"Socialist Agitation Among
Farmers in America," by Karl Kautsky (translated by Ernest
Untermann) [Sept. 1902] The
dean of European Marxism weighs in on American capitalism in
the pages of Die Neue Zeit. Kautsky indicates that the
torch has been passed in the capitalist world, that "while
in the middle of the last [19th] century it was necessary to
study England in order to understand the tendencies of modern
capitalism, our knowledge on this subject today must be derived
from America." Further, more information was available about
the "last phase" of capitalism through the study of
Germany than England. As for America, "Nowhere are all the
means of political power so shamelessly purchasable as in America:
administration, popular representation, courts, police and press;
nowhere are they so directly dependent on the great capitalists."
Kautsky sees America as dominated by an Anglo-Saxon national
character: "The Anglo-Saxon is of an eminently practical
nature. He prefers inductive reasoning in science to the deductive
method, and keeps as much as possible out of the way of generalizing
statements. In politics he only approaches problems that promise
immediate success, and he prefers to overcome arising difficulties
as he meets them instead of penetrating to the bottom of them."
In politics the Anglo-American workers consequently pursued a
"shortsighted policy which should take heed only of the
moment and regard it more practical to run after a bourgeois
swindler who promises real successes for tomorrow, instead of
standing by a party of their own class which is honest enough
to confess that it has nothing but struggles and sacrifices in
store for the next future, and which declares it to be foolish
to expect to reap immediately after sowing." Kautsky then
delves at length into the new book by International Socialist
Review editor Algie Simons, The American Farmer, which
he touts as a "welcome beginning" of a "new scientific
literature for the American socialist movement. While acknowledging
Simons' statistic that farmers make up 40% of American voters
compared to the mere 25% represented by industrial workers, Kautsky
remains clear to whom the Socialist Party should make its appeal:
"At present it is not a question of winning the political
power, but taking root in the popular mind. For this purpose
the industrial proletariat is certainly better fitted than the
farming population. To agitate among farmers when the mass of
the city workers are still strangers to Socialism is equivalent
to bringing rocky soil under cultivation at great expense and
leaving fertile soil untouched from lack of labor power."
Kautsky declares that "It is the class struggle of the present
which forms parties and keeps them together. But in this struggle
the farmers have different interests than the industrial laborers";
therefore it would be a mistake to make a concentrated appeal
to them. "A new attempt to unite large farmers and proletarians
in the same party would end the same way as the Greenback and
the Populist movement, or, what is more likely, will fail in
the outset," Kautsky emphatically states.
"Sugarman Replies to Työmies:
Says Finnish Machine is Menace to Party: Urges Election of Dirba
as State Secretary," by A.L. Sugarman [Aug. 16, 1918] This testy letter from the outgoing
State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Minnesota attacking
the Finnish Socialist daily Työmies for a laundry
list of alleged misdemeanors against the cause and touting the
candidacy of Charles Dirba for new State Secretary may seem like
an esoteric factional quibble -- and perhaps it is. Nevertheless,
this letter demonstrates several interesting things at variance
with Customary Belief. (1) Both publications embroiled in this
war of words were publications from the Socialist Party's "Left
Wing" -- Truth [Duluth] was later a publication closely
associated with the Communist Labor Party, Työmies
with the Workers Party of America. The Left Wing was heterogeneous,
with personal rivalries and antipathies (Sugarman hated Finnish
Secretary Henry Askeli) and policy disagreements (Työmies
was hostile to the IWW, Truth supportive of it). (2) There
was quite clearly debate back and forth across linguistic lines;
Sugarman takes umbrage to Finnish language journalism published
in Työmies; Työmies editor Eemeli Parras is offended
and rebukes Sugarman and Truth for charges levied in the English
language. Language groups were clearly not strict enclaves, but
rather related with one another at least to some limited extent.
(3) Dirba, the future Executive Secretary of the old Communist
Party of America and leader of the Central Caucus faction's Communist
Party of America, is depicted as someone very well qualified
for the specific tasks of party secretaryship: "Dirba is
so far superior to [competitor Anna] Maley that there can be
little comparison. By trade a bookkeeper and stenographer, he
is easily able to handle the work of the office. His wide propaganda
experience as Secretary of the Hennepin County organization makes
him far the best fitted for the position.... Dirba is not an
IWW, but he believes that socialism means socialism and nothing
else. Both in matters of policy and efficiency, Dirba will make
a secretary that will help the movement grow, whereas if Miss
Maley is elected, it can be expected that our organization will
lose its identity in a sea of Non-Partisanism."
"Työmies Reply
to Sugarman," by Eemeli Parras [Aug. 23, 1918] Työmies Editor Eemeli Parras takes umbrage to State Secretary
A.L.Sugarman's claim that "Työmies advocated
scabbery during the Mesaba strike." He challenges Sugarman
to immediately produce evidence backing up this claim. Parras'
tone is arrogant and dismissive, as he condescendingly calls
the outgoing State Secretary "an enthusiastic young comrade
in the party" who "may still be a socialist sometime
in the future, when he matures and is schooled." Similar
treatment is dealt to Truth Editor Jack Carney, who is
chastised for "boyishness that is befitting only to a youngster"
for having pecked at Työmies. " For some reason - we
do not know what - the Truth has written against the Työmies.
And the Työmies has not given any reason for it," Parras
writes. In a rejoinder, Editor Carney (a founding member of the
CLP National Executive Committee) hammers Työmies
for allowing syndicalist leader Leo Laukki to be mocked while
he was jailed by the Wilson administration. Carney declares:
"We may be boyish, but we have never been guilty of making
sport out of a comrade who is in prison: Työmies
someday will recognize the fact that the members of the IWW are
members of the working class, and they will also understand that
the basic principle of the Socialist Party is: AN INJURY TO ONE
IS THE CONCERN OF ALL. Until they recognize the foregoing, let
them forever hold their peace." Includes a short biographical
footnote on Eemeli Parras, a prolific journalist and writer who
was deported from the United States to Soviet Russia in 1931
and who perished during the last days of the Ezhovshchina,
in January 1939.
"Letter to Morris Hillquit
at Saranac Lake, NY from Santeri Nuorteva in New York City, October
23, 1918." This
document is useful as an illumination of the political perspective
of Santeri Nuorteva -- a translator of John Spargo and close
personal friend of Morris Hillquit on the one hand; an opponent
of the anti-Bolshevik stance of Raivaaja managing editor
Frans Josef Syrjälä on the other. Nuorteva calls Syrjälä
"an honest Socialist and I value his friendship much, but
he is one of those 'old fashioned' Socialists who feel themselves
quite uneasy when something happens which on the surface of it
is not in strict accordance with the rules laid by Kautsky. He
takes his theories too literally and it seems to him impossible
that the evolution [sic.?] in Russia may take a course somewhat
different from that in other countries." One implication
of this, of course, is that Nuorteva viewed the Russian revolution
as an "acceptable deviation" from Socialist theory,
rather than as a universalist prescription for socialist change
in the future. Nuorteva had clashed with Syrjälä repeatedly
on the matter, and he tells Hillquit that he suspects that Raivaaja
had denounced his, Nuorteva's, activities on behalf of the Russian
Revolution to alleviate the Post Office Department's threats
upon the publication's mailing privileges. Nuorteva states that
Syrjälä had a "general fear that my activities
in the interest of the Russian revolution would incite the authorities
into a prosecution of Finns in America and thus damage the many
institutions we have built up in the past 15 years" and
that this had further influenced Raivaaja's editorial
policy, which had increased the difficulty of Nuorteva's work.
Includes a biographical footnote on Santeri Nuorteva.
"Debs to the Socialist Party,"
by William M. Fiegenbaum [Oct. 7, 1920] Although he was prohibited from writing on party
affairs, Federal prisoner Eugene Debs was allowed to meet with
members of the Socialist Party's Campaign Committee at Atlanta
Federal Penitentiary to coordinate his campaign for President
of the United States in the November 1920 election. Campaign
Committee member William Fiegenbaum recorded Debs' words in the
form of direct quotations for publication in the official organ
of the SPA. Debs remained upbeat about his situation and advocated
waiting out the Wilson administration rather than pleading on
bended knee for clemency for Socialist political prisoners --
defense of " the right of anyone, under all circumstances,
to exercise the right of free speech" was held to be worth
fighting for. Debs advocated a strong attempt be made to win
the support of new female voters, citing the long-running Socialist
Party support of woman suffrage, even in the days "when
it was unpopular, when it meant outrageous persecution."
With regard to the rebuff of the Socialist Party's ongoing effort
to affiliate with the Third International at Moscow, Debs is
scornful. "If you were to commit the party in America to
the International program laid down by Lenin, you would kill
the party. The angry wrangling over the Moscow program is disrupting
parties everywhere. What we need before everything else is a
party to affiliate somewhere. We must not enter a policy that
means disruption. The Moscow program would commit us to a policy
of armed insurrection. The Moscow comrades have arrogated to
themselves the right to dictate the very terms, the tactics,
the conditions of our work here. It is outrageous, autocratic,
ridiculous." Fiegenbaum quotes Debs as adding that "Moscow
wants us to change our name to 'Communist Party.' They require
adherence to a Communist program. I am not a Communist; I am
a Socialist. My party is not a Communist party; it is a Socialist
party. We cannot go in."
"The Workers' Council:
An Organ for the Third International," by Benjamin Glassberg
[April 1, 1921] Unsigned
lead editorial announcing the formation of a new publication
aiming to "become the expression of revolutionary Socialism"
and to carry agitation for the Third International "into
working class circles that have never been reached before."
The Workers' Council was clearly intended as a publication
rather than as a political organization, and was closely linked
to the Left Wing still inside the Socialist Party. Secretary
of the Editorial Board was Benjamin Glassberg, and Secretary
of the publishing association which produced the journal was
Walter M. Cook -- a person depicted as a sort of Party Regular
alter-ego of Julius Gerber and Adolph Germer in the pages of
Theodore Draper's history of the early Communist American Communist
movement. Mounting frustration with the Socialist Party is clear,
the organization being characterized as "vacillating between
the Second and the Third International, standing upon a platform
of ineffectual reforms and parliamentarism of the kind that have,
since the war, been discarded by every European socialist party
outside of the Second International" and thus "not
today the instrument of revolutionary working class education
and action."
"Report of the National Executive
Committee to the National Convention of the Socialist Party,
Detroit, MI -- June 25, 1921," by Otto Branstetter This is the organizational report
of the Socialist Party delivered to the June 1921 Detroit Convention
by Executive Secretary Otto Branstetter, published in the official
organ of the party. It contains a plethora of information about
the SPA's various activities over the previous 12 months -- the
1920 Presidential campaign, the Amnesty Campaign, the party press,
and the ongoing debate about international affiliation. Of particular
note are comprehensive membership statistics, showing an average
membership of 26,766 (46.5% language federation) in calendar
1920, and 17,464 (23.9% language federation) in the first 5 months
of calendar 1921 -- the primary cause of this drop in the non-English
contingent being the departure of the Finnish Federation on Dec.
31, 1920. Month by month figures are provided for each of the
party's 6 remaining language federations: Yiddish, Italian, Czech,
German, Slovenian, and Lithuanian. Details on pamphlets published
and press runs are given. Due to the party's extremely poor finances,
running at a projected monthly deficit of $668 per month, organizers
were being eliminated from the road and the funding agreement
with the Language Federations changed, with Branstetter stating
that "instead of helping to support the National Office,
the Federations are a liability and cost us from $30 to $100
each per month." Party headquarters, the title held by a
3 person trust including Regulars Robert Howe and Adolph Germer
as well as Communist leader Alfred Wagenknecht, were unable to
be transferred to a new holding company due to Wagenknecht's
refusal to sign off on the deal, Branstetter says, noting that
legal proceedings to remove Wagenknecht were forthcoming. The
headquarters building had gained between $10,000 and $15,000
in value, but a $15,000 payment loomed on March 3, 1923, and
as yet the $1,175 tax bill for the year remained to be paid.
"Platform of the Workers
Party: Congressional Election 1922." [circa Oct. 1922] In 1920 the American Communist
movement boycotted the elections, in 1921 there was a campaign
in New York City under the umbrella of "the Workers League."
It was not until the fall election of 1922 that the Communists
entered the electoral fray at the Congressional level, this time
under the auspices of their "Legal Political Party"
-- the Workers Party of America. This is the Congressional campaign
platform for that debut race, probably composed by C.E. Ruthenberg.
It includes 14 "slogans of the immediate struggles,"
including among them the right of unions to organize, strike,
and picket; the unrestricted right of free speech, press, and
assembly; elimination of anti-syndicalist laws; termination of
"industrial courts" and "government by injunction";
protection of Negro lives and civil rights; a "four-fold"
bonus to soldiers for lost wages; payment of union scale to the
unemployed; withdrawal of troops from Latin America; non-intervention
in the Near East; and the ubiquitous call for establishment of
"trade relations and recognition of Soviet Russia."
The Socialist Party is attacked as an institution which "misleads
the workers through its efforts to make them believe that the
road to freedom lies through petty reforms achieved through the
existing legislative bodies." The WPA, on the other hand,
"declares that the workers will free themselves from the
exploitation and oppression which is their lot under the existing
system of industries through the use of their mass power"
to thereby "end the existing dictatorship of the capitalists"
and establish "workers' rule through a workers' government."
Although "workers' dictatorship" is explicitly advocated,
the word "socialism" is never expressed as an objective
nor any form of nationalization advocated as part of the 14 proposed
"slogans of the immediate struggles" -- a perplexing
choice of which punch to pull in an effort to maintain the organization's
tenuous legality.
"Proposed Statement of Principles
of the Conference for Progressive Political Action." [Prepared
by the Workers Party of America for the 2nd Conference, Dec.
11-12, 1922] The
Workers Party of America made a concerted effort to gain admission
as an affiliated political organization to the 2nd Conference
for Progressive Political Action, held in Cleveland on Dec. 11-12,
1922. A four member delegation, including Bill Dunne, Caleb Harrison,
Ludwig Lore, and C.E. Ruthenberg was sent to the meeting, along
with Harry Gannes of the Young Workers League. The WPA and its
youth section were refused participation in the conference by
the Credentials Committee, however, the views of the Communist
movement on revolution held as anathema to the organization.
This is an indication of what the WPA sought to achieve through
the CPPA -- a proposed program for the organization. The most
notable difference between this program and the 1922 Congressional
Election Program used earlier that fall was a call for a very
extensive amount of nationalization, including "the immediate
nationalization of the railroads, the coal mines, the steel mills,
the oil industry, the merchant marine, and other large-scale
industries in which ownership has become highly centralized."
In addition, immediate nationalization was urged for "all
storage, transportation, and marketing utilities and the revision
of the banking laws so as to provide for the widest credit to
the farmers through government loans without interest."
These nationalizations were to be achieved "through application
of the Plumb Plan, modified to give the organized workers in
these industries a majority control of the industry and with
provisions for taxation of the capitalist owners in such a degree
as to quickly wipe out their title to these industries."
Also of note in this document are repeated uses of the phrase
"wage-workers and farmers" as the exploited group to
whom appeal is made. The document has harsh words for "American
Democracy,"noting the structural checks and balances of
the American constitutional system and asserting "to talk
of 'democracy' is to throw sand in the eyes of the workers. The
much talked of 'American Democracy' is a fraud. Such formal democracy
as is written into the Constitution and the laws of the country
is camouflage to hide the real character of the rule of the capitalists.
"Report of the Secretary
of the Russian Federation to the Secretary of the Party,"
by "P. Ovod" [December 1922] Brief report of unified CPA's Russian Federation
detailing the results of the "First Congress" of the
Federation, an underground event held late in December 1922.
The Congress was attended by 23 delegates, concentrated in the
New York and Boston Districts, and represented a claimed membership
of 1314. The biggest decision of lasting importance was to move
towards the establishment of a legal Communist daily paper in
the Russian language, to begin publication by Feb. 15, 1923.
To this end, the districts were assessed a special tax of $5
per member, payable by Feb. 1, 1923, with an additional special
assessment of 25 cents per member by month. To raise money to
cover this new cost, the branches of the Russian Federation were
advised to hold fundraising "entertainments." The congress
was also addressed by two members of the Trade Union Educational
League, who sought to increase participation of Russian-language
Communists in that organization. One additional figure bears
mentioning: one year after the formation of the Workers Party
of America, the Russian Section of that organization had a declared
dues paying membership of 1,000 -- that is, smaller than
the size of the underground CPA! Includes a district by district
breakdown of the membership of the CPA's Russian Federation.
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