(SEPTEMBER 15, 1921 SEPTEMBER 15, 1921 THE WORKERS COUNCIL 107 THE WORKERS COUNCIL 106 Jewish Federation Leaves Socialist Party Tentative Statement of the Position and Purposes of the Workers Council of the United States of America The Jewish Socialist Federation has withdrawn from the Socialist Party. The convention held in New York, September 5, called specifically to consider withdrawal from the party, showed 41 delegates against the party and 33 for it.
However, the attitude of the entire convention, that of both sides in it, constituted a convincing demonstration against the old organization of Morris Hillquit, Victor Berger, Gerber, Branstetter, Stedman, Germer, etc.
The debate on the main issue consumed fully five hours, evenly divided between the pro and the con The defenders of law and order, of the status quo in the party, had not one word to say in favor of the party. Fear for the new, for the jump into the unknown, was all they could find in favor of remaining in the Socialist Party.
The loyalists organized into a Jewish Alliance (Verband) within the party. The withdrawing federation retains its name, organization, meinbership, its weekly paper, the Naye Welt (New World. large book publishing plant and other valuable assets.
The 33 delegates who voted for the Socialist Party represented what is known in Gogol classic epic as Dead Souls. While still in session the convention continually received telegrams from the membership in the branches, whose delegates remained in the party, urgently requesting them to quit the ship that no longer sails under the reydlutionary Socialist flag.
The Jewish Forward, the powerful daily in New York, with editions in half a dozen other cities, played a rather peculiarly interesting role in the proceeding.
Its circulation and advertising agents all over the country delivered the delegates with the votes for the Socialist Party. The publishing association that runs the daily placed an embargo on all and any criticism in the paper columns against other questions, make for the importance of this step. The statement of withdrawal follows: THESES ON WITHDRAWAL FROM THE ADOPTED AT THE CONVENTION The Jewish Socialist Federation was organized as a central body of Jewish language branches of the party, with a sincere obligation to work in the party and through the party for the realization of the ideals of revolutionary Marxian Socialism.
The members and leaders of the Jewish Socialist Federation realized and have at several conventions pointed out that the party, was far from being a revolutionary Socialist organization in many instances, both with regard to general formulation of principles as well as tactics. Our criticism was comradeiy. We sought to convince from the inside.
But the international revolutionary movement, which followed in the wake of the world war, put the party to a test, along with the other sections of the world movement.
The time came to speak in clear cut Socialist terms. In this the party failed. It remained silent.
The crisis in the party followed. The split of 1919 was the first consequence of this failure. The formation of the left wing strengthened the reactionary element in the party This we foresaw and we opposed the step from the outset. It was tactically wrong. The Left Wing was equally wrong in point of principle, and time has proven to us and to the left elements the correctness of our position. We remained in the party, giving the party membership the warning that the future would test the ability of the leaders to withstand the temptation to join the camp of the reactionaries.
They have not stood the test. They tried to deceive us.
though for a short time only. They showed their colors a few months after the Chicago (1919) Convention. They took the position that they always had been and under all conditions would remain a non militant party of lawabiding reform Socialists, although they were not opposed to coquetting at times with revolutionary phrases.
The Albany chapter of party history cannot be recalled too often, but we do not intend to repeat again in detail what transpired there. The whole conduct of the Albany trial aimed to show that the party is law abiding before everything and is out for respectability at any cost.
The defense disavowed the Third International, shelved all pretense to party discipline, and convicted through its spokesmen the Soviet Government and the Soviet Regime.
Yet the disgrace heaped upon the Socialist movement by the Albany trial cannot be measured alone by its betrayal of all Socialist principles. It remained for the New York (1920) Convention to complete the infamy, this being the theoretical approval of the actual betrayal of Socialism.
Even Comrade Debs felt obliged to state that the party looked more like a party of politicians than a party of workers.
The 1920 election proved the actual demoralization of the party from the point of view of membership, influence and activity. It showed that no more could there be any hope that the Socialist Party would survive, that it could be resurrected in the Socialist sense. It became impossible for a serious Socialist to remain in the party.
We decided to put the party to a test on the issue of the Third International, its spirit, its principles, its aspirations.
This is why we remained thru the Detroit Convention.
But all Socialist fundamentals were deserted at Detroit in June. The convention there refused to take a positive stand on any question except that dealing with political fusion, adopting the tactics of discredited, bankrupt politicians.
It put the Third International, the Department of Justice and American capitalism on the same basis.
The party that was already dead now received its spiritual burial.
Under these circumstances the convention declares that the Jewish Socialist Federation can no longer remain in the Socialist Party and is withdrawing from it, individually and collectively.
The Workers Council of the United States has THE TRADE UNIONS:We must make been called into being for the purpose of aiding in clear to the workers that in the struggle for the abothe struggle to unite all class conscious working lition of the wages system, the economic organizaclass groups into a truly revolutionary Socialist tions of the workers are a most important factor, organization.
and that to be most effective, labor must be imbued It pledges itself to aid in the effort to establish a with the spirit of the class struggle; must aim at the Socialist Soviet Republic in the United States.
complete abolition of the capitalist system; must For immediate organization purposes it offers the work for the re organization of labor along indusfollowing tentative draft of a program upon which trial lines to meet with equal force the ever extending industrial forces of capitalism, and that it must all such revolutionary elements can unite: THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL: Unbe aggressive in its tactics and methods.
conditional affiliation with the Third International. FORM OF ORGANIZATION:It must pro2. DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLEvide for the concentration of power and authority TARIAT. The transitional period, following the within the party in the hands of the executive cominevitable breakdown of the capitalist system, may mittee, subject to control by the membership. The take a long time and will unavoidably be accomWorkers Council will carry on all its work as an panied by civil strife in one form or another. At open organization.
such a time the new order has a right to defend it PARTY PRESS, ELECTED OFFICIALS self, and the Communist conscious workers and AND MEMBERS OF TRADE UNIONS:The their party are then duty bound to disregard the party executive shall have complete control of the formal rights of the bourgeoisie as a minority of press and the activities of all elected officials, with the people and build the power of the workers as the power of expelling officials who fail in their the great majority upon such a strong basis and duty to the party and the workers. It shall also cowith such guarantees that the revolution will not be ordinate and direct the work of the party members endangered by counter revolution from within nor in the trade unions.
intervention from without.
Upon the basis of this tentative statement the POLITICAL ACTION Participation in all Workers Council of the United States issues a call political activities, as well as electoral campaigns, for a National Conference to be held some time durin order to utilize them for the purpose of carrying ing November, the exact time and place to be anthe Communist message to the masses. But the nounced at an early date.
parliamentary struggle is only one form of the political struggle of the working class for its emancipation. The political struggle must never be cir Direct all requests for information to Louis cumscribed by purely parliamentary activity; on Engdahl, Secretary, Workers Council of the the contrary, it must be extended in all possible United States of America, Room 233, 80 East 11th spheres.
Street, New York City, the party Competition Among Sleuths Yet the entire editorial staff of the Forward went with the seceding Federation, the exception being the editor in chief, Abraham Cahan, who gives a rap for the party, and Business Manager Alderman Vladek, who knows better.
Thus the Federation lined up on its side such tried and proved Socialists as Morris Winchevsky (the Grandfather of Jewish Socialism. Moissaye Olgin; Dr. Hoffman (Zivien. Harry Rogoff, until the day of the convention the acting editor of the Daily Forward, Loliput, and Novick. All these people left the staff of the Forward.
It is not, however, the aligning of the leading Jewish Socialists on the side of the Federation that made its convention a red letter day in the Socialist movement of the country. The clear cut position taken by the Federation on all the current issues of the day, its uncompromising and well considered attitude toward the Third International, the problems of Political Action, Trade Union Tactics, Soviet Rule, Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and The Socialist Party, its secretary, Otto Branstetter, The American Labor Alliance is a federation of and the Call, New York party daily, parade in the organizations. The secret service, now role of informer and agent provocateur of the depart headed by that king of dime novel detectives, Bill ment of justice in the issue of the Call, Tuesday, Sep Burns, has been exerting every effort to link these tember 6, page organizations with the Communist Party. But The Call becomes a party to these spy activities by without success, because there is no connection bevoluntarily giving space to Branstetter latest, entitled tween them except the solidarity that should unite Communists Try Legal Work, in which the Sothe ranks of all class conscious labor.
cialist secretary glories in his ability as a sleuth by What the police hounds have failed to do, Branproclaiming that the American Labor Alliance is stetter, Feigenbaum and Co. brilliantly achieve with simply an alias of the United Communist Party, a few mesmeric waves at a typewriter. Great is camouflaged in an attempt to secure the support of the power of the traitor. Capitalism daily recruits the workers under false pretences.
new renegades.
Branstetter thus joins the quixotic Feigenbaum LATER. Branstetter is unanimously re elected of the Call in taking bread and butter out of the national secretary of the Socialist Party by the mouths of underpaid secret service agents who party executive. Feigenbaum ought to go to conmust do this dirty work for a living.
gress, at least.