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JUNE 15, 1921 THE WORKERS COUNCIL 93 92 THE WORKERS COUNCIL June 15, 1921 Program Suggestions for the Socialist Party Convention No disinterested ultimate consumer stopped con consciousness of intelligent progress toward a suming sheets and pillow cases to go down on the supreme goal.
picket lines at six o clock of a frosty morning. Few The Amalgamated is not a group of ignorant, of them stopped consuming anything sufficiently to listless victims of the present system, whose highsend a dollar or two to the lockout resistance fund. est thought is to shelter themselves in makeshift Of the 1, 500, 000 raised by the union, less than fashion against its worst abuses, and let the rest of 100, 000 came from outside its own ranks, and most the world go hang. It is a band of stalwarts who of that was donated by other labor organizations. know the reason of their present subjugation, who The battle was fought and won by the organized have achieved a knowledge of their rights and might and ability of the Amalgamated Clothing powers as workers, and whose faces are set resoWorkers themselves.
lutely toward a new social order. The AmalgamThat they were able to win in the teeth of all ob ated victory is a victory for sound and steady edustacles, after a slack spell nearly as long as the cation for a purpose big enough to stir the symlockout had drained their resources and their ener pathies and enlist the idealism of the mass. The gies, is one of the outstanding miracles of the recon industry is ours may not be literally true for the struction period. But like most miracles that are clothing workers today. But the Amalgamated won true it has a human source. That source is the aaginst every odds because it is consistently and spirit generated in a mass of men and women by the ably building toward the day when it shall be.
INTERNATIONAL NOTES By ALEXANDER TRACHTENBERG Polish Social Patriots Support Upper Silesian Adventure Echoes of the Paul Levi Incident The Polish Socialist Party (P. of Cracow held a The expulsion of Paul Levi from the German United Comdemonstration in favor of the insurrection in Upper Silesia munist Party for the publication of the now famous pamphlet and called upon the government to give open military assistin which the central committee of the party was accused as ance to the Polish insurgents. The Warsaw section of the the instigator of the abortive March uprising, has created a same Socialist party even issued an appeal to the workers lively discussion in the Communist parties of other countries.
of the Entente countries to support the Korfanty adventure The central committees of the Austrian, Swiss and Chechoin the name of self determination of the Polish people in Slovak (German) Communist parties expressed their solidarUpper Silesia.
ity with the action of the central committee of the German The was always a nationalist party, but since the party, and editor Strasser of the Vienna Rote Fahne and the establishment of Poland as an outpost of Allied imperialism, editor of the Checho Slovak Communist organ were removed it has sanctioned all the persecutions of the revolutionary from their positions for approving Levi stand. The execlabor organizations in Poland and has blessed the Polish utive committee of the Third International has agreed with troops under the leadership of General Pilsudski, an honthe German party that Levi action was a gross breach of ored member of the party, in their raids upon Soviet Russia.
party discipline. The matter will be taken up at the present It is interesting to note that the Cracow organization was congress of the International in connection with the general quite insistent that the party withdraw from the defunct SecItalian and German problems which the executive committee ond International and affiliate with the reconstructed 242 has placed on the agenda of the congress.
Vienna International. The International presided over by MacDonald, Vandervelde, Troelstra, Renaudel and Thomas Red Trade Union International Gains Adherents was not considered sufficiently revolutionary even by this As the first congress called by the International Council jingo and Jew baiting Socialist organization. Sic transit of Socialist trade and industrial unions draws nearer, large gloria mundi.
labor bodies are deciding to send delegates and to affiliate with the new international labor federation. The congress Jewish Bund Merges with Russian Communist Party of the South African Federation of Labor has recently decided to join the new body and to be represented at the conThe Jewish Social Democratic organization in Russia, gress which opens July first at Moscow. Similar action was better known under the name of Bund, has ceased to exist taken by the federation of the Luxemburg trade unions and as an independent national party. national conference of the Scottish Trade Union Congress held April 22 voted 55 the organization decided by a vote of 47 to 23 to merge with to 50 to join Moscow. The Scottish congress represented the Russian Communist party. The minority which believed 560, 000 organized workers who are considered the radical there was still need for the Bund to continue its independent wing in the British labor movement.
existence announced that it would abide by the decision of the On May a conference of British labor unions was held majority.
in London with 354 delegates in attendance. Tom Mann, secThe Bund was founded prior to the organization of the retary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, which inRussian Social Democratic Workers Party, the forerunner cludes all organized workers in the metal and machine trades, of the present Communist Party. As an integral part of the presided, and it was voted to urge upon the British labor Russian Socialist movement it was at the forefront of the movement to affiliate with the Labor International formed revolution for a generation. It has called the Jewish workers at Moscow.
to revolutionary deeds and has instilled in them the spirit of In France the matter of affiliation with the new Internaclass consciousness and internationalism. Although it real tional is becoming an important issue. The future of the ized the presence of certain problems with which Jewish work Confederation of Labor (C. depends upon the action ers had to deal as Jews, the Bund taught their workers to which various sections of the labor movement are taking consider themselves as a part of the working class of Russia on this question. The resignation of Leon Jouhaux, the and called upon them to struggle for their rights as an op Gompers of France, as secretary of the Federation is prepressed nationality and as workers together with the workers dicted in the radical labor press. The Paris central federaof other nationalities in Russia. Thus, besides training the tion of trade unions voted to send delegates to Moscow by Jewish workers for revolutionary activity, it devoted a great a vote of 128 to of the delegates present, with 12 abstendeal of energy to combat the influence of the various national tions. Labor federations of other departments are taking ist groups whether they were bourgeois Zionists, or Terri similar action. The National Union of Postal and Telegraph torialists, Poalei Zionists, etc. with Socialist leanings. Workers voted at a convention by 11, 712 against 1, 116 and When the glorious history of the Socialist and Labor the Railway Workers by a vote of 55, 140 to 53, 667 to join the movement of Russia will be written, the achievements of the new Labor International. The National Metal Workers Bund will be accorded a place of honor in the annals of the Union, it is reported, has also voted in favor of leaving the Russian Revolution.
conservative Amsterdam Trade Union International.
By BENJAMIN GLASSBERG The revolutionary movement in the United States members of the Socialist Party as a basis for a prois not only weaker than that of any other country, gram. Only such a program can save the party from but it is also more hopelessly divided. confusing complete disintegration and at the same time form number of groups appeal for the suport of the com the basis upon which all the revolutionary elements paratively few workers in America who are at all of the country would be able to combine: class conscious. The Socialist Party must join the Third International There is first the Socialist Labor Party, small but and take its place with the rest of the revolutionary Socialist and Communist parties of the world.
ever persistent. The possibilities of its becoming an There is no valid reason for a party, claiming to be important factor in the revolutionary movement are revolutionary, to refuse to join the only International indeed remote. At the same time it refuses to acwhich is working for the actual establishment of Comknowledge its willingness to join with all the revolumunism. All parties which are sincerely working for tionary forces under one single banner, that of the such an aim, for the creation of a League of Soviet Third International because it has not adopted in tota republics, will not stay outside of the ranks because the attitude towards trade unionism, the of minor differences as to tactics or form of organizaW. and political action.
tion within the International.
The various Communist parties in America after There can be no real International unless power, spending two years trying to unite have finally sucand authority is vested in the hands of its executive ceeded in doing so. In the meantime they have been committee. There can be no real International which more occupied in internal squabbles than in the effort allows each national group to pursue any tactics it to reach the American people. While this has unchooses. Matters of policy and tactics must be codoubtedly militated against their success, it is exordinated. Each national group will naturally be caltremely doubtful whether there are any present prosled upon to carry out such policies in the light of the pects of their being able to reach wide masses of the prevailing historic and social conditions. It is this American workers, due to their underground form of which the Third International is attempting to do.
organization and their extreme military discipline, The form of organization must provide for the conA movement cannot, at present, enlist the support of centration of power and authority within the party the American working class unless it does so in the in the hands of the executive committee, subject to open.
control by the membership. The form of organization The Socialist Party as a result of its recent policies should likewise provide for any possible emergencies which may arise through imperialist wars or class stands discredited in the eyes of the workers. The struggles which may either threaten the existence of membership has again and again expressed its desire the party or interfere with its functioning.
to align itself with the revolutionary elements in the The party executive should have complete control of International Socialist movement but the officials in the press and the activities of all elected officials, with the party have consistently prevented the party from the power of expelling officials who fail in their duty to the party and the workers.
joining the Third International. The surrender of The party must completly revise its program and prinSocialist principles at Albany, and at the May 1920 ciples in the spirit of the decisions of the Third Iuter.
convention definitely unfitted it for leadership. Only national.
a thorough overhauling, only a complete scrapping of It should make clear to the workers the nature of both leaders and program, can regain for the Socialist the existing Bourgeois Dictatorship as contained in Party the position it held in the United States before the American Constitution and as practised by the Government in every industrial struggle when the Two years ago there were 110, 000 members in the armed forces are to crush the workers. It should Socialist Party. There are probably less than 25, 000 point out, for example, the unlimited power placed members in the Socialist and Communist parties com in the hands of the Supreme Court and in the hands bined. While a great many have left the Socialist of the President, and how it has been used to crush Party because of utter dissatisfaction with its position, the independence of small nations, as in Santa Dothe loss of membership in the ranks of the Commu mingo, Haiti, Nicaragua. It should expose the false nists has also been very heavy. There are undoubtedly notion that there can be any such thing as free speech, many thousands of comrades throughout the country, or free press, or any liberty or democracy or freedom ald as well as new, who are anxious to align so long as the wealth and industries of the country themselves with the parties in the ranks of as well as the schools, the press, the meeting places, the Third International; who are anxious to the churches, etc. are in the hands of the capitalist join an organization which will propagate the prin forces. It should emphasize the fact that political ciples of revolutionary socialism but who do not feel power without economic power is meaningless and that the newly united Communist Party, any more fundamentally of little value.
than the Socialist Party, is the medium through which It should explain the necessity of establishing the they can work, or is the agency, which is fitted be Dictatorship of the Proletariat, that is the concentrat cause of program and leadership to form the advance tion of power in the hands of the workers during the guard of the working class.
period of the inevitable breakdown of capitalism, In view of the existing conditions, the following which faces every nation. It should point out that only suggestions are submitted for the consideration of the the working class, of all the social classes at such a the war.