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The significance of Herbert Philbrick's testimony was that it demonstrated—on the neighborhood level—what ex-Communist Budenz had demonstrated to be the operating procedure of upper echelons in the Communist Party. Philbrick learned the need for increasing secrecy as U.S. policy toward U.S. Reds became tougher: the churning underground groups were narrowed down to five members apiece; last names were out; there was to be no communication (for security reasons) with any Communist party member outside the unit.
Early in the game, Philbrick had learned the Marxist-Leninist definition of revolution. Fanny Hartman, the divorced wife of the onetime boss of the Massachusetts party, taught it: "Violent revolution to be carried out by bands of armed workers against the existing state government." When would it come? Not "next week or next month or 2 o'clock Wednesday afternoon" but during a "heavy depression" or a war, "in which case the conflict would be converted into civil war . . . The working class must shatter, break up and blow up the whole state machinery . . ." Meanwhile, party "activists" were to get jobs in key industries: the General Electric plant in Lynn, Mass., where jet engines are produced, textile plants, the Boston & Maine Railroad. This, in the party's circumlocutory "Aesopian" language, was known as "colonizing."
The Smear. The witness made one more startling disclosure before the Government turned him over to a defense that was scrabbling to get at him: one of the teachers at the secret schools for revolutionists was none other than Dirk Struik, professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, longtime sponsor of many organizations listed as subversive.
In Cambridge, Struik denied that he was a Communist, though he defined himself as a "Marxist scholar." He furiously labeled Philbrick a "stool pigeon." In the courtroom, the defense shrilly trumpeted "admitted FBI spy," and in the Communist press, the whole clanking machinery of vituperation was cranked into motion: the Daily Worker could find something revolting even in the fact that Philbrick was wearing a red, white & blue tie.
But such irrelevancies were just the point. The defense had nothing on Philbrick, and he gave no ground under the nagging cross-examination of bull-roaring, white-haired Louis McCabe, Said one Government official of Philbrick: "They're going to have a tough time smearing him. He's as clean as a whistle." There was also another disturbing fact for the defendants to consider: Communists anywhere in the U.S. could no longer be sure who among them was a Communist.