110 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 111 Party Discussion What is the Left Wing Movement and Its Purpose?
By EDWARD LINDGREN upon the people of Germany, that the last four years of war have taught them such a bitter lesson, that the Independent and the Majority Socialist Parties will, unquestionably, be returned by a huge majority of votes, as the controlling parties, to the National Assembly. The recent elections, however, have shown the utter fallacy of this assumption, and it is more than likely that the Constituent Assembly, in its present make up, will be content with the adoption of a few political and some more social reforms that will establish a German Republic after the pattern of that of the United States.
Similarly recent events have proven the baselessness of the fear that it would be impossible to come to terms with the Allied nations if Germany proceeded immediately to carry out a program of actual proletarian socialization. For reasons best known to themselves the statesmen that dominate the Peace Conference have seen fit to abandon their former attitude of indignant aloofness in Russian affairs in favor of a distinctly conciliatory proposal to the Bolshevik government of Russia. Had the rulers of Germany, instead of anxiously drawing away their skirts from the Russian Socialist Republic, openly entered upon an alliance with the proletarian government of the Russian people, they would have formed a League of Nations so powerful that the Allied governments, in the face of an increasingly revolutionary sentiment at home, would have been forced to come to terms.
These arguments were, until very recently, it must be admitted, of no mean importance. His contention, on the other hand, that Germany must have a Constituent Assembly in order to establish a new state that shall actually possess the power to carry out a Socialist program is hardly worthy of man of Kautsky political sagacity and understanding. He shows the impossibility of nationalizing Germany industries under present conditions, while the country is divided up into a number of more or less autonomous states under the domination of Prussia. But he fails to show why the process of political nationalization, which admittedly must precede that on the industrial field, cannot be equally well accomplished, and with far less danger to the realization of our ideals, under the direction of an All German Council of Workmen and Soldiers Councils.
This question is agitating hundreds of members of the Socialist Party at this time.
Since the memorable night when the Central Committees of the various locals of New York City held a conference, at which half of the delegates bolted and adjourned to another hall and there organized themselves into a Left Wing group of the party, it has been a perplexing question, and the party machinery, held in control by reactionary officials, paid organizers and speakers and other parasites who cling like leeches to the Socialist pie counter, have endeavored to squelch this exhibition of indignation and anger of the rank and file by holding private meetings of good, loyal comrades, for the purpose of saving the party from ism, anarchy, and the devil knows what. Indeed, going to the extent of using their influence with the party press to have them deny their columns for notices of meetings or statements of principles and tactics as long as the name Left Wing is used.
Apparently the bolt was brought about by the chairman refusing to grant the floor to a number of delegates, who wanted to question Algernon Lee, leader of the Socialist group in the Board of Aldermen, on the question of voting an 80, 000 appropriation for a Victory Arch. and the attitude of the Socialist leader, that it had been a mistake in squandering so much of the people money, but that there were no Socialist principles involved.
However, these were but contributory causes. Its origin has a more fundamental basis. While for years there have been factions in the party no real line up was taken until 1912, when half of the party membership, was read out of the party, by the infamous clause known as the sabotage. section of the Socialist party constitution.
At that time the reactionaries were left in control, as they believed for good. But the question was one of principles and could not be killed by official proclamations or by expelling members who refused to accept it. Logically, one reactionary step must be followed by others, and the party plunged deeper and deeper into the mire of vacillating policies, of opportunism and reforms; compromising the revolutionary position it should have occupied as a Socialist party, for a vote catching policy, based on social reform issues, aimed exclusively at electing candidates to office, no matter who the candidates were or their stand on the class struggle.
When the test came in 1914, for a showdown as to the quality and quantity of Socialist idealism and principles in the party, that happened what any Socialist could have predicted who was familiar