"Editorial in Opposition to Paul Carpenter for County Court Judge," by Victor L. Berger [March 18, 1905] This editorial by newly-elected member of the Socialist Party's National Executive Committee Victor L. Berger ignited a firestorm in the party, culminating in his removal by the National Committee and subsequent reinstatement by party referendum. At issue was Berger's endorsement of former Milwaukee mayor Emil Wallber against sitting judge Paul Carpenter in a non-partisan race for County Judge -- an election for which the Social Democratic Party of Wisconsin (state affiliate of the SPA) did not field candidates. Berger stated that Carpenter had spoken against Socialism and the Socialist Party at a meetings of Catholic societies and had used his position to assign dependent children to Catholic charities rather than to the public institution established for that purpose. Berger's endorsement of a non-Socialist political candidate was considered a brazen violation of the party constitution's prohibition of "fusion" with other political organizations, and great hay was made of the transgression by Berger's Left Wing opponents, who immediately moved to have him removed from the NEC.

 

"Motion to the National Committee, SPA [on Apparent Fusionism in Milwaukee]," by William Trautmann [March 23, 1905] Text of the motion of Left Wing SPA National Committee member William Trautmann of Ohio, which "calls upon the State Executive Board of Wisconsin to proceed at once with an investigation" as to whether there was collusion between Local Milwaukee SPA and any capitalist political party surrounding the endorsement by Victor Berger of former Milwaukee mayor Emil Wallber in the race for the judicial seat held by Paul Carpenter. Includes text of Berger's editorials and Trautmann's explanation of the thinking behind the action. Trautman states: "It is absolutely necessary for the Socialist Party as a whole to find out whether it is in line with Socialist tactics, discipline, and the integrity of the party to allow such bargain counter and counter-bargaining deals prevail in any part of the Union. If the party membership of Milwaukee has sanctioned such policy, then the Socialists all over the United States ought to know it; if they have not, then they will demand and give themselves such an explanation as will set them clear before the Socialists, and bring those who are responsible for this to give account for."

 

"Letter to the National Committee, SPA from Victor L. Berger, National Committeeman for Wisconsin." [published April 1, 1905] Reply by Victor Berger to the motion of William Trautmann calling for an investigation of the published endorsement of a non-Socialist judicial candidate which he made in March 1905. Berger calls Trautmann's insinuation that "there is a collusion, or secret or open understanding in the city of Milwaukee between the Social Democratic Party organization or a member or members thereof and representatives of capitalist parties" a "miserable and cowardly slander." Berger explains the thinking behind the decision of Milwaukee Socialist organization not to run candidates in the judicial campaign and the reasoning behind his call for negative action against sitting judge Paul Carpenter, a "Catholic zealot" and avowed enemy of Socialism. Berger states that he in no way violated the constitution of the Socialist Party, which he interprets as providing "the absolute and irrevocable duty of every Social Democrat" to vote a straight Socialist ticket whenever the party names one, but "whenever and wherever the Social Democratic Party has no ticket in the field, any member individually has a right to vote or not to vote just as he pleases." Berger claims personal motives behind Trautmann's motion against him: "Trautmann is simply bitter, because I refused to endorse his plan of splitting up the national trade union movement. After trying to split the economic movement of the working class, Trautmann would like also to split up the political movement of the working class." Berger declares that "we are a political party, not a politico-religious order. We are not Dominicans nor Franciscans. We want strict party discipline, and there is no man who stands for good discipline more than I do. But whenever discipline turns into oppressive fanaticism, then I oppose it."

 

"At the Parting of the Ways," by Hermon F. Titus [April 8, 1905] In this important article by Left Wing Socialist Hermon Titus, Titus argues that the simultaneous eruption of "Impossibilism" and "Opportunism" has brought the Socialist Party "sharply, but not unexpectedly, to the parting of the ways." On the one hand he cites the example of Thomas J. Hagerty, a radical industrial unionist who advocated the doctrine that "economic organization of the working class must precede and dominate political organization." Titus characterizes this as the same sort of "ruinous" thinking long espoused by Daniel DeLeon, a "propaganda of expletives, of misrepresentations, of meaningless mouthings of revolutionary phrases" -- leading ultimately to suspicion and distrust of the Socialist Party and political action in general and the subjugation of the political movement to the temporal needs of the trade union movement. At the other pole, Titus states, is the "opportunism" of Victor Berger. Berger and the doctrine of "state autonomy" which he espoused implied an inability of the national Socialist Party to enforce its principles -- "especially the principle of no compromise with capitalism." Titus observes that "state autonomy is not the cause of compromise, any more than industrial unionism is the cause of impossibilism. State autonomy is but the shield behind which compromise can hide. As the doctrine of states' rights was used to defend and uphold chattel slavery, so can state autonomy in our day be used to cover and bolster up compromise in the Socialist movement." It is for this reason that Berger must be reined in for his transgressions and his doctrine of state autonomy crushed, in Titus' view. "If the impossibilists stand for anything it is for a species of Socialism which would ultimately make political action impossible, magnify the importance of economic action, and end with the 'general strike,' the anarchist method of revolution. To follow opportunism, fortified by state autonomy, to its logical conclusion would be to make the state independent of the national organization, the local of the state, and the individual of the local, thus arriving also at individualism, the essence of anarchism, and establishing an affinity between the impossibilist and the opportunist of which they are perhaps both unaware," Titus declares.

 

"Moderation, Comrades!" by Morris Hillquit [May 6, 1905] New York's SPA National Committee representative Morris Hillquit weighs in on the Berger Affair with this letter to the Toledo Socialist, a Left Wing weekly edited by Hermon Titus, the business manager of which was former SPA Executive Secretary William Mailly. Hillquit states that while he disapproved "unqualifiedly" of Berger's decision to endorse a friendly capitalist judicial candidate over an unfriendly capitalist judicial candidate, at the same time "I am opposed to any punishment or disciplinary measures against the organization of the state of Wisconsin or that of the city of Milwaukee or against Victor L. Berger personally." Instead, the Socialist Party needed to "adopt clear and unambiguous rules against the recurrence of such conditions as have brought about the Milwaukee trouble." Hillquit states that "I believe that as soon as a fallacious or injurious tendency is noticed in any quarter of our movement, it should be energetically combatted, but combatted by argument and not by punishment -- by discussion, not by expulsion. Our comrades are voluntary fighters for a great cause, not soldiers in compulsory service. We can maintain the purity and integrity of our party by educating the membership to a proper understanding of the nature and spirit of our movement, but never by a system of rigid discipline." Hillquit states that while he greatly respects Titus and Mailly, at the same time they had come to take their self-appointed task of the preservation of Socialist Party purity "a trifle too strenuously." "Within the comparatively short career of our movement we have managed to develop two new types within our ranks, the 'Opportunist' and the 'Impossibilist,' and I hardly think it will be conducive to our welfare to enrich our anthropological museum by a new species, that of the "Alarmist," Hillquit declares.

 

"Shield No One: A Reply to Morris Hillquit," by William Mailly [May 6, 1905] Business manager of the Toledo Socialist, NEC member, and former Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party William Mailly responds to Morris HIllquit's defense of Victor Berger with this article. Mailly notes that Hillquit expresses agreement with his strong disapproval of Berger's actions in endorsing a non-Socialist judicial candidate in Milwaukee, but had thereupon retreated into a sort of "Tolstoian nonresistance to evil." Mailly declares that "I...believe that any party member who willfully supports a capitalist candidate for any office is not qualified to represent the Socialist Party in any capacity and in this immediate case the offense is all the greater because the offender has been honored by the national party with a place on its National Executive Committee and he therefore owed and still owes a duty to the national party which rises above any petty, local political interest." Berger was well aware of precedent in this matter, Mailly insists, yet he still unapologetically chose to proceed along a prohibited course of action, and he should be subject to disciplinary measures the same as any other less famous party member. Further, contrary to Hillquit's pooh-poohing of the assertion that Berger was planning to split from the Socialist Party and form a new organization if events turned against him, in fact Berger had declared this very thing at the most recent meeting of the National Executive Committee. "Impossibilism exists because Opportunism has been allowed to flourish. One is the complement of the other. Let the national party go on record in favor of placating (and that is all it will be) Opportunism and compromise, and Impossibilism will receive an impetus from which it will take the party years to recover," Mailly insists.

 

"Berger and His Opponents," by Eugene V. Debs [June 17, 1905] Eugene Debs chimes in on the Berger Affair in this letter to the editor of Hermon Titus' Left Wing Socialist weekly, The Socialist, the publication which broke the story of Berger's transgression and which stirred the pot most vigorously after the matter came to a boil. Debs declares that while Berger's actions were "wrong, flagrantly wrong, in my judgment," it was excessive to remove him from the National Executive Committee, a "position of trust in a party he helped to organize and for which he worked with all his strength of mind and body." Debs argues that for his error, Berger "should have been called to account, but there was, and is, nothing in the case to warrant the extreme measures that have been taken against him and that, if carried into effect, would make of an unfortunate tactical blunder an act of foulest treason." The excessiveness of the penalty will serve only to make Berger a martyr among many in the party, defeating the efficacy of his punishment. "A reasonable rebuke would have served a good purpose, while extreme harshness will react in favor of the accused and make his offense the means of praise instead of blame," Debs warns. "Let us preserve the party purity and vigilantly guard its uncompromising tactics, but let us not be too swift to condemn a mistake as a crime and an erring comrade as a vicious traitor," Debs declares. Debs seeks an end to the matter: "Let us have done with the Berger case. He has been more than punished and the incident should now be closed. There is no danger of repetition of the offense."

 

"The Industrial Workers: The Convention and Its Work," by Eugene V. Debs [July 29, 1905] This article on the recent founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) by prominent Socialist Gene Debs written for The Socialist, published by Hermon Titus in Toledo, Ohio. Debs characterizes the new union as a major step forward for the American working class, the existing structure unions hopelessly splintered, bureaucratic, and supportive of the capitalist regime. "To me it seems not only impossible but absurd to expect the American Federation of Labor, under its capitalistic Civic Federation supervision, to turn itself inside out, as certain of our comrades expect it will do in the course of a few years or centuries," Debs writes. As for the charge made against the IWW of "splitting" the trade union movement, Debs cites the myriad of competing unions already in the field and calls the charge "something so silly and stupid about it in the light of existing facts that it seems nothing less than idiotic." Under the umbrella of the American Federation of Labor "every handful of men that are ground through the hopper of industrial evolution must have a separate union, separate jurisdiction, and above all, and most important of all, a separate set of 'grand' or 'supreme' officers, of whom there is an army and to whose personal interest it is to keep the workers divided into innumerable petty factions," Debs states. "The working class are going to unite, economically and politically, for their emancipation," Debs declares, and he indicates that the formation of the IWW is a historic step forward down this path.

 

"The Coming Union," by Eugene V. Debs [Oct. 26, 1905] A defense of the fledgling Industrial Workers of the World against its "numerous, varied, and powerful" opponents by Socialist Party leader Gene Debs. "These opponents, strange as it may seem, embrace, besides the capitalist class and their 'labor lieutenants,'" Debs declares, noting that the IWW is the "only national labor union that recognizes the class struggle" and therefore the union worthy of the support of class-conscious workers and Socialists. "The American Federation of Labor, which is simply an attempt to harmonize pure and simple trade unions, that were built up on tools long since discarded and on principles long out of date, is the enemy of working class solidarity. It is in control of the capitalist class," Debs states. While some Socialists continued to follow the "boring-from-within" approach with regards to the AF of L, Debs believes that such a tactic is an unmitigated failure: "When the moon turns into green cheese will these Socialists succeed in converting the American Federation of Labor, honeycombed with capitalistic influences, into a revolutionary working class organization." Debs states that opposition to the IWW among Socialists based upon the fact that Daniel DeLeon and his acolytes were closely involved with the project was "puerile, to say the least," adding "DeLeon is sound on the question of trade unionism and to that extent, whether I like him or not personally, I am with him. My personal likes and dislikes are secondary to my allegiance to the working class." The choice should be simple for Socialists, in Debs' opinion: "The AF of L is for the wages system; the Industrial Workers of the World for its abolition. How can a Socialist hesitate in his choice an instant? The AF of L keeps the working class divided into trades which have ceased to exist; the Industrial Workers unites them into one compact militant body. Which of these truly expresses the present industrial situation and which actually stands for working class solidarity?"

 

"The Executive Committee's Statement: A Response to the Communique Issued by the EC of Local New York, Socialist Party," by Maximilian Cohen [May 8, 1919] Lengthy reply by Left Wing leader Max Cohen to the May 8 circular letter of the Executive Committee of Local New York which vilified the Left Wing Section and announced a party purge in the form of "reorganizations." Cohen states that the Executive Committee, headed by Julius Gerber, "is absolutely without any authority to reorganize any branches in New York, until the referendum issued by the State Committee has been passed." He indicates that the rush to suspend various Left Wing branches is little more than an effort to manipulate the result of this pending referendum. The assertion that the city Central Committee had ceded its authority to its Executive Committee and instructed that body to reorganize Local New York is called by Cohen "a deliberate lie," complete with falsified meeting minutes published in David Berenberg's organ, The Socialist. Cohen gives his first-hand account of the pivotal April 22 meeting of the Central Committee of Local New York, and the heated debate there over the reorganization of the 17th AD Branch -- the largest single branch of Local New York. The so-called "Right Wing's" position that adequate opportunity existed for alteration of party policies within the structure of the party organization is dismissed by Cohen as the illusory promises of a political machine intent on holding power: "They do not wish to revise the party's policies and tactics if they can help it; certainly they are not for the abolition of social reform planks; they are not for repudiating the Second International, they are not for affiliating with the Third International, called by the Communist Party of Russia (Bolsheviki). They are not for making revolutionary industrial unionism a part of its general propaganda." To the claim of the Regular faction that the Left Wing had formed "an organization within the organization," Cohen responds not with a denial but with an accusation that the Regulars had themselves formed "an organization outside of the organization," consisting of quasi-party institutions such as the New York Call and the Rand School of Social Science over which the rank and file had no control, these being controlled and carefully guarded by the SPA's ruling clique. Cohen calls for the recall of the Executive Committee of Local New York and Secretary Gerber and for a "no" vote on the pending party referendum to expel the Left Wing Section.

 

"A Statement," by Max S. Hayes [May 17, 1919] Published statement by long time Socialist stalwart Max Hayes explaining the thinking behind his decision to resign from the Socialist Party on May 7, 1919. Hayes lists three principle reasons for his decision: 1. A disagreement with the strongly anti-militarist St. Louis Resolution of 1917; 2. A fundamental disagreement with the Left Wing platform, a document which Hayes states was "foisted upon Local Cleveland largely by an element who were in the party organization less than 3 months and many of whom are not voters and who are admittedly anarchistic in their tactics"; and 3. A disagreement with the "foolish tactics" displayed at the May 1, 1919 parade in Cleveland, an event which culminated in a riot ending in 2 deaths and the ransacking of Socialist offices in the city by Right Wing mobs. "The SP officials seem to have deliberately invited trouble that might have been avoided by the use of ordinary tact," Hayes states, noting that civil liberties had been curtailed by the local regime in response to the troubles. "I am not an apostate and have not recanted my principles and ideals. The Socialist Party, and certainly not the Left Wingers, control no patent or copyright on socialism, which philosophy I shall continue to advocate most sincerely," Hayes declares. Includes a short biography of Max S. Hayes.

 

"Speech at the Congress of the Peoples of the East: Baku, Azerbaijan," by John Reed [Sept. 4, 1920] Stenographic report of the final public speech by John Reed, made to the Congress of Peoples of the East in Baku, made less than 6 weeks before his death of typhus in Moscow. This document stands as fairly conclusive evidence that Reed remained loyal to the revolutionary socialist cause to the end of his life. Reed cautions the Eastern delegates not to illusion themselves that the rulers of "free America" is any different than the hated imperialists of Britain, France, or Italy. He notes false American promises of independence to the Philippines, an exploitative system backed by American power in Cuba, military dictatorships set up by American armed intervention in Haiti and Santo Domingo, intervention and counterrevolution sponsored by America in Mexico, and the denial of political and civil rights to 10 million American blacks. American promises of aid and food are not to be trusted, Reed warns, noting that the head of the American aid effort to starving Armenia, Cleveland Dodge, was responsible for driving workers at his copper mines into the desert at bayonet point in a manner fitting of the Turks. American capitalists seek only the mineral wealth of Armenia, Reed says. "Promising food to starving peoples and at the same time organizing a blockade of the Soviet Republics -- that is the policy of the United States. The blockade of Soviet Russia has starved to death thousands of Russian women and children. This same method of blockade was applied in order to turn the Hungarian people against their Soviet Government. The same tactic is now being used in order to draw the people of White Hungary into war against Soviet Russia. This method is also being used in the small countries bordering on Russia -- Finland, Estonia, Latvia," Reed states. "There is only one road to freedom. Unite with the Russian workers and peasants who have overthrown their capitalists and whose Red Army has beaten the foreign imperialists! Follow the red star of the Communist International!" Reed declares.

 

"Letter to the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of America from C.E. Ruthenberg in Ossining, NY, March 14, 1922." Letter from imprisoned Communist leader C.E. Ruthenberg to the governing CEC of the Communist Party of America explicitly exonerating the actions of Jay Lovestone in his decision to testify (under compulsion) in the trial of Harry Winitsky in 1920. "At first it was thought that certain legal provisions would relieve them from any responsibility and make their appearance unnecessary, but while the matter was pending the state legislature changed the situation by amending the law covering it," Ruthenberg states. Citing a previous decision of the CEC on a similar matter, Ruthenberg declares that " I personally gave instructions to Lovestone and Ferguson to make an appearance and also telephoned Rose Stokes, giving her the same instructions." At a subsequent investigation of this matter by the CEC, Ruthenberg indicates that "I assumed all responsibility for Comrade Lovestone having appeared, citing as my authority the previous ruling of the Executive Committee.... Comrade Lovestone was exonerated from all responsibility for his appearance, leaving open only the question of what he said." Ruthenberg cites his associate I.E. Ferguson, a lawyer who was also present at the proceedings and who later studied the transcript of the trial, who declared to Ruthenberg that "there is nothing that Comrade Lovestone said that was not already a part of the proceedings and that nothing he said could have been of any material effect in influencing the outcome."

 

"Lovestone, Wolfe & Co. Stand Naked in the Marketplace: Unsigned Editorial in The Daily Worker, Nov. 30, 1929." A heated and rather nasty front page editorial from the pages of the CPUSA's daily. Bukharin's capitulation and admission of having made "dangerous errors" in the USSR "has left the latest recruits to the ranks of the enemies of the working class and of the Communist Party of the United States -- Lovestone, Wolfe & Co. -- stark naked with their renegade sores exposed in the marketplace where capitalism purchases its servants," the Editorial declares. The "counterrevolutionary hope" of a split in the CPSU around Bukharin is said to have "gone glimmering. That the actions of Comrade Bukharin, with the opportunist, pessimist platform upon which he then stood, could bring a split in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was never more than a desperate wish on the part of the enemies of Communism and the working class who found temporary refuge in the ranks of our world Party." The editorial quotes Lovestone's charges that the present leaders of the Comintern were "political ignoramuses" marked by "unprincipledness" and responds in kind with specific charges: "Lovestone speaking of 'unprincipledness!' This is surely a sight for gods and men! The young gentleman who began his career as a police probation officer, who, true to his training in this broad field of anti-working class activity, added fresh laurels by appearing as a state's witness against a comrade in 1920, who found his way into our Party by methods best known to himself but of which others are not entirely ignorant -- the petty bourgeois careerist who systematically corrupted the younger and weaker elements of our Party and who only 8 months ago called Salome-like for the head of Bukharin in the vain belief that he could thereby save his own." Lovestone and his political associates Bert Wolfe and Ben Gitlow are called "petty bourgeois gentlemen" and "counterrevolutionists." "Fortunately for the American working class our Party was strong enough to expose and drive these treacherous elements from its ranks," the editorial trumpets.

 

"Lovestone Ends His 'Isolation,'" by Earl Browder [Dec. 23. 1929] Article from the Communist Party's daily press attempting to denigrate expelled party leader Jay Lovestone as a participant in an international alliance of Right Wing elements. Browder makes much of a $100 donation received by Lovestone from "Mexican comrades" as "blood-money" from "a choice collection of scoundrels" and renegades who were ultimately "supported and financed by Wall Street." All this serves as precursor to the main event, Browder's dusting off of the 1920 Winitsky Trial affair, in which Lovestone testified under subpeona from the prosecution, only to be accused of party treason. Browder asserts that Lovestone "received immunity from prosecution by agreeing to testify; his testimony was referred to by the judge in charging the jury as the basis for a verdict of guilt against Winitsky. About that time there were several splits in the underground party, and in the confusion Lovestone escaped from having to answer to the Party for his conduct." Browder notes that the affair was, years later, brought before the International Control Committee of the Comintern, which "after reviewing the case, declared that Lovestone had been guilty of conduct impermissible in a Communist" -- but which closed the case without sanctions, in light of so much time having passed and Lovestone having been accepted into the top leadership. "Under normal circumstances the case would have been closed even now. But Lovestone has shown by his present renegacy, by his slanderous attacks upon the Party and Comintern, and by his open collaboration with the enemies of the revolutionary working class, that his testimony for the state in 1920 was not an accident," Browder states.

 

"Clique or Class? What's Happening in the ILD?" by Benjamin Gitlow [Jan. 1, 1930] This article by Ben Gitlow, a leading member of the "Communist Party-Majority Group" organization headed by Jay Lovestone, charges that a campaign was well underway in the International Labor Defense organization to change its nature from a non-partisan workers' defense organization to the partisan legal defense arm of the so-called "'loyalist' clique" -- i.e. the CPUSA. Gitlow quotes the 6th Congress of the Comintern's characterization of the ILD as "an independent organization standing outside of all parties which on the one hand defends all victims of the revolutionary struggle and on the other admits to membership without any distinctions of party." He contrasts this with the political practice employed at 1929 gatherings, in which "every trick and manipulation" was used "in order to exclude the 'renegades' from the district and national conferences." The conferences had their floors closed to speeches by "non-Party workers," Gitlow alleges, and "not a single non-Party worker" was elected to the group's 1930 national convention. Gitlow warns that this sectarianization of the ILD would soon be formalized. "At the New York conference Nessin and [Louis] Engdahl announced officially that the national convention would amend the constitution of the ILD by eliminating the declaration that the ILD is a non-partisan organization. Thus will the finishing touches be put..." he declares.

 

"The Facts Speak for Themselves," by Harry Winitsky [Feb. 15, 1930] The charges made by the CPUSA that recently expelled leader Jay Lovestone had acted improperly as a state's witness in the Harry Winitsky trial of 1920 are refuted in this article by Winitsky himself, published in the pages of The Revolutionary Age, official organ of the "CPUSA-Majority Group." Winitsky states that while at the time of the trial he had believed that Lovestone should have refused to testify under compulsion and instead should have chosen to go to jail for contempt of court, instead "Lovestone as a disciplined member of the Party accepted the instructions of Ruthenberg, then the Secretary of the Party, and testified." Winitsky takes aim at Earl Browder's editorial of Dec. 23, 1929, against Lovestone and declares "Browder in his article lies when he states that Lovestone agreed to testify against me when he was offered immunity from prosecution." Browder's further statement that Lovestone's testimony "was referred to by the judge in charging the jury as the basis for a verdict of guilty against Winitsky" is called by Winitsky "a deliberate lie, a contemptible trick used by Browder to cover the truth." In reality, Winitsky states that "I had no illusions as to my fate when I went to trial" and that Lovestone had merely regurgitated facts already in evidence in the proceeding. "I frankly told the Communist International in my statement of the case that I was convicted by the court even before my trial had started and that Lovestone's testimony had nothing to do with my conviction," Winitsky states. Winitsky proceeds to tell the sordid tale of the ongoing effort of the Foster-Cannon-Bittelman-Lore faction to dust off the 1920 trial for factional gain, as part of an effort to discredit the man believed to be the "brains" of the opposing Ruthenberg faction. Winitsky was induced against his better judgment to prefer charges against Lovestone to the Communist International -- an action for which he was ashamed and subsequently apologized to Lovestone. Winitsky's account of this effort to make hay of the trial offers a fascinating glimpse of the bitter and utterly unprincipled factional warfare of the middle-1920s.

 

"Beginnings of Revolutionary Political Action in the USA," by Vern Smith [Oct. 1933] A pamphlet-length historical survey of the development of the American radical movement from 19th Century utopianism to the formation of the Socialist Party of America, as published in the pages of the theoretical journal of the CPUSA. While tendentious treatments of controversial topics do creep into the work, as might be expected, the article remains useful as a brief summary of the main course of left wing political development throughout the last part of the 19th Century and first part of the 20th. Smith emphasizes the continuity between the American sections of the First International and the formation of the Socialist Labor Party, from which sprang the Socialist Party of America; from which in turn sprang the American Communist movement. Of particular interest is the rather heroic portrayal of the Chicago Anarchist movement of the 1880s -- depicted as fundamentally sound revolutionists who were pushed into the position of becoming "more and more extreme in the course of their reaction against the sickening legalism of the SLP." Also interesting is the accusation that the Socialist Labor Party took a position of national chauvinism during the Spanish-American War of 1898, ignoring the transparently obvious imperialist basis of the conflict and explicitly regurgitating the official slogan that this was a war to "Free the oppressed Cubans!"

 

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