"A group of Socialist Party officials and active party members came together for consultation as to ways and means for giving the American Socialist movement a revolutionary character in harmony with all the significance of November 7th, the most glorious date in all history. At the hour of that little meeting bedlam reigned in the streets of Chicago by premature celebration of peace. The calling of this meeting during the ma.s.s tumult of November 7th is prophetic of the revolutionary vision which brought these Comrades together. On that day the seething proletariat ruled Chicago by sheer force of numbers. One thing alone was needed to give this ma.s.s expression ident.i.ty with the proletarian uprisings of Europe--one thing: the revolutionary idea!
"The Communist Propaganda League is an organization for the propagation of the revolutionary idea. The civilization of tomorrow is with unorganized ma.s.ses who greeted the news of peace and revolution in Germany with what may be safely described as the greatest spontaneous expression of ma.s.s sentiment ever witnessed in America. To give direction and inspiration to the advancing and irresistible army of the preletariat is the mission to which this League is dedicated."
This League, with the millionaire Socialist, William Bross Lloyd, at its head, became part of the Communist Labor Party.
The indications are that the Communist Labor Party, had it been left undisturbed by our Government, would soon have surpa.s.sed in numbers the remnant left in the old Socialist Party, whose dues-paying membership dwindled from 109,589 in January, 1919, to 39,750 by July of the same year. Evidently, when the Left Wing secession occurred, a few real rebels came out of the Socialist Party, which used to boast in election campaigns that it was merely a party of evolution, not of revolution.
Those who still remain in the old party are rebels, too, but the rank and file is restrained by seasoned leaders, who are more prudent but less honest than the hot-headed Communists.
The Socialists now have in the country four revolutionary organizations: the Socialist Party, the Socialist Labor Party, the Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party. The sc.u.m of the land, the wrecks and wreckers of civilization, deluded ignoramuses, thus find ample opportunity for selecting an organization of rebellion in which there is "no political corruption." The members of these parties find fault with everything under the Stars and Stripes, and yet hesitate to pa.s.s over to Russia and live under the b.l.o.o.d.y standard of Lenine and Trotzky. If these four rebel parties do not suffice for some of the rebels, there still remains the I. W. W. All are pretty much the same, their princ.i.p.al differences being the varying degrees of hypocrisy, boldness and l.u.s.t for power of their leaders.
The open and p.r.o.nounced revolutionary character of the I. W. W., Communist Party and Communist Labor Party, evidenced in their inflammatory utterances and tactics, had established their criminal status with our National and State police and legal departments, while startling wholesale arrests, deportations and indictments of these three cla.s.ses of law-breakers soon impressed a recognition of their criminal status upon the public mind. It is important to establish the further fact, if it be one, that the only difference between the rank and file of these organizations and the rank and file of the remnant still attached to the Socialist Party of America is the difference between tweedledee and tweedledum.
The late inquiry into the qualifications of five suspended Socialists to sit as law-makers in the New York a.s.sembly created an astonishing furore, disclosing amazing ignorance concerning American Socialism among our most intelligent citizens. The confusion of the public mind was still further increased by the Attorney-General of the United States, whose convincing characterization of the two Communist parties, given out on January 23, 1920, contained the following sentence:
"Certainly such an organization as the Communist Party of America and also the Communist Labor Party cannot be construed to fall within the same category as the Socialist Party of America, which latter organization is pledged to the accomplishment of changes of the Government by lawful and rightful means."
But can the facts so far brought out in this book "be construed" as indicating any substantial difference between the 39,000 or 40,000 Socialists who have kept their old party name and the 70,000 or 72,000 who separated from them in September, 1919? Up to the moment of separation were not all alike under the same "pledge" to use "lawful and rightful means?" But if this public profession of lawfulness meant nothing to 70,000 of them, why think it means more to the rest?
We have the further striking evidence, shown above, that the leaders who had compromised their att.i.tude toward Bolshevism felt compelled, in order to hold any of the rank and file, to argue that "the National Executive Committee and the party in general" had "supported the Russian Comrades at the head of the Soviet power." Yet in spite of this defense the old National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party was rebuked and kicked out of office during the Emergency Convention, even by delegates who were friendly to the compromised leaders. The "Call,"
September 5, 1919, gives some of the details:
"The rebuke of the National Executive Committee was in the form of an amendment to the original motion to adopt its report. The amendment carried by 63 to 39....
"Perhaps Frederick Haller expressed the general sentiment of the convention when he said:
""We must endorse this supplemental report of the National Executive Committee, but we must go back to our const.i.tuents and tell them that we gave the National Executive Committee h.e.l.l.""
These "const.i.tuents," the rank and file, determine the character of the party, and not the thimble-rigging games of their political leaders, who support themselves and have "made a good thing" out of Socialism by carrying water on one shoulder for gullible voters, and on the other for their credulous disciples. This is not the first time that self-serving, hypocritical teachers, in compa.s.sing sea and land to make proselytes, have made them twofold more the children of h.e.l.l than themselves.
The National Emergency Convention of 1919 affords still other evidence of the mind of the rank and file of the Socialist Party in the report of the committee which investigated the referendum vote of 1919 which the old National Executive Committee had suppressed. The "Call," September 1, 1919, says:
"The report states that on the face of the returns, referendum B and D were carried by large majorities, and a National Executive Committee, consisting of Louis Fraina of New York, Charles E.
Ruthenberg of Cleveland, Seymour Stedman of Chicago, Patrick S.
Nagle of Oklahoma and L. E. Katterfeld of Cleveland was elected.
The returns also showed on their face that John Reed and Louis Fraina had been elected as the party"s international delegates and Kate Richards O"Hare its international secretary."
Thus the party was "Red" or Left-Wingish "by large majorities," and was distinctly Bolshevist, as we learn from the "Call"s" explanation of "referendum B and D," which "were carried by large majorities."
"Referendum B put the question of holding a National Emergency Convention up to the membership. Referendum D asked the membership to decide whether the party should record itself as being opposed to entering any other international Socialist alignment than that of the Third National [International?] which held its first conference at Moscow early in March.
"Its adoption means that the Socialist party will not take part in any international conference from which the Bolsheviki of Russia and the Spartacans of Germany are excluded, or in which they refuse to partic.i.p.ate."
Thus at the Emergency Convention of August-September, 1919, the Socialist Party of America was tied to the will of the Russian Bolshevists and the German Spartacides, who held the powers of approval and veto in deciding what internationals the members of the Socialist Party of America might a.s.sociate with! A more anomalous product of the double-faced generalship of Berger and Hillquit it would be hard to imagine.
But this is not all. The Moscow Manifesto of March, 1919, was before the Emergency Convention. This Russian Communistic Manifesto is addressed "To the proletariat of all countries" (see Chapter IV) and reads: "We Communists, representatives of the revolutionary proletariat of the different countries of Europe, America and Asia, a.s.sembled in Soviet Moscow." Would the Socialist Party of America accept its inclusion among those in "America" thus designated, or refuse? The committee which considered the matter split, bringing in majority and minority reports.
The majority report, favored by Berger, considered the Third International as not yet const.i.tuted, thus hanging the Socialist Party of America in the air, without fellowship with Moscow, Berne or any other thing--a trapeze performance truly Bergeresque. The minority report, voted for even by a third of the machine delegates in the Emergency Convention, favored affiliation with the a.s.sociates of the Moscow Conference as const.i.tuting the Third International. It was decided to submit both reports to a referendum vote of the party, which should have been taken in January or February, 1920, if the requirements of the party Const.i.tution were followed.
The concern of the Socialist Party managers to keep the facts from the general public, evidenced by their tactics in the case of the five suspended Socialist a.s.semblymen at Albany, might have led to another unconst.i.tutional delay or manipulation of a referendum. But this was immaterial in determining the mind of the rank and file, as we have doc.u.mentary evidence showing that the only opposition within the party to a clear-cut Bolshevik committal sprang out of fear either of legal prosecution or of the loss of votes through public condemnation. The following illuminating discussion is extracted from a letter of Alexander Trachtenberg, a conspicuous Socialist, as printed in the "Call" of November 26, 1919:
"The members of the Socialist Party now have before them two referenda--Referendum E, consisting of the various changes in the party Const.i.tution which were decided upon at the Chicago Convention, and Referendum F, on international Socialist relations....
"The question of international affiliation is at this moment probably the most important before the Socialist Party. The two reports which emanated from the convention, known as the majority and minority reports, will no doubt receive very careful consideration by the members....
"A close examination of the two reports reveals that the condition laid down for the International, with which the Socialist party cares to affiliate itself, are the same. Both reports agree that:
"a. The Second International is dead.
"b. The Berne International Conference hopelessly failed in its indeavor to reconst.i.tute the International.
"c. The New International must consist only of those parties:
"1. Which have remained true to the revolutionary International Socialist movement during the war.
"2. Which refused to co-operate with bourgeois parties and are opposed to all forms of coalition.
"In short, _both_ reports agree that the Socialist Party will go only into such an International the component parties of which _conduct their struggle on revolutionary cla.s.s lines_. The difference between the two reports is, that while the majority report leaves the matter of the reconstruction of the International hang in the air, the minority report has something tangible to offer. It also more specifically outlines the Socialist policy on the question of international affiliation, and gives several reasons for joining the Third (Moscow) International....
"The Socialist Party of America cannot afford to remain amorphous at the present stage of the building of the new International. It has refused to go with those elements who have either betrayed or were unwilling to remain true to their professions. It belongs among those parties which have remained true to International Socialism and who alone have the right to build the edifice of the new International.
"By voting for the minority report the Comrades will give expression to _what they have professed and believed in_ during the past critical years in the life of the international Socialist movement."
A letter on the same subject, by Benjamin Gla.s.sberg, appears in the "Call" of December 4, 1919, from which we take extracts showing the Bergeresque argument of Hoan, Berger"s mayor of Milwaukee:
"The most important question before the members of the Socialist Party just now is the referendum on the majority and minority reports on international relations. Comrade Trachtenberg has argued in the columns of "The Call" in favor of the minority report, and Hoan of Milwaukee for the majority, and Comrade Warshow has argued against both.
"A careful examination of the position taken by both Hoan and Warshow fails to reveal why the minority report should be voted down. Comrade Hoan is naturally very much concerned at the possibility that "in the coming political battles the capitalistic henchmen will flaunt in your face that the above is the program of the Socialist Party" (referring to the statement in the governing rules of the Communist International that the revolutionary era compels the proletariat to make use of ma.s.s action).
"The important thing, according to Hoan, is not whether the minority report is right or not, but rather what will the effect be at the next election. In this respect he is typical of the pure and simple political Socialist....
"In one breath Comrade Warshow calls for a new International to which shall be admitted all Socialist parties of the world who believe in the cla.s.s struggle, and in the next he defends the Socialists supporting a coalition government. How can one subscribe to the doctrine of the cla.s.s struggle and at the same time approve of Socialists joining in a coalition government, which of necessity will not be the agent of the workers but of the cla.s.s with which the workers are at all times at war?....
"In all our official declarations, including the Chicago manifesto, we have voiced our support of the Bolsheviki. In our meetings and in our literature we have taken our stand solidly with our Russian Comrades, our friends, the Left Wingers to the contrary notwithstanding.
"Why, then, hesitate to affiliate with them?"
Thus, whether or not Berger"s policy of dissimulation prevailed--and his wholesale slaughter of dues-payers with the ax of the Executive Committee had shown all who opposed him what they might expect--it remained true that identification with the Bolshevist principles and tactics of Lenine and Trotzky was what the present members of the Socialist Party in America "have professed and believed in during the past critical years" and was in accord with "all" their "official declarations," their "meetings" and their "literature."
The base ingrat.i.tude of Berger toward those who have followed and supported him; the gross, incredible savagery of his egotism in turning to rend those he had discipled into revolutionaries the moment their allegiance to the principles he taught them stood in the way of his cowardice and ambition; his butcher insensibilities in making his party"s Const.i.tution a "sc.r.a.p of paper" and the party a shambles for the hewing down of two-thirds of his "Comrades;" his burlesque effrontery in posing in the convention as a law-and-order man, railing at his own victims as "anarchists"--these daubs of color paint the cubist portrait of Wisconsin"s mock hero, one of the meanest caricatures of human life that ever swaggered on a political arena.
When the two Wings of the Convention raised the question, "Who called the cops?" Berger"s pale and innocent figure rose with the trembling remark: "If they had not been here yesterday morning we would not be here now. The two-fisted Reed and the other two-fisted Left Wingers would be here." He took pains to have the delicate pathos of his martyrdom sketched into the Executive Committee report he signed, "Victor L. Berger, in addition to a sentence of 20 years, has four more indictments pending against him, besides being refused his seat in Congress. All the Socialist candidates for Congress in Wisconsin and the State Secretary also are under indictment. No mail whatever is permitted to be delivered to the "Leader," the party daily in Milwaukee," etc. On the other hand, against the terrible "anarchs" who had so outraged his own gentle spirit and sense of order, he even fulminated outside the Convention Hall, as in the interview which we take from the "Call" of September 4, 1919:
"Ever since the Socialist movement has existed there have been two very distinct tendencies apparent--the Social Democratic tendency and the Anarcho-Syndicalist tendency....
"But the revolution in Russia and Hungary, which had been predicted by us, as well as in Germany, has had a peculiar psychological effect on many of the rank and file of the party, especially upon those who had come from Russia and Hungary. They really believe this revolt can be repeated today in America.
"The revolution in Russia and the psychological effect of it penetrated into the foreign federations affiliated with the Socialist party of America and gave the Anarcho-Syndicalists, who have joined us in great numbers in the last six months, a chance to split up the Socialist party of America into three groups.
"First, the old Socialist Party, which will remain longer to aid the old ideals of Social Democracy, even though there may be a change in tactics required by changed conditions.