THE FREE-FOR-ALL FIGHT BETWEEN THE RIGHT AND LEFT WINGS
Emanuel Blumstein, a member of the Right Wing, in a letter published in
"The Call," April 9, 1919, bitterly complained against the tactics of
the Left Wingers--in trying to wrest control of the Socialist Party from
the "Old Guard" of Berger and Hillquit, which had acquired the habit of
domination:
"The reason that the so-called Left Wingers are concentrating at
meetings, making motions to recall delegates, and carry their
motions through, is very simple. Anyone who attends the meetings
can easily understand it. They shout down every honest thinking
Socialist with slurs and abuse. They make it so intolerable that
the meeting hall appears to be, instead of a Socialist meeting, a
room frequented by rowdies of all types and descriptions. In this
way they drive the most active Comrades out of the meeting hall, as
these Comrades get disgusted with the tactics pursued and leave the
meeting. Then they drag the meeting on to all hours of the night
until those left, having no opposition, carry all their destructive
actions through, and this they call democratic decision for the
Comrades of the branch--deciding the policies for them."
Morris Zucker, a member of the Left Wing, defends his faction in a
letter that appeared in "The Call," New York, April 11, 1919:
"In regard to Lee's objection that the Left Wing may bring about a
premature revolt, the reply is that no real revolution, no social
revolution, is ever manufactured. It must be spontaneous. It must
be real. It must be an overwhelming, impulsive demonstration of the
popular will. Revolutions may be manipulated but not manufactured.
Trotzky shows in his 'From October to Brest-Litovsk' that the
Bolshevist Revolution was not manufactured.
"The problem is to manipulate the revolution, to guide it, to
counsel it. And herein lies the importance of proper Socialist
education, of knowledge and understanding, and from these of proper
Socialist tactics.
"The Left Wing believes it has the proper program. And it wants the
Socialist Party to adopt its program. The Left Wing not only
preaches revolutionary Socialism, it believes that the economic and
social forces that have made half Europe Socialist, and threaten
momentarily to engulf the other half are at work in America also.
It believes that a revolutionary outbreak in America is not a
matter of the far and distant future. And it desires to make that
revolution as easy and as successful as it can possibly be. For
that reason the Left Wing has evolved its manifesto and program,
and now calls upon the Socialist Party to discuss it, perfect it,
and adopt it."
In April, 1919, the New York State Committee of the Socialist Party, by
a vote of 24 against 17, resolved that it was "definitely opposed to the
organization calling itself the Left Wing section of the Socialist
Party, and to any group within the party organized for the same or
similar purpose;" and it instructed "its executive committee to revoke
the charter of any local affiliated with any such organization or that
permits its subdivision or members to be affiliated."
"The Call," April 23, 1919, publishes a long letter from F. Basky in
which he defends the principles of the Left Wing and attacks the New
York State Committee for the above resolutions. We quote a part:
"Aside of these arguments the Left Wing is not a
counter-organization to the Socialist Party. On the contrary, it is
the only active force to save the party from going into decay and
finally to the scrap heap as a tool not adapted to the task. If the
Left Wing is the party, then and only then can we answer the
criticism of the syndicalist that a political party is nothing else
but a vote-catching machinery for middle-class politicians. If the
principles enunciated in the manifesto will be the principles of
the party, then it will enjoy the confidence of those who, through
their bitter experience realized the fallacies of the Second
International, led and dominated by the social-patriots, reformists
of the German Social Democratic Party. If we follow the line of
uncompromising revolutionary activity indicated by the Left
Wingers, then we can rest assured that the party will be cleared of
the would-be Scheidemanns, Eberts, Kerenskys, Brantenburgs, and the
rest of the traitors of our principles and our class.
"They will be eliminated anyway. The fight is on. And I welcome the
attack of the state committee. We at least know some of those we
would have to face in the critical hour. Might as well fight it out
now; whether they or the Left Wing represents the party. Let us
find out right now who is with us and who is against us."
"The Call," April 30, 1919, published a resolution then recently passed
by the Socialist Party of Essex County, New Jersey, which had adopted
the Left Wing program. Part of the resolution is hereby quoted:
"While the need for new orientation is clearly apparent, there is
an element within the party which is either unwilling or unable to
adjust itself to the new world conditions and the new tactics
required by these conditions. Unfortunately, this element has
controlled the party national executive committee and the party
machinery, with the consequence that the national organization, in
place of furnishing the leadership and urging the locals forward to
take advantage of the present world crisis in building up the
proletariat movement, has conspicuously lagged behind."
By the early part of May, 1919, conditions in the Socialist Party became
so serious that the Executive Committee of Local New York, according to
"The Call," May 8, 1919, issued the following statement on the Left
Wing:
"To the Members of Local New York:
"Comrades.--A critical situation has arisen within Local New York.
Your executive committee is compelled to take unusual and vigorous
measures to combat the disruptive efforts of an internal faction
which seeks to dominate the party by undemocratic and unsocialistic
methods. The executive committee addresses itself to you, the
membership, to explain the gravity of the crisis and to urge your
support in saving the organization which has been built up with so
much sacrifice by thousands of Comrades.
"The very existence of the party is at stake--its existence as the
democratically self-governed party of the working class, laboring
to awaken and educate the proletarian masses and to express their
class interests on the political field....
"This organization, i.e., the Left Wing, is not open to all party
members, nor even to all who accept the ideas set forth in its
manifesto and program. Only such persons are admitted as can be
counted on to set the authority of the 'Left Wing Section' above
that of the party itself. Its meetings are held in secret, and
their business is that of a permanent closed caucus to lay plans
for controlling the action of the party branches and committees,
and of obstructing their activities when it cannot control them.
"Even within the 'Left Wing Section' itself democratic methods are
not used. The admission of members, the choice of delegates to Left
Wing conferences, and the framing of instructions to those
delegates are intrusted to committees composing an inner circle.
All members and adherents of the 'Left Wing Section' are called
upon in their action as party members and as members of party
committees, to give explicit obedience to orders issued by the
inner circle. A sufficient sample of this is the appointment of a
'steering committee' for the Left Wingers in the central committee
of the local, and the issuance of instructions to delegates
affiliated with that section as follows:
"'In all matters involving Left Wing tactics vote as a unit with
the steering committee. Do not make motions, ask for divisions,
further divisions, roll call, and appeals from the chair. The
steering committee will attend to that.'
"The Left Wing Section has not been able to command a majority in
the central committee, notwithstanding the drastic methods used in
their attempt to capture it. Unable to control they have practised
systematic obstruction, and have openly declared that they will not
permit the central committee to function so long as their group is
in the minority there. Under the direction of their steering
committee, the time is consumed with every species of parliamentary
delay, with the aim and effect of preventing the central committee
from transacting business and carrying on the normal work of the
party. These dilatory tactics are supplemented by personal abuse
directed against those who will not truckle to the 'Left Wing,' by
insults and provocatory threats, and when necessary, by the
creation of an uproar designed to attract the attention of the
police and to break up the sessions....
"The Executive Committee has heretofore decided not to have a
meeting of the central committee on May 13, and has appointed a
committee to reorganize Local New York. This committee will begin
with such branches as are affiliated with the 'Left Wing Section.'
No one will be excluded because of his opinions, but no one can
retain a double membership in the party and the so-called 'Left
Wing Section.'"
By about the middle of May, 1919, the Left Wing program had been adopted
by the Socialist Party in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit,
Philadelphia, Kings and Queens Counties, N. Y., and Essex County, N. J.
In Hudson County, N. J., the county committee referred it favorably to
all the branches, and at the end of the month the New Jersey Convention
of the party adopted it. In Chicago, J. Louis Engdahl, sentenced[C] to
twenty years in Leavenworth prison, was reported to have been ousted
from the organization, having been considered too conservative by the
millionaire Socialist, William Bross Lloyd, and the latter's friends who
controlled the Communist Propaganda League, the Left Wing faction of the
local organization.
"The Call," May 8, 1919, publishes an interesting letter from one of its
correspondents:
"It is not so much a question as to Left or Right Wing domination
as it is a question of whether we are to have a united or divided
party.
"I am not a Centrist, if that means to be in the center of the
party as it is today. We must move to the Left--that is understood
by all thinking, class-conscious Comrades, but we must move
together, not, perhaps, as far as some of the hot-heads would like
to have us--they fail to understand what an American Socialist
Party should be, for they seem to think of New York City as the
whole thing. If they could take a trip to Chicago and back they
might find themselves moving toward the Right.
"No one wants to be where the stick-in-the-mud Rights are,
either--that is, no one except them. The majority of us see the
need for revolutionizing the party. What we don't see is any
necessity of disrupting the party in the process. The master class
would like to see that; in fact, they have been egging us on to
fight among ourselves for the last two or three years, and we have
blindly done the very thing that they want most we should do. They
are laughing in their sleeves at us--poor boobs that we are."
On May 15, 1919, following the open fight against the Left Wing
inaugurated by the New York State Committee and its Executive Committee,
the Left Wing Locals of Boston, Cleveland and New York joined in a call
for a National Conference of the Left Wing to convene in New York on
June 21. This call opened with the following paragraph:
"The international situation and the crisis in the American
Socialist Party; the sabotage the party bureaucracy has practised
on the emergency national convention; the N. E. C. [National
Executive Committee] aligning our party with the social-patriots at
Berne, with the Congress of the Great Betrayal; the necessity of
reconstructing our policy in accord with revolutionary events--all
this and more, makes it necessary that the revolutionary forces in
the Socialist Party get together for counsel and action."
Apparently so many bitter letters were sent to "The Call" that it found
it expedient to publish the following notice in its edition of May 16,
1919:
"No letters dealing in personalities of any kind will be published
in this column. All views and all arguments set forth must be
confined strictly to the principles and tactics either defended or
attacked. This ruling is by the unanimous vote of the Board of
Managers of 'The Call.'"
Morris Hillquit, member of the National Executive Committee of the
Socialist Party till September, 1919, and one of the principle leaders
of the Right, published in his paper, "The Call," May 21, 1919, a long
article in large type, covering half of the editorial page, under the
caption, "The Socialist Task and Outlook." After speaking of the gloomy
conditions in the Socialist Party abroad, he thus comments on conditions
in the American branch of the international organization:
"All the more unfortunate is it that the energies of the Socialist
Party should at this time be dissipated in acrimonious and
fruitless controversies brought on by the self-styled Left Wing
movement. I am one of the last men in the party to ignore or
misunderstand the sound revolutionary impulse which animates the
rank and file of this new movement, but the specific form and
direction which it has assumed, its program and tactics, spell
disaster to our movement. I am opposed to it, not because it is too
radical, but because it is essentially reactionary and
non-Socialistic; not because it would lead us too far, but because
it would lead us nowhere. To prate about the dictatorship of the
proletariat and of workers' Soviets in the United States at this
time is to deflect the Socialist propaganda from its realistic
basis, and to advocate the abolition of all social reform planks in
the party platform means to abandon the concrete class struggle as
it presents itself from day to day.
"The Left Wing movement, as I see it, is a purely emotional reflex
of the situation in Russia. The cardinal vice of the movement is
that it started as a wing, i.e., as a schismatic and disintegrating
movement. Proceeding on the arbitrary assumption that they were the
Left, the ingenuous leaders of the movement had to discover a
Right, and since the European classification would not be fully
reproduced without a Center, they also were bound to locate a
center in the Socialist movement of America.[D] What matters it to
our imaginative Left Wing leaders that the Socialist Party of
America as a whole has stood in the forefront of Socialist
radicalism ever since the outbreak of the war, that many of its
officers and leaders have exposed their lives and liberties to
imminent peril in defense of the principles of international
Socialism, they are Right Wingers and Centrists because the
exigencies of the Left Wing require it. The Left Wing movement is a
sort of burlesque on the Russian revolution. Its leaders do not
want to convert their Comrades in the party. They must capture and
establish a sort of dictatorship of the proletariat(?) within the
party. Hence the creation of their dual organization as a kind of
Soviet, and their refusal to cooperate with the aforesaid stage
Centrists and Right Wingers.
"But the performance is too sad to be amusing. It seems perfectly
clear that, so long as this movement persists in the party, the
latter's activity will be wholly taken up by mutual quarrels and
recriminations. Neither wing will have any time for the propaganda
of Socialism. There is, as far as I can see, but one remedy. It
would be futile to preach reconciliation and union where antagonism
runs so high. Let the Comrades on both sides do the next best
thing. Let them separate, honestly, freely and without rancor. Let
each side organize and work in its own way, and make such
contribution to the Socialist movement in America as it can. Better
a hundred times to have two numerically small Socialist
organizations, each homogeneous and harmonious within itself, than
to have one big party torn by dissensions and squabbles, an
impotent colossus on feet of clay. The time for action is near.
Let us clear the decks."
By the end of May, 1919, the Left Wing fight had become so serious that
the National Executive Committee revoked the charter of the Socialist
Party in Michigan and suspended the Russian, Lithuanian, Ukranian,
Lettish, Polish, South Slavic and Hungarian branches, expelling or
suspending considerably over 25,000 members out of a total dues-paying
membership of about 100,000.
"The Ohio Socialist," the party organ of Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia
and New Mexico, in its issue of June 4, 1919, comments as follows on the
expulsions:
"Violating every principle of fair play and square dealing and
disregarding every constitutional provision, the National Executive
Committee at its session in Chicago, May 24 to 30, expelled without
a trial the state organization of the Socialist Party of Michigan,
constituting about 6,000 members, suspended the Russian,
Lithuanian, Lettish, Polish, Hungarian, Ukrainian and South Slavic
Federations of the party, constituting more than 30,000 members,
and worst of all--and let it be said to their everlasting
shame--are autocratically holding up the national membership
referendum for the election of a new National Executive Committee,
International Delegates, International Secretary, and the holding
of a national convention.
"Never before in the party's history have Socialist Party officials
been so lost to all sense of decency and square dealing. A wilful
group of seven members of the National Executive Committee usurped
power which the constitution does not grant them and which the
Socialist Party membership never intended any servants of the party
to have. This despotic group of seven did not act as the party's
servants, but as dictators and tyrants to defeat the expressed will
of the party membership and to perpetuate itself in office.
"Unbelievable as it may seem, seven officials of the party had the
monumental effrontery to assume the right to expel and suspend
40,000 members. Think of it. That such a dastardly deed should ever
be perpetrated upon the rank and file of our organization is almost
beyond comprehension. And yet it was done--it was done by those
whom you elected to serve you. Instead they are betraying you,
disrupting the organization....
"The intention of these autocrats is plain as daylight. Like a
tidal wave, the demand for a Socialism which stands true to the
working class at all times has swept the party. The thousands of
Comrades who are sincerely working to win the party to a more
revolutionary position are known to the Left Wing. This Left Wing
understands clearly that the Scheidemann brand of Socialism stands
for the betrayal and defeat of the working class and that only the
Socialism of Liebknecht and Lenine has within it the potentialities
of victory and success....
"There was no trial, no opportunity for defense offered to the
Michigan Comrades. A motion to allow Michigan a chance to interpret
their action was voted down. The right to appear at a trial was
denied....
"Expulsion meant throwing out over three thousand votes. On with
the expulsion of Michigan....
"But the expulsion of Michigan was apparently not sufficient to
decide the elections in favor of the reactionary moderates. At a
subsequent session, accordingly, it was decided to destroy the
whole election.
"The National Executive Committee instructed the secretary not to
tabulate the vote or make it public. They nullified the referendum
vote, destroyed the will of the membership in order to retain
control. Most of these National Executive Committee members are out
for re-election, are interested parties, knowing that the
referendum defeated them for re-election, are now, by this action,
perpetuating themselves in office....
"The National Executive Committee's action is equivalent to
stealing the elections. The party must act sternly to rebuke this
official chicanery.
"After this betrayal of the party the despotic seven seemed to fear
the results of the National Convention, which has been called for
August 30. A way had to be devised to control the convention. Happy
thought: Suspend the federations that have endorsed the Left Wing,
and we are safe. Another caucus held. Result: Suspension of the
Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Lettish and
South Slavic Federations from the Socialist Party--over thirty
thousand members. A plain attempt to assure the election of
reactionary delegates to the National Convention to approve the
abominable actions of the National Executive Committee majority....
"In spite of all these dirty tactics the little group of
reactionary autocrats did not feel themselves secure. They still
fear that they will not be able to control the coming National
Convention. So they formed a corporation, nearly all the directors
of which are of the same stamp as the wilful seven, and into the
hands of these directors is to be placed the entire property of the
Socialist Party, including the new headquarters building upon which
$10,000 has been paid. These directors cannot be recalled by the
party membership as long as they retain membership in the party,
and only four, a minority, can be removed in three years' time....
"They want the Left Wing to desert the party. They want us to leave
the party machinery in their hands. They will be disappointed in
this. We know their game. We shall not play into their hands. We
will not quit. Every Left Winger will work night and day for the
reinstatement of the nearly 40,000 members whom the reactionaries
are trying to sever from the party in violation of the party's
constitution. Every radical will work with might and main to get
new members and build, build the Left Wing and the party. Every
revolutionist will stick until victory is ours and the Socialist
Party is completely won for revolutionary Socialism."
Commenting on the referendum for a new National Executive Committee "The
Revolutionary Age" in its May 24, 1919, issue says:
"The moderates claim that the Left Wing represents only a small
clique in the party: why, then, not allow the membership to make
its decision through the referendum? Why disfranchise the
revolutionary Socialists? Why steal votes away from the Left Wing
candidates? These desperate tactics are understandable only on the
theory that the moderates feel that the revolutionary Socialists
are a majority, that they will meet defeat in the referendum votes
and revolutionary Socialism will conquer the party."
"The Revolutionary Age," July 12, 1919, informs us that the
Massachusetts Comrades were also expelled and that others in other
States were threatened:
"Another State gone. Massachusetts is expelled for adopting the
Left Wing program at its State Convention and for refusing to
recognize the National Executive Committee's act of suspending the
Federations. For this latter offense, Pennsylvania is now
threatened with excommunication, and very likely Ohio will meet the
same sad fate.
"It is a race against time. Will there be anything left for the
rump N. E. C. to expel by August 30th?"
Relative to the success of the Left Wing in electing its members to the
new National Executive Committee of fifteen, and to the meeting of this
new committee, "The Revolutionary Age," July 19, 1919, comments as
follows:
"The election of Comrades Fraina, Hourwich, Harwood, Prevey,
Ruthenberg, Lloyd, Keracher, Batt, Hogan, Millis, Nagle,
Katterfeld, Wicks and Herman appears now to be certain, while there
is still a question about the third choice in the First District,
Comrade Lindgren leading without the New York vote.
"There is no question, but that the final tally of the party
elections is available at the National Office, but according to the
action of the National Executive Committee this tally will not be
made known till August 30. Meanwhile the State secretaries have
published enough of the votes to leave no question of the outcome,
except as above indicated....
"According to the party law the new N. E. C. is entitled to control
beginning July 1st....
"There can be no legality by which a defunct Executive Committee
can keep the newly elected committee from taking office. By such
'constitutionality' the old body could perpetuate itself
indefinitely, let the members vote as they like. Stopping
referendums is the method chosen to make sure that the members
consent."
Accusations and recriminations, charges and counter-charges, continued
to fly back and forth between the two Wings, as the secretaries
proceeded with the work of expulsion or suspension, carrying out the
savage instructions of the Right Wing majority of the National Executive
Committee, where Victor L. Berger, Morris Hillquit and Seymour Stedman
were the dominating leaders. On the side of the Lefts little more could
be done than to set up a howl against the "dictatorship of the
proletariat" within the party which forced them to taste the medicine
they would have preferred to prescribe for the rest of the country.
During the summer the Left Wing movement was hastened on, dragging the
Right Wing after it, by the publication in the radical papers of America
of the manifesto issued in Moscow in March, 1919, by the Third or
Communistic International in session there. Max Eastman, a Left Wing
leader, in an article on "The New International" in "The Liberator,"
July, 1919, a Left Wing magazine, thus describes the Bolshevik
International:
"The Communist International, which met at Moscow on March 2d,
1919, comprised thirty-two _delegates with full power to act_,
representing parties or groups in Germany, Russia, Hungary,
Sweden, Norway, Bulgaria, Rumania, Finland, Ukrainia, Esthonia,
Armenia, delegates from the 'Union of Socialists of Eastern
Countries,' from the labor organizations of Germans in Russia, and
from the Balkan 'Union of Revolutionary Socialists.'
"There were also present _representatives with consultative powers_
from parties and groups in Switzerland, Holland, Bohemia,
Jugo-Slavia, France, Great Britain, Turkey, Turkestan, Persia,
Corea, China, and the United States (S. J. Rutgers, of the
Socialist Propaganda League, now merged with the Left Wing section
of the Socialist Party). A letter was read from Comrade Loriot, the
leader of the Left Wing section of the French Party, repudiating
the Berne Congress of the Second International.
"The Russian Communist Party was represented by Comrades Lenine,
Trotzky, Zinoviev, Kukharin and Stalin. This party contains many
millions of organized class-conscious Socialists, more, perhaps,
than are to be found in all the rest of the world."
The Communist Manifesto of 1919, issued by this Moscow International,
became the test of fellowship among the simon-pure "Reds" the world
over, and since the campaign of the Left Wing grew into an attempt to
force the Socialist Party of America to adopt this Bolshevik program, we
here quote the salient parts of the Moscow Manifesto from the article by
Eastman mentioned above:
"_To the proletariat of all countries!_
"Seventy-two years have gone by since the Communist Party of the
World proclaimed its program in the form of the Manifesto written
by the great teachers of the proletarian revolution, Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels....
"We Communists, representatives of the revolutionary proletariat of
the different countries of Europe, America and Asia, assembled in
Soviet Moscow, feel and consider ourselves followers and fulfillers
of the program proclaimed seventy-two years ago. It is our task now
to sum up the practical revolutionary experience of the working
class, to cleanse the movement of its admixtures of opportunism and
social patriotism, and to gather together the forces of all the
true revolutionary proletarian parties in order to further and
hasten the complete victory of the Communist revolution.
"The opportunists who, before the war, exhorted the workers, in the
name of the gradual transition into Socialism, to be temperate;
who, during the war, asked for submission in the name of 'civil
peace' and defense of the Fatherland, now again demand of the
workers self-abnegation to overcome the terrible consequences of
the war. If this preaching were listened to by the workers,
Capitalism would build out of the bones of several generations a
new and still more formidable structure, leading to a new and
inevitable world war. Fortunately for humanity, this is no longer
possible....
"Only the Proletarian Dictatorship, which recognizes neither
inherited privileges nor rights of property, but which arises from
the needs of the hungering masses, can shorten the period of the
present crisis; and for this purpose it mobilizes all materials and
forces, introduces the universal duty to labor, establish the
regime of industrial discipline, thus to heal in the course of a
few years the open wounds caused by the war and also to raise
humanity to new undreamed-of heights.
"The whole bourgeois world accuses the Communists of destroying
liberties and political democracy. This is not true. Having come
into power the proletariat only asserts the absolute impossibility
of applying the methods of bourgeois democracy, and it creates the
conditions and forms of a higher _working class democracy_....
"The peasant of Bavaria and Baden who does not look beyond his
church spire, the small French wine-grower who has been ruined by
the adulterations practiced by the big capitalists, the small
farmer of America plundered and betrayed by bankers and
legislators--all these social ranks which have been shoved aside
from the main road of development by Capitalism, are called on
paper by the regime of political democracy to the administration of
the State. In reality, however, the finance-oligarchy decides all
important questions which determine the destinies of nations behind
the back of parliamentary democracy....
"The proletarian State, like every State, is an organ of
suppression, but it arrays itself against the enemies of the
working class. It aims to break the opposition of the despoilers of
labor, who are using every means in a desperate effort to stifle
the revolution in blood, and to make impossible further opposition.
The dictatorship of the proletariat, which gives it the favored
position in the community, is only a provisional institution. As
the opposition of the Bourgeoisie is broken, as it is expropriated
and gradually absorbed into the working groups, the proletarian
dictatorship disappears, until finally the State dies and there are
no more class distinctions....
"In an empire of destruction where not only the means of production
and transportation, but also the institutions of political
democracy have become bloody ruins, the proletariat must create its
own forms, to serve above all as a bond of unity for the working
class and to enable it to accomplish a revolutionary intervention
in the further development of mankind. Such apparatus is
represented in the Workmen's Councils. The old parties, the old
unions, have proved incapable, in person of their leaders, to
understand, much less to carry out the task which the new epoch
presents to them. The proletariat has created a new institution
which embraces the entire working class without distinction of
vocation or political maturity, an elastic form of organization
capable of continually renewing itself, expanding, and of drawing
into itself ever new elements, ready to open its doors to the
working groups of city and village which are near to the
proletariat. This indispensable autonomous organization of the
working class in the present struggle and in the future conquests
of different lands, tests the proletariat and constitutes the
greatest inspiration and the mightiest weapon of the proletariat of
our time. Wherever the masses are awakened to consciousness,
Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Councils will be formed....
"The outcry of the bourgeois world against the civil war and the
red terror is the most colossal hypocrisy of which the history of
political struggles can boast. There would be no civil war if the
exploiters who have carried mankind to the very brink of ruin had
not prevented every forward step of the laboring masses, if they
had not instigated plots and murders and called to their aid armed
help from outside to maintain or restore their predatory
privileges. Civil war is _forced upon_ the laboring classes by
their arch-enemies. The working class must answer blow for blow, if
it will not renounce its own object and its own future which is, at
the same time, the future of all humanity.
"The Communist parties, far from conjuring up civil war
artificially, rather strive to shorten its duration as much as
possible--in case it has become an iron necessity--to minimize the
number of its victims, and, above all, to secure victory for the
proletariat. This makes necessary the disarming of the bourgeoisie
at the proper time, the arming of the laborer, and the formation of
a communist army as the protector of the rule of the proletariat
and the inviolability of the social structure. Such is the Red Army
of Soviet Russia which arose to protect the achievements of the
working class against every assault from within or without. The
Soviet Army is inseparable from the Soviet State.
"Seizure of political power by the proletariat means destruction of
the political power of the bourgeoisie. The organized power of the
bourgeoisie is in the civil State, with its capitalistic army under
control of bourgeoisie-junker officers, its police and gendarmes,
jailers and judges, its priests, government officials, etc.
Conquest of the political power means not merely a change in the
personnel of ministries, but annihilation of the enemy's apparatus
of government; disarmament of the bourgeoisie of the
counter-revolutionary officers, of the White Guard; arming of the
proletariat, the revolutionary soldiers, the Red Guard of
workingmen; displacement of all bourgeois judges and organization
of proletarian courts; elimination of control by reactionary
government officials and substitution of new organs of management
of the proletariat.... Not until the proletariat has achieved this
victory and broken the resistance of the bourgeoisie can the former
enemies of the new order be made useful, by bringing them under
control of the Communist system and gradually bringing them into
accord with its work....
"The Dictatorship of the Proletariat does not in any way call for
partition of the means of production and exchange; rather, on the
contrary, its aim is further to centralize the forces of production
and to subject all of production to a systematic plan. As the first
steps--socialization of the great banks which now control
production; the taking over by the power of the proletariat of all
government-controlled economic utilities; the transferring of all
communal enterprises; the socializing of the syndicated and
trustified units of production, as well as all other branches of
production in which the degree of concentration and centralization
of capital makes this technically practicable; the socializing of
agricultural estates and their conversion into co-operative
establishments....
"As far as smaller enterprises are concerned, the proletariat must
gradually unite them, according to the degree of their importance.
It must be particularly emphasized that small properties will in no
way be expropriated and that small property owners who are not
exploiters of labor will not be forcibly dispossessed....
"The task of the Proletarian Dictatorship in the economic field can
only be fulfilled to the extent that the proletariat is enabled to
create centralized organs of management and to institute workers'
control. To this end it must make use of its mass organizations
which are in closest relation to the process of production....
"As in the field of production, so also in the field of
distribution, all qualified technicians and specialists are to be
made use of, provided their political resistance is broken and they
are still capable of adapting themselves, not to the service of
capital, but to the new system of production.... Besides
expropriating the factories, mines, estates, etc., the proletariat
must also abolish the exploitation of the people by capitalistic
landlords, transfer the large mansions to the local workers'
councils, and move the working people into the bourgeois
dwellings....
"The capitalistic criminals asserted at the beginning of the World
War that it was only in defense of the common Fatherland. But soon
German Imperialism revealed its real brigand character by bloody
deeds in Russia, in the Ukraine and Finland. Now the Entente States
unmask themselves as world despoilers and murderers of the
proletariat....
"Indescribable is the White Terror of the bourgeois cannibals.
Incalculable are the sacrifices of the working class. Their
best--Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg--they have lost. Against this the
proletariat must defend itself, defend at any price. The Communist
International calls the whole world proletariat to this final
struggle.
"Down with the imperialistic conspiracy of capital!
"Long live the International Republic of the Proletarian Councils!"
As will be seen when we study the I. W. W., the above is the program of
the world-wide conspiracy of a single class, a minority of society, to
carry out the cynical purpose of I. W. W.'ism--to "take possession of
the earth and the machinery of production."
Morris Hillquit, a Right Wing leader of the Socialist Party of America,
declared that "The Communist Congress of Moscow made the mistake of
attempting a sort of dictatorship of the Russian proletariat in the
Socialist International and was conspicuously inept and unhappy in the
choice of certain allies and in the exclusion of others."[E]
Quoting this, Max Eastman, in the article from which we have taken so
much, makes the following reply:
"How can he expect them to be any more indefinite and generous in
their invitation than they were? In every country where there was a
doubt as to what groups had stood true to the revolutionary
principle and the principle of Internationalism, they so indicated
the alignment as to leave every Socialist free to consider himself
their ally who seriously and courageously desired to. This was what
they did in America. The S. L. P. (Socialist Labor Party), the
Socialist Propaganda League, the I. W. W. and in the Socialist
Party 'the followers of Debs!' Could they in a brief word open the
door wider to American Socialists, unless they wished to admit
prominent members of the Socialist Party who were known to have
repudiated them, as Berger did, declaring his solidarity with the
Mensheviks who were waging war on them?"