392 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CONVENTION IMPRESSIONS 393 Convention, our convention is absolutely bound by the joint call. Up to the assembling of the Conference, no one had thought of forming a new party. And yet the Michigan Federation crowd made a continuous persistent effort to stampede the convention for a new party. This, in spite of the fact that over a hundred delegates had come long distances, some twentyfive hundred miles, to consider something quite different. Bound?
Bound by nothing except their imperious will to power. Defeated on the new party, nevertheless, the Federation Michigan delegates remained in the conference till defeated on a question more important to them, The conference seated the delegates elected by the Federation branches. Then the Federation Executive Committee demanded and secured the seating of delegates from their bodies.
Later, when the National Council was being elected, the Federations, although doubly represented by delegates participating in the election, demanded that nine members to be elected by the Federation Executive Committees be added to the Council.
Beaten on this proposition, they withdrew from further participation in the conference. It would seem these Russian gentlemen will only play when they can load the dice.
These Russian Federations openly regard themselves as the only simon pure Bolsheviks in the world. not even excluding Russia. Yet they broke from the Conference on a question not of principle but one of clique control. Yet they united with Michigan, a purely political parliamentarian non Bolshevik organization, disbelieving in industrial unionism, industrial organization of working class political power and in mass action. All through July the Federations were maligning the Left Wing Council as centrists, as a fetid swamp. Meanwhile, the council was maligning Michigan as parliamentarian and non Bolsheviks and both Michigan and the Federations as petty political intriguers.
The National Council was elected under carefully drawn instructions which made it an administrative, ministerial body and in no sense an Executive Committee with power to act on questions of policy. Those instructions were to organize to capture the at the Emergency Convention, and, failing that, afterwards to organize a Communist Party. The Council advertised for money to carry on that work. And in August, the Council publicly renounced the struggle to control the and joined with Michigan and the Federations in calling the Communist Convention. In so doing it violated its instructions and exceeded its authority and if any unexpended funds so secured by advertisement were expended in the Council new venture, these funds were misapplied.
That is the Communist Party: a faction of non Bolsheviks, parliamentarians; a faction, the only real Bolsheviks, systematically seeking clique control by undemocratic methods; the Left Wing Council, violators of instructions and betrayers of the Left Wing Movement, the whole crowd petty olitical intriguers without principle, seeking simply power and the control of organization expenditure.
The first thing the Left Wing delegates to the Emergency Convention did was to appoint a committee of five to meet the Organization Committee of the Communist Party and later a like committee of the Communist convention for the purpose of seeking unity. Bound by the call of their convention this time they wanted to be the Communists could only admit delegates on a very narrow basis, which many of the Left Wing delegates, though elected by a referendum of their states, could not fulfill. The Communists would examine our roster of delegates and admit them as individuals whenever proper just like Germer et al. Their communications cheerfully admitted that they were always and perfectly right, that they alone knew anything, especially of Communist principles and tactics. Their game was perfectly simple and perfectly apparent. They would have been only too glad to secure a considerable number of Communist Labor Party delegates to camouflage their gang controlled convention with the semblance of being representative.
But on no terms nor whatever be the cost even to the splitting of American Communist elements would they for one moment peril their control. So with a standing invitation for unitynot only to the Communists but to all other class conscious, revolutionary working class bodies, the Communist Labor Party left that branch of their work. And rest assured, if unity comes, it will come because self seeking politicians and their power of control have been eliminated. would be glad to represent the Communist Labor Party Convention as perfect. It was far from that. Often the longest way round through interminable debate was the shortest way out for it. Often it made mistakes, some of them glaring mistakes such as, for instance, when, having adopted a Communist platform, it elected an executive committee with a large nonCommunist element upon it and had to go back and elect all over again. But, like all bodies controlled by the rank and file, no matter how inefficient, how ignorant, unwise or mistaken they seem to be, the got to the right end at last. We had