216 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 217 EDITORIALS Communism in Hungary made during the transition period for the protection of small owners of stock. f) The sozialization of foreign trade.
These are not the immediate demands comprised in the social reform planks now in the platform of our party; they are not a tompromise with the capitalist state, but imply a revolutionary struggle against that state and against capitalism, the conquest of power by the proletariat through revolutionary mass action. They imply the new Soviet state of the organized producers, the dictatorship of the proletariat; they are preliininary revolutionary measures for the expropriation of capital and the introduction of communist Socialism.
PROGRAM We stand for a uniform declaration of principles in all party platforms both local and national and the abolition of all social reform planks now contained in them. The party must teach, propagate and agitate exclusively for the overthrow of Capitalism, and the establishment of Socialism through a Proletarian Dictatorship. The Socialist candidates elected to office shall adhere strictly to the above provisions. Realizing that a political party cannot reorganize and reconstruct the industrial organizations of the working class, and that that is the task of the economic organizations themselves, we demand that the party assist this process of reorganization by a propaganda for revolutionary indutrial unionism as part of its general activities.
We believe it is the mission of the Socialist movement to encourage and assist the proletariat to adopt newer and more effective forms of organization and to stir it into newer and more revolutionary modes of action. We demand that the official party press be party owned and controlled. We demand that officially recognized educational institutions be party owned and controlled. We deinand that the party discard its obsolete literature and publish new literature in keeping with the policies and tactics above mentioned. We demand that the National Executive Committee call an immediate emergency national convention for the purpose of formulating party policies and tactics to meet the present crisis. We demand that the Socialist Party repudiate the Berne Congress or any other conference engineered by moderate Socialists and social patriots.
10. We demand that the Socialist Party shall elect delegates to the International Congress proposed by the Communist Party of Russia (Bolsheviki. that our party shall participate only in a new International with which are affiliated the Communist Party of Russia (Bolsheviki. the Communist Labor Party of Germany (Spartacus. and all other Left Wing parties and groups.
The second revolution in Hungary, which overthrew the coalition ministry under Karolyi and substituted for the futile efforts of a bourgeois social patriotic government a dictatorship of the proletariat, created a profound stir all over the world. While the European and the American capitalist press immediately interpreted it as a nationalistic revolution, it cannot be denied that the Peace Conference at Paris received the news of the overthrow of the Hungarian Republic with dismay. For this new proletarian government gave an entirely new direction and impetus to their negotiations, and their attitude toward Bolshevist Russia was to a large degree determined by this astounding turn of events.
The first Hungarian revolution created little attention. It was completely overshadowed by the events that were transpiring in Germany, where the overthrow of the Imperial government was making history, not only for Germany but for the entire civilized world. Like all revolutions in modern times, the reasons that culminated in this outbreak were various and diverse in character. The people of Hungary had suffered untold hardships during the war. The oppression and exploitation to which the Magyars of Hungary had been subjected at the hands of their Austrian rulers in times of peace were increased a hundredfold when war, with its rule by the power of arms, swept over Europe. Hunger and suffering stalked throughout the land. And for the people of Hungary there was no patriotism, no love of fatherland to alleviate the hardships they were forced to undergo, and to blind them to their sufferings. Hatred of Germany and of the German Austrian rulers, who were responsible for the misery hat engulfed them, was the sentiment that dominated the first revolution in Hungary.
It was only natural, therefore, that the new government, under Karolyi, should be distinctly pro Ally in its sympathies.
As in Germany and in Russia, the power of government was first placed into the hands of a coalition ministry, a combination of socialist and bourgeois elements, under the nominal domination of labor. Count Karolyi, the head of the new