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2 The New York Communist COMMUNIST ence.
in about innocuous.
Ghe New York to outline the Right Wing position a position opinion that this method of conducting human afwhich more and more clearly defines a group in fairs is, or has been in operation somewhere. We substantial agreement with the parliamentary So would be glad to find where this elysium is or has cialist groups which dominated the Berne Confer been. In reference to national governments no such idealistic plan has even been tried, much less Official Organ of the Left Wing Section, We welcome this emergence of a clear cut sau become the recognized method of administration.
Socialist Party sage Socialism in our midst. It simplifies our In political parties and societies where there is no Owned and Controlled by Local task.
responsibility for actual governmental administration, this method, so far as we are aware, has never Greater New York JOHN REED been practised.
Editor Illegal But let us put the theory to the test of practise.
EADMONN MACALPINE Associate Editor ONE of the Right. Wing most imprese in operation is democracy the method of procedure within the for MAXIMILIAN COHEN Business Manager of our Manifesto and Program will make the AmerEditorial Board ican Socialist Party an illegal organization. In whom The Socialist speaks, conduct the affairs of Local New York? Is it HOURWICH ZUCKER the last number of The Socialist, for example, there WOLFE WILENKIN is an article by Claessens, pointing out that in Buf and free opportunity for the minority to express its falo, where the Party Local has joined the Left ecutive Committee has ordered the reorganization Published Every Week.
Wing, the Manifesto and Program are being used of the Branches which do not bow to its will? Was in the courts to outlaw Party members.
it under the influence of such high sounding ideals SUBSCRIPTION RATES Is it possible that the Right Wing is taking this that the editor of The Socialist fathered the heresy. Year. 00 opportunity to display its real sentiments concern hunting resolution at the State Committee? Months 50 ing the St. Louis Resolution which, it will be remembered, also made the Party illegal. Is it pos Call belief in the freedom of expression, is so The Socialist belief in democracy, like The Months. 75 sible that the Right Wing, in the face of such grave much hypocritical cant. Both these publications events as the imprisonment of Gene Debs, proSingle Copies, Cents poses that the Socialist Party repudiate his are afraid of their own real beliefs, they are afraid Bundle Orders of 10 or over, 37 Cents a Copy.
because it makes the Party illegal as, in view openly to embrace the tactics they are logically 43 West 29th Street. New York City does?
tion things. THE COMMUNIST is not in love with dictatorship or We do not wish to put in the mouths of these peo any more than the workers and peasants of Russia any form of tyranny, ple words which they do not say. But in the end, are in love with the suppression of counter revoluBeginnings of a Right Wing to what does this panic cry of illegality reduce itself?
tion, but we recognize that democracy and freedom Formulation of Principles are mere shams under the existing form of society, Is the Socialist Party merely a vote getting ma and that during the transition period from Capital been that they have refused to state their posi Democrats for control of the political State? Or is monwealth, all opposition to the will of the class tion. For years the American Socialist Party has a movement of the working class to overthrow conscious workers must be stamped out or rendered been a formless movement, ranging from Syndithe capitalist system?
calists to Single Taxers, and expressing itself by Do the Right Wingers repudiate Marx definition, We see from acual experience that political deprograms which were designed to express the com that the modern capitalist State is nothing less mocracy will not and can not work. We recognize way as offend nobody, and attract everybody, another, and that not less so in a democratic repub ism establishes the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
from small property owners to migratory workers. lic than under a monarchy. Alone of all Socialist movements of the world, If the State is merely the political expression of guage are so many traps and pitfalls for the workthis movement of ours has been able successfully to the capitalist system, and the Socialist Party pro ing class, and we ruthlessly strip these phrases crush all ciples and tactics, and the creation of clearly out legal except insofar attempts at definite formulation of prin poses to destroy capitalism, how can Socialism be from our own movement. In society today the its working class class struggle is raging, in some parts of the earth lined currents of Party opinion.
strength, backed up by action on the industrial it has burst into open Hame and the contest of ideas When called upon to define their position toward field forces recognition of its political representa is being fought through the mouths of machine new theories of working class organization and ac.
tives?
guns, through the power of the bayonet, through the tion, our leaders have remained silent, surround The Socialist Party is legal only so long as it ravages and the bloody horrors of war, in other ing themselves with an inky vapor through which suits the capitalist State to put its legality. Ai parts it is comparatiyely quiescent. appearing in the the present time the American capitalists have deof strikes, lockouts, unemployment demonstra.
deceive the rank and file. If the membership dis. termined to outlaw all attacks upon the State. The time ser one end the victory of the workers and the estabhasten to profess an eagerness for the same ideas, plays sympathy with these new ideas, our eaders cart Berger party is illegal in Wisconsin; the lishment of Socialism. When Socialist society is of the red flag is illegal in this State; being careful, however, to remove the vital organs New York Call is illegal in the eyes of the Post firmly established, when the opposition is once and take an uncompromising position such as was laid down in the St. Louis Resolution, carefully refrain peaceable able poroken homeetings were practically route de creatory and the beautiful conceptions of society ing from acting on it.
ted gangs of thugs to break them up an act which struggle unhampered by any illusions as to what Publicly they proclaim their sympathy with the was upheld by the Secretary of the Treasury in Russian Bolsheviki and the German Spartacans, at the same time flirting with the Berne Conference, The new session of Congress will pass a law de ever med het into practice the pleasant theories of bourgeois idealists.
and strenuously opposing the Left Wing movement claring illegal all propaganda or actions incitIt is the duty of Socialists to point out to their in our own Party, whose aim is identical with that ing to the overthrow of the Government. As we worker brothers and sisters the brutal realities of of the European Communists.
understand the terms of this law, it can be inter capitalist society, and the necessity of the struggle Publicly join in the denunciation of social preted to include any and all attempts to point out against it. The beauties of Jeffersonian democracy reformism, and endorse the abolition of immediate demands in Party platforms; but at the same time an institution which, according to Marx himself, day. Governments are not wilfully less idealistic they participate in a Non Parisan League, help to cannot be used by a proletarian majority to intro today than 140 years ago. They are facing differorganize a ent conditions and they act in accordance with the duce Socialism.
abor Pary, and join in the call for a national Amnesty Convention in which bourgeois Are we to have a Socialist Party which frankly conditions that confront them. The ideals of liberal groups will be abandons, or postpones, its revolutionary objec trate bodies of the negro race.
the represented.
prosThe Right Wing has refused to state its position. tiv. an opportunistic movement, anxious above all This has forced the Left Wing to state it, at the to onform to the legality which a capitalist gov. In the present crisis in the American Socialist same time stating our own in no uncertain terms. ern ient ordains? Or shall we lay down a set of Party let us also face the facts. We of the Left The Party membership, educated by the War and revolutionary principles which must not be lost Wing are dissatisfied with the administration of the the Revolution in Europe, can no longer be put off sight of, and to which all our actions must conform Party, local, state and national. We have protested no matter how seriously our tactics must be modified in vain and we are now determined upon a showwhich up to now has been the Right Wing Senty by circumstances. answer to our challenge. The Right Wing is be In being legal. we must remember that the Socialism and to rid it of the disease that has crept to suit our purpose the historic purpose of Soginning to find it necessary to formulate its own cialist movement will be entirely at the mercy of with petty personal attacks upon Left Wingers, in ist principles, we pin our faith to the growing class. position as to what are the duties and purposes of The Socialist.
consciousness of the working class, which will the Socialist Party, and on this position we are ap.
In the second number of The Socialist, for exam.
ple, there is an article endorsing the Communist proletarian power.
create its own legality, and enforce it by its own ver the country the men and women of the moveto our comrades throughout the Party. All International, summoned to meet in Moscow, butment are lining up solidly behind that position.
after all, perhaps the Second International is not Democracy is not the essential question at stake.
so bad as it is painted. After all, we do not know Democracy We are not appealing to the membership about the anything about it, except from reports in the capilack of democracy manifest in the administration talist press! In the same number Louis Waldman E are pleased to find that at last The Socialist of the Party. That we consider a minor question outlines his conception of municipal, state and nahas risen to the dignity of an editorial page and in due time we will indict our officialdom betional ownership of industry, under democratic While we recognize that we must give The Social fore the bar of Party opinion. The issue is clear control, as Socialism! In The Socialist of May ist time, we did expect something better than the cut and no amount of sneers at our personal cour.
13th we find a defense of democracy, which is whines about Discrimination and Hatred; we age, integrity or ability, nor covert hints to the answered on this page; also an editorial upon Co sought to find it in the official pronouncement on American Government as regards the desirability in which occurs the following sen. Democracy.
of our arrest and incarceration, will deter us from Democracy, says The Socialist, the rule of stating that issue whether the American Socialist With proletarian organization and proletarian the majority, with full and free opportunity for the Party is to be the party of revolutionary Socialism control, the cooperative is a far more effective minority to express its opinions and to agitate for or whether it is to be the party of bourgeois liberweapon for accomplishing the revolution than is its ends, still remains the best method of conduct alism, petty reforms and idealistic phraseology.
a reliance upon a vague and ill defined mass act ing human affairs.
That is the issue on which we appeal to the memThis like all the other cant about democracy, bership over the heads of the Party bureaucracy.
In almost every paragraph of The Socialist are sounds well on paper, but as our friends use the That is the issue upon which the Left Wing organsimilar statements, the cumulative effect of which is phrase still remains, they are apparently of the ization is based upon operatives, tence: ion.