Communist infiltration of Hollywood motion-picture industry : hearing before the Committee on Un-American activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-second Congress, first session (1951)

1444 COMMUNISM IN MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY Mr. Ashe. Well, I would like to say that I severed my connection voluntarily. I was not expelled. I was presumably acceptable as a Communist Party member right up to the last, in fact there was considerable ignorance as to what my status was. As late as 1943 or 1944 some of the rank and file comrades who had known me downtown took it for granted that I was still a party member. I very quickly disabused them of that. I would like to say that I got out because of a developing disillu- sionment over a period of years. The party has no least semblance of democracy, despite its protestations. It is a monolithic party from top to bottom; a single block of stone. The party is hard and unyielding and unconscionable. The party members know it. They subscribe to the attitude that the end justifies the means. From almost the outset I was in some posi- tion of leadership and responsibility and, unlike many, many people who have been only rank and file members or who have been isolated in limitative activity, they, unlike myself, have not had an oppor- tunity to get their eyes open and see what is going on in the leader- ship, and to see the naked brutality of the leadership. I suppose some of them never see this. Even during the period when I was most zealous in the party, I never lost my belief in the essential dignity of the individual, and this presented one of the difficulties that I was always confronted with in the party, whether it was a section organizer or as a member of the disciplinary committee, to see the sheer brutality, the lack of human understanding by one comrade to another. I have seen them almost like wolves tearing individuals down who, the day before, they had called friends. You surrender all indepen- dent thought, all independent action to those higher in the chain of command. Discipline is more important in the party than being right. I mean that literally. You can make mistakes; they will for- give you, but if you are right and your correct position is not recog- nized yet as a^correct position, then you are doing violence to the dis- cipline of the party. If, later, the position is corrected and you are proven to be correct, they still mistrust you because you have broken discipline. This is more important than being correct. I imagine a good many Communists can testify to this fact. Some of the Communists had a positive genuis for self-criticism to a point of indecency. They actually reveled in seeking out leaders and confessing to these leaders their errors and their sins of omission and commission. I, for a long time, thought that this would be a good subject for psychiatrists. The party is entirely humorless—and I think this is a significant thing—completely devoid of any remnant of a sense of humor. I remember one time going to a county conven- tion, and we met on a street corner, the delegates, and we were to be picked up. So we stood on the corner of Hollywood—no, Santa Mon- ica Boulevard and Vine Street. I don't know of any more conspicu- ous place we could have picked, and we waited and we waited and we waited for about 2 or ?> hours, and finally Ave were picked up. We got into a car and went to the convention. On the way to the convention I observed to some of the other comrades that I suppose that nobody knew where the convention was except Red Hines, which was literally true. Red Hines did know where it was. I was later