"The 'Pittsburgh Proclamation': Adopted by the Founding Congress of the American Federation of the International Working People's Association, October 14, 1883." From October 12-14, 1883, 40 representatives of anarchist and Social Revolutionary groups came together in congress at Pittsburgh, PA and established themselves as the "American Federation of the International Working People's Association" -- styling themselves the American affiliate of the so-called "Black International" formed in London in 1881. This "Pittsburgh Proclamation," written by former German Social Democrat Johann Most, was adopted unanimously by the gathering as its organizational manifesto. Victor Berger, among other American Social Democrats, long claimed the American Bolshevik movement had its antecedents in Johann Most, and this document provides illumination of the thinking behind this assertion. Most's analysis of the political and economic situation facing the working class is unflinchingly Marxist -- the extraction of surplus-value by a propertied class; inevitable periodic crises of overproduction; a rapidly rising technological basis that steadily which reduced the demand for labor-power at the same time the population was expanding, resulting in an impoverished working class; a state of the propertied class which exerted its power to preserve a system of inequality; a superstructure of legality, ineffectual elections, pulpit, and press bolstering this system. Even the classic slogan "Workmen of all countries unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to win!" is made the main watchword by Most. Where then, the "anarchism" of Johann Most? "That they will not resign their privileges voluntarily we know; that they will not make concessions we likewise know. Since we must then rely upon the kindness of our masters for whatever redress we have, and knowing that from them no good may be expected, there remains but one recourse -- FORCE! Our forefathers have not only told us that against despots force is justifiable, because it is the only means, but they themselves have set the immemorial example," Most declares. A new society is called for, emerging from the "destruction of the existing ruling class, by all means." The proclamation declares that this new society is to be based upon "cooperative organization of production" and the "free exchange of equivalent products by and between the productive organizations without commerce and profit-mongery," with the "regulation of all public affairs by free contracts between the autonomous (independent) communes and associations, resting on a federalistic basis." Most calls for organization and unity and notes that "The work of peaceful education and revolutionary conspiracy well can and ought to run in parallel lines."

 

"A Trip to Girard," by "Wayfarer" [Jan. 1900] Brief first hand account of a trip by a pseudonymous Midwestern member of the Social Democratic Party to the "modern Mecca of Socialism," Girard, Kansas to visit the editor of the seminal socialist weekly newspaper, The Appeal to Reason, J.A. Wayland. "Wayfarer" manages to become closely acquainted with Wayland, and remarks on Wayland's dedication to the ideas of John Ruskin. He quotes Wayland as saying that "The Appeal editorials are simply Ruskin turned into the language of the common people." Wayland relates the story of how he became involved in the socialist movement to "Wayfarer," giving credit to a Pueblo, Colorado shoe store proprietor named "Bredfield" who plied him with conversation and radical literature -- in the first place Gronlund's The Cooperative Commonwealth. The story of Wayland's unsuccessful Ruskin colony is related, featuring a scam in which purported colonists were misrepresenting the situation in the colony and using funds earmarked for the Tennessee group's development were instead misdirected to quarter the colonists at a hotel at Tennessee City, at which they were "living in luxury on the money [Wayland] had forwarded." Wayland is proclaimed to be "decidedly my kind of good fellow" by the author of the piece.

 

"The Disintegration of the SLP and the Establishment of the Socialist Party of America," by Morris Hillquit [Oct. 1903] Section from Hillquit's History of Socialism in the United States (1903) in which he relates the story of the 1899 split in the Socialist Labor Party and the subsequent negotiations of the SLP's "Rochester faction" (so-called "Kangaroos") for unity with the Social Democratic Party of America -- two events in which Hillquit was himself a primary participant. Hillquit lists two primary factors behind the split of the SLP: the Socialist Trade and Labor Association, the umbrella association of dual unions "sprung as a surprise on the convention of 1896," which was billed as being a tool for "organization of the unorganized" but which instead "within a few years succeeded in placing the party in a position of antagonism to organized labor, as well as to all socialistic and semi-socialistic elements outside of the party organization;" secondly, an intolerant internal party regime in which the "strict disciplinarians" developed into "intolerant fanatics." " Every criticism of their policy was resented by them as an act of treachery, every dissension from their views was decried as an act of heresy, and the offenders were dealt with unmercifully. Insubordinate members were expelled by scores, and recalcitrant 'sections' were suspended with little ceremony," according to Hillquit. Hillquit also provides the best extant memoir of the negotiations between the insurgent SLP Right with which he was associated and the Social Democratic Party -- a process which resulted in a split of the SDP before eventual reunification at the founding convention of the Socialist Party of America in 1901.

 

"Patriotism," by Ralph Korngold [June 1911] This short essay, really a prose poem, by Socialist Party activist Ralph Korngold was published in the monthly magazine of the Young People's Socialist Federation and Socialist Sunday Schools. "The capitalist class, by making the workers propertyless, has made them fatherlandsless.
The workers have no country. This is no more your country than the shop you work in is your shop or the factory you work in is your factory. You are simply employed there, that is all.... I can imagine Morgan being patriotic, or Rockefeller, or Weyerhauser, but why a workingman, no matter to what country he belongs, should be patriotic is more than I can see.... Let Rockefeller and Morgan fight their own battles.
The workingmen of the world have but one common enemy -- the capitalist class of the world."

 

"The Young People's Socialist Federation," by Louis Weitz [Sept. 1911] This short article from the monthly Young Socialists' Magazine published by the New Yorker Volkszeitung was written by the director of the Young People's Socialist Federation. It provides a brief outline of that organization's history -- short on specific detail but nevertheless providing important clues about the origins of the youth section of the Socialist Party of America which eventually emerged as the Young People's Socialist League. The Young People's Socialist Federation is said to have begun in New York City in 1907, apparently started in an effort to "erase the false teachings of both our public and private institutions of learning," to develop interrelationships between young socialists and instilling training and discipline among them, and thus preparing these youth for active and productive participation in the socialist movement in the future. Beginning with "high hopes and enthusiasm," this project seems to have become something of a debacle, with falling membership, financial difficulties, and a failure of the Socialist Party to treat the matter with sufficient seriousness. Nevertheless, a small core of activists persevered, and a reorganization was made at a June 1911 gathering of Young Socialist clubs, which adopted a new constitution and elected a new set of organizational officers. Little work had taken place in the slow summer months of 1911, Weitz confessed, but he held high hopes for renewed activity in the coming fall months.

 

"How I Became a Socialist: An Episode of My Boyhood," by Alexander Jonas [published March 1912] Alexander Jonas was the most important figure in the history of the 19th Century German-American Socialist movement -- a fact somehow missed by historical encyclopedia editors of left (Buhle, Buhle & Georgakas) and right (Johnpoll & Klehr) alike. Co-founder and editor of one of the longest-lived and most influential periodicals of the American left (the New Yorker Volkszeitung), Jonas played an important role in educating German-speaking American Socialists for a generation. In addition to his literary contributions, Jonas also played an important role as a political actor in all three of the great factional wars of the 19th Century Socialist Labor Party -- the battle with the anarchist and Social Revolutionary groups of 1883-86, the recall of W.L. Rosenberg of 1889, and the pitched battle with the DeLeon-Kuhn faction for the soul of the party in 1899. Jonas and those around the Volkszeitung went 2-for-3 in these struggles, winding up outside the SLP and founding members of the Socialist Party of America in 1901. This article was translated from the German for the magazine of the Young People's Socialist Federation in memory of Jonas, who died on January 30, 1912. In it, Jonas grippingly describes the revolutionary events of March 1848 in his native Berlin, and how he, the young son of a petty bourgeois bookseller of democratic sympathies, came to understand the existence of an inevitable division between the bourgeoisie and the working class even within the revolutionary forces and how he thus gained consciousness of the Socialist mission. Includes a brief biography and photo.

 

"Rose Pastor Stokes Asks Privilege to Return to Socialist Party Ranks," by J. Louis Engdahl [Jan. 19, 1918] Rose Pastor Stokes, prominent lecturer, social worker, and future member of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of America, had a "Zinoviev moment" in 1917 when she, together with her millionaire husband J.G. Phelps Stokes, exited the Socialist Party to help found the social-patriotic National Party shortly after the American declaration of war on Germany. While Graham Stokes never looked back, Rose Pastor Stokes thought better of her decision and wrote a letter appealing for readmission to the SPA in January of 1918 -- much of the content quoted verbatim in the news report reprinted here. Stokes' departure and return from the SP ranks has been noted by her biographers (Arthur and Pearl Zipster, Fire and Grace). What has been less definitely understood is that Stokes did not make her return as a fire-breathing radical, chastened by a momentary lapse of political judgment, but rather that she made her return amidst heartfelt declarations for consensus and unity. "Unless all individual Socialists and Socialist factions sink their minor differences and work together for national and international, social, economic, and industrial democracy," she wrote, "the ideals embodied in President Wilson's declarations and the principles embodied in the Russian endeavor, which have heartened and fortified the democratic and social democratic forces throughout the world, may easily fail of establishment." She advocated unified action of Right and Left Socialist forces in Germany and Russia, in Italy, France, and England. "If I see and deplore the results of disruption and desire unity for my Comrades abroad, I must surely strive for unity here," she declared. Such sentiments were absolutely NOT those of the revolutionary Socialist Left but were rather an expression of Social Democratic Centrism. Stokes clearly moved a very great intellectual distance between her exit from the Socialist Party to help form the National Party in 1917 and her exit from the Socialist Party to help form the Communist Party of America in 1919 -- a fact which is underappreciated.

 

"The Campaign This Year," by Eugene V. Debs [Feb. 9, 1918] This article by Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs, prematurely declaring an end to state repression of the Socialist Party, is most interesting from the standpoint of irony: "The Socialist Party is emerging from another struggle crowned with victory. When the party declared its attitude toward war at the St. Louis convention [April 7-14, 1917] it was fiercely attacked from within as well as without as an anti-patriotic, seditious, traitorous organization.... Since that time and especially since President Wilson's recent message virtually recognizing the Bolsheviki and proposing to accept their peace terms there has been a marvelous change of sentiment toward socialists and the Socialist Party. The capitalist press is today actually covering Lenin and Trotsky with fulsome praise in the vain attempt to square itself for the foul abuse it has poured upon their heads.... No more speakers are being arrested and no more indictments are being found, and it is a sage prediction that acquittal will follow the trials of those under indictment if the trials ever taken place."

 

"Aping Our Elders," by Oliver Carlson [Aug. 1919] The newly-elected 3rd National Secretary of the Young People's Socialist League here criticizes the tendency for the YPSL to mindlessly divide itself into "Right," "Center," "Left," and "Communist" factions. He finds that the fissure in the Socialist Party, which was "at first about Tactics" had "passed entirely out of sight by this time, so that the issue now is one of 'for or against the NEC.'" The real cause of the fight was lost, and it was unreasonable to expect young people, who had not studied socialism for any significant length of time, to make a decision on the matter. "What we must do is that which our League is organized for: To Train Ourselves in the Principles of International Socialism. We cannot hope to grasp the situation in a moment. We cannot become able fighters for the Cause in a day or week or month. Ours is not a creed or dogma which one can embrace at a moment's notice. Ours is a complete philosophy which we must learn." Carlson (later an important youth leader in the American Communist movement) concludes that "We must meet the new issues with a clear vision. We must take a stand for revolutionary socialism. But above all we must become free so that as an organization we can develop ourselves mentally to a level where we will not be followers, where we will not be led this way or that way, but as young men and women who UNDERSTAND Socialism we will decide for ourselves what our attitude is going to be."

 

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