself upon so-called scientific socialism, the theory and practice of so-called scientific socialism as appears in the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, therefore as interpreted by Lenin and Stalin who have specifically interpreted scientific socialism to mean that socialism can only be attained by the violent shattering of the capitalist state, and the setting up of a dictatorship of the proletariat by force and violence in place of that state. In the United States this would mean that the Communist Party of the United States is basically committed to the overthrow of the Government of the United States as set up by the Constitution of the United States....
McGohey: Now, Mr. Budenz, I hand you Government's Exhibit 26, it being the constitution of the Communist Party of the United States . . . and again directing your attention to the first sentence of the preamble I call your attention to the fact that it says that "The Communist Party of the United States is the political party of the American working class basing itself upon"--does that language "basing itself upon the principles of scientific socialism, Marxism-Leninism" have any particular meaning with respect to other language which may appear and does appear throughout the constitution? . . .
BUDENZ: Yes, sir, it implies that those portions of this constitution which are in conflict with Marxism-Leninism are null in effect. They are merely window dressing asserted for protective purposes, the Aesopian language of V. I. Lenin.
McGohey: The what language?
BUDENZ: The Aesopian language of V. I. Lenin.
McGohey: Will you spell it?
BUDENZ: A-e-s-o-p-i-a-n. The Aesopian language of V. I. Lenin, that is referred to by V. I. Lenin as Aesopian language; that is, round about, protective language based on the well known writer of fables, Aesop....
[McGohey then produces a copy of Lenin's "Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism" and reads a passage from its preface in which Lenin talks about how he had to avoid tsarist censorship and make political observations "with extreme caution by hints in that Aesopian language--in that cursed Aesopian language to which Czarism compelled all revolutionaries to have recourse whenever they took up their pens to write a 'legal' work."]
McGohey: That first sentence of that sixth paragraph of the Preamble [of the party constitution] reads, does it not, "The Communist Party therefore educates the working class in the course of its day to day struggles for its historic mission, the establishment of Socialism."
Now, can you tell us, Mr. Budenz, what was meant and understood by you and those associated with you, including these defendants, at the time that this Constitution was adopted at the Convention in July 1945? . . .
BUDENZ: This sentence is well known in Communist circles. It has been stated by Lenin and Stalin, the historical mission of the working class is the establishment of socialism by the violent shattering of the capitalist state, its military and judicial arms. Lenin and Stalin have stated that, and it is well known to be the statements of Lenin and Stalin in the Communist circles. Socialism can only be established through this violent shattering and the setting up of the dictatorship of the proletariat as defined by Lenin and Stalin....
Budenz again, March 30, 1949
THE COURT: And so everybody will know what it is you are explaining I am going to read this section. This is what it says. And then you are going to tell us what it meant to you under all the circumstances and so on put in the question.
Section 2: "Adherence to and participation in any clique, group, circle, faction, or party which conspires or acts to subvert, undermine, weaken or overthrow any or all institutions of American democracy whereby the majority of the American people can maintain their right to determine their destinies in any degrees shall be punished by immediate expulsion."
Now what did that mean to you?
BUDENZ: In view of the dedication of the Party in the first sentence [of its constitution] to Marxism-Leninism and the definition that has been given to Marxism-Leninism this was purely Aesopian language for protective purposes to protect the Party in its activities before courts of law in America while it could continue the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism.
[The government seeks to place a copy of The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in evidence.]
ISSERMAN: We are putting a book on trial....
THE COURT: If the contents of this book and these other pamphlets and documents of one kind or another, that were handed around, and people were told to study them and to teach other people what to do, and how they were to go around and do the things that have been testified to here. I can scarcely believe that it is trying a book. It is trying those persons who used the book and other means to allegedly commit a crime, and that is part of the paraphernalia of the crime.
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