"Winning a World," by Eugene V. Debs [Nov. 1905]. Article from the November 1905 issue of Wilshire's Magazine, believed to be republished here for the first time. Debs waxes eloquent as to the lofty task of the Socialist movement, "to win the world -- the whole world -- from animalism, and consecrate it to humanity." This is to be achieved as a result of releasing the "imprisoned productive forces from the vandal horde that has seized them, that they may be operated, not spasmodically and in the interest of a favored class, as at present, but freely and in the common interest of all." For this the working class must be "roused" and Debs urges his readers to "Spread Wilshire's Magazine, the weekly Socialist papers, the pamphlets, tracts, and leaflets among the people" and thereby educate the working class. He calls for both economic and political action, "One Great, All-embracing Industrial Union and One Great, All-embracing Political Party, and both revolutionary to the core -- two hearts with but a single soul." Includes a photographic image of Debs from a circa 1904 postcard.

"Winneks Model Farm and Resort, Bridgman, Mich." [postcard postmarked Sept. 1910] **PDF GRAPHIC FILE. (525 k.) As it stands, there is not a shred of evidence to indicate that "Winneks Model Farm and Resort" of Bridgman, Michigan -- as shown in this newly discovered colorized postcard -- was the same facility as the "Wolfskeel Resort" of Bridgman, Michigan lore, site of Communist conventions in May 1920 and August 1922. Then again, Bridgman was a small town and this might explain how a summer resort was long-later remembered by some participants as a "farm." Given soil conditions of the wooded dunes and ravines tangential to Lake Michigan there is no chance whatsoever that the convention was held on a working farm -- but this postcard does provide food for thought and a new lead for ongoing research...

 

"Organizational Problems of the Workers Party," by A. Bimba [April 12, 1924]. This article by Lithuanian Federationist Antonas "Anthony" Bimba criticizes the WPA for failing to coordinate its educational programs with its organizational recruiting practices at mass meetings of the organization. "Through our political activities we have created large spheres of influence in various organizations of workers. Thousands of workers are our sympathizers. They are with us and are working for our program. Ideologically they are ready for membership in the Workers Party. Now the question arises: why are they not in the Party?" he asks. Bimba cites three examples to back up his contention that the party should make more effort to turn sympathizers into party members by moving speakers on this theme earlier into the program. Particularly galling for Bimba is the mishandling of the Feb. 6, 1924 Lenin Memorial meeting at Madison Square Garden: "We had the best speakers. Comrade Foster was to make an appeal for the Workers Party. He delivered a masterful speech. But he was left last on the program, when many of the people were already leaving the hall and bout half of the audience was standing between the chairs. The speech lost its entire effect and the good appeal did not bring the desired results." "If we want to get the workers into our Party we must change the character of the programs of our mass meetings. We must call upon them to join our ranks," Bimba declares.

 

"Workers in Hancock, Michigan Organize Forces for Labor Rule; Will Go to St. Paul on June 17," by T.J. O'Flaherty [April 25, 1924]. In April of 1924 Daily Worker staffer T.J. O'Flaherty went on a speaking tour sponsored by the Workers Party of America on behalf of the June 17 Farmer-Labor convention. This report from the little town of Hancock, Michigan, in the copper country of the state's upper peninsula, provides an interesting bit of local color. Hancock, the town in which the Finnish radical newspaper Työmies was first firmly established, would have seemed to have been a natural hotbed of WPA activity, given that fully 40% of the organization was Finnish in this period. However, O'Flaherty indicates that the 1910 Calumet strike "left a reign of terror in its wake that practically crushed every vestige of trade union organization and prevented any radical movement from lifting its head for several years." Though active and promising, the Hancock WPA branch consisted of just 8 members in a town and environs of 25,000 people. O'Flaherty notes that about half of his audience of 145 were of Irish extraction, their interest piqued by the denunciations of him by the local Catholic priest. "The curses of the priest had no effect on those sturdy trade unionists, and every copy of The Irish People offered for sale at the meeting was disposed of," O'Flaherty notes.

 

"Party Principles and Discipline: A Letter Authorized by the Central Executive Committee Directing the Reinstatement of an Expelled Comrade," by C.E. Ruthenberg [April 29, 1924]. Letter of Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg on behalf of the Central Executive Committee of the WPA to the English Branch of Local Portland [OR}, published for the edification of the party in the pages of The Daily Worker. This letter nominally deals with the case of Otto Newman, ordering his reinstatement to the English Branch after being expelled in March 1924 for violating party discipline by accentuating the necessity of force in the socialist revolution at a public meeting. Beyond this, the document serves as a very useful and explicit official published statement of the position of the American Communist movement on the role of force in the transition from capitalism to socialism. Ruthenberg writes: "We cannot as a Communist Party hide our views on this question from the working masses. We must, where the issue is raised, frankly present our viewpoint. We cannot stultify ourselves because of the pressure of the capitalist state power.... Our Party does not advocate the use of force by the workers today. The whole strength of our Party is being given to the campaign to build a mass political party, that is a Farmer-Labor Party, through which the workers and farmers will enter into the political struggle against the capitalist ruling parties.... Does this mean that we believe that the workers and farmers of this country will through such a Farmer-Labor Party elect their representatives to public office and then win control of the governmental power and proceed by legislative action of the parliamentary institutions of the capitalist government to the abolition of the Capitalist System? Such a viewpoint is an illusion.... No privileged class in past history has given up its privileged position upon the demand of the exploited class without resorting to force to maintain its privileged position..." Ruthenberg cites the recent experience of Russia, Hungary, and Bavaria as evidence that the final conflict "takes the form of a struggle between a capitalist parliamentary government and the Soviets which are the expression of the workers' government."

 

"Our Policy in the Farmer-Labor Party: A Letter to a Group of Finnish Comrades," by C.E. Ruthenberg [May 7, 1924]. An open letter from WPA Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg to a group of Minnesota Finnish party members who wrote a letter to the CEC questioning the decision to run explicitly Communist candidates to contest races in the Minnesota FLP primaries. The Minnesota group clearly saw this as a violation of the spirit of the United Front and a strategy that was leading to the marginalization of the WPA by alienating non-Communist members of the FLP. To this argument Ruthenberg responds that "our instructions were, in effect, that while we remain part of the FLP, while we loyally support the FLP in its struggle against the capitalist parties, within the FLP we carry on a struggle to win the workers and farmers for our program of a proletarian revolution, the Soviets, and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." While doing this is certain to fan the flames of antipathy with a segment of the FLP, Ruthenberg declares that "in place of becoming frightened because we find ourselves in conflict with certain progressives, we should welcome this conflict as the best indication and proof that we are following a Communist policy." Evidence of the shaky relationship between the WPA and the FLP prior to the debacle of July 1924.

 

"A May Day in Prison," by Joseph M. Coldwell [May 8, 1924]. Brief autobiographical snippet of May Day behind bars in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary by Coldwell, a Socialist Party activist who became a founding member of the Communist Labor Party in 1919. Coldwell began serving his sentence later that year, imprisoned by the Woodrow Wilson regime for making the "seditious" public declaration that "war is organized murder." Coldwell writes in a heartfelt manner about a simple May Day celebration held by the handful of political prisoners at Atlanta, a group which included Russian Jewish emigre anarchists, members of the IWW, and Eugene V. Debs. The group gathered by the tuberculosis quarantine area, one of their number drew an artistic "banner" in the sand, and the group sang revolutionary songs, acompanied by a violin. A nice little word picture about May Day behind bars. Includes a biographical footnote on Coldwell and a rare 1922 Workers Party of America leaflet bearing his photograph.

 

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