The Red Conspiracy Part 5

"'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 Ess.e.x 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, cla.s.s-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 cla.s.s 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 b.o.o.bs 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 a.s.sumed, 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sumption that they were the Left, the ingenuous leaders of the movement had to discover a Right, and since the European cla.s.sification 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 h.o.m.ogeneous 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 const.i.tutional 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, const.i.tuting about 6,000 members, suspended the Russian, Lithuanian, Lettish, Polish, Hungarian, Ukrainian and South Slavic Federations of the party, const.i.tuting 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 const.i.tution 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 a.s.sume 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sure 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 const.i.tution. 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 Ma.s.sachusetts Comrades were also expelled and that others in other States were threatened:

"Another State gone. Ma.s.sachusetts 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 ent.i.tled 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 'const.i.tutionality' 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 cla.s.s-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....