Disputes within the local CP leadership escalated during the longshore and maritime strikes. Hynes was gone, but Harrison George remained to defend ideological orthodoxy against Darcy’s more flexible approach. George, under various pseudonyms, wrote long letters to Browder complaining about Darcy. On May 26, seventeen days after the strike began, George sent a four-page, single-spaced, typed letter criticizing Darcy’s conduct:

Now, if half what I hear is true, the strike—from a Party viewpoint—is in such condition that although I’m busy as hell I simply must say something to you, since I cannot say anything to swell-head [Darcy]. . . . 1. The Party face has been hidden, much to the injury of the Party and equally to the injury of the strike. 2.-A policy of “Tailism” is being carried out, and Economism; with almost no politicalization of the strike. If the role of the State is even mentioned, I have not heard of it.

“Hiding the face of the party” meant concealing the role of the party and keeping secret the party affiliations of those in the union. “Tailism” meant that the party was following the workers rather than leading them. “Economism,” related to tailism, referred to focusing on economic issues such as wages and hours. George concluded by urging the national office to order the district committee “to bring the Party into the picture in its rightful place, and to politicalize the strike.”53 “Politicalization”—i.e., politicization—meant turning the workers from concern with immediate economic issues toward recognizing the repressive role of the state, accepting the leadership of the party, and committing to the defense of the Soviet Union. Ten days later, George again wrote to Browder: “Exceptionalism of the rankest sort is expressed by both the comrades on the Strike Committee, (which we might understand) and by the comrades around the Dist Office. . . . An opportunist and syndicalist line is followed.”54 “Exceptionalism” referred to the argument, associated with Jay Lovestone and rejected by the party and the Comintern, that the United States was an exception to Marxist-Leninist theories of economic development.55