258 THE CLASS STRUGGLE LEFT OR RIGHT?
259 promise everywhere, condoning the outrages committed by social patriots, on one hand, making occasional concessions to the party membership which clamored for more revolutionary methods, on the other.
nay more, it vehemently insisted upon his re nomination for office against the more determined element in the party, on the principle that even a rotten Socialist Congressman is better than none. It greeted the first Russian revolution with a tremendous demonstration, and remained discreetly silent when a Socialist government was established in Russia, until sentiment in Washington seemed so friendly to the Bolshevist régime that our leaders on the Executive Committee felt constrained to drop their attitude of watchful waiting and to adopt an open declaration of allegiance to the Soviet government.
When the Allied governments dropped their first friendly overtures and came out openly for Russian intervention the membership of the Socialist Party seethed with indignation and even the bourgeois liberal press adopted a policy of open opposition. But our Executive Committee contented itself with a few perfunctory protests.
The cessation of hostilities has in no wise changed the situ.
ation. The party has made no attempt to arouse public opinion against the fraud of the Peace Conference at Paris.
There has been no concerted move to restore free speech and free press and to prevent the passage of new and even more stringent repressive legislation. The nation is on the eve of permanent compulsory military service and as yet no definite policy has been adopted, no plan of action decided upon.
Our friends of the Right have called attention to the fact that hundreds of Socialist Party members are in jail, that almost the whole National Executive Committee is under indictment. Undoubtedly, there has been no lack of personal courage. Our leaders have delivered splendid speeches of protest and denunciation in the face of the Espionage Law.
But these sacrifices were like slaps on the water, ineffectual because there was no organized movement behind them. The members of the were ready to risk their own persons in the fray; but they placed the party organization in a defensive position, fearing to sacrifice its prestige and its opportunities as a political party by radical action.
Where state organizations possessing the courage of their convictions took up the fight against American militarism openly, as, for instance, in Ohio, the attitude of the party leaders was, to say the least, frankly discouraging.
Their policy, throughout the critical period through which we are passing, has been the typical Centrist position. ComThe conflict that is now raging within the party is not a local, or even a national, matter. The Socialist movement of the world has split asunder. There are two International Socialist organizations representing two irreconcilable extremes in Socialist philosophy. Between the International at Berne and the International of Moscow there can be no compromise and no understanding. The former represents a policy of State Socialism, of gradual growth and evolution into a Socialist commonwealth, of democratic co operation with capitalism until the time shall have arrived when the actual majority of the people shall have become converted to Socialist ideals and shall place political supremacy into the hands of the Socialist Party. The latter is founded upon the dictatorship of the proletariat. It insists that to the proletariat which fights the battles of the revolution belong the fruits thereof, that the class conscious working class must wrest the political power out of the hands of the capitalist class in order to establish an economic democracy under the actual control of those who produce. It believes that Socialism cannot be realized by purely political methods; that the masses must be trained to appreciate and understand the necessity of decisive action at the critical moment. It openly disavows the accepted capitalist notion of democracy in political institutions and insists that Socialism is possible only when the rule of the capitalist and his power to influence the thoughts and actions of large masses of the people has been destroyed.
Between these two points of view there can be no compromise. Between them the Socialist must choose and his choice must determine, once and for all, his course of action.
Yet that is exactly what our party as an organization has refused to do. It was prevented from sending delegates to Berne, not by its own patriots who controlled it, but by a merciful fate in the shape of the government. It is equally ready to co operate with the more radical wing of the international movement; rejoices in the success of the Soviets of Russia and mourns the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg