The Socialist Party of America

(1922-1946)

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1922

JANUARY

“‘Let Them Come; I Fear No Man,’ Debs Tells Indiana Governor: Gov. McCray Admits He Counseled American Legion Affront to Debs and Urged He Be Taught a Lesson -- Law and Order Hypocrites Expose Hand.” by Frederic Heath [Events of Jan. 16-17, 1922] On Jan. 16, 1922, Terre Haute Socialist Eugene Debs wrote a letter to Indiana Governor Warren T. McCray inquiring about McCray’s reported quote that “I am sorry, extremely sorry, that the arch-traitor of our country [Debs] should live in the state of Indiana. I believe he will be taught a lesson by the American Legion.” Debs coyly remarks to McCray that “You will oblige me by advising if you are correctly quoted in this statement, and if so, it would seem to follow that you must also denounce the President of the United States in the same terms for releasing an arch-traitor from prison and inviting him to the White House.” Debs adds that “a committee representing the miners and other workingmen of this city and vicinity have just called on me to ask you if you as Governor of the state, sworn to uphold its laws and preserve order, endorse and intend to back up the program of threat and violence against the ‘arch-traitor’ in question, incited by your remarks, and announced in the same report of the same meeting?” Gov. McCray responded to Debs the next day in a brief note in which he indicated that the comments made to the proto-fascist American Legion were made without notes and while “I am not sure of the language quoted in the paper which you repeat,” it was “in the main it was what I said.” Editor of The New Day Frederic Heath notes that this exchange puts the Governor and other “‘Law and Order’ hypocrites in high places” on record. He also directly quotes Debs as making the following retort to Gov. McCray’s flippancy about encouraging American Legion thuggery: “Let them come! I have not the slightest objection. It will be an illuminating exhibition. Were I so inclined I could easily muster an army of a few thousand to make their reception an interesting one. But I shall do nothing of the kind. Were I to call upon my friends at all it would be to see to it that the marchers were unmolested. I do not object to being called a ‘traitor’ under certain circumstances for I certainly am a ‘traitor’ to the powers and personalities of Wall Street that are looting this nation, corrupting its government, debauching its politics, and robbing and starving the people, including the boys who went overseas at their command to ‘save civilization,’ for which many are now facing starvation as a reward.”

“Indiana Governor Incites Legion Lawlessness Toward Debs!”. by Frederic Heath [Events of Jan. 11-13, 1922] On Jan. 11, 1922, Governor Warren T. McCray of Indiana briefly addressed a local post of the American Legion, in its initial phase a proto-fascist organization of former soldiers responsible for a lengthy and growing series of vigilante attacks on persons and property. He there stated with regard to recently-returned Socialist leader Eugene Debs of Terre Haute, “I am sorry, extremely sorry, that the one arch-traitor of our country should live in the state of Indiana. I believe he will be taught a lesson by the American Legion, however.” This transparent call for mob violence drew an immediate response from State Secretary Emma Henry of the Socialist Party of Indiana. In the open letter to the Governor reprinted here, Henry writes “as an American citizen and a citizen of Indiana, I feel that it is to be deplored that we have a man elected as chief executive of this state who will so far forget the high office he occupies, as to use the terms you have been reported as using, terms which tend to incite lawlessness. An official of the state who is sworn to uphold the law should be the last person to use language that will incite to unlawful acts.” Henry offers to send the Governor the text of the speech made by Debs for which he was imprisoned to refute the charge that Debs was in any way a “traitor” to his country. “We Socialists stand for real Americanism, the principles for which our forefathers fought, the rights that are guaranteed to every citizen under the constitution of the United States and the state of Indiana; that is freedom of speech, press, and assemblage,” Henry declares, adding that “We do not advocate the destruction of anything; we are for construction, we are for changing the system for the benefit of all.”

FEBRUARY

“Conference for Progressive Political Action: A Report to the Membership of the Socialist Party,” by Otto Branstetter, et al. [Feb. 1922] The 1921 Detroit Convention of the Socialist Party instructed its National Executive Committee to make a survey of other progressive organizations in the US and the prospects for joint action; using this as justification, five leading members of the SPA accepted invitations to attend the Founding Conference of the Conference for Progressive Political Action and made this report to the membership of the party via an article in the group’s official organ, The Socialist World. The gathering—held Feb. 20-21, 1922, in Chicago—was characterized as “a disappointment, so far as immediate results are concerned,” due in large measure to the heterogenous nature of the body, ranging from conservative unionists seeking to promote pro-labor candidates in the old parties to the Socialist and Farmer-Labor Parties on the left, who sought to establish an independent political organization. Despite the lack of immediate results, the fact that the gathering of such a wide range of elements was held with little acrimony was heralded as a small step forward by the Socialist atendees.

APRIL

“Where I Stand—And Why,” by Emil Herman [April 7, 1922] Article by the former State Secretary of the radical Socialist Party of Washington Emil Herman—a victim of Wilson administration repression during the world war—on why he was choosing to remain with the Socialist Party despite speculation to the contrary. Upon his Christmas 1922 release after nearly 3 years in the Federal Penitentiary at McNeil’s Island, Washington. Herman made an assessement of the political situation that had developed since 1919. He saw the heavy hand of the Justice Department behind the 1919 Socialist Party split: “It is apparent to me that the programs of the Communist Labor and the Communist Parties which resulted from the ill-advised Left Wing split from the Socialist Party were in great part written by agents of the Department of Justice and that this was true to a still greater extent of the program of the United Communist Party, which was a fusion of the two first-mentioned organizations. They swallowed hook, bait, and line of the programs imposed upon them, and having adopted the illegal programs, were, of course, driven underground.” While the rank and file party members involved were individuals with honest intentions, circumstances had led them to form the Workers Party of America—which Herman characterizes as similar in form and strategy to the Socialist Party of America. “The Left Wing offshoot from the Socialist Party, having made the illegal and ill-fated underground attempt to organize the workers for revolutionary activity through the United Communist Party now recognize their mistake, return above ground in the Workers Party, and find themselves advocating practically the same program which they formerly advocated through the Socialist Party and which the Socialist Party still advocates,” Herman declares. The other contenders—the Farmer-Labor Party and the Socialist Labor Party—are dismissed by Herman as (respectively) “merely a repetition of Socialist Party principles” and “ a small, critical, and comparatively ineffective group.” Herman proclaims he has a 25 year history as a Socialist and that the Socialist Party most closely approximates his political views. “It is impossible for me to be a quitter in this time of crimes and imminent change,” Herman writes, therefore he would cast his lot with the SPA.

MAY

“National Constitution of the Socialist Party: As Amended by the National Convention at Cleveland, April 29-May 2, 1922.” Basic document of organizational law of the Socialist Party. The early SPA had been a loose federation of state-based organizations; by this time stronger centralized authority was asserting itself, while extensive provisions for recall and referendum were retained. The lowest level of organization in the SP was the city- or county-level “Local,” which may or may not be subdivided into “Branches.” At least 10 of these Locals with an aggregate membership of 200 were organized into a State Organization which purchased dues stamps from the National Office. A 7 member National Executive Committee was to meet quarterly to supervise operation of the party between annual conventions, with day-to-day affairs of the National Office handled by an Executive Secretary employed by and serving at the pleasure of the National Executive Committee. Party dues in 1922 were 25 cents per month to the National and State offices in organized states (with additional dues paid to the Local); in unorganized states, dues were 50 cents per month.

“Death Chills Seize Meeting of Socialist Party,” by C.E. Ruthenberg. [May 13, 1922] The new Executive Secretary of the Workers Party of America, C.E. Ruthenberg, observed and wrote about the 1922 Cleveland Convention of the Socialist Party of America. He depicted it as a lifeless gathering, showing “senile decay.” As for the small group of assmbled delegates, Ruthenberg notes that “A majority of them are portly, gray-haired men with a look of petty-bourgeois prosperity about them. They talk in the language of past Socialist conventions, but there is no enthusiasm, no fervor, in what they say.” Ruthenberg isolated the root cause of this geriatric decay in the blows struck against the industrialist Left Wing at the 1912 Indianapolis Convention—“anti-sabotage, anti-force, and narrow definition of political action constitutional clauses” which drove vital elements from a 100,000 member organization. At the 1917 St. Louis Convention these “elderly men” were unable to control the gathering but sabotaged the party’s militant position against the war by lack of action, Ruthenberg charged, while at the 1919 Chicago Convention they presided over a mass purge of 3/4 of the party’s membership that resulted in the current lifeless skeleton organization.

Debs Calls the Jury of the People to Try Indiana Governor, by Eugene V. Debs [May 20, 1922] Recently freed Socialist leader Gene Debs uses the various legal premises used to convict him to indict the governor of his state for his Jan. 1922 words to the American Legion to the effect that “Debs is the arch-traitor of our country. May the Legion teach him a lesson.”The American Legion is characterized by Debs as “Young men, immature, inexperienced, many illiterate, without social vision, ignorant of history and social science, led by self-seeking egotists, boasting a crude, raw, ruthless, ignorant, blatant, conceited type of mind that hates everything above its own limitations; responsive to flattery, inflammable, unreasoning, prejudiced, lovers of heroics, a whooping, flag-waving bunch without foresight or any rational love of country—just the kind to be excited by a flattering, inflaming speech.”Debs declares that “To call a man a traitor because he disagrees with a bunch of politicians in Washington is the utmost limit of bigotry and insolence.”Debs asserts he was convicted for stating the truth that the recently completed European war was an imperialist conflict. He asserts: “The constitution says, ‘Congress shall make no law abridging free speech.’ Congress has made such a law, the President signed it, and the court sustained it. Who were the traitors? Without free speech there is no progress, and the people stagnate. Better a thousandfold the abuse than the denial of free speech, for the abuse lasts but a day, while denial destroys the life of a nation.”

AUGUST

The Green Corn Rebellion in Oklahoma, by Bertha Hale White [events of Aug. 3, 1917] The so-called “Green Corn Rebellion” was one of the seminal events of the socialist movement in Oklahoma, an uprising of radicalized impoverished farmers who purportedly planned to march to Washington, DC in conjunction with others around the country, eating green corn on their way for sustenance, in an effort to remove “Big Slick” Woodrow Wilson from power and establish the Cooperative Commonwealth. Or so the story goes. This 1922 article by soon-to-be Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party Bertha Hale White indicates that the motives of the farmers had been misrepresented, the specifics of the action had been grossly exaggerated, and the tale had grown with the telling as a sort of post-facto justification for the repression of the 175 individuals who were sentenced to terms ranging from 6 months in jail to 10 years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. The “Working Class Union” behind the rebellion was a “non-political” organization of 20,000 based in Eastern Oklahoma, bringing together the region’s illiterate tenant farmers for but one object — to force down exploitative rents and usurious interest rates. Woodrow Wilson’s hypocritical reversal on the question of American participation in the war had caused the WCU to abandon its anti-political stand. The WCU held secret meetings and determined to resist conscription by force: “They did not believe the people of the country would tamely submit to the violation of the pledges which had resulted in the re-election of President Wilson. And they decided they would not accept that violation. They agreed to hide their boys from the draft officers and to prevent troops from coming into the Seminole country.” On Aug. 3, 1917, about 150 WCU supporters were encamped under arms on a hill near Sasakwa, OK; a posse of about 50 townsmen was formed and despite having no advantages of terrain or firepower, they bloodlessly disarmed the rebellious WCUs. “It has been asserted that the rebellion resulted in loss of life. That is not true. Not a single shot was fired by either side,” White declares, noting that the event had been grossly exaggerated. “In Sasakwa, the Green Corn Rebellion is a story that provokes laughter,” White remarks.

An Answer from Debs, by Theodore Debs [Aug. 9, 1922] Reply on behalf of Gene Debs by his brother and personal secretary, Theodore, to Louis Engdahl’s open letter of August 3, 1922. “The attempt to make [Gene] appear the enemy of Lenin and the Soviet Government in face of the fact that from the hour that government was born he proclaimed himself its friend and has stood by it and defended and extolled Lenin and Trotsky in every word uttered and written, is too false and silly to merit attention,” writes Theodore. While Engdahl’s indictment of the offenses of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the Civil War is complete, it is nevertheless one-sided, omitting the fact that violence and outrages were committed by both sides, and that the PSR were victims as well as perpetrators. Gene Debs “does not believe in revenge, in capital punishment, in cold-blooded murder, and these brutal passions and atrocious crimes are all the more reprehensible in his eyes when committed in the name of law and justice by Socialists who have for years been denouncing capitalism for these identical infamies,” writes Theodore. “If we believe in bloodthirsty revenge, in cruel reprisals and savage killings to satisfy our law and ethics, we are even lower than the capitalists and their mercenary hangmen, who at least make no pretense of such humane ideals as we profess and shamelessly betray the moment we succeed to power.” Further, Gene Debs is said to be convinced “that the murder of these men would betray the weakness and fear of the Soviet Government and bring it into contempt all over the world among people who now give it their allegiance and support.”

SEPTEMBER

“The Sad Tale of Tomsky Sawyerovich,” by William M. Fiegenbaum” [Sept. 12, 1922] This mocking article by William Feigenbaum, distributed by the Socialist Party’s press service, likens the behavior of the American Communist movement to the farcical and melodramatic shenanigans of Mark Twain’s fictional character, Tom Sawyer. Fiegenbaum calls the Communists "another crop of children running around loose who are playing another game; it is more elaborate, more costly, a little sillier, and the children who are playing it are a little older and they ought to be able to have something more serious to do with their time, but they’re also having an amazing good time about it in spite of it all.” Fiegenbaum declares that "These childish romanticists in the United States, having read about the fun they used to have in Russia, proceeded to do the same thing here.... it isn’t against the law here to organize a political party; it isn’t against the law to teach political principles. It isn’t against the law to publish newspapers that openly proclaim what one believes -- even though those laws may have lately been more honored in the breach than in the observance.” However, Fiegenbaum observes, "these later day Tom Sawyers won’t have it that way,” instead lurking about at secret conventions in the Michigan woods, where they might receive their patently obvious political directions from romantic authority figures from abroad.

OCTOBER

“Review and Personal Statement,” by Eugene V. Debs. [Oct. 2, 1922] At the time Gene Debs was imprisoned in April of 1919, factional storm clouds were brewing in the Socialist Party of America, but the party had not been split asunder. Isolated from active politics, the factional wars of 1919-21 took place in his absence, with Debs maintaining a strict neutrality in terms of stating his personal allegiance. It was not until this lengthy October 1922 published statement that Debs formally declared his intention to stay with his beloved Socialist Party and to help rebuild it. Debs encouraged others to rebuild their locals, pay their dues, to send organizers into the field, and to spread propaganda far and wide. Debs stoutly refused to engage in polemics, stating that “I have never had any heart for factional warfare. I simply cannot and will not engage in it. I can argue and reason with comrades, but I cannot and will not give way to anger and resort to vituperation over my differences with them.” Debs closes with a strong statement of unconditional support for the Russian Revolution: “It matters not what its mistakes have been, nor what may be charged against it, the Russian Revolution, in what it expresses for the Russian people and in what it portends for the oppressed and exploited peoples of all nations, is the greatest, most luminous and far reaching achievement in the entire sweep of human history.”

“Debs, Hero of ARU Strike Nearly 30 Years Ago, Talks for Federated Press Readers,” by Eugene V. Debs [Oct. 7, 1922] Socialist Party leader Gene Debs contributes an article for distribution by the Federated Press, the news syndicate targeted to the American labor press started by individuals close to Victor Berger’s Milwaukee Leader before being effectively taken over and manipulated by the Communist Party. Debs agitates for the freedom of imprisoned California union leaders Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, declaring “I know Tom Mooney as I do my brother, and a cleaner, manlier man, a whiter soul never drew breath, and that is precisely why the silk-tied and white-livered wrecking crew that has California by the throat are determined to murder him.” Debs declares the American government to be “the corruptest and cruelest in existence” owing to the country’s wealth: “Riches, corruption, and decay, when the riches are in the private hands of a few parasites as in this country, have gone hand in hand down through the centuries from Nebuchadnezzar down to Rockefeller..... The handwriting blazes on the walls in the United States, but the bacchanalian revelers in high (!) life are drunk with power and blind with greed and will realize their inevitable fate only when they are swept into the abyss.” Debs salutes the Federated Press, noting that the service already services some 80 papers and proclaiming its prospects bright with wartime censorship abating.

NOVEMBER

“Embattled Liberators,” by Eugene V. Debs. [written Nov. 1922] An article written to herald the 5th Anniversay of the Russian Revolution by Socialist Party orator Eugene Debs. Debs does not step back from the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic an inch: “That the revolution and the republic which sprang from it have survived, not only to be commemorated on their Fifth Anniversary, but are today more puissant and promising, and pulse with keener life and activity than ever before, in the face of every conceivable attempt to crush and destroy them on the part of the combined capitalist powers of the earth, is a miracle no less marvelous and seemingly impossible than the revolution and republic themselves.” First published in the Dec. 1922 issue of The Liberator.

1923

FEBRUARY

“A Sheriff I Loved,” by Eugene V. Debs [Feb. 9, 1923] Socialist orator Gene Debs provides a remembrance his unusual friendship of 27 years with one of his former captors, George Eckert, sheriff of McHenry County, Illinois. In 1895, jailed for his part in the 1894 strike of the American Railway Union, Debs had been moved from Cook Co. Jail to McHenry Co. Jail due to overcrowding. Inflamed by the Right Wing press, a potential lynch mob gathered to meet Debs at the train. “The farmers were there with their threats and mutterings, and with some other sheriff than George Eckert in charge might have attempted their cowardly program. But George Eckert was a man as well as a sheriff, and he told them, in words they did not fail to understand, that I was his prisoner, and that it was his duty to protect as well as to jail me, and that he proposed to do it. The would-be lynchers knew George Eckert, and slunk away in the darkness. They knew he would protect me—if necessary with his own life.” The pair had remained in regular touch for the rest of their lives.

MARCH

”The Secret is Out” by Otto Branstetter [March 1923] This article by Socialist Party Executive Secretary Otto Branstetter attempts to make political hay out of the Workers Party’s attempt to gain admittance in the Conference for Progressive Political Action, ostensibly to work alongside organizations upon which they had for years poured venom and vilification, such as the Socialist Party, the Farmer-Labor Party, AF of L unions, and the Committee of 48. This effort at admission to the CPPA had been turned back by the Socialists, causing Louis Engdahl to protest on behalf of the Workers Party. Branstetter mockingly remarks that "the matter is now perfectly clear. The aggregation of camouflaged communists and government agents known as the Workers Party is revolutionary because it wants to affiliate with the ‘yellow’ Socialist Party. The Socialist Party is reactionary because it won’t let them. What a shame!” Branstetter also smirks that "Another decided difference has been brought to light by the testimony of Ruthenberg at the Bridgman trial. Ruthenberg quoted Lenin as saying that all talk of armed insurrection in the United States at present is ‘nonsensical.’ That settles it. The difference between a Socialist and a Communist is that the Socialist knew this all the time and said so -- which made him ‘yellow’; the Communist didn’t know it until Lenin told him, which makes him ‘red.’"

The Enemy Within by Bertha Hale White. Published in The Socialist World [Chicago], v. 4, no. 3 (March 1923), pp. 5-8.

“Inviting Debs to Soviet Russia: Letter from Israel Amter in Moscow to the Presidium of the Comintern, March 9, 1923.” Despite his decision to stick with the Socialist Party of America which he helped to found, the American Communists continued to hold out hope that Eugene Debs would turn his back on the SPA’s increasingly conservative leadership. This letter from the CPA’s man in Moscow, Israel Amter, noted that Debs had at last been persuaded to visit Soviet Russia to see the situation first-hand and requested that an invitation be cabled to Debs by the Soviet railway union, central trade union body, or government. Amter remarks that “when Debs came from prison, he was very angry with the Communists for their failure to do anything to obtain his release. Undoubtedly he was right in his contention, but the American Party not understanding proper tactics and incensed that he did not break away” from the Socialist Party and consequently “did not feel inclined to speak in his behalf.” A sentimental disposition, Ill-health, and his “yellow Socialist” brother had prevented closer collaboration between the Communists and Debs—who instead fell victim to the “trickery” of the SPA. Nevertheless, Debs’ honesty and love for the working class combined with “repugnance at the brutal attacks of the Socialist press on Soviet Russia have made him at last desire to see Soviet Russia with his own eyes and judge for himself.”

”Letter to J. Louis Engdahl, Editor of The Worker, in New York from Eugene V. Debs in Chicago, March 17, 1923.” Short letter by Socialist Party leader Gene Debs to his former party comrade Louis Engdahl in reply to Engdahl’s letter of March 12, 1923, apparently bringing to Debs’ attention the action of SPA delegates in blocking Workers Party participation at the 2nd conferences of the Conference for Progressive Political Action (Cleveland, Dec. 1922) and the American Labor Party (New York, March 1923). In effort to explain the actions of the Socialist delegates to those gatherings, Debs sarcastically notes that “it may be that the Socialist Party delegates at Cleveland and New York voted as they did in order that the delegates of the Workers Party might not suffer humiliation and imperil their revolutionary reputation by affiliating with ‘yellow-legged renegades,’ ‘agents of the petite bourgeoisie,’ and ‘traitors to the working class.’” He adds that “had I been a delegate of the Socialist Party I should have voted to admit the delegates of the Workers Party notwithstanding their organs and speakers having screamed themselves hoarse in their denunciation of the party I represented. This would have been my answer to their silly screeds and their vicious calumnies.” Debs expresses the belief that WPA exclusion “will be adjusted in due course.”

“Memo from C.E. Ruthenberg to All WPA District Organizers on Infiltration of the Socialist Party, March 17, 1923.” A memo from Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg to all District Organizers of the Workers Party of America that a “left wing” movement seemed to be emerging in the Socialist Party and that “it is necessary for us to help crystallize that left movement.” The DOs are instructed to “select some trustworthy and capable comrades who should be instructed to make an effort to join one of their branches in their locality. This is to be done in every city of your district where they are strong. One or two comrades is sufficient for every branch. The comrades must be absolutely trustworthy.” This operation is to be secret: “The entire question is absolutely confidential and should not be made subject for discussion among the general membership for obvious reasons,” Ruthenberg notes.

APRIL

“Getting Together,” by Eugene V. Debs. [April 1923] Article by the Socialist Party of America’s 5-time Presidential candidate on the trade union situation in America, published in the monthly magazine of the Trade Union Educational League. Debs states that recent defeats of major strikes in the steel, mining, and railroad industries would have been winnable had they been conducted by unified industrial unions rather than a multitude of fragmented craft unions—a form of organization which Debs believed to be an obsolete relic of individual handicraft production, utterly unsuited to the large-scale and complex industry of the modern world. In advancing the end of amalgamation of existing craft unions into large industrial unions, Debs wholeheartedly supports the work of the TUEL: “The Trade Union Educational League, under the direction and inspiration of William Z. Foster, is in my opinion the one rightly directed movement for the industrial unification of the American workers. I thoroughly believe in its plan and its methods and I feel very confident of its steady progress and the ultimate achievement of its ends.”

“American Legion Has Another Brainstorm: Break Up Labor Defense Council Meeting in Kansas City Thus Preventing Another Revolution.” (Miami Valley Socialist) [report of April 13, 1923] Brief journalistic account of unconstitutional action engaged in by the ultra-nationalist ex-soldiers’ organization, the American Legion. A peaceful public meeting in Kansas City of the Communist Party’s legal defense organization, the Labor Defense Council, was raided by the unholy alliance of American Legionnaires and local police. “According to reports appearing in the Kansas City daily press the raid was made on information given by the local American Legion Secret Service,” it is noted, with this news report adding sarcastically that “it was not explained why it was necessary for any undercover sleuths to ‘discover’ the meeting, which was given all the publicity and advertising that the local Labor Defense Council could secure.” Four local trade unionists were arrested at the meeting. “Ella Reeve Bloor, who was the speaker at the meeting, was not molested. She announced as the crowd was being chased out of the hall by the dicks and Legion that a mass meeting would be held on Sunday, April 15 [1923], and the authority of the police and the power of the Legion to stop peaceful assemblages will be tested.”

MAY

“Michigan in the Muck,” by Eugene V. Debs. [May 1923] Article on the heated legal battle in Michigan over the August 1922 raid of the Communist Party of America’s Bridgman, Michigan convention published in the pages of The Liberator. Debs, the most widely recognized member of the Socialist Party’s National Executive Committee, unleashes a barrage on the “idiotic and criminal ‘criminal syndicalist’ law enacted by political crooks to seal the lips of industrial slaves” in Michigan. Debs charges that “The communists had as good a right to hold a convention in the state of Michigan and to discuss their affairs and formulate their program, any kind of a program that stopped short of the actual commission of crime penalized under the law, as the graft-infested Republican and Democratic parties have to hold such a convention.” The Michigan prosecutions were nothing but a “foul assault upon the Constitution and upon the elemental rights of citizenship,” according to Debs.

JUNE

Reply to the Farmer-Labor Party: A Letter to J.G. Brown, Secretary of the Farmer-Labor Party of the United States from a Committee of the Socialist Party of America, circa June 1, 1923. Published in The Socialist World [Chicago], v. 4, no. 6 (June 1923), pg. 3.

SEPTEMBER

“Let Us Build,” by Eugene V. Debs. [Sept. 1923] From the time of his imprisonment in 1919 until the end of his life, Gene Debs tirelessly argued against factionalism within the radical movement. In this article from the Socialist Party’s official organ, Debs rues the energy lost to factional infighting and calls for an end to namecalling (“reds” vs. “yellows) in the party. He colorfully remarks that “I know a good many of both, and so far as I am able to discern, they are much alike. The actual difference between them, were it fire, would hardly be enough to light a cigarette.” Debs does utter stern tones when he observes that “there is room enough” in the Socialist Party “for everyone who subscribes to its principles and upholds them in good faith; but there is no room in it for those who either openly sneer at political action or who avow it falsely to mask their treachery while they carry on their work of disruption.” Debs calls for unity of effort in a period of protracted party building and press building.

“The Story of the British Labour Party,” by Morris Hillquit [Sept. 1923] The stunning success of the British Labour Party in realigning the two-party system of that nation during the first two decades of the 20th Century served as a practical model for both the Socialist Party of America and the Workers (Communist) Party, each in their own way. This article by SPA leader Morris Hillquit in the party’s official organ recounted the path of success in Great Britain. It was there that “a series of intense industrial struggles in which the powers of the government werre openly and consistently arrayed on the side of the employers and against labor,” prompting the British Trades Union Congress to pass a resolution in 1899 calling for a conference of trade unions, socialist parties, cooperative societies, and other labor organizations to devise means for gaining better representation in the House of Commons. This conference evolved into the British Labour Party, which had received a full third of the vote and emerged as the primary opposition group in the 1922 national elections. “With the crying needs for political relief in this country and with the exaqmple and ready methods of England back of us we can form a powerful Labor Party in this country today; we can challenge the supremacy of the old parties in a few years,” Hillquit hopefully opined.

OCTOBER

“Rebuilding the Socialist Party,” by James Oneal [Oct. 1923] This article by Socialist Party leader James Oneal attempts to spin the SPA’s precipitous decline in membership as a normal aspect of a labor movement in retreat across the country. "One striking fact regarding working class organizations since the end of the World War is that all of them, conservative and radical, have suffered a heavy loss in membership,” writes Oneal, noting the American Federation of Labor had shed over 1 million members, falling from 4 million to under 3 million in the years 1919-1923. Oneal fails to note the magnitude of the SPA’s catastrophic decline, with the party losing approximately 90% of its members during the same interval -- an avalanche triggered in large part by NEC member Oneal’s own motions and votes to suspend 7 foreign language federations and various state party organizations in 1919. "The Socialist Party also lost members. Government and ‘patriotic’ persecution destroyed many branches. Communism destroyed many more. Now we have reached the period of party building,” Oneal blandly states and optimistically concludes. Oneal sees hope in the experience of the British fraternal party of the SPA, the Independent Labour Party, which had emerged from its own demoralization and funk to provide 32 elected Members of Parliament, including Ramsay MacDonald as Labour Party speaker in Commons. "What the ILP has done the Socialist Party can do,” Oneal declares.

“The Ku Klux Klan,” by Victor L. Berger [Oct. 26, 1923] One of the oft-repeated chestnuts that one hears about Socialist editor and Congressman Victor Berger of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is that the man was a confirmed racist. This article by Berger, reprinted in the pages of the Miami Valley Socialist [Dayton, OH], effectively belies such nonsense. Advised to “go easy” on the KKK, Berger responds by standing up up boldly and fearlessly to the goup, an organization which registered impressive growth in size and influence during the first half of the 1920s. Berger minces no words: “I consider the Ku Klux Klan an organization built upon race hatred and religious hatred. I know it to be anti-social and anti-American—a menace to rich and poor, to workers and capitalists alike. I believe the Klan to be an utterly venomous, cowardly, and despicable gang of marauders hiding under the cloak of secrecy and mysticism and patriotism.” If Berger can be justly accused of national chauvinism, the object of his antipathy is an unconventional target; Berger alleges the Klan to be “the only proof of a yellow streak in the American people and particularly in the Anglo-Saxon race—which is very much inbred and degenerated in certain parts of the South that had little immigration and infusion of new and healthy European blood.” Berger likens the KKK to the reign of terror of the Know-Nothings in the 1850s, a semi-secret organization of ultra-nationalist thugs who burned Catholic churches and “killed many hundred Irish people in a riot lasting several days in Louisville.” Berger declares: “I am opposed to the Klan, not only because the Ku Klux Klan has made the fight on Socialism, trade unionism, the IWW, etc., one of its principle objects... Not only because the Klan has been guilty of murders and terrible outrages against railroad men during their recent strike. Not only because they have been unspeakably cruel against Jews, Catholics, and Negroes. I am opposed because the mere existence of an organization like the Klan is a menace to the entire commonwealth. It seeks to substitute organized crime for organized government.”

“After 5 Years, Debs Completes Canton Address: Noted Socialist Comes Back to Canton With Praise for City: Says World Was Never More Unsafe For Democracy Than Now.” (Miami Valley Socialist) [event of Oct. 31, 1923] On Oct. 31, 1923, Socialist orator Gene Debs was able to finish the speech which he had begun 5 years earlier in Canton, Ohio—for which he was sent to prison for nearly 3 years by the Justice Department of the Woodrow Wilson regime. “”I was not for the war. I did not want war. But I was in it,” Debs told the audience of 1500 persons, adding, “I was conscripted. I was taken by the selective draft. And I am still waiting for my bonus. Woodrow Wilson was unanimously elected President of the United States for keeping us out of war. I was given 10 years in the Atlanta prison for trying to do the same thing.” Debs sounds an ominous warning: “”The whole world is preparing for the next war. This war will be fought in the air. Experts are working now in the many laboratories throughout the country, preparing liquid fire and powerful explosives which will be used. Even the savages spared women and children. The next war will not. Explosives will be dropped from the air, and men, women, and helpless children will be annihilated wholesale. And this is what you vote for when you vote the Democratic or Republican ticket.”

NOVEMBER

“Letter from C.E. Ruthenberg in Chicago to Morris Hillquit in New York, Nov. 3, 1923.” A cryptic note sent from the Executive Secretary of the Workers Party of the member to the leading light of the arch-rival Socialist Party of America. Ruthenberg notes that he will be in New York on Nov. 8, 1923, and that he seeks a conference with Hillquit to “talk with you” in regard to an invitation sent by the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party to labor political groups for a Nov. 15 conference in St. Paul. This conference was an attempt to “come to an agreement on the question of calling a national convention for the nomination of a presidential candidate and the adoption of a national platform.” Despite the hostility between the two organizations, this document affirms that there was at least informal discussion at the top level about the possibility of joint action with regards to the Farmer-Labor Party movement.

1924

The Story of the British Labor Party, by Morris Hillquit [undated, c. 1924] (PDF graphic file, 250 kb). Socialist Party propaganda leaflet by Morris Hillquit. Hillquit attempts to draw a parallel between British experience and American prospects, noting that in the UK voters were "handicapped by the superstitious belief in the ‘two-party’ system of government” for generations. Then in 1899 the Trades Union Congress set in motion a mechanism for the working class to secure "better representation of the interests of labor in the House of Commons.” The federative Labour Party had started modestly, electing just 2 candidates in the election of 1900. But steady growth had been show, Hillquit indicates, until at the "last general parliamentary elections...held in 1923,” the Labour Party had seen the election of 191 Members of Parliament. "This is the story of the political achievements of the British workers,” Hillquit declares: "Its lesson is inspiring, its moral is simple. It loudly cries to American labor: ‘Go thou and do likewise!’” Hillquit asserts: "With the example and ready methods of England back of us we can form a powerful Labor Party in this country today; we can challenge the supremacy of the old parties in a few years.” First published in The Socialist World [Chicago], vol. 4, no. 9 (September 1923), pp. 3–4. Parallel file uploaded to Archive.org/

The Communist Hoax,” by James Oneal [Jan. 1924] (Graphic pdf) Pioneering popular history of the American Communist movement from the pages of The American Mercury by the ideological pitbull of the Socialist Party’s Center faction, James Oneal. Oneal discounts contemporary estimates of between 1 million and 1.5 million American Communists as “absurd” but does note the proliferation of an amazing number of factional groups and grouplets — a total of 17 organizations during the first four years of the American movement. “Each new program and each coalition of two or more groups has usually produced only fresh schisms and desertions,” Oneal declares, with the current year of 1924 representing “probably” the “lowest ebb” of American Communism. Oneal’s short survey touches on the following organizations: (1) Communist Party of America; (2) Communist Labor Party); (3) Proletarian Party; (4) Industrial Communists (Nov. 1919); (5) Rummager’s League (1922); (6) United Communist Party; (7) Committee of the Third International (1921); (8) Workers’ Council (1921); (9) African Blood Brotherhood; (10) American Labor Alliance (1921); (11) Workers’ League (Fall 1921); (12) Workers Party; (13) “What was called the Proletarian Party” (Central Caucus CPA, 1922); (14) United Toilers (1922); (15) Federated Farmer-Labor Party; (16) IWW; (17) Trade Union Educational League. Oneal estimates the total number of American Communists as “something less than 20,000, about one-half the number in 1919.” Oneal asserts that “this little band of emotional men and women” has been “magnified into millions by those unacquainted by the facts” and that this mistaken reflection of the “nervous psychology of fear” was actually “the greatest hoax in history.”

JUNE

Socialist Party Due to Make Greatest Gains in its Entire History, Eugene Debs Declares: National Chairman of the Socialist Party Outlines Political Situation...” by Eugene V. Debs [June 14, 1924] This article by Eugene Debs for the members of the Socialist Party, written from a sanitarium in Colorado, consists of two parts—a brief historical overview of the SPA leading up to the forthcoming St. Paul and Cleveland conventions aiming to establish a Labor Party in America, and a plea for funds. Debs sees the volition for a unified Labor Party in America as a sort of vindication of the Socialist Party’s 27 years of agitation for independent political action by the working class, noting that both conservative unionists on the right and communists on the left had been influenced by the SP’s teachings on the matter. “For myself, I earnestly hope a united Labor Party, based upon the principles of industrial democracy and cornerstoned in the interest of the working class, may issue from these conventions; but whether it does nor not we must preserve strictly the identity and guard rigidly the integrity of the Socialist Party as an uncompromising revolutionary political organization of the workers in their struggle for emancipation,” Debs notes, thus indicating a willingness to make common cause with the communists in the Labor Party task. As for funds, the message is simple, the Socialist Party’s “membership has been greatly reduced and its treasury utterly bankrupted.” An appeal is made to loyalty, honor, and sense of obligation for all members to immediately pay their back dues and the 50 cent to $5 voluntary convention assessment to the National Office.

JULY

“Letter to William Z. Foster in Chicago from Eugene V. Debs in Terre Haute, July 23, 1924 A snippet from an acrimonious exchange of correspondence between Socialist Party leader Gene Debs and Communist Party leader Bill Foster which marked the end of the Farmer-Labor Party fiasco of 1924. Debs takes umbrage at Foster’s criticism of his endorsement of Robert LaFollette for President and Debs’ acceptance of the ceremonial position of National Chairman of the SPA. “I know, of course, that you have a very poor opinion of the Socialist Party — quite as poor as my opinion of the Communist Party — and I can readily understand why it should have suited you far better had the Socialist Party ended its career at Cleveland and disappeared from the scene, or remained dissevered to cut as sorry and discrediting a figure as the Communist Party will in the campaign this year,” Debs notes. He intimates Foster’s “shock” is hypocritical in light of testimony that the Communists had themselves planned to endorse LaFollette through the Federated Farmer-Labor Party had not LaFollette first formally denounced such an effort. “You may be right in your criticism of my position and I may be wrong, as I have been before. Having no Vatican in Moscow to guide me I must follow the light I have, and this I have done in the present instance, as I always have in the past,” Debs declares.

OCTOBER

“The Death of the Socialist Party,” by J. Louis Engdahl [October 1924]. A final sneer at the Socialist Party from the 1924 campaign. Former editor of the Socialist Party’s offical organ Engdahl argues that the SP’s immersion in the campaign of progressive Republican Robert LaFollette for President of the United States spells the final deathknell for the SPA: “When the Socialist Party deserted the ‘Labor Party’ fight, turned its back on class action, and joined the LaFollette straddle of the two old parties of Wall Street, its members had two choices. They could either join the Communist forces in the Workers Party, or go over into the LaFollette camp. Many did join the Communist ranks, singly and in groups. The rest are going over to the temporary LaFollette organizations that will collapse after the election day has passed.... The Socialist movement has been swallowed up in the LaFollette wave. It has been completely obliterated.”

1925

JANUARY

“The American Labor Party,” by Eugene V. Debs. [Jan. 1925] A 2nd National Convention of the Conference for Progressive Political Actions (CPPA) was scheduled to closely follow the completion of the 1924 LaFollette/Wheeler Presidential campaign. Chief on the agenda for the group was the establishment of a new political party, intended to be built upon the alliances around the country developed during the course of the fall of 1924. The Socialist Party sought the formation of a British-style Labor Party, federating component organizations and envisioning itself as playing the role of the Independent Labour Party in the UK. This article by Eugene Debs in the official organ of the Socialist Party of America gives voice to this desire. Debs states that despite the “blind stupidity of the workers and the covert machinations of their enemies to thwart or misdirect them,” a Labor Party was inevitable in America. The staunch backing and support of the unions was mandatory for the success of such a venture, Debs declared, stating that while the leadership of the unions remained “almost to a man opposed to a Labor Party,” hope lay in the hands of the rank and file, who might successfully be aroused to the task. Debs did not think it likely that such an organization would be constructed by the forthcoming gathering of the CPPA, but he hoped for the best and professed patience and an ability to wait.

FEBRUARY

“Speech to the Conference for Progressive Political Action, Feb. 21, 1925,” by Eugene V. Debs. The National Chairman of the Socialist Party of America was the featured speaker at a “mass meeting” held at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago in conjunction with the Second Convention of the CPPA. This is the full text of his speech, from the official stenographic report of the convention. Debs argues that political parties can be either capitalist or socialist, but not both, and that any attempt to merge the “irrepressible” antagonistic interests of the capitalist class and the working class in a new party will be met with failure. Political parties by definition can not be non-partisan, Debs indicates, and the term “progressive” has been so “prostituted” that even J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller might be reasonably expected to consider themselves progressives. Only a true Labor Party dealing with the fundamental issue of whether the national as a whole should own and control its own industries has any prospects for long-term success, in Debs’ view.

“Statement of Party Policy by the Socialist Party in National Convention, Chicago, Illinois—Feb. 24, 1925.” The 1925 “Special Convention” of the Socialist Party was scheduled and held in Chicago immediately after the close of the 2nd Convention of the Convention for Progressive Political Action. This statement was issued by the SPA’s convention to announce to the party membership that the CPPA Convention had failed to establish a Labor Party on the British model, and that with the departure of the railway unions and failure of the CPPA to establish a Labor Party, there was “no conceivable good either to the Conference or to the Socialists” for any continued affiliation. The Socialist Party consequently was severing its relations with that organization.

MARCH

“As to the Labor Defense Council,” by Eugene V. Debs [March 1925] Although initially organized by the Communist Party as a broad-based non-party legal defense organization to aid the victims of the August 1922 raid on the party’s convention at Bridgman, Michigan, by 1925 the Legal Defense Council had begun to take a more partisan cast. Lips began to wag about the presence of Socialist Party National Chairman Eugene V. Debs on the LDC’s letterhead—to the effect that Debs was, in deeds if not in words, sympathetic to the Communist cause. This prompted a reply by Debs in the official organ of the Socialist Party to discount any such speculation. “was organized to provide defense for Communists prosecuted under so-called criminal syndicalism and other laws because of their activities in the labor movement, the purpose of the defense being the preservation of the right of free speech, free assemblage, and other civil rights in the United States. I gladly accorded to this body the use of my name in raising funds and consented to be named as Vice President in its list of officers. I did this not so much for Foster, Ruthenberg, Minor, and others as individuals, but to back then up in the defense of their civil rights. That fight is also my fight,” Debs declares. He bitterly notes that while the Communist Party “refused to lift a finger to help me out of prison,” he nevertheless stood ready to defend the civil rights of Communists. Debs forcefully states that the “surreptitious” reports of his support of the Communists as against the Socialists are “on a par with some other falsehoods published in Communist organs to which my attention has been called.” After this statement of his true allegiance, Debs insists that “if hereafter any Communist whispers it into your ear that I am with the Communists in anything except their right to free speech and other civil rights, just answer by turning your back upon him and leaving the vulgar falsifier to himself.”

“The Chicago Conventions,” by Bertha Hale White. [March 1925] Assessement of the Chicago conventions of the Conference for Progressive Political Action (Feb. 21-22, 1925) and the Socialist Party of America (Feb. 23-24, 1925) by the National Executive Secretary of the SPA. White provided valuable detail about the parliamentary maneuvering at the CPPA gathering—a meeting split between the trade unionists seeking no party, socialists and radical unionists seeking a British Labor Party-style organization allowing participation by independent constituent organizations such as the Socialist Party, and liberals in favor of a Progressive Party constructed around a traditional individual memberships. White states that participants at the Socialist convention expressed “relief and satisfaction” knowing that the period of uncertainty was over effective with the unanimous decision of the SPA to withdraw from the CPPA.

JULY

Allen Cook: A Tribute: A Pioneer of Socialism in Ohio Passes Away -- The Spirit of a Spartan, by Eugene V. Debs [event of July 20, 1925] Brief memorial to a little-remembered Ohio Socialist, Allen Cook, who died of a stroke in July 1925 at the age of 41. Debs remarks upon Cook’s decisive importance to the Socialist movement of Canton, Ohio, as a pioneer there. Cook was also “the chief promoter of the meeting at Canton which resulted in the writer being sentenced to prison,” Debs notes. Cook is remembered as “a logical, forceful, convincing speaker and he wielded an incisive and trenchant pen” who never wavered, compromised, or lost faith in the ultimate triumph of the Socialist cause, Debs says.

1926

OCTOBER

“A Tribute to Debs,” by Morris Hillquit. [Oct. 23, 1926] A short tribute to the Socialist leader written by his friend and comrade and published on the front page of The New Leader at the time of Debs’ death. According to Hillquit, Debs was “a crusader and a fighter, but there was no hate in him. His most ardent fighting sprang from his deep and warm love for all that bears human countenance. A pure type of early Christian at his best, he was strangely misplaced in our cold age of selfishness and greed.” “Through all the years of his struggles and suffering his frail body was vibrant with flaming vitality. In spite of his advanced age and ill health he was to the last the impersonation of radiant youth in his mental alertness and never-flagging enthusiasm.”

NOVEMBER

“At the Bier of Debs,” by Morris Hillquit [delivered Oct. 22; published Nov. 13, 1926] One of the funeral speeches delivered in Eugene Debs’ honor from the porch of the Debs house in Terre Haute, Indiana in the afternoon of Friday, October 22, 1926—later reprinted in the Socialist press. Hillquit noted that while Debs “was one of the most effective orators of America” what really made the man was his personality. “It was first of all the boundless love of everything that bears human countenance which radiated from him. Not an intellectual love, not an abstract love, but a love that flowed naturally, organically, communicating itself electrically to all who came within the magic sphere of his personal contact. He loved everybody—the poor and even the rich, the righteous, the criminal, and the outcast. He loved mankind and his very eloquence sprung from his love. He did not merely appeal and convince, he communicated part of himself, part of his very being to his audience.”

“Debs and SP Policies,” by James Oneal. [Nov. 13, 1926] The Socialist Party Old Guard’s attack dog locks jaw on the “most revolting performance” of the American Communists in their attempt to “claim Eugene Debs as their own.” To this end, two charges were made in a Communist leaflet distributed at a Debs memorial meeting held at Madison Square Garden which stick in Oneal’s craw: (1) that Debs was “always on the left wing of the Socialist Party"; and (2) that only in recent years did the SP “permit” Debs to be a member of the SP’s governing National Executive Committee. Oneal mocks the first assertion, dumping everything from the Social Democracy in America’s colonization wing to Daniel DeLeon’s ST&LA to the eccentric anti-union views of two 1904 SP convention delegates to the 1912 syndicalist movement into a single large bin labelled “left wing.” Since Debs never followed any of this “topsy turvy conduct,” Oneal asserts, the claim of Debs’ fidelity to the “left” is absurd. Oneal depicts Debs’ later pro-unity position as the result of sentimentality and the cause of unintentional misunderstanding and says that the 1905 decision to help form the IWW was a “mistake,” soon corrected. As for the assertion that Debs was only allowed on the NEC in the last years, Oneal convincingly argues that Debs saw his role as a propagandist, not as a party executive, that he was regularly nominated—and declined—all such offices as a matter of preference, so that he might concentrate on his main mission. ” It is precisely because he was committed to the Socialist Party and its policies that he consented to go to the National Executive Committee in recent years. The fact that he took up work that he disliked and which he had avoided for more than twenty years shows that he was so convinced that the Socialist Party represented his views,” Oneal notes.

1928

AUGUST

“Speech to the Third Congress of the Labor and Socialist International, Aug. 6, 1928,” by Morris Hillquit. Text of an address by the Chairman of the Socialist Party of the United States to the International Socialist Congress held in Brussels from Aug. 5 to 11, 1928. Hillquit identifies three trends in the development of the world economy in the post-World War world: centralization, internationalization, and Americanization. He cautions about the negative effects of industrial rationalization and the trend towards American financial hegemony, warns of a trend towards exploitation of cheap “Asiatic labor and labor in backward countries,” and calls for international efforts to develop a labor movement “as powerful and more powerful than modern capitalism.”

NOVEMBER

“Report of William H. Henry, National Secretary, to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, Nov. 24, 1928.” This document covering the first 10 months of operations by the SPA in 1928 in comparison to the same period one year previous provides scholars with a first hard set of membership numbers for the organization for those two years. Includes a state-by-state membership count for 1927 and 1928, memberships for the five federations of the SPA, a brief discussion of organizational prospects in the various states, and financial details of the organization. Rather esoteric fare, perhaps, but a very important primary source document for specialists in the history of American radicalism in the 1920s.

1930

DECEMBER

"The Socialist Party City Convention: Groups in the SP— Perspectives of the Left Movement— The Line of the Communists,” by Will Herberg [events of Dec. 27-28, 1930] This is an assessment of the December 1930 New York City Convention of the Socialist Party of America written by one of the leaders of Jay Lovestone and Benjamin Gitlow’s Communist Party USA (Majority Group). Herberg sees three primary factions in the New York SP organization: an “extreme right” group headed by Norman Thomas comprised “largely of bourgeois liberals"; a dominant group of “old timers,” headed by Morris Hillquit, placing primary emphasis on the “labor bureaucracy” and attempting to win “respectability” for the Socialist Party among the AF of L unions; and a growing “leftward tendency,” including some radical unionists and a large segment of the SP’s youth section. Herberg sees the differentiation in the SP as reflective of similar trends in the social democratic and trade union movement around the world, with a revitalized left wing emerging. Herberg asserts that “The leftward movement in the Socialist Party is still extremely immature, heterogeneous in its composition, and utterly amorphous in its political outlook. It is not yet the end — it is only the beginning. Realignments of forces within the left wing and between the left wing and the SP as a whole are inevitable as the movement gains in maturity.” Herberg sees a move towards Communism and a split of the Socialist Party as a likely outcome.

1931

APRIL

“This Post-War Generation and Our Time: Will It Be Able to Find a Way Out?,” by Anna P. Krasna [April 30, 1931] A little heard perspective: the views of a Depression-era Socialist rather than a Communist; of a woman, not a man; of a Slovene-American, not an Anglo-American. Anna P. Krasna, a writer, appeals to the youth of America to wake up and begin to take an active interest in politics, as a new war was in the wind. The post-war generation had been bred upon illusions of individual success and was learning that the brutal reality of the economic system was different, Krasna stated. “We are hoping that the youth, seeing the future holds nothing but misery in store for them, or perhaps a chance to die a heroic death for the international speculators and exploiters, shall demand the right to live as comfortably as the modern technical improvements permit”—this to be achieved through participation in “the groups of those who believe in equality for all.”

1932

MAY

“The Finnish Socialists in America,” by W.N. Reivo. [May 1932] Report of the Secretary of the Finnish Federation of the Socialist Party to the 17th National Convention of the organization, held in Milwaukee in May 1932. Reivo states in no uncertain terms that “the future of the Socialist Party in America is in the native born stock. They days of the language federations are in the past.” Reivo notes that the children of Finnish immigrant socialist parents tend to join the English-language branches in their communities rather than the Finnish-language branches. This is not necessarily a bad thing, Reivo believes, as “perhaps it would be a mistake if the youth joined us directly and stood aloof of the body of the Socialist Party just as the older element does now.” Nevertheless, the reputation of the Finnish Federation was greater than at any time since the 1920 split of the organization and the growth of the SP was edifying—even if very few disgruntled ex-Communists were making the trek back to their former organization.

Should the American Workers Form a Political Party of their Own? A Debate. Morris Hillquit (National Chairman, Socialist Party)—Yes. Matthew Woll (Vice President, American Federation of Labor) - No. [1932] Nearly a decade after the Labor Party question first burned hot for the Socialist Party of America, its position had changed little—it was in favor of establishing a constituent organization akin to the British Labour Party. Nor had the opposition of organized labor moved—it remained, by and large, opposed to the establishment of a Third Party, instead continuing to tout the tactic of selective support of “Friends of Labor” within the two major parties. This 1932 debate between Socialist Party National Chairman Morris Hillquit and AFL Vice President Matthew Woll details the thinking behind each of these positions. In the course of his remarks Hillquit assigns blame for the failure of the Third Party movement in 1924 to the desire of Robert LaFollette to run alone, resulting in the “doom of the movement.” The AFL is upbraided by Hillquit for its “late and...luke warm” support of the LaFollette candidacy, which is said to have killed any chance for the LaFollette campaign to lay “the foundation of a great and powerful labor party in America.” Full text of a pamphlet published in 1932 by the Rand School of Social Science.

“The Socialist Party and the Militant Program,” by James Oneal [April 9, 1932] After nearly two years of agitation at local and state meetings of the Socialist Party of New York a younger generation of Socialist Party activists emerged as a formal faction in the spring of 1932, issuing their program as a short pamphlet. This is an initial response to that document by New Leader editor and top leader of the Old Guard Jim Oneal. Always the ideological pugilist, Oneal immediately attacks the Militants as an eclectic group of new party members, “neither Left, nor Right, nor Center.” These are united by a desire to refuse compromise under any circumstances, in Oneal’s telling, as well as to suppress all critical debate about the nature of the Soviet Union. Oneal quotes Lenin and Engels in making his case against what he perceives to be an inconsistent band of neophytes. He cites his own intellectual path from utopian colonizer to impossibilist to party regular as evidence that years of study and experience are necessary before Socialist intellectual development is complete.

“‘Left’ Proposals at the Socialist Party Convention,” by Jack Stachel [May 11, 1932] Commentary on the forthcoming 1932 convention of the rival Socialist Party of America by CPUSA regular Jack Stachel. Stachel notes the decisive victory of the SP center-right at the group’s previous 1928 national convention, at which “Hillquit, Lee, Thomas & Co. decided that the class struggle had become out of style side by side of the chicken pot and the two auto garage.” By early 1929 the SPA “openly gave up Marx, whom they had vulgarized and betrayed for years, and adopted Hooverism and Fordism,” Stachel asserts. The coming of economic crisis had discredited the theories of prosperity and social peace of the SP Regulars, Stachel intimates, giving life to a new left wing presence in the party, the so-called “Militants.” Stachel dismisses this new tendency as “ministers and intellectuals, middle class elements that in 1928 and 1929 led in the praise of organized capitalism and ‘class peace.’” Stachel depicts the program of the Miitants as a transparent attempt to undercut the revolutionary program of the Communists, an “attitude to the class struggle that unmasks the Socialists as the agents of the bosses in the ranks of the working class.”

“That ‘Reactionary’ International,” by Morris Hillquit [May 7, 1932] The letter to the editor of The New Leader by Morris Hillquit hints at the personal and generational components of the factional battle between young insurgent “Militants” and the veteran “Old Guard” of the Socialist Party of America. Hillquit takes umbrage at the claims of Boston Militant Alfred Baker Lewis that every weakness and compromise of foreign socialist parties found ready apologists in America, “headed intellectually” by Morris Hillquit. Making use of his mastery of understatement and irony, Hillquit explains the American Socialist delegation’s decision to support a less than fully satisfactory disarmament resolution jointly adopted by the Labor and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions. Hillquit reveals not only that he was the author an American position statement that Baker had accused him of ignoring, but an extensive excerpt of the 1931 LSI Congress stenogram is reproduced in which Hillquit explicitly specified the American delegation’s dissatisfaction with the final resolution’s timidity. Baker’s histrionics are demolished, but the intellectual tension between the two emerging factions is readily apparent.

“Keynote Speech to the 1932 Socialist Party Convention,” by Morris Hillquit [May 21, 1932] Socialist Party National Chairman Morris Hillquit lights up a room full of delegates and guests in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with this keynote address to the assembly. President Hoover is derided as “ludicrously incompetent” to deal with the economic meltdown, with his platitudes and financial stunt targeted to the financial community rather than suffering unemployed workers. The alternative of Franklin Roosevelt is seen as bringing to the table only a small injection of “innocuous liberalism.” In reality, Hillquit declares, “we are witnessing today is nothing less than the complete bankruptcy of capitalism,” with both the old parties having proved themselves unequal to the magnitude of the catastrophe. Hillquit calls for an end to high tariffs and the cancellation of uncollectable war debts as small steps towards “a radically remodeled, new, sane and equitable social order."

SocialistParty Convention: Opportunism and Petty Bourgeois Reform MarkOutstanding Traits of Convention and Standard-Bearers,” by “J.W.” [events of May 21-24, 1932] Briefaccount of the sometimes stormy 1932 National Convention of theSocialist Party of America, held in Milwaukee, by a member of theProletarian Party of America who was in attendance as an observer. TheProletarian Party activist notes ironically the way that MorrisHillquit's keynote speech against the timidity, superficiality, andphrasemongering of the liberals was at least as applicable to theSocialist Party itself. The organization's attempt to offer officialsupport for the“ Soviet experiment” while at the same time condemningthe effects of the dictatorship of the proletariat is loudlycriticized, with the dictatorship of the proletariat lauded as“ the onething that makes success possible.” The“ healthy sign” of emergence ofa left wing labor movement within the SPA is noted, although“ even thismilitant section” is said to have“ a long way to travel before it willbecome Marxian in its understanding and revolutionary enough in itspolitical activity to constitute any real danger to the petty bourgeoismakeup of the Socialist Party.” The SPA is characterized as a reformparty during a phase of capitalist development in which reforms are nolonger possible, critically and seemingly insurmountably hampered byits petty bourgeois social composition.

“Hillquit Again National Chairman: Dramatic Session Ends in His Re-election,” by James Oneal [event of May 23, 1932] One perplexing aspect of the eventful 1932 Socialist Party convention was the pitting of the staid Mayor of Wisconsin, Dan Hoan, against New York party icon Morris Hillquit as the candidate of the New York-based Militant faction’s insurgency. This article by staunch Hillquit supporter Jim Oneal provides some illumination: the two candidates had personal friends in both camps, Oneal indicates, with the race for the figurehead National Chairman position largely symbolic of the programmatic division within party ranks. Hoan, seemingly a half-hearted supporter of the effort to unseat Hillquit, did not even take the rostrum during the convention debate. Hillquit seems to intimate a deeper division that personal vendetta, however, calling his Militant-and-Milwaukee opponents an “unholy alliance working against why I and my friends stand for.” For his party, Hillquit declared himself a Marxist and an international socialist, mocking one supporter of Hoan as an unsophisticated neophyte.

“The Socialist Party Convention Day-by Day,” by Edward Levinson [events of May 21-24, 1932] Detailed first-hand journalistic account of the 1932 National Convention of the Socialist Party of America, held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Although this convention marked the first national appearance of the so-called Militant faction, the gathering seems to have been a lively but ultimately amicable affair, marked by the reelection of Morris Hillquit as National Chairman in a contest against the combined forces of the young Militants and the Milwaukee party organization. A hotly debated resolution of the Soviet Union supported by the Militants narrowly passed, as did a resolution calling for the end of liquor prohibition. Norman Thomas was nominated for President and James Maurer for Vice-President amidst convention delegate tomfoolery for a national radio audience. Includes extracts of speeches by Louis Waldman, Morris Hillquit, and Norman Thomas, as well as a complete listing of the new 11 member NEC and the 5 elected alternates.

SEPTEMBER

“Correspondence between William L. Patterson, Communist Candidate for Mayor of New York City and Morris Hillquit, Socialist Candidate for Mayor of New York City, Late Sept. 1932.” This article from the Socialist weekly The New Leader reproduces a vituperative letter from Communist candidate for Mayor of New York William Patterson demanding a debate of Socialist candidate Morris Hillquit and Hillquit’s reply. Citing a 60% unemployment rate in Harlem, Patterson accuses Hillquit and the Socialists of offering noting to “ameliorate the suffering of Negro or white workers.” He accuses Hillquit of living an opulent lifestyle which separates him from the sufferings of the working class in the depression. Patterson posits Hillquit’s failure to protest a passage from The New Leader published two years previously as evidence the Hillquit stands “openly on the side of those who support Jim-crowism, lynch-terror, brutal exploitation, and oppression of the Negro people.” In reply Hillquit accuses Patterson of taking the perspective not of Socialism or Communism but rather that of crude nationalism, noting that the Socialist program treats workers of all ethnicities as a class and offers one relief program for all. Hillquit denies the assertion that he lives a posh lifestyle and subtly accuses Patterson of either incompetence or dishonesty by garbling the passage from The New Leader. Hillquit uses understatement to mock Patterson’s nasty attack upon himself and the Socialist Party in declining to debate: “From the mild tone of your observations I infer that you are a novice in the Communist movement and have not yet fully mastered the picturesque vocabulary of Communist invective.”

OCTOBER

“Eugene V. Debs is Dead But His Spirit Still Lives,” by James Oneal [Oct. 22, 1932] With the 6th Anniversary of the death of Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs nearing, Old Guard leader James Oneal takes to the pages of The New Leader to assign political meaning to the icon. Oneal indicates that Debs had disdain for those espousing the half-measure of “progressivism.” Instead Debs is depicted as a Marxist whose chief value was as an agitator who “inspired millions of workers with confidence in themselves as a class.” Oneal also depicts Debs not only as a spokesman for revolutionary socialist but also a committed believer in political action, citing his 1912 alignment with the center-right coalition against William D. Haywood and the anti-political syndicalist left wing which had emerged in the party. Oneal calls for renewed commitment to the working class orientation of Debs — a veiled critic of the emerging intellectual-oriented “progressive” faction in the Socialist party, exemplified by Norman Thomas and Harry Laidler.

1933

APRIL

“Finnish Branch Celebrates 30th Year,” by Wilno Hedman [April 29, 1933] Brief 30 year retrospective of the history of “the largest Socialist branch of New York and of the Finnish Federation.” Independent for its first two years of existence, the New York City Finnish branch joined the Socialist Party of America in January 1905. It moved into spacious headquarters located on Fifth Avenue in 1917 and subsequently hosted no fewer than three national conventions of the SPA, in addition to at least two gatherings of the New York state organization. The New York Finnish branch peaked with a membership of 918 in 1921 before splitting, with fewer than 300 remaining in the Socialist branch following an acrimonious split. This number had expanded somewhat in subsequent years, with the branch sitting with a membership between 350 and 400 by 1933. A July 1931 raid is recounted, in which more than 400 attendees of a ball were held for questioning and 18 taken in for failure to prove the legality of their entry into the USA. Recent establishment of an English-language subdivision of the Finnish branch, organized by younger members, is noted.

“Sinclair is Expelled by California Socialists." (The New Leader) [event of Sept. 20, 1933] Short news report from the Socialist Party press noting the expulsion of Upton Sinclair, future candidate for Governor of California of the Democratic Party. Although the State Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of California held a special meeting on Sept. 20, 1933 to handle the Sinclair case, in actuality Sinclair had already allowed his membership to lapse effective at the end of December 1932 and under the constitution he would have been previously been dropped from the party for non-payment of dues. The expulsion resolution, reproduced in full in this article, is thus so much window dressing for political effect. The “capitalist Democratic Party” is decried in the resolution as “a powerful and dangerous enemy of the working class and of the Socialist Party” and Sinclair is declared separated from the latter for having “flatly broken his pledge” to sever connections with all other parties. Socialists are “warned against the futile supposition that they can use a capitalist party to further the interests of the working class.”

OCTOBER

“New York Yipsels Organize Vanguard; Acts as Colorful Unit in Mass Action: Blue Shirts and Red Emblems Worn by Young Socialists." [Oct. 1933] One of the greatest aggravations of the Old Guard Socialists in New York state was the emergence of fist-clenching, royal blue shirted young radicals at the mass meetings of the party — a quasi-militarized form of participation reminiscent of the fascist and communist movements of Europe. The origins of this “shirts” movement in the American Socialist Party has been largely undocumented. This article from the monthly newspaper of the Young People’s Socialist League reveals the origins of this organized campaign — an initiative of the organization and propaganda committee of the Socialist Party of New York to form a “disciplined, uniformed band” called the “Socialist Vanguard.” Head of the Socialist Vanguard was Jack Altman, a veteran of the Young People’s Socialist League turned party functionary who was soon to emerge as a top figure in the Militant Faction. The Vanguard was organized into “squads” of 8 members, each headed by a “captain,” the article indicates. There were approximately 40 of these squads in existence at the time of the writing of this piece shortly after the group’s debut, a Sept. 24 meeting attended by nearly 2,000 and addressed by Norman Thomas.

“Millions Mourn Hillquit: World-Famous Socialist Leader Dies After Long Illness." (The New Leader) [event of Oct. 8, 1933] Unsigned front-page news report of the death of Socialist Party National Chairman Morris Hillquit as published by The New Leader, at the time the party’s weekly newspaper of record. The report indicates that Hillquit’s death of tuberculosis at age 64 was not an expected event — that he had continued to accept party assignments running through the coming months. The story notes that Hillquit’s fatal illness marked his third bout with tuberculosis over the previous two decades and speculates whether the exertion of his November 1932 run for Mayor of New York might have sapped Hillquit of his vitality and thereby “shortened his life by years.”

“His Memory Will Point the Way,” by Algernon Lee [event of Oct. 8, 1933] On October 7, 1933 the last of the three primary leaders of the early Socialist Party of America, Morris Hillquit, succumbed to a two decade-long battle with tuberculosis at the age of 64. The death inspired a spate of obituaries, testimonials, and poems in the party press, including this short piece by his political comrade of nearly 40 years, Algernon Lee. Lee emphasizes the place of Hillquit as a “great leader” with an acute eye for choosing a principled and correct course in a world of changing political situations and issues, inspiring loyalty rather than demanding obedience. Hillquit’s greatest faults, in Lee’s estimation, were an overly trusting nature which led him to periodically “push forward men who did not deserve it” and an inability to “feign a liking for those he disliked,” even when doing so would have been politically expedient. Hillquit is remembered as a man of sensitive spirit who was quietly injured by “petty and ruthless and sometimes thoughtless” individuals who personally attacked him.

“A Story of Fifty Years of Devotion to Socialism,” by William M. Feigenbaum [event of Oct. 8, 1933] Official memorial biography of Morris Hillquit from the Socialist Party’s newspaper of record, The New Leader. Although unsigned this lengthy piece was clearly written by the paper’s leading journalist William M. Feigenbaum, a worthy party historian. Feigenbaum provides a complete overview of Hillquit’s life, from his middle-class Jewish origins in Riga, Latvia (then part of the Russian empire) to menial work in a shirt factory and as a $3 a week Yiddish journalist, to his emergence as a top leader of the American socialist movement before the age of 30. Feigenbaum repeatedly employs the word “brilliant” in reference to Hillquit, noting his place in the organizational merger which established the Socialist Party of America, his place as a delegate to every Congress of the International Socialist movement, his role as party leader during the 1912 battle against syndicalism in the Socialist Party and in the 1924 effort to fuse behind the Presidential campaign of Robert LaFollette, and his various political campaigns for New York State Assembly (1906, 1908), for Congress (1916), for Mayor of New York (1917, 1932).

“Hillquit, Leader of SP, Dies of Heart Attack at Age 63." (Daily Worker) [Oct. 8, 1933] Notice of the death of the National Chairman of the rival Socialist Party of America from the front page of the English-language daily of the Communist Party. The CPUSA gets both Hillquit’s cause of death and age at death wrong in the headline before launching into a short litany of tendentious historical misrepresentations and dubious quotations. Hillquit is damned for having visited Roosevelt at the White House and for having been the recipient of posthumous condolences from conservative head of the American Federation of Labor, William Green.

1935

JUNE

Facts About New York and About the Nation, by David P. Berenberg [June 22, 1935] David Berenberg, publisher of the anti-Left Wing weekly New York Socialist during the party controversy of 1919, found himself on the other side of the factional barricades during the battle between the Militant and Old Guard factions for control of the Socialist Party during the middle 1930s. This article from the weekly newspaper of the allied Militants and Norman Thomas loyalists details the disruptive behavior of the Old Guard-dominated New York organization during the year after the 1934 convention. The March 1935 session of the governing National Executive Committee of the SPA had presented the Old Guard New York organization with 9 demands, Berenberg notes, aimed at ending the Old Guard’s factional antics and adverting a split. The Old Guard organization had refused to comply, sending an inadequate answer in May. On June 12 the NEC’s next session was held in New York City, where formal hearings began. The New York State Committee again refused to appear. Instead, the Old Guard’s newspaper, The New Leader, had launched an fusillade of highly intemperate factional articles sporting “hysterical headlines,” Berenberg notes. Any declines in Socialist strength in Militant-controlled state organizations was “the result of deliberate sabotage on the part of the Right Wing,” Berenberg charges. “The Conservatives preferred rather to destroy the party than see it in hands other than their own,” Berenberg insists. “They have become so accustomed to thinking of the Socialist Party as their private possession, that they deny in practice the democracy they preach rather than permit the true majority to take power.”

NOVEMBER

The Thomas-Browder Debate, by Haim Kantorovitch [event of Nov. 27. 1935] Marxist theoretician and American Socialist Quarterly co-editor Haim Kantorovitch — best conceptualized as “the Morris Hillquit of the Militant faction” — offers his appraisal on the united front, the main issue of the widely publicized and controversial public debate between CPUSA General Secretary Earl Browder and three time SPA Presidential nominee Norman Thomas. Contrary to the shrill prognostications of the bitterly anti-communist Old Guard faction, the debate had not been either a “love fest” or itself a manifestation of a united front, Kantorovitch says. It was a debate from fundamentally different positions — no more, no less. Indeed, a permanent united front was at least temporarily blocked by two factors, in Kantorovitch’s estimation: the Communist Party’s past history of sectarian warfare against Socialists and others on the left, which implied bad faith in the current tactical shift, as well as the party’s “attitude towards the Soviet Union, its ‘great leader,’ Stalin, and his enemies.” Kantorovitch argues that this latter factor is actually the chief obstacle to long term unity of action: “A united front is a temporary union of people of different opinions and ideas for some common end. The Communists have reached the stage where they compel themselves to tolerate non-Communist opinions on the class struggle, on social revolution, even on the problem of proletarian dictatorship. But they cannot tolerate anyone having an opinion about Soviet Russia different than their own. Soviet Russia and Stalin are above criticism. Whoever dares criticize either of them is a counter-revolutionist, just as one is still a counter-revolutionist if he dares remember the glorious role of Trotsky in the creation of the Soviet state.” Kantorovitch observes that for all the chanting of “We want a united front!” by the debate audience, only local and temporary actions would be possible owing to the Communist Party’s uncritical attitude towards the Stalin dictatorship, the position advanced by Thomas in the debate.

DECEMBER

Socialists Reject NY Old Guard; Map Party Drive.(Socialist Call) [events of Dec. 4-8, 1935] On the evening of Dec. 4. 1935 the long-threatened split of the Socialist Party in New York state finally occurred when the City Central Committee by a 48-44 vote passed a resolution prohibiting party members from associating with the Socialist Call (a paper established as an alternative to the Old Guard-dominated New York Leader) or its affiliated institutions. The move was seen as a clear effort to provoke a split as it would have lead either the the closure of the Call or the expulsion of factional leaders Jack Altman and Norman Thomas, and when the decision was not reconsidered the minority walked out and reconvened at the Call’s offices where they reconstituted themselves a new City Central Committee and called a reorganizational convention for Dec. 28-29, 1935 in Utica. Rival mass meetings of the parallel organizations were held the night of Sunday, Dec. 8, with the Militant-Thomasite insurgents drawing 1500 and the Old Guard, 650, according to this Call report.

The Old Guard: An Analysis of Its History and of Its Principles, by Haim Kantorovitch [Dec. 14, 1935] With a split of the Socialist Party an accomplished fact, leading theoretician of the Militant faction Haim Kantorovitch attempts an analysis of the composition and ideas of the rival Old Guard faction. Kantorovitch notes that an attempt to examine the dispute on the basis of the Old Guard’s program would be fruitless, since “it has none. While the Old Guard constantly ridicules and misquotes the program of the Left Wing, it has never attempted to formulate a program of its own.” Kantorovitch instead tries to understand the faction from their composition, which he characterizes as “old and tired in body and mind,” filled with a “kind of paternalistic cynicism” about the “folly of their youth” when revolutionary ardor burned bright. The battle with the left wing fought by some of the Old Guard leaders for nearly 20 years had been a fight for control of our institutions rather than a committed struggle for hegemony of principles, Kantorovitch indicates. The world had changed dramatically over a quarter century, Kantorovitch observes, but the Old Guard “simply repeat mechanically what they learned 25 years ago,” failing to even attempt to originally analyze dynamic events. “Marxism in their hands became nothing but a dead dogma, a rationalization for doing nothing,” Kantorvitch states. Over time their attempts at leadership of the trade union movement had fallen away and “the Old Guard leaders became its servants. Every form of criticism was prohibited,” Kantorovitch says. This burned out generation had come into conflict with thousands of “young, energetic Socialists” who had joined the Socialist Party. Kantorovitch states that “the inner-party fight which culminated in the present situation began not as a fight for or against this or that principle, but purely as a fight between activists and quietists,” culminating in the Old Guard’s hysterical blocking of party membership of newcomers in an effort to retain its grip on the party apparatus. “When the Old Guard leaders now accuse the Left Wing of being communists, they know it is not true. The cry ‘communist’ is only to serve as a smoke-screen for their disruptive activities. It is not communism they fear — it is Socialism,” Kantorovitch contends, noting that the “machinations” of the Old Guard had failed and the Socialist Party in New York had passed into the hands of the new generation of revolutionary socialists.

A Letter to the Membership, by Charles Garfinkel and Jack Altman [Dec. 14, 1935] Threatened for two years, a split of the Socialist Party of New York was now a reality, writes Charles Garfinkel and Jack Altman, temporary executives of a new parallel City Committee established in opposition to that of the Old Guard faction. The previous “gerrymandered” City Central Committee by a vote of 48 to 44 had decided to reorganize the party, expelling all who participated or worked in connection with The Socialist Call, rival paper of the dissidents of the Militant faction and their close allies surrounding party leader Norman Thomas. Old Guard leaders Louis Waldman, Julius Gerber, James Oneal, and Algernon Lee are called “party wreckers” and “breeders of disunity” and likened to Daniel DeLeon by the two alternative leaders. The Old Guard is charged with violation of party democracy, refusal to accept the judgments of the national convention, and attempting to undermine the national Socialist Party leadership with a view to creating a national split. Additional charges are leveled that the Old Guard has used the capitalist press to win political advantage, been incompetence in party work, condoned trade union corruption, engaged in the systematic exclusion of young newcomers, libeled Norman Thomas for having debated Earl Browder, and suspended branches not to their liking so as to deny them representation on the City Central Committee and maintain their dictatorial regime, in the worst tradition of “Tammany tricks and political conniving.” A new City Central Committee office had been established, Garfinkel and Altman note.

New York Locals Vote 29-15 for Party Loyalty. (Socialist Call) [Dec. 28, 1935] Although the constitutional mechanism is unclear, it seems that in the aftermath of the Dec. 4 split of the New York City Central Committee into dual Old Guard and Militant-Thomasite bodies, a referendum vote of the branches of Local New York took place to resolve the dispute. According to this report from the organ of the insurgents, by a vote of 29 to 15 these branches decided in favor of the Militant faction’s new rival body. A branch-by-branch listing of allegiances is included in the report. Various factional shenanigans of the opposition are specified, including the Old Guard’s expulsion of 9 branches, its refusal to allow qualified Young People’s Socialist League members from gaining their party cards, as had been called for in a July agreement, the allowance of the voted of members of a rival Old Guard “Young Socialist Alliance,” and the stacking of membership roles by strategic transfer of Old Guard memberships from one branch to another.

1936

No month given

Crisis in the CP by James Casey. Graphic pdf of a full pamphlet by Socialist Party partisan James Casey criticizing from the left the new “People’s Front” line of the Communist Party USA. The People’s Front represented a fundamental departure from “the fundamental teachings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels” as well as disowning “in deeds, if not yet in words, all of the preachings and hopes of Nicolai Lenin, great interpreter of Marx.” The People’s Front put aside the class struggle as “outdated,” Casey contends, thereby rendering the CPUSA as an organization of “open class collaboration” — a “social reform organization.” The party’s membership had thus been cast into a “Niagara of Confusion” and an exodus from CP ranks in response to the new line had followed. Casey pointedly notes that party dues books had been changed, removing the full page devoted to the party’s form of organization and goals, leaving only information about dues rates and room for monthly dues stamps. Changes to the form and content of the “new” Daily Worker — and a decline in its circulation under the People’s Front — are further noted as indicative of the Communist Party’s rightward turn. Party leader Earl Browder’s electoral pronouncement that “We must defeat Landon at all costs,” thereby tacitly endorsing the Democratic Party and Franklin D. Roosevelt, is called “the most shameless and, at the same time, the most disgraceful chapter in the history of the American Communist Party.” Casey concludes with a call for Communists to join with Socialist Party members to fight for higher wages, better living conditions, defense of the Soviet Union, and against imperialism, imperialist wars, and class collaboration.

JANUARY

Socialist NEC Lifts Charter in New York State. (Socialist Call) [Events of Jan. 4-5, 1936] In January 1936 the governing National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, controlled by an alliance of party radicals and Norman Thomas loyalists, decided the matter of competing Socialist Party administrations in New York in the favor of the insurgents by voting to suspend the charter and reorganize the Socialist Party of New York. Called before the NEC to resolve the dispute, Old Guard leader Louis Waldman was dismissive, merely sending a letter of refusal. The investigation proceeded nonetheless, with David Berenberg — an individual closely associated with the Rand School in the past — charging that “The Old Guard in New York has precipitated an emergency in which only the vigorous action of New York comrades has saved the party from being shattered into fragments. As a result of a threatened purge under the guise of reorganization, which would have left the party stripped of all its vital elements, a revolt of the party membership has resulted in the establishment of a new party apparatus.” The New York charter was lifted and a provisional State Executive Committee named pending formal state reorganization — a list which in the spirit of compromise pointedly included among its 15 members, 5 representatives associated with the Old Guard’s Rand School or the Jewish Daily Forward against only 3 activists of the Militant faction. In a rhetorical flourish short on introspection, Old Guard NEC member James Oneal, a chief perpetrator of the abrogation of party elections and the expulsions and suspensions of the Left Wing Section in 1919, angrily charged that the NEC’s action were “unconstitutional, illegal, and unprecedented.”

The Party Controversy, by Norman Thomas [Jan. 11, 1936] Two-time Socialist Party Presidential candidate and factional leader Norman Thomas offers his take on the factional war which had shattered the New York party. Thomas upbraids Louis Waldman and Jim Oneal as “Old Guard extremists,” crippled by a “communist phobia.” He defends the Dec. 28-29, 1935 New York party conference at Utica as an act to “save the party” by removing “a State Committee which crowned a long list of sins of omission and commission against the Party by the wholly illegal attempt to expel from the Party everyone in any way connected with The Socialist Call.” Thomas acknowledges that the extraordinary activity against the State Executive Committee in New York had “greatly weakened the Party” by giving “left-handed encouragement to secession in Indiana, to a Hearst-like denunciation of Russia, to a dozen other things wholly opposed to true Socialism.” Nevertheless, he offers Waldman, Oneal & Co. an olive branch: “The cure for this is not expulsion. For individuals in the Old Guard I have a genuine affection. A good Socialist Party must be inclusive. It needs the right wing.”

APRIL

To All Enrolled Socialist Voters: A Statement on the Primaries, by Jack Altman, et al. [Election of April 2, 1936] In an echo of previous factional wars, the 1936 New York state Socialist Party primary election saw the nomination of rival slates of candidates. This is an election message and “signature ad” targeted to primary voters by the Militant-Thomasite alliance. The statement charges the Old Guard headed by Louis Waldman and James Oneal with various sins, including the willful overlooking of union corruption, the sheltering of expelled trade unionists in their ranks, a “black record” of work with the unemployed, and continued strident attempts to undermine the political efforts of Norman Thomas. The Old Guard is similarly charged with tepid criticism of the Franklin Roosevelt administration and the use of the methods of dictatorship to win their way in the party. “They went so far as to try to expel from the Party those who disagreed with them — comrades like Norman Thomas — but the National Executive Committee of the Party, the highest body between national conventions, prevented it,” the campaign statement notes. The list of 45 signatories which follows includes a few of the usual suspects and many lesser known trade union officials along with such “big names” as Anita and S. John Block, long of the New York Call, black leaders Frank Crosswaith and A. Philip Randolph, Jessie Wallace Hughan of the War Resisters’ League, former Rand School activist David Berenberg, and Louis Waldman’s fellow 1920 New York Assembly associate Sam DeWitt.

MAY

Notes on the United Front Problem, by Haim Kantorovitch [May 1936] Kantorovitch, an intellectual leader of the Socialist Party‣s “Militant” faction, takes aim both at the “Old Guard” defectors such as Louis Waldman, who after being soundly defeated by the SP majority in National Convention, in a party referendum, in the NEC, and in the New York SP primaries, are presumptuous enough to dictate terms under which they will return to the party fold. “It never occurred to people like Waldman that he and his followers could remain in the Socialist Party and use all the legal and ethical party channels to persuade the majority of the party members that after all the Old Guard was right,” Kantorovitch observes. Instead, the Old Guard splitters had chosen to fight the party, making use of none-too-subtle red baiting tactics in the capitalist press. This involved a conscious attempt to confuse two distinct concepts, according to Kantorovitch: the United Front and “participation of Socialists in common action in which Communists also participate.” In the former case, a “permanent and national agreement” between the Socialist and Communist Parties would lock the two organizations together, while in the latter case the Socialist and Communist Parties participate in joint projects as members of a still larger coalition, free to come or go or to criticize as each organization so desired. Kantorovitch sees the Old Guard Socialists as having adopted the discarded theory of social fascism and inverted it — projecting instead the Communist Party as the “chief enemy” which must be defeated and stricken from the ranks of the labor before serious battle could be waged against capitalism, war, and fascism. Kantorovitch states that the revolutionary socialists of the Militant faction the Communists were an integral part of the labor movement — merely one from which revolutionary socialists differed. Common action with such an organization was possible, Kantorovitch asserts, but not (in present circumstances) a United Front, which would inevitably require the Socialists to surrender their freedom and obligation to criticize particulars of Soviet Society, Stalin, and Stalinism.

AUGUST

Socialist Party is Split in New York Expulsions: ‘LaGuardia Socialists’ Oust Left Wingers at Rump Meeting of Central Committee.(Socialist Appeal) [event of Aug. 9, 1937] On August 9, 1937 another split of the Socialist Party of New York was formalized when an alliance of factions constructed around the personalities of Jack Altman and Norman Thomas, making use of the full repertoire of machine-political tricks, expelled 52 top leaders of the Trotskyist “Appeal” faction from the party. This report in the debut issue of the Trotskyists’ New York organ, The Socialist Appeal, details the process from the point of view of the expelled factional group. The proceeding had been predetermined and rushed through over a request from SPA National Secretary Roy Burt to delay for one week so that the party’s governing National Executive Committee could investigate, the reporter notes. The meeting additionally had been stacked by the New York City Central Committee pulling the charters of three left wing branches to deprive them of committee representation and refusing to seat other validly elected left wing delegates. Only four hours of debate had taken place on this first action that was ultimately to affect 450 party members, according to the article, and no specific charges had been presented to any individual affected other than advocacy of participation in a new revolutionary 4th International. No charge of violation of party discipline had been proved against any expelled member, the article notes. The expulsion process had been so brazenly undemocratic that it had caused the left social democratic “Clarity” faction “to denounce the Altman machine as worse than that of the Old Guard and to refuse to recognize the legality of the entire procedure.” The expulsion had been a necessary expedient to those favoring participation in the American Labor Party, conservative trade union functionaries, and anti-Trotskyist Communist Party sympathizers, in the estimation of the writer. The slogan “Unite all forces around the left wing!” was advanced in the aftermath and a call for resolutions denouncing “the illegal and reactionary expulsions” made.

1937

MARCH

Exclusive Story of SP Convention Shows Collapse: Party Disintegrating and in Complete Control of Communists, Milwaukee Delegate Writes, by Frederic Heath [events of March 26-29, 1937 Pioneer Milwaukee Socialist and founding member of the Socialist Party Frederic Heath offers a disillusioned and bitter account of the tumultuous 1937 national convention of the Socialist Party of America in Chicago. He and his moderate Wisconsin comrades had “felt as if they had blundered into an alien gathering to which they did not belong,” he writes in a convention account for the New York Social Democratic Federation weekly, The New Leader. The first day of the gathering had been a shock, “surrounded by leering, victorious Communists who have made a complete capture of the movement we have given much of our lives to help build up,” Heath notes. The fact that the convention had been placed “completely in the control of the enemy” was “a miracle that had been made possible by the arch betrayer, Norman Thomas,” in Heath’s estimation. A second part of the account, written two days later is more sanguine. Instead of seeing himself as part of a minority against a monolith in a 75-25 delegate split, Heath writes of delegates who were “not Communists in fact who had been stung by the direct actionists’ tsetse bug” and who attempted compromise with the Wisconsin delegation, including 2 designated seats on their forthcoming 15 seat NEC. The ultimate way the Socialist Party of Wisconsin would proceed in the wake of the expulsion of the Old Guard New York organization and departure of the Pennsylvania and Connecticut organizations from the SPA was not yet known, Heath indicates. “There will be no relish, to state it mildly, for a national party with a shipload of Communist pirates aboard and manning the guns,” he remarks.

MAY

“Advance in Chicago: An Analysis of the March 1937 Special Convention,” by Samuel Romer & Hal Siegel. Held only 10 months after the 1936 conclave, the Socialist Party’s Special Convention of 1937 was ostensibly called to restructure the national organization, increasing centralization in place of the historic loose federation of largely independent state organizations and banning the factional press in favor of a central discussion bulletin. Factionalism remained one of the central concerns of the organization, however, particularly the working alliance between the historic small group of “single plankers” (who advocated no ameloriative reforms in the party program, only the agitation for revolutionary socialism) and the new cohort of former members of the Trotskyist “Workers Party,” who shared this perspective and gave the position critical mass from a factional standpoint. Romer and Siegel, adherents of the majority Militant wing of the party, note that the decision to ban factional inner-party organs was made by the convention unanimously and saw this as a positive sign for the future of the organization.

JULY

“Letter to Glen Trimble from Gus Tyler in New York, circa July 15, 1937.” A cautionary letter from left socialist and future ILGWU functionary Gus Tyler to his comrade Glen Trimble, who had chosen to cast his lot with the Trotskyists moving to split the Socialist Party of America. Tyler accuses Trimble of dishonesty, noting that the Clarity faction had been consistently in favor of party unity but that the Cannon-Shachtman Appeal faction had lied about the matter and vilified the Clarity-dominated National Executive Committee as a right wing body hand-picked by the conservative Milwaukee organization. Tyler accuses the Trotskyist Appeal faction of “dialectical crookedness” in demanding freedom of agitation when in the minority, fully intending to suppress dissent when in the majority. Tyler charges the Trotskyist foolishly refuse to accept the possibility of multiple correct revolutionary socialist solutions to social and political problems, thereby creating a situation in which “virtually every tactical difference becomes a principled difference; every momentary slip becomes a calculated conspiracy against eternal verity; every non-Trotskyite becomes a reformist, therefore an agent of the bourgeoisie, therefore a counter-revolutionary.” Factional disintegration is the inevitable result, Tyler cautions. “Your organization can not gain any influence by basing itself upon the lie that it alone is revolutionary. Other revolutionists won’t believe you, and will despise you for your pious hypocrisy. The workers won’t believe you and will laugh at your splits when they find the time to pay any attention to you at all,” Tyler presciently warns.

AUGUST

1938

MARCH

“The Moscow Trials,” by Norman Thomas [March 1938] Article by the leader of the Socialist Party attempting to make sense of the Great Show Trials in Moscow—the third of which, featuring Bukharin in the dock, was held March 2-13, 1938. “These confessions, true, false, or partly true and partly false, are for us who have believed in socialism as the hope of the world the occasion of bitter tears and deep humiliation,” states Thomas, who notes similar patently false confessions happened during the period of the Spanish Inquisition and the witchcraft trials. “I assume that in a regime which makes possible no legal or democratic opposition even within the Communist Party to the decisions of the bureaucracy there have been plots. This was probably especially true in the dark days of 1932-1933....The important thing is that there is no interpretation of these trials which does not bring shame upon the regime,” writes Thomas. He adds that “Lenin was a great enough man to master the amoral tactics which he consciously used with some regard for proportion and achievement. None of his successors has that ability. Insofar as Lenin, yes, and Trotsky, were responsible for this exaltation of secular Jesuitism as a kind of working class virtue, they must share in the guilt of its complete degeneration under Stalin.... [Stalin’s] supreme failure has been an exaltation of a regime which makes suspicion of one’s closest comrades inevitable and plots and counterplots the only vehicle of effective political activity.” Thomas calls the USSR “a totalitarian state under a monolithic party” and presciently notes the likelihood of a change of party line with some chance of “an alliance or understanding with Hitler.”

Thomasite Group Denied Affiliation with Labor Party: ALP State Executive Committee Votes 10 to 7 Against Accepting Offer of Socialist Party. (New Leader) [events of March 7-10, 1938] In March 1938 politically astute New Yorkers were treated to the spectacle of the state Socialist Party attempting to follow the Social Democratic Federation which had split from it (because it saw the Socialists as Communist-dominated) into the American Labor Party — which actually was dominated by Communists through their trade union leadership positions! Adding to the complexity or mirth of the situation, the Socialists were backed in their appeal to join the ALP by their erstwhile rivals of the SDF (Louis Waldman and Louis Hendin) and stymied by the organized opposition of the Communists (Mike Quill, Vito Marcantonio, Louis Weinstock). State Secretary of the ALP Alex Rose clarified that the Socialist Party of New York’s application to join the ALP as a group was only temporarily deferred by the State Committee of that organization rather than rejected outright. In other news, the Democratic Party establishment began its red baiting of the ALP for having appointed the former head of the Socialist Party radio station WEVD as head of municipal radio station WNYC and for having broadcast a travelogue of the Soviet Union. This was dismissed by the SDF’s official New York Leader as an election-driven attempt to “besmirch” the ALP.

APRIL

SP Reports Show Sharp Decline in Party Membership.(New Leader) [events of April 21-23, 1938] Unsigned news account from the pages of the rival New Leader purporting to reveal details of a secret (executive session) report of Socialist Party National Secretary Roy Burt to the delegates of the 1938 party convention. According to this article, Burt revealed that membership of the SPA had plummeted to a mere 3,000 for the first quarter of 1938 and that finances were in a critical state. Factional activity conducted by the now-expelled Trotskyist wing had force the revocation of party charters for the state parties of Oklahoma, California, Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio, according to this account, with the additional loss of Arkansas, Arizona, Montana, Washington, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming due to insufficient membership. A new declaration of principles dealing with war and fascism had been adopted by the convention, with the two phrases most objectionable to the Old Guard/SDF dissidents from the 1934 declaration eliminated, it is said.

1944

NO MONTH

Building the Social Democratic Party, by Emil Seidel [1944] Short excerpt from a previously unpublished memoir by the first Socialist Mayor of Milwaukee, Emil Seidel. Seidel tells the tale of his membership in Branch 1 of the Social Democratic Party of America, where the Pennsylvania-born but culturally German Seidel came into contact with socialists of "purely native stock” such as Frederic Heath for the first time. The SDP grew in Milwaukee and expanded its branch structure to parallel the city’s electoral wards; Seidel consequently moved from Branch 1 to the 20th Ward Branch. He relates the story of bringing in the silver-tongued orator F.G.R. Gordon as a stump speaker. Gordon is remembered as a great influence in Seidel’s own development into one of Milwaukee socialism’s most effective stump speakers, despite Gordon’s later being discredited for falsifying statistics. An anecdote about the 1900 Debs campaign is related.

Joining the Socialist Movement, by Emil Seidel [1944] Short excerpt from a previously unpublished memoir by the Socialist Mayor of Milwaukee, Emil Seidel, dealing with the socialist movement in that city during the decade of the 1890s. Seidel notes that he was brought into a non-party socialist club called the Vereinigung [Association] by a foreman at the metal fabrication plant where he worked. The group included 35 to 40 German-speaking socialists and was closely linked to the publishing ventures of Victor L. Berger, the daily Arbeiter Zeitung [Workers’ Newspaper], which was replaced by the weekly Vorwärts [Forward]. Seidel relates an anecdote of a disillusioned Victor Berger attacking in print the People’s Party’s "free silver” plank of 1896 before turning down $10,000 from a Republican Party insider to print a 100,000 copy extra edition of the paper containing this editorial. Berger won trade union leader and orator Eugene Debs to socialism when Debs was serving a six month jail term in connection with the 1894 Pullman strike. A new organization called the Social Democracy resulted; Seidel states that he was the first person to sign up for membership in Branch One of the group when it was established in Milwaukee at a meeting addressed by Debs. This gave way to the Social Democratic Party of America in 1897. Seidel details the first slate of this new organization in Milwaukee, which stood in the city elections of 1898, drawing just over 2,400 votes.