As the Democratic Party slides into minority status, groups within the party have looked about to find what could be salvaged from the wreckage. With the southern wing standing just as pat as it has for 70 years, the job of reclamation has been left to that movement of many colors--the Democrat left. Within this heterogeneous mass has risen a vast confusion over aims and a debilitating internecine strife over fundamentals, with treatment of the Communists lying at the heart of the difficulty. Strained Russian-American relations have transformed Communism from a wartime ally into the greatest red herring in the American press. This swift change of opinion, coupled with Truman's domestic difficulties has-put organizations of the left wing on the defensive. If the Democratic Party is to recover, if it is to galvanize its forces under one program, it remains for these elements to find some common ground for working with, or eliminating of its Red members.

The first possibility is an open break with the Communist Party and expulsion of its members. Until Russian aims are brought into the open in moves amenable to the conservative American voting public, this pathway looms as the only expedient for left wing groups interested in their future. For no matter what the background of our difficulties with the Soviets, the mere presence of friction on the international scene will force voters on the large scale to shy from groups with Communist backing. This is the pure pragmatic approach. It skirts the ethics and polities involved in current affairs and comes up with the only clear truth in a foggy picture--that Communists are unpopular in this country. Thus, if the organization is young (the AVC), or anxious to win votes in a real national election (the fledgling Americans for Democratic Action), the program has been: face the Reds, isolate them, eliminate them.

Obsessed with the great difficulties in the first alternative, other American groups have preferred to admit Communists and control them in the normal course of democratic politicking. On one hand, this treatment avoids the monumental task of distinguishing party members from progressives who do their own thinking and who, all too often, are swept away by indiscriminate housecleaners. But what can guarantee Communist conduct in democratic activities? Only the greatest vigilance prevents a tightly knit minority, well-trained in political techniques, from feeding on the indifference of the moderates until it emerges as master of policy and direction. Many youth groups such as the American Youth for Democracy have maintained their programs but lost their backing because idealism in accepting Communists gave way to apathy in routine dealings with them. Disaffected members of these chameleon-like organizations claim that the price of idealism these days is hard-headed vigilance--the cost of political independence endless man-hours of organization patterned after, but in opposition to, the surging Party tide.

Therein lies the quandary of the Democratic left. Forced to dissipate its energies in rigid self-examination, it is fearful lest one of its most useful members prove treacherous beyond control. And while left-wingers dispute whether the horse in the market place is real or imaginary, the battle beyond the gates goes badly. Reuniting of the splintered Democratic left must await the day when the question of Communists is solved by Soviet-U. S. rapprochement, or the more dismal reality of a break.