Undetermined Month
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. Incidentally, none of these four types are listed in Mark Warda's Political Campaign Stamps. (Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 1998).
APRIL 1935"Which Party for the American Worker? Letter to a Worker-Correspondent," by A.J. Muste [April 1935] Published appeal of pacifist and labor leader A.J. Muste for American workers to join the new Workers Party of the United States, formed through a merger of Muste's American Workers Party and the Trotskyist Communist League of America headed by James P. Cannon and Max Shachtman. Muste outlines the history of the WPUS, launched on Dec. 1, 1934, noting that the CLA was comprised of "revolutionists who were expelled from the Communist Party and the Communist International" who had "differed with the line taken by the CP and CI in certain matters of principle and tactics." His own American Workers Party had had roots in the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA), which had likewise emerged in 1928-29, Muste notes. The trade union-oriented CPLA and the political CLA ultimately arrived "from very different directions to the same conclusion" -- that there was a necessity of a new "revolutionary working class party" -- and unity was negotiated and achieved, Muste indicates. Muste states that according to the new group's Declaration of Principles, its "primary task" was to be "the defeat of the enemy at home -- the overthrown of the capitalist government of the United States." According to Muste the new vanguard party would "adapt [its] tactics to the concrete situation and the lineup of the class forces in the US in order to inspire and lead the American working class and its allies...to the overthrow of capitalism and the building of a society in which natural resources and the machinery of production will be used for the benefit of the workers and not for the profit of a few."
MAY 1935
Night Riders in Gallup, by Louis Coleman [May 1935] Large file. Graphic pdf of a pamphlet published by International Labor Defense (ILD), issued following the May 2, 1935 kidnapping of high CPUSA functionary Robert Minor and ILD lawyer David Levinson in Gallup, New Mexico. Chapter one relates the story of the kidnapping, in which black-hooded vigilantes took Minor and Levinson at gunpoint from an automobile. The pair were beaten and threatened with murder. Chapters 2 and 3 tell the backstory, beginning with an August 1933 strike of coal miners against the Gallup-American Coal Company. Blacklistings and evictions of strike leaders ensued, which resulted in a gun battle in which two strikers were killed and two sheriff's deputies were wounded. A mass arrest of 200 followed, bringing the ILD into the case, the outline of which appears as chapters 4 and 5. Basic scan by Marty Goodman, Digital Archive Project.
JUNE 1935
"Facts About New York and About the Nation," by David P. Berenberg [June 22, 1935] David Berenberg, publisher of the anti-Left Wing weekly New York Socialist during the party controversy of 1919, found himself on the other side of the factional barricades during the battle between the Militant and Old Guard factions for control of the Socialist Party during the middle 1930s. This article from the weekly newspaper of the allied Militants and Norman Thomas loyalists details the disruptive behavior of the Old Guard-dominated New York organization during the year after the 1934 convention. The March 1935 session of the governing National Executive Committee of the SPA had presented the Old Guard New York organization with 9 demands, Berenberg notes, aimed at ending the Old Guard's factional antics and adverting a split. The Old Guard organization had refused to comply, sending an inadequate answer in May. On June 12 the NEC's next session was held in New York City, where formal hearings began. The New York State Committee again refused to appear. Instead, the Old Guard's newspaper, The New Leader, had launched an fusillade of highly intemperate factional articles sporting "hysterical headlines," Berenberg notes. Any declines in Socialist strength in Militant-controlled state organizations was "the result of deliberate sabotage on the part of the Right Wing," Berenberg charges. "The Conservatives preferred rather to destroy the party than see it in hands other than their own," Berenberg insists. "They have become so accustomed to thinking of the Socialist Party as their private possession, that they deny in practice the democracy they preach rather than permit the true majority to take power."
NOVEMBER 1935
"The Thomas-Browder Debate," by Haim Kantorovitch [event of Nov. 27. 1935] Marxist theoretician and American Socialist Quarterly co-editor Haim Kantorovitch -- best conceptualized as "the Morris Hillquit of the Militant faction" -- offers his appraisal on the united front, the main issue of the widely publicized and controversial public debate between CPUSA General Secretary Earl Browder and three time SPA Presidential nominee Norman Thomas. Contrary to the shrill prognostications of the bitterly anti-communist Old Guard faction, the debate had not been either a "love fest" or itself a manifestation of a united front, Kantorovitch says. It was a debate from fundamentally different positions -- no more, no less. Indeed, a permanent united front was at least temporarily blocked by two factors, in Kantorovitch's estimation: the Communist Party's past history of sectarian warfare against Socialists and others on the left, which implied bad faith in the current tactical shift, as well as the party's "attitude towards the Soviet Union, its 'great leader,' Stalin, and his enemies." Kantorovitch argues that this latter factor is actually the chief obstacle to long term unity of action: "A united front is a temporary union of people of different opinions and ideas for some common end. The Communists have reached the stage where they compel themselves to tolerate non-Communist opinions on the class struggle, on social revolution, even on the problem of proletarian dictatorship. But they cannot tolerate anyone having an opinion about Soviet Russia different than their own. Soviet Russia and Stalin are above criticism. Whoever dares criticize either of them is a counter-revolutionist, just as one is still a counter-revolutionist if he dares remember the glorious role of Trotsky in the creation of the Soviet state." Kantorovitch observes that for all the chanting of "We want a united front!" by the debate audience, only local and temporary actions would be possible owing to the Communist Party's uncritical attitude towards the Stalin dictatorship, the position advanced by Thomas in the debate.
DECEMBER 1935
"Socialists Reject NY Old Guard; Map Party Drive." (Socialist Call) [events of Dec. 4-8, 1935] On the evening of Dec. 4. 1935 the long-threatened split of the Socialist Party in New York state finally occurred when the City Central Committee by a 48-44 vote passed a resolution prohibiting party members from associating with the Socialist Call (a paper established as an alternative to the Old Guard-dominated New York Leader) or its affiliated institutions. The move was seen as a clear effort to provoke a split as it would have lead either the the closure of the Call or the expulsion of factional leaders Jack Altman and Norman Thomas, and when the decision was not reconsidered the minority walked out and reconvened at the Call's offices where they reconstituted themselves a new City Central Committee and called a reorganizational convention for Dec. 28-29, 1935 in Utica. Rival mass meetings of the parallel organizations were held the night of Sunday, Dec. 8, with the Militant-Thomasite insurgents drawing 1500 and the Old Guard, 650, according to this Call report.
"The Old Guard: An Analysis of Its History and of Its Principles," by Haim Kantorovitch [Dec. 14, 1935] With a split of the Socialist Party an accomplished fact, leading theoretician of the Militant faction Haim Kantorovitch attempts an analysis of the composition and ideas of the rival Old Guard faction. Kantorovitch notes that an attempt to examine the dispute on the basis of the Old Guard's program would be fruitless, since "it has none. While the Old Guard constantly ridicules and misquotes the program of the Left Wing, it has never attempted to formulate a program of its own." Kantorovitch instead tries to understand the faction from their composition, which he characterizes as "old and tired in body and mind," filled with a "kind of paternalistic cynicism" about the "folly of their youth" when revolutionary ardor burned bright. The battle with the left wing fought by some of the Old Guard leaders for nearly 20 years had been a fight for control of our institutions rather than a committed struggle for hegemony of principles, Kantorovitch indicates. The world had changed dramatically over a quarter century, Kantorovitch observes, but the Old Guard "simply repeat mechanically what they learned 25 years ago," failing to even attempt to originally analyze dynamic events. "Marxism in their hands became nothing but a dead dogma, a rationalization for doing nothing," Kantorvitch states. Over time their attempts at leadership of the trade union movement had fallen away and "the Old Guard leaders became its servants. Every form of criticism was prohibited," Kantorovitch says. This burned out generation had come into conflict with thousands of "young, energetic Socialists" who had joined the Socialist Party. Kantorovitch states that "the inner-party fight which culminated in the present situation began not as a fight for or against this or that principle, but purely as a fight between activists and quietists," culminating in the Old Guard's hysterical blocking of party membership of newcomers in an effort to retain its grip on the party apparatus. "When the Old Guard leaders now accuse the Left Wing of being communists, they know it is not true. The cry 'communist' is only to serve as a smoke-screen for their disruptive activities. It is not communism they fear — it is Socialism," Kantorovitch contends, noting that the "machinations" of the Old Guard had failed and the Socialist Party in New York had passed into the hands of the new generation of revolutionary socialists.
"A Letter to the Membership," by Charles Garfinkel and Jack Altman [Dec. 14, 1935] Threatened for two years, a split of the Socialist Party of New York was now a reality, writes Charles Garfinkel and Jack Altman, temporary executives of a new parallel City Committee established in opposition to that of the Old Guard faction. The previous "gerrymandered" City Central Committee by a vote of 48 to 44 had decided to reorganize the party, expelling all who participated or worked in connection with The Socialist Call, rival paper of the dissidents of the Militant faction and their close allies surrounding party leader Norman Thomas. Old Guard leaders Louis Waldman, Julius Gerber, James Oneal, and Algernon Lee are called "party wreckers" and "breeders of disunity" and likened to Daniel DeLeon by the two alternative leaders. The Old Guard is charged with violation of party democracy, refusal to accept the judgments of the national convention, and attempting to undermine the national Socialist Party leadership with a view to creating a national split. Additional charges are leveled that the Old Guard has used the capitalist press to win political advantage, been incompetence in party work, condoned trade union corruption, engaged in the systematic exclusion of young newcomers, libeled Norman Thomas for having debated Earl Browder, and suspended branches not to their liking so as to deny them representation on the City Central Committee and maintain their dictatorial regime, in the worst tradition of "Tammany tricks and political conniving." A new City Central Committee office had been established, Garfinkel and Altman note.
"New York Locals Vote 29-15 for Party Loyalty." (Socialist Call) [Dec. 28, 1935] Although the constitutional mechanism is unclear, it seems that in the aftermath of the Dec. 4 split of the New York City Central Committee into dual Old Guard and Militant-Thomasite bodies, a referendum vote of the branches of Local New York took place to resolve the dispute. According to this report from the organ of the insurgents, by a vote of 29 to 15 these branches decided in favor of the Militant faction's new rival body. A branch-by-branch listing of allegiances is included in the report. Various factional shenanigans of the opposition are specified, including the Old Guard's expulsion of 9 branches, its refusal to allow qualified Young People's Socialist League members from gaining their party cards, as had been called for in a July agreement, the allowance of the voted of members of a rival Old Guard "Young Socialist Alliance," and the stacking of membership roles by strategic transfer of Old Guard memberships from one branch to another.
