THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST OUR COUNTRY
This chapter is the center of our book, the hub where all the spokes of
evidence focus and unite, clearly revealing the unity, power and purpose
of the Wheel of Revolution which now is rolling through the minds and
wills of American radicals. To make this complex plot simple, it has
been analyzed into its parts in the other chapters of "The Red
Conspiracy," so that each element may be weighed by itself. In the
present chapter the results of this analysis are gathered up again, to
show how all the parts fit into one mechanism; and, with the whole thus
seen as one contrivance, the working of each part being understood, the
plan and purpose of the entire invention stands out as clear as day.
But if this chapter is the center of our explanation of "The Red
Conspiracy," the center of the thing itself lies elsewhere. The Great
Red Wheel of Proletarian Revolution is an International Wheel, and both
the hub which unites it and the turning power which moves it are
centered in the old Russian town of Moscow.
Frequently in preceding chapters the reader has been impressed by the
fact that the "Reds" are guilty of conspiracy against all governments,
including that of the United States of America. In the present chapter
we shall discuss this matter of conspiracy much more in detail and
assemble the proofs in such order and strength that no reasonable man
can deny the existence of the widespread plot now fast undermining the
pillars of our country.
The "Reds" under one name or another have in the long run proven to be
far more than evolutionists in the various countries of Europe. Actual
rebellions have shown them to be revolutionists by violence in the
strictest sense of the word in Russia, Germany, Bavaria, Hungary and
even on one of the islands of far distant Japan. Their activities in
England, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Bulgaria and many
another foreign land bid fair to give us still further proofs in the
near future that the "Reds" do not intend to wait for success by the
ballot, but that, as soon as they consider themselves a sufficiently
strong and united minority, they will throw off their masks, use rifles
in place of hypocritical words, and work behind barricades instead of
behind closed meeting doors. The Italian Socialists were about to begin
their rebellion when, quite recently, the word came from the Moscow
headquarters of the International conspirators to wait for a more
opportune moment.
It seems quite incredible that the "Reds" of our own country, whether
they be I. W. W.'s, Communists, members of the Communist Labor Party, or
Socialists, should be merely evolutionists, harmless parliamentarians,
when their brethren abroad, with whom they so much sympathize, and upon
whom they look as the saviors of the world and the highest types of
advanced civilization, are either avowedly attempting to overthrow their
governments or else have already done so, and in not a single instance
by means of the ballot. There is an old saying to the effect that we are
known by the company we keep. Since the American "Reds" keep company
with foreign rebels, it is not to be presumed that the latter are demons
and the former saints.
Few specific proofs need be given in this chapter to show that the I. W.
W.'s are guilty of conspiracy against the United States Government, for
a great part of them, especially those most active, belong either to the
Communist, Communist Labor or the Socialist Party, and an abundance of
proofs will be given that these latter organizations are far from being
harmless and innocent political parties.
Moreover, the I. W. W.'s, in their revolutionary "Preamble" and by the
many utterances of their leaders, are openly committed to a conspiracy
of violence against our Government. Relative to the I. W. W. and its
underhand activities, the reader will remember the words of Arturo
Giovannitti, quoted in a previous chapter, from the Socialist Labor
Party paper, "Weekly People," New York, February 10, 1912. That writer,
with all his experience as a leader of the "Wobblies," certainly knew
their plans, and makes this astounding admission relative to the part
that the I. W. W. is expected to take in bringing about the Marxian
rebellion:
"The future of Socialism lies only in the general strike, not
merely a quiet political strike, but one that once started should
go fatally to its end, i.e., armed insurrection, and the forcible
overthrow of all existing social conditions.... The task of
revolution is not to construct the new society, but to demolish the
old one, therefore, its first aim should be at the complete
destruction of the existing state, so as to render it absolutely
powerless to react and re-establish itself.... The I. W. W. must
develop itself as the new legislature and the new executive body of
the land, undermine the existing one, and gradually absorb the
functions of the state until it can entirely substantiate it
through the only means it has, the revolution."
During the year 1919 a very excellent example of how the One Big Union
tried to develop a strike into a rebellion was given in Winnipeg,
Canada. Some time previously we had in our own country an example in the
great strike at Seattle, Washington.
Cases of sabotage, murder and arson are but minor activities of the I.
W. W., and mere circumstances to aid in bringing about the contemplated
rebellion.
Government raids in recent years, and the seizure of hundreds of tons of
inflammatory literature, from which extensive quotations were made in
the daily press, have furnished us with ample proofs that the I. W. W.'s
are national conspirators.
The reader will remember the vivid picture of the contemplated rebellion
in the mind of the "Wobbly" who wrote in "The Rebel Worker," April 15,
1919:
"The United States is in the grip of a bloody revolution! Thousands
of workers are slaughtered by machine guns in New York City!
Washington is on fire! Industry is at a standstill and thousands of
workers are starving! The government is using the most brutal and
repressive measures to put down the revolution! Disorganization,
crime, chaos, rape, murder and arson are the order of the day--the
inevitable results of social revolution!"
The I. W. W.'s are certainly conspirators, and seek the overthrow of our
Government by industrial violence, and we were told by "The Evolution of
Industrial Democracy," page 40, that "Government, as now understood,
will disappear--there being no servile class to be held in
subjection--but in its place will be an administration of affairs."
The spirit of armed rebellion against our Government was foremost in the
minds of the Left Wing members of the Socialist Party who afterwards
formed the Communist and the Communist Labor Parties. We shall recall
some of the words of Louis C. Fraina during the great struggle between
the Rights and Lefts:
"All propaganda, all electoral and parliamentary activity are
insufficient for the overthrow of Capitalism, impotent when the
ultimate test of the class struggle turns into a test of power. The
power for the social revolution issues out of the actual struggles
of the proletariat, out of its strikes, its industrial unions and
mass action."--"The Revolutionary Age," July 12, 1919.
"Socialism will come not through the peaceful, democratic
parliamentary conquest of the state, but through the determined and
revolutionary mass action of a proletarian minority."--"The
Revolutionary Age," July 12, 1919.
"Revolutionary Socialists hold, with the founders of Scientific
Socialism, that there are two dominant classes in society--the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat; that between these two classes a
struggle must go on until the working class, through the seizure of
the instruments of production and distribution, the abolition of
the capitalist state, and the establishment of the dictatorship of
the proletariat, creates a Socialistic system. Revolutionary
Socialists do not believe that they can be voted into power. They
struggle for the conquest of power by the revolutionary
proletariat."--"The Revolutionary Age," March 22, 1919.
"The Communist," of Chicago, April 1, 1919, it will be remembered, in
speaking of November 7, 1919, the day on which the armistice was signed,
said:
"On that day the seething proletariat ruled Chicago by sheer force
of numbers. One thing alone was needed to give this mass expression
identity with the proletarian uprisings in Europe--one thing, the
revolutionary idea."
After the formation of the Communist and Communist Labor parties, in
September, 1919, both made great progress in winning recruits to the
cause of armed rebellion. On January 2, 1920, government agents all over
the country suddenly descended upon the conspirators and took thousands
of them prisoners. Bombs, rifles and other weapons were captured by the
department agents. In Newark 25 rifles and a large number of bombs were
taken, many tons of violent literature were seized and innumerable
quotations from it appeared in the daily press, showing beyond the
shadow of a doubt the evil intentions of these "Reds" against the land
that we love.
The Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party have the
same purposes and aims as the Communist Party of Russia. They are joined
with the latter in advocating and supporting the manifesto of the Third
International, which openly urges an armed revolution to bring about the
overthrow of the Government of the United States.
Both parties have conducted effective propaganda work through
newspapers, books, pamphlets and other means. The Communist Party alone
had twenty-five newspapers printed in several languages, actively
supporting its cause. This number was being increased weekly, papers
which were formerly Socialist Party organs going over to its support.
The alien editors of most of these papers were taken by the Department
of Justice agents in the raids.
The Department of Justice naturally was most vitally interested in the
promises of violence against the United States Government contained in
the manifesto of the Communists of the Third International, which was
held at Moscow, March 2 to 6, 1919. Among the passages in the Moscow
manifesto which most interested the Department of Justice were the
following:
"Socialist criticism has sufficiently stigmatized the bourgeois
world order. The task of the International Communist Party is now
to overthrow this order and to erect in its place the structure of
the Socialist world order. We urge the workingmen and women of all
countries to unite under the Communist banner, the emblem under
which the first victories have already been won.
"Proletarians of all lands! In the war against imperialistic
barbarity, against monarchy, against the privileged classes,
against the bourgeois state and bourgeois property, against all
forms and varieties of social and national oppression--unite!
"Under the standard of the Workingmen's Councils under the banner
of the Third International, in the revolutionary struggle for power
and the dictatorship of the proletariat, proletarians of all
countries--unite!"
The manifesto is signed by Lenine, Trotzky and other revolutionaries.
Several references are made to the United States, indicating this
country as one of the objectives of the revolutionaries. Describing the
methods to be used, the manifesto says:
"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."
Under the caption, "The Way to Victory," the manifesto says:
"The revolutionary era compels the proletariat to make use of the
means of battle which will concentrate its entire energies, namely,
mass action, with its logical resultant, direct conflict with the
governmental machinery in open combat. All other methods, such as
revolutionary use of bourgeoisie parliamentarism, will be of only
secondary significance."
The principles of the American Communist Party set forth in their seized
records and made public by the Department of Justice, are:
"The Communist Party of America is the party of the working class.
The Communists of America propose to end capitalism and organize a
workers' industrial republic. The workers must control industry and
dispose of the products of industry.
"The Communist Party is a party realizing the limitations of all
existing workers' organizations and purposes to develop the
revolutionary movement necessary to free the workers from the
oppression of capitalism. The Communist Party insists that the
problems of the American worker are identical with the problems of
the workers of the world.
"The Communist Party is the conscious expression of the class
struggle of the workers against capitalism. Its aim is to direct
this struggle to the conquest of political power, the overthrow of
capitalism and the destruction of the bourgeois state.
"The Communist Party prepares itself for the revolution in the
measure that it develops a program of immediate action expressing
the mass struggles of the proletariat. These struggles must be
inspired with revolutionary spirit and purposes.
"The Communist Party is fundamentally a party of action. It brings
to the workers a consciousness of their oppression, of the
impossibility of improving their condition under capitalism. The
Communist Party directs the workers' struggle against capitalism,
developing fuller forms and purposes in this struggle, culminating
in the mass action of the revolution.
"The negro problem is a political and economic problem. The racial
oppression of the negro is simply the expression of his economic
bondage and oppression, each intensifying the other. This
complicates the negro problem, but does not alter its proletarian
character. The Communist Party will carry on agitation among the
negro workers to unite them with all class conscious workers."
Little need be added concerning the Communist Labor Party. As its
manifesto and program are practically identical with those of the
Communist Party of America, while all its members are likewise
affiliated with the Third or Moscow International, the foregoing
characterization of the Communist Party applies without essential
modification to the Communist Labor Party. The identical character of
these two parties was asserted by A. Mitchell Palmer, Attorney-General
of the United States, in a statement given out January 23, 1920, and
printed in the "New York Times" of the next day, as follows:
"These two organizations are identical in aim and tactics, the
cause for their separate existence being due to the desire of
certain individuals connected with the so-called Left Wing elements
of the Socialist Party to be leaders. For the sake of convenience I
shall refer to members of the Communist Party of America and the
Communist Labor Party as 'Communists.'"
Attorney-General Palmer then quotes from the manifesto of the Third
International, adopted March 6, 1919, at Moscow, to show, as he says,
"that their sole and intimate aim was to accomplish not only the
conquest but the destruction of the idea of the 'State,' as understood
by loyal American citizens," and that "this destruction was not to be
accomplished by parliamentary action, for it is specifically stated that
it is to be by armed conflict with governmental authority." The
Attorney-General's statement then continues:
"It is this manifesto which was adopted by the Communist parties in
the United States as their program of action....
"In the program of the Communists in the United States we find such
statements as the following:
"'Communism rejects the conception of the State; it rejects the
idea of class reconstruction and the parliamentary conquest of
capitalism....
"'The objective is the conquest by the proletariat of the power of
the State. Communism does not propose to capture the bourgeois
parliament of any State, but to conquer and destroy it.'
"We thus find stated in very clear and plain language the fact that
the aim of the Communists of America is for the destruction of the
government. This shows clearly that the organizations of Communists
in this country aim, not at the change of government of the United
States by parliamentary or political methods, but in the overthrow
and the destruction of the same by mass and direct action, by force
and violence.
"Another point of particular significance to which I feel I should
call your attention, is the fact that the organizations of
Communists in the United States are pledged to destroy the great
and loyal labor organization of America, namely, the American
Federation of Labor, which, according to the Communist Party of
America is considered to be reactionary and a bulwark of
capitalism. Another particularly significant pledge of the
Communists of America is to carry on agitation of the negro workers
of America."
The I. W. W.'s and the members of the Communist and Communist Labor
parties are all openly confessed conspirators against the United States
Government. The members of the Socialist Party are just as bad, and
worse, for they are hypocrites, besides being conspirators.
The Socialists, as we have seen in a former chapter, have for many years
given unlimited support to the I. W. W., knowing full well that it was
an organization pledged to revolution by violence.
The Socialists, moreover, are heart and soul in favor of the Bolsheviki
of Russia, who have issued the manifesto of their International
expressly to stir up revolutions by violence in all countries, including
our own. The Socialists of the United States call themselves Bolsheviki,
are spreading the doctrines of the Bolshevists of Russia and openly
admit that Bolshevism and Socialism are identical.
Until very recently the Socialist Party nursed within its bosom about
70,000 dues-paying members, out of 109,586, who went over to the
Communist and Communist Labor parties. Hence, at least till lately,
nearly two-thirds of its membership consisted of avowed rebels. Has it
changed since the break with the Communists? No, not at all. It is just
as bad as ever, only more hypocritical, more prudent and biding its time
so as not to start a premature revolt. After the wholesale arrests of
the members of the Communist and the Communist Labor parties on January
2, 1920, the Publicity Department of the Socialist Party, 220 South
Ashland Boulevard, Chicago, said: "The Socialist Party herewith raises
its voice in emphatic and solemn protest against these activities on the
part of the hot-headed and overzealous guardians of the safety of the
United States."
Now listen once more to the words of Morris Hillquit, who poses before
the public as in a different class from the American Communists and
Communist Laborites. In "The Call," May 21, 1919, in a long article in
large type covering half the editorial page, Morris Hillquit said of the
"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
Socialistic 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." (Italics mine.)
The wisdom of this crafty, go-slow policy is now apparent, with the
"Left Wing" leaders in jail, and Hillquit's chameleons now posing as
angels of light, the saviors of "representative government" in America.
The fact that the Socialist Party of America "goes into politics" does
not make it less dangerous than the other revolutionary bodies, but more
dangerous, for it thus expects to have men in political positions to
seize the reins of government when the hour of blood and violence
arrives. That this is its definite policy, the meaning of its political
activity, was apparent as far back as its National Convention of 1908,
when, in opposing those who would dismiss the use of the ballot in favor
of "direct action"--violence--exclusively, Victor L. Berger said:
"I have no doubt that in the last analysis we must shoot, and when
it comes to shooting, Wisconsin will be there.... In order to be
able to shoot even some day we must have the powers of political
government in our hands, at least to a great extent. I want that
understood. So everybody who is talking to you about direct action
and so on, and about political action being a humbug, is your enemy
today, because he keeps you from getting the powers of political
government." ("Proceedings of the 1908 National Convention of the
Socialist Party," page 241.)
In the "Social Democratic Herald" of Milwaukee, July 31, 1909, Berger
wrote: "It is easy to predict that the safety and hope of this country
will finally lie in one direction only, that of a violent and bloody
revolution. Therefore, I say, each of the 500,000 Socialist voters and
of the 2,000,000 workingmen who instinctively incline our way, should,
besides doing much reading and still more thinking, also have a good
rifle and the necessary rounds of ammunition in his home, and be
prepared to back up his ballot with his bullets if necessary. This may
look like a startling statement. Yet I can see nothing else for the
American masses today." In the same paper, August 14, 1909, he wrote:
"We should be grateful if the social revolution, if the freeing of
75,000,000 whites, would not cost more blood than the freeing of
4,000,000 negroes in 1861."
Thus the Socialist Party of America, under the tutelage and control of
far-seeing and deep-witted leaders like Hillquit and Berger, is by far
the most dangerous band of conspirators in the United States. No
"revolutionary impulse" is too extreme for Hillquit, no movement is "too
radical;" but its "program and tactics" must be deep-laid, deceptive,
seizing every present political advantage so that the central power can
be grasped by astute leadership in one lurch when the hour of "shooting"
arrives.
The dramatic violence of Lenine and Trotzky passed through all the
radical bodies in America like an electric shock, and the enthusiasts
wished to start a ruction right away. But Morris Hillquit was not
carried off his feet. If the boys were so senseless as to try to seize
the reins of party government, Hillquit would dismiss them with a
friendly wave, as in his article, quoted above, in which he also says:
"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." If the "contribution" of the boys should really turn
out to be a successful general strike and overturn, who would be better
able to grasp the power than an astute leader like Hillquit?
This book was written before the Judiciary Committee of the New York
Assembly began its inquiry, in January, 1920, into the fitness of five
Socialist Assemblymen to act as law-makers, and since then has only
received the addition of some important facts and testimony. It is
remarkable, therefore, that all the evidence independently sifted in
that investigation overwhelmingly points to the same conclusions arrived
at in this volume.
On January 21, 1920, at the second day's hearing at Albany, as reported
in the "New York Times" of January 22, John B. Stanchfield and Martin W.
Littleton, of counsel for the Judiciary Committee, stated the
fundamental nature of the charges brought against the five suspended
Socialists--charges based, as is well known, on the results of raids and
investigations of radicalism by the New York State Legislative
Committee, Senator Lusk, Chairman. Said Mr. Stanchfield:
"When the Chairman read from the statement yesterday that the
charge against these men was disloyalty, and that they had
affiliated themselves with a party whose platform and program call
for an overthrow of this Government by violence, he added that we
will prove this beyond the shadow of a doubt.
"We are not upon this investigation engaged in a discussion of the
philosophy of Socialism or its economics. We are engaged in an
investigation of its tactics, its methods, its practical program,
and these tactics, these methods, and that program called for the
overturn of the power of this State and its annihilation, its utter
and complete annihilation."
Mr. Littleton said:
"The representation with reference to what these five men did and
what they profess and what they engaged to do stands out as plainly
as any thing can stand out--that they gave their allegiance wholly
and solely to an alien and invisible empire known as the
Internationale. It stands out that they are the citizens, not in
reality of the country which sustains and maintains them, but they
are citizens of this invisible empire which projects itself as a
revolutionary force into every country, menacing its institutions
and threatening its overthrow. Their allegiance before they ever
entered upon the threshold of this chamber was given to this
empire, which masquerades at one time with the softness of
parliamentary reform and which declares itself in favor of
revolution with force, according to the place and time where it may
so declare.
"It is that alien state, people of alien races--pledged to the
destruction of this Government and its institutions--that the
charges say that these men belong to and act with....
"Perhaps at a later day in this proceeding we will ascertain the
specific program to which they pledged themselves, the program of
Mr. Lenine and Mr. Trotzky, not to reform Russia--that is a
misconception and a misdirection; it is not that Lenine and Trotzky
are trying to reform Russia or change Russia, it is that Lenine and
Trotzky, acting through these agencies, are proposing the
installation of the same kind of government in constitutional
America that they have inaugurated in Russia, and these are the
agents and the instructors, according to the charge, to carry out
that program.
"It is quite a different thing from expressing your sympathy in a
convention for downtrodden Russia. It is a little different
program, Mr. Chairman, and the evidence in this case will disclose
that these members, in conjunction with that party, have tied
themselves irrevocably to the program.
"So that charge involves, I should say, a grave question as to
whether these men, pledged to an alien empire to carry out an alien
policy and to do it masquerading as a political party, shall be
members of that Assembly and can take the oath of office.
"Our ideals are the embodiment of the Constitution which these men
ought to have been able to take the oath to and support. No alien,
invisible empire, having one corner of it resting in the heart of
Soviet Russia, another corner of it resting upon the shoulders of
the Spartacides in Germany, and another resting somewhere else, you
swore allegiance to, but to this country and this standard and no
other country or standard--that is the ideal which we take the oath
for and undertake to support.
"Now, with that situation, here is an Assembly organized under the
ideals of that country and under its Constitution, and the question
here is, Can that Assembly inquire into whether or not five of its
members are disloyal to the country have foresworn themselves and
given their allegiance to an alien and an invisible empire, and
placed themselves in the hands of a master who can withdraw them
from this Assembly when he chooses? Can such a deliberative body as
this make that inquiry, and, finding the fact out, can it expel
that agency from this body before the poison has contaminated the
system?"
Mr. Littleton here took up the charge that the five Socialist
Assemblymen, before taking office, had placed their resignations in the
hands of their party leaders, or their local organizations, to be used
to withdraw them from office should they fail to carry out their party's
behest. He continued:
"What is the charge here? That these men, belonging to the
invisible empire of the Internationale, whose agents may be violent
or peaceable, according as the law allows, and according as they
may escape, are here acting as agents of Lenine and Trotzky, not to
establish a Soviet Republic under the rotten ruins of an infamous
democracy, but to establish a Soviet Republic on the ruins of a
Constitution to which every man is pledged by every ounce of his
blood and by that solemn vow which he registered in heaven when he
entered on the duties of his office.
"Mr. Chairman, before this investigation is over and before the
waves which have been stirred, the waves of public opinion, have
subsided, I make no threat, but I make a prediction, that this
country will understand that this so-called political party,
masquerading as a political party, is the agent and the
co-conspirator with the dark forces of this invisible empire whose
object is the forcible destruction of constitutional government in
America.
"I say this question, before it is over, will arouse this country.
It will not be a tempest in the teapot. It will be a question as to
whether they can hypocritically masquerade as a political party,
and strike hands with every agency of force and revolution, and
still make simple American people understand they are not sworn
enemies of their country and ready to overthrow it."
The power of the "invisible empire" established by Lenine and Trotzky
can be traced in the quotations in this book as a great dramatic energy
which has seized and dragged into its vortex one after another of the
radical organizations in the United States until none are now left out,
and some even of the comparatively conservative trades union bodies
appear to be trembling on the verge of peril. The evil fascination of
the blood-reign of Lenine and Trotzky has been most remarkably evident
in the Socialist Party of America, and precisely so because an element
in this organization developed a strong power of resistance--only to
succumb at last.
The story of this struggle is told in Chapters III to V of this work,
where we see the Moscow Magnet dragging one section so much more rapidly
than the rest moved that the Socialist Party at first stretched out into
two wings, the Left and the Right, and then exploded into three parts,
the Communist Labor Party, the Communist Party of America and that which
still calls itself the Socialist Party of America.
We cannot forget the significant statement by Morris Hillquit in the
"New York Call" after the Chicago Emergency Convention of September,
1919. This was put in evidence against the Socialist Party of America
during the trial before the New York Assembly's Judiciary Committee and
appeared in the "New York Herald" of January 29, 1920. Hillquit's letter
in the "Call" raised the question, "What shall be the attitude of the
Socialist Party toward the newly formed Communist organization?" In
answering this question Hillquit used the following remarkable
expressions:
"The division _was not brought about by differences on vital
questions of principles_. It arose over disputes on methods and
policy. The separation of the Socialist Party into three
organizations _need not necessarily mean a weakening of the
Socialists_.... Our quarrel is a _family_ quarrel, and has no room
in the columns of the capitalistic papers.... We have had our
split.... Now we are through with it. Legitimate constructive work
of the Socialist movement is before us. Let us give it all of our
time, energies and resources. Let us center our whole fight upon
capitalism, and let us hope _our Communist brethren_ will go and do
likewise." (Italics mine.)
The difference, then, is not at all one of "principles," but only one of
"methods and policy," that is, of cunning in putting on disguises; and
in this we concede that the Socialist Party of America is greatly
superior to its "Communist brethren."
Another evidence of this cunning, brought out at the trial of the
Socialist Assemblymen in January, 1920, bears directly upon the
conspiratory character of the Socialist Party's policy of "political
action." According to the "New York Evening Sun," January 22, 1920, the
following from the Socialist Party's New York State Constitution was put
in evidence:
"All candidates or appointees to public office selected by the
dues-paying membership of the Socialist Party of the State of New
York, or any of its subdivisions, shall sign the final resignation
blank before nomination is made official or appointment is made
final."
The form of resignation, also put in evidence, is here reproduced from
the same issue of the "Evening Sun":
"To the end that my official acts may at all times be under the
direction and control of the party membership, I hereby sign and
place in the hands of Local (........) my resignation to any office
to which I may be elected (or appointed), such resignation to
become effective whenever a majority of the local shall so vote. I
sign this resignation voluntarily as a condition of receiving said
nomination, and pledge my honor as a man and Socialist to abide by
it."
One of the by-laws of the New York County organization put in evidence
also reads:
"On accepting a nomination of the party for public office, the
candidate shall at once give to the executive committee a signed
resignation of the office for which he is nominated, and shall
assent in writing to its being filed with the proper authority, if,
in case of election, he proves disloyal to the party."
A protest had been made to the New York Assembly claiming that "the
fundamental principles of representative government" would be violated
in refusing to seat the five suspended Socialist Assemblymen. But it is
plain that men controlled in office by such a secret device would not
really represent their districts, nor those who voted for them, but only
the members of the dues-paying locals or the executive committee holding
their resignations; and in cases of some of the suspended Socialists it
was said that of the votes they received not one in ten nor even one in
twenty had been cast by a dues-paying Socialist. At the trial Morris
Hillquit, of counsel for the defense, tried to break the force of this
damaging evidence by getting in testimony "that this provision of the
State Constitution has been a dead letter since its inception." (New
York "Evening Sun," January 22, 1920.) But this hypocrisy was thoroughly
exposed by the testimony given on January 28, 1920, by George R. Lunn,
Democratic Mayor of Schenectady, who had been a candidate for that
office three times as a Socialist. The following summary of his
testimony is from the "New York Sun" of January 29, 1920:
"The outstanding features of Mayor's Lunn's testimony were his
statements that on the night before election in 1911, when he was
running for Mayor on the Socialist ticket, two members of the party
went to his home and presented a blank resignation for his
signature. This, he said, he signed in order to 'avoid a squabble,'
although he considered it 'child's play and illegal.' He refused,
he said, in 1913 to sign the required resignation before the
election. This time he was defeated. In 1915, he testified, he was
again nominated and elected, after repudiating that part of the
Socialist Constitution which bound him to follow the dictates of
his party leaders. The result, he said, was that the State
organization revoked the charter of the entire Schenectady local in
order to discipline him."
In a ninety-page brief, submitted to members of the New York Assembly on
February 12, 1920, by counsel of the Judiciary Committee, after five
weeks of investigating the qualifications of the suspended Socialist
Assemblymen, Attorney-General Charles D. Newton and the other signers
said that the five Socialists by "their promise ... to place their
resignations in the hands of the dues-paying members ... abdicated their
functions as Assemblymen and disqualified themselves from taking the
oath of office and rendered their oath false." ("New York Times,"
February 13, 1920.)
The same brief, according to the "Times" of above date, says:
"A decent regard for the Assembly as the popular representative
house of the State requires that these five Assemblymen be excluded
from their seats. They have taken a false oath to secure seats
which they cannot occupy as gentlemen, patriots, loyal citizens or
Assemblymen. They come here under the false pretense of being loyal
to their Government, when in fact they are really citizens of the
Internationale, and desire above all things the destruction of this
Government."
The Socialist Party of America is also denounced by the same brief on
three other counts, which the "New York Times" of February 13, 1920,
thus summarizes:
"The Socialist Party is a revolutionary party, having the single
purpose of destroying our institutions and Government, which they
abhor, and substituting the Russian Soviet Government or the
proletariat Government instead to be controlled by themselves. This
appears from their platforms and propaganda.
"The Socialist Party is not a national party, like the Democratic
Party or the Republican Party, whose aim is to conserve and
preserve the nation. The Socialist Party is an anti-national party
whose allegiance is given to the Internationale and not to the
United States, whose Government and institutions it would destroy.
"'Mass action' and the 'general strike' are advocated and urged by
the Socialist Party as a part of the plan to bring about conditions
favorable to revolution, and as instruments of revolution, and not
to remedy industrial evils. The revolutionary purpose and
non-political character of such acts make them treasonable, and,
whether criminal or not in the absence of such purpose, treasonable
with it."
This last point, the attitude of the Socialist Party of America toward
"mass action" and the "general strike," is of the utmost importance as
evidence that the Socialist Party stands for seizure of the Government
of the United States by revolutionary violence; for the reader will
recall abundant proof in this book that it is precisely by means of
"mass action" and the "general strike" that both of the Communist
parties in this country expect to destroy our existing Government, these
"instruments of revolution" being also the very ones recommended by the
Communist manifesto of the Third (Moscow) International, and the ones
employed by the I. W. W. in its industrial battles.
The Moscow Manifesto, as cited from the copy of it in the "New York
Call" of July 24, 1919, gives the Third International's plan of action
for world revolution in a nutshell:
"The revolutionary epoch demands that the proletariat should employ
such fighting methods as will concentrate its entire energy, viz.,
the method of mass action, and lead to its logical consequence--the
direct collision with the capitalist state machine in an open
combat. All other methods, e.g., revolutionary use of bourgeois
parliamentarism will in the revolution have only a subordinate
value."
It is very significant, therefore, that the Socialist Party of America
definitely committed itself to these tactics in the manifesto it adopted
at the Chicago Emergency Convention on September 4, 1919. As given in
the "Call" of September 5, 1919, the manifesto of the Socialist Party of
the United States says on this point:
"The great purpose of the Socialist Party is to wrest the
industries and the control of the Government of the United States
from the capitalists and their retainers. It is our purpose to
place industry and government in the control of the workers with
hand and brain, to be administered for the benefit of the whole
community.
"To insure the triumph of Socialism in the United States the bulk
of the American workers must be strongly organized politically as
Socialists, in constant, clear-cut and aggressive opposition to all
parties of the possessing class. They must be strongly organized in
the economic field on broad industrial lines, as one powerful and
harmonious class organization, co-operating with the Socialist
Party, and ready in cases of emergency to reinforce the political
demands of the working class by industrial action.
"To win the American workers from their ineffective and
demoralizing leadership, to educate them to an enlightened
understanding of their own class interests, and to train and assist
them to organize politically and industrially on class lines, in
order to effect their emancipation, that is the supreme task
confronting the Socialist Party in America.
"To this great task, without deviation or compromise, we pledge all
our energies and resources. For its accomplishment we call for the
support and co-operation of the workers of America and of all other
persons desirous of ending the insane rule of capitalism before it
has had the opportunity to precipitate humanity into another
cataclysm of blood and ruin.
"Long live the International Socialist Revolution, the only hope of
the suffering world!"
So culminates and ends this 1919 national convention manifesto of the
Socialist Party of America. This dedication of that party to the
"supreme task" of "strongly organizing" the "bulk of the American
workers" into "one powerful and harmonious class organization" in order
that "industrial action" may "reinforce the political demands of the
working class," adds greatly to the significance of some testimony by
leading Socialists in the inquiry of the New York Assembly's Judiciary
Committee at Albany. On January 30, 1920, Algernon Lee, educational
director of the Rand School and secretary of the New York County
Committee of the Socialist Party, was sworn and testified as follows,
according to the "New York Herald" of January 31, 1920:
"Mr. Lee ... described at length what Socialists mean by direct
mass action and the general strike. He said the general strike had
been used with some degree of success in Russia and Belgium....
'The general strike is often used to back up political action,' the
witness said. He justified combining economic strikes as a
political weapon....
"'Let us assume for the moment,' said Mr. Conboy, 'that these five
gentlemen whose seats are in question ... should present a
political program here in the shape of proposed legislation, and
they were reinforced by the combination in industrial action,
including within its weapons the general strike. It would be
possible for them, would it not, in the event that the Legislature
of this State refused to adopt the movement which they presented
for adoption by the Legislature, to cripple the industries of the
State and to starve the people thereof?'
"'I think you are assuming, I may almost say, an impossible
condition,' replied Mr. Lee, 'that the people should elect an
overwhelming majority upon one side and then be so overwhelmingly
organized as to be able to use industrial action on the other
side.'"
But here Mr. Lee simply concealed the truth behind hypocritical
camouflage by using the term, "the people," ambiguously. For our people
might go on as now, conducting constitutional government by
representatives in all their legislatures elected by "an overwhelming
majority upon one side," while at the same time the underground work
might go on of "strongly organizing" "the bulk of the American workers"
into "one powerful and harmonious class organization" ready for
"industrial action." In that case, a "general strike" would absolutely
paralyze the whole country, and "the people" and all their legislatures
alike would have to surrender absolutely to any demands made upon them,
or would have to engage instantly in such a civil war as the world has
not yet seen, carried on under conditions of indescribable chaos.
Moreover the underground work of revolutionary "industrial organization"
need be only partial, need, in fact, be carried on only a little beyond
conditions already actually existing, in order to establish a
"dictatorship of the proletariat," or else terrible civil war, in many
of our American cities by the simple process of calling general strikes.
The reader who questions this should learn the facts about the Winnipeg
general strike of May 1-June 15, 1919, "the culmination of the
development of the One Big Union movement in Canada" (page 333 of "The
American Labor Year Book, 1919-1920, edited by Alexander Trachtenberg,
Director, Department of Labor Research, Rand School of Social Science"),
which held a city of 200,000 terrorized for six weeks under the absolute
dictatorship of a Strike Committee elected by the strikers, while "many
cities, including Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto, meanwhile joined the
general strike in sympathy with Winnipeg." (Ibid., page 334.)
The strikers included the employees of the fire, water supply, health,
street cleaning, light and power, transportation, telegraph, telephone
and postal departments of the city, together with the janitors of
buildings, elevator men, wholesale and retail clerks and the carters and
deliverers of the stores, railways and express companies, thus cutting
off the city from the rest of the world and even from the supplies and
facilities within its own bounds except only as the Strike Committee
made concessions. "I could have a glass of milk or lunch if I had a
ticket from the Strike Committee. Otherwise I couldn't." This was the
testimony of Mr. Robert McKay, of Winnipeg, February 10, 1920, and
printed in the Albany "Knickerbocker Press" of February 11, 1920, from
which we take the facts. Even the Winnipeg newspapers failed to appear
after the first three days of the strike, while the city police also
voted to strike, but continued on duty under command of the Strike
Committee.
At length a Citizens' Committee was organized, 100 men at first, which
grew to 1,000, and even 10,000, Mr. McKay says. "The regular police was
replaced by 1,500 special police, assisted by mounted police and
militia," and "during the last two weeks there were two riots, in which
two persons were shot by the mounted police." (Account in Trachtenberg's
"Year Book," above quoted, page 334.) In other words, Winnipeg was only
delivered by means of rescue from outside and by incipient civil war,
the ringleaders of the dictatorship being arrested and indicted for
trial.
Yet are there some Americans still so blinded by foolish optimism as to
think we are in no danger--even at a time when all the "Reds" of
America, inflamed by the Third International, are uniting in feverish
haste to carry "industrial organization" to a sufficient state to make
it an instrument for holding up the whole American people? If the false
prophets of optimism pooh-pooh the peril and label intelligent warnings
as "hysteria," will it be the first time in history that this was done
by men of weight and influence in the very shadow of a great, impending
rebellion and down to the very hour of its outbreak?
Mr. Lee's testimony on January 30, 1920, as quoted above, was
voluntarily supplemented by a statement by Seymour Stedman, of counsel
for the five Socialist Assemblymen and a prominent Socialist himself,
one of the National Executive Committeemen who fought the Left Wing to
keep the control of the party in 1919. We quote from the report of the
trial in the "New York Times" of January 31, 1920:
"Mr. Lee was next asked to explain what was meant by the pledge of
the Socialist anti-war faction to support 'mass action' against
conscription. He answered that the general strike was included in
the term 'mass action,' but that the word contemplated other
methods as well.
"'Is it part of the Socialist Party plans to use the general strike
to back up political action?'
"'If the circumstances should exist which made that necessary, I
take it that it would be construed so,' said the witness.
"Mr. Conboy was unable to pin the witness down to a definition of
what circumstances would make the Socialists resort to direct
action. Mr. Stedman interrupted:
"'There was a bill to nationalize the railroads,' he said. 'The men
went on strike to reinforce their demands. I can see the miners and
the whole working class going on a strike protesting against the
Government paralyzing them rather than taking the mine owners by
the collar. That will be general. If the working class made such a
demand to reinforce a general political demand for the relaxation
of such an injunction, the Socialists would stand side by side with
them everywhere. Personally, I think the mining situation was an
instance where there should have been a general strike.'"
It is important to emphasize the proofs that the Socialist Party of
America has openly committed itself to the sanction and advocacy of
"industrial" violence in furtherance of its avowed intention "to wrest
industry and the control of the government of the United States" from
the whole American people and place them in the hands of a special
class. For since the wholesale arrests of "Reds" by the Department of
Justice were made, followed by the institution of the inquiry into the
qualifications of the five Socialist Assemblymen at Albany, a new,
general movement became discernible among the radicals, a movement to
disguise their real principles, camouflage their plan of action and
carry their propaganda "under ground."
Hillquit, Victor L. Berger and the other shrewd leaders of the Socialist
Party realized early in 1919 that the programs of violence against this
country, flaunted openly by the Left Wing leaders, would bring down the
hand of the Government upon the conspirators. As early as April 19,
1919, Julius Gerber, Executive Secretary of the New York Local of the
Socialist Party, in a private letter which we quote from the Left Wing
"New York Communist." May 1, 1919, stated that "the control of the party
by these irresponsible people will make the party an outlaw
organization, and break up the organization."
Yet the call for the Third (Moscow) International had cunningly
classified the Socialists of the world into three groups, a Right, a
Center and "the Revolutionary Left Wing." This last group included the
friends of Moscow, the elements of the Third International; and those
credited to it in America, who received invitations to the Moscow
Conference of March 2-6, were the Socialist Labor Party, the I. W. W.,
the Workers' International Industrial Union and "the elements of the
Left Wings of American Socialist Propaganda (tendency represented by E.
V. Debs and the Socialist Propaganda League)." The group of the Right,
the other extreme, was completely condemned by the Moscow call as
"avowed social-patriots who, during the entire duration of the
imperialistic war between the years 1914 and 1918 have supported their
own bourgeoisie."
But the "Center" was described as "represented by leaders of the type of
Karl Kautsky, and who constitute a group composed of ever-hesitating
elements, unable to settle on any determined direction and who up to
date have always acted as traitors." "In regard to the 'Center,'" the
call continues, "the tactics consist in separating from it the
revolutionary elements, in criticizing pitilessly its leaders and in
dividing systematically among them the number of their followers." The
Left Wing leaders in America, however, ignoring the recognition of a
"Center" in this country, lumped together and designated as the "Right"
all their Socialist opponents, the special followers of Hillquit, Victor
L. Berger and the other "bosses" of the Socialist Party; but they
certainly followed the tactics of "criticizing pitilessly its leaders."
(See the Moscow call in Chapter III and the details of the Left Wing
fight in Chapters III, IV and V.)
These facts explain the course pursued by Hillquit and his
fellow-leaders. In the first place they had to get rid of the Left Wing
leaders whose "control of the party" would make it "an outlaw
organization and break up the organization." This they accomplished by
wholesale expulsions and suspensions, as we have seen in earlier
chapters. But in the second place they had to prepare a sufficiently
strong public declaration of the real revolutionary principles of their
party and a sufficiently explicit identification of the party with the
Moscow International to satisfy both the rank and file of their
followers and Lenine and Trotzky in Russia, while yet not going far
enough to incriminate themselves with the awakening suspicions of our
National and State Governments. As a result we have the utterances of
the Emergency Convention of August-September, 1919, where every
compromising word was still only a hint of the principles and plan of
action carefully concealed behind it.
Even so, the leaders soon realized that they had revealed too much of
the truth for their safety; while the wholesale arrests, indictments and
deportations of radicals evidently convinced these cunning plotters that
the old-time disguises and hypocrisies of Hillquit, Victor Berger and
the other foxes of the party were the only safe tactics for
revolutionists in America. Thus Ludwig C. A. K. Martens, the Bolshevist
"ambassador," himself led the retreat in his smooth lies to the United
States Senate Foreign Sub-Committee, to the effect that the dictatorship
in Russia no longer regarded it as necessary to urge those affiliated
with it in other countries to overthrow the existing governments.
Undoubtedly he had made the American situation perfectly clear to Lenine
and Trotzky.
The reappearance of Morris Hillquit in the Assembly case at Albany, on
February 17, 1920, and his appearance on the witness-stand as "an expert
on Socialism," was a similar attempt to repair the breaches with
camouflage. It was his part with an amused smile to show that
"industrial organization," "industrial action," "mass action" and
"general strikes" really mean nothing in the Socialist Party's
manifestoes, platforms and programs, and that his party's affiliation
with the Third (Moscow) International was a mere meaningless, friendly
gesture. But these party utterances and acts meant all and even more
than they said to the party's rank and file and confederates.
It was brought out in the testimony at Albany on February 10, 1920, that
the minority report of the Emergency Convention, decreeing affiliation
with the Moscow International, had been adopted by a referendum vote of
the party's rank and file, 3,495 votes for to 1,449 against. The wording
of this report, here given in part from Trachtenberg's 1919-20 Labor
Year Book, page 411, is another of those brilliant attempts at
camouflage for which the "Yellow" Socialists are famous:
"Any International, to be effective in this crisis, must contain
only those elements who take their stand unreservedly upon the
basis of the class struggle, and their adherence to this principle
is not mere lip loyalty....
"The Socialist Party of the United States, in principle and in its
past history, has always stood with those elements of other
countries that remained true to their principles. The manifestoes
adopted in national convention at St. Louis (1917) and Chicago
(1919), as well as Referendum 'D,' 1919, unequivocally affirm this
stand.[K] These parties, the majority parties of Russia, Italy,
Switzerland, Norway, Bulgaria and Greece, and growing minorities in
every land, are uniting on the basis of the preliminary
convocation, at Moscow, of the Third International. As in the past,
so in this extreme crisis, we must take our stand with them.
"The Socialist Party of the United States, therefore, declares
itself in support of the Third (Moscow) International, not so much
because it supports the 'Moscow' programs and methods, but because:
"(a) 'Moscow' is doing something which is already challenging world
imperialism.
"(b) 'Moscow' is threatened by the combined capitalist forces of
the world simply because it is proletarian.
"(c) Under these circumstances, whatever we may have to say to
'Moscow' afterwards, it is the duty of Socialists to stand by it
now because its fall will mean the fall of Socialist republics in
Europe, and also the disappearance of Socialist hopes for many
years to come."
If Moscow's "programs and methods" are only the minor reason for
supporting Moscow, what is the major reason for this "support?" What is
the Third (Moscow) International "doing" which "is really challenging"
the "world," arraying the "forces of the world" against it and thus
making its own "fall" a serious possibility? We examine (see Chapters
III and IV and the present chapter) the Third (Moscow) International's
call to the March, 1919, Conference and the manifesto sent out from it,
and we see what it has done in challenge of the rest of the world. It
has declared war against the rest of the world and its existing
governments, the "Entente Powers," "The White Terror of the
bourgeoisie," as it calls them in the "Manifesto of the Moscow
International" published in the "New York Call" of July 24, 1919, from
which we here quote; and against these "Entente Powers," "The White
Terror," the manifesto continues, "Against this the proletariat must
defend itself--defend itself at all costs! The Communist International
calls the whole world-proletariat to this, the final struggle! Down with
the imperialist conspiracy of capital! Long live the International
Republic of Proletarian Soviet!" (Ibid.)
Thus complete identification with this proletarian declaration of war
against the "Entente Powers" was the major aim of the Socialist Party of
the United States in voting for affiliation with Moscow. This is the
principal ground on which it "declares itself in support of the Third
(Moscow) International" and proclaims it to be "the duty of Socialists
to stand by it now." Just as Hillquit differed from the Left Wingers,
now his "communist brethren," not "on vital questions of principles,"
but only "on methods and policy," opposing their "movement" "not
because" it was "too radical" or "would lead us too far," but simply
because its "specific form and direction, ... its program and tactics,"
would "spell disaster," so Hillquit's Party supported the Third (Moscow)
International "not so much because" of its "programs and methods" as
because what it was "doing," its war-declaration and marshaling of the
world's proletarian forces against the "Entente Powers," was "really
challenging world imperialism."
Is not one mind, one aim, one intent, one purpose and hatred
consistently evident in all these utterances? And thus we understand the
vehemence of the Chicago Manifesto of September 4, 1919, "largely based
upon one suggested by Morris Hillquit," as the "Call," New York, of
September 5, 1919, says. The following quotation from the Chicago
Manifesto, as printed in the "New York Call" of September 5, 1919, and
also in Trachtenberg's Labor Year Book, 1919-1920, pages 413-14, shows
that the Socialist Party of America completely repudiates the so-called
"Moderate" Socialists, and supports the Bolshevist and Communist violent
revolutionists:
"The Socialist Party of the United States at its first national
convention after the war, squarely takes its position with the
uncompromising section of the international Socialist movement. We
unreservedly reject the policy of those Socialists who supported their
belligerent capitalist governments on the plea of 'national defense,'
and who entered into demoralizing compacts for so-called civil peace
with the exploiters of labor during the war and continued a political
alliance with them after the war. We, the organized Socialists of
America, pledge our support to the revolutionary workers of Russia in
the maintenance of their Soviet Government, to the radical Socialists of
Germany, Austria and Hungary in their efforts to establish working-class
rule in their countries, and to those Socialist organizations in
England, Italy and other countries who during the war, as after the war,
have remained true to the principles of uncompromising international
Socialism."
Just as the Moscow Manifesto cries out, "Long live the International
Republic of Proletarian Soviet!" so does Hillquit's manifesto, adopted
September 4, 1919, by the Socialist Party, "hold out to the world the
ideal of a federation of free and equal Socialist nations." A common
zeal for the violent overthrow of the world's existing non-Socialist
governments, in order to set up a world-empire of Socialism, is the
major feature of the Socialist Party's unity with the Moscow plotters
and incendiaries.
But while Moscow's "programs and methods" are "not so much" the concern
of the American Socialist Party as the "federation of ... Socialist
nations," yet these Moscow "programs and methods" are themselves also
distinctly adopted and enthusiastically followed by the American
Socialists.
The Moscow Manifesto ("New York Call," July 24, 1919) lays down two
great principles of action, one of _method_, the other of _means_. Here
is the method: "The revolutionary epoch demands that the proletariat
should employ such fighting methods as will concentrate its entire
energy, viz., the method of mass action, and lead to its logical
consequence--the direct collision with the capitalist state machine in
an open combat. All other methods, e.g., revolutionary use of bourgeois
parliamentarism, will in the revolution have only a subordinate value."
Here is the means: "A coalition is necessary with those elements of the
revolutionary workers' movement who, though they did not previously
belong to the Socialist Party, now, on the whole, take up the standpoint
of the proletarian dictatorship in the form of the power of Soviets,
e.g., _some of the sections among the Syndicalists_." (Ibid.)
The American "Syndicalists" are the I. W. W.'s, and their methods are
those of "industrial action" by means of industrial unionism. In other
words, they are seeking to organize "One Big Union" in order, as the
"Preamble" to their Constitution asserts, to "take possession of the
earth and the machinery of production." These are the methods and means
recommended by the Moscow International to the rabid Socialists
affiliated with it all over the world.
These methods and means, urged by the Moscow Manifesto, were evidently
adopted in Hillquit's manifesto, which led, by the party's adoption of
it, to the American Socialist Party's strong commitment of itself at
Chicago to "strongly organize" on "industrial lines" the "bulk of the
American workers" into "one powerful and harmonious class organization"
ready for "industrial action." The preamble to the Constitution, also
adopted at the Emergency Convention of 1919, according to Trachtenberg's
Labor Year Book, 1919-1920, page 410, stresses the same thing:
"The Socialist Party seeks to organize the working-class for
independent _action_ on the political field, not merely for the
betterment of their conditions, _but also and above all with the
revolutionary aim_ of putting an end to exploitation and class
rule." And it adds: "To accomplish this aim, it is necessary that
the working-class be powerfully and solidly organized also on the
economic field _to struggle for the same revolutionary goal_."
Trachtenberg's 1919-1920 Year Book, page 409, tells us, too, that the
party at its Emergency Convention "adopted a series of resolutions,"
including two described as follows:
"_Co-operatives._--Favoring the establishment of co-operatives and
recommending that literature be distributed on the subject."
"_Economic Organization._--Favoring industrial unionism and
establishing a labor department in the party for the preparation of
literature and more active work among the labor unions."
We know what the last-mentioned resolution means; and the meaning of the
propaganda for "co-operatives" becomes plain when we read in
Trachtenberg's same Year Book, page 393, that this co-operative movement
has been defined as "The state within a state."
Indeed, these two resolutions, favoring propaganda for "co-operatives"
and "industrial unionism," seem to be explained in the "Preamble to the
Constitution of the Socialist Party," adopted at Chicago on September 6,
1919. A single sentence in this Preamble, which we quote from
Trachtenberg's Labor Year Book, 1919-1920, page 410, tells us what the
Socialist Party wants and the means by which it hopes to get it. Here is
the sentence: "The workers must wrest the control of the government from
the hands of the masters and use its powers in this upbuilding of the
new social order, the Co-operative Commonwealth."
Naturally "co-operatives" are favored as a step toward the "Co-operative
Commonwealth," which is what the Socialist dreamers want. But in order
to set up this new state, the Socialists want "the workers" to do a big
job for them, namely, to "wrest the control of" the present Government
of the United States and get it out of the way. Thus "the workers" are
the means, the tool, which the hair-brained Socialists hope to use,
while the proposed method of using these "workers" is to make Socialists
of them and line them up in one big "industrial union" ready for
"industrial action" when the Socialists crack the whip. We do not think
America's "workers" intend to burn their fingers in pulling Hillquit's
chestnuts out of the fire; but the lazy drones, the Socialist
"intellectuals," as the Hillquitites love to style themselves, certainly
hope to ride into power on the back of American labor just as the
Bolshevist "dictators," Lenine and Trotzky, rode into power and are
still riding on the galled back of the labor slaves of Russia.
It appears, then, that the Socialist Party of America is not merely
affiliated with Moscow's "programs and methods" by a referendum vote,
but has adopted a similar program and method for its own "supreme task."
The only difference is that the Bolsheviks have made their revolution,
while the American Socialists are forging the weapon for theirs. Debs'
motto is their motto: "I am law abiding under protest--not from
scruple--and bide my time."
Perceiving the peril of his party, Hillquit, on the witness stand in the
Judiciary Committee's inquiry at Albany, sought in every way to belittle
the significance of his and his party's Chicago Manifesto, the Moscow
Manifesto, and the evident connection between the two, belittling, also,
his party's affiliation with the Third (Moscow) International. How
unscrupulous and hypocritical his testimony seems in the light of all
the facts!
In his testimony at Albany on February 19, 1920, Hillquit acknowledged
the Chicago Manifesto, adopted September 4, 1919, as his own child. "At
least ninety per cent of it is my authorship," he proudly said. Having
himself imprudently led his party to make open confession, by manifesto,
of its plot "to wrest the industries and the control of the government
of the United States" out of their present keeping and so completely
into the hands of the Socialist Party that it would be able "to place"
them "in the control of" a special class, did Hillquit feel that he
would be justified on the witness stand in using any extreme of craft
which might help to bury the plot out of sight again?
In spite of the fact that the Party Manifesto Hillquit wrote sounds
astonishingly like the echo of the Moscow Manifesto, Hillquit, on
February 19, 1920, swore that he had never read the Moscow Manifesto
when he wrote his ninety per cent or more of the Chicago Manifesto. To
this he held even when reminded by Mr. Conboy that all of the Moscow
Manifesto but the preamble had appeared in the "New York Call" of July
24, 1919. And he still sought to convey the notion that the Moscow
Manifesto had not made any particular impression upon the members of
his party prior to the Emergency Convention of September, 1919, in spite
of the letter read to him by Mr. Conboy, of which the following is an
extract:
"SOCIALIST PARTY
"National Office
"Executive Secretary: Adolph Germer
"803 West Madison Street
"Chicago, Ill., 5/12/1919.
"Local Rochester, C. M. O'Brien,
"580 St. Paul St., Rochester, N. Y.: