JANUARY

"The American Labor Party," by Eugene V. Debs. [Jan. 1925] A 2nd National Convention of the Conference for Progressive Political Actions (CPPA) was scheduled to closely follow the completion of the 1924 LaFollette/Wheeler Presidential campaign. Chief on the agenda for the group was the establishment of a new political party, intended to be built upon the alliances around the country developed during the course of the fall of 1924. The Socialist Party sought the formation of a British-style Labor Party, federating component organizations and envisioning itself as playing the role of the Independent Labour Party in the UK. This article by Eugene Debs in the official organ of the Socialist Party of America gives voice to this desire. Debs states that despite the "blind stupidity of the workers and the covert machinations of their enemies to thwart or misdirect them," a Labor Party was inevitable in America. The staunch backing and support of the unions was mandatory for the success of such a venture, Debs declared, stating that while the leadership of the unions remained "almost to a man opposed to a Labor Party," hope lay in the hands of the rank and file, who might successfully be aroused to the task. Debs did not think it likely that such an organization would be constructed by the forthcoming gathering of the CPPA, but he hoped for the best and professed patience and an ability to wait.

 

FEBRUARY

"Speech to the Conference for Progressive Political Action, Feb. 21, 1925," by Eugene V. Debs. The National Chairman of the Socialist Party of America was the featured speaker at a "mass meeting" held at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago in conjunction with the Second Convention of the CPPA. This is the full text of his speech, from the official stenographic report of the convention. Debs argues that political parties can be either capitalist or socialist, but not both, and that any attempt to merge the "irrepressible" antagonistic interests of the capitalist class and the working class in a new party will be met with failure. Political parties by definition can not be non-partisan, Debs indicates, and the term "progressive" has been so "prostituted" that even J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller might be reasonably expected to consider themselves progressives. Only a true Labor Party dealing with the fundamental issue of whether the national as a whole should own and control its own industries has any prospects for long-term success, in Debs' view.

 

"Statement of Party Policy by the Socialist Party in National Convention, Chicago, Illinois -- Feb. 24, 1925." The 1925 "Special Convention" of the Socialist Party was scheduled and held in Chicago immediately after the close of the 2nd Convention of the Convention for Progressive Political Action. This statement was issued by the SPA's convention to announce to the party membership that the CPPA Convention had failed to establish a Labor Party on the British model, and that with the departure of the railway unions and failure of the CPPA to establish a Labor Party, there was "no conceivable good either to the Conference or to the Socialists" for any continued affiliation. The Socialist Party consequently was severing its relations with that organization.

 

MARCH

"The Chicago Conventions," by Bertha Hale White. [March 1925] Assessment of the Chicago conventions of the Conference for Progressive Political Action (Feb. 21-22, 1925) and the Socialist Party of America (Feb. 23-24, 1925) by the National Executive Secretary of the SPA. White provided valuable detail about the parliamentary maneuvering at the CPPA gathering -- a meeting split between the trade unionists seeking no party, socialists and radical unionists seeking a British Labor Party-style organization allowing participation by independent constituent organizations such as the Socialist Party, and liberals in favor of a Progressive Party constructed around a traditional individual memberships. White states that participants at the Socialist convention expressed "relief and satisfaction" knowing that the period of uncertainty was over effective with the unanimous decision of the SPA to withdraw from the CPPA.

 

"As to the Labor Defense Council," by Eugene V. Debs [March 1925] Although initially organized by the Communist Party as a broad-based non-party legal defense organization to aid the victims of the August 1922 raid on the party's convention at Bridgman, Michigan, by 1925 the Legal Defense Council had begun to take a more partisan cast. Lips began to wag about the presence of Socialist Party National Chairman Eugene V. Debs on the LDC's letterhead -- to the effect that Debs was, in deeds if not in words, sympathetic to the Communist cause. This prompted a reply by Debs in the official organ of the Socialist Party to discount any such speculation. "was organized to provide defense for Communists prosecuted under so-called criminal syndicalism and other laws because of their activities in the labor movement, the purpose of the defense being the preservation of the right of free speech, free assemblage, and other civil rights in the United States. I gladly accorded to this body the use of my name in raising funds and consented to be named as Vice President in its list of officers. I did this not so much for Foster, Ruthenberg, Minor, and others as individuals, but to back then up in the defense of their civil rights. That fight is also my fight," Debs declares. He bitterly notes that while the Communist Party "refused to lift a finger to help me out of prison," he nevertheless stood ready to defend the civil rights of Communists. Debs forcefully states that the "surreptitious" reports of his support of the Communists as against the Socialists are "on a par with some other falsehoods published in Communist organs to which my attention has been called." After this statement of his true allegiance, Debs insists that "if hereafter any Communist whispers it into your ear that I am with the Communists in anything except their right to free speech and other civil rights, just answer by turning your back upon him and leaving the vulgar falsifier to himself."

 

FEBRUARY

"Black Persecution," by Eugene V. Debs [Feb. 20, 1926] In this article by the Socialist Party's ceremonial "Chairman," Eugene Debs, the problem of racism is again raised, using as the foil the legal lynching of a black Kentuckian recently tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for rape and murder in less than 16 minutes. A bloodthirsty mob of so-called Christians surrounded the courthouse, intent on assuring by scarcely concealed threat of violence the maintenance of white supremacy in the region. Debs charges that in contrast "Many and many a Negro girl, scarcely out of her childhood, has been seduced, raped, assaulted by a Nordic gentleman (!) with a white skin, but it has never been necessary to order out the state militia to protect him against the avenging wrath of his Christian fellow-citizens." He declares that "the whole history of the Negro race in America is one to make the white race blush scarlet with shame. From the time the poor black man was seized in his native land by the brutal kidnapper of the slave-trader, loaded into a boat like a beast and on landing sold like one from the auction block; from that time to the 'Jim Crow' car has been one continuous shameless persecution of the Negro..."Debs states that it is certain that the mob was "without exception" a group of so-called "100% Americans." He adds that "there were few, if any, "ignorant and vicious foreigners" milling around madly intent upon the feast of blood. They were chiefly if not wholly native to the soil, having from the beginning enjoyed all the advantages of Christian culture, and having never been, like the poor Negro, kept under the lash, exploited, robbed, degraded in every possible way to make possible the blessings of such culture and civilization for the white race."

 

OCTOBER

"A Tribute to Debs," by Morris Hillquit. [Oct. 23, 1926] A short tribute to the Socialist leader written by his friend and comrade and published on the front page of The New Leader at the time of Debs' death. According to Hillquit, Debs was "a crusader and a fighter, but there was no hate in him. His most ardent fighting sprang from his deep and warm love for all that bears human countenance. A pure type of early Christian at his best, he was strangely misplaced in our cold age of selfishness and greed." "Through all the years of his struggles and suffering his frail body was vibrant with flaming vitality. In spite of his advanced age and ill health he was to the last the impersonation of radiant youth in his mental alertness and never-flagging enthusiasm."

 

NOVEMBER

"At the Bier of Debs," by Morris Hillquit [delivered Oct. 22; published Nov. 13, 1926] One of the funeral speeches delivered in Eugene Debs' honor from the porch of the Debs house in Terre Haute, Indiana in the afternoon of Friday, October 22, 1926 -- later reprinted in the Socialist press. Hillquit noted that while Debs "was one of the most effective orators of America" what really made the man was his personality. "It was first of all the boundless love of everything that bears human countenance which radiated from him. Not an intellectual love, not an abstract love, but a love that flowed naturally, organically, communicating itself electrically to all who came within the magic sphere of his personal contact. He loved everybody -- the poor and even the rich, the righteous, the criminal, and the outcast. He loved mankind and his very eloquence sprung from his love. He did not merely appeal and convince, he communicated part of himself, part of his very being to his audience."

 

"Debs and SP Policies," by James Oneal. [Nov. 13, 1926] The Socialist Party Old Guard's attack dog locks jaw on the "most revolting performance" of the American Communists in their attempt to "claim Eugene Debs as their own." To this end, two charges were made in a Communist leaflet distributed at a Debs memorial meeting held at Madison Square Garden which stick in Oneal's craw: (1) that Debs was "always on the left wing of the Socialist Party"; and (2) that only in recent years did the SP "permit" Debs to be a member of the SP's governing National Executive Committee. Oneal mocks the first assertion, dumping everything from the Social Democracy in America's colonization wing to Daniel DeLeon's ST&LA to the eccentric anti-union views of two 1904 SP convention delegates to the 1912 syndicalist movement into a single large bin labeled "left wing." Since Debs never followed any of this "topsy turvy conduct," Oneal asserts, the claim of Debs' fidelity to the "left" is absurd. Oneal depicts Debs' later pro-unity position as the result of sentimentality and the cause of unintentional misunderstanding and says that the 1905 decision to help form the IWW was a "mistake," soon corrected. As for the assertion that Debs was only allowed on the NEC in the last years, Oneal convincingly argues that Debs saw his role as a propagandist, not as a party executive, that he was regularly nominated -- and declined -- all such offices as a matter of preference, so that he might concentrate on his main mission. " It is precisely because he was committed to the Socialist Party and its policies that he consented to go to the National Executive Committee in recent years. The fact that he took up work that he disliked and which he had avoided for more than twenty years shows that he was so convinced that the Socialist Party represented his views," Oneal notes.

 

 

 

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AUGUST

"Speech to the Third Congress of the Labor and Socialist International, Aug. 6, 1928," by Morris Hillquit. Text of an address by the Chairman of the Socialist Party of the United States to the International Socialist Congress held in Brussels from Aug. 5 to 11, 1928. Hillquit identifies three trends in the development of the world economy in the post-World War world: centralization, internationalization, and Americanization. He cautions about the negative effects of industrial rationalization and the trend towards American financial hegemony, warns of a trend towards exploitation of cheap "Asiatic labor and labor in backward countries," and calls for international efforts to develop a labor movement "as powerful and more powerful than modern capitalism."

 

NOVEMBER

"Report of William H. Henry, National Secretary, to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, Nov. 24, 1928." This document covering the first 10 months of operations by the SPA in 1928 in comparison to the same period one year previous provides scholars with a first hard set of membership numbers for the organization for those two years. Includes a state-by-state membership count for 1927 and 1928, memberships for the five federations of the SPA, a brief discussion of organizational prospects in the various states, and financial details of the organization. Rather esoteric fare, perhaps, but a very important primary source document for specialists in the history of American radicalism in the 1920s.

 

"This Post-War Generation and Our Time: Will It Be Able to Find a Way Out?" by Anna P. Krasna [April 30, 1931] A little heard perspective: the views of a Depression-era Socialist rather than a Communist; of a woman, not a man; of a Slovene-American, not an Anglo-American. Anna P. Krasna, a writer, appeals to the youth of America to wake up and begin to take an active interest in politics, as a new war was in the wind. The post-war generation had been bred upon illusions of individual success and was learning that the brutal reality of the economic system was different, Krasna stated. "We are hoping that the youth, seeing the future holds nothing but misery in store for them, or perhaps a chance to die a heroic death for the international speculators and exploiters, shall demand the right to live as comfortably as the modern technical improvements permit" -- this to be achieved through participation in "the groups of those who believe in equality for all."

 

MAY

"The Finnish Socialists in America," by W.N. Reivo. [May 1932] Report of the Secretary of the Finnish Federation of the Socialist Party to the 17th National Convention of the organization, held in Milwaukee in May 1932. Reivo states in no uncertain terms that "the future of the Socialist Party in America is in the native born stock. They days of the language federations are in the past." Reivo notes that the children of Finnish immigrant socialist parents tend to join the English-language branches in their communities rather than the Finnish-language branches. This is not necessarily a bad thing, Reivo believes, as "perhaps it would be a mistake if the youth joined us directly and stood aloof of the body of the Socialist Party just as the older element does now." Nevertheless, the reputation of the Finnish Federation was greater than at any time since the 1920 split of the organization and the growth of the SP was edifying -- even if very few disgruntled ex-Communists were making the trek back to their former organization.

 

No Month Specified.

"Should the American Workers Form a Political Party of their Own? A Debate. Morris Hillquit (National Chairman, Socialist Party) -- Yes. Matthew Woll (Vice President, American Federation of Labor) - No. [1932] Nearly a decade after the Labor Party question first burned hot for the Socialist Party of America, its position had changed little -- it was in favor of establishing a constituent organization akin to the British Labour Party. Nor had the opposition of organized labor moved -- it remained, by and large, opposed to the establishment of a Third Party, instead continuing to tout the tactic of selective support of "Friends of Labor" within the two major parties. This 1932 debate between Socialist Party National Chairman Morris Hillquit and AFL Vice President Matthew Woll details the thinking behind each of these positions. In the course of his remarks Hillquit assigns blame for the failure of the Third Party movement in 1924 to the desire of Robert LaFollette to run alone, resulting in the "doom of the movement." The AFL is upbraided by Hillquit for its "late and...luke warm" support of the LaFollette candidacy, which is said to have killed any chance for the LaFollette campaign to lay "the foundation of a great and powerful labor party in America." Full text of a pamphlet published in 1932 by the Rand School of Social Science.

 

OCTOBER

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

 

DECEMBER

"As to 'Red Terror,'"by Will Herberg [Dec. 15, 1934] Rather snotty editorial from the pages of the offical organ of the Communist Party (Opposition) attacking Norman Thomas and the Socialist Party for their protests against the mass repression which swept the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the assassination of Sergei Kirov. "To get aroused to white-heat over the instant meting out of full and irrevocable justice to the White Guard assassins and to the imperialist spies would mean to get aroused over the enemies of the Socialist Soviet Republic. That's why silence in the case of Kirov and raucous anger in the case of Soviet justice," the editorial declares. The "bogus democratic justice" of the "Social Democratic tear-shedders" is condemned and Soviet mass reprisals defended: "Thomas and his colleagues are to be condemned in the most unmistakable terms by all honest socialists for their attempt to cover up the trail of the imperialist right and its hired assassins banded against the Soviet regime. Every class-conscious worker can only hail the swift and complete justice accorded the culprits in the Soviet Union."

 

No Month Specified.

Socialist Party/Social Democratic Federation dues card (1935-1937). *** PDF GRAPHICS FILE (475 k.) *** This is a very interesting item, a single Socialist Party dues card formerly belonging to Howard Rudner of 323 E. 200th St., Bronx, NY -- part of the Upper 8th Assembly District Bronx Branch. Rudner was admitted to the SPA on Feb. 27, 1935 and departed with the Old Guard in the 1936 party split. What makes this card so interesting are the use of four types of dues stamps on the single document -- (1) Regular SPA stamps from March 1935 through February 1936; (2) Stamps "Issued by Authority Socialist Party New York State" from March 1936 to June 1936; (3) Stamps of the "Social Democratic Federation of America" from July 1936 through March 1937; and (4) stamps of the "Social Democratic Federation USA" for April and May 1937. Since it is my belief that Rudner remained in the SDF after this date, this probably marks the date at which the SDF moved to issue party cards of its own.

 

MAY

"Notes on the United Front Problem," by Haim Kantorovitch [May 1936] Kantorovitch, an intellectual leader of the Socialist Party's "Militant" faction, takes aim both at the "Old Guard" defectors such as Louis Waldman, who after being soundly defeated by the SP majority in National Convention, in a party referendum, in the NEC, and in the New York SP primaries, are presumptuous enough to dictate terms under which they will return to the party fold. "It never occurred to people like Waldman that he and his followers could remain in the Socialist Party and use all the legal and ethical party channels to persuade the majority of the party members that after all the Old Guard was right," Kantorovitch observes. Instead, the Old Guard splitters had chosen to fight the party, making use of none-too-subtle red baiting tactics in the capitalist press. This involved a conscious attempt to confuse two distinct concepts, according to Kantorovitch: the United Front and "participation of Socialists in common action in which Communists also participate." In the former case, a "permanent and national agreement" between the Socialist and Communist Parties would lock the two organizations together, while in the latter case the Socialist and Communist Parties participate in joint projects as members of a still larger coalition, free to come or go or to criticize as each organization so desired. Kantorovitch sees the Old Guard Socialists as having adopted the discarded theory of social fascism and inverted it -- projecting instead the Communist Party as the "chief enemy" which must be defeated and stricken from the ranks of the labor before serious battle could be waged against capitalism, war, and fascism. Kantorovitch states that the revolutionary socialists of the Militant faction the Communists were an integral part of the labor movement -- merely one from which revolutionary socialists differed. Common action with such an organization was possible, Kantorovitch asserts, but not (in present circumstances) a United Front, which would inevitably require the Socialists to surrender their freedom and obligation to criticize particulars of Soviet Society, Stalin, and Stalinism.

 

 

MARCH

"Advance in Chicago: An Analysis of the March 1937 Special Convention," by Samuel Romer & Hal Siegel. Held only 10 months after the 1936 conclave, the Socialist Party's Special Convention of 1937 was ostensibly called to restructure the national organization, increasing centralization in place of the historic loose federation of largely independent state organizations and banning the factional press in favor of a central discussion bulletin. Factionalism remained one of the central concerns of the organization, however, particularly the working alliance between the historic small group of "single plankers" (who advocated no ameliorative reforms in the party program, only the agitation for revolutionary socialism) and the new cohort of former members of the Trotskyist "Workers Party," who shared this perspective and gave the position critical mass from a factional standpoint. Romer and Siegel, adherents of the majority Militant wing of the party, note that the decision to ban factional inner-party organs was made by the convention unanimously and saw this as a positive sign for the future of the organization.

 

MARCH

"The Moscow Trials," by Norman Thomas [March 1938] Article by the leader of the Socialist Party attempting to make sense of the Great Show Trials in Moscow -- the third of which, featuring Bukharin in the dock, was held March 2-13, 1938. "These confessions, true, false, or partly true and partly false, are for us who have believed in socialism as the hope of the world the occasion of bitter tears and deep humiliation," states Thomas, who notes similar patently false confessions happened during the period of the Spanish Inquisition and the witchcraft trials. "I assume that in a regime which makes possible no legal or democratic opposition even within the Communist Party to the decisions of the bureaucracy there have been plots. This was probably especially true in the dark days of 1932-1933....The important thing is that there is no interpretation of these trials which does not bring shame upon the regime," writes Thomas. He adds that "Lenin was a great enough man to master the amoral tactics which he consciously used with some regard for proportion and achievement. None of his successors has that ability. Insofar as Lenin, yes, and Trotsky, were responsible for this exaltation of secular Jesuitism as a kind of working class virtue, they must share in the guilt of its complete degeneration under Stalin.... [Stalin's] supreme failure has been an exaltation of a regime which makes suspicion of one's closest comrades inevitable and plots and counterplots the only vehicle of effective political activity." Thomas calls the USSR "a totalitarian state under a monolithic party" and presciently notes the likelihood of a change of party line with some chance of "an alliance or understanding with Hitler."

 

OCTOBER

"Motive-Patterns of Socialism," by Max Eastman [October 1939] Rather than dividing the adherents of socialism by the tactics they espouse -- revolutionary upheaval vs. the ballot box -- in this provocative essay radical publicist Max Eastman is concerned rather with the generalized motivations of the various advocates of socialism. Eastman sees three fundamental "motive-patterns." The first of these Eastman characterizes as "rebels against tyranny and oppression," who based their motivation upon the fundamental concept of "human freedom." The second motive-pattern Eastman calls the "united-brotherhood pattern," based upon a mixture of "religious mysticism" and "animal gregariousness for human solidarity." In the third motive-pattern group Eastman includes "those anxious about efficiency and intelligent organization," for whom "a cerebral anxiety capable of rising in times of crisis to a veritable passion for a plan." It is as a function of these underlying motive-patterns that the various responses by American radicals to the reality of Soviet Union emerged. "To libertarian socialists, therefore, no matter how monolithic it may become, nor how much industrial planning and solving of unemployment problems it may do, Stalin's Russia is a counterrevolutionary state," Eastman observes. On the other hand, the "human-solidarity socialists" concerned with constructing a quasi-religious movement in which the will of the individual is subjugated to the needs of the collective had come to see the USSR under Stalin as a sort of promised land. As for the third typology, those concerned with the business-like reorganization of society in the face of capitalist collapse, while not necessarily a promised land, "Russia seems at least a promising land." Eastman includes much of the American liberal intelligentsia in this latter camp and asserts that the "neo-Marxian ex-liberals are at present a greater menace than the Stalinists to the cause of freedom in America." This he holds to be true because "they not only apologize for totalitarianism in Russia, but they help to camouflage its propaganda-stratagems and pressure-plots in this country. By abandoning their faith in popular intelligence, lending their pages to the manipulation as well as the enlightenment of public opinion, condoning political immoralism, adopting an attitude of realpolitik wherever such antique concepts as the Rights of Man are in question, and in general outdoing Marx in being hard-boiled on all questions except that of proletarian power, they are, while professing themselves friends, giving aid and comfort to the enemies of democracy."