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The Communist Official Paper of the Communist Party of America Vol. I, No. Chicago, III. Saturday, July 12, 1919 Five Cents Call for a National Convention For the Purpose of Organizing the Communist Party of America In this the most momentous period of the world history form of the rule of the finance oligarchy, with its purely formal capitalism is tottering to its ruin. The proletariat is straining equality but proletarian democracy based on the possibility at the chains which bind it. resolutionary spirit is speading of actual realization of freedom for the working masses; not throughout the world. The workers are rising to answer the capitalist bureaucracy, but organs of administration which clarion call of the Third International.
have been created by the masses themselves, with the real partOnly one Socialism is possible in the crisis. Socialism bas icipation of these masses in the government of the country and ed upon understanding. Socialism that will express in action in the activity of the communistic structure this should be the the needs of the proletariat. The time has passed for temporiz type of the proletarian state. The Workers Councils and similar ing and hesitating. We must act. The Cominunist call of the organizations represent its concrete form.
Third International, the echo of the Communist Manifesto of The Dictatorship of the Proletariat shall carry out the 1848, must be answered.
abolition of private property in the means of production and The National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of distribution, by transfer to the proletarian state under Socialist America has evidenced by its expulsion of nearly half of the administration of the working class; nationalization of the membership that they will not hesitate at wrecking the organi great business enterprises and financial trusts.
zation in order to maintain their conirol. crisis has been The present world situation demands the closest relaprecipitated in the ranks of revolutionary Socialism by the tion between the revolutionary proletariat of all countries.
wholesale expulsion or suspension of the membership compris The fundamental means of the struggle for power is the ing the Socialist Party of Michigan, Locals and Branches mass action of the proletariat, gathering together and conthroughout the country together with seven language federa centration of all its energies; whereas methods such as the retions. This has created a condition in our movement that makes volutionary use of bourgeois parliamentarism are only of subit manifestly impossible to longer delay the calling of a con sidiary significance.
vention to organize a new party. Those who realize that the In those countries in which the historical development has capturing of the Socialist Party as such is but an empty victory furnished the opportunity, the working class has utilized the will not hesitate to respond to this call and leave the right regime of political democracy for its organization against capiand center to sink together with their revolutionery lead talism. In all countries where the conditions for a worker ers.
rcrolutior are not yet ripe, the same prcress will go on.
The majority of the delegates to the Left Wing Conference Lut within this process the workers must never logc sight of in New York weakly neglected to sever their connections with the true character of bourgeois democracy. If the finance olithe reactionary National Executive Committee. Rendered in garchy considers it advantageous to veil its deeds of violence potent by the conflicting emotions and lack of understanding behind parliamentary votes, then the capitalist power has at present they continued to mark time as Centrists in the wake its command, in order to gain its ends, all the traditions and atof the Right. Their policiy is one of endeavor to capture the tainments of former centuries of upper class rule, demagogism, old party machinery and the stagnant elements which have persecution, slander, bribery, calumny and terror. To demand been struggling for a false unity, who are only ready to abandon of the proletariat that it shall be content to yield itself to the the ship when it sinks beneath the waves of reaction.
artificial rules devised by its mortal enemy, but not observed The condition which confronted the minority delegates at by the enemy, is to make a mockery of the proletarian struggle the Left Wing Conference has been met by issuing this call for for power a struggle which denends primarily on the developthe formation of a Communist Party of America. The delegates ment of separate organs of the working class power.
issuing the call represented the following organizations: Social The old Socialist International has broken into three ist Party of Michigan, Left Wing State Convention of Minnesota, main groups. a) Those frankly social patriots who since 1914 Locals Buffalo, Chicago, II. Union Local, Cudahy, have supported their bourgeoisie and transformed those eleWis. Rochester, Rockford, 111. Kenosha, Wis. New York, ments of the working class which they control into hangmen of Providence, Nanticoke, Pa. Milwaukee, Wis. Boston, the international revolution.
Mass. and the Polish, Lettish, Russian, Jewish, Lithuanian. b) The Center, representing elements which are conUkrainian and Esthonian Federations.
stantly wavering and incapable of following a definite plan of No other course is possible; therefore, we, the minority dele action, and which are at times positively traitorous; and gates at the Left Wing Conference, call a convention to mret in The Communists.
the city of Chicago on September 1st, 1919 for the purpose of As regards the social patriots, who everywhere in the criorganizing a Communist Party in America.
tical moment oppose the proletarian revolution with force of This party will be founded upon the following principles: arms, a merciless fight is absolutely necessary. As regards the The present is the period of the dissolution and collapse Center our tactics must be to separate the revolutionary eleof the whole capitalist world system, which will mean the comments by pitilessly criticizing the leaders. Absolute separation plete collapse of world culture, if Capitalism with its unsolv from the organization of the center is necessary.
able contradictions is not replaced by Communism. It is necessary to rally the groups and proletarian organ2. The problem of the proletariat consists in organizing izations who, though not as yet in the wake of revolutionary and training itself for the conquest of the powers of the state. trend of the communist movement, nevertheless have manifestThis conquest of power means the replacement of the state ed and developed a tendency leading in that direction.
machinery of the bourgeoisie with a new proletarian machinery Socialist criticism has sufficiently stigmatized the bourgeois of government.
world order. The task of the International communist press This new proletarian state must embody the dictator is to carry on propaganda for the abolition of this order and to ship of the proletariat, both industrial and agricultural, this crect in its place the structure of the Sociolist world order.
dictatorship constituting the instrument for the taking over of Under the Communist banner, the emblem under which the first property used for exploiting the workers, and for the re organ great victories have already been won; in the war against im.
perialistic barbarity, against the privileged classes, against the ization of society on a communist basis.
Not the fraudulent bourgeois democracy the hypocritical bourgeois state and bourgcols property, against all forms of