MARCH
"Application of the Socialist
Party of America for Membership in the Communist International.
A letter from Otto Branstetter to Grigorii Zinoviev, March 12,
1920." Even after suspending
and expelling a majority of the members of the Socialist Party
for endorsing the program of a formal Left Wing faction within
the party, the rump of the organization approved via referendum
vote a minority plank on international affiliation calling for
the SP to immediately join the Communist International. This
is the letter which SP National Executive Secretary Otto Branstetter
composed and sent to Moscow in accordance with this decision
of the party membership. Branstetter's official letter, typed
up by future National Executive Secretary Bertha Hale White,
was pro forma and made no concrete case for inclusion of the
Socialist Party in the Comintern. It was dispatched to Russia
together with the rejected "Majority plank" and the
approved "Minority plank" on international affiliation.
"Draft of a Supplemental
Appeal to the Executive Committee of the Communist International
from the Socialist Party of America, circa March 12, 1920,"
by Otto Branstetter" While
the official application for inclusion in the Communist International
submitted on behalf of the Socialist Party of America by its
National Executive Secretary, Otto Branstetter, was tepid and
certain of immediate rejection, there was considered a strong
appeal affirming with vigor the SPA's credentials for membership.
This fascinating document is a draft of a supplemental appeal
to the ECCI composed by Branstetter. The Socialist Party's opposition
to the European war is characterized as militant, consistent,
and nearly unanimous. The SP's officials are characterized as
"no less loyal and devoted and steadfast in maintaining
the position of the Party," as exemplified by the draconian
legal action taken against them by the "black reaction"
of the capitalist state. "There was no split in the American
Socialist party on account of or during the war. The split in
this country occurred a year after the signing of the armistice"
and "was largely composed of comrades who had never been
affiliated with the Socialist Party until after the signing of
the armistice and of those who, though affiliated, were conspicuously
silent and inactive during the war." The courage and capability
of those Left Wing leaders is called into question by Branstetter,
who observes "the fact that the most prominent and influential
leaders in the recent split have fled to safety in foreign countries,
while their deluded and deserted followers are being thrown into
jails and penitentiaries by the thousands, is significant of
the caliber and character of those leaders." The leaders
of the Socialist Party are held up in contradistinction to the
successionists as the authentic representatives of American radicalism,
worthy of inclusion in the Communist International in their stead.
APRIL
"Letter on Unity to David
Karsner in New York City from Eugene V. Debs in Atlanta, April
30, 1920." In
this letter written from Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, Socialist
leader Gene Debs clarifies statements about Socialist unity that
he had made in person to New York Call journalist David
Karsner during a previous visit (published April 15, 1920). Debs
states that Karsner's published report of their meeting was correct
"in all essential particulars." Debs reiterates that
"there is no fundamental difference, in my opinion, between
the great majority of the rank and file of the three parties;
no difference that will not yield to sound appeal in the right
spirit." Debs notes that blunders had been made by members
of all three parties, errors which had been "aggravated
by the war hysteria," but by self-critical admission of
these mistakes "an understanding is possible that will embrace
a vast majority of all the factions that composed the party prior
to its separation." Debs adds that "I personally know
most of the members of all these factions, and I know them to
be equally loyal and true, and equally eager to serve the cause."
Debs states that due to the banning of the Communist Party of
America and the Communist Labor Party in various jurisdiction,
"we either have to enter the campaign as the Socialist Party
or not at all." Debs believes that common engagement of
all three parties in the campaign under the Socialist Party banner
would result in a unitary organization "so welded together,
so completely one in solidarity and sympathy and understanding
that there will be little inclination to part company and reestablish
a divided and discordant household." Debs declares that
"Differences there will always be, especially among Socialists,
and fortunately so, but wise men profit by their differences
and do not permit themselves to be throttled by them. For myself,
I have no stomach for factional quarreling and I refuse to be
consumed in it. If it has to be done others will have to do it.
I can fight capitalists but not comrades."
MAY
"An Open Letter to Eugene
V. Debs: Issued by the Central Executive Committee of the Communist
Party of America. [circa May 1919] The
May 1920 Convention of the Socialist Party of America nominated
Eugene V. Debs as its candidate for President for an unprecedented
fifth time. Although imprisoned in the Federal Penitentiary at
Atlanta, Debs accepted the nomination. The Communist Party of
America was aghast at Debs' decision and issued this "open
letter" to him as a leaflet. "We presume, Comrade Debs,
that you are ignorant of the facts and unacquainted with all
that transpired within the Socialist movement this last year,"
the open letter reads, detailing the opportunistic degeneration
of the party in 1919-20, particularly the ultra-patriotic defense
made in the context of the hearings over the suspension of the
five New York State Assemblymen. "Between the Communist
Party and the Socialist Party there can be no compromise. The
latter is the most dangerous enemy of the working class and as
such, we shall wage a bitter struggle against it. Their attempt
to use your name in order to fool the masses will avail them
of nothing. Their betrayal of Socialism has been too complete
and too cowardly. Not even your name can hide their counterrevolutionary
tendency. The class-conscious workers of America are through
with the stinking carcass that calls itself the Socialist Party
of America," the open letter rages.
"Debs and Socialist Unity."
(editorial from Communist Labor) [May 7, 1920] This editorial from the official
organ of the Communist Labor Party takes on the question of whether
the communists would be able to conduct united front action with
the Socialist Party around its Presidential candidate, the imprisoned
Eugene V. Debs. The question is answered with a resounding negative.
The experience of the German Social Democratic Party is cited,
in which a false unity was maintained for years between Right
and Left until suddenly on Aug. 4, 1914, "the Left was overwhelmed
by the Right and, for a moment at least, acquiesced in the betrayal
of the German working class by the Social Democratic Party."
Then when it gradually came to an understanding of the necessity
for a split, the German Left Wing was unable to successfully
achieve this break, due to the extraordinarily limits on the
ability to organize brought about by the war. The German Left
Wing was then "assassinated by these friends of capitalism
in the name of law and order." A direct correlation is drawn
between the German wartime experience and the situation in the
Socialist party, with Stedman, Hillquit, Waldman, and Berger
assuming the place of Scheidemann and Noske as the "rear
guard" of capitalism -- as opposed to the communists, who
were the "advance guard" of the working class, whose
purpose is "to replace the capitalist state by a proletarian
dictatorship, exercised through workers' councils. And the purpose
of this dictatorship is the creation of a free communist society,
thus abolishing the state." Either the communists must abandon
the working class or the socialists must abandon the bourgeoisie,
the editorialist opines. Thus unity "can only be accomplished
if the revolutionary workers gather around the banners of communism.
They must leave the Socialist Party and its leaders because those
leaders are misleading the working class. For a unity under the
banner of communism we are glad to join hands with Eugene V.
Debs. But the first provision is that Debs himself leave the
Scheidemanns and join the real forces of the proletarian revolution,
the communist movement of America."
"Socialism -- The Hope of
the World: Keynote Address to the 1920 Socialist Party Convention:
New York City -- May 8, 1920," by Morris Hillquit Morris Hillquit marks his return
to active political life with this keynote address to the 1920
convention of the Socialist Party of America. Hillquit's perspective
on the split of the Socialist movement is sanguine rather than
sanguinary, a byproduct of the world war and a difficulty through
which the SPA had steered a middle course between social-patriotism
on the one hand and revolutionary phrase mongering on the other:
"All over the world Socialism was split into contending
and antagonistic camps, ranging from those who had betrayed the
vital principles of the movement during the war and were cooperating
with its enemies after the war, to those who, in their impulse
of resentment and impatience, were ready to surrender the most
effective methods of the Socialist propaganda, the slow but certain
methods of political education and struggle. The question then
was whether the Socialists of America would remain true to the
fundamental principles and methods of the militant working class
Socialist Party, rejecting the suicidal compromises of the extreme
right as well as the sterile revolutionary phrases of the extreme
left. We did." In the current period, then external enemy
-- the forces of reaction -- represented the most grave threat
to the SPA. Hillquit declares that "within the last year
all the powers of darkness and reaction in the country have united
in a concerted attack upon the Socialist movement unparalleled
in ferociousness and lawlessness. The obvious object of the provocative
onslaught is to crush the spirit and paralyze the struggles of
the Socialist movement or to goad it into a policy of desperation
and lawlessness, thus furnishing its opponents the pretext for
wholesale violent reprisals and physical extermination."
Hillquit slams Woodrow Wilson for his hypocrisy and remains upbeat
about the SPA's prospects. "The only active and organized
force in American politics that combats reaction and oppression,
that stands for the large masses of the workers and for a social
order of justice and industrial equality is the Socialist Party,"
Hillquit states, adding the prediction that the party will "double
or treble its membership before the year is over and will poll
upward of 2 million votes for its Presidential candidates"
in the 1920 campaign.
"Socialists Discuss Labor
Party League: National Convention to Decide Whether Union of
Forces May Become Possibility," by J.C. Laue [May 11, 1920]
Report from the
official organ of the Labor Party of the United States on the
deliberations of the Socialist Party of America with respect
to cooperation with non-socialist political organizations. Laue
is optimistic, writing: "It is almost certain that the convention
will recommend the party to continue its sympathetic attitude
toward all organizations that have cut loose from the dominant
political parties and that the way will be paved at this 1920
convention for a coalition of all radical groups in political
life after the fashion of the British Labour Party in which each
radical group will maintain its integrity but will 'go along'
without internal war against a common enemy." The Left Wing
Chicago delegation was opposed to this policy, the Right Wing
Wisconsin delegation in favor, the New York delegation taking
a center position, Laue believes, adding: "Practically every
delegate west of the Mississippi River is in favor of the coalition
and the outcome will be determined by the quality of the leadership
in the convention."
"Dictatorship and the International,"
by Morris Hillquit. [May 1920] Speech
by the International Secretary of the Socialist Party of America
delivered at the May 8-14, 1920 New York Convention of the party.
Hillquit, supportive of the Russian Revolution and the legitimacy
of Lenin and Trotsky's government, calls the Third International
"a nucleus, but no more than that, of a new International."
Hillquit objects to any international organization which might
impose theoretical interpretations and tactical policies on member
parties, noting that "the rule of self-determination in
matters of policy and matters of struggle" had been a fundamental
principle of both the First and Second Internationals. In particular,
Hillquit considers the Third International's interpretation of
the phrase "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" to be
historically erroneous (citing the phrase's origin in Marx's
1875 "Critique of the Gotha Program") and tactically
disastrous, opening the the Socialist movement to abrogation
of democratic norms and victimization by its bourgeois opponents.
Hillquit seeks the SPA's participation in a future International
including both the Russian Communist Party as well as the Independent
Labour Party of Britain, the Socialist Party of France, and the
Independent Socialists of Germany.
"The Winds of Reaction: News
of the Socialist Party Convention." (Communist Labor
Party News) [events of May 8 to 14, 1920] This hostile analysis of the 1920
convention of the Socialist Party by an unnamed Communist Labor
Party member seems to have been written from press accounts rather
than on the basis of actual attendance, which limits its utility
as a primary document of the SP. Nevertheless, the piece does
offer an interesting view of CLP doctrine and the group's political
horizons. The SPA Left Wing of Louis Engdahl and Bill Kruse is
the recipient of surprisingly harsh criticism, called "Centrist"
here. The CLP journalist argues that "staying in" the
party, the position advocated by Kruse and Engdahl, "means
nothing more than lending financial and moral support to the
counterrevolutionist who have firmly decided to keep the SP label
no matter how many members it costs them." There can be
no organizational unity between the pro-Third International Left
Wing and the dominant Regular Party faction, called the "Hillquit
faction" here. Hillquit is called the "oracle"
of the Socialist Party and the group is ridiculed for an inability
to even half fill the 12,000 seat Madison Square Garden to launch
its 1920 Presidential campaign. The writer analyzes the published
words of SP leaders Hillquit, Victor Berger, and James Oneal
and concludes that "the stand then of the Socialist Party
is not to overthrow bourgeois democracy, which in reality is
capitalist class dictatorship, and to establish in its place
a workers' dictatorship, but...to cry for the good old times
of long ago, to try to reestablish normal times so that bourgeois
democracy might again have an opportunity to be honest and fair."
The Socialist Party is dismissed as being "reactionary to
the core."
"The Socialist Party Convention,"
by Ammon A. Hennacy. [events of May 8 to 14, 1920] An uncommon document, a critical first-hand account
of the 1920 Socialist Party Convention in New York from the perspective
of the Left Wing minority. About 140 delegates were in attendance
at this convention, split about 2-to-1 between a Center-Right
bloc of party regulars (Morris Hillquit, Jacob Panken, James
Oneal, Victor Berger, Meyer London, John Work, Lazarus Davidow,
etc.) against an organized Left Wing group including J. Louis
Engdahl, William Kruse, Benjamin Glassberg, and Walter Cook.
A blow-by-blow account of the convention is given, with an emphasis
on the inconsistencies of the majority group and the focused
efforts of the majority to railroad its platform and terminate
debate of unpleasant matters. Hennacy notes that debate critical
of the "patriotic" defense of the five Socialist Assemblymen
expelled from the New York legislature was terminated through
machine methods and the entire record of the debate expunged
from the minutes and erased from the published record of the
gathering in the party press.
"The Socialist Party Convention,"
by Jack Carney [events of May 8 to 14, 1920] Communist Labor Party NEC member
and editor of Duluth Truth Jack Carney grudgingly provides
a brief commentary to the paper's readers on the May 8-14, 1920
Convention of the Socialist Party of America. The convention
had cynically and opportunistically nominated Debs as its Presidential
nominee in 1920, Carney notes. "They named Debs because
they realized that the wonderful personality and sterling integrity
of Debs would be the means of giving them a new lease of life.
They lied to and betrayed Debs. They lied about the Third International,
when they told Debs it was an organization confined solely to
Russia. They betrayed him when they adopted a program that they
knew Debs would repudiate. Only those workers who have no backbone
or brains will join the Socialist Party or maintain their allegiance
to it. The worker who has a serious purpose in life will shun
the Socialist Party like he would the little animal whose name
has become synonymous with odoriferous infamy." The decision
of the convention to continue to attempt to affiliate with the
Comintern with conditions was nothing more than a hypocritical
ploy, Carney states. "Let us not waste any more time over
the Socialist Party convention, but get down to business. We
need to hear the sound of marching men, marching along the road
to industrial freedom, rather than the marching of politicians
to the political pie-counter," Carney declares.
"Thumbs Down" is Socialists'
Edict: Can't See Labor Party -- Caution Governs Deliberations
at 8th Convention." (Unsigned news article from The New
Majority) [May 22, 1920] Contrary
to previous expectations, the Socialist Party did not liberalize
its anti-fusionism rules at its 1920 national convention. "The
Labor Party came in for a panning, and cooperation in this country
with other political groups whose views are in accord with those
contained in Socialist Party platforms was specifically turned
down by the convention," the article indicates. The report
indicates that a telegram signed by 30 delegates had been dispatched
to James Maurer of Pennsylvania, urging him to accept nomination
as Vice Presidential candidate on the Socialist Party ticket
but that "Maurer declined, as he had decided to link his
fortunes with the Labor Party of the United States."
JUNE
"The Socialist Convention,"
by Harry W. Laidler [June 1920] Since no official stenographic report of the 1920
Socialist Party Convention in New York City was kept, due to
the party's grim financial state, this lengthy and detailed article
on the gathering prepared for the readers of the magazine of
the Intercollegiate Socialist Society is of particular value
to historians of 1920s radicalism. Laidler includes what appears
to be a very nearly complete stenographic report of the keynote
speech of party leader Morris Hillquit, making his first appearance
at a party conclave in nearly two years. Hillquit blisters the
hypocrisy, militarism, and anti-democratic behavior of President
Woodrow Wilson and his regime, noting the purported pacifist
had drawn the nation into "the world's most frightful war,"
had established a large standing army and navy, had imposed conscription,
had wielded autocratic powers against his opponents, truncating
freedoms of speech, thought, and conscience, filling the nation's
jails with political prisoners and creating a climate that cast
such dubious fellows as Palmer, Burleson, Lusk, and Ole Hanson
to the political fore. "The only active and organized force
in American politics that combats reaction and oppression, that
stands for the large masses of the workers and for a social order
of justice and industrial equality is the Socialist Party,"
Hillquit declared. Three major matters were the subject of factional
fighting between Party Regulars and a Chicago-based Left Wing,
all of which were controlled by the regulars: a statement of
principles (103-33), a party platform (80-60), and the matter
of international affiliation (90-50). The convention nominated
imprisoned party orator Gene Debs as its Presidential standard-bearer
for the 5th time, with party founder Seymour Stedman his running
mate. The convention also voted to return the Young People's
Socialist League to party control and debated at length essentially
a United Front proposal aimed at reestablishing a unified socialist
movement.
"Police Spies and Agents
Provocateurs," by William M. Feigenbaum [June 17, 1920]
Leading Socialist
Party journalist William Feigenbaum offers commentary upon Santeri
Nuorteva's charge that Louis C. Fraina of the Communist Party
of America was actually an employee of the Department of Justice,
calling it "sensational, but hardly unexpected." Feigenbaum
notes that from the time of Fraina's joining the SP in 1913,
"I do not believe that he ever wrote an article or made
a speech that was designed to convert a non-Socialist to the
Socialist position. All his work was to convince the party members
that the party position was incorrect, or that it should have
taken some other stand," adding that "the dominant
note in all of Fraina's work was intolerance, bigotry, and heresy
hunting." Suspicion about Fraina's true allegiance had been
growing over the course of the last year, Feigenbaum states,
drawing a parallel between Fraina's behavior with spies in the
Russian revolutionary movement: "That is the kind of man
that the Russian revolutionary movement was accustomed to beware
of. When one protested his revolutionary devotion a little too
vehemently, the Russian comrades were in the habit of looking
up his antecedents." The Communist split of 1919 had the
effect of "sowing of a spirit of distrust among tens of
thousands of comrades" and "dispersing of hundreds
of party sub-divisions by the splitting of its members into quarreling
camps, and the consequent loss of hundreds of party headquarters
all over the country." He offers the specter of a vast conspiracy,
noting the recently completed 1920 SP Convention, despite "numerous
differences of opinion in principles and tactics" was able
to "honestly and decently" debate the issues within
the party organization, thereby illustrating "the deep cunning
of those who launched the movement of a year ago, and gives us
a hint of the motives of those who launched that movement."
JULY
"Correspondence Relating
to the Application of the South Slavic Federation for Readmission
to the Socialist Party of America from Frank Petrich, Secretary.'
[July 1, 1920] The
Slovenian-dominated South Slavic Federation withdrew from the
Socialist Party on Sept. 20, 1918, over the issue of the war
(the Slovenian and Serbian members of the federation being generally
pro-war in orientation, the SPA maintaining a strong anti-militarist
line throughout). The anti-war and revolutionary socialist Croatian
section stayed within the SPA before leaving for the Communist
movement in 1919, but the changed situation after the termination
of the war left the Slovenians on the outside looking in. This
document collects several pieces of correspondence to and from
Frank Petrich, the Slovenian Secretary of the South Slavic Federation,
dealing with the federation's ongoing effort to gain readmission
to the Socialist Party. The NEC of the Socialist Party was in
no forgiving mood, it seems, as the first formal proposal for
readmission was defeated on June 1, 1920 by a vote of 6-1. Petrich
continued his campaign for readmission, however, writing an extensive
letter to NEC member William Henry of Indiana on June 26 attempting
to explain the situation within the South Slavic Federation.
Petrich unapologetically skirts the issue of the federation's
pro-war stance. "We were against the war then, as we are
against it today. But the war came in spite of our opposition.
...We could not believe that passivity in such a crisis is a
virtue of Socialism; we thought such tactics erroneous because
it does not allow to exploit the situation in the best interests
of international Socialism. There were many problems the war
had to settle -- problems in which the working class had interests.
Of course, our thought was wrong because we were in minority
-- and as a rule the minorities are always 'wrong," Petrich
coyly asserts. Petrich indicates that a section of the Slovenian
and Serbian socialists were coquetting with "Laborism"
[the Farmer-Labor Party], a trend which would "become impossible"
if the South Slavic Federation were readmitted. Petrich states
he would be in attendance at the forthcoming July 10, 1920, physical
meeting of the NEC, at which the matter of the South Slavic Federation's
readmission would be reconsidered.
"Kate O'Hare Visits Debs
in Atlanta," by Frank O'Hare [event of July 2, 1920] An account of the July 2, 1920,
prison visit by recently-released Socialist orator Kate O'Hare
to imprisoned Socialist orator Gene Debs, as published in the
Socialist Party's general propaganda weekly, The New Day.
The tone of the article is sappy and sentimental, playing up
Gene's watering eyes over the Wilson regime's oppression of youthful
anarchist Mollie Steimer and Kate's heartfelt gift of an autographed
family portrait. Debs is quoted as offering this analysis of
the factional situation in the American radical movement: "This
is no time for division. The rank and file will speak as they
have never spoken before. Although some of my most dear friends,
who are in the different factions and parties, who I know to
be absolutely sincere, will someday realize that they are mistaken
in their tactics, and they will discover that the Socialist Party
is best adapted for emancipating the American working class."
"The Farmer-Labor Party,"
by Upton Sinclair [July 25, 1920] Brief summary of the 2nd Convention of the Labor
Party of the United States (which changed its name to the Farmer-Labor
Party of the United States) by California Socialist author Upton
Sinclair. Sinclair writes that "Three or four days ago it
looked as if there were going to be a combination of all the
various liberal and labor parties, with Senator LaFollette as
candidate, and so I prepared a brief article, setting forth the
high opinion I had of Senator LaFollette, and how sorry I was
not to be able to support him for President. The next morning
I opened my paper and read that the various parties had swallowed
5/6ths of the Committee of Forty-Eight and the remaining 1/6th
of the committee had held a "rump" convention and had
adopted resolutions setting forth how disappointed it was. The
Farmer-Labor Party has nominated a man of whom I have never heard
before [Parley Parker Christensen], but he comes from the West
and is 6'4" high and weighs 287 pounds, and every pound
was found useful in handling a stormy convention." Sinclair
characterizes the Committee of Forty-Eight as having originated
with a "group of liberals who are tinged with Single Tax
thought," an ideology which Sinclair states was impractical
in the era of trustified industry. Sinclair characterizes such
parts of the Farmer-Labor platform as he has seen as "quite
wonderful reading" and indicates an ideological proximity
between the Farmer-Labor and Socialist Parties. "Apparently
it is too late to get the two groups together for this election,
so we who are going to support Debs can do no more than resolve
to do it as tactfully and persuasively as we can. If we must
oppose the candidate of the Farmer-Labor Party, let us at least
do it without bitterness and narrowness, without suspecting the
motives of those who have not traveled quite so far along the
path as we have," Sinclair volunteers.
AUGUST
"Debs Speaks from Atlanta,"
by Irwin St. John Tucker [Aug. 28, 1920] A de facto campaign speech from behind prison
bars by Gene Debs, running his 5th campaign for President of
the United States. Tucker provides extensive quotations from
Debs, who concentrates on the coal situation in America as the
"supreme and vital issue" in the coming campaign. The
preoccupation of the Democrat Cox and the Republican Harding
is with the false issue of American endorsement of the League
of Nations, Debs observes, while proclaiming that institution
to be dead: "Our entry into it could not revive it, could
only still further putrefy the corpse. And men who are fighting
on an issue such as that are degrading themselves." On the
other hand, the critical issue of the nation's coal supply --
which imperiled thousands -- was being pointedly ignored by Governor
Cox and Senator Harding. In contrast, Debs' outlines his plan:
"The Socialist proposition is this: we are proposing to
take possession of the coal fields, to pay the miners at work
the full value of all the coal they dig, so that they may build
decent homes, educate their children, and live in comfort; and
then charge to the public exactly what it costs to dig and distribute
the coal." Debs critically asserts that "We have some
comrades in our Party who have been too timid and who have patterned
after the capitalist politicians whom I utterly detest. These
comrades have no convictions about anything and are willing to
say or omit almost anything for the purpose of corralling votes."
This he considers an error, as those voters who are won by soft-selling
Socialist principles were sure to depart the cause when the reaction
counterattacked. "We have some comrades in our Party who
have been too timid and who have patterned after the capitalist
politicians whom I utterly detest. These comrades have no convictions
about anything and are willing to say or omit almost anything
for the purpose of corralling votes. I never could find it in
me to make a speech and withhold anything for fear that I might
shoo away a voter. If a man is shooable, I do not want him. I
want those who are responsive to my message and who will stick
when the crisis comes," Debs declares.
SEPTEMBER
"America Turns to Socialism,"
by Morris Hillquit [Sept. 4, 1920] An upbeat assessment of American Socialist prospects
in the 1920 campaign by the SPA's leading figure outside of prison
walls. Hillquit notes a trebling of the socialist vote throughout
Europe and sees the likelihood of a similar circumstance developing
in the USA: "The people here as elsewhere are disillusioned
with the war and its results. They feel that the colossal destruction
of life and property has been in vain; that the victory of our
arms brought to the world neither security nor social justice.
They know that true wages have been badly cut, that prime necessaries
of decent existence have been put beyond their reach through
monstrous price increases, and that their standards of life are
being steadily depressed, while profiteering capitalists have
made and are still making fabulous new fortunes. They see industries
dislocated, commerce disrupted, and the precarious world peace
menaced anew by the incapable and rapacious governments of the
ruling classes -- and they turn to Socialism for relief."
Hillquit notes that the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in
Russia had "opened new vistas to the oppressed of all nations,"
while the ham-handed intervention against the fledgling Soviet
Republic had "served to intensify class feelings."
Despite the economy's comparative strength in America, Hillquit
asserts that "our government has managed to create an immense
volume of political resentment through an absurd reactionary
policy of repression," alienating the workers of the primary
industries of coal and the railroads by one-sidedly enforcing
the employers' line on wages and hours. Hillquit does not see
the new Farmer-Labor Party as a significant threat to the SPA,
believing it to an "indigestible combination" of labor,
farmer, and middle class programs and as such "doomed to
failure." "The conservative trade unionists and farmers
will vote for the old parties. The radicals among them will vote
for Debs," Hillquit declares.
"Manifesto to Socialist Youth:
Adopted by the Reorganizational Conference of the New York Young
People's Socialist League, September 5 & 6, 1920." The New York state organization
of the Socialist Party's youth section reorganized itself at
a conference held in New York city on Sept. 5-6, 1920, which
issued this "Manifesto to Socialist Youth." It briefly
recounts the history of the YPSL during the 1919-1920 period:
"A few of the younger comrades, influenced by the older
ones, who were opposed to the Socialist Party, tried to bring
the party differences into the YPSL. Instantaneously, the YPSL
was turned into a battleground, where the whole "Left Wing"
controversy took up the time of the organization. Instead of
fighting capitalism, the comrades fought themselves." As
a result and "Independent YPSL" was launched, according
to this manifesto. This group was "independent in name only,"
however, it being "a guise under which a group of Communist
leaders could put through their aims," according to manifesto.
The 1920 conventions of the Socialist Party of America and the
Socialist Party of New York called for a YPSL under the direction
of the National Executive Committee of the SPA, which this reorganized
New York YPSL pledged to be, adding its pledge to work for the
Debs-Stedman ticket in the fall Presidential campaign.
"The Moscow International,"
by Morris Hillquit [Sept. 23, 1920] One of the infrequent high profile public pronouncements
of Socialist Party leader Morris Hillquit from the pages of the
New York Call. After silently enduring in the name of
Left Wing conciliation a barrage of personal attacks dating back
more than a year, Hillquit returns fire at the "bombastic
'manifestos' of the chairman of the Moscow Executive Committee,
G. Zinoviev, which have become so chronic and aggressive that
they can no longer be allowed to go unnoticed and unchallenged."
Hillquit notes that "on several other occasions the stern
chairman of the Moscow International has nailed me to the cross
as an agent of the bourgeoisie" along with Iulii Martov,
Victor Chernov, Friedrich Adler, and Ramsay MacDonald. Hillquit
states that the "sole specification of offense" against
these Social Democratic leaders is that they cannot and do not
"lead the struggle for the soviet power of the proletariat."
Hillquit argues that Zinoviev's "arbitrary and faulty"
analysis is a double absurdity, in that it presumes the universality
of the soviet model for transformation in the first place, and
presumes the immediacy of revolutionary overturn in America and
Western Europe in the second place. "American capitalism
is not in a condition of collapse, nor are the American workers
in a state of revolution. The war and the resultant economic
upheavals have weakened the foundations of the capitalist system
in the United States, but they have not destroyed them. The capitalist
rule is still powerfully entrenched in the whole industrial and
political system of the country," Hillquit declares. "The
trouble with the Moscow International is that it is not international,
but intensely and narrowly national. It is a purely Russian institution,
seeking to impose its rule upon the Socialist movement of the
world. Its policy is one of spiritual imperialism. It does not
strive to unify all revolutionary working class forces in the
general struggle for the abolition of capitalism, leaving them
free to choose the methods most suitable in each case, but insists
upon working class salvation strictly according to the Koran
of the Bolshevik prophets," Hillquit powerfully asserts.
"The Wall Street Explosion,"
by Eugene V. Debs [Sept. 25, 1920] In this short news article, written from his prison
cell at Atlanta, Socialist Party Presidential nominee Gene Debs
likens the anti-radical hysteria surrounding the Wall Street
bombing to the frenzy against radicalism at the time of the assassination
of William McKinley in 1901. Debs intimates that the state will
delegate a victim to take the fall for the crime: "The Wall
Street explosion must be proved the result of a plot and fastened
upon some red conspirator. Mr. Palmer, the red expert, and his
army of trained spies should have no difficulty in apprehending
the culprit and convicting him of his crime. In the meantime,
there will be a harvest of fat pickings for a fresh American
Legion of sleuths, sneaks, spotters, and spies, as choice a lot
as ever infested the land of the Tsar." The old parties,
headed by Cox and Harding, loved nothing more than such a diversion
of the attention of the working class from the real crime, exploitation:
"With them it is anything to keep the people's eyes on the
jugglers whirling balls while the coal trust, the beef trust,
et al., are going through their pockets." "As long
as the industrial machinery that feeds and clothes and shelters
the people is the private property of the 2 percent minority
of exploiting capitalists, the people will be poor, life will
be wretched struggle for existence, the divine in human nature
will never be realized, and this world will still be nearer to
the jungles than to any real civilization," Debs declares,
noting that only the Socialist Party offered any prospect of
changing this bitter reality.
OCTOBER
"Rebuilding the Socialist
Party," by James Oneal [Oct. 1923] This article by Socialist Party leader James Oneal
attempts to spin the SPA's precipitous decline in membership
as a normal aspect of a labor movement in retreat across the
country. "One striking fact regarding working class organizations
since the end of the World War is that all of them, conservative
and radical, have suffered a heavy loss in membership,"
writes Oneal, noting the American Federation of Labor had shed
over 1 million members, falling from 4 million to under 3 million
in the years 1919-1923. Oneal ignores the magnitude of the SPA's
catastrophic decline, with the party losing approximately 90%
of its members during the same interval -- an avalanche triggered
in large part by NEC member Oneal's own motions and votes to
suspend 7 foreign language federations and various state party
organizations in 1919. "The Socialist Party also lost members.
Government and 'patriotic' persecution destroyed many branches.
Communism destroyed many more. Now we have reached the period
of party building," Oneal blandly states and optimistically
concludes. Oneal sees hope in the experience of the British fraternal
party of the SPA, the Independent Labour Party, which had emerged
from its own demoralization and funk to provide 32 elected Members
of Parliament, including Ramsay MacDonald as Labour Party speaker
in Commons. "What the ILP has done the Socialist Party can
do," Oneal declares.
"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."
"Rand School Begins 15th
Year as Workers' Educational Center," by Marion Lucas Bird
[Oct. 10, 1920] A
brief historical summary of the Socialist Party's popular educational
institute, the object of 2 years' worth of harsh repression by
the Right Wing New York state legislature and the militaristic
Wilson regime in Washington. Bird notes that the Rand School
had been preceded by the American Socialist Society, a socialist
lyceum bureau established in 1901. The American Socialist Society
had envisioned a formal school from the outset, a dream turned
into reality in 1906 through an endowment by Carrie Rand. From
modest beginnings, 250 students during its first year, the Rand
School had grown to the point where over 5,000 people attended
its courses and formal lectures in the 1918-19 academic year.
An account is given of the concerted attacks by Right Wing mobs
and state and federal authorities, dating back to Nov. 25, 1918.
After 4 failed attempts at gutting the Rand School, the Lusk
Committee had been created, which by means of "clearly illegal"
search warrants in which state officials were assisted by former
members of the ultra-nationalist American Protective League had
seized books and records of the organization. The Rand School
had thus far deflected the attack and was preparing for a new
academic year. An impressive list of instructors and lecturers
for the 1920-21 academic year is included.
"Radicalism in America,"
by Morris Hillquit. [October 15, 1920] This
article by Socialist Party NEC member Morris Hillquit in the
party's official organ reviews the two new political organizations
to emerge in post-war America -- the Labor Party (which transformed
itself to the Farmer-Labor Party) and the Communist Party. Hillquit
states that the Labor Party began from a principled position,
seeking fundamental change of capitalist society, but was quick
to sacrifice principle for expedience on the campaign trail,
destroying its working-class nature through a merger with the
"nebulous aggregation of middle-class liberals known as
the 'Committee of 48.'" To this amalgam was added the "purely
imaginary forces of the farming community," resulting in
an eclectic mish-mash slated for quick political extinction.
As for the Communist Party, Hillquit stated that while it was
"desirable" to have "extreme" groups within
the Socialist Party as a counterbalance to "any existing
tendencies to opportunism," in the current case the Left
Wing's position was not a "legitimate reaction" since
the SPA had taken "the most advanced international socialist
position" during and after the war. Instead, it was a "quixotic"
attempt to duplicate the Bolshevik Revolution in the United States
-- and effort which had shattered by "endless internecine
strife and successive splits" as soon as the negative program
of opposition to the SPA leadership was replaced by the positive
task of organization building. As a result, neither of the new
political groups had made "any essential contribution"
to American radicalism. "The Socialist Party still holds
the leadership in radical politics in the United States,"
Hillquit notes.
NOVEMBER
"Why Are We Not Stronger?"
by Eugene V. Debs. [Nov. 1920] During
his 5th and final campaign for the Presidency in 1920, the government's
information blackout on the imprisoned Eugene V. Debs seems to
have been abated and he was in periodic contact with some of
his comrades in the Socialist Party. Debs even wrote a few columns
on current affairs for the party press, as was the case with
this article for the November issue of the SPA's official organ,
The Socialist World. Debs asks the question of why there
is no strong socialist movement in America after 42 years of
concerted effort and points to factionalism as the culprit: "Socialists,
communists, anarchists, syndicalists, and IWWs spend more time
and energy fighting each other than they do fighting capitalism.
Each faction assumes that it is entirely right and that all others
are entirely wrong, a very human way of seeing things, but far
better calculated to prevent than to promote the effective organization
of the workers." To avoid a "disastrous if not fatal"
blow to the socialist movement from factional bitterness, Debs
strongly counsels his readers to show a "more decent, tolerant,
and truly revolutionary spirit" towards those with whom
they differ. Debs also states in this article that having now
seen Zinoviev's 21 Conditions for admission to the Communist
International, unconditional membership in that body is now impossible:
"No American party of the workers can subscribe to those
conditions and live," Debs writes.
"Hillquit Excommunicates
the Soviet," by Max Eastman [Nov. 1920] Lengthy reply to Morris Hillquit's
Sept. 23rd article, "The Moscow International," from
the pages of The Liberator by editor Max Eastman. Eastman
adroitly sidesteps HIllquit's main arguments: (1) that Soviets
were not a universal model for socialist transformation but rather
were an institution specific to the Russian revolution; (2) that
there was no imminent revolutionary upsurge in the offing in
America or Western Europe, the proximity of which alone might
justify Comintern head Grigorii Zinoviev's impassioned attack
of Hillquit and other Social Democrats as "anti-socialist"
for their failure to pretend to lead the workers to the barricades;
(3) that the Comintern was in essence a nationalistic Russian
construct, an institution which had practiced "spiritual
imperialism" by "seeking to impose its rule upon the
Socialist movement of the world." Instead, Eastman allows
only that the Comintern had used intemperate language against
its Social Democratic opponents (regrettably but understandably
in Eastman's view) and proceeds to argue at considerable length
over the question of whether Lenin and the Bolsheviks pushed
the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" from the standpoint
of principle (Eastman's view) or crass political expedience (Hillquit's
view).
"The Socialist Party and
Moscow: Statement Issued by the NEC in Reply to An Inquiry by
the Executive Committee of the Finnish Socialist Federation.
[Nov. 1920] A Minority Resolution
initiated on the floor of the 1919 Chicago Emergency Convention
and ratified by the membership of the Socialist Party via a referendum
vote called for the party to affiliate in an international organization
along with the Russian Bolsheviki and the German Sparticans.
An application was duly sent to Moscow by National Executive
Secretary Otto Branstetter on March 4, 1920. By the time of the
SPA's 1920 Convention, no answer had been given from Moscow.
Following the close of the 1920 Convention, membership of the
SPA again reaffirmed their desire for affiliation with Moscow
via referendum, placing more restrictions upon this allegiance.
Shortly thereafter, the content of the "21 Conditions"
for affiliation to the Communist International became known,
throwing a wrench into the works. This report of the National
Executive Committee of the SPA is intended to explain this political
situation and to answer a request made by the Finnish Socialist
Federation to "state clearly the attitude of the Party on
the question of affiliation with the Communist International."
"Greetings on the Third Anniversary
of the Russian Revolution: Read at the Celebration Meeting of
Local Cook Co., SPA, Chicago," by Eugene V. Debs [Nov. 7,
1920] This short
message of revolutionary greetings on the occasion of the 3rd
anniversary of the Russian Revolution was released by Socialist
Party leader Gene Debs from behind prison bars at the Atlanta
Federal Penitentiary. Debs declares: "The proletarian world
and lovers of liberty everywhere are thrilled with joy at the
news of the great victory of the Russian people. The triumph
of the workers' cause in Russia is a historic milestone in the
progress of the world, and its influence for good has circled
the earth, and shall direct the course of the future. The emancipation
of Russia and the establishment of the Workers' Republic is an
inspiration to the workers of the world. This people's government
is a bright star in the political heavens, and shall light the
way of the world. It is the great hope of the human race, and
its example will lead to the emancipation of the workers of the
world."
"Another One Caught: Joseph
Krieg of St. Louis a Spy." [Nov. 15, 1920] Documentation of a spy and agent provocateur expelled
on Sept. 17, 1920, from Machinists' Union no. 41 for spying on
behalf of the Industrial Service Corporation. Krieg had joined
Local St. Louis, Socialist Party on May 26, 1917 and was said
to have been a consistent and vocal supporter of the Left Wing
Section during the faction fight of 1919, leaving the SPA at
the time of the August 1919 split. This short article was published
in the official organ of the Socialist Party of America as part
of its ongoing effort to discredit the communist movement, rather
than as an indictment of the authorities who wormed the undercover
provocateur into the ranks of the radical movement.
JANUARY
"Hillquit Repeats His Error,"
by Max Eastman [Jan. 1921] In
the fall of 1920, Morris Hillquit responded to Max Eastman's
article entitled "Hillquit Excommunicates the Soviet,"
which drew this additional lengthy round of polemical prose from
The Liberator's editor. Eastman accuses Hillquit of failing
to accurately know or to accurately state the position of the
Left Wing. "The essential point of the Communist position,
in contrast to the position of the 'Centrists,' is its absolute
and realistic belief in the theory of the class struggle, and
the theory that all public institutions -- whether alleged to
be democratic or not -- will prove upon every critical occasion
to be weapons in the hands of the capitalist class," Hillquit
declares. All of Hillquit's errors are held by Eastman to flow
from this fundamental blunder. Eastman also upbraids Hillquit
for failure to read and contemplate the writings of the Socialist
Party's Left Wing, which predated by years the Russian Revolution.
The revolutionary Socialist perspective of the Communists is
in no way "new," as Hillquit claims, but rather a restatement
of long-existing Marxian tenants. "The actual experience
of a successful revolution has only confirmed the opinions of
the revolutionary or thoroughgoing Marxian factions in all the
Socialist parties of the world. It is transforming these factions
from weak and seemingly 'academic' minorities into powerful and
active majorities everywhere," Eastman asserts. While Hillquit
claims the Bolsheviks are both "dogmatic" and "opportunistic,"
Eastman characterizes them as highly principled and unwilling
to water down their revolutionary doctrine, but conscious that
they are engaged in hand-to-hand combat with capitalism and thus
willing to "grab every advantage, every probability of defeating
the enemy" that comes to mind. Eastman then returns to the
question of the Soviets v. the Constituent Assembly in Russia,
arguing convincingly the long time theoretical support of the
Bolsheviks for the institution of the Soviets and attempting
to force Hillquit to "lay aside all his pride of authority
and acknowledge that he was flatly and absolutely wrong"
in asserting that the Bolsheviks' support of the institution
of the Soviets was hastily and opportunistically put forward
only when they had won a majority in the All-Russian Congress
of Soviets.
MARCH
"Branstetter in Interview
With Eugene V. Debs: Wilson Gag on Socialist Prisoner."
[Milwaukee Leader] [March 19, 1921] Following the November 1920 election, Atlanta
prison authorities, apparently acting on directions of officials
in the Wilson administration, seem to have cracked down on imprisoned
Socialist leader Gene Debs, taking away his privilege to send
or receive mail or to receive visitors. This period of holding
Debs incommunicado was finally broken in March 1921 with a visit
by Executive Secretary of the SPA Otto Branstetter to Debs in
prison. Branstetter dispelled rumors that Debs had been physically
mistreated, noting that ""His guards have the deepest
respect and even affection for him, and the matter of personal
mistreatment is unthinkable." Branstetter states that Debs'
"rights have been restored, at the discretion of the warden,
and it seems as if the matter of his gagging is an ugly incident
of the past, the last foul smelling act of the discredited Wilson
regime." The article also makes not that Debs' fellow political
prisoner in Atlanta Joseph Coldwell of Rhode Island, had refused
an opportunity at parole on more than one occasion with the words,
""While Gene is in, I will not voluntarily get out."
"Daugherty Acts on Debs Monday:
Gene Returns to Cell from Capital Without Guards: Leaves Washington
After Secret Conference with Attorney General on Case - Trial
Judge Also Called: Prisoner Came and Left in Silence," by
Paul Hanna [March 25, 1921] This article distributed by the Federated Press
details a surprising and largely unknown episode from the life
of Eugene Debs -- that in March 1921 he was permitted to leave
the federal penitentiary in Atlanta without escort to travel
by train to meet with new Attorney General Daugherty. ""I
could not go to see Debs, so Debs came to see me," Daugherty
told reporters after Debs had safely returned to Atlanta. "I
wanted his own answer to certain questions and Debs gave them,"
Daugherty said. Debs was sworn to silence on the trip, a promise
which he did not violate."His sensational round trip from
Atlanta to Washington is regarded as being in part a move by
the administration to show the public that Eugene V. Debs is
a man of spotless personal honor, no less than of unflinching
devotion to his political principles. The administration has
learned how to share in the drama of Debs, and to set off the
villain's role played by a prominent Democrat," reporter
Paul Hanna remarks. The Attorney General also sought the counsel
of Judge Westenhaver of Ohio, who sentenced Debs to 10 years
imprisonment on Sept. 11, 1918. Resolution of the call for amnesty
in the case of Debs and all other political prisoners remaining
from the late European war was expected shortly.
APRIL
"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."
"Debs Tried Out One Big Union
of Railroads: Plan Weakened Craft Bodies, Says Foster,"
by William Z. Foster [April 6, 1921] This article distributed by the Federated Press
by the former syndicalist and future Communist leader emphasizes
Foster's anti-dual union perspective. While the spirit behind
the effort of Gene Debs to establish a militant industrial union
of railway workers in 1893 is embraced, Foster ultimately declares
that the ARU's "brilliant" early victory only lead
to "overconfidence" and a smashing of the union. "The
advent of the American Railway Union, as is always the case with
dual organizations, did great harm to the railroad craft unions.
All of them were weakened and some nearly destroyed. Thousands
of their best members quit them to take part in the ARU, only
to find themselves blacklisted out of the railroad service later
because of the lost strike," Foster declares. He adds that
"The case of Debs himself is a striking example of the damage
done. When he resigned his position as General Secretary-Treasurer
and editor of the official journal of the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Firemen in order to form the ARU, he was a great force for progress
in the old unions. Had Debs stayed with them he would have been
a big factor in their future development. But he was lost to
them, and that they have suffered much in consequence no unbiased
observer will deny." Foster does not recognize or emphasize
that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, from whence Debs
sprung, was a fraternal and benefit society rather than a union
per se -- providing cultural opportunities and accident insurance
rather than engaging in collective bargaining.
MAY
"William D. Haywood, Communist
Ambassador to Russia," by David Karsner. [May 1, 1921] In 1921, the Supreme Court of the United States
affirmed the conviction and 20 year sentence of IWW leader William
D. Haywood under the so-called Espionage Act. Rather than return
to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, Haywood instead
jumped bail and emigrated to Soviet Russia. This article, published
in the illustrated Sunday supplement of the Socialist Party-affiliated
New York Call assesses "Big Bill" Haywood's
career as a revolutionary labor leader and attempts to analyze
the thinking behind Haywood's decision to escape American justice
for foreign shores. The author of this article, David Karsner,
the editor of The Call's Sunday magazine and the first
biographer of Eugene Debs, was not unsympathetic to Haywood's
plight.
"Stedman's Red Raid,"
by Robert Minor. [May 1, 1921]
Full text of a
pamphlet produced by the UCP's Toiler Publishing Association
detailing a particularly disgusting footnote to the 1919 split
of the Socialist Party. Minor indicates that in the immediate
aftermath of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's anti-red raid
of January 2, 1920, Socialist Party attorneys Seymour Stedman
and Lazaras Davidow attempted to expropriate the assets of the
Socialist Party of Michigan under the flimsy pretext that as
"Communists" the expelled Michiganites of the party's
holding company were participants in a criminal organization
which "advocated the overthrow of the government by force
and violence." At bottom of this scheme was a Detroit headquarters
building owned by the Michigan party, represented by Minor as
having approximately $90,000 of equity. Stedman issued a Bill
of Complaint paralleling the criminal charges of the state against
the unfortunate Michigan party members already jailed for alleged
violation of the state's Criminal Syndicalism law. He then red-baited
the members of the legitimate holding company on the stand in
an attempt to have the property awarded to a hastily gathered
and miniscule Michigan "organization" retaining ties
to the national SPA. Minor states that when they were at last
confronted about their uncomradely behavior by concerned Socialist
Party members, Stedman and Davidow thereafter lied and mislead
their inquisitors as to their actions and had a further smoke
screen laid by SPA National Executive Secretary Otto Branstetter
with a fallacious news release of his own to the socialist press.
A sordid tale of greed, deceit, and foul play...
"1920 Financial Report of
Charles H. Kerr & Co., Book Publishers." [May 5, 1921]
A mimeographed financial report
sent out by America's largest socialist publisher, Charles H.
Kerr & Co. to its cooperative stockholders. Kerr announces
the forthcoming publication of The Shop Book, planned
to be an occasional publication, to replace the suppressed International
Socialist Review. It is noted that 1920 export trade was
"almost entirely cut off" by the depreciation of the
pound, which made it impossible for English booksellers to buy
Kerr publications economically. In addition, "the price
of paper, printing, and binding almost doubled," resulting
in a large increase in unsold inventories. One of three highlighted
new publications, William Z. Foster's The Railroaders' Next
Step, was actually published by the Trade Union Educational
League -- another sign of the waning influence of Kerr as the
leading radical publisher in America. Includes a full financial
report of Receipts v. Expenditures and Assets v. Liabilities.
"Wherefore Stand Ye Divided?"
by William Z. Foster [May 28, 1921] This article is a bit of a curiosity -- a piece
written by closeted Communist union leader William Z. Foster
and published in The New Day, propaganda weekly of the
Socialist Party of America (probably distributed by the Federated
Press as the conduit). Foster outlines the fundamental principles
of his union philosophy: "For a generation virtually the
whole radical movement has been wasting itself on utopian union
projects," Foster declares, dedicating themselves to futile
radical dual unions and abandoning the mass organizations to
the control of a conservative bureaucracy. In Foster's view the
dual unions violate what Foster calls "the first principle
of unionism, namely the solidarity of labor." Foster states
that the dual unions are essentially utopian attempts to bypass
the normal development of mass unions -- which in other countries
typically include a broad array of ideological tendencies, including
"Anarchists, Socialists, Communists, Catholics, Protestants,
atheists, craft unionists, industrial unionists, etc.,"
instead basing themselves on narrow ideological tenets "not
held by the great masses." The normal course of union development
includes 3 phases, Foster believes, including "(1) Isolation;
(2) Federation; and (3) Amalgamation." Foster bitterly notes:
"but our dual unionists ignore it all. They have their spick
and span, blueprinted, perfected organizations. And they ask
an ignorant working class, habituated to craft unionism, to throw
aside their old unions, built through 40 years of strife and
struggle, and to join themselves forthwith to the highly advanced
type they propose. They would abolish the law of labor union
development. That's all. Is it any wonder that the American radical
movement stagnates, resting as it does upon such a bizarre and
unworkable economic program?"
JUNE
"Moscow and the Socialist
Party of the United States," by Bertha Hale White. [June
11, 1921] White, one of the leading
female members of the Socialist Party, writes in a pre-convention
discussion bulletin that any discussion about SPA affiliation
with the Third International in Moscow is moot, since the question
has already been answered in no uncertain terms in the negative.
Interesting for its discussion of the lengths taken by National
Executive Secretary to make application to the Comintern for
membership in 1920 -- as he was instructed to do by party referendum.
White states the SPA must rebuild its shattered organization
into a powerful force before being able to affiliate with Moscow
on its own terms rather than be subject to conditions amounting
to "tyranny."
"A Cook County Socialist
Conference: Bureau of Investigation Report on the Special Meeting
of Local Cook County, SPA: Machinists' Hall, Chicago," by
August H. Loula [June 19, 1921] This document reproduces the report of Chicago
Bureau of Investigation August Loula concerning the bitterly
contested June 19, 1921, meeting of Local Cook County, Socialist
Party -- a conclave which pitted SPA Executive Secretary Otto
Branstetter and his supporters against the last enclave of a
quasi-Communist Left Wing, headed by Louis Engdahl and Hyman
Schneid. The meeting rejected a proposal recommending the Socialist
Party's affiliation with the Third International on the basis
of the Comintern's "21 points" by a vote of 50-74;
this result prompted a walk out by 21 Bohemian delegates, who
favored affiliation. A second resolution, declaring for reservation
without reservations, was thereafter defeated by a vote of 36
to 44. A proposal favoring affiliation with the 2-1/2 International
was severely trounced, the resolution garnering only 5 votes
from the assembled delegates. Instead, a resolution was passed
59 to 24, stating that the Socialist Party should not affiliate
with any international organization, but should instead spend
its efforts building "a powerful, revolutionary, Socialist
organization in this country." A further proposal by Executive
Secretary Branstetter, calling for the expulsion of those who
continued to advocate affiliation with the 3rd International,
died when the convention voted to adjourn rather than to take
action. Instead a similar proposal was made by Branstetter a
week later at the SPA's annual convention, held in Detroit.
"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.
"Proceedings of the SP National
Convention at Detroit: Nationalistic Spirit Rules. Delegates
Repudiate Affiliation with 3rd International. Left Wing Hopelessly
Weak. 'Milwaukee Socialism' in Complete Control," by Thurber
Lewis [events of June 25-29, 1921] An extensive first-hand account of the 1921 Socialist
Party convention in Detroit, at which the SPA stepped away definitively
from any possible affiliation with the Third International. Since
no stenogram exists for this gathering , Lewis' account has the
effect of filling in blank spots in our information. One scene
related by Lewis is particularly dramatic: on the last day of
the gathering, some 100 nationalists from the "Disabled
Veterans of the World War" marched into the high school
auditorium where the convention was being held. There were only
39 regular and 11 fraternal delegates to the convention -- they
were thus outnumbered by 2:1. Their spokesman, a man named Horr
from Seattle, attempted intimidation, as Lewis recounts: "He
said that the news had reached them that there was evidence of
disloyalty at the convention. He 'hoped to God the reports were
untrue.' But if it were true that someone said the red flag of
Internationalism was the only flag (Engdahl), if there were those
here who advocated force, he went on in a passion, let them come
outside. Of course, no one arose to comply. He then warned the
convention that 'force would be met with force.'" Lewis
expresses grudging admiration for the brave response by the Socialists'
chairman of the day, Cameron King of California, who told the
veterans: "As Americans we demand the right of free speech,
free press, and free assemblage. You have suffered, it is true,
but we, too have suffered," he went on. "If we had
had our way, you would not have had to suffer." Lewis comments
that "The Vets were of course whipped, and they showed it
as they meekly filed out," although he cattily remarks that
the Right Wing veterans had been "applauded by the delegation,
coming in and going out."
"Berger's Convention,"
by John Keracher [events of June 25-29, 1921] This is an interesting perspective
of the 1921 Detroit Convention of the Socialist Party of America,
written by the leader of the Proletarian Party of America (based
in Detroit) and published in that organization's official organ.
Keracher sees the 1921 SPA Convention as a triumph of "Bergerism,"
with the new SPA "Left Wing" based around the publication
The Workers Council and the Chicago party organization
tiny, isolated, and decisively defeated. "These delegates
had practically no support, a fact that was quickly taken advantage
of by Berger, who made them the target for his shafts of wit,"
Keracher notes, adding that the most controversial matter --
the question of international affiliation -- readily disposed
of on the first day of the proceedings, with association with
the 3rd and 2-1/2 Internationals defeated handily and a decision
not to affiliate with any international body passed by a vote
of 31 to 8. Berger mockingly referred to the Left Wing as "Chicago
Communists," Keracher notes, adding that he talked down
to Left Wing leader William Kruse "like a daddy talking
to a wayward boy, hoping that he would bye and bye grow into
a great big man." Keracher also emphasizes the debate over
the question of the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat,"
with the Left Wing's endorsement of the concept of a "Dictatorship
of the Proletariat" in the transition period from Capitalism
to Communism defeated by a big majority. Thus "these 'pure
democrats' who expelled only 60 percent of their membership expressed
themselves as 'opposed to the rule of any Minority,'" Keracher
snidely observes. A further split of the SPA Left Wing in the
near future is anticipated by Keracher.
JULY
"'Farewell!' to the Socialist
Party: An Appeal to Its Remaining Members: Statement by the Committee
for the Third International of the Socialist Party to the Members
of the Socialist Party." [Circa July 1921]. The Committee for the Third International was
the organized faction for Left Wing realignment of the Socialist
Party of America in 1920-21, after the departure of the great
bulk of the Left Wing Section for the Communist Party of America,
Communist Labor Party of America, and Proletarian Party of America.
Headed by Secretary J. Louis Engdahl and including such future
Communist leadership cadres as William F. Kruse, Benjamin Glassberg,
Alexander Trachtenberg, J.B. Salutsky, and Moissaye Olgin, the
Committee for the Third International formally left the SPA with
this statement, published as a pamphlet in the aftermath of the
June 25-29, 1921 Convention of the party. "A new home for
constructive revolutionary Socialism must be built. Another political
party of the working class must be established with the passing
of the Socialist Party," the farewell statement declared.
In the interim, a formal organization called The Workers' Council
was established -- a group which merged with the American Labor
Alliance and elements of the majority underground CPA to form
the Workers Party of America in December 1921.
"The Future of the Socialist
Party," by Thurber Lewis [July 23, 1921] Communist commentator on the Socialist
Party Thurber Lewis provides a surprisingly analysis of the future
path of the SPA in this article from The Toiler, a legal
weekly of the Communist Party. Lewis, having recently attended
the June 1921 convention of the SPA in Detroit, is well versed
on the situation facing the party -- its membership down from
a 100,000 to about 15,000 in just 2 years, its finances depleted
to the point that organizers were being pulled in, $20,000 in
debt staring the organization in the face. Lewis foresaw three
possible outcomes: a Left line in which the party would endorse
the Third International, cleanse itself of a major part of its
remaining membership, and liquidate itself to become part of
the Communist Party (which Lewis saw as an extraordinarily unlikely
possibility); a Center line in which the group attempted to tread
water -- condemning the Third International but refusing to form
alliances with other organizations; and a Right line (pushed
by the powerful Milwaukee organization) in which fusion with
other like-minded political organizations would prove the order
of the day. Lewis saw this move to opportunistic alliance with
other "progressive" groups to be by far the most likely
outcome for the SPA, as in alliance with the Farmer-Labor Party
and the Non-Partisan League the Socialist Party would prove an
adept partner, would regain organizational strength and prestige,
and would be saved from financial oblivion. Failure to achieve
this alliance in a broad Labor Party on the British model, on
the other hand, would consign the SPA to the position of an irrelevant
sect. Failure to form a broad alliance would, n Lewis' view,
render the party "a politically lifeless organization, destined
to travel much the same road as the SLP has so unwillingly yet
gloriously traversed for the past years, a sterile admiration
society."
AUGUST
"The American Labor Alliance:
An Editorial," by Otto Branstetter [Aug. 1921] The formation of the American
Labor Alliance for Trade Relations with Soviet Russia, an open
adjunct of the United Communist Party, was the cause of great
mirth for some officials of the beleaguered Socialist Party of
America. This editorial in the SP's official organ declared that
the formation of the ALA by the Communists constituted "an
admission that their theories and their methods were wrong."
Citing a number of specific instances, Branstetter chortled that
the Left Wing had "arrogantly assumed to themselves all
revolutionary wisdom and were the self-appointed and infallible
interpreters and executors of Marx and Engels. They assumed to
be Neo-Marxists, Neo-Socialists, and Neo-Revolutionists when
in reality they were merely Neo-Nuts." "The Communists
have utterly failed to make good in America. Their pet theories
are all exploded and their plans for the immediate overthrow
of the capitalist system through 'revolutionary mass action'
have been abandoned," Branstetter declared, adding that
the only thing the communists had done effectively was split
and weaken the Socialist Party and the radical labor movement
in America, generating "fundamentally reactionary"
results.
"The Strength of American
Socialism," by James Oneal [Aug. 7, 1921] New York party leader James Oneal
attempts to make the case that "the comparatively small
increase of the Socialist vote cast in 1920" is in no way
indicative of a decline in the prestige, power, and organization
of the Socialist Party. While acknowledging that the SP had been
left with a "wreck of an organization" by the "coercion
and persecution" of the Wilson administration and Right
Wing elements around the country. Nevertheless, wherever the
party had been able to maintain its presence, its vote totals
had increased in 1920, Oneal states. Oneal is optimistic about
the party's prospects, noting that for the first time since 1893,
an insurgent movement had developed in the ranks of American
labor seeking independent working class political action, taking
the form of the Farmer-Labor Party, while in the Upper Midwest
a radical agrarian movement had emerged under the banner of the
Non-Partisan League. Illusions had been smashed by the imperialist
outcome of the world war and cyncicism had become rampant. Oneal
likens the Socialist Party's current moment to the 15 year period
prior to the Civil War during which abolitionist forces consolidated
themselves from various tributaries into the radical 3rd Party
known as the Republican Party, which was soon swept to power.
Oneal is upbeat: "I have no fears as to the future of the
Socialist movement in this country. In fact, a close study of
many financial journals for the past year convinces me that the
"best minds" of the present social order are much more
puzzled about the future of capitalism. The whole world drifts,
the statesmen and financiers known not where. They hope for the
best and yet are possessed with fear. The old order seethes with
economic contradictions which they are unable to solve."
"Legion Mob Kidnaps Mrs.
Hazlett in Iowa: Banker's Son, Who is Local Commander, Leads
Gang That Seizes Socialist Speaker, and Drives Her 20 Miles in
Country and Back -- Mayor Refuses Protection." (NY Call)
[event of Aug. 11, 1921] News
account briefly detailing the kidnapping of Socialist Party organizer
Ida Crouch Hazlett by a car full of ultra-nationalist American
Legion thugs when the party founder was attempting to speak in
the little town of Shenandoah, Iowa. Hazlett was pulled down
from the automobile from which she was speaking and thrust into
a waiting car, which drove away at high speed. The 8 Right Wing
goons menaced Hazlett, instructing her not to speak any more
in Shenandoah; Hazlett boldly refused to agree. Eventually, the
kidnappers thought better of their action and turned around,
returning Hazlett to her hotel unharmed. Hazlett immediately
complained to the authorities, who refused to either arrest her
kidnappers or promise her future protection. The Aug. 11 kidnapping
was the 5th in a series of abuses against Hazlett by the American
Legion, which had previously systematically harassed at Newton,
Des Moines, and Boone. ""The state of Iowa is in the
hands of an American Legion mob of kids," Hazlett declared.
"The Party and the Future,"
by Victor L. Berger [Aug. 13, 1921] The year 1921 was a watershed for the Socialist
Party of America. The internecine war of 1919 had been "won"
by the Regular faction and control of the party maintained --
but the administration had managed to both rule and ruin. Mass
purges and ongoing disillusionment had caused party membership
to plummet from more than 100,000 in the first half of 1919 to
less than 15,000 by the middle of 1921. A severe financial crisis
had followed. The vision of an inevitably glorious future for
the SPA had vanished in the wind, and a broad fundamental reevaluation
of the party's ideology and tactics followed. This article by
the Socialist Party's leading realist, Victor Berger, is based
upon the observation that the SPA had failed to become "the
great opposition party against capitalism" during the subsequent
half decade. Berger places blame for this failure on the fragmented
American working class, consisting of dozens of nationalities,
combined with the revival of "innumerable national prejudices
and race hatreds that had slumbered for years" as a byproduct
of American entry into the world war. The SPA had additionally
be trapped between what Berger likens to "two millstones"
--one being the opposition to the party's principled opposition
to the war, the other being the "Communistic ideas among
the workers, especially those of foreign birth," developing
because of the war. Its membership atrophied by these external
factors, Berger states that the party's development was additionally
handicapped by "an impossible and ironclad set of rules
that were considered sacred - from the old and defunct Socialist
Labor Party." "It was and is actually considered a
crime to vote for anybody who is not a regular card member,"
Berger observes, arguing that the net result was the reduction
of the party to a sort of "perfectionist sect." Berger
concludes that sectarian tactics must be cast aside and "we
must by all means support, strengthen, and uphold our Socialist
organization at the present time as well as in the future. At
the same time, however, we must show our willingness to cooperate
with any radical group - no matter what its makeup or complexion
-- that is willing to assist us and to cooperate with us on the
political or economic field in our continuous and ceaseless battle
against the capitalist system."
"Volkszeitung Recovers
Its Mailing Rights: Hays, in Announcing Restoration of Paper's
Status, Declares Post Office Censorship is Gone...: All Papers
Carried in Mails at All are Entitled to Second-Class Rights,
is Postmaster's View," by Laurence Todd [event of Aug. 14,
1921] With the
coming to power of the Warren Harding administration, the draconian
anti-libertarian policies of the Wilson regime came under new
scrutiny. Subject to particular liberalization was the application
of statute by the post office department, with new Postmaster
General Will Hays reconsidering the Burleson policy of the mass
voiding of 2nd Class mailing privileges of the opposition press.
On Aug. 14, 1921, the 2nd Class mailing privilege of the Marxist
New Yorker Volkszeitung was restored, with Postmaster
General Hays issuing an extensive statement reflecting upon the
official change of policy (reproduced in full here). While noting
statutory prohibition of certain matter from the mails, Hays
states: "I want again to call the attention of the publishers
to the fact that I am not, and will not allow myself to be made,
a censor of the press. I believe that any publication that is
entitled to use of the mails at all is entitled to the 2nd Class
privileges, provided that it meets the requirements of the law
for 2nd Class matter.... I will at all times act with moderation
and consideration for the freedom of the press, but I must and
will enforce in good faith, without evoking technicalities..."
Solicitor Edwards echoed these views, telling Laurence Todd of
the Federated Press that "It is not our purpose or duty
to advocate or oppose any school of political though so long
as it does not violate any existing law interpreted liberally
to permit mailability."
"Finn Federation Report Pledges
Aid for Party: Reorganized Socialist Division now has 3,300 Members
with 66 Locals in 14 States...: Convention Decides Central Office
Will Be Moved from Chicago to Fitchburg, Mass."(NY Call)
[events of Aug. 13-15, 1921] This unsigned news report in the Socialist Party's
New York Call announces the results of an August 1921
convention reorganizing the Finnish Socialist Federation, which
had declared its independence from the SPA at the end of 1920
and slowly moved towards the Communist orbit. The reorganization
convention had been attended by 12 delegates, each representing
approximately 300 members of the Finnish Federation. The reorganized
Finnish Socialist Federation included 66 locals in 14 states,
predominantly in New England and elsewhere in the East. New organizational
rules for the reorganized Finnish Socialist Federation were adopted
and headquarters for the group were moved from Chicago to Fitchburg,
MA -- location of the federation's daily newspaper, Raivaaja.
The unknown Finnish-American writer optimistically notes: "Our
Federation is now smaller than it has been for many years. But
the days of dissension and dissolution are past. The agitated
and chaotic state of the European Socialist movement, which has
reacted upon our movement here, is slowly subsiding. The progress
of events demonstrated that the new revolutionary theories, built
by the Russian Communists upon the moment's expediency, are false.
The workers, and especially the Socialists, received an object
lesson in Marxian theory that there is no shortcut to Socialism.
And this lesson will be of immense value for the Socialist movement
in the future. It will save it from destructive emotionalism."
"Mrs. Hazlett to Sue Ringleader
of Legion Mob: $20,000 Damage Action to Be Brought Against Son
of Banker Who Kidnapped Her." (NY Call) [event of
Aug. 16, 1921] Having
received no satisfaction with the partisan application of criminal
law in the small town of Shenandoah, Iowa, Socialist Party organizer
Ida Crouch Hazlett took her kidnapping by American Legion thugs
to civil court for remedy, announcing that a $20,000 lawsuit
was being launched against the ringleader of the crime for having
violated her civil rights. In announcing her intention to bring
suit, Hazlett revealed additional details of her kidnapping,
charging that alleged ringleader Thomas Murphy had raised his
hand to strike her and that she had boldly averted injury by
challenging the 8 Legionnaires to go the full measure and to
kill her. "Riding down the road at terrific speed,"
Hazlett recounted, "I suggested that they kill me. I pictured
my body hacked to pieces and scattered along the road. I implied
that it would certainly add to the sweet memories of their mothers.
Then I switched the picture. I suggested the possibility that
the car might be wrecked and all of us killed. Their mothers
would not like to see that, would then? That twist changed their
minds. And when I suggested that the only thing to do was to
turn back, they simply had to obey."
"W.J. Burns Named Director
of Federal Secret Service: Will Head All US Detective Agencies
Under Reorganization -- Flynn Has Not Yet Resigned - Successor
Was First Sleuth to Carve Career From Class Struggle." (NY
Call) [event of Aug. 18, 1921] This news account in the Socialist Party daily,
the New York Call, announces the appointment of veteran labor
spy and detective agency chief William J. Burns as Director of
the Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation, forerunner
of the FBI. Burns, who was replacing William J. Flynn in the
post, is said to have been a fellow resident of Columbus, Ohio,
and long-time friend of the new Attorney General of the Harding
administration, Harry Daugherty. The career of Burns is briefly
recounted here, including his growing up the son of the police
commissioner of Columbus and work there as a local detective,
his joining of the Secret Service in 1889 and promotion to the
Washington, DC office 5 years later, his founding of the Burns
Detective Agency, and his greatest professional coup, the conviction
of the MacNamara brothers in the bloody bombing of the Los
Angeles Times building in 1911. Burns and his company had
lately been intimately connected to the financial giant J.P.
Morgan & Co., providing intelligence and protection, the
article states.
SEPTEMBER
"My Interview with Debs in
his Prison," by James H. Maurer [event of Sept. 1, 1921]
First-hand account
of a Sept. 1, 1921 visit by Socialist Party leader James Maurer
to Gene Debs at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, quoting an extensive
letter written to Socialist Party Executive Secretary Otto Branstetter
at the time. "What made the greatest impression on me was
Gene's mental and physical condition. He has a healthy color,
looks like a farmer, tanned as though he had worked on a farm.
I mentioned to him that he looked as though he was enjoying good
health, and he assured me that he was feeling fine. As to his
mental faculties, I can truthfully say they are as keen as ever.
All this talk about his being a mental wreck is rot," Maurer
writes. Branstetter and Maurer had been concerned about the efforts
of the Communists to win Debs' allegiance. "From my conversation
with Gene I feel sure that the "impossibilists" have
not succeeded in fooling him. We talked about the much-heralded
revolution which is now years overdue, and we both enjoyed a
good laugh. I asked him not to commit himself to any 'ism' until
he had an opportunity of looking the field over after his discharge,
and his answer was that I could rest easy on that point,"
Maurer writes.
A Call for United Action: To All
Labor Unions, Farmers' Organizations, and Other Economic, Political,
Cooperative, and Fraternal Organizations of the Producing Class.
[Sept. 1921] The
origin of the Conference for Progressive Political Action has
long been attributed to a joint decision of the 16 main railway
unions, which sponsored a founding conference in Chicago in February
of 1922. This September 1921 appeal for just such an organization,
written and transmitted to the various unions by the National
Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, lends support for
the theory that this idea actually originated outside the 16
railway brotherhoods. The Socialist Party's vision was of a loose
alliance which brought together various labor groups in joint
political action "similar to that of the federated organizations
of the British Labour Party." According to the appeal, America
was embroiled in "the worst industrial depression we have
ever experienced," with six million workers unemployed,
armed anti-union bands given free reign under the moniker of
"detective agencies," while other bands of thugs like
the American Legion and the Ku Klux Klan operated outside the
rule of law altogether. Employers shamelessly used the legislative
and judicial arms of the state to conduct an open shop drive
which threatened the very existence of the organized labor movement.
In response, a "united front" joining the forces of "every progressive, liberal,
and radical organization of the workers must be mobilized to
repel these assaults and to advance the industrial and political
power of the working class," according to the NEC's appeal.
"Jewish Group in Party Will
Convene Today: Federation, 500 Weak Now, Thought Certain to be
Destroyed, No Matter What Action is Taken: Once Numbered 5,000:
Organized as Autonomous Body in 1912, Its Officials Have Fought
Party Since Albany Trial." (NY Call) [Sept. 3, 1921]
From Sept. 3-5,
1921, a special convention of the Jewish Socialist Federation
was held to decide the question of that organization's future
affiliation with the Socialist Party of America. The Executive
Committee of the JSF sought to sever ties with the parent organization,
in favor of some sort of affiliation with the Third International
-- although there was very little support remaining within the
Federation for the underground tactics of the CPA (the Left Wing
of the organization having already departed in 1919-20). This
is the first of 4 reports in the Socialist Party's New York daily
detailing the proceedings of the JSF special convention. The
loss of the JSF is seen as a foredrawn conclusion by the reporter,
who notes that with the 1921 convention "an important chapter
in the Socialist movement comes to a close." The importance
of this change is minimized, the unnamed reporter noting that
from a peak membership of 5,000 to 6,000, the JSF had fallen
to barely 500 dues-paying members. The history of the Jewish
Federation is detailed here, from the organization of the "Jewish
Agitation Bureau" by Benjamin Feigenbaum, Meyer Gillis,
Max Kaufman, and others in 1908; to full Federation status in
1912. The Federation's turn to a "nationalistic viewpoint"
is blamed on Max Goldfarb ["A.J. Bennett"], a former
member of the Bund who returned to Soviet Russia in 1917. The
decisive turning point is said to have occurred in 1920, with
the trial of the 5 Socialist Assemblymen by the New York Legislature,
an event which was denounced as obsequious parliamentarism by
the Left Wing of the JSF, headed by Jacob Salutsky.
"Jewish Group Seats Enemies
of Party Unity: Loyal Delegates Beaten in Every Fight Against
Executive Committee -- Move for Split: Kahn Flays Bolters: Some
Leaders Charged at Opening of Federation Congress with Being
Supporters of World War." (NY Call) [Sept. 4, 1921]
This is the 2nd
of 4 reports in the Socialist Party's New York daily detailing
the proceedings of the JSF special convention, called to determine
the JSF's future relationship to the Socialist Party of America.
In this unsigned article, it is intimated that the secessionists
had successfully won control of the convention at the first day's
sessions, as in the evening "the Credentials Committee and
the Convention was seating every contested delegate who had expressed
a desire to see the Federation withdraw from the party and unseating
every contested delegate who was loyal to the party." Two
slates had vied for seats on the Credentials Committee, with
the Left Wing supporters of the Executive Committee defeating
slate of the the insurgent party loyalists by about 40 to 25,
with all delegates -- even those under challenge -- permitted
to vote. "At the time of going to press the loyal party
delegates were still fighting every anti-party delegate, but,
realizing that, with the contesting delegates voting on their
own cases, and with a Central Office eager for the withdrawal
plan, it was hopeless to expect to carry the convention,"
the reporter indicates, adding that the decision on affiliation
was the sole item on the agenda of the special convention. Otto
Branstetter had previously addressed the convention on behalf
of the National Office of the SPA, stating: "There is no
other party in the world in any of the great countries that stood
so true to international Socialism as did our party. In other
countries, minorities stood straight. In America, the official
position of the party was straight. What have the Communists
done? They went out of the party; they said they were going to
organize the workers and make the revolution, but to date they
have done nothing except to weaken the Socialist Party. And much
as they want all the honor for this, they must divide that honor
with the American Legion, with the Department of Justice, and
with the Chambers of Commerce."
"Loyal Jewish Socialists
Quit Seceding Body: Federation Convention Votes, 41 to 34, to
Leave Party -- New Group is Immediately Organized...: Bigger
and More Active Movement Promised by Those Who Refuse to Bolt
Organization." (NY Call) [Sept. 5, 1921] This is the 3rd of 4 reports in
the Socialist Party's New York daily detailing the proceedings
of the JSF special convention, called to determine the JSF's
future relationship to the Socialist Party of America. This installment
notes the result of the final vote on affiliation after 6 hours
of debate on Sept. 4, won by the withdrawal forces over the SP
loyalists, 41 to 34. The main speech for the secessionists was
delivered by Jacob Salutsky, while Nathan Chain of the United
Hebrew Trades made the opening speech for the loyalists. Upon
the decision, the 34 loyalists bolted the convention, meeting
in another room of Forward Hall. Speeches were made to the loyalists
assembled by Jacob Panken; J. Baskin (General Secretary of the
Workmen's Circle), Alexander Kahn of the Forward, and
SPA Executive Secretary Otto Branstetter. A committee of 9 was
elected to draw up plans for the Jewish Federation loyalists,
to report back on the ensuing day.
"New Alliance is Created
by Jewish Group: Loyal Socialists Organize in Opposition to Seceding
Federation with Endorsement of Labor Unions...: United Hebrew
Trades Secretary Assures Delegates of Support in Movement for
Strong Party." (NY Call) [Sept. 6, 1921] This is the 4th of 4 reports in
the Socialist Party's New York daily detailing the proceedings
of the JSF special convention, called to determine the JSF's
future relationship to the Socialist Party of America. This installment
reports the formation of the Jewish Socialist Alliance (Verbund)
of the Socialist Party by the bolting minority delegates. Nathan
Chanin was elected General Secretary of the new organization.
Meanwhile, the JSF majority voted 43 to 3 to affiliate with the
Communist International, despite their misgivings about the institutionalized
underground tactics of the Communist Party of America. The organization
prepared for a period of independence, setting its dues at 50
cents per month. (The secessionist JSF soon merged with the "Committee
for the 3rd International" in the SP to establish itself
as the Workers' Council).
"Working Class Political
Unity," by Morris Hillquit [Sept. 7, 1921] This article in the New York Call
by the Socialist Party's most respected strategist, Morris Hillquit,
delves into the shift of the Socialist Party towards cooperation
with progressive elements from outside the party, a marked departure
from the party's historical orientation against "fusion"
with external elements. Hillquit notes that the decision of the
1921 Detroit Convention to explore the field. Hillquit notes
that this decision is less monumental than some believed: that
the tactic would need to be reported to the next convention and
approved, and ratified by the membership. Hillquit indicates
his support for an electoral alliance through a British-style
Labor Party, in which the constituent organizations would continue
to run their own candidates for state governorships in order
to retain their electoral status, but through which "candidates
for other offices would be distributed among the different cooperating
organizations with regard to their respective strength in different
political districts." Hillquit's thinking is intensely practical:
"To continue as a movement of the select few, as a small
priesthood charged with the duty of keeping the sacred flame
alive and protected from the profane gaze of the multitude, is
not an object which in our agitated days will commend itself
to the workers of this country. We must have the workers with
us, if we are to succeed and we must go to them if they do not
come to us."
"Can We Work for Socialism
Outside the Socialist Party?" by William M. Feigenbaum [Sept.
9, 1921] In this
article published in the Socialist Party's New York daily, journals
William Feigenbaum -- son of one of the fathers of the Yiddish
language Federation of the SPA -- takes aim at the Communists
for disrupting the cause of Socialism in America, exemplified
by their behavior at the recently completed special convention
of the Jewish Socialist Federation. Feigenbaum questions the
motives of the Left Wing of the JSF in waiting so long to break
with the national Socialist Party, seeing in the delay an effort
"to do as much damage to the Socialist Party as they could
in their withdrawal." Feigenbaum thus characterizes the
Left Wing of the Federation as "wreckers and disrupters"
whose work, "together with the work of the Ku Klux and the
American Legion, had borne fruit." Feigenbaum contends that
the 2 years of Communist independent action had been an abysmal
failure: "Not a single new member was gained, but more than
nine-tenths of the old went out. Not a stroke of organization
work has been done, except to throw a few manifestos from elevated
trains and roofs. Instead of sections of a united party, the
few hundred remaining men are two angrily quarreling 'parties,'
periodically 'uniting,' and then splitting again." Feigenbaum
argues that this was a necessary result of the fact that the
"Communist movement was born as a negative drive against
the Socialist Party, rather than as a positive movement for some
ideal or some method of organization." Instead, Feigenbaum
declares that despite its various "faults and shortcomings,
the only work for Socialism of any consequence that has been
done within the past 2 years since the 'new' methods were evolved,
is the direct result of the Socialist Party's work." Feigenbaum
insists: "Those who want to see Socialism grow can work
for Socialism. Let all others get out of the way."
"Some Plain Words,"
by Charles W. Ervin [Sept. 10, 1921] Managing Editor of the New York Call Charles
Ervin fires a broadside in the direction of the Communist Party's
Friends of Soviet Russia organization, appealing for funds for
Russian famine relief, to be collected and distributed outside
of the FSR apparatus. The Call's fund will be administered without
the deduction of a single cent for operational expenses, Ervin
indicates. Alternatively, Call readers are encouraged
by Ervin to donate to Russian famine relief through their trade
unions. Ervin notes the hostility of the FSR to parallel relief
efforts, and cites the group's antipathy to the efforts of the
ACWU and ILGWU as "proof positive to us of a desire to sabotage
other funds being collected, and a total disinclination to really
unify the activities taking place among the working class."
Ervin declares that "we are used to the abuse of the Communists
in this country. All the energies that in Russia go to the doing
of constructive work seem to be employed by the Communists in
America in factional strife. Not content with going their own
way and attacking capitalism, they spend much of their time in
a vain effort to destroy the existing labor unions by intriguing
within their ranks and by seeking to interfere in every way possible
with the activity of other groups of workers who do not happen
to believe in their tactics." Ervin characterizes the CPA's
efforts under the FSR banner as the "antics" of "long-distance
revolutionists" who are "working under false colors,
or posing like some cheap detective in ridiculous disguise"
and indicates that the paper will not hesitate to "show
them up as thoroughly as we know how" when they are caught
vilifying others.
"Cahan Says the Forward
Supports the Party: Editor of Great Jewish Daily, Back from Europe,
Declares Seceders Will be Fought -- Praises Germans and Scores
Communists Abroad," by William M. Feigenbaum [Sept. 11,
1921] On Sept.
11, 1921, the powerful and widely respected editor of the Jewish
Daily Forward, Abraham Cahan, returned to America after a
14 week stay in Europe, centered in Berlin. There Cahan had exchanged
views with a wide range of leaders of the European Socialist
movement, including representatives of the Soviet government.
Upon his return, Cahan was met at the docks by about 75 prominent
Jewish-American leaders, who sat together in a luncheon at the
Hotel Brevoort in New York. In his address to the gathering,
Cahan declared in no uncertain terms that "no man can write
against the Socialist Party and remain on the Forward... I am
sorry that we must lose some of our best people,but if they are
against the party, that settles it. No one who is against the
party can be on the Forward. The Forward was established
for the party, not the party for the Forward. Some of
the intellectuals want the Third International. For an American
to speak of the Third International is a sign of absolute idiocy
-- if not of a police spy. In Europe, people know that the Third
International is an absolute failure. It is a joke. Lenin would
like to get rid of it if he could. No one takes it seriously
any more. The Third International has done 1,000 times more damage
to the Socialist movement than good." Cahan noted the vitality
of the Social Democratic Party in Germany and stated that "the
Communist there amount to nothing.... The leading Communist members
of the Soviet government that I spoke to admit that the whole
Communist movement, and the hope of a world revolution, on which
the Communist International is based, is done for."
"The 'Legal' Communists:
Letter to the Editor of the New York Call," by Adolph
Germer [Sept. 11, 1921] The
former Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party and current
assistant to Greater New York Secretary Julius Gerber, Adolph
Germer, writes this letter in support of Charles Ervin's editorial
of the previous day attacking the Friends of Soviet Russia. "It
is high time that the unsuspecting public, especially the progressing
working class, among whom they carry on their panhandling, understand
these self-appointed 'saviors of the proletarian revolution'....
It should require no argument to convince any open-minded person
that anyone, or any group, that carries on a persistent campaign
to divide the ranks of labor, no matter in whose name it is done
or to what pretended purpose, is an enemy of the working class
- a far greater and more dangerous enemy than the paid hireling
of the employers," Germer declares.
"Gale to Squeal Way to Liberty,
Inquiry Shows: Renegade Radical to Give State's Evidence to Escape
Penalty for Evading the Draft." [Sept. 17, 1921] This article from the New York
Call notes the transformation of draft resister and radical publisher
Linn Gale from "a rabid Communist to a prisoner willing
to incriminate other radicals, betraying their confidences."
In view of Gale's decision to collaborate with Federal authorities
after his deportation from Mexico, the American Civil Liberties
Union had declined to come to the aid of Gale's legal defense.
An Aug. 26 letter of ACLU head Roger Baldwin is cited: "The
Civil Liberties Union has no interest whatever in the case of
Linn A.E. Gale. He is not and never was a 'conscientious objector.'
His activities as a radical in Mexico are open to grave charges
of unscrupulous conduct, to put it mildly. His attitude since
his arrest and the character of his efforts to secure support
for his defense make it clear that he is unworthy of the confidence
of those interested in civil liberty. We advise our friends not
to contribute to his defense fund." In response to a communication
from Baldwin, Gale's lawyer issued a statement declaring "my
client has authorized me to make public the information that
he has renounced his former political beliefs and convictions,
that he has completely severed his connections with the radical
movement, and consequently would not be justified in receiving
any further aid or support from them. My client, Linn Gale, desires
to state that he is absolutely sincere in the repudiation of
his former radical opinions, as expressed through Gale's Magazine,
and that at no time in the future will he engage in radical activities."
"The Detroit Resolution,"
by James Oneal [Sept. 19, 1921] Socialist Party NEC member James Oneal offers
his perspective on the decision of the June 1921 Detroit Convention
to survey the field with a view to eventual work with other radical
organizations in an umbrella organization patterned after the
British Labour Party. Oneal states that the NEC had followed
the instructions of the convention and dispatched a survey to
likely political partners. Oneal notes that the NEC did not have
authority to act upon the replies it received -- it would take
approval of the next convention and ratification by referendum
vote of the party to call a conference of progressive organizations
to formally organize the new multi-party alliance. The model
and goal advocated by Oneal is quite clear: "In England,
whether the candidate is a member of the Independent Labour Party
or any other Socialist organization, whether he is a member of
an affiliated trade union or cooperative society, he wages the
contest in the name of the Labour Party. The same procedure would
be taken here." Oneal critically observes that "for
a generation the Socialist movement of the United States has
been cursed with theoreticians and dogmatists" and declares
that "one advantage of the British form of political organization
of the workers is that it throws the Socialists into intimate
contact with other organizations of the working class and brings
these workers into contact with us." Oneal indicates he
personally sees 2 million adherents to the new umbrella organization
as the essential minimum for the tactic to be pursued. He rules
out alliance with the progressive capitalist "Committee
of 48" but does see the Non-Partisan League as being ideologically
close enough to the SP to merit interest. Oneal is critical of
the "no less than a dozen Communist priesthoods " which
emerged from the 1919 split of the Socialist Party and maintains
little interest in alliance with those who indulge in "introspective
brooding" and who "burn incense in honor of the Communist
ritual."
"For a Mass Movement,"
by Adolph Dreifuss [Sept. 22, 1921] This article by the leader of the Socialist Party's
German Federation, Adolph Dreifuss, speaks to the hot issue in
party ranks -- the move towards organized cooperation with other
Left Wing organizations in an American version of the British
Labour Party. Dreifuss notes that this represented "a deviation
from the tactics hitherto pursued by the Socialist Party"
and attempts to explain that the decision to pursue the tactic
was not the province of the SP Right, but rather was the considered
opinion of all tendencies at the Detroit Convention, including
Left Wingers Louis Engdahl and Bill Kruse. Dreifuss notes that
"the object is to bring about an organization similar to
that of the British Labour Party, which is composed from autonomous
parties and groups, like the Independent Labour Party, the Social
Democratic Federation, the Fabian Society, the various labor
unions, etc. Each one of these parties retains its integrity
and autonomy... Each of these organizations has its own platform,
based on its own principles. But the struggle of the present
against their common enemy they fight together." Dreifuss
notes that the United States has "no opposition that amounts
to much." He declares that "none of the 'revolutionary'
parties, however they may call themselves, reach the masses"
and observes that the ongoing economic crisis has made the working
class "servile" and "submissive." "It
must be every worker's aim to get out of this slough to strengthen
his class. To cooperate with others is one means to achieve liberty
of movement," Dreifuss declares -- thus the move towards
joint action has been supported by all tendencies in the SPA,
"from Engdahl to Berger."
"Rand School is Voted to
Be SP Auxiliary: Controlling Society, 38 to 20, Fixes Its Stand
-- Six Directors Resign from Board." [event of Sept. 23,
1921] On Sept.
23, 1921, at the start of the academic year, the membership of
the American Socialist Society met and, after lengthy and heated
debate, adopted a resolution declaring the Rand School of Social
Science to be a Socialist Party institution and determined that
"the teachers of history, economics, political science,
and related subjects, therefore, ought to be in the main either
members of or avowed sympathizers with the Socialist Party."
Furthermore, the resolution asserted that "The American
Socialist Society considers it inconsistent for any person to
act as an officer or director of the society or as an officer
of the Rand School whose views or activities are hostile to those
of the Socialist Party or who cannot heartily accept the foregoing
instruction." Passage of the resolution prompted the resignation
of 6 directors of the American Socialist Society -- Benjamin
Glassberg, Augusta Holland, Jacob Purchin, Eugene Schoehn, Alexander
Trachtenberg, and Rose Weiner. Complete text of the resolution
is included here.
"Communists Try to Disrupt
Socialist Rally: Create Uproar at Brownsville Labor Lyceum During
Address by London -- Disturbers are Ejected...: Incident Stimulates
Enthusiasm of Workers for Socialist Message -- Report Fusion
Aids Communists." (NY Call) [event of Sept. 23, 1921]
On Sept. 23, 1921,
Socialist Congressman Meyer London spoke on behalf of his party
before a crowd of 1,500 at an electoral rally held in Brownsville,
NY. During the course of London's remarks, a Communist Party
member in the audience shouted "Traitor!" -- prompting
"a group of workers began battering away at the disturber."
The scuffle expanded when friends of the heckler came to his
aid; the outnumbered Communists were expelled from the meeting
by the Socialists, with the aid of a policeman. According to
this news account in the New York Call, "when quiet
was restored, Representative London warned the Communists who
remained hidden in the hall that in the future the Socialists
will not be responsible for what happens to those who try to
break up Socialist meetings." "These disrupters will
be treated in the same way as a scab is treated by a good union
man," London aggressively shouted, "No decent working
man will tolerate them in their midst." A demonstration
lasting several minutes followed.
"Socialist Vote Will Have
Worldwide Effect: Speech at the Lexington Theater, New York City,"
by Morris Hillquit [Sept. 25, 1921] Text of a speech by Socialist Party leader Morris
Hillquit kicking off the party's 1921 electoral campaign. Hillquit
characterizes the New York City mayoral campaign as a meaningless
choice of evils between a "self-confessed 'friend of the
people'" and "the avowed candidate of the vested interests."
Neither will solve the fundamental problems faced by the city's
working class. Hillquit argues that the 1921 election does have
an important aspect, however -- "The election separates
and groups the voters of the whole city into distinct camps or
parties, which voice their political views, aims, and aspirations.
The vote cast on election day is a faithful mirror of the mental
and moral caliber of the electorate.... The only manifestation
of an awakening working class intelligence, the only ray of hope
that the election may offer, will be in the votes cast for the
Socialist Party." A crisis is approaching, in Hillquit's
view, wherein "the delicate industrial machine of capitalism
is cracking, and the shortsighted capitalist master machinists
are making frantic efforts to repair it with sledgehammers."
However, the union-busting efforts of the capitalist class will
be thwarted, Hillquit believes: "There will be no return
to capitalist normalcy. There is nothing but war and strife ahead
of mankind unless the entire discord-breeding machine of capitalism
is scrapped, and the workers of the world take hold of the governments
and industries and run them rationally and peacefully for the
equal benefit and happiness of all people and all peoples."
Hillquit also makes a plea for Russian famine relief, under the
slogan "Give till it hurts."
OCTOBER
"Raids, Deportations, and
Palmerism," by Swinburne Hale [written circa October 1921]
This article provides
a useful short summary of the abuses of Attorney General Mitchell
Palmer during 1920. Hale, a civil libertarian lawyer from New
York City, dates the repression from an August 12, 1919, directive
of the head of the Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation
to its field agents to begin vigorously investigating "anarchistic
and similar classes, Bolshevism and kindred agitations."
Then in November 1919 came the first systematic wave of persecution,
targeting the Federation of Unions of Russian Workers of the
United States and Canada. On December 27, 1919, came the order
for the mass dragnet of January 2/3, 1920, targeting the Communist
and Communist Labor Parties and the IWW, among other radical
groups. Hale indicates that approximately 10,000 persons were
arrested in this campaign. On January 24, 1920, Sec. of Labor
Wilson declared membership in the Communist Party of America
to be a deportable offense. The tide had begun to turn, however,
on Jan. 22 and 23, when hearings concerning a peacetime sedition
act proposed by Right Wingers in Congress met with organized
liberal and labor opposition, which stopped it. Another landmark
came on April 10, 1920, when Assistant Sec. of Labor Post handed
down an important decision that raised the bar for the prosecution
in deportation hearings and began releasing prisoners held from
the Palmer raids for whom there was no sufficient evidence of
guilt. The Right Wing in Congress responded by beginning impeachment
hearings of Assistant Sec. Post. Another major turning point
came on May 5, 1920, when it was held that mere membership in
the Communist Labor Party was insufficient grounds for deportation.
" It is a matter of opinion that the distinction between
the two parties rested on pretty thin reasoning, and that the
principal difference between them lay in the fact that the Communist
Party case was argued at the height of the "Red" hysteria
in January [1920] and the Communist Labor Party case 3 months
later," Hale notes. Then on May 28, 1920 came the "Twelve
Lawyers' Report" published as a pamphlet by the National
Popular Government League, which further turned the tide against
the illegality and "white terror" of the Palmerites
and their allies. Congress adjourned on June 5, 1920, without
taking action on the Post impeachment and Mitchell Palmer was
defeated in his bid to win the Democratic Presidential nomination
that summer, Hale noted, effectively terminating the Red Scare
of 1919-20.
"'In Re: Workers Council.':
Report of a Meeting Held in New York, Oct. 8, 1921," by
Department of Justice Undercover Agent "P-134" This is an unusual document, the
report of an undercover agent of the Department of Justice's
Bureau of Investigation of an open meeting of the Workers' Council
group in New York City. Agent "P-134" quotes Secretary
of the Workers' Council J. Louis Engdahl as saying that "he
is a Communist, and that the Workers Council is organizing for
the purpose of establishing Socialist Soviet Republic in the
US." He quotes Engdahl as saying that the primary mission
of the group is to "help all the revolutionary classes unite
into a true revolutionary Socialist organization." The meeting
was also addressed by Benjamin Glassberg, Rose Weiss, Comrade
Ligoria of the Italian movement, Alexander Trachtenberg, I. Cohen
of the Independent YPSL, and Ludwig Lore of the Newyorker
Volkszeitung. Agent "P-134" quotes Lore as admitting
his membership in the Communist Party of America and declaring
that "the American working class will not take any orders
from a clique, namely, the [CEC] of the Communist Party of America,
which is termed illegal and underground." Lore seems to
have taken a similar independent position towards the Executive
Committee of the Comintern, saying that regardless of "whether
the 3rd International says that Workers Council is proper or
not, they will go before the masses openly and preach Communism
and the establishment of a Soviet Republic in the United States."
Agent "P-134" states that Lore "also said the
Workers Council will organize the class conscious revolutionary
forces of this country regardless of what the orders from Moscow
may be, and carry on their educational campaign organizing mass
open organizations, whether it be legal or not..."
"Socialist Party Declared
Dead: Ex-Members Dine, Chant Requiem for Organization in Various
Keys." (NY Call) [event of Oct. 8, 1921] This short news report in the
New York Call notes the formation of the Workers Council organization
by anti-Socialist Party members of the Jewish Socialist Federation
and the newly departed SP Left Wingers of the Committee for the
Third International. This article chronicles a dinner held in
New York City and addressed by J.L. Engdahl, Benjamin Glassberg,
J.B. Salutsky, Rose Weiss, Alexander Trachtenberg, L. DeGregoria,
Isadore Cohen, and Ludwig P. Lore. The purge of Communists at
the Rand School of Social Science seems to have been a contributing
factor to the formation of the Workers Council organization,
with both Glassberg and Trachtenberg alluding to the event, the
latter of whom said: "I have tried to continue on in the
Socialist Party. A few weeks ago I found that it was impossible
to stay in. Now is the time to build up a class-conscious, revolutionary
party that will stay our in the open." Keynote speaker was
Lore, who told the attendees ""We need the Communist
Party. We need frank discussion and education for the masses.
This is the movement which will give us what we want and need."
"Where We Stand," by
Charles W. Ervin [Oct. 13, 1921] This statement by managing editor of the Socialist
Party's New York Call, Charles Ervin, contrasts the ideology
of the SPA with that of the Communist movement. Ervin neatly
summarizes the Social Democratic ideology: "From the very
first this paper not only adhered to the Socialist movement of
the world at large, but it was one of the organs of the Socialist
Party of America. It believed then, as it believes now, in the
immense value of political education. It does not go into a political
campaign merely for the sake of bringing its ideas to the people.
It believes in striving for political power to use it in securing
industrial control. It believes, and always has believed, in
the great importance of immediate demands. If it did not, it
certainly would not support the battle of the labor unions as
it does. It believes that every advantage, no matter how slight,
that is wrested from the capitalist class puts the workers in
a position where they will be able to secure still further advantages
until they become sufficiently organized to stretch out and grasp
all the good things of life. This paper does not believe that
things have to get worse before they get better. It does not
believe that when men and women rise to a higher standard of
life they become so contented that they cease to strive to reach
toward higher things. On the contrary, it strives for and welcomes
every improvement in the human mind and body, every improvement
in physical environment, every step toward a higher spiritual
development that mankind succeeds in making."
JANUARY
"Indiana Governor Incites
Legion Lawlessness Toward Debs!" by Frederic Heath [Events
of Jan. 11-13, 1922] On
Jan. 11, 1922, Governor Warren T. McCray of Indiana briefly addressed
a local post of the American Legion, in its initial phase a proto-fascist
organization of former soldiers responsible for a lengthy and
growing series of vigilante attacks on persons and property.
He there stated with regard to recently-returned Socialist leader
Eugene Debs of Terre Haute, ""I am sorry, extremely
sorry, that the one arch-traitor of our country should live in
the state of Indiana. I believe he will be taught a lesson by
the American Legion, however." This transparent call for
mob violence drew an immediate response from State Secretary
Emma Henry of the Socialist Party of Indiana. In the open letter
to the Governor reprinted here, Henry writes "as an American
citizen and a citizen of Indiana, I feel that it is to be deplored
that we have a man elected as chief executive of this state who
will so far forget the high office he occupies, as to use the
terms you have been reported as using, terms which tend to incite
lawlessness. An official of the state who is sworn to uphold
the law should be the last person to use language that will incite
to unlawful acts." Henry offers to send the Governor the
text of the speech made by Debs for which he was imprisoned to
refute the charge that Debs was in any way a "traitor"
to his country. "We Socialists stand for real Americanism,
the principles for which our forefathers fought, the rights that
are guaranteed to every citizen under the constitution of the
United States and the state of Indiana; that is freedom of speech,
press, and assemblage," Henry declares, adding that "We
do not advocate the destruction of anything; we are for construction,
we are for changing the system for the benefit of all."
"'Let Them Come; I Fear No
Man,' Debs Tells Indiana Governor: Gov. McCray Admits He Counseled
American Legion Affront to Debs and Urged He Be Taught a Lesson
-- Law and Order Hypocrites Expose Hand." by Frederic Heath
[Events of Jan. 16-17, 1922] On Jan. 16, 1922, Terre Haute Socialist Eugene
Debs wrote a letter to Indiana Governor Warren T. McCray inquiring
about McCray's reported quote that ""I am sorry, extremely
sorry, that the arch-traitor of our country [Debs] should live
in the state of Indiana. I believe he will be taught a lesson
by the American Legion." Debs coyly remarks to McCray that
"You will oblige me by advising if you are correctly quoted
in this statement, and if so, it would seem to follow that you
must also denounce the President of the United States in the
same terms for releasing an arch-traitor from prison and inviting
him to the White House." Debs adds that "a committee
representing the miners and other workingmen of this city and
vicinity have just called on me to ask you if you as Governor
of the state, sworn to uphold its laws and preserve order, endorse
and intend to back up the program of threat and violence against
the 'arch-traitor' in question, incited by your remarks, and
announced in the same report of the same meeting?" Gov.
McCray responded to Debs the next day in a brief note in which
he indicated that the comments made to the proto-fascist American
Legion were made without notes and while "I am not sure
of the language quoted in the paper which you repeat," it
was "in the main it was what I said." Editor of The
New Day Frederic Heath notes that this exchange puts the Governor
and other "'Law and Order' hypocrites in high places"
on record. He also directly quotes Debs as making the following
retort to Gov. McCray's flippancy about encouraging American
Legion thuggery: "Let them come! I have not the slightest
objection. It will be an illuminating exhibition. Were I so inclined
I could easily muster an army of a few thousand to make their
reception an interesting one. But I shall do nothing of the kind.
Were I to call upon my friends at all it would be to see to it
that the marchers were unmolested. I do not object to being called
a 'traitor' under certain circumstances for I certainly am a
'traitor' to the powers and personalities of Wall Street that
are looting this nation, corrupting its government, debauching
its politics, and robbing and starving the people, including
the boys who went overseas at their command to 'save civilization,'
for which many are now facing starvation as a reward."
FEBRUARY
"Conference for Progressive
Political Action: A Report to the Membership of the Socialist
Party," by Otto Branstetter, et al. [Feb. 1922] The 1921 Detroit Convention of the Socialist Party
instructed its National Executive Committee to make a survey
of other progressive organizations in the US and the prospects
for joint action; using this as justification, five leading members
of the SPA accepted invitations to attend the Founding Conference
of the Conference for Progressive Political Action and made this
report to the membership of the party via an article in the group's
official organ, The Socialist World. The gathering --
held Feb. 20-21, 1922, in Chicago -- was characterized as "a
disappointment, so far as immediate results are concerned,"
due in large measure to the heterogeneous nature of the body,
ranging from conservative unionists seeking to promote pro-labor
candidates in the old parties to the Socialist and Farmer-Labor
Parties on the left, who sought to establish an independent political
organization. Despite the lack of immediate results, the fact
that the gathering of such a wide range of elements was held
with little acrimony was heralded as a small step forward by
the Socialist attendees.
MARCH
"The Green Corn Rebellion
in Oklahoma," by Bertha Hale White [March 4, 1922] The so-called "Green Corn
Rebellion" was one of the seminal events of the socialist
movement in Oklahoma, an uprising of radicalized impoverished
farmers who purportedly planned to march to Washington, DC in
conjunction with others around the country, eating green corn
on their way for sustenance, in an effort to remove "Big
Slick" Woodrow Wilson from power and establish the Cooperative
Commonwealth. Or so the story goes. This 1922 article by soon-to-be
Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party Bertha Hale White
indicates that the motives of the farmers had been misrepresented,
the specifics of the action had been grossly exaggerated, and
the tale had grown with the telling as a sort of post-facto justification
for the repression of the 175 individuals who were sentenced
to terms ranging from 6 months in jail to 10 years in Leavenworth
Federal Penitentiary. The "Working Class Union" behind
the rebellion was a "non-political" organization of
20,000 based in Eastern Oklahoma, bringing together the region's
illiterate tenant farmers for but one object -- to force down
exploitative rents and usurious interest rates. Woodrow Wilson's
hypocritical reversal on the question of American participation
in the war had caused the WCU to abandon its anti-political stand.
The WCU held secret meetings and determined to resist conscription
by force: "They did not believe the people of the country
would tamely submit to the violation of the pledges which had
resulted in the re-election of President Wilson. And they decided
they would not accept that violation. They agreed to hide their
boys from the draft officers and to prevent troops from coming
into the Seminole country." On Aug. 3, 1917, about 150 WCU
supporters were encamped under arms on a hill near Sasakwa, OK;
a posse of about 50 townsmen was formed and despite having no
advantages of terrain or firepower, they bloodlessly disarmed
the rebellious WCUs. "It has been asserted that the rebellion
resulted in loss of life. That is not true. Not a single shot
was fired by either side," White declares, noting that the
event had been grossly exaggerated. "In Sasakwa, the Green
Corn Rebellion is a story that provokes laughter," White
remarks.
MAY
"National Constitution of
the Socialist Party: As Amended by the National Convention at
Cleveland, April 29-May 2, 1922." Basic
document of organizational law of the Socialist Party. The early
SPA had been a loose federation of state-based organizations;
by this time stronger centralized authority was asserting itself,
while extensive provisions for recall and referendum were retained.
The lowest level of organization in the SP was the city- or county-level
"Local," which may or may not be subdivided into "Branches."
At least 10 of these Locals with an aggregate membership of 200
were organized into a State Organization which purchased dues
stamps from the National Office. A 7 member National Executive
Committee was to meet quarterly to supervise operation of the
party between annual conventions, with day-to-day affairs of
the National Office handled by an Executive Secretary employed
by and serving at the pleasure of the National Executive Committee.
Party dues in 1922 were 25 cents per month to the National and
State offices in organized states (with additional dues paid
to the Local); in unorganized states, dues were 50 cents per
month.
"Death Chills Seize Meeting
of Socialist Party," by C.E. Ruthenberg. [events of April
29-May 2, 1922] The new Executive
Secretary of the Workers Party of America, C.E. Ruthenberg, observed
and wrote about the 1922 Cleveland Convention of the Socialist
Party of America. He depicted it as a lifeless gathering, showing
"senile decay." As for the small group of assembled
delegates, Ruthenberg notes that "A majority of them are
portly, gray-haired men with a look of petty-bourgeois prosperity
about them. They talk in the language of past Socialist conventions,
but there is no enthusiasm, no fervor, in what they say."
Ruthenberg isolated the root cause of this geriatric decay in
the blows struck against the industrialist Left Wing at the 1912
Indianapolis Convention -- "anti-sabotage, anti-force, and
narrow definition of political action constitutional clauses"
which drove vital elements from a 100,000 member organization.
At the 1917 St. Louis Convention these "elderly men"
were unable to control the gathering but sabotaged the party's
militant position against the war by lack of action, Ruthenberg
charged, while at the 1919 Chicago Convention they presided over
a mass purge of 3/4 of the party's membership that resulted in
the current lifeless skeleton organization.
"Debs Calls the Jury of the
People to Try Indiana Governor," by Eugene V. Debs [May
20, 1922] Recently
freed Socialist leader Gene Debs uses the various legal premises
used to convict him to indict the governor of his state for his
Jan. 1922 words to the American Legion to the effect that "Debs
is the arch-traitor of our country. May the Legion teach him
a lesson." The American Legion is characterized by Debs
as "Young men, immature, inexperienced, many illiterate,
without social vision, ignorant of history and social science,
led by self-seeking egotists, boasting a crude, raw, ruthless,
ignorant, blatant, conceited type of mind that hates everything
above its own limitations; responsive to flattery, inflammable,
unreasoning, prejudiced, lovers of heroics, a whooping, flag-waving
bunch without foresight or any rational love of country -- just
the kind to be excited by a flattering, inflaming speech."
Debs declares that "To call a man a traitor because he disagrees
with a bunch of politicians in Washington is the utmost limit
of bigotry and insolence." Debs asserts he was convicted
for stating the truth that the recently completed European war
was an imperialist conflict. He asserts: "The constitution
says, 'Congress shall make no law abridging free speech.' Congress
has made such a law, the President signed it, and the court sustained
it. Who were the traitors?
Without free speech there is no progress, and the people stagnate.
Better a thousandfold the abuse than the denial of free speech,
for the abuse lasts but a day, while denial destroys the life
of a nation."
JULY
"The American Socialist Party
and the Farmers," by Alexander Trachtenberg [second half
of 1922] This
is a short analysis of recent changes of Socialist Party of America
tactics written for President of the Communist International
Grigorii Zinoviev. Trachtenberg states that the 1921 and 1922
SPA conventions had given the right to state and local units
of the party to engage in the formerly prohibited tactic of "fusionism"
by working directly with other non-socialist progressive organizations
in the electoral realm. "Altogether the Socialist Party
has during the past few years made strenuous attempts to secure
cooperation among the farmers' organizations of the Western states.
In the East it is joining in political compacts with all sorts
of progressive political groups, some of which are of distinct
bourgeois origin," Trachtenberg declares, adding that "the
political orientation of the SP is now on the one hand toward
securing close contact with the reactionary leadership of the
labor unions -- its only contact with labor -- and on the other,
with various political and economic groupings of farmers and
various middle class reform organizations." Trachtenberg
sees the defeat of anti-fusionism as a victory for the revisionist
Marxist Victor Berger over the orthodox Marxist Morris Hillquit
-- a policy which won due to the practical results achieved in
Milwaukee as well as the greatly attenuated size of the Socialist
Party itself.
AUGUST
"Questions to Debs,"
by J. Louis Engdahl [Aug. 3, 1922] This is a pointed and aggressive open letter to
Eugene V. Debs by the editor of The Worker, a former longtime
associate of Debs in the Socialist Party. Engdahl rebukes Debs
for heeding a request of Socialist Revolutionary Party leader
Victor Chernov and sending a cable to Lenin in Moscow with which
Debs joined the international chorus of voices demanding leniency
in sentencing of the accused in the 1922 show trial of the Socialist
Revolutionary Party. Adapting an article from International
Press Correspondence for his purposes, Engdahl presents a
veritable laundry list of transgressions against the revolution
by the PSR, including assassinations plotted and committed, bombings,
acceptance of financial and military aid from foreign powers,
collaboration with counterrevolutionary peasant movements (Antonov)
and the installation of neo-monarchist military dictators (Kolchak),
and publication of documents calling for armed revolt against
the Soviet regime. Engdahl declares that "The history of
the early days of the Bolshevik Revolution showed the Communists
too gentle with their force-loving adversaries. The Bolsheviks
were not in love with the use of force. They used it only when
necessary to win and preserve the workers' revolution. The Proletarian
Dictatorship is still fighting for its life in Soviet Russia.
It has only reached the doorstep of Communism. Capitalism throughout
the world, aided and abetted by the Chernovs, has made war, is
making war, and will continue to make war to its last breath
against the emancipating rule of Russia's workers. But Communism
replies to Capitalism with its own weapons, the only weapons
Capitalism knows, and with the spread of the social revolution
over the world, the workers everywhere are compelled to take
their stand." Engdahl notes that a copy of the communication
to Debs and invited Debs' reply for publication in The Worker.
"An Answer from Debs,"
by Theodore Debs [Aug. 9, 1922] Reply on behalf of Gene Debs by his brother and
personal secretary, Theodore, to Louis Engdahl's open letter
of August 3, 1922. "The attempt to make [Gene] appear the
enemy of Lenin and the Soviet Government in face of the fact
that from the hour that government was born he proclaimed himself
its friend and has stood by it and defended and extolled Lenin
and Trotsky in every word uttered and written, is too false and
silly to merit attention," writes Theodore. While Engdahl's
indictment of the offenses of the Socialist Revolutionary Party
in the Civil War is complete, it is nevertheless one-sided, omitting
the fact that violence and outrages were committed by both sides,
and that the PSR were victims as well as perpetrators. Gene Debs
"does not believe in revenge, in capital punishment, in
cold-blooded murder, and these brutal passions and atrocious
crimes are all the more reprehensible in his eyes when committed
in the name of law and justice by Socialists who have for years
been denouncing capitalism for these identical infamies,"
writes Theodore. "If we believe in bloodthirsty revenge,
in cruel reprisals and savage killings to satisfy our law and
ethics, we are even lower than the capitalists and their mercenary
hangmen, who at least make no pretense of such humane ideals
as we profess and shamelessly betray the moment we succeed to
power." Further, Gene Debs is said to be convinced "that
the murder of these men would betray the weakness and fear of
the Soviet Government and bring it into contempt all over the
world among people who now give it their allegiance and support."
"A Reply to Debs," by
J. Louis Engdahl [Aug. 26, 1922] Rejoinder by the Editor of The Worker to Theodore
Debs' "Answer from Debs" of August 9, 1922. Engdahl
backs away from his implication that Eugene Debs is in the camp
of the international counterrevolutionary movement and instead
dismisses him as a wavering pacifist. Engdahl states that it
was easy for the pacifist humanitarian Debs to be anti-war; the
acid test of "his standing as a revolutionist came in 1920,
when, as the Presidential candidate of the Socialist Party, he
declared, 'I am a Socialist, not a Communist.'" Engdahl
sates that while the Bolsheviks have desired peace, "the
Socialist (Counter-)Revolutionaries, with their party, stood
on the side of capitalist oppression, and they must suffer the
consequences." He continues that "Capitalist nations
may rest upon their arms for recuperation between wars and wax
merciful for a time toward war objectors, toward pacifists. But
there is no letup in the class war until the social revolution
has spread to every land and established its victory without
dispute. Then, with the inauguration of a Communist Society,
mercy and humanity will come into their own, not because there
were those who sympathized with Lenin or Trotsky, or any other
revolutionary leaders, but because the world heard the tramp
of millions ready to give their all, their lives, for the winning
of the New Day."
SEPTEMBER
"The Sad Tale of Tomsky Sawyerovich,"
by William M. Fiegenbaum [Sept. 12, 1922] This mocking article by William Feigenbaum, distributed
by the Socialist Party's press service, likens the behavior of
the American Communist movement to the farcical and melodramatic
shenanigans of Mark Twain's fictional character, Tom Sawyer.
Fiegenbaum calls the Communists "another crop of children
running around loose who are playing another game; it is more
elaborate, more costly, a little sillier, and the children who
are playing it are a little older and they ought to be able to
have something more serious to do with their time, but they're
also having an amazing good time about it in spite of it all."
Fiegenbaum declares that "These childish romanticists in
the United States, having read about the fun they used to have
in Russia, proceeded to do the same thing here.... it isn't against
the law here to organize a political party; it isn't against
the law to teach political principles. It isn't against the law
to publish newspapers that openly proclaim what one believes
- even though those laws may have lately been more honored in
the breach than in the observance." However, Fiegenbaum
observes, "these later day Tom Sawyers won't have it that
way," instead lurking about at secret conventions in the
Michigan woods, where they might receive their patently obvious
political directions from romantic authority figures from abroad.
OCTOBER
"Review and Personal Statement,"
by Eugene V. Debs. [Oct. 2, 1922] At
the time Gene Debs was imprisoned in April of 1919, factional
storm clouds were brewing in the Socialist Party of America,
but the party had not been split asunder. Isolated from active
politics, the factional wars of 1919-21 took place in his absence,
with Debs maintaining a strict neutrality in terms of stating
his personal allegiance. It was not until this lengthy October
1922 published statement that Debs formally declared his intention
to stay with his beloved Socialist Party and to help rebuild
it. Debs encouraged others to rebuild their locals, pay their
dues, to send organizers into the field, and to spread propaganda
far and wide. Debs stoutly refused to engage in polemics, stating
that "I have never had any heart for factional warfare.
I simply cannot and will not engage in it. I can argue and reason
with comrades, but I cannot and will not give way to anger and
resort to vituperation over my differences with them." Debs
closes with a strong statement of unconditional support for the
Russian Revolution: "It matters not what its mistakes have
been, nor what may be charged against it, the Russian Revolution,
in what it expresses for the Russian people and in what it portends
for the oppressed and exploited peoples of all nations, is the
greatest, most luminous and far reaching achievement in the entire
sweep of human history."
NOVEMBER
"Embattled Liberators,"
by Eugene V. Debs. [written Nov. 1922] An
article written to herald the 5th Anniversary of the Russian
Revolution by Socialist Party orator Eugene Debs. Debs does not
step back from the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic
an inch: "That the revolution and the republic which sprang
from it have survived, not only to be commemorated on their Fifth
Anniversary, but are today more puissant and promising, and pulse
with keener life and activity than ever before, in the face of
every conceivable attempt to crush and destroy them on the part
of the combined capitalist powers of the earth, is a miracle
no less marvelous and seemingly impossible than the revolution
and republic themselves." First published in the Dec. 1922
issue of The Liberator.
FEBRUARY
"A Sheriff I Loved,"
by Eugene V. Debs [Feb. 9, 1923] Socialist orator Gene Debs provides a remembrance
his unusual friendship of 27 years with one of his former captors,
George Eckert, sheriff of McHenry County, Illinois. In 1895,
jailed for his part in the 1894 strike of the American Railway
Union, Debs had been moved from Cook Co. Jail to McHenry Co.
Jail due to overcrowding. Inflamed by the Right Wing press, a
potential lynch mob gathered to meet Debs at the train. "The
farmers were there with their threats and mutterings, and with
some other sheriff than George Eckert in charge might have attempted
their cowardly program. But George Eckert was a man as well as
a sheriff, and he told them, in words they did not fail to understand,
that I was his prisoner, and that it was his duty to protect
as well as to jail me, and that he proposed to do it. The would-be
lynchers knew George Eckert, and slunk away in the darkness.
They knew he would protect me -- if necessary with his own life."
The pair had remained in regular touch for the rest of their
lives.
MARCH
"The Secret is Out,"
by Otto Branstetter [March 1923] This article by Socialist Party Executive Secretary
Otto Branstetter attempts to make political hay out of the Workers
Party's attempt to gain admittance in the Conference for Progressive
Political Action, ostensibly to work alongside organizations
upon which they had for years poured venom and vilification,
such as the Socialist Party, the Farmer-Labor Party, AF of L
unions, and the Committee of 48. This effort at admission to
the CPPA had been turned back by the Socialists, causing Louis
Engdahl to protest on behalf of the Workers Party. Branstetter
mockingly remarks that "the matter is now perfectly clear.
The aggregation of camouflaged communists and government agents
known as the Workers Party is revolutionary because it wants
to affiliate with the 'yellow' Socialist Party. The Socialist
Party is reactionary because it won't let them. What a shame!"
Branstetter also smirks that "Another decided difference
has been brought to light by the testimony of Ruthenberg at the
Bridgman trial. Ruthenberg quoted Lenin as saying that all talk
of armed insurrection in the United States at present is 'nonsensical.'
That settles it. The difference between a Socialist and a Communist
is that the Socialist knew this all the time and said so -- which
made him 'yellow'; the Communist didn't know it until Lenin told
him, which makes him 'red.'"
"The Enemy Within,"
by Bertha Hale White [March 1923] This article by Socialist Party Assistant Executive
Secretary Bertha Hale White makes an explicit charge against
Alexander Stoklitsky, Translator-Secretary of the Russian Socialist
Federation of the Socialist Party in 1919, accusing him of being
"a secret employee of a detective bureau" who worked
to disrupt and disorganize the Socialist Party in conjunction
with Louis Fraina, who is himself characterized as "an undercover
man for the Department of Justice." White offers not a whit
of concrete evidence in support of her spy-mania. Instead she
recounts the disputed party of election of 1919, in which 30,000
printed ballots are said to have vanished and a Left Wing rebellion
is said to have been run from Stoklitsky's office at SP headquarters
in Chicago. White melodramatically declares: "The knowledge
of Stoklitsky's treachery came with peculiar bitterness. While
his rude and boorish manner made it impossible to associate with
him without irritation, he had enjoyed the unqualified confidence
of the National Office and no suspicion of him had stayed his
hand while he scattered the seeds of dissension and hatred. All
the tyranny and persecution of the war could not shatter the
Socialist Party. Stoklitsky, agent provocateur, had more efficient
methods. In less than a year after he come into the National
Office he had accomplished the task assigned him by the enemies
of the Socialist Party. In the midst of fratricidal strife the
Communist and Communist Labor Parties were organized and the
Socialist Party cleft to its foundations. Stoklitsky, glorious
leader of the 'Left,' was the final authority in all the newest
modes and fashions of the 'revolution' and for a little while
no one could aspire to recognition or distinction in those circles
who failed of his approval. Then came the red raids. Stoklitsky,
arrested and indicted with countless others, slipped casually
through the police net and disappeared. His mission was fulfilled
for the Socialist Party was disrupted and the 'red menace' had
thoroughly hoaxed the American public."
"Inviting Debs to Soviet
Russia: Letter from Israel Amter in Moscow to the Presidium of
the Comintern, March 9, 1923. Despite his decision to stick with the Socialist
Party of America which he helped to found, the American Communists
continued to hold out hope that Eugene Debs would turn his back
on the SPA's increasingly conservative leadership. This letter
from the CPA's man in Moscow, Israel Amter, noted that Debs had
at last been persuaded to visit Soviet Russia to see the situation
first-hand and requested that an invitation be cabled to Debs
by the Soviet railway union, central trade union body, or government.
Amter remarks that "when Debs came from prison, he was very
angry with the Communists for their failure to do anything to
obtain his release. Undoubtedly he was right in his contention,
but the American Party not understanding proper tactics and incensed
that he did not break away" from the Socialist Party and
consequently "did not feel inclined to speak in his behalf."
A sentimental disposition, Ill-health, and his "yellow Socialist"
brother had prevented closer collaboration between the Communists
and Debs -- who instead fell victim to the "trickery"
of the SPA. Nevertheless, Debs' honesty and love for the working
class combined with "repugnance at the brutal attacks of
the Socialist press on Soviet Russia have made him at last desire
to see Soviet Russia with his own eyes and judge for himself."
"Memo from C.E. Ruthenberg
to All WPA District Organizers on Infiltration of the Socialist
Party, March 17, 1923. A
memo from Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg to all District
Organizers of the Workers Party of America that a "left
wing" movement seemed to be emerging in the Socialist Party
and that "it is necessary for us to help crystallize that
left movement." The DOs are instructed to "select some
trustworthy and capable comrades who should be instructed to
make an effort to join one of their branches in their locality.
This is to be done in every city of your district where they
are strong. One or two comrades is sufficient for every branch.
The comrades must be absolutely trustworthy." This operation
is to be secret: "The entire question is absolutely confidential
and should not be made subject for discussion among the general
membership for obvious reasons," Ruthenberg notes.
"Letter to J. Louis Engdahl,
Editor of The Worker, in New York from Eugene V. Debs
in Chicago, March 17, 1923." Short letter by Socialist Party leader Gene Debs
to his former party comrade Louis Engdahl in reply to Engdahl's
letter of March 12, 1923, apparently bringing to Debs' attention
the action of SPA delegates in blocking Workers Party participation
at the 2nd conferences of the Conference for Progressive Political
Action (Cleveland, Dec. 1922) and the American Labor Party (New
York, March 1923). In effort to explain the actions of the Socialist
delegates to those gatherings, Debs sarcastically notes that
"it may be that the Socialist Party delegates at Cleveland
and New York voted as they did in order that the delegates of
the Workers Party might not suffer humiliation and imperil their
revolutionary reputation by affiliating with 'yellow-legged renegades,'
'agents of the petite bourgeoisie,' and 'traitors to the working
class.'" He adds that "had I been a delegate of the
Socialist Party I should have voted to admit the delegates of
the Workers Party notwithstanding their organs and speakers having
screamed themselves hoarse in their denunciation of the party
I represented. This would have been my answer to their silly
screeds and their vicious calumnies." Debs expresses the
belief that WPA exclusion "will be adjusted in due course."
APRIL
"Getting Together,"
by Eugene V. Debs. [April 1923] Article by the Socialist Party of America's 5-time
Presidential candidate on the trade union situation in America,
published in the monthly magazine of the Trade Union Educational
League. Debs states that recent defeats of major strikes in the
steel, mining, and railroad industries would have been winnable
had they been conducted by unified industrial unions rather than
a multitude of fragmented craft unions -- a form of organization
which Debs believed to be an obsolete relic of individual handicraft
production, utterly unsuited to the large-scale and complex industry
of the modern world. In advancing the end of amalgamation of
existing craft unions into large industrial unions, Debs wholeheartedly
supports the work of the TUEL: "The Trade Union Educational
League, under the direction and inspiration of William Z. Foster,
is in my opinion the one rightly directed movement for the industrial
unification of the American workers. I thoroughly believe in
its plan and its methods and I feel very confident of its steady
progress and the ultimate achievement of its ends."
"Letter to Otto Branstetter,
Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America in Chicago
from J.G. Brown, Secretary of the Farmer-Labor Party of the US
in Chicago, April 11, 1923." This letter from the Secretary of the Farmer-Labor
Party to the Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party invites
the latter to elect delegates to the forthcoming July 3 national
convention of the FLP. Brown writes: "In the past, as you
know, the farmers and city workers have been either divided in
numerous minority parties with competing candidates at election
time or have supported the candidates of one of the old parties.
Where the latter course has been followed it has been with the
hope that if friendly candidates were elected consideration would
be given to the political demands of both divisions of labor.
Nearly all agree that results from any of the plans so far tried
have not been satisfactory. All felt the methods followed were
justified as being the best under the circumstances. Many have
waited and hoped that some group would take the step now being
taken by the Farmer-Labor Party and invite all organizations
and all parties to a convention where this grave situation might
be dispassionately discussed and, if possible, ways and means
found for solidifying political power of the workers as has been
done in other countries." The Socialist Party is asked to
forward a list of delegates to the convention and additionally
to contribute "any amount you can send" to help defray
the substantial costs of the convention.
"NY Call in Conspiracy
Against Russia; Also in War on American Communists; NY Socialists
Hold Underground Meeting," by H.M. Wicks [April 21, 1923]
During the winter
of 1922-23 and the spring of 1923, the Workers Party and the
Socialist Party simultaneously engaged in an escalation of rhetoric,
making permanent a rift in the ranks of the American Left that
would last for decades. Aspects of this "Divided Front"
included the ongoing effort of the Socialist Party to exclude
and isolate the Workers Party from the Conference for Progressive
Political Action (Dec. 11-12, 1922) and from the American Labor
Party (March 3-4, 1923) and a covert operation of the WPA to
infiltrate its members in the SPA down to the branch level (per
March 17, 1923 memo by Ruthenberg). As was the case during the
1919 Socialist Party internal war, the SP daily New York Call
was dragged from a position of relative neutrality in the internecine
scuffle into the position of being an instrument of factional
warfare on behalf of the SP Regulars. This article from the WPA
weekly organ, The Worker, reports (on the basis of unnamed
sources providing "absolutely trustworthy and authentic
information") a "secret meeting" held on the evening
of Thursday, March 23, 1923. At this meeting, said to include
representatives of the Call Managing Board, the Amalgamated
Clothing Workers, the Jewish Daily Forward, and the Rand
School -- Call Editor David Karsner was said to have been
subjected to serious criticism for pulling punches in the factional
war and for soft-pedaling defects in the political practice of
Soviet Russia. A resolution was unanimously adopted, according
to the Worker exposé, which launched a systematic
attack on the Communists and their efforts at "boring from
within" in the labor movement, and directing Karsner to
ignore Soviet Russia as much as possible. The Worker article
cites New York Call content from the issues of April 3,
4, 6, and 7, indicating that this direction to Editor Karsner
was put into practice. The Call was thus engaged in a
"campaign of slander against the Communists and the Russian
Revolution" and was further taking positions at odds with
those of SP leader Gene Debs, who supported the Russian Revolution,
the constitutional rights of the Michigan trial defendants, and
the work of the Trade Union Educational League, the Worker
article charged.
"Cahan Dictator of The
Call as Karsner, Editor, Resigns; More Light on Anti-Soviet
Plot," by J. Louis Engdahl [April 28, 1923] The sudden resignation of New
York Call editor David Karsner "confirmed" the
reporting of The Worker on a change of political line
at the New York Call, states this follow-up article by
Worker editor Louis Engdahl. In reality, rather than regurgitating
the melodramatic tale told April 21 of a "secret meeting"
of New York's leading "yellow Socialists," this report
retells the complete tale with more nuance, due in no small measure
to the cooperation of "the best sources in the New York
Call office" -- meaning, it would seem from the content
here, Karsner himself. The revised and enlarged saga is as follows:
a dire financial situation in the call necessitated a March 29,
1923, meeting of the Board of Directors of the New York daily
(previously described as the "secret meeting"). It
was determined to bring the paper closer to the (anti-Communist)
political line of the prosperous Jewish Daily Forward
in hopes of winning temporary financial support from that quarter.
A resolution introduced by Algernon Lee bound editor Karsner
to follow this line. A committee of 3, including staunch Red-fighter
James Oneal, was appointed to ensure Karsner's obedience to this
directive. Material critical of the Workers Party defendants
in Michigan had been published before the Foster jury had arrived
at a verdict at Oneal's direction, over the objections of Karsner.
A piece of anti-Soviet reportage from the New York Herald
had been directed to editor Karsner from the Call's city desk,
and Karsner had run it on his own authority, attempting to follow
the new line established for the publication. A firestorm of
reader anger had resulted, and at the regularly scheduled April
6 meeting of the Call's Board of Directors, Karsner had
been subjected to harsh criticism for his failure in judgment.
"In the quarrel which ensued, Karsner gave his resignation
as editor, to become effective a few days later," Engdahl
states. The Board wrote an apologetic retraction of the story
which had first appeared in the Herald and ordered its
publication in the Sunday and Monday editions of the paper. The
retraction had run in the Sunday edition, but Abraham Cahan of
the Jewish Daily Forward raised an objection to the retraction
and the Board had retreated, scrapping plans to run the apology
again in the Monday edition. Engdahl concludes that "The
reactionary "Abe" Cahan and the yellow Socialist Forward
dictates the policy of The Call. It is a policy of war
against Soviet Russia and the Communists. In this war the Socialists
gladly ally themselves with the capitalist agents. It is the
duty of all workers to boycott these prostituted sheets."
MAY
"Michigan in the Muck,"
by Eugene V. Debs. [May 1923] Article on the heated legal battle in Michigan
over the August 1922 raid of the Communist Party of America's
Bridgman, Michigan convention published in the pages of The
Liberator. Debs, the most widely recognized member of the
Socialist Party's National Executive Committee, unleashes a barrage
on the "idiotic and criminal 'criminal syndicalist' law
enacted by political crooks to seal the lips of industrial slaves"
in Michigan. Debs charges that "The communists had as good
a right to hold a convention in the state of Michigan and to
discuss their affairs and formulate their program, any kind of
a program that stopped short of the actual commission of crime
penalized under the law, as the graft-infested Republican and
Democratic parties have to hold such a convention." The
Michigan prosecutions were nothing but a "foul assault upon
the Constitution and upon the elemental rights of citizenship,"
according to Debs.
"Report of the Jewish Alliance:
Delivered to the National Convention of the Socialist Party,
New York -- May 19-22, 1923," by Alexander Kahn This is the report of the Jewish
Socialist Verband (JSV) to the 1923 annual convention of the
Socialist Party. Kahn reports that the former Jewish Socialist
Federation had fallen into the hands of "a group which was
not sincere enough to withstand the crisis in the Socialist Party,
and not foolish nor mad enough to join the Communists."
The national office of the Federation, official organ, and membership
rolls had been lost and the JSV forced to organize from scratch.
The group seceding from the SP had attempted to win control of
the Jewish Daily Forward, the Jewish trade union movement,
and the Workmen's Circle as well, Kahn notes, but had been turned
back in their efforts. The JSV had established its own organ,
Der Wecker, and its ranks had grown from 250 to about
800 in the subsequent 2 years. Kahn likens the disproportionately
strong influence of the JSV to the influence of the Independent
Labour Party in Great Britain: "As compared to the rest
of the movement the membership is small. But nothing is done
in the Jewish labor movement without the cooperation or leadership
of the Verband."
"Report of the Jugoslav Federation
on the 4th Convention of the JSZ: Chicago -- May 27-29, 1923,"
by Frank Petrich [end of May 1923] Report to the Socialist Party of the 1923 convention
of the Yugoslav Federation, Socialist Party (JSV) by the Secretary
of the organization, a leading Slovenian Socialist. The JSV convention
was attended by 21 regular and 17 other delegates. It passed
resolutions following those of the 1923 Socialist Party Convention
as well as an extensive supplemental resolution on the Immigration
Question, reproduced here. Legislation was recommended guaranteeing
immigrant workers the right to move from job to job, banning
importation of labor for the purposes of strikebreaking, and
easing the process of naturalization of immigrants into American
citizenship. Also includes an excerpt of the resolution on the
Yugoslav situation, in which the lack of self-determination of
peoples (previously touted during the war years) is decried.
JUNE
"Reply to the Farmer-Labor
Party: A Letter to J.G. Brown, Secretary of the Farmer-Labor
Party of the United States from a Committee of the Socialist
Party of America, circa June 1, 1923," by William Henry
et al. Official
reply of the Socialist Party to the April 11, 1923, invitation
of the Farmer-Labor Party for the SP to send delegates to its
June 3 convention in Chicago. The Socialist Party declines to
attend: "The Socialist Party fully agrees with the Farmer-Labor
Party as to the desirability of uniting the workers on the political
field. The only question is how soon and by what means this end
can best be attained. A necessary condition to the establishment
of a really powerful political party of the working class is
the active support of at least a majority of the great trade
unions. Unless there is assurance that this support is now obtainable,
any attempt at this time to effect the proposed "unity of
the political forces of the entire working class" would
result in disappointment. Is there reason to believe that a sufficient
number of powerful national and international unions favor independent
political action at the present time? We wish that we could answer
this question in the affirmative. Candor compels us to admit
that, while there are evidences of widespread discontent with
the parties of capitalism within the ranks of Organized Labor,
comparatively few of the great unions are yet ready to take the
decisive step of launching a working class party on a national
scale." The situation was seen as fluid however: "We
are convinced that working class opinion is fast evolving in
this direction, influenced thereto by the logic of events as
well as by the arguments of those who already advocate independent
political action. We think, however, that it would be a mistake
to force the issue prematurely, or to take such action as might
give a delusive appearance of political unity of the whole working
class without the reality."
"Socialist Party National
Convention Delegates Remain Silent in Face of Attack on Soviet
Russia: Cahan Rages in Attack on Soviet Rule," by H.M Wicks
[June 2, 1923] First-hand
account of the Socialist Party's 11th National Convention (May
1923) written by The Worker's journalistic attack dog,
Harry Wicks. Wicks sinks his teeth into the convention keynote
speech of "notorious Bolshevik baiter and editor of the
Jewish (Socialist) Daily Forward" Abraham Cahan --
a "tirade that was so acrimonious, intemperate, and obviously
false that the majority of the delegates were stunned."
Wicks quotes Cahan as calling Trotsky a "bombastic windbag,"
Lenin a "muddlehead fanatic," Radek a dishonest and
shady adventurer, Bukharin a "simple-minded fellow -- a
mere baby in intelligence," and Zinoviev a "rotten
egg" responsible for mass murder with a Swiss bank account
at his disposal. He repeats accusations in the capitalist press
that the Soviet government had made available a "$13 million
fund sent out...to corrupt the world." Wicks quotes Cahan
as saying of the Communists in America that "we must always
fight them. Never show them any favors, but knock them in the
head." Wicks intriguingly adds (without providing any specifics)
that "This advice seems to have been followed by the yellow
leaders of some of the needle trades unions, who employ sluggers
and gangsters against the 'Left' opposition in their own unions."
Only 6 of those present applauded Cahan's ill-tempered remarks
upon their conclusion, Wicks notes. Wicks also details the Socialist
Party's inability to pass any meaningful resolution on the question
of International affiliation, sending the question back to committee
from whence a carefully drafting and vapid resolution completely
avoiding the controversial topic of alliance with the advocates
of "Social Peace" issued forth.
"Socialist Party Convention
Rejects the United Front," by John Pepper [June 2, 1923]
Workers Party
of America leader John Pepper comments upon the recently-concluded
1923 Convention of the Socialist Party of America, which he characterizes
as a "debacle without equal" and a "pitiful spectacle."
Pepper declares that the SPA, devoid of ideas and of leadership,
had produced a gathering so vacuous that "the emptiest convention
of the smallest trade union is more instructive and richer in
content than this so-called National Convention of a so-called
political workers' party." Pepper adds that "It may
sound paradoxical, but it is true nonetheless, that in spite
of its opportunism, the Socialist Party is nothing but a sect.
We are accustomed to consider opportunism and reformism as maladies
of mass parties. But the Socialist Party is a freak -- an opportunist
sect." Pepper upbraids the SP for refusing to join the WPA
in a United Front on common matters of interest to the working
class. He notes that the accusation that the WPA is directed
by Russians is preposterous coming from a party dominated by
emigre Jews from the Russian Empire, such as Hillquit, Cahan,
London, Shiplacoff, and Panken. Pepper asserts that the SPA's
claim to American origins is false, with its own statistics proving
that "almost half of it consists of Foreign Language Federations,
and when we examine more closely the so-called English-speaking
elements in the SP, we see that even these are mainly foreign-born,
principally Jewish elements." Pepper declares that "The
Socialist Party rejects the United Front with the Workers Party
because it has degraded itself to an accomplice of the agents
of the capitalists," allying itself with Gompers and the
lower middle class reformers of the CPPA against the interests
of the working class in establishing an independent Labor Party.
"In obstructing the United Front the Socialist Party becomes
an agent of the capitalists," Pepper asserts. Pepper also
accuses SP leader James Oneal of falsifying quotations of Communist
documents in order to subvert any movement towards a United Front.
"Debs -- Chairman of the
Socialist Party," by John Pepper [June 9, 1923] This is perhaps as interesting
for the presumptions which Workers Party leader John Pepper makes
about the rival Socialist Party of America than for its concrete
analysis. Veteran Left Socialist Eugene V. Debs has been elected
to the National Executive Committee of the SPA for the first
time since 1899, Pepper announces, and further elected National
Chairman of the organization. As the titular leader, Debs now
faced a "dilemma" of whether to continue to support
the policies he had long advocated, including Amalgamation, support
of Soviet Russia, and support of the United Front with the WPA
-- or whether he would cave in to support the "petty Tammany
Hall" regime of "Hillquit and Berger" which stood
as official party policy. "If he fights for his own political
views, he must fight against the petty Tammany Hall of Hillquit
and Berger. But the destruction of the petty Tammany Hall of
the Socialist Party officialdom means the death of the Socialist
Party. And yet, if Debs chooses the other way, and accepts the
policy of the petty Tammany Hall of Hillquit and Berger, the
laboring masses who have confidence in him today will quickly
abandon him. That also means the death of the Socialist Party
in another way." Includes extensive footnotes by Tim Davenport
examining various dubious assertions about SPA ideology made
by Pepper in this article, which seems to have been essentially
agitational rather than truly analytical.
"Statement in Reply to the
Socialist Party's Decision Not to Participate in the July 1923
Convention of the Farmer-Labor Party of the United States, circa
June 23, 1923," by Jay G. Brown Disappointment and pique is palpable in this response
of the National Secretary of the Farmer-Labor Party of the United
States to the June 19, 1923 declination of the Socialist Party
of America to participate in the forthcoming July 3 convention
of the FLPUS -- a special gathering which was intended to attempt
to unite the political activities of various working class political
parties under a common banner in the 1924 elections. The 1923
SPA convention had appointed a committee to reply to the FLPUS
before its adjournment on May 22, but a reply had not been received
until fully a month later, and this only after the letter of
declination was first published in the pages of the New York
Call. "To profess a desire for unity and then refuse
to discuss means of achieving it is not a very consistent attitude.
To withhold sending a communication for 30 days was discourteous;
to publish the letter before mailing it was to capitalize the
discourtesy," Brown declares. "The action of the Socialist
Party has been a disappointment to the Farmer-Labor Party,"
Brown states, adding that the Farmer-Labor Party "felt the
Socialist Party would be the last group to refuse. No obligation
was exacted in advance, no expense was entailed, no pledge to
abide by the findings was required." With the Socialist
Party opting out, the Farmer-Labor Party was faced with the prospect
of conducting a joint convention in just 10 days time with potential
allies on the far Left with whom it shared less in common --
the Workers Party of America and the Proletarian Party of America.
SEPTEMBER
"Let Us Build," by Eugene
V. Debs. [Sept. 1923] From
the time of his imprisonment in 1919 until the end of his life,
Gene Debs tirelessly argued against factionalism within the radical
movement. In this article from the Socialist Party's official
organ, Debs rues the energy lost to factional infighting and
calls for an end to namecalling ("reds" vs. "yellows)
in the party. He colorfully remarks that "I know a good
many of both, and so far as I am able to discern, they are much
alike. The actual difference between them, were it fire, would
hardly be enough to light a cigarette." Debs does utter
stern tones when he observes that "there is room enough"
in the Socialist Party "for everyone who subscribes to its
principles and upholds them in good faith; but there is no room
in it for those who either openly sneer at political action or
who avow it falsely to mask their treachery while they carry
on their work of disruption." Debs calls for unity of effort
in a period of protracted party building and press building.
"The Story of the British
Labour Party," by Morris Hillquit [Sept. 1923] The stunning success of the British
Labour Party in realigning the two-party system of that nation
during the first two decades of the 20th Century served as a
practical model for both the Socialist Party of America and the
Workers (Communist) Party, each in their own way. This article
by SPA leader Morris Hillquit in the party's official organ recounted
the path of success in Great Britain. It was there that "a
series of intense industrial struggles in which the powers of
the government were openly and consistently arrayed on the side
of the employers and against labor," prompting the British
Trades Union Congress to pass a resolution in 1899 calling for
a conference of trade unions, socialist parties, cooperative
societies, and other labor organizations to devise means for
gaining better representation in the House of Commons. This conference
evolved into the British Labour Party, which had received a full
third of the vote and emerged as the primary opposition group
in the 1922 national elections. "With the crying needs for
political relief in this country and with the example and ready
methods of England back of us we can form a powerful Labor Party
in this country today; we can challenge the supremacy of the
old parties in a few years," Hillquit hopefully opined.
OCTOBER
"Rebuilding the Socialist
Party," by James Oneal [Oct. 1923] This article by Socialist Party leader James Oneal
attempts to spin the SPA's precipitous decline in membership
as a normal aspect of a labor movement in retreat across the
country. "One striking fact regarding working class organizations
since the end of the World War is that all of them, conservative
and radical, have suffered a heavy loss in membership,"
writes Oneal, noting the American Federation of Labor had shed
over 1 million members, falling from 4 million to under 3 million
in the years 1919-1923. Oneal fails to note the magnitude of
the SPA's catastrophic decline, with the party losing approximately
90% of its members during the same interval -- an avalanche triggered
in large part by NEC member Oneal's own motions and votes to
suspend 7 foreign language federations and various state party
organizations in 1919. "The Socialist Party also lost members.
Government and 'patriotic' persecution destroyed many branches.
Communism destroyed many more. Now we have reached the period
of party building," Oneal blandly states and optimistically
concludes. Oneal sees hope in the experience of the British fraternal
party of the SPA, the Independent Labour Party, which had emerged
from its own demoralization and funk to provide 32 elected Members
of Parliament, including Ramsay MacDonald as Labour Party speaker
in Commons. "What the ILP has done the Socialist Party can
do," Oneal declares.
"The Ku Klux Klan,"
by Victor L. Berger [Oct. 26, 1923] One of the oft-repeated chestnuts that one hears
about Socialist editor and Congressman Victor Berger of Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, is that the man was a confirmed racist. This article
by Berger, reprinted in the pages of the Miami Valley Socialist
[Dayton, OH], effectively belies such nonsense. Advised to "go
easy" on the KKK, Berger responds by standing up up boldly
and fearlessly to the goup, an organization which registered
impressive growth in size and influence during the first half
of the 1920s. Berger minces no words: "I consider the Ku
Klux Klan an organization built upon race hatred and religious
hatred. I know it to be anti-social and anti-American -- a menace
to rich and poor, to workers and capitalists alike. I believe
the Klan to be an utterly venomous, cowardly, and despicable
gang of marauders hiding under the cloak of secrecy and mysticism
and patriotism." If Berger can be justly accused of national
chauvinism, the object of his antipathy is an unconventional
target; Berger alleges the Klan to be "the only proof of
a yellow streak in the American people and particularly in the
Anglo-Saxon race -- which is very much inbred and degenerated
in certain parts of the South that had little immigration and
infusion of new and healthy European blood." Berger likens
the KKK to the reign of terror of the Know-Nothings in the 1850s,
a semi-secret organization of ultra-nationalist thugs who burned
Catholic churches and "killed many hundred Irish people
in a riot lasting several days in Louisville." Berger declares:
"I am opposed to the Klan, not only because the Ku Klux
Klan has made the fight on Socialism, trade unionism, the IWW,
etc., one of its principle objects... Not only because the Klan
has been guilty of murders and terrible outrages against railroad
men during their recent strike. Not only because they have been
unspeakably cruel against Jews, Catholics, and Negroes. I am
opposed because the mere existence of an organization like the
Klan is a menace to the entire commonwealth. It seeks to substitute
organized crime for organized government."
"After 5 Years, Debs Completes
Canton Address: Noted Socialist Comes Back to Canton With Praise
for City: Says World Was Never More Unsafe For Democracy Than
Now." (Miami Valley Socialist) [event of Oct. 31,
1923] On Oct.
31, 1923, Socialist orator Gene Debs was able to finish the speech
which he had begun 5 years earlier in Canton, Ohio -- for which
he was sent to prison for nearly 3 years by the Justice Department
of the Woodrow Wilson regime. ""I was not for the war.
I did not want war. But I was in it," Debs told the audience
of 1500 persons, adding, "I was conscripted. I was taken
by the selective draft. And I am still waiting for my bonus.
Woodrow Wilson was unanimously elected President of the United
States for keeping us out of war. I was given 10 years in the
Atlanta prison for trying to do the same thing." Debs sounds
an ominous warning: ""The whole world is preparing
for the next war. This war will be fought in the air. Experts
are working now in the many laboratories throughout the country,
preparing liquid fire and powerful explosives which will be used.
Even the savages spared women and children. The next war will
not. Explosives will be dropped from the air, and men, women,
and helpless children will be annihilated wholesale. And this
is what you vote for when you vote the Democratic or Republican
ticket."
NOVEMBER
"Letter from C.E. Ruthenberg
in Chicago to Morris Hillquit in New York, Nov. 3, 1923."
A cryptic note sent from the Executive
Secretary of the Workers Party of the member to the leading light
of the arch-rival Socialist Party of America. Ruthenberg notes
that he will be in New York on Nov. 8, 1923, and that he seeks
a conference with Hillquit to "talk with you" in regard
to an invitation sent by the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party to
labor political groups for a Nov. 15 conference in St. Paul.
This conference was an attempt to "come to an agreement
on the question of calling a national convention for the nomination
of a presidential candidate and the adoption of a national platform."
Despite the hostility between the two organizations, this document
affirms that there was at least informal discussion at the top
level about the possibility of joint action with regards to the
Farmer-Labor Party movement.
MAY
"Open Letter to the National
Executive Committee of the Socialist Party from the Central Executive
Committee of the Workers Party of America." [May 14, 1924].
As the pivotal
St. Paul Farmer-Labor Party Convention of June 17, 1924 drew
near, the political rhetoric about the gathering intensified.
This open letter to the governing National Executive Committee
of the Socialist Party called upon that organization to "immediately
sever its connection with and repudiate" the competing July
4th Convention of the Conference for Progressive Political Action.
Contrary to the expressed desires of the Socialists, the CPPA
would not yield an independent labor party, the open letter declared.
"Even [if] the CPPA through some miracle were to enter into
the political arena as a political party standing for independent
political action, what kind of party would come out of the CPPA?...
Everyone knows that it does not. Its leadership belongs to the
aristocracy of labor. The LaFollette group in Congress which
it supports is not the representative of workers and farmers
but of small business me, professional groups -- the petty bourgeoisie.
Out of the CPPA there could only come a petty bourgeois Third
Party, never a Farmer-Labor Party standing for the class interests
of the exploited workers and farmers." The CEC of the Workers
Party's open letter declared that "If the Socialist Party
wishes to retain any vestige of a right to call itself a workers'
political organization, it will give heed to this demand. Today
it is an enemy of the movement for growing class action of farmers
and workers through its support of the CPPA, which denies and
opposes such class action and by its policy stands as an obstacle
to the development of a great mass movement of workers and farmers..."
JUNE
"Socialist Party Due to Make
Greatest Gains in its Entire History, Eugene Debs Declares:
National Chairman of the Socialist Party Outlines Political Situation..."
by Eugene V. Debs [June 14, 1924] This
article by Eugene Debs for the members of the Socialist Party,
written from a sanitarium in Colorado, consists of two parts
-- a brief historical overview of the SPA leading up to the forthcoming
St. Paul and Cleveland conventions aiming to establish a Labor
Party in America, and a plea for funds. Debs sees the volition
for a unified Labor Party in America as a sort of vindication
of the Socialist Party's 27 years of agitation for independent
political action by the working class, noting that both conservative
unionists on the right and communists on the left had been influenced
by the SP's teachings on the matter. "For myself, I earnestly
hope a united Labor Party, based upon the principles of industrial
democracy and cornerstoned in the interest of the working class,
may issue from these conventions; but whether it does nor not
we must preserve strictly the identity and guard rigidly the
integrity of the Socialist Party as an uncompromising revolutionary
political organization of the workers in their struggle for emancipation,"
Debs notes, thus indicating a willingness to make common cause
with the communists in the Labor Party task. As for funds, the
message is simple, the Socialist Party's "membership has
been greatly reduced and its treasury utterly bankrupted."
An appeal is made to loyalty, honor, and sense of obligation
for all members to immediately pay their back dues and the 50
cent to $5 voluntary convention assessment to the National Office.
OCTOBER
"The Death of the Socialist
Party," by J. Louis Engdahl [October 1924]. A final sneer at the Socialist Party from the
1924 campaign. Former editor of the Socialist Party's offical
organ Engdahl argues that the SP's immersion in the campaign
of progressive Republican Robert LaFollette for President of
the United States spells the final death knell for the SPA: "When
the Socialist Party deserted the 'Labor Party' fight, turned
its back on class action, and joined the LaFollette straddle
of the two old parties of Wall Street, its members had two choices.
They could either join the Communist forces in the Workers Party,
or go over into the LaFollette camp. Many did join the Communist
ranks, singly and in groups. The rest are going over to the temporary
LaFollette organizations that will collapse after the election
day has passed.... The Socialist movement has been swallowed
up in the LaFollette wave. It has been completely obliterated."
