The Socialist Party of America
(1921-1946)
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1921
JANURARY
“Hillquit Repeats His Error,” by Max Eastman [Jan. 1921] In the fall of 1920, Morris Hillquit responded to Max Eastman’s article entitled “Hillquit Excommunicates the Soviet,” which drew this additional lengthy round of polemical prose from The Liberator’s editor. Eastman accuses Hillquit of failing to accurately know or to accurately state the position of the Left Wing. “The essential point of the Communist position, in contrast to the position of the ‘Centrists,’ is its absolute and realistic belief in the theory of the class struggle, and the theory that all public institutions— whether alleged to be democratic or not— will prove upon every critical occasion to be weapons in the hands of the capitalist class,” Hillquit declares. All of Hillquit’s errors are held by Eastman to flow from this fundamental blunder. Eastman also upbraids Hillquit for failure to read and contemplate the writings of the Socialist Party’s Left Wing, which predated by years the Russian Revolution. The revolutionary Socialist perspective of the Communists is in no way “new,” as Hillquit claims, but rather a restatement of long-existing Marxian tenants. “The actual experience of a successful revolution has only confirmed the opinions of the revolutionary or thoroughgoing Marxian factions in all the Socialist parties of the world. It is transforming these factions from weak and seemingly ‘academic’ minorities into powerful and active majorities everywhere,” Eastman asserts. While Hillquit claims the Bolsheviks are both “dogmatic” and “opportunistic,” Eastman characterizes them as highly principled and unwilling to water down their revolutionary doctrine, but conscious that they are engaged in hand-to-hand combat with capitalism and thus willing to “grab every advantage, every probability of defeating the enemy” that comes to mind. Eastman then returns to the question of the Soviets v. the Constituent Assembly in Russia, arguing convincingly the long time theoretical support of the Bolsheviks for the institution of the Soviets and attempting to force Hillquit to “lay aside all his pride of authority and acknowledge that he was flatly and absolutely wrong” in asserting that the Bolsheviks’ support of the institution of the Soviets was hastily and opportunistically put forward only when they had won a majority in the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.
MARCH
“Debate on the Press and the Society for Medical Aid to Soviet Russia at the 3rd Russian All-Colonial Congress: New York City,” by Bureau of Investigation Undercover Agent “P-132” [March 8, 1921] The Russian All-Colonial Congresses were ostensibly non-partisan biannual gatherings of the “Russian colony in the United States and Canada” sponsored by the anarchist Union of Russian Workers. This material is an extract from the report of the 3rd Russian All-Colonial Congress was provided by “P-132,” a Russian-speaking undercover Special Agent of the Bureau of Investigation (a full BoI employee who wrote his own reports, as opposed to a paid informer who funneled information to a reporting Special Agent). Topics of debate here are the ideological line to be pursued by the new official organ of the All-Colonial and the financial controversy over the Detroit branch of the Medical Aid to Soviet Russia organization. With regard to the press, the All-Colonial (Union of Russian Workers) had launched a paper called Amerikanskaia Izvestiia [American News] to replace the suppressed anarchist weeklies Rabochii i Krest'ianin and Khleb i Volia. Calls were made by anarchist delegates to the 3rd Congress for the publication to adopt an explicitly anarchist line. Delegate Mikhailov declares” “Comrades, you all know that we are Anarchists. Why should we cover up our beliefs and teachings by organizing schools and various educational societies? And that applies to Amerikanskaia Izvestiia. Once for all we ought to say clearly that it is an Anarchist newspaper and establish definitely its true character and purpose.” This perspective is opposed by Delegate Sivko, who states: “You are an Anarchist; well, I am a Communist, and if you demand the Anarchist policy I demand the Communist, and I will never consent that Anarchist propaganda be taught through Amerikanskaia Izvestiia.” Despite their control of the convention, the multi-tendency orientation of the newspaper was maintained by the final resolution of the 3rd All-Colonial Congress. That same evening a “special meeting or session” was held to deal with the alleged improprieties of the Medical Aid to Soviet Russia organization. At this “special session,” the same “Communist” delegate Sivko (probably a communist-anarchist as opposed to a CPA member) detailed the fraudulent practices which he uncovered in the Detroit organization of the Medical Aid for Soviet Russia organization. Rovin, Saks, Mendelsohn, and Boris Roustam-Bek are accused of having pocketed organizational funds, nearly $2,000 being unaccounted for by a snap audit. A parallel (anarchist) Medical Aid to Soviet Russia organization had been launched. Adding color is the comment by “P-132” that “during [Sivko's] speech several members of the Communist Party were trying to break up the meeting, but they were beaten up by members of the Union of Russian Workers, especially by Kiselev, who threw them down the stairs."
“Branstetter in Interview With Eugene V. Debs: Wilson Gag on Socialist Prisoner.” [Milwaukee Leader] [March 19, 1921] Following the November 1920 election, Atlanta prison authorities, apparently acting on directions of officials in the Wilson administration, seem to have cracked down on imprisoned Socialist leader Gene Debs, taking away his privilege to send or receive mail or to receive visitors. This period of holding Debs incommunicado was finally broken in March 1921 with a visit by Executive Secretary of the SPA Otto Branstetter to Debs in prison. Branstetter dispelled rumors that Debs had been physically mistreated, noting that “His guards have the deepest respect and even affection for him, and the matter of personal mistreatment is unthinkable.” Branstetter states that Debs’ “rights have been restored, at the discretion of the warden, and it seems as if the matter of his gagging is an ugly incident of the past, the last foul smelling act of the discredited Wilson regime.” The article also makes not that Debs’ fellow political prisoner in Atlanta Joseph Coldwell of Rhode Island, had refused an opportunity at parole on more than one occasion with the words, “While Gene is in, I will not voluntarily get out.”
“Daugherty Acts on Debs Monday: Gene Returns to Cell from Capital Without Guards: Leaves Washington After Secret Conference with Attorney General on Case - Trial Judge Also Called: Prisoner Came and Left in Silence,” by Paul Hanna [March 25, 1921] This article distributed by the Federated Press details a surprising and largely unknown episode from the life of Eugene Debs—that in March 1921 he was permitted to leave the federal penitentiary in Atlanta without escort to travel by train to meet with new Attorney General Daugherty. “I could not go to see Debs, so Debs came to see me,” Daugherty told reporters after Debs had safely returned to Atlanta. “I wanted his own answer to certain questions and Debs gave them,” Daugherty said. Debs was sworn to silence on the trip, a promise which he did not violate."His sensational round trip from Atlanta to Washington is regarded as being in part a move by the administration to show the public that Eugene V. Debs is a man of spotless personal honor, no less than of unflinching devotion to his political principles. The administration has learned how to share in the drama of Debs, and to set off the villain’s role played by a prominent Democrat,” reporter Paul Hanna remarks. The Attorney General also sought the counsel of Judge Westenhaver of Ohio, who sentenced Debs to 10 years imprisonment on Sept. 11, 1918. Resolution of the call for amnesty in the case of Debs and all other political prisoners remaining from the late European war was expected shortly.
APRIL
“Debs Tried Out One Big Union of Railroads: Plan Weakened Craft Bodies, Says Foster,” by William Z. Foster [April 6, 1921] This article distributed by the Federated Press by the former syndicalist and future Communist leader emphasizes Foster’s anti-dual union perspective. While the spirit behind the effort of Gene Debs to establish a militant industrial union of railway workers in 1893 is embraced, Foster ultimately declares that the ARU’s “brilliant” early victory only lead to “overconfidence” and a smashing of the union. “The advent of the American Railway Union, as is always the case with dual organizations, did great harm to the railroad craft unions. All of them were weakened and some nearly destroyed. Thousands of their best members quit them to take part in the ARU, only to find themselves blacklisted out of the railroad service later because of the lost strike,” Foster declares. He adds that “The case of Debs himself is a striking example of the damage done. When he resigned his position as General Secretary-Treasurer and editor of the official journal of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen in order to form the ARU, he was a great force for progress in the old unions. Had Debs stayed with them he would have been a big factor in their future development. But he was lost to them, and that they have suffered much in consequence no unbiased observer will deny.” Foster does not recognize or emphasize that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, from whence Debs sprung, was a fraternal and benefit society rather than a union per se—providing cultural opportunities and accident insurance rather than engaging in collective bargaining.
MAY
“William D. Haywood, Communist Ambassador to Russia,” by David Karsner. [May 1, 1921] In 1921, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed the conviction and 20 year sentence of IWW leader William D. Haywood under the so-called Espionage Act. Rather than return to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, Haywood instead jumped bail and emigrated to Soviet Russia. This article, published in the illustrated Sunday supplement of the Socialist Party-affiliated New York Call assesses “Big Bill” Haywood’s career as a revolutionary labor leader and attempts to analyse the thinking behind Haywood’s decision to escape American justice for foreign shores. The author of this article, David Karsner, the editor of The Call’s Sunday magazine and the first biographer of Eugene Debs, was not unsympathetic to Haywood’s plight.
“Stedman’s Red Raid,” by Robert Minor. [May 1, 1921] Full text of a pamphlet produced by the UCP’s Toiler Publishing Association detailing a particularly disgusting footnote to the 1919 split of the Socialist Party. Minor indicates that in the immediate aftermath of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s anti-red raid of January 2, 1920, Socialist Party attorneys Seymour Stedman and Lazaras Davidow attempted to expropriate the assets of the Socialist Party of Michigan under the flimsy pretext that as “Communists” the expelled Michiganites of the party’s holding company were participants in a criminal organization which “advocated the overthrow of the government by force and violence.” At bottom of this scheme was a Detroit headquarters building owned by the Michigan party, represented by Minor as having approximately $90,000 of equity. Stedman issued a Bill of Complaint paralleling the criminal charges of the state against the unfortunate Michigan party members already jailed for alleged violation of the state’s Criminal Syndicalism law. He then red-baited the members of the legitimate holding company on the stand in an attempt to have the property awarded to a hastily gathered and miniscule Michigan “organization” retaining ties to the national SPA. Minor states that when they were at last confronted about their uncomradely behavior by concerned Socialist Party members, Stedman and Davidow thereafter lied and mislead their inquisitors as to their actions and had a further smoke screen laid by SPA National Executive Secretary Otto Branstetter with a fallacious news release of his own to the socialist press. A sordid tale of greed, deceit, and foul play...
“1920 Financial Report of Charles H. Kerr & Co., Book Publishers.” [May 5, 1921] A mimeographed financial report sent out by America’s largest socialist publisher, Charles H. Kerr & Co. to its cooperative stockholders. Kerr anounces the forthcoming publication of The Shop Book, planned to be an occasional publication, to replace the suppressed International Socialist Review. It is noted that 1920 export trade was “almost entirely cut off” by the depreciation of the pound, which made it impossible for English booksellers to buy Kerr publications economically. In addition, “the price of paper, printing, and binding almost doubled,” resulting in a large increase in unsold inventories. One of three highlighted new publications, William Z. Foster’s The Railroaders’ Next Step, was actually published by the Trade Union Educational League—another sign of the waning influence of Kerr as the leading radical publisher in America. Includes a full financial report of Receipts v. Expenditures and Assets v. Liabilities.
JUNE
“Moscow and the Socialist Party of the United States,” by Bertha Hale White. [June 11, 1921] White, one of the leading female members of the Socialist Party, writes in a pre-convention discussion bulletin that any discussion about SPA affiliation with the Third International in Moscow is moot, since the question has already been answered in no uncertain terms in the negative. Interesting for its discussion ofthe lengths taken by National Executive Secretary to make application to the Comintern for membership in 1920—as he was instructed to do by party referendum. White states the SPA must rebuild its shattered organization into a powerful force before being able to affiliate with Moscow on its own terms rather than be subject to conditions amounting to “tyranny.”
“A Cook County Socialist Conference: Bureau of Investigation Report on the Special Meeting of Local Cook County, SPA: Machinists’ Hall, Chicago,” by August H. Loula [June 19, 1921]” This document reproduces the report of Chicago Bureau of Investigation August Loula concerning the bitterly contested June 19, 1921, meeting of Local Cook County, Socialist Party—a conclave which pitted SPA Executive Secretary Otto Branstetter and his supporters against the last enclave of a quasi-Communist Left Wing, headed by Louis Engdahl and Hyman Schneid. The meeting rejected a proposal recommending the Socialist Party’s affiliation with the Third International on the basis of the Comintern’s “21 points” by a vote of 50-74; this result prompted a walk out by 21 Bohemian delegates, who favored affiliation. A second resolution, declaring for reservation without reservations, was thereafter defeated by a vote of 36 to 44. A proposal favoring affiliation with the 2-1/2 International was severely trounced, the resolution garnering only 5 votes from the assembled delegates. Instead, a resolution was passed 59 to 24, stating that the Socialist Party should not affiliate with any international organization, but should instead spend its efforts building “a powerful, revolutionary, Socialist organization in this country.” A further proposal by Executive Secretary Branstetter, calling for the expulsion of those who continued to advocate affiliation with the 3rd International, died when the convention voted to adjourn rather than to take action. Instead a similar proposal was made by Branstetter a week later at the SPA’s annual convention, held in Detroit.”
JULY
“Berger’s Convention,” by John Keracher [July 1921] This is an interesting perspective of the 1921 Detroit Convention of the Socialist Party of America, written by the leader of the Proletarian Party of America (based in Detroit) and published in that organization’s official organ. Keracher sees the 1921 SPA Convention as a triumph of “Bergerism,” with the new SPA “Left Wing” based around the publication The Workers Council and the Chicago party organization tiny, isolated, and decisively defeated. “These delegates had practically no support, a fact that was quickly taken advantage of by Berger, who made them the target for his shafts of wit,” Keracher notes, adding that the most controversial matter—the question of international affiliation—readily disposed of on the first day of the proceedings, with association with the 3rd and 2-1/2 Internationals defeated handily and a decision not to affiliate with any international body passed by a vote of 31 to 8. Berger mockingly referred to the Left Wing as “Chicago Communists,” Keracher notes, adding that he talked down to Left Wing leader William Kruse “like a daddy talking to a wayward boy, hoping that he would bye and bye grow into a great big man.” Keracher also emphasizes the debate over the question of the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” with the Left Wing’s endorsement of the concept of a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” in the transition period from Capitalism to Communism defeated by a big majority. Thus “these ’pure democrats’ who expelled only 60 percent of their membership expressed themselves as ’opposed to the rule of any Minority,’” Keracher snidely observes. A further split of the SPA Left Wing in the near future is anticipated by Keracher.
“’Farewell!’ to the Socialist Party: An Appeal to Its Remaining Members: Statement by the Committee for the Third International of the Socialist Party to the Members of the Socialist Party.” [Circa July 1921]. The Committee for the Third International was the organized faction for Left Wing realignment of the Socialist Party of America in 1920-21, after the departure of the great bulk of the Left Wing Section for the Communist Party of America, Communist Labor Party of America, and Proletarian Party of America. Headed by Secretary J. Louis Engdahl and including such future Communist leadership cadres as William F. Kruse, Benjamin Glassberg, Alexander Trachtenberg, J.B. Salutsky, and Moissaye Olgin, the Committee for the Third International formally left the SPA with this statement, published as a pamphlet in the aftermath of the June 25-29, 1921 Convention of the party. “A new home for constructive revolutionary Socialism must be built. Another political party of the working class must be established with the passing of the Socialist Party,” the farewell statement declared. In the interim, a formal organization called The Workers’ Council was established—a group which merged with the American Labor Alliance and elements of the majority underground CPA to form the Workers Party of America in December 1921.
AUGUST
“The American Labor Alliance: An Editorial,” by Otto Branstetter [Aug. 1921] The formation of the American Labor Alliance for Trade Relations with Soviet Russia, an open adjunct of the United Communist Party, was the cause of great mirth for some officials of the beleaguered Socialist Party of America. This editorial in the SP’s official organ declared that the formation of the ALA by the Communists constituted “an admission that their theories and their methods were wrong.” Citing a number of specific instances, Branstetter chortled that the Left Wing had “arrogantly assumed to themselves all revolutionary wisdom and were the self-appointed and infallible interpreters and executors of Marx and Engels. They assumed to be Neo-Marxists, Neo-Socialists, and Neo-Revolutionists when in reality they were merely Neo-Nuts.” “The Communists have utterly failed to make good in America. Their pet theories are all exploded and their plans for the immediate overthrow of the capitalist system through ‘revolutionary mass action’ have been abandoned,” Branstetter declared, adding that the only thing the communists had done effectively was split and weaken the Socialist Party and the radical labor movement in America, generating “fundamentally reactionary” results.
“The Strength of American Socialism,” by James Oneal [Aug. 7, 1921] New York party leader James Oneal attempts to make the case that “the comparatively small increase of the Socialist vote cast in 1920” is in no way indicative of a decline in the prestige, power, and organization of the Socialist Party. While acknowledging that the SP had been left with a “wreck of an organization” by the “coercion and persecution” of the Wilson administration and Right Wing elements around the country. Nevertheless, wherever the party had been able to maintain its presence, its vote totals had increased in 1920, Oneal states. Oneal is optimistic about the party’s prospects, noting that for the first time since 1893, an insurgent movement had developed in the ranks of American labor seeking independent working class political action, taking the form of the Farmer-Labor Party, while in the Upper Midwest a radical agrarian movement had emerged under the banner of the Non-Partisan League. Illusions had been smashed by the imperialist outcome of the world war and cynicism had become rampant. Oneal likens the Socialist Party’s current moment to the 15 year period prior to the Civil War during which abolitionist forces consolidated themselves from various tributaries into the radical 3rd Party known as the Republican Party, which was soon swept to power. Oneal is upbeat: “I have no fears as to the future of the Socialist movement in this country. In fact, a close study of many financial journals for the past year convinces me that the “best minds” of the present social order are much more puzzled about the future of capitalism. The whole world drifts, the statesmen and financiers known not where. They hope for the best and yet are possessed with fear. The old order seethes with economic contradictions which they are unable to solve.”
“Legion Mob Kidnaps Mrs. Hazlett in Iowa: Banker’s Son, Who is Local Commander, Leads Gang That Seizes Socialist Speaker, and Drives Her 20 Miles in Country and Back—Mayor Refuses Protection.” (NY Call) [event of Aug. 11, 1921] News account briefly detailing the kidnapping of Socialist Party organizer Ida Crouch Hazlett by a car full of ultra-nationalist American Legion thugs when the party founder was attempting to speak in the little town of Shenandoah, Iowa. Hazlett was pulled down from the automobile from which she was speaking and thrust into a waiting car, which drove away at high speed. The 8 Right Wing goons menaced Hazlett, instructing her not to speak any more in Shenandoah; Hazlett boldly refused to agree. Eventually, the kidnappers thought better of their action and turned around, returning Hazlett to her hotel unharmed. Hazlett immediately complained to the authorities, who refused to either arrest her kidnappers or promise her future protection. The Aug. 11 kidnapping was the 5th in a series of abuses against Hazlett by the American Legion, which had previously systematically harassed at Newton, Des Moines, and Boone. “"The state of Iowa is in the hands of an American Legion mob of kids,” Hazlett declared.
“The Party and the Future” by Victor L. Berger [Aug. 13, 1921] The year 1921 was a watershed for the Socialist Party of America. The internecine war of 1919 had been “won” by the Regular faction and control of the party maintained — but the administration had managed to both rule and ruin. Mass purges and ongoing disillusionment had caused party membership to plummet from more than 100,000 in the first half of 1919 to less than 15,000 by the middle of 1921. A severe financial crisis had followed. The vision of an inevitably glorious future for the SPA had vanished in the wind, and a broad fundamental reevaluation of the party’s ideology and tactics followed. This article by the Socialist Party’s leading realist, Victor Berger, is based upon the observation that the SPA had failed to become “the great opposition party against capitalism” during the subsequent half decade. Berger places blame for this failure on the fragmented American working class, consisting of dozens of nationalities, combined with the revival of “innumerable national prejudices and race hatreds that had slumbered for years” as a byproduct of American entry into the world war. The SPA had additionally be trapped between what Berger likens to “two millstones” —one being the opposition to the party’s principled opposition to the war, the other being the “Communistic ideas among the workers, especially those of foreign birth,” developing because of the war. Its membership atrophied by these external factors, Berger states that the party’s development was additionally handicapped by “an impossible and ironclad set of rules that were considered sacred - from the old and defunct Socialist Labor Party.” “It was and is actually considered a crime to vote for anybody who is not a regular card member,” Berger observes, arguing that the net result was the reduction of the party to a sort of “perfectionist sect.” Berger concludes that sectarian tactics must be cast aside and “we must by all means support, strengthen, and uphold our Socialist organization at the present time as well as in the future. At the same time, however, we must show our willingness to cooperate with any radical group - no matter what its makeup or complexion — that is willing to assist us and to cooperate with us on the political or economic field in our continuous and ceaseless battle against the capitalist system.”
“Volkszeitung Recovers Its Mailing Rights: Hays, in Announcing Restoration of Paper’s Status, Declares Post Office Censorship is Gone...: All Papers Carried in Mails at All are Entitled to Second-Class Rights, is Postmaster’s View,” by Laurence Todd [event of Aug. 14, 1921] With the coming to power of the Warren Harding administration, the draconian anti-libertarian policies of the Wilson regime came under new scrutiny. Subject to particular liberalization was the application of statute by the post office department, with new Postmaster General Will Hays reconsidering the Burleson policy of the mass voiding of 2nd Class mailing privileges of the opposition press. On Aug. 14, 1921, the 2nd Class mailing privilege of the Marxist New Yorker Volkszeitung was restored, with Postmaster General Hays issuing an extensive statement reflecting upon the official change of policy (reproduced in full here). While noting statutory prohibition of certain matter from the mails, Hays states: “I want again to call the attention of the publishers to the fact that I am not, and will not allow myself to be made, a censor of the press. I believe that any publication that is entitled to use of the mails at all is entitled to the 2nd Class privileges, provided that it meets the requirements of the law for 2nd Class matter.... I will at all times act with moderation and consideration for the freedom of the press, but I must and will enforce in good faith, without evoking technicalities...” Solicitor Edwards echoed these views, telling Laurence Todd of the Federated Press that “It is not our purpose or duty to advocate or oppose any school of political though so long as it does not violate any existing law interpreted liberally to permit mailability.”
“Mrs. Hazlett to Sue Ringleader of Legion Mob: $20,000 Damage Action to Be Brought Against Son of Banker Who Kidnapped Her.” (NY Call) [event of Aug. 16, 1921] Having received no satisfaction with the partisan application of criminal law in the small town of Shenandoah, Iowa, Socialist Party organizer Ida Crouch Hazlett took her kidnapping by American Legion thugs to civil court for remedy, announcing that a $20,000 lawsuit was being launched against the ringleader of the crime for having violated her civil rights. In announcing her intention to bring suit, Hazlett revealed additional details of her kidnapping, charging that alleged ringleader Thomas Murphy had raised his hand to strike her and that she had boldly averted injury by challenging the 8 Legionnaires to go the full measure and to kill her. “Riding down the road at terrific speed,” Hazlett recounted, “I suggested that they kill me. I pictured my body hacked to pieces and scattered along the road. I implied that it would certainly add to the sweet memories of their mothers. Then I switched the picture. I suggested the possibility that the car might be wrecked and all of us killed. Their mothers would not like to see that, would then? That twist changed their minds. And when I suggested that the only thing to do was to turn back, they simply had to obey.”
SEPTEMBER
“A Call for United Action: To All Labor Unions, Farmers’ Organizations, and Other Economic, Political, Cooperative, and Fraternal Organizations of the Producing Class”. . [Sept. 1921] The origin of the Conference for Progressive Political Action has long been attributed to a joint decision of the 16 main railway unions, which sponsored a founding conference in Chicago in February of 1922. This September 1921 appeal for just such an organization, written and transmitted to the varioius unions by the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, lends support for the theory that this idea actually originated outside the 16 railway brotherhoods. The Socialist Party’s vision was of a loose alliance which brought together various labor groups in joint political action “similar to that of the federated organizations of the British Labour Party.” According to the appeal, America was embroiled in “the worst industrial depression we have ever experienced,” with six million workers unemployed, armed anti-union bands given free reign under the moniker of “detective agencies,” while other bands of thugs like the American Legion and the Ku Klux Klan operated outside the rule of law altogether. Employers shamelessly used the legislative and judicial arms of the state to conduct an open shop drive which threatened the very existence of the organized labor movement. In response, a “united front” joining the forces of “every progressive, liberal, and radical organization of the workers must be mobilized to repel these assaults and to advance the industrial and political power of the working class,” according to the NEC’s appeal.
“My Interview with Debs in his Prison”, by James H. Maurer [event of Sept. 1, 1921] First-hand account of a Sept. 1, 1921 visit by Socialist Party leader James Maurer to Gene Debs at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, quoting an extensive letter written to Socialist Party Executive Secretary Otto Branstetter at the time. “What made the greatest impression on me was Gene’s mental and physical condition. He has a healthy color, looks like a farmer, tanned as though he had worked on a farm. I mentioned to him that he looked as though he was enjoying good health, and he assured me that he was feeling fine. As to his mental faculties, I can truthfully say they are as keen as ever. All this talk about his being a mental wreck is rot,” Maurer writes. Branstetter and Maurer had been concerned about the efforts of the Communists to win Debs’ allegiance. “From my conversation with Gene I feel sure that the “impossibilists” have not succeeded in fooling him. We talked about the much-heralded revolution which is now years overdue, and we both enjoyed a good laugh. I asked him not to commit himself to any‘ism’ until he had an opportunity of looking the field over after his discharge, and his answer was that I could rest easy on that point,” Maurer writes.
“Working Class Political Unity,” by Morris Hillquit [Sept. 7, 1921] This article in the New York Call by the Socialist Party’s most respected strategist, Morris Hillquit, delves into the shift of the Socialist Party towards cooperation with progressive elements from outside the party, a marked departure from the party’s historical orientation against “fusion” with external elements. Hillquit notes that the decision of the 1921 Detroit Convention to explore the field. Hillquit notes that this decision is less monumental than some believed: that the tactic would need to be reported to the next convention and approved, and ratified by the membership. Hillquit indicates his support for an electoral alliance through a British-style Labor Party, in which the constituent organizations would continue to run their own candidates for state governorships in order to retain their electoral status, but through which “candidates for other offices would be distributed among the different cooperating organizations with regard to their respective strength in different political districts.” Hillquit’s thinking is intensely practical: “To continue as a movement of the select few, as a small priesthood charged with the duty of keeping the sacred flame alive and protected from the profane gaze of the multitude, is not an object which in our agitated days will commend itself to the workers of this country. We must have the workers with us, if we are to succeed and we must go to them if they do not come to us.”
“Can We Work for Socialism Outside the Socialist Party?” by William M. Feigenbaum [Sept. 9, 1921] In this article published in the Socialist Party’s New York daily, journals William Feigenbaum—son of one of the fathers of the Yiddish language Federation of the SPA—takes aim at the Communists for disrupting the cause of Socialism in America, exemplified by their behavior at the recently completed special convention of the Jewish Socialist Federation. Feigenbaum questions the motives of the Left Wing of the JSF in waiting so long to break with the national Socialist Party, seeing in the delay an effort “to do as much damage to the Socialist Party as they could in their withdrawal.” Feigenbaum thus characterizes the Left Wing of the Federation as “wreckers and disrupters” whose work, “together with the work of the Ku Klux and the American Legion, had borne fruit.” Feigenbaum contends that the 2 years of Communist independent action had been an abysmal failure: “Not a single new member was gained, but more than nine-tenths of the old went out. Not a stroke of organization work has been done, except to throw a few manifestos from elevated trains and roofs. Instead of sections of a united party, the few hundred remaining men are two angrily quarreling ‘parties,’ periodically ‘uniting,’ and then splitting again.” Feigenbaum argues that this was a necessary result of the fact that the “Communist movement was born as a negative drive against the Socialist Party, rather than as a positive movement for some ideal or some method of organization.” Instead, Feigenbaum declares that despite its various “faults and shortcomings, the only work for Socialism of any consequence that has been done within the past 2 years since the ‘new’ methods were evolved, is the direct result of the Socialist Party’s work.” Feigenbaum insists: “Those who want to see Socialism grow can work for Socialism. Let all others get out of the way.”
“Cahan Says the Forward Supports the Party: Editor of Great Jewish Daily, Back from Europe, Declares Seceders Will be Fought—Praises Germans and Scores Communists Abroad,” by William M. Feigenbaum [Sept. 11, 1921] On Sept. 11, 1921, the powerful and widely respected editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, Abraham Cahan, returned to America after a 14 week stay in Europe, centered in Berlin. There Cahan had exchanged views with a wide range of leaders of the European Socialist movement, including representatives of the Soviet government. Upon his return, Cahan was met at the docks by about 75 prominent Jewish-American leaders, who sat together in a luncheon at the Hotel Brevoort in New York. In his address to the gathering, Cahan declared in no uncertain terms that “no man can write against the Socialist Party and remain on the Forward... I am sorry that we must lose some of our best people,but if they are against the party, that settles it. No one who is against the party can be on the Forward. The Forward was established for the party, not the party for the Forward. Some of the intellectuals want the Third International. For an American to speak of the Third International is a sign of absolute idiocy—if not of a police spy. In Europe, people know that the Third International is an absolute failure. It is a joke. Lenin would like to get rid of it if he could. No one takes it seriously any more. The Third International has done 1,000 times more damage to the Socialist movement than good.” Cahan noted the vitality of the Social Democratic Party in Germany and stated that “the Communist there amount to nothing.... The leading Communist members of the Soviet government that I spoke to admit that the whole Communist movement, and the hope of a world revolution, on which the Communist International is based, is done for.”
“Jewish Group in Party Will Convene Today: Federation, 500 Weak Now, Thought Certain to be Destroyed, No Matter What Action is Taken: Once Numbered 5,000: Organized as Autonomous Body in 1912, Its Officials Have Fought Party Since Albany Trial.” (NY Call) [Sept. 3, 1921] From Sept. 3-5, 1921, a special convention of the Jewish Socialist Federation was held to decide the question of that organization’s future affiliation with the Socialist Party of America. The Executive Committee of the JSF sought to sever ties with the parent organization, in favor of some sort of affiliation with the Third International—although there was very little support remaining within the Federation for the underground tactics of the CPA (the Left Wing of the organization having already departed in 1919-20). This is the first of 4 reports in the Socialist Party’s New York daily detailing the proceedings of the JSF special convention. The loss of the JSF is seen as a foredrawn conclusion by the reporter, who notes that with the 1921 convention “an important chapter in the Socialist movement comes to a close.” The importance of this change is minimized, the unnamed reporter noting that from a peak membership of 5,000 to 6,000, the JSF had fallen to barely 500 dues-paying members. The history of the Jewish Federation is detailed here, from the organization of the “Jewish Agitation Bureau” by Benjamin Feigenbaum, Meyer Gillis, Max Kaufman, and others in 1908; to full Federation status in 1912. The Federation’s turn to a “nationalistic viewpoint” is blamed on Max Goldfarb ["A.J. Bennett"], a former member of the Bund who returned to Soviet Russia in 1917. The decisive turning point is said to have occurred in 1920, with the trial of the 5 Socialist Assemblymen by the New York Legislature, an event which was denounced as obsequious parliamentarism by the Left Wing of the JSF, headed by Jacob Salutsky.
“Jewish Group Seats Enemies of Party Unity: Loyal Delegates Beaten in Every Fight Against Executive Committee—Move for Split: Kahn Flays Bolters: Some Leaders Charged at Opening of Federation Congress with Being Supporters of World War.” (NY Call) [Sept. 4, 1921] This is the 2nd of 4 reports in the Socialist Party’s New York daily detailing the proceedings of the JSF special convention, called to determine the JSF’s future relationship to the Socialist Party of America. In this unsigned article, it is intimated that the secessionists had successfully won control of the convention at the first day’s sessions, as in the evening “the Credentials Committee and the Convention was seating every contested delegate who had expressed a desire to see the Federation withdraw from the party and unseating every contested delegate who was loyal to the party.” Two slates had vied for seats on the Credentials Committee, with the Left Wing supporters of the Executive Committee defeating slate of the the insurgent party loyalists by about 40 to 25, with all delegates—even those under challenge—permitted to vote. “At the time of going to press the loyal party delegates were still fighting every anti-party delegate, but, realizing that, with the contesting delegates voting on their own cases, and with a Central Office eager for the withdrawal plan, it was hopeless to expect to carry the convention,” the reporter indicates, adding that the decision on affiliation was the sole item on the agenda of the special convention. Otto Branstetter had previously addressed the convention on behalf of the National Office of the SPA, stating: “There is no other party in the world in any of the great countries that stood so true to international Socialism as did our party. In other countries, minorities stood straight. In America, the official position of the party was straight. What have the Communists done? They went out of the party; they said they were going to organize the workers and make the revolution, but to date they have done nothing except to weaken the Socialist Party. And much as they want all the honor for this, they must divide that honor with the American Legion, with the Department of Justice, and with the Chambers of Commerce.”
“Loyal Jewish Socialists Quit Seceding Body: Federation Convention Votes, 41 to 34, to Leave Party—New Group is Immediately Organized...: Bigger and More Active Movement Promised by Those Who Refuse to Bolt Organization.” (NY Call) [Sept. 5, 1921] This is the 3rd of 4 reports in the Socialist Party’s New York daily detailing the proceedings of the JSF special convention, called to determine the JSF’s future relationship to the Socialist Party of America. This installment notes the result of the final vote on affiliation after 6 hours of debate on Sept. 4, won by the withdrawal forces over the SP loyalists, 41 to 34. The main speech for the secessionists was delivered by Jacob Salutsky, while Nathan Chain of the United Hebrew Trades made the opening speech for the loyalists. Upon the decision, the 34 loyalists bolted the convention, meeting in another room of Forward Hall. Speeches were made to the loyalists assembled by Jacob Panken; J. Baskin (General Secretary of the Workmen’s Circle), Alexander Kahn of the Forward, and SPA Executive Secretary Otto Branstetter. A committee of 9 was elected to draw up plans for the Jewish Federation loyalists, to report back on the ensuing day.
“New Alliance is Created by Jewish Group: Loyal Socialists Organize in Opposition to Seceding Federation with Endorsement of Labor Unions...: United Hebrew Trades Secretary Assures Delegates of Support in Movement for Strong Party.” (NY Call) [Sept. 6, 1921] This is the 4th of 4 reports in the Socialist Party’s New York daily detailing the proceedings of the JSF special convention, called to determine the JSF’s future relationship to the Socialist Party of America. This installment reports the formation of the Jewish Socialist Alliance (Verbund) of the Socialist Party by the bolting minority delegates. Nathan Chanin was elected General Secretary of the new organization. Meanwhile, the JSF majority voted 43 to 3 to affiliate with the Communist International, despite their misgivings about the institutionalized underground tactics of the Communist Party of America. The organization prepared for a period of independence, setting its dues at 50 cents per month. (The secessionist JSF soon merged with the “Committee for the 3rd International” in the SP to establish itself as the Workers’ Council).
“Some Plain Words,” by Charles W. Ervin [Sept. 10, 1921] Managing Editor of the New York Call Charles Ervin fires a broadside in the direction of the Communist Party’s Friends of Soviet Russia organization, appealing for funds for Russian famine relief, to be collected and distributed outside of the FSR apparatus. The Call’s fund will be administered without the deduction of a single cent for operational expenses, Ervin indicates. Alternatively, Call readers are encouraged by Ervin to donate to Russian famine relief through their trade unions. Ervin notes the hostility of the FSR to parallel relief efforts, and cites the group’s antipathy to the efforts of the ACWU and ILGWU as “proof positive to us of a desire to sabotage other funds being collected, and a total disinclination to really unify the activities taking place among the working class.”Ervin declares that “we are used to the abuse of the Communists in this country. All the energies that in Russia go to the doing of constructive work seem to be employed by the Communists in America in factional strife. Not content with going their own way and attacking capitalism, they spend much of their time in a vain effort to destroy the existing labor unions by intriguing within their ranks and by seeking to interfere in every way possible with the activity of other groups of workers who do not happen to believe in their tactics.”Ervin characterizes the CPA’s efforts under the FSR banner as the “antics”of “long-distance revolutionists”who are “working under false colors, or posing like some cheap detective in ridiculous disguise”and indicates that the paper will not hesitate to “show them up as thoroughly as we know how”when they are caught vilifying others.
“The ‘Legal’ Communists: Letter to the Editor of the New York Call,” by Adolph Germer [Sept. 11, 1921] The former Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party and current assistant to Greater New York Secretary Julius Gerber, Adolph Germer, writes this letter in support of Charles Ervin’s editorial of the previous day attacking the Friends of Soviet Russia. “It is high time that the unsuspecting public, especially the progressing working class, among whom they carry on their panhandling, understand these self-appointed ‘saviors of the proletarian revolution’.... It should require no argument to convince any open-minded person that anyone, or any group, that carries on a persistent campaign to divide the ranks of labor, no matter in whose name it is done or to what pretended purpose, is an enemy of the working class - a far greater and more dangerous enemy than the paid hireling of the employers,”Germer declares.
“W.Z. Foster, Back from Europe, Pins Faith on Economic Action: Labor Man Slips Quietly Into US After Months in Russia, Italy, Germany, France, England—Confident of Soviets’ Success and Leadership of ACW Here.” (NY Call) [Sept. 15, 1921] This article from the pages of the Socialist Party’s New York Call documents the return of William Z. Foster from his extended tour of Russia, Germany, Italy, England, and France on behalf of the Federated Press. The friendly writer of this piece indicates that “There are two things of which Foster remains sincerely convinced: that the Russian revolution is a success and that the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America will continue to be the leader among American labor organizations.”Foster is characterized as “an optimist, confident of the ultimate victory of the working class in the very near future,”despite his belief that the world was enmeshed in a “trough of reaction,”with the revolutionary movement stilted across Europe. The Call writer says that Foster argued that one of the most serious problems facing the European labor movement was “the lack of restraint of the younger men.”Foster recalled that in Germany and Italy “the workers were continually called on strike, how often at intervals of only 2 or 3 days, for Mooney, for Russia, because some leader had been assaulted, and for hundreds of trifling incidents in the course of events. The workers have struck time and again and nothing has happened. They have become tired of striking.”The revolutionary moment had particularly passed in Germany, in Foster’s estimation, where “with 9 million members in the unions alone and the workers thoroughly conscious of their political power, the average workman laughs when asked about the revolution.”
“Gale to Squeal Way to Liberty, Inquiry Shows: Renegade Radical to Give State’s Evidence to Escape Penalty for Evading the Draft.” (NY Call) [Sept. 17, 1921] This article from the New York Call notes the transformation of draft resister and radical publisher Linn Gale from “a rabid Communist to a prisoner willing to incriminate other radicals, betraying their confidences.”In view of Gale’s decision to collaborate with Federal authorities after his deportation from Mexico, the American Civil Liberties Union had declined to come to the aid of Gale’s legal defense. An Aug. 26 letter of ACLU head Roger Baldwin is cited: “The Civil Liberties Union has no interest whatever in the case of Linn A.E. Gale. He is not and never was a ‘conscientious objector.’ His activities as a radical in Mexico are open to grave charges of unscrupulous conduct, to put it mildly. His attitude since his arrest and the character of his efforts to secure support for his defense make it clear that he is unworthy of the confidence of those interested in civil liberty. We advise our friends not to contribute to his defense fund.”In response to a communication from Baldwin, Gale’s lawyer issued a statement declaring “my client has authorized me to make public the information that he has renounced his former political beliefs and convictions, that he has completely severed his connections with the radical movement, and consequently would not be justified in receiving any further aid or support from them. My client, Linn Gale, desires to state that he is absolutely sincere in the repudiation of his former radical opinions, as expressed through Gale’s Magazine, and that at no time in the future will he engage in radical activities.”
“The Detroit Resolution,” by James Oneal [Sept. 19, 1921] Socialist Party NEC member James Oneal offers his perspective on the decision of the June 1921 Detroit Convention to survey the field with a view to eventual work with other radical organizations in an umbrella organization patterned after the British Labour Party. Oneal states that the NEC had followed the instructions of the convention and dispatched a survey to likely political partners. Oneal notes that the NEC did not have authority to act upon the replies it received—it would take approval of the next convention and ratification by referendum vote of the party to call a conference of progressive organizations to formally organize the new multi-party alliance. The model and goal advocated by Oneal is quite clear: “In England, whether the candidate is a member of the Independent Labour Party or any other Socialist organization, whether he is a member of an affiliated trade union or cooperative society, he wages the contest in the name of the Labour Party. The same procedure would be taken here.”Oneal critically observes that “for a generation the Socialist movement of the United States has been cursed with theoreticians and dogmatists”and declares that “one advantage of the British form of political organization of the workers is that it throws the Socialists into intimate contact with other organizations of the working class and brings these workers into contact with us.”Oneal indicates he personally sees 2 million adherents to the new umbrella organization as the essential minimum for the tactic to be pursued. He rules out alliance with the progressive capitalist “Committee of 48”but does see the Non-Partisan League as being ideologically close enough to the SP to merit interest. Oneal is critical of the “no less than a dozen Communist priesthoods “ which emerged from the 1919 split of the Socialist Party and maintains little interest in alliance with those who indulge in “introspective brooding”and who “burn incense in honor of the Communist ritual.”
“For a Mass Movement,” by Adolph Dreifuss [Sept. 22, 1921] This article by the leader of the Socialist Party’s German Federation, Adolph Dreifuss, speaks to the hot issue in party ranks—the move towards organized cooperation with other Left Wing organizations in an American version of the British Labour Party. Dreifuss notes that this represented “a deviation from the tactics hitherto pursued by the Socialist Party”and attempts to explain that the decision to pursue the tactic was not the province of the SP Right, but rather was the considered opinion of all tendencies at the Detroit Convention, including Left Wingers Louis Engdahl and Bill Kruse. Dreifuss notes that “the object is to bring about an organization similar to that of the British Labour Party, which is composed from autonomous parties and groups, like the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation, the Fabian Society, the various labor unions, etc. Each one of these parties retains its integrity and autonomy... Each of these organizations has its own platform, based on its own principles. But the struggle of the present against their common enemy they fight together.”Dreifuss notes that the United States has “no opposition that amounts to much.”He declares that “none of the ‘revolutionary’ parties, however they may call themselves, reach the masses”and observes that the ongoing economic crisis has made the working class “servile”and “submissive.”“It must be every worker’s aim to get out of this slough to strengthen his class. To cooperate with others is one means to achieve liberty of movement,”Dreifuss declares—thus the move towards joint action has been supported by all tendencies in the SPA, “from Engdahl to Berger.”
“Rand School is Voted to Be SP Auxiliary: Controlling Society, 38 to 20, Fixes Its Stand—Six Directors Resign from Board.” (NY Call) [event of Sept. 23, 1921] On Sept. 23, 1921, at the start of the academic year, the membership of the American Socialist Society met and, after lengthy and heated debate, adopted a resolution declaring the Rand School of Social Science to be a Socialist Party institution and determined that “the teachers of history, economics, political science, and related subjects, therefore, ought to be in the main either members of or avowed sympathizers with the Socialist Party.”Furthermore, the resolution asserted that “The American Socialist Society considers it inconsistent for any person to act as an officer or director of the society or as an officer of the Rand School whose views or activities are hostile to those of the Socialist Party or who cannot heartily accept the foregoing instruction.”Passage of the resolution prompted the resignation of 6 directors of the American Socialist Society—Benjamin Glassberg, Augusta Holland, Jacob Purchin, Eugene Schoehn, Alexander Trachtenberg, and Rose Weiner. Complete text of the resolution is included here.
“Communists Try to Disrupt Socialist Rally: Create Uproar at Brownsville Labor Lyceum During Address by London—Disturbers are Ejected...: Incident Stimulates Enthusiasm of Workers for Socialist Message...” (NY Call) [event of Sept. 23, 1921] On Sept. 23, 1921, Socialist Congressman Meyer London spoke on behalf of his party before a crowd of 1,500 at an electoral rally held in Brownsville, NY. During the course of London’s remarks, a Communist Party member in the audience shouted “Traitor!”-- prompting “a group of workers began battering away at the disturber.”The scuffle expanded when friends of the heckler came to his aid; the outnumbered Communists were expelled from the meeting by the Socialists, with the aid of a policeman. According to this news account in the New York Call, “when quiet was restored, Representative London warned the Communists who remained hidden in the hall that in the future the Socialists will not be responsible for what happens to those who try to break up Socialist meetings.”“These disrupters will be treated in the same way as a scab is treated by a good union man,”London aggressively shouted, “No decent working man will tolerate them in their midst.”A demonstration lasting several minutes followed.
OCTOBER
1922
JANUARY
“‘Let Them Come; I Fear No Man,’ Debs Tells Indiana Governor: Gov. McCray Admits He Counseled American Legion Affront to Debs and Urged He Be Taught a Lesson -- Law and Order Hypocrites Expose Hand.” by Frederic Heath [Events of Jan. 16-17, 1922] On Jan. 16, 1922, Terre Haute Socialist Eugene Debs wrote a letter to Indiana Governor Warren T. McCray inquiring about McCray’s reported quote that “I am sorry, extremely sorry, that the arch-traitor of our country [Debs] should live in the state of Indiana. I believe he will be taught a lesson by the American Legion.” Debs coyly remarks to McCray that “You will oblige me by advising if you are correctly quoted in this statement, and if so, it would seem to follow that you must also denounce the President of the United States in the same terms for releasing an arch-traitor from prison and inviting him to the White House.” Debs adds that “a committee representing the miners and other workingmen of this city and vicinity have just called on me to ask you if you as Governor of the state, sworn to uphold its laws and preserve order, endorse and intend to back up the program of threat and violence against the ‘arch-traitor’ in question, incited by your remarks, and announced in the same report of the same meeting?” Gov. McCray responded to Debs the next day in a brief note in which he indicated that the comments made to the proto-fascist American Legion were made without notes and while “I am not sure of the language quoted in the paper which you repeat,” it was “in the main it was what I said.” Editor of The New Day Frederic Heath notes that this exchange puts the Governor and other “‘Law and Order’ hypocrites in high places” on record. He also directly quotes Debs as making the following retort to Gov. McCray’s flippancy about encouraging American Legion thuggery: “Let them come! I have not the slightest objection. It will be an illuminating exhibition. Were I so inclined I could easily muster an army of a few thousand to make their reception an interesting one. But I shall do nothing of the kind. Were I to call upon my friends at all it would be to see to it that the marchers were unmolested. I do not object to being called a ‘traitor’ under certain circumstances for I certainly am a ‘traitor’ to the powers and personalities of Wall Street that are looting this nation, corrupting its government, debauching its politics, and robbing and starving the people, including the boys who went overseas at their command to ‘save civilization,’ for which many are now facing starvation as a reward.”
“Indiana Governor Incites Legion Lawlessness Toward Debs!”. by Frederic Heath [Events of Jan. 11-13, 1922] On Jan. 11, 1922, Governor Warren T. McCray of Indiana briefly addressed a local post of the American Legion, in its initial phase a proto-fascist organization of former soldiers responsible for a lengthy and growing series of vigilante attacks on persons and property. He there stated with regard to recently-returned Socialist leader Eugene Debs of Terre Haute, “I am sorry, extremely sorry, that the one arch-traitor of our country should live in the state of Indiana. I believe he will be taught a lesson by the American Legion, however.” This transparent call for mob violence drew an immediate response from State Secretary Emma Henry of the Socialist Party of Indiana. In the open letter to the Governor reprinted here, Henry writes “as an American citizen and a citizen of Indiana, I feel that it is to be deplored that we have a man elected as chief executive of this state who will so far forget the high office he occupies, as to use the terms you have been reported as using, terms which tend to incite lawlessness. An official of the state who is sworn to uphold the law should be the last person to use language that will incite to unlawful acts.” Henry offers to send the Governor the text of the speech made by Debs for which he was imprisoned to refute the charge that Debs was in any way a “traitor” to his country. “We Socialists stand for real Americanism, the principles for which our forefathers fought, the rights that are guaranteed to every citizen under the constitution of the United States and the state of Indiana; that is freedom of speech, press, and assemblage,” Henry declares, adding that “We do not advocate the destruction of anything; we are for construction, we are for changing the system for the benefit of all.”
FEBRUARY
“Conference for Progressive Political Action: A Report to the Membership of the Socialist Party,” by Otto Branstetter, et al. [Feb. 1922] The 1921 Detroit Convention of the Socialist Party instructed its National Executive Committee to make a survey of other progressive organizations in the US and the prospects for joint action; using this as justification, five leading members of the SPA accepted invitations to attend the Founding Conference of the Conference for Progressive Political Action and made this report to the membership of the party via an article in the group’s official organ, The Socialist World. The gathering—held Feb. 20-21, 1922, in Chicago—was characterized as “a disappointment, so far as immediate results are concerned,” due in large measure to the heterogenous nature of the body, ranging from conservative unionists seeking to promote pro-labor candidates in the old parties to the Socialist and Farmer-Labor Parties on the left, who sought to establish an independent political organization. Despite the lack of immediate results, the fact that the gathering of such a wide range of elements was held with little acrimony was heralded as a small step forward by the Socialist atendees.
APRIL
“Where I Stand—And Why,” by Emil Herman [April 7, 1922] Article by the former State Secretary of the radical Socialist Party of Washington Emil Herman—a victim of Wilson administration repression during the world war—on why he was choosing to remain with the Socialist Party despite speculation to the contrary. Upon his Christmas 1922 release after nearly 3 years in the Federal Penitentiary at McNeil’s Island, Washington. Herman made an assessement of the political situation that had developed since 1919. He saw the heavy hand of the Justice Department behind the 1919 Socialist Party split: “It is apparent to me that the programs of the Communist Labor and the Communist Parties which resulted from the ill-advised Left Wing split from the Socialist Party were in great part written by agents of the Department of Justice and that this was true to a still greater extent of the program of the United Communist Party, which was a fusion of the two first-mentioned organizations. They swallowed hook, bait, and line of the programs imposed upon them, and having adopted the illegal programs, were, of course, driven underground.” While the rank and file party members involved were individuals with honest intentions, circumstances had led them to form the Workers Party of America—which Herman characterizes as similar in form and strategy to the Socialist Party of America. “The Left Wing offshoot from the Socialist Party, having made the illegal and ill-fated underground attempt to organize the workers for revolutionary activity through the United Communist Party now recognize their mistake, return above ground in the Workers Party, and find themselves advocating practically the same program which they formerly advocated through the Socialist Party and which the Socialist Party still advocates,” Herman declares. The other contenders—the Farmer-Labor Party and the Socialist Labor Party—are dismissed by Herman as (respectively) “merely a repetition of Socialist Party principles” and “ a small, critical, and comparatively ineffective group.” Herman proclaims he has a 25 year history as a Socialist and that the Socialist Party most closely approximates his political views. “It is impossible for me to be a quitter in this time of crimes and imminent change,” Herman writes, therefore he would cast his lot with the SPA.
MAY
“National Constitution of the Socialist Party: As Amended by the National Convention at Cleveland, April 29-May 2, 1922.” Basic document of organizational law of the Socialist Party. The early SPA had been a loose federation of state-based organizations; by this time stronger centralized authority was asserting itself, while extensive provisions for recall and referendum were retained. The lowest level of organization in the SP was the city- or county-level “Local,” which may or may not be subdivided into “Branches.” At least 10 of these Locals with an aggregate membership of 200 were organized into a State Organization which purchased dues stamps from the National Office. A 7 member National Executive Committee was to meet quarterly to supervise operation of the party between annual conventions, with day-to-day affairs of the National Office handled by an Executive Secretary employed by and serving at the pleasure of the National Executive Committee. Party dues in 1922 were 25 cents per month to the National and State offices in organized states (with additional dues paid to the Local); in unorganized states, dues were 50 cents per month.
“Death Chills Seize Meeting of Socialist Party,” by C.E. Ruthenberg. [May 13, 1922] The new Executive Secretary of the Workers Party of America, C.E. Ruthenberg, observed and wrote about the 1922 Cleveland Convention of the Socialist Party of America. He depicted it as a lifeless gathering, showing “senile decay.” As for the small group of assmbled delegates, Ruthenberg notes that “A majority of them are portly, gray-haired men with a look of petty-bourgeois prosperity about them. They talk in the language of past Socialist conventions, but there is no enthusiasm, no fervor, in what they say.” Ruthenberg isolated the root cause of this geriatric decay in the blows struck against the industrialist Left Wing at the 1912 Indianapolis Convention—“anti-sabotage, anti-force, and narrow definition of political action constitutional clauses” which drove vital elements from a 100,000 member organization. At the 1917 St. Louis Convention these “elderly men” were unable to control the gathering but sabotaged the party’s militant position against the war by lack of action, Ruthenberg charged, while at the 1919 Chicago Convention they presided over a mass purge of 3/4 of the party’s membership that resulted in the current lifeless skeleton organization.
Debs Calls the Jury of the People to Try Indiana Governor, by Eugene V. Debs [May 20, 1922] Recently freed Socialist leader Gene Debs uses the various legal premises used to convict him to indict the governor of his state for his Jan. 1922 words to the American Legion to the effect that “Debs is the arch-traitor of our country. May the Legion teach him a lesson.”The American Legion is characterized by Debs as “Young men, immature, inexperienced, many illiterate, without social vision, ignorant of history and social science, led by self-seeking egotists, boasting a crude, raw, ruthless, ignorant, blatant, conceited type of mind that hates everything above its own limitations; responsive to flattery, inflammable, unreasoning, prejudiced, lovers of heroics, a whooping, flag-waving bunch without foresight or any rational love of country—just the kind to be excited by a flattering, inflaming speech.”Debs declares that “To call a man a traitor because he disagrees with a bunch of politicians in Washington is the utmost limit of bigotry and insolence.”Debs asserts he was convicted for stating the truth that the recently completed European war was an imperialist conflict. He asserts: “The constitution says, ’Congress shall make no law abridging free speech.’ Congress has made such a law, the President signed it, and the court sustained it. Who were the traitors? Without free speech there is no progress, and the people stagnate. Better a thousandfold the abuse than the denial of free speech, for the abuse lasts but a day, while denial destroys the life of a nation.”
AUGUST
The Green Corn Rebellion in Oklahoma, by Bertha Hale White [events of Aug. 3, 1917] The so-called “Green Corn Rebellion” was one of the seminal events of the socialist movement in Oklahoma, an uprising of radicalized impoverished farmers who purportedly planned to march to Washington, DC in conjunction with others around the country, eating green corn on their way for sustenance, in an effort to remove “Big Slick” Woodrow Wilson from power and establish the Cooperative Commonwealth. Or so the story goes. This 1922 article by soon-to-be Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party Bertha Hale White indicates that the motives of the farmers had been misrepresented, the specifics of the action had been grossly exaggerated, and the tale had grown with the telling as a sort of post-facto justification for the repression of the 175 individuals who were sentenced to terms ranging from 6 months in jail to 10 years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. The “Working Class Union” behind the rebellion was a “non-political” organization of 20,000 based in Eastern Oklahoma, bringing together the region’s illiterate tenant farmers for but one object — to force down exploitative rents and usurious interest rates. Woodrow Wilson’s hypocritical reversal on the question of American participation in the war had caused the WCU to abandon its anti-political stand. The WCU held secret meetings and determined to resist conscription by force: “They did not believe the people of the country would tamely submit to the violation of the pledges which had resulted in the re-election of President Wilson. And they decided they would not accept that violation. They agreed to hide their boys from the draft officers and to prevent troops from coming into the Seminole country.” On Aug. 3, 1917, about 150 WCU supporters were encamped under arms on a hill near Sasakwa, OK; a posse of about 50 townsmen was formed and despite having no advantages of terrain or firepower, they bloodlessly disarmed the rebellious WCUs. “It has been asserted that the rebellion resulted in loss of life. That is not true. Not a single shot was fired by either side,” White declares, noting that the event had been grossly exaggerated. “In Sasakwa, the Green Corn Rebellion is a story that provokes laughter,” White remarks.
An Answer from Debs, by Theodore Debs [Aug. 9, 1922] Reply on behalf of Gene Debs by his brother and personal secretary, Theodore, to Louis Engdahl’s open letter of August 3, 1922. “The attempt to make [Gene] appear the enemy of Lenin and the Soviet Government in face of the fact that from the hour that government was born he proclaimed himself its friend and has stood by it and defended and extolled Lenin and Trotsky in every word uttered and written, is too false and silly to merit attention,” writes Theodore. While Engdahl’s indictment of the offenses of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the Civil War is complete, it is nevertheless one-sided, omitting the fact that violence and outrages were committed by both sides, and that the PSR were victims as well as perpetrators. Gene Debs “does not believe in revenge, in capital punishment, in cold-blooded murder, and these brutal passions and atrocious crimes are all the more reprehensible in his eyes when committed in the name of law and justice by Socialists who have for years been denouncing capitalism for these identical infamies,” writes Theodore. “If we believe in bloodthirsty revenge, in cruel reprisals and savage killings to satisfy our law and ethics, we are even lower than the capitalists and their mercenary hangmen, who at least make no pretense of such humane ideals as we profess and shamelessly betray the moment we succeed to power.” Further, Gene Debs is said to be convinced “that the murder of these men would betray the weakness and fear of the Soviet Government and bring it into contempt all over the world among people who now give it their allegiance and support.”
SEPTEMBER
“The Sad Tale of Tomsky Sawyerovich," by William M. Fiegenbaum” [Sept. 12, 1922] This mocking article by William Feigenbaum, distributed by the Socialist Party’s press service, likens the behavior of the American Communist movement to the farcical and melodramatic shenanigans of Mark Twain’s fictional character, Tom Sawyer. Fiegenbaum calls the Communists "another crop of children running around loose who are playing another game; it is more elaborate, more costly, a little sillier, and the children who are playing it are a little older and they ought to be able to have something more serious to do with their time, but they’re also having an amazing good time about it in spite of it all." Fiegenbaum declares that "These childish romanticists in the United States, having read about the fun they used to have in Russia, proceeded to do the same thing here.... it isn’t against the law here to organize a political party; it isn’t against the law to teach political principles. It isn’t against the law to publish newspapers that openly proclaim what one believes -- even though those laws may have lately been more honored in the breach than in the observance." However, Fiegenbaum observes, "these later day Tom Sawyers won’t have it that way," instead lurking about at secret conventions in the Michigan woods, where they might receive their patently obvious political directions from romantic authority figures from abroad.
OCTOBER
“Review and Personal Statement,” by Eugene V. Debs. [Oct. 2, 1922] At the time Gene Debs was imprisoned in April of 1919, factional storm clouds were brewing in the Socialist Party of America, but the party had not been split asunder. Isolated from active politics, the factional wars of 1919-21 took place in his absence, with Debs maintaining a strict neutrality in terms of stating his personal allegiance. It was not until this lengthy October 1922 published statement that Debs formally declared his intention to stay with his beloved Socialist Party and to help rebuild it. Debs encouraged others to rebuild their locals, pay their dues, to send organizers into the field, and to spread propaganda far and wide. Debs stoutly refused to engage in polemics, stating that “I have never had any heart for factional warfare. I simply cannot and will not engage in it. I can argue and reason with comrades, but I cannot and will not give way to anger and resort to vituperation over my differences with them.” Debs closes with a strong statement of unconditional support for the Russian Revolution: “It matters not what its mistakes have been, nor what may be charged against it, the Russian Revolution, in what it expresses for the Russian people and in what it portends for the oppressed and exploited peoples of all nations, is the greatest, most luminous and far reaching achievement in the entire sweep of human history.”
NOVEMBER
“Embattled Liberators,” by Eugene V. Debs. [written Nov. 1922] An article written to herald the 5th Anniversay of the Russian Revolution by Socialist Party orator Eugene Debs. Debs does not step back from the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic an inch: “That the revolution and the republic which sprang from it have survived, not only to be commemorated on their Fifth Anniversary, but are today more puissant and promising, and pulse with keener life and activity than ever before, in the face of every conceivable attempt to crush and destroy them on the part of the combined capitalist powers of the earth, is a miracle no less marvelous and seemingly impossible than the revolution and republic themselves.” First published in the Dec. 1922 issue of The Liberator.
1923
FEBRUARY
“A Sheriff I Loved,” by Eugene V. Debs [Feb. 9, 1923] Socialist orator Gene Debs provides a remembrance his unusual friendship of 27 years with one of his former captors, George Eckert, sheriff of McHenry County, Illinois. In 1895, jailed for his part in the 1894 strike of the American Railway Union, Debs had been moved from Cook Co. Jail to McHenry Co. Jail due to overcrowding. Inflamed by the Right Wing press, a potential lynch mob gathered to meet Debs at the train. “The farmers were there with their threats and mutterings, and with some other sheriff than George Eckert in charge might have attempted their cowardly program. But George Eckert was a man as well as a sheriff, and he told them, in words they did not fail to understand, that I was his prisoner, and that it was his duty to protect as well as to jail me, and that he proposed to do it. The would-be lynchers knew George Eckert, and slunk away in the darkness. They knew he would protect me—if necessary with his own life.” The pair had remained in regular touch for the rest of their lives.
MARCH
”The Secret is Out” by Otto Branstetter [March 1923] This article by Socialist Party Executive Secretary Otto Branstetter attempts to make political hay out of the Workers Party’s attempt to gain admittance in the Conference for Progressive Political Action, ostensibly to work alongside organizations upon which they had for years poured venom and vilification, such as the Socialist Party, the Farmer-Labor Party, AF of L unions, and the Committee of 48. This effort at admission to the CPPA had been turned back by the Socialists, causing Louis Engdahl to protest on behalf of the Workers Party. Branstetter mockingly remarks that "the matter is now perfectly clear. The aggregation of camouflaged communists and government agents known as the Workers Party is revolutionary because it wants to affiliate with the ‘yellow’ Socialist Party. The Socialist Party is reactionary because it won’t let them. What a shame!" Branstetter also smirks that "Another decided difference has been brought to light by the testimony of Ruthenberg at the Bridgman trial. Ruthenberg quoted Lenin as saying that all talk of armed insurrection in the United States at present is ‘nonsensical.’ That settles it. The difference between a Socialist and a Communist is that the Socialist knew this all the time and said so -- which made him ‘yellow’; the Communist didn’t know it until Lenin told him, which makes him ‘red.’"
“Inviting Debs to Soviet Russia: Letter from Israel Amter in Moscow to the Presidium of the Comintern, March 9, 1923.” Despite his decision to stick with the Socialist Party of America which he helped to found, the American Communists continued to hold out hope that Eugene Debs would turn his back on the SPA’s increasingly conservative leadership. This letter from the CPA’s man in Moscow, Israel Amter, noted that Debs had at last been persuaded to visit Soviet Russia to see the situation first-hand and requested that an invitation be cabled to Debs by the Soviet railway union, central trade union body, or government. Amter remarks that “when Debs came from prison, he was very angry with the Communists for their failure to do anything to obtain his release. Undoubtedly he was right in his contention, but the American Party not understanding proper tactics and incensed that he did not break away” from the Socialist Party and consequently “did not feel inclined to speak in his behalf.” A sentimental disposition, Ill-health, and his “yellow Socialist” brother had prevented closer collaboration between the Communists and Debs—who instead fell victim to the “trickery” of the SPA. Nevertheless, Debs’ honesty and love for the working class combined with “repugnance at the brutal attacks of the Socialist press on Soviet Russia have made him at last desire to see Soviet Russia with his own eyes and judge for himself.”
”Letter to J. Louis Engdahl, Editor of The Worker, in New York from Eugene V. Debs in Chicago, March 17, 1923.” Short letter by Socialist Party leader Gene Debs to his former party comrade Louis Engdahl in reply to Engdahl’s letter of March 12, 1923, apparently bringing to Debs’ attention the action of SPA delegates in blocking Workers Party participation at the 2nd conferences of the Conference for Progressive Political Action (Cleveland, Dec. 1922) and the American Labor Party (New York, March 1923). In effort to explain the actions of the Socialist delegates to those gatherings, Debs sarcastically notes that “it may be that the Socialist Party delegates at Cleveland and New York voted as they did in order that the delegates of the Workers Party might not suffer humiliation and imperil their revolutionary reputation by affiliating with ‘yellow-legged renegades,’ ‘agents of the petite bourgeoisie,’ and ‘traitors to the working class.’” He adds that “had I been a delegate of the Socialist Party I should have voted to admit the delegates of the Workers Party notwithstanding their organs and speakers having screamed themselves hoarse in their denunciation of the party I represented. This would have been my answer to their silly screeds and their vicious calumnies.” Debs expresses the belief that WPA exclusion “will be adjusted in due course.”
“Memo from C.E. Ruthenberg to All WPA District Organizers on Infiltration of the Socialist Party, March 17, 1923.” A memo from Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg to all District Organizers of the Workers Party of America that a “left wing” movement seemed to be emerging in the Socialist Party and that “it is necessary for us to help crystallize that left movement.” The DOs are instructed to “select some trustworthy and capable comrades who should be instructed to make an effort to join one of their branches in their locality. This is to be done in every city of your district where they are strong. One or two comrades is sufficient for every branch. The comrades must be absolutely trustworthy.” This operation is to be secret: “The entire question is absolutely confidential and should not be made subject for discussion among the general membership for obvious reasons,” Ruthenberg notes.
APRIL
“Getting Together,” by Eugene V. Debs. [April 1923] Article by the Socialist Party of America’s 5-time Presidential candidate on the trade union situation in America, published in the monthly magazine of the Trade Union Educational League. Debs states that recent defeats of major strikes in the steel, mining, and railroad industries would have been winnable had they been conducted by unified industrial unions rather than a multitude of fragmented craft unions—a form of organization which Debs believed to be an obsolete relic of individual handicraft production, utterly unsuited to the large-scale and complex industry of the modern world. In advancing the end of amalgamation of existing craft unions into large industrial unions, Debs wholeheartedly supports the work of the TUEL: “The Trade Union Educational League, under the direction and inspiration of William Z. Foster, is in my opinion the one rightly directed movement for the industrial unification of the American workers. I thoroughly believe in its plan and its methods and I feel very confident of its steady progress and the ultimate achievement of its ends.”
“American Legion Has Another Brainstorm: Break Up Labor Defense Council Meeting in Kansas City Thus Preventing Another Revolution.” (Miami Valley Socialist) [report of April 13, 1923] Brief journalistic account of unconstitutional action engaged in by the ultra-nationalist ex-soldiers’ organization, the American Legion. A peaceful public meeting in Kansas City of the Communist Party’s legal defense organization, the Labor Defense Council, was raided by the unholy alliance of American Legionnaires and local police. “According to reports appearing in the Kansas City daily press the raid was made on information given by the local American Legion Secret Service,” it is noted, with this news report adding sarcastically that “it was not explained why it was necessary for any undercover sleuths to ‘discover’ the meeting, which was given all the publicity and advertising that the local Labor Defense Council could secure.” Four local trade unionists were arrested at the meeting. “Ella Reeve Bloor, who was the speaker at the meeting, was not molested. She announced as the crowd was being chased out of the hall by the dicks and Legion that a mass meeting would be held on Sunday, April 15 [1923], and the authority of the police and the power of the Legion to stop peaceful assemblages will be tested.”
MAY
“Michigan in the Muck,” by Eugene V. Debs. [May 1923] Article on the heated legal battle in Michigan over the August 1922 raid of the Communist Party of America’s Bridgman, Michigan convention published in the pages of The Liberator. Debs, the most widely recognized member of the Socialist Party’s National Executive Committee, unleashes a barrage on the “idiotic and criminal ‘criminal syndicalist’ law enacted by political crooks to seal the lips of industrial slaves” in Michigan. Debs charges that “The communists had as good a right to hold a convention in the state of Michigan and to discuss their affairs and formulate their program, any kind of a program that stopped short of the actual commission of crime penalized under the law, as the graft-infested Republican and Democratic parties have to hold such a convention.” The Michigan prosecutions were nothing but a “foul assault upon the Constitution and upon the elemental rights of citizenship,” according to Debs.
SEPTEMBER
“Let Us Build,” by Eugene V. Debs. [Sept. 1923] From the time of his imprisonment in 1919 until the end of his life, Gene Debs tirelessly argued against factionalism within the radical movement. In this article from the Socialist Party’s official organ, Debs rues the energy lost to factional infighting and calls for an end to namecalling (“reds” vs. “yellows) in the party. He colorfully remarks that “I know a good many of both, and so far as I am able to discern, they are much alike. The actual difference between them, were it fire, would hardly be enough to light a cigarette.” Debs does utter stern tones when he observes that “there is room enough” in the Socialist Party “for everyone who subscribes to its principles and upholds them in good faith; but there is no room in it for those who either openly sneer at political action or who avow it falsely to mask their treachery while they carry on their work of disruption.” Debs calls for unity of effort in a period of protracted party building and press building.
“The Story of the British Labour Party,” by Morris Hillquit [Sept. 1923] The stunning success of the British Labour Party in realigning the two-party system of that nation during the first two decades of the 20th Century served as a practical model for both the Socialist Party of America and the Workers (Communist) Party, each in their own way. This article by SPA leader Morris Hillquit in the party’s official organ recounted the path of success in Great Britain. It was there that “a series of intense industrial struggles in which the powers of the government werre openly and consistently arrayed on the side of the employers and against labor,” prompting the British Trades Union Congress to pass a resolution in 1899 calling for a conference of trade unions, socialist parties, cooperative societies, and other labor organizations to devise means for gaining better representation in the House of Commons. This conference evolved into the British Labour Party, which had received a full third of the vote and emerged as the primary opposition group in the 1922 national elections. “With the crying needs for political relief in this country and with the exaqmple and ready methods of England back of us we can form a powerful Labor Party in this country today; we can challenge the supremacy of the old parties in a few years,” Hillquit hopefully opined.
OCTOBER
“Rebuilding the Socialist Party,” by James Oneal [Oct. 1923] This article by Socialist Party leader James Oneal attempts to spin the SPA’s precipitous decline in membership as a normal aspect of a labor movement in retreat across the country. "One striking fact regarding working class organizations since the end of the World War is that all of them, conservative and radical, have suffered a heavy loss in membership," writes Oneal, noting the American Federation of Labor had shed over 1 million members, falling from 4 million to under 3 million in the years 1919-1923. Oneal fails to note the magnitude of the SPA’s catastrophic decline, with the party losing approximately 90% of its members during the same interval -- an avalanche triggered in large part by NEC member Oneal’s own motions and votes to suspend 7 foreign language federations and various state party organizations in 1919. "The Socialist Party also lost members. Government and ‘patriotic’ persecution destroyed many branches. Communism destroyed many more. Now we have reached the period of party building," Oneal blandly states and optimistically concludes. Oneal sees hope in the experience of the British fraternal party of the SPA, the Independent Labour Party, which had emerged from its own demoralization and funk to provide 32 elected Members of Parliament, including Ramsay MacDonald as Labour Party speaker in Commons. "What the ILP has done the Socialist Party can do," Oneal declares.
“The Ku Klux Klan,” by Victor L. Berger [Oct. 26, 1923] One of the oft-repeated chestnuts that one hears about Socialist editor and Congressman Victor Berger of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is that the man was a confirmed racist. This article by Berger, reprinted in the pages of the Miami Valley Socialist [Dayton, OH], effectively belies such nonsense. Advised to “go easy” on the KKK, Berger responds by standing up up boldly and fearlessly to the goup, an organization which registered impressive growth in size and influence during the first half of the 1920s. Berger minces no words: “I consider the Ku Klux Klan an organization built upon race hatred and religious hatred. I know it to be anti-social and anti-American—a menace to rich and poor, to workers and capitalists alike. I believe the Klan to be an utterly venomous, cowardly, and despicable gang of marauders hiding under the cloak of secrecy and mysticism and patriotism.” If Berger can be justly accused of national chauvinism, the object of his antipathy is an unconventional target; Berger alleges the Klan to be “the only proof of a yellow streak in the American people and particularly in the Anglo-Saxon race—which is very much inbred and degenerated in certain parts of the South that had little immigration and infusion of new and healthy European blood.” Berger likens the KKK to the reign of terror of the Know-Nothings in the 1850s, a semi-secret organization of ultra-nationalist thugs who burned Catholic churches and “killed many hundred Irish people in a riot lasting several days in Louisville.” Berger declares: “I am opposed to the Klan, not only because the Ku Klux Klan has made the fight on Socialism, trade unionism, the IWW, etc., one of its principle objects... Not only because the Klan has been guilty of murders and terrible outrages against railroad men during their recent strike. Not only because they have been unspeakably cruel against Jews, Catholics, and Negroes. I am opposed because the mere existence of an organization like the Klan is a menace to the entire commonwealth. It seeks to substitute organized crime for organized government.”
“After 5 Years, Debs Completes Canton Address: Noted Socialist Comes Back to Canton With Praise for City: Says World Was Never More Unsafe For Democracy Than Now.” (Miami Valley Socialist) [event of Oct. 31, 1923] On Oct. 31, 1923, Socialist orator Gene Debs was able to finish the speech which he had begun 5 years earlier in Canton, Ohio—for which he was sent to prison for nearly 3 years by the Justice Department of the Woodrow Wilson regime. “”I was not for the war. I did not want war. But I was in it,” Debs told the audience of 1500 persons, adding, “I was conscripted. I was taken by the selective draft. And I am still waiting for my bonus. Woodrow Wilson was unanimously elected President of the United States for keeping us out of war. I was given 10 years in the Atlanta prison for trying to do the same thing.” Debs sounds an ominous warning: “”The whole world is preparing for the next war. This war will be fought in the air. Experts are working now in the many laboratories throughout the country, preparing liquid fire and powerful explosives which will be used. Even the savages spared women and children. The next war will not. Explosives will be dropped from the air, and men, women, and helpless children will be annihilated wholesale. And this is what you vote for when you vote the Democratic or Republican ticket.”
NOVEMBER
“Letter from C.E. Ruthenberg in Chicago to Morris Hillquit in New York, Nov. 3, 1923.” A cryptic note sent from the Executive Secretary of the Workers Party of the member to the leading light of the arch-rival Socialist Party of America. Ruthenberg notes that he will be in New York on Nov. 8, 1923, and that he seeks a conference with Hillquit to “talk with you” in regard to an invitation sent by the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party to labor political groups for a Nov. 15 conference in St. Paul. This conference was an attempt to “come to an agreement on the question of calling a national convention for the nomination of a presidential candidate and the adoption of a national platform.” Despite the hostility between the two organizations, this document affirms that there was at least informal discussion at the top level about the possibility of joint action with regards to the Farmer-Labor Party movement.
1924
JUNE
Socialist Party Due to Make Greatest Gains in its Entire History, Eugene Debs Declares: National Chairman of the Socialist Party Outlines Political Situation...” by Eugene V. Debs [June 14, 1924] This article by Eugene Debs for the members of the Socialist Party, written from a sanitarium in Colorado, consists of two parts—a brief historical overview of the SPA leading up to the forthcoming St. Paul and Cleveland conventions aiming to establish a Labor Party in America, and a plea for funds. Debs sees the volition for a unified Labor Party in America as a sort of vindication of the Socialist Party’s 27 years of agitation for independent political action by the working class, noting that both conservative unionists on the right and communists on the left had been influenced by the SP’s teachings on the matter. “For myself, I earnestly hope a united Labor Party, based upon the principles of industrial democracy and cornerstoned in the interest of the working class, may issue from these conventions; but whether it does nor not we must preserve strictly the identity and guard rigidly the integrity of the Socialist Party as an uncompromising revolutionary political organization of the workers in their struggle for emancipation,” Debs notes, thus indicating a willingness to make common cause with the communists in the Labor Party task. As for funds, the message is simple, the Socialist Party’s “membership has been greatly reduced and its treasury utterly bankrupted.” An appeal is made to loyalty, honor, and sense of obligation for all members to immediately pay their back dues and the 50 cent to $5 voluntary convention assessment to the National Office.
OCTOBER
“The Death of the Socialist Party,” by J. Louis Engdahl [October 1924]. A final sneer at the Socialist Party from the 1924 campaign. Former editor of the Socialist Party’s offical organ Engdahl argues that the SP’s immersion in the campaign of progressive Republican Robert LaFollette for President of the United States spells the final deathknell for the SPA: “When the Socialist Party deserted the ‘Labor Party’ fight, turned its back on class action, and joined the LaFollette straddle of the two old parties of Wall Street, its members had two choices. They could either join the Communist forces in the Workers Party, or go over into the LaFollette camp. Many did join the Communist ranks, singly and in groups. The rest are going over to the temporary LaFollette organizations that will collapse after the election day has passed.... The Socialist movement has been swallowed up in the LaFollette wave. It has been completely obliterated.”
1925
JANUARY
“The American Labor Party,” by Eugene V. Debs. [Jan. 1925] A 2nd National Convention of the Conference for Progressive Political Actions (CPPA) was scheduled to closely follow the completion of the 1924 LaFollette/Wheeler Presidential campaign. Chief on the agenda for the group was the establishment of a new political party, intended to be built upon the alliances around the country developed during the course of the fall of 1924. The Socialist Party sought the formation of a British-style Labor Party, federating component organizations and envisioning itself as playing the role of the Independent Labour Party in the UK. This article by Eugene Debs in the official organ of the Socialist Party of America gives voice to this desire. Debs states that despite the “blind stupidity of the workers and the covert machinations of their enemies to thwart or misdirect them,” a Labor Party was inevitable in America. The staunch backing and support of the unions was mandatory for the success of such a venture, Debs declared, stating that while the leadership of the unions remained “almost to a man opposed to a Labor Party,” hope lay in the hands of the rank and file, who might successfully be aroused to the task. Debs did not think it likely that such an organization would be constructed by the forthcoming gathering of the CPPA, but he hoped for the best and professed patience and an ability to wait.
FEBRUARY
“Speech to the Conference for Progressive Political Action, Feb. 21, 1925,” by Eugene V. Debs. The National Chairman of the Socialist Party of America was the featured speaker at a “mass meeting” held at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago in conjunction with the Second Convention of the CPPA. This is the full text of his speech, from the official stenographic report of the convention. Debs argues that political parties can be either capitalist or socialist, but not both, and that any attempt to merge the “irrepressible” antagonistic interests of the capitalist class and the working class in a new party will be met with failure. Political parties by definition can not be non-partisan, Debs indicates, and the term “progressive” has been so “prostituted” that even J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller might be reasonably expected to consider themselves progressives. Only a true Labor Party dealing with the fundamental issue of whether the national as a whole should own and control its own industries has any prospects for long-term success, in Debs’ view.
“Statement of Party Policy by the Socialist Party in National Convention, Chicago, Illinois—Feb. 24, 1925.” The 1925 “Special Convention” of the Socialist Party was scheduled and held in Chicago immediately after the close of the 2nd Convention of the Convention for Progressive Political Action. This statement was issued by the SPA’s convention to announce to the party membership that the CPPA Convention had failed to establish a Labor Party on the British model, and that with the departure of the railway unions and failure of the CPPA to establish a Labor Party, there was “no conceivable good either to the Conference or to the Socialists” for any continued affiliation. The Socialist Party consequently was severing its relations with that organization.
MARCH
“As to the Labor Defense Council,” by Eugene V. Debs [March 1925] Although initially organized by the Communist Party as a broad-based non-party legal defense organization to aid the victims of the August 1922 raid on the party’s convention at Bridgman, Michigan, by 1925 the Legal Defense Council had begun to take a more partisan cast. Lips began to wag about the presence of Socialist Party National Chairman Eugene V. Debs on the LDC’s letterhead—to the effect that Debs was, in deeds if not in words, sympathetic to the Communist cause. This prompted a reply by Debs in the official organ of the Socialist Party to discount any such speculation. “was organized to provide defense for Communists prosecuted under so-called criminal syndicalism and other laws because of their activities in the labor movement, the purpose of the defense being the preservation of the right of free speech, free assemblage, and other civil rights in the United States. I gladly accorded to this body the use of my name in raising funds and consented to be named as Vice President in its list of officers. I did this not so much for Foster, Ruthenberg, Minor, and others as individuals, but to back then up in the defense of their civil rights. That fight is also my fight,” Debs declares. He bitterly notes that while the Communist Party “refused to lift a finger to help me out of prison,” he nevertheless stood ready to defend the civil rights of Communists. Debs forcefully states that the “surreptitious” reports of his support of the Communists as against the Socialists are “on a par with some other falsehoods published in Communist organs to which my attention has been called.” After this statement of his true allegiance, Debs insists that “if hereafter any Communist whispers it into your ear that I am with the Communists in anything except their right to free speech and other civil rights, just answer by turning your back upon him and leaving the vulgar falsifier to himself.”
“The Chicago Conventions,” by Bertha Hale White. [March 1925] Assessement of the Chicago conventions of the Conference for Progressive Political Action (Feb. 21-22, 1925) and the Socialist Party of America (Feb. 23-24, 1925) by the National Executive Secretary of the SPA. White provided valuable detail about the parliamentary maneuvering at the CPPA gathering—a meeting split between the trade unionists seeking no party, socialists and radical unionists seeking a British Labor Party-style organization allowing participation by independent constituent organizations such as the Socialist Party, and liberals in favor of a Progressive Party constructed around a traditional individual memberships. White states that participants at the Socialist convention expressed “relief and satisfaction” knowing that the period of uncertainty was over effective with the unanimous decision of the SPA to withdraw from the CPPA.
1926
OCTOBER
“A Tribute to Debs,” by Morris Hillquit. [Oct. 23, 1926] A short tribute to the Socialist leader written by his friend and comrade and published on the front page of The New Leader at the time of Debs’ death. According to Hillquit, Debs was “a crusader and a fighter, but there was no hate in him. His most ardent fighting sprang from his deep and warm love for all that bears human countenance. A pure type of early Christian at his best, he was strangely misplaced in our cold age of selfishness and greed.” “Through all the years of his struggles and suffering his frail body was vibrant with flaming vitality. In spite of his advanced age and ill health he was to the last the impersonation of radiant youth in his mental alertness and never-flagging enthusiasm.”
NOVEMBER
“At the Bier of Debs,” by Morris Hillquit [delivered Oct. 22; published Nov. 13, 1926] One of the funeral speeches delivered in Eugene Debs’ honor from the porch of the Debs house in Terre Haute, Indiana in the afternoon of Friday, October 22, 1926—later reprinted in the Socialist press. Hillquit noted that while Debs “was one of the most effective orators of America” what really made the man was his personality. “It was first of all the boundless love of everything that bears human countenance which radiated from him. Not an intellectual love, not an abstract love, but a love that flowed naturally, organically, communicating itself electrically to all who came within the magic sphere of his personal contact. He loved everybody—the poor and even the rich, the righteous, the criminal, and the outcast. He loved mankind and his very eloquence sprung from his love. He did not merely appeal and convince, he communicated part of himself, part of his very being to his audience.”
“Debs and SP Policies,” by James Oneal. [Nov. 13, 1926] The Socialist Party Old Guard’s attack dog locks jaw on the “most revolting performance” of the American Communists in their attempt to “claim Eugene Debs as their own.” To this end, two charges were made in a Communist leaflet distributed at a Debs memorial meeting held at Madison Square Garden which stick in Oneal’s craw: (1) that Debs was “always on the left wing of the Socialist Party"; and (2) that only in recent years did the SP “permit” Debs to be a member of the SP’s governing National Executive Committee. Oneal mocks the first assertion, dumping everything from the Social Democracy in America’s colonization wing to Daniel DeLeon’s ST&LA to the eccentric anti-union views of two 1904 SP convention delegates to the 1912 syndicalist movement into a single large bin labelled “left wing.” Since Debs never followed any of this “topsy turvy conduct,” Oneal asserts, the claim of Debs’ fidelity to the “left” is absurd. Oneal depicts Debs’ later pro-unity position as the result of sentimentality and the cause of unintentional misunderstanding and says that the 1905 decision to help form the IWW was a “mistake,” soon corrected. As for the assertion that Debs was only allowed on the NEC in the last years, Oneal convincingly argues that Debs saw his role as a propagandist, not as a party executive, that he was regularly nominated—and declined—all such offices as a matter of preference, so that he might concentrate on his main mission. ” It is precisely because he was committed to the Socialist Party and its policies that he consented to go to the National Executive Committee in recent years. The fact that he took up work that he disliked and which he had avoided for more than twenty years shows that he was so convinced that the Socialist Party represented his views,” Oneal notes.
1928
AUGUST
“Speech to the Third Congress of the Labor and Socialist International, Aug. 6, 1928,” by Morris Hillquit. Text of an address by the Chairman of the Socialist Party of the United States to the International Socialist Congress held in Brussels from Aug. 5 to 11, 1928. Hillquit identifies three trends in the development of the world economy in the post-World War world: centralization, internationalization, and Americanization. He cautions about the negative effects of industrial rationalization and the trend towards American financial hegemony, warns of a trend towards exploitation of cheap “Asiatic labor and labor in backward countries,” and calls for international efforts to develop a labor movement “as powerful and more powerful than modern capitalism.”
NOVEMBER
“Report of William H. Henry, National Secretary, to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, Nov. 24, 1928.” This document covering the first 10 months of operations by the SPA in 1928 in comparison to the same period one year previous provides scholars with a first hard set of membership numbers for the organization for those two years. Includes a state-by-state membership count for 1927 and 1928, memberships for the five federations of the SPA, a brief discussion of organizational prospects in the various states, and financial details of the organization. Rather esoteric fare, perhaps, but a very important primary source document for specialists in the history of American radicalism in the 1920s.
1931
APRIL
“This Post-War Generation and Our Time: Will It Be Able to Find a Way Out?,” by Anna P. Krasna [April 30, 1931] A little heard perspective: the views of a Depression-era Socialist rather than a Communist; of a woman, not a man; of a Slovene-American, not an Anglo-American. Anna P. Krasna, a writer, appeals to the youth of America to wake up and begin to take an active interest in politics, as a new war was in the wind. The post-war generation had been bred upon illusions of individual success and was learning that the brutal reality of the economic system was different, Krasna stated. “We are hoping that the youth, seeing the future holds nothing but misery in store for them, or perhaps a chance to die a heroic death for the international speculators and exploiters, shall demand the right to live as comfortably as the modern technical improvements permit”—this to be achieved through participation in “the groups of those who believe in equality for all.”
1932
MAY
“The Finnish Socialists in America,” by W.N. Reivo. [May 1932] Report of the Secretary of the Finnish Federation of the Socialist Party to the 17th National Convention of the organization, held in Milwaukee in May 1932. Reivo states in no uncertain terms that “the future of the Socialist Party in America is in the native born stock. They days of the language federations are in the past.” Reivo notes that the children of Finnish immigrant socialist parents tend to join the English-language branches in their communities rather than the Finnish-language branches. This is not necessarily a bad thing, Reivo believes, as “perhaps it would be a mistake if the youth joined us directly and stood aloof of the body of the Socialist Party just as the older element does now.” Nevertheless, the reputation of the Finnish Federation was greater than at any time since the 1920 split of the organization and the growth of the SP was edifying—even if very few disgruntled ex-Communists were making the trek back to their former organization.
Should the American Workers Form a Political Party of their Own? A Debate. Morris Hillquit (National Chairman, Socialist Party)—Yes. Matthew Woll (Vice President, American Federation of Labor) - No. [1932] Nearly a decade after the Labor Party question first burned hot for the Socialist Party of America, its position had changed little—it was in favor of establishing a constituent organization akin to the British Labour Party. Nor had the opposition of organized labor moved—it remained, by and large, opposed to the establishment of a Third Party, instead continuing to tout the tactic of selective support of “Friends of Labor” within the two major parties. This 1932 debate between Socialist Party National Chairman Morris Hillquit and AFL Vice President Matthew Woll details the thinking behind each of these positions. In the course of his remarks Hillquit assigns blame for the failure of the Third Party movement in 1924 to the desire of Robert LaFollette to run alone, resulting in the “doom of the movement.” The AFL is upbraided by Hillquit for its “late and...luke warm” support of the LaFollette candidacy, which is said to have killed any chance for the LaFollette campaign to lay “the foundation of a great and powerful labor party in America.” Full text of a pamphlet published in 1932 by the Rand School of Social Science.
1936
MAY
Notes on the United Front Problem, by Haim Kantorovitch [May 1936] Kantorovitch, an intellectual leader of the Socialist Party‣s “Militant” faction, takes aim both at the “Old Guard” defectors such as Louis Waldman, who after being soundly defeated by the SP majority in National Convention, in a party referendum, in the NEC, and in the New York SP primaries, are presumptuous enough to dictate terms under which they will return to the party fold. “It never occurred to people like Waldman that he and his followers could remain in the Socialist Party and use all the legal and ethical party channels to persuade the majority of the party members that after all the Old Guard was right,” Kantorovitch observes. Instead, the Old Guard splitters had chosen to fight the party, making use of none-too-subtle red baiting tactics in the capitalist press. This involved a conscious attempt to confuse two distinct concepts, according to Kantorovitch: the United Front and “participation of Socialists in common action in which Communists also participate.” In the former case, a “permanent and national agreement” between the Socialist and Communist Parties would lock the two organizations together, while in the latter case the Socialist and Communist Parties participate in joint projects as members of a still larger coalition, free to come or go or to criticize as each organization so desired. Kantorovitch sees the Old Guard Socialists as having adopted the discarded theory of social fascism and inverted it — projecting instead the Communist Party as the “chief enemy” which must be defeated and stricken from the ranks of the labor before serious battle could be waged against capitalism, war, and fascism. Kantorovitch states that the revolutionary socialists of the Militant faction the Communists were an integral part of the labor movement — merely one from which revolutionary socialists differed. Common action with such an organization was possible, Kantorovitch asserts, but not (in present circumstances) a United Front, which would inevitably require the Socialists to surrender their freedom and obligation to criticize particulars of Soviet Society, Stalin, and Stalinism.
1937
MARCH
“Advance in Chicago: An Analysis of the March 1937 Special Convention,” by Samuel Romer & Hal Siegel. Held only 10 months after the 1936 conclave, the Socialist Party’s Special Convention of 1937 was ostensibly called to restructure the national organization, increasing centralization in place of the historic loose federation of largely independent state organizations and banning the factional press in favor of a central discussion bulletin. Factionalism remained one of the central concerns of the organization, however, particularly the working alliance between the historic small group of “single plankers” (who advocated no ameloriative reforms in the party program, only the agitation for revolutionary socialism) and the new cohort of former members of the Trotskyist “Workers Party,” who shared this perspective and gave the position critical mass from a factional standpoint. Romer and Siegel, adherents of the majority Militant wing of the party, note that the decision to ban factional inner-party organs was made by the convention unanimously and saw this as a positive sign for the future of the organization.
1938
MARCH
“The Moscow Trials,” by Norman Thomas [March 1938] Article by the leader of the Socialist Party attempting to make sense of the Great Show Trials in Moscow—the third of which, featuring Bukharin in the dock, was held March 2-13, 1938. “These confessions, true, false, or partly true and partly false, are for us who have believed in socialism as the hope of the world the occasion of bitter tears and deep humiliation,” states Thomas, who notes similar patently false confessions happened during the period of the Spanish Inquisition and the witchcraft trials. “I assume that in a regime which makes possible no legal or democratic opposition even within the Communist Party to the decisions of the bureaucracy there have been plots. This was probably especially true in the dark days of 1932-1933....The important thing is that there is no interpretation of these trials which does not bring shame upon the regime,” writes Thomas. He adds that “Lenin was a great enough man to master the amoral tactics which he consciously used with some regard for proportion and achievement. None of his successors has that ability. Insofar as Lenin, yes, and Trotsky, were responsible for this exaltation of secular Jesuitism as a kind of working class virtue, they must share in the guilt of its complete degeneration under Stalin.... [Stalin’s] supreme failure has been an exaltation of a regime which makes suspicion of one’s closest comrades inevitable and plots and counterplots the only vehicle of effective political activity.” Thomas calls the USSR “a totalitarian state under a monolithic party” and presciently notes the likelihood of a change of party line with some chance of “an alliance or understanding with Hitler.”