"Manifesto of the Left Wing National Conference: Issued on Authority of the Conference by the Left Wing National Council." [July 5, 1919] This lengthy document is the second of two "Left Wing Manifestos" -- not to be confused with the earlier and better known "Manifesto of the Left Wing Section of Greater New York." This second manifesto was issued on behalf of the June 1919 National Conference of the Left Wing, held in New York City, and it attempts to provide a theoretical analysis of the situation facing the Revolutionary Socialist movement in America in the midst of the rapidly changing events of the summer of 1919. It was this explicit document -- not the earlier manifesto -- that was published in the pages of The Revolutionary Age and which was cited as the basis of the prosecution of the editors and leaders of the Left Wing for purported violation of the so-called New York "Criminal Anarchy" law. The manifesto posits a dichotomy between "dominant Moderate Socialism" and "revolutionary Socialism." As for the former, "Moderate Socialism is compromising, vacillating, treacherous, because the social elements it depends upon -- the petite bourgeoisie and the aristocracy of labor -- are not a fundamental factor in society; they vacillate between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, their social instability produces political instability; and, moreover, they have been seduced by Imperialism and are now united with Imperialism." By way of contrast, "Revolutionary Socialism does not propose to 'capture' the bourgeois parliamentary state, but to conquer and destroy it. Revolutionary Socialism, accordingly, repudiates the policy of introducing Socialism by means of legislative measures on the basis of the bourgeois state.... As long as the bourgeois parliamentary state prevails, the capitalist class can baffle the will of the proletariat, since all the political power, the army and the police, industry and the press, are in the hands of the capitalists, whose economic power gives them complete domination. The revolutionary proletariat must expropriate all these by the conquest of the power of the state, by annihilating the political power of the bourgeoisie, before it can begin the task of introducing Socialism."

 

"The Second UCP Convention." [convention began Dec. 24, 1920; article published early Jan. 1921] This unsigned report appeared in the official organ of the United Communist Party and outlines for the membership of that organization the basic accomplishments of the Extraordinary Second Convention of the UCP. The primary task of the gathering was to approve the Theses and Resolutions of the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern -- a non-controversial unanimous decision. Instead, it was the unity question and the seriatim consideration of a new constitution for the underground party that consumed much of the convention's time and energy. A series of messengers were dispatched from the Kingston site of the Second Convention to the CEC of the rival Communist Party of America in New York City attempting to bring about a unity convention on terms other than the proportional representation based on actually paid members (as specified by the instructions of the Comintern). Instead, the UCP convention offered to meet in unity convention with the CPA on the basis of organizational parity -- and a slate of 25 delegates for such a future gathering were elected by the 42 assembled delegates at the 2nd UCP Convention. A new Central Executive Committee was also elected, although not a single detail about this change of leading personnel was published in the erstwhile underground official organ, even in pseudonymous form.

 

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