The crisis in the Socialist party

CHAPTER ONE ■

chapter one: The Failure of the Socialist Party
and the Reason Why

Success Was Possible, 4. Why the Socialist Party Failed, 5,

chapter two : A Generation of Reformism and Its
Disastrous Effects

l The Socialist Party's Failure to Assume Mass
Le\dership, 9. a. Passivity in Strikes and Other Struggles,
9 i) Contradictory Industrial Union Policy, 11. C Anti-
Labor Party Tendency 13. d. Opportunist Trade Union
Neutrality, 15. E. Opportunist War Policy, IT. F. Sabotag-
ing the Russian Revolution, 18. a Neck Deep in Class Col-
laboration, 20. H. Socialist Party Inertia in the Crisis, 23.
A Word in Summary, 24.

chapter three: A Generation of Reformism and
Its Disastrous Effects (Continued)

•> The War Against the Left Wing, 26. The Two
~Win« of the Party, 27. Early Phases of the Inner-Party
Struggle, 30. The 1912 Split, 32. The 1919 Split, 35.
The Communist Party, 37.

chapter four: The Present Situation in the So-
cialist Party

The Turn to the Left, 41. The Socialist Party's Petty-
Bourgeois Leadership, 42.

1 The Question of the Daily Mass Struggles, 43
a' The New Socialist Party Sectarian Reformism, 44
B Under-estimation of Immediate Demands, 45. c. The
Retreat Before Fascism, 47. D. A Reactionary Peace 1 olicy,
50. E. A Sectarian Labor Party Policy, 5 3. F. Thomas
Defeatism, 5 5.

2 The Question ok Cultivating the Revolutionary
Forces, 56. a. Reformist Theoretical W lakness 56, b.
Hostility Against the United Front, 60. c. Unfriendly Atte
,,,,1, Towards the Soviet Union, 63, The Perspective of
the ' alisi Party, 65.

PUBLISHED BY WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS, INC.
P ... BOS i|S, 6TA. D, NEW YORK CITY. NOVEMBER, l 93 6

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26

41

The Failure of the Socialist Party and the
Reason Why

WHEN the Socialist Labor Party split in 1900-1901, and gave
birth to the Socialist Patty, this was a progressive development.
The Socialist Labor Party, although some twenty-three years in the
field, had not been able to root itself firmly among the American
masses. It remained a skeleton organization of the foreign-born,
and its program and activities had little immediate relation to the lite
of the native workers. The main cause of this was its narrow
sectarian policy, especially in the previous ten years under the leader-
ship of Daniel De Leon. , T ,

In 1900, capitalism was undergoing a very rapid expansion. 1 he
working class was also growing swiftly and its grievances and strug-
gles were multiplying. There was an urgent need for a better organi-
sation of the workers' struggles, economically and politically, in the
* light of a revolutionary goal for the working class. In this situation
o breaking through the hard sectarian shell of the Socialist Labor
Party, the Socialist Party came into existence. .

Great hopes were placed in the new organization by the bulk
roof the revolutionary elements of the time. And during the oncoming
?lyears these revolutionary forces put forth the most intense efforts to
Strengthen the party. Many thousands of workers made the building
Sof the Socialist Party their life's work. They struggled and fough
©If or it, and prepared and distributed seas of propaganda. At tunes it
looked as though their efforts would succeed, for the Socialist Party
Iradually grew in membership and influence. It appeared that the
American party would be able to progress as fast as the rapidly grow-
ing Socialist Parties in other capitalist countries.

g But since the formation of the Socialist Party thirty-five years
have passed, and what do we see? The Socialist Party into which so
much devoted work was put, is today small, stagnant and weak; m
Set is actually declining both in organizational strength and influence
In 1903, the Socialist Party had 15,970 members, and in 1935 it

3

415380

^M

had 19,121 or just about the number it started with a generation
before, and it is now rapidly losing membership. The Socialist Party's
vote in 1932 was 883,342, or less than the 897,01 1 which it polled
in 1912. Twenty-five years ago the Party's trade union influence also
was many times greater than it is at the present time. The Party has r
long since lost its single representative in Congress, And so it is on
all fronts: stagnation and decline. To cap the climax, the Socialist
Party is now undergoing a national split which has thrown the Party
into confusion, is causing it a heavy loss in membership, and is gen-
erally creating a critical situation.

Obviously, the Socialist Party, like the Socialist Labor Party before
it, has failed. That is the meaning of its present crisis. The Socialist
Party has not been the means of winning the American masses
ideologically for socialism nor of providing them with the necessary
effective political organization. The reality of the failure of the So-
cialist Party is emphasized by the very existence of the Communist
Party. It was only because the Socialist Party did not function as an
effective revolutionary organization of the American working class
that the Communist Party came into being.

Success Was Possible

It is a pertinent question to ask why this miserable showing of
the Socialist Party over so many years? Is this the best that could
have been done for socialism in the greatest capitalist country in the
world? The workers have the right to a correct answer to this
question. No party can claim the sole right to carry the banner^ of
socialism unless it can effectively defend it. Self-criticism is a cardinal
Leninist virtue and the Socialist Party has great need at present to
practice it. The lessons to be learned should be helpful in bringing
the Socialist Party out of its present serious crisis.

The customary explanation for the inability of the Socialist Party
to grow is that it was because of the great objective difficulties in the
United States that it had to contend with. There is much merit in
this contention; but as we shall see, it does not explain basically the
failure of the Socialist Party.

Among the big objective factors militating against the develop-
ment of class consciousness among the workers and the building of a
revolutionary party in the United States were (a) the existence of
plentiful government free land during several generations; (b) the

)

traditionally higher wage and living standards; (c) the development
of a large and conservative labor aristocracy made up principally of
American-born workers; (d) the presence of millions of low-paid
disfranchised immigrant workers of Various nationalities, languages,
religions and traditions; (e) the passage of large numbers of workers
into the ranks of the petty bourgeois^ and many even into the big
bourgeoisie during the long period o;f industrial expansion; (f) the
existence of a relatively high degree q>f the formal democratic rights
of free speech, free press, free assembly, to organize and strike, to
be elected to any office, the fiction o f legalized social equality, etc.,
which were won by the toilers many years before in the early stages
of the bourgeois revolution and which no longer served as major
issues of immediate political struggle (as, for example, they did
in Germany, Austria and other European countries).

These many economic, political an d social factors undoubtedly
tended powerfully to blur class line Sj to create bourgeois property
illusions among the workers, and to prevent their independent political
organization as a class. But they did not stifle the class struggle
altogether. Far from it. The American working masses bitterly
resented the brutal and ferocious exploitation to which they were
subjected, and they resolutely fought against it. This is amply shown
by their long history of determined trade union struggles. Prior to
the great war no country in the world except tsarist Russia had such
a record of violent and fiercely fought strikes as the United States.
The workers' strong class instinct and fighting trade union spirit were
the raw material out of which a real revolutionary party could have
been built. Not as big a party perhaps as in some European coun-
tries, yet certainly a strong, healthy, growing organization. But the
Socialist Party proved glaringly incapable of educating these dis-
contented masses, of raising their struggle from the economic to the
political sphere, and of building a strong party from their ranks. It is
our task to learn the reasons why.

Why the Socialist Party Failed

When the Socialist Party broke through the crust of Socialist
Labor Party sectarianism and took U p its work of education and
organization it found indeed a very h^rd problem before it; one more
difficult in fact than that faced by the Socialist Party in any major
capitalist Country. The working cla^s, in the grip of a tremendous

'

ruling class propaganda, was thoroughly saturated with capitalist
illusions; the trade unions were already in the hands of the deeply
reactionary Gompers clique; the great mass of workers were still
tied to the two big capitalist parties. Therefore, the most elementary
work of enlightenment and organization stood before the Party.

In this difficult situation, in order to grow and to put itself at
the head of these backward masses, dominated by ruthless capitalist
enemies, the Socialist Party had boldly to tackle the great problems
of mass education, organization and struggle confronting it It had
to militantly wrest the leadership of the masses out of the hands of
the capitalists and their labor agents. It had to be a fighting party, a
party of militant proletarian class struggle.

This meant that to develop such a policy of Marxian class strug-
gle, the Socialist Party had to fulfil two major and basic conditions:
(1) to give active political leadership to the workers in their every-
day fights for immediate and burning economic and political de-
mands* and (2) systematically to educate its own membership and
mass following in the principles of Marxian Socialism. Only >nth«
manner could the Socialist Party come forward as the real vanguard
of the workers in the class struggle and at the same time build up
a strong body of revolutionary fighters to serve as the very founda-
tion and structure of the Party and all its work.

The validity of such a policy of Marxian class struggle is demon-
strated by the whole history of the American labor movement. No
o-g nization can make headway against the powerful American capi-
talist class without an aggressive, fighting policy. For example h
trade unions have always grown most in their periods of greate
militancy, and stagnated most in their periods of intense* class col-
IXatS. Recent expre S sions of this truth were the rapid expansion
of the trade unions during the great strike wave of 1933-1934 and
the paralyzing decay that set in among them during the period of
wL^real class collaboration in the so-called good times from

'^Anothrelmentary proof of the effectiveness and i correctne^ >of
the oolicv of class struggle is furnished by the growth of the Commu

nist P Z in numbers and influence. Although the Communist Party
nist Party n num ^ ^^ four t]mes as

I^;;'^! . "AVoli^dtd heihv, while .he Sod* Part.
Tmn wTh factionalism. The Communis. Party, moreover, has had

1

to face far greater persecution than was ever the case with the So-
cialist Party, exemplified by the Palmer Red raids in which thousands
were arrested, wholesale expulsions from the trade unions and indus-
tries by reactionary American Federation of Labor leaders, violent
attacks by the capitalist press, government deportations, etc. The
growth of the Communist Party in the face of these difficulties is to
be ascribed to its brave and tireless class struggle policy.

Still another demonstration of the correctness of the class struggle
policy is provided by the history of the Socialist Party itself. The best
periods of growth of the Socialist Party were exactly those in which
its policies, because of Left wing pressure, took on more of a class
struggle character (thus 1907-1912), and it was exactly during
those periods in which the Socialist Party plunged most deeply into
class collaboration (for example, 1923-1932) that the Party was
weakest and least effective in the class struggle.

From all this we are led directly to the principal cause of the
Socialist Party's failure historically. This failure was caused precisely
by the fact that, except upon rare occasions, the Socialist Party has
not carried on a policy of class struggle. On the contrary, its tradi-
tional course has been one of opportunism, of reformism, of class
collaboration. Throughout its history the Socialist Party has flagrantly
violated the two fundamentals necessary to the development of the
Marxian class struggle policy required for the building of a revolu-
tionary party in the given American conditions. That is, ( 1 ) it has
not come forward as the militant leader of the toiling masses in
their daily struggle over urgent economic and political issues, but,
instead, has systematically evaded assuming such leadership; (2)
it has not striven to build up a strong body of revolutionary Marxian
understanding among the Party membership and mass following,
but, on the contrary, has definitely hindered and checked the growth
of such revolutionary education.

The reformist, opportunist policy which the Socialist Party has
traditionally followed was the natural consequence of the composition
of its decisive leading forces. From its inception, the Socialist Party
attracted many elements of the city petty bourgeoisie who were
feeling acutely the pressure of the trusts upon the middle class and
who had no faith in the two old parties, but who in no sense were
Marxian revolutionaries. Hence the Party became infested with a
horde of lawyers, doctors, preachers, professors, journalists, small

businessmen, with an occasional "millionaire" Socialist thrown in.
And they, extra-vocal and very energetic, soon arrived at complete
domination over the Party.

These people, the Hillquits, Bergers, Works, Wallings, Spargos,
Russels, Myers, Waylands, Simons, Harrimans, Bensons, Stokes, etc.,
etc., were not revolutionists. They were radicals, the Left wing of
the petty bourgeoisie which was being crushed by monopoly capital
and which had no party of its own. Over and above mere wordy
differences between them, the decisive idea animating them all was to
build the Socialist Party into a sort of progressive-populist party. To
this end they advocated opportunist policies of government and
municipal ownership of industry and various minor legislative re-
forms, with the general idea of some day transforming capitalism
into socialism through a peaceful process of the worker voting
themselves into power and then legally buying out the industries.

The general conception of the proletariat's role by these middle
class elements was to serve as an instrument of the petty bourgeoisie
in its fight for self-preservation against the advancing big capitalists.
To them the class struggle of the workers was essentially something
foreign, something, at best, that they only had a dilletante interest in
and which, at worst, was a danger to their vote-catching and class
collaboration schemes. Consequently, the middle class, intellectual
leaders of the Party throughout its history played down every
manifestation of working class fighting spirit. And all the way along
through the years they distorted or suppressed the teaching of Marx-
ism to the Party members and following and used their own power
to check the development of, and even to drive out of the Party in
thousands, the very revolutionary elements without whom the Party
could not possibly be built, the Left wing of the Party.

The general result of these long-continued reformist, non-revo-
lutionary policies was to make it impossible to build the Socialist
Party into a strong, revolutionary organization. The natural end-
product of such a history is the present-day weak and stagnant
Socialist Party.

CHAPTER TWO

A Generation of Reformism and Its
Disastrous Effects

1. The Socialist Party's Failure to Assume
Mass Leadership

XJOW let us look briefly at the record of the Socialist Party and see
concretely how it has persistently and flagrantly violated the two
main essentials of the Marxian class struggle policy necessary for
the building of a revolutionary party in the specific American con-
ditions, namely, the development of the Party as the actual leader
of the masses in the daily struggle and the cultivation of Marxian
principles among the Party membership and mass following. We
will take up the former essential first. Our summary of the So-
cialist Party's experiences in this connection makes no pretense at
being a complete history of the Party. All it does is to indicate some
of the main opportunist errors of the Party and the lessons to be
drawn from them. The period covered extends from the foundation
of the Party in 1901 down to the Socialist Party convention of
1934. As for the present tendencies of the Socialist Party, I shall
discuss them in a later chapter.

A. Passivity in Strikes and Other Struggles

When the Socialist Party was formed the trade unions were
already in the hands of the Gompers machine. The reactionary
trade union leaders did not carry on a campaign to organize the mass
of the unorganized, but instead confined their efforts chiefly to tin-
narrow fringe of skilled workers. Many of these leaders were sloth-
ful, inefficient, self-seeking, corrupt, and tied up with all kinds of
capitalist organizations. They were open defenders of the capitalist
system, worked hand in glove with the two capitalist parties and
generally acted as a brake upon the development of the : vf orkers 5
class struggle.

In such a situation it was manjfestly the task and duty of tin

9

Socialist Party to do everything within its power to stimulate and
give political leadership to the immediate struggles of the workers,
particularly on the trade union field. This does not mean that the
Socialist Party should have undertaken to take the place of the trade
unions, but it should have sought to invigorate them, to extend
their strikes, to strengthen their organization campaigns and gen-
erally to give practical leadership to their struggle, as against the
reactionary policies of the Gompers machine.

This aggressive policy offered a high road to effective mass leader-
ship by the Party. But such a course was alien to the nature and
policies of the Socialist Party petty-bourgeois leaders. They neither
saw the historic task before the Party nor had the impulse to carry
it out. They conceived the Party principally to be a propaganda organ-
ization, a movement to further their conceptions of public ownership
and moderate legislative reform, as well, as to conduct occasional
election campaigns. They did not militantly lead the struggling

workers.

Since its foundation, the Communist Party has shown how a

party should give the lead to the trade unions and unorganized

masses. Time and again it has mobilized its organizers and financial

resources to support and strengthen trade union and other struggles.

Many examples of this might be cited, such as the placing of some

twenty paid organizers in the Pittsburgh area during the 1927 coal

strike; the maintenance of many organizers during various Labor

Party campaigns; the extensive organization crews built up during

the big unemployment struggle of 1930-1933, the financing of

various united front conferences, etc. But this active and leading

organization work was practically unknown to the petty-bourgeois

leaders of the Socialist Party. Where any such work was done it was

almost always under the direct initiative of the Left wing. It is true

that individual unions controlled by Socialists and also minorities of

Socialists Within various organizations outlined active organization

campaigns and strike work, but this was largely spontaneous; the

Party as a whole did not follow any such general policy. Its essential

attitude was that of a bystander, commentator and educational force,

rather than the militant, actual leader of the workers' daily struggle

for their burning economic and political demands. .',-■*

Illustrations of this Socialist Party passivity could be cited, it

space permitted, from many important strike struggles, orgamza-

10

tion campaigns, etc., throughout the many years of the Party's
existence. But the Socialist Party's attitude during the many great
labor defense cases that came up from time to time serves to exem-
plify its non-militant relation towards the class struggle. In the
Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone case in 1907, the Left wing of
the Party gave active support, but the Right wing, instinctively sens-
ing the militant revolutionist Haywood as an enemy, sabotaged the
fight. In the McNamara case of 1911, the Socialist Party leaders,
jointly with the American Federation of Labor, gave a certain sup-
port, until these brave fighters, badly advised, pleaded guilty in an
effort to save the trade unions and their leaders from persecution.
Whereupon the Socialist Party, like the American Federation- of
Labor, abandoned them completely and has never done a thing to
help them since, although McNamara and Schmidt are still in jail
after twenty-five years. In the Mooney-Billings and Sacco-Vanzetti
cases of later years, it was the Anarchists, Syndicalists, Communists
and Farmer-Labor ites who took the lead in the fight, with the
Socialist Party trailing along in the rear. And in the recent Scottsboro
case, it was the Communist Party that leaped quickly to the defense
of the condemned nine Negro boys and by its swift action undoubt-
edly saved them from electrocution, while the Socialist Party only
joined the struggle in the later stages, and then lamely and formally.
This traditional passive attitude of the Socialist Party towards the
daily class struggle of the workers, the tendency to tail after the
masses, to preach at them rather than to stand militantly at their
head on every field of battle, cost the Socialist Party much possible
mass support and leadership. It was one of the major reasons why the
Socialist Party never succeeded in actually being accepted as the
fighting party of the proletariat in this country.

B. Contradictory Industrial Union Policy

One of the great mistakes also of the Socialist Party over many
years was its opportunist handling of the vital question of industrial
unionism. Even before 1900 the more progressive elements among
the workers realized that the craft unions, because of specialization
and trustification in industry, had become obsolete and that a system
of industrial unionism was imperatively necessary. All sections of the
revolutionary movement became impregnated with industrial union
sentiment. With the issue of industrial unionism was bound up the

11

whole question of the organization of the unorganized, honest lead-
ership, militant policy, etc. . -j V :„
It was the historic task of the Socialist Party to give clear direc-
tion and active leadership to the industrial union movement but it
failed dismally in this obligation. It is true that the Party declared
unequivocally for the principle of industrial unionism. But it never
told the workers clearly how to bring about industrial unionism, nor
did it give unified leadership to the movement. The Party was di-
vided for fifteen years into two sections over this fundamental ques-
tion The Right wing worked mildly within the A. F. of L. for the
principle of industrial organization through amalgamation, but always
ready to make an opportunist maneuver on the question with the
GoJpers machine. On the other hand, the revolutionary Left wing
of the Party, outraged by the corrupt regime in the A. F. *•%*£;
rected its efforts in the main towards the rea hzation of industrial
unionism through the incorrect policy of budding dual unions, that
" nZrial unions independent of the A. F of L. The outstanding
example of such dual industrial unions was the Industrial Workers of
the World, which was launched in 1905. _

Manifestly, in this situation, it was the definite responsibility of
the Party to liquidate by educational means and firm direction this
gllring contradiction in policy within its ranks and to concentrate
all Patty forces upon a militant struggle within the trade unions for
dust ia" unionism. But the petty-bourgeois Socialist Party eaders
did not want an active fight for industrial unionism inside the A.
F of U or outside either. They never wanted to fight the A F
of L leaders aggressively on basic issues. They were quite content

ha"v the infused situation drag along as it was. So, over many
years they straddled the question, and the Right wing continued its
5S line in the A F. of L., while the Left wing frittered
"way "strength in dual unionism. The typical opportunist policy on

hTvSl sue & was expressed in 1912 when the Soc ahst Party con-
vent n endorsed the principle of industrial unionism but .did ^o
sS whether this was to be brought to realization through the tian
formation of the old trade unions, or by the building up of the

1 WW. and similar dual industrial unions.

It was not until after the organization of the Communist Party
in 1919, and especially under the influence of the writings of Lenin
on the question of work within the old trade unions, that the revo-

12

lutionary movement in the United States liquidated its tradi aonal dual
union tendencies and worked out a militant campaign in the A. I.
of L. for industrial unionism, a campaign that eventually took or-
ganized shape in the Trade Union Educational League.

The general consequence of the Socialist Party's whole oppor-
tunist handling of the industrial union question vastly reduced the
effectiveness of the Party's industrial union campaign in general. The
work of one wing of the Party was antagonistic to that of the other,
and because of this doubly wrong policy the Socialist Party as a whole
lost its opportunity to secure real leadership of the masses on this
fundamental question.

C. Anti-Labor Party Tendency

Another disastrous error of the Socialist Party in pre-war days
was its opposition in principle to the formation of the Labor Party.
This was a mistake also shared in by the Left wing, for ultra-Left
reasons. It is a well-known fact that in those countries where, be-
cause of specific national conditions, the trade unions were organized
before the Socialist Parties took shape, the workers' first steps into
independent political action were in the form of organizing labor
parties based directly on the trade unions. This was notably the case
in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. The United States
belonged to this category of countries. Here, because of factors already
pointed out, the political development of the workers had been de-
layed; but they had succeeded in building trade unions. The con-
sequence was that when the workers began to feel the necessity for
organized class political action their natural tendency was to do as
the workers in Great Britain had done by developing a political or-
ganization, a Labor Party, directly out of the unions.

But the American Socialist Party leaders never understood this
elementary fact. They resisted the natural trend of the workers to
form a Labor Party. They tried mechanically to apply to the United
States a policy which was adapted to Germany, Austria and old
Russia, where the Socialist Party, either growing before or simulta-
neously with the trade Onions, naturally became looked upon by the
workers as the party of the working class. Thus, instead of helping
the workers to take their first steps in political action through a mass
Labor Party, the Socialist Party for many years sought to kill the

415380

Labor Party tendency by insisting upon the American workers ac-
cepting the Socialist Party as their mass party.

Instead of being its greatest champion as it should, the Socialist
Party traditionally looked upon the Labor Party as a rival and fought
against it. Harry W. Laidler said: "The formation of these parties
[local labor parties — W.Z.F.] in various parts of the country brought
a new competitor into the field against the Socialist Party.' 5 * Robert
Hunter, the S.P.'s early expert on the Labor Party, said the Social-
ist Party "is a Labor Party and all it needs is the united support of
all American organizations".** He believed that to build a Labor
Party apart from the Socialist Party would be "about as foolish a
thing as to scrap the machinery of the A. F. of L. and to form a new
trade union movement".***

It was only in 1921 when the Socialist Party, with but a handful
of members and with its anti-Labor Party policy clearly bankrupt,
finally had to yield to the inevitable and endorsed in principle the
organization of a Labor Party. But it never became reconciled to
this perspective. It refused to join with the Chicago Federation of
Labor, the Communist Party and other Left organizations in 1923
in a real fight for the Labor Party. It has never made an active cam-
paign for the Labor Party. Even today it is passive upon this whole
question and still has the lingering feeling that the Labor Party is
its rival.

The Socialist Party and the working class paid high for this long
continued anti-Labor Party tendency. The Socialists' resistance to
the naturally and spontaneously growing Labor Party definitely hin-
dered the political development of the working class. It checked the
growth of the Labor Party sentiment in the trade unions. It made it
easier for the Gompers machine to keep the masses tied to the two
old parties. Furthermore, with its wrong policy, the Socialist Party
gave up perhaps the best weapon it ever had with which to fight the
Gompers machine — the issue of the Labor Party. It was a sacrifice
that the opportunist leaders could easily make, however, in their
eagerness to be on good terms with the Gompers regime. The gen-
eral consequence was that the Socialist Party badly failed to give
leadership to the workers in the vital question of the development

* Socialism in Thought and Action, p. 465.
** Labor in Politics, p. 179.
*** Ibid.

14

of their mass political consciousness and organization, and the Socialist
Party itself as a result paid dearly in loss of potential membership
and influence.

D. Opportunist Trade Union Neutrality

Another disastrous reformist tendency that prevailed all through
the life of the Socialist Party down to the advent of the present new
leadership was the so-called attitude of neutrality towards the trade
unions. In substance this policy constituted a failure to put forward
the Party policy militantly in the trade unions. It was a refusal to
take up the cudgels for the necessary active fight against the corrupt
Gompers-Green leadership to win the masses for Socialism. W. J.
Ghent, expressing many Party decisions, defended this opportunist
policy on the basis that the "Party does not seek to dictate to organized
labor in matters of internal organization and policy".

It is clear that for Socialism to make headway in the working
class, especially in the trade union movement, the Socialist Party had
to come into head-on collision with the reactionary trade union lead-
ership. It was not a question of dictation to the unions, but of positive
assertion of the Party policy. But the doctors, lawyers, preachers,
journalists, etc., who led the Socialist Party, wanted no such fight.
In many instances in the trade unions, the Left Party elements,
notably such men as Duncan McDonald of the Illinois miners, made
a militant fight against Gompers. But this was not the true policy of
the Party leadership. They wanted to cooperate with the Gompers-
ites, not fight them. Such a struggle as that made later over many
years by the Trade Union Educational League or such a determined
stand as that now being taken by John L. Lewis and the Committee
for Industrial Organization against the trade union bureaucracy,
was quite foreign to the whole conception of the opportunist S.P.
leaders. They seldom got beyond the stage of shadow-boxing with
the reactionaries.

In fact, the S.P. leaders' real tendency was to collaborate and
amalgamate with the Gompers regime. If they did not actually con-
solidate their forces with the Green ruling bureaucracy sooner, it
was primarily because of the pressure of the large and militant Left
wing in the Party. However, after the big split in 1919 which took
the whole Left wing out of the Party, the petty-bourgeois leader-
ship, with no Left militants to restrain them, proceeded to drop all

15

opposition to Gompers and to identify themselves almost completely
with the reactionary ruling trade union clique. Says D. J. Saposs,
dealing with this period:

"This new political alignment of the Socialists with the admin-
istration forces marks the end of their leadership in the opposition
in the labor movement. They have abandoned the role of initiators
of new issues for the labor movement. They are no longer the center
of aggressive opposition.'

"In its political activities, the Socialist Party has followed a course
similar to that of the Socialist trade unionists. It has ceased attacking
the conservative unions and leaders." *

This traditional policy of the Socialist Party leadership to tem-
porize and compromise with the reactionary American Federation
of Labor officialdom was disastrous to the development of the Social-
ist Party as the real leading force in the labor movement. The only
way the Socialist Party could have come forward as the vanguard
of the working class was by a policy of sustained militant struggle on
all fronts against the Gompers regime, and in this it failed dismally.

In summing up the general situation during the pre-war period,
it can be safely said that if the Socialist Party had carried on a policy
of class struggle, as indicated in the foregoing, it could have de-
feated the Gompers regime and given the trade union movement a
Socialist leadership. In those days the Gompers machine was not so
deeply entrenched, trade union democracy was much more prevalent,
Red-baiting was not so effective (for the reactionaries then only
deemed the revolution pretty much as an abstraction), and a well-
directed fight could have upset the old leadership.

Even as it was, with all the wishy-washy opportunist policies of
the Socialist Party, passivity in strikes, organization -campaigns, Labor
defense cases, etc.; its confused industrial union policy; its anti-
Labor Party program; its weak fight against Gompers, etc., etc., —
the Socialist forces made distinct headway in the unions. In 1912
they controlled such organizations as the brewery workers, bakery
workers, shingle weavers, cap makers, painters, Western Federa-
tion of Miners, machinists, fur workers, journeymen tailors, ladies
garment workers, coal miners, etc. They also controlled many cen-
tral labor unions and large numbers of local unions, as well as strong

* Left Wing Trade Unionism) p. 39.

16

minorities in the printers, cigar makers and almost every other labor
organization. In the 1912 American Federation of Labor Conven-
tion, the Socialist candidate for President, Hayes, polled 5,073 votes
against Gompers 5 11,974. A determined policy on the part of the
Socialist Party leadership would have soon carried the majority of
the trade union movement. But such a policy was not applied. And
to make matters worse, the petty-bourgeois leadership of the Social-
ist Party proceeded to smash completely the hopes of the Socialist
forces winning the trade union leadership by driving thousands
of the best proletarian elements out of the Party during the big
Party split of 1912, of which I shall speak further along.

E. Opportunist War Policy

The World War presented a golden opportunity to the Socialist
Party to develop its strength and mass leadership, but it fumbled
the whole matter and failed to organize the masses effectively for
anti-war struggle. There was undoubtedly a huge sentiment among
the broad ranks of the people against America's entry into the war.
This was demonstrated, among other things, by the election of
Wilson on his anti-intervention program, and also by the total im-
mediate failure of the volunteer system to recruit soldiers for the
war. Not only did the situation offer a splendid opportunity for mass
anti-war work, but this was also the central revolutionary task
of the time.

But the reformist-led Socialist Party proved incapable of rising to
the occasion. It did not develop a definite and well-organized mass
struggle against the war. True enough, the Left wing, led by Debs
and Ruthenberg, did succeed in putting the Party on record against
the war and in developing considerable and- war agitation, even
though this was somewhat of a pacifist type and not yet a real
Bolshevik anti-war policy aiming at transforming the war into a
revolutionary struggle against capitalism.

The Right wing, however, took an equivocal position towards the
war. Many of the petty-bourgeois leaders — Russell, Walling, Spargo,
Simons, Stokes, Ghent, etc. — split away from the Party on a pro-
war program. The rest dilly-dallied with the question and, in effect,
sabotaged the Party's anti-war resolution. So that there was no real
crystallization of the Party's forces to mobilize the masses against

17

the war, no serious attempt to win the trade unions to an anti-war
position, no organization of anti-war strikes, etc.

The general result was that, instead of making the huge gains
that it should have made, the Socialist Party, because of its vacillating,
opportunist policy on the war, only made a relatively moderate mem-
bership increase in the war years. And this advance was more than
offset by a disastrous sharpening of the struggle between the Right
and Left wings in the Party over the reformist leadership's oppor- ■
tunist war-time policies, and also by serious losses of position and
control in the trade unions. During the war the Socialist Party paid
heavily for its long years of wrong trade union policy. Because the
Socialist Party had not entrenched itself in the unions in former times
by a militant struggle based on sound principles, the Gompers clique
was in firm command at the crucial moment and was able to use its
official control with telling effect to swing the trade unions to a pro-
war position. Thus it largely isolated the Socialist Party and crippled
the whole anti-war struggle. The Socialist Party reformist leaders
muffed the war situation almost completely. What should have re-
sulted in a great victory of the Party they eventually turned into a
serious defeat.

F, Sabotaging the Russian Revolution

A deadly, disastrous sin of the reformist petty-bourgeois leader-
ship of the Socialist Party against the working class and the Socialist
Party was its hostile attitude towards the Bolshevik Russian revolu-
tion. Perhaps nothing in the whole history of the Socialist Party did
more to destroy that Party's internal unity, prevent its growth, and
kill its mass influence than the bitter warfare that the professors,
preachers, lawyers, and similar non-proletarian elements running
the Socialist Party directed for many years against the Soviet gov-
ernment.

The advent of the October Revolution presented an unequaled
opportunity for the Socialist Party to educate and organize the masses.
Here, at last, was the much-dreamt-of, long-planned socialism come
into being after a glorious victory over Russian tsarism and capi-
talism. The revolution taught a thousand vital lessons in proletarian
theory, strategy and tactics; the heroism of its fighters was an
inspiration to the toiling masses of the world; it gave the first real
ray of hope to the oppressed in all countries. What a tremendous

18

opportunity for the Socialist Party to build itself by using this great
world-shaking event for the furtherance of the Socialist cause in the
United States! And together with this immense propaganda value
of the Russian revolution to the Socialist Party there was also^ the
duty-bound revolutionary task upon the shoulders of the Socialist
Party to use all its power to organize the masses to defend the
newly-formed Soviet government, attacked on all sides as it was by

capitalist forces.

During all the years of its existence it has been one of the
strongest factors in the growth of the Communist Party that it has
fully understood the revolutionary significance of the Soviet govern-
ment and thoroughly appreciated the opportunities and revolutionary
duties connected therewith. But not so the Socialist Party. Its petty-
bourgeois leaders were not revolutionists. They did not want to
destroy capitalism, but to reform it. The Russian revolution was a
thing alien and hostile to them. The overthrow of capitalism in
Russia in October, 1917, was against their plan of gradually trans-
forming society from capitalism to socialism. So, instead of supporting
the Soviet government as all true revolutionists must, they viewed it
with hatred and spared no words in denouncing it. And all this was
in line with the antagonistic position assumed towards the Soviets
by the Second International.

Throughout the life of the Russian revolution, the American
Socialist press has reeked with anti-Soviet attacks, even though the
Socialist Party has grudgingly endorsed the Soviet government be-
cause of mass pressure. Hillquit clearly expressed the general attitude
of his co-middle class leaders when he declared, in a spirit of thorough
hostility :

"The Soviet government has been the greatest disaster and calam-
,'iity that has ever occurred to the Socialist movement. Let us dissociate
ourselves from the Soviet government." *

Every slander against the U.S.S.R. sent forth by bourgeois ene-
mies was picked up, repeated and enlarged upon in the Socialist press.
The Party leaders accused the Soviet government of "Red impe-
rialism", of starving and oppressing the masses, of betraying the

*New Leader, Feb. 4, 1928.

19

Socialist cause. Norman Thomas, characteristically, added his voice
to the deplorable anti-Soviet chorus when he said:

"One thing, however, is certain j the Russian government rules
by tyranny and terror, with secret police, espionage and arbitrary
executions." *

Gompers, Woll and Green did not outdo the Socialist leaders
in vicious anti-Soviet attacks. And as for Hearst, he copied many of
his worst slanders from the columns of the Jewish Socialist Forward.
The Socialist Party heroized the Menshevik counter-revolutionary
Abramovich when he came to the United States, and the bourgeois
world applauded the shameful spectacle of Hillquit, leader of the
Socialist Party, acting as attorney for former Russian capitalist oil
interests in the American courts in an effort to force the Soviet
government to return their confiscated property.

Of all the non-revolutionary policies in the history of the So-
cialist Party petty-bourgeois leaders their anti-Soviet line was the
worst and most destructive to the health, growth and mass leader-
ship of the Socialist Party. It was the poison fruit of many years of
reformism in all its putrid rottenness. It worked profoundly to un-
dermine the integrity of the Socialist Party, to alienate from it the
best fighting elements in the working class and to weaken its mass
influence generally. This enmity towards the U.S.S.R. had a power-
ful effect in driving still deeper the wedge separating the Socialist
and Communist Parties. Altogether it was a decisive factor in re-
ducing the Socialist Party to the impotency which it has suffered in
the past fifteen years. The anti-Soviet policy of the Socialist Party
leaders was an aid and comfort to the capitalist enemies of the revo-
lution, and it showed conclusively that these petty-bourgeois oppor-
tunists never could build the Socialist Party into a powerful
revolutionary mass party.

G. Neck Deep in Class Collaboration

After the World War the American big capitalists initiated their
notorious movement for speeding up the workers. It was the period
of the great rationalization of industry. New methods of driving the
workers were introduced on all sides and the toilers' productivity

* As I See It, p. 93.

20

swiftly increased. To secure some pretense of consent of the workers
to the inhuman speed-up, all sorts of welfare systems, bonus plans,
old age pensions, and the like were established. Besides this, illusions
were intensively cultivated far and wide among the workers by
Carver, Gillette, and many others to the effect that through the
new-fangled employee stock-ownership plans they were actually
buying control of the industries and were on the highroad to some
sort of collective commonwealth. This speed-up movement raged
nearly all through the Coolidge prosperity period, from about 1922
to 1929. It spread in the unorganized as well as organized industries.
It vastly increased the exploitation of the workers and brought fresh
billions into the coffers of the money-drunk capitalists.

The top A. F. of L. leaders, true to their reactionary role, fitted
themselves into this whole speed-up program. They declared that
strikes and the class struggle were obsolete and that the way of the
workers to prosperity now lay through cooperation with the bosses
to increase production — of which the workers were somehow to get
an increased share. The A. F. of L. leaders adopted the whole
speed-up system under the euphonious phrases of the "new wage
plan" and the "higher strategy of labor". They hired efficiency
engineers for the unions and set up the B. & O. plan and other forms
of "union-management cooperation" to apply the bosses' speed-up.
As a result of this monstrous class collaboration policy the A. F. of
L. leaders reduced the unions to a semi-company union status, to
mere appendages of the employers' production schemes. The workers'
hard-won working conditions were ruthlessly sacrificed. In con-
sequence, the unions declined steadily in membership and fighting
spirit. For the first time in history they did not grow during a period
of economic expansion. The whole trade union movement was
afflicted with dry rot.

As befitted revolutionary organizations, the Communist Party
and Trade Union Educational League fought uncompromisingly
against this whole speed-up development. The Communists raised
the question in every trade union. They denounced the B. & O. plan
as disastrous to the trade unions and the interests of the workers;
they exposed the many illusions that were being built up around em-
ployee-stockbuying, labor banking, etc.; they demanded a fighting,
class struggle policy. And in making this fight the Communists had
to face wholesale expulsion and discharge from industry and labor

21

unions all over the country; for the combined employers and reac-
tionary trade union leaders proceeded to extremes to break up all
opposition to their class collaboration program. Never in the history
of the American labor movement was trade union democracy at
such a low ebb. The brave fight it made in these times was one of the
best pages of the life of the Communist Party.

How did the Socialist Party meet its revolutionary duty in this
critical situation, when the masses needed correct leadership so
acutely? As usual, it did not rise to the occasion. On the contrary,
the Socialist trade union leaders everywhere identified themselves
almost completely with the Green leadership. This was the period
cited by Saposs above when the S.P. leaders ceased to be the trade
union opposition. They became ardent supporters and theorizers of
the "new wage policy" and the "higher strategy of labor". They con-
demned strikes as entirely out of date. In no industry did class col-
laboration reach greater heights than in the Socialist-controlled
needle trades. And nowhere was the expulsion policy so ruthlessly
applied against the militant Left-wing elements who were fighting
to keep the trade unions from being used as tools to increase the
exploitation of the working class.

The Socialist Party made no fight whatever against the infamous
B. & O. plan, union management cooperation, the "new wage pol-
icy", and all the rest of it. This is not surprising, because the whole
Second International had become greatly enthused over the speed-up
movement, helped the bosses to introduce it in Europe, and hailed it
as the broad way to socialism. Spinning fancy theories about an
"organized capitalism", "super-imperialism", and a long period of
peaceful capitalist expansion ahead, they outdid even the hectic
American capitalist theorists of the rationalization, of industry
movement.

In 1925, when the Communist Party was fighting against union-
management cooperation throughout the trade union movement,
Norman Thomas, in his booklet, What Is Industrial Democracy?,
gave his blessing to the notorious B. & O. speed-up plan in the
following words:

". . . the railroad management in return for improved standards
of shop production is doing its utmost to keep the men supplied with
work so that the men gain, not lose, by efficiency. The plan seems
to be working well. . . ."

22

The American Socialist Party naturally suffered severely from
its tailing after the bourgeoisie in this situation. It became afflicted
with the dry rot that had infected the trade union movement gen-
erally, except that the Socialist Party got it worse. The Party sank
to the lowest stage in all its career, both ideologically and organiza-
tionally. By 1929 it had remaining only about 7,500 members, and
its revolutionary spirit had dropped to correspondingly low levels.
This was the generally unlovely period of the Party's support to
LaFollette's candidacy, the removal of the class struggle clause
from the Socialist Party membership application card, the agitation
of Norman Thomas to change the name of the Party, etc. In short,
the Socialist Party was on the very brink of bankruptcy. The Party
was harvesting in full the bitter crop of its many long years of
opportunist petty-bourgeois leadership.

H. Socialist Party Inertia in the Crisis

When the great economic crash came in 1929 the employers,
with the Hoover government their willing tool, proceeded to slash
the wages of the employed and to force the millions of unemployed
to starve. It is a notorious fact that the A. F. of L. leaders took
no real action against this brutal course. On the contrary, they ob-
jectively aided the employers by viciously fighting against unem-
ployment insurance and in support of Hoover's stagger system, and
by signing the infamous Hoover no-strike-no-wage-cut agreement
which enabled the bosses freely to slash wages. And for all this
they were duly praised by the capitalist press.

The Communist Party, on the other hand, militantly took up
the fight for the employed and unemployed workers. Beginning with
the famous March 6, 1930, national demonstration of 1,250,000
unemployed, it carried on during the next three years a most ag-
gressive struggle for and with the unemployed all over the country.
It organized hundreds of local and state mass hunger marches and
other demonstrations. It carried out several national conventions and
marches on Washington. During these bitter fights the Communist
Party and its following faced violent attacks from the police; hun-
dreds were clubbed and jailed and many were killed in the demon-
strations. The general effect of this big mass struggle under the
Communist Party leadership was to make unemployment insurance

23

and relief real issues in this country and to force many important
relief concessions from the employers. It also laid a strong founda-
tion for the Communist Party among the masses..

And what was the Socialist Party doing in these crucial early
years of the crisis? Practically nothing to organize the unemployed
masses for struggle. It was still paralyzed from its former orgy of
class collaboration. While the Communist Party was on the firing
line with huge demonstrations and other struggles, we find Norman
Thomas and J. P. Morgan jointly supporting over the radio the
useless block-aid system. The Socialist Party, it is true, talked a great
deal in these years of unemployment relief and insurance, but it did
not go out and fight for them. It was only after the Communist
Party had long taken the lead in the struggle, and especially after
new Left elements began to develop in the Socialist Party, that that
Party slowly started to play a role in the struggle of the unemployed.

When the great strike movement began under Roosevelt's regime
early in 1933, again the Socialist Party could not rise to the situation
and give the awakening masses effective leadership. Manifestly, it
was the task of every revolutionary organization to do all possible
(as the Communist Party did) to stimulate and lead the employed
workers in this the first real attack they had made against their
oppressors for a dozen years. But the Socialist Party was incapable
of giving such aggressive leadership. Instead, its leader Norman
Thomas, who in 1932 had complained of the "docility of labor"
and who was now filled with illusions about Roosevelt's ''socialism",
actually tried to put a damper on the struggle by telling the workers
that "strikes are inadvisable at the present time".* But the workers
paid no attention to Thomas' opportunism, no more than they did
to the similar advice of William Green; but went militantly ahead
with the development of their enormous strike movement. Thus,
once more, the Socialist Party, moved by reformist considerations,
dilly-dallied with a crucial situation and failed to give the masses the
necessary class struggle leadership.

A Word in Summary

In this section I have shown that historically the Socialist Party
has consistently violated the first fundamental of the class struggle

policv: namely, the necessity of coming forward aggressively as the
champion of the masses in their daily fights for urgent economic and
political demands. Instead of fulfilling this imperative necessity, the
whole history of the Socialist Party is an abdication of such mass
leadership. The illustrations cited: the Socialist Party's traditionally
passive attitude towards strikes and organization campaigns; its
long-continued contradictory industrial union policy; its anti-Labor
Party tendency; its opportunist policy of neutrality towards the
trade unions; its failure, militantly to fight the Gompers-Green
bureaucracy; its wavering policy during the war; its hostility to the
Soviet government; its failure to fight the deadly union-management
cooperation speed-up movement; and its lethargy in the struggles
of the unemployed and employed workers during the early years of
the present industrial crisis^-all these wrong policies together amply
prove the point that the Socialist Party has failed to give a fighting
leadership to the toilers in their situations of deepest need. And to
these illustrations others could be added as, for example, the So-
cialist Party's complete neglect of the burning Negro question over
many years, its opportunistic handling of the youth issue, its haphazard
consideration of the problems of women, the foreign-born, etc.

The general result of the Socialist Party's traditional flabby,
reformist," class-collaborationist policies, dictated by its opportunist
middle class leadership, has been that the Socialist Party could not
and did not become a strong, mass revolutionary Party. Its leaders
ducked and evaded and compromised every struggle and issue that
the workers were basically interested in. By its weak, opportunist
course, the Socialist Party was unable to defeat its powerful capi-
talist enemies and their labor leader henchmen. Hence it did not
secure the leadership of the masses and become their accepted revo-
lutionary party. There could be no other outcome of the Socialist
Party's long record of opportunist vacillations and abdication of
leadership in the class struggle than the Party's present crisis and
obvious failure.

*Ne<w York Herald Tribune, August 8, 1933.

24

25

CHAPTER THREE

A Generation of Reformism and Its
Disastrous Effects (Continued)

2, The War Against the Left Wing

TN ANALYZING the basic reason for the historical failure of the
*- Socialist Party— which was its lack of a Marxian policy of class
struggle — let us now consider briefly the Socialist Party's experience
with the second element going to make up such a policy of class
struggle, Le. } the necessity of laying a firm foundation for the So-
cialist Party by the cultivation of a strong body of revolutionary
Marxian understanding in the Party membership and among its mass
following. In doing this we shall see that the opportunist Socialist
Party leaders have violated this fundamental no less deeply and con-
sistently than they did the other imperative essential of a class struggle
policy (which we have previously discussed), that of giving effective
leadership to the masses in their daily struggles, and with equally
disastrous results.

It was obviously an indispensable first condition for the success of
the Socialist Party that it systematically educate the broadest possible
ranks of Marxian revolutionists* Such revolutionists furnish the
necessary understanding of the capitalist system, they are the tire-
less organizers of the masses, the bravest fighters in every crisis, the
indefatigable builders of the Party, the heart and brain of the class
struggle. To try to build a revolutionary Socialist Party without
developing the Marxian understanding of its membership is to at-
tempt the classically impossible task of making bricks without straw.

This would seem to be a pretty self-evident fact, but the Socialist
Party has grossly ignored it throughout its existence. The Right wing
petty-bourgeois intellectuals controlling the Socialist Party, instead of
carefully cultivating the life-giving revolutionary tendency, looked
upon it as a hostile force, and they spared no efforts to check it, to
repress it, to extinguish it, indeed to burn it out of the Party. This
action on their part was logical enough as they had no intention what-

26

ever of making the Socialist Party a revolutionary party. In this
ruthless war against the Left wing, continued for a generation, is to
be found a fundamental reason for the failure of the Socialist
Party and for its present critical condition.

The Two Wings of the Party

Before describing this war against the Left wing it will be well
briefly to analyze the Socialist Party groups. The Right wing, which
dominated the Socialist Party from its organization down to the
present year, was, during the heyday of the Party, made up of several
groups. Chiefly these were:

A. The extreme Right, roughly, the Bernstein revisionist ten-
dency, was composed of a miscellaneous group of lawyers, doctors,
preachers, etc., such as Harriman, Berger, Cahan, Stokes, Wilson,
Mills, Hoan, Laidler, et al. Previously, I have indicated the general
reformist tendency of this group — government ownership, municipal
socialism, parliamentary reform, anti class struggle, etc.

B. The agrarian group, also of extreme Right tendency, was
strong in the farming districts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas,
Washington, etc. It was a remnant from the breakup of the old
Populist movement and it generally supported the line of the Right
wing intellectuals, with the addition of its cheap-money vagaries and
a particularly Utopian slant to its "Socialism". This tendency crys-
tallized chiefly around such papers as Wayland's Coming Nation,
Affeal to Reason and Arkansas Ripaw.

C. The trade union group was composed of labor officials, like
Van Lear and Johnston (Machinists), Walker, Germer and Hayes
(Miners), Hayes (Printers), Barnes (Cigarmakers), Maurer
(Plumbers), Skemp (Painters), Schlessinger (I.L.G.W.U.), etc.
In general this opportunist group also followed the lead of the
Right wing intellectuals, except that they placed more stress upon
trade union questions.

D. The so-called center or Kautsky tendency was composed
mainly of petty-bourgeois intellectuals. It included Hillquit,
Simons, Oneal, Lee, etc. These people were sticklers for Marxian
phrases if not for Marxian deeds. This group gave the Socialist
Party its dominant leader for 34 years, Morris Hillquit.

Historically these four reformist groups functioned unitedly as

27

the Right wing of the Socialist Party, especially in the war against
the Left wing, and they had the backing chiefly of the non-prole-
tarians and the skilled worker members of the Party, It is true that
the Hillquit center group kept up a running quarrel for years with
the raw opportunism of the extreme Right "postofBce socialism"
elements. But this fight was superficial and did not conflict with the
basically reformist line of the Party, The only serious differences that
developed within the broad Right wing were during the war when
the pro-war Spargo, Stokes, Walling, et al y quit the Party. After
the national split of 1919 the four Right groups, or what was still left
of them, gradually coalesced and became practically indistinguishable
from each other in one crassly opportunist old guard leadership.

The Left wing of the Socialist Party was more homogeneous
than the Right wing. It was made up almost entirely of proletarians,
chiefly unskilled and immigrant workers, with an occasional revolu-
tionary intellectual. Through its twenty years of history within the
Socialist Party it was led by such figures as Hagerty, Trautmann,
Titus, Marcy, Haywood and Ruthenberg. Debs was usually a mili-
tant spokesman of the Left wing program, but he took no active
part in shaping Party policy in conventions, etc. He never identified
himself with the Left in its organized struggles against the Right, nor
did he become involved in any of the various Party splits.

The Left wing took flat issue with the whole reformist line of
the dominant Right wing intellectual leadership. Basing itself upon
the fundamentals of Marx and Engels, it fought to give the Socialist
Party a program and policy of revolutionary class struggle. It op-
posed the current opportunist theories of the peaceful taking over
of the government and the plan of buying up the industries, and it
placed in opposition to them the Marxian perspective of the over-
throw of capitalism by open struggle and the expropriation of the
expropriators without compensation. It condemned the Socialist
Party leaders' passivity in the daily class struggle and their class
collaboration policies and compromises with Gompersism, It demand-
ed a program of active struggle against the employers and war to
the knife against the capitalist-minded leaders of the trade unions.

Although the Left wing was the revolutionary element within
the Party, it nevertheless suffered from many and serious theoretical
and practical weaknesses, arising mainly out of its inexperience and
ideological unripeness. These errors in general tended in the direction

28

of "Left" sectarianism. They were largely a heritage from De
Leonism, and were usually semi-Syndicalist in character. Among
the more important of these Left wing errors were (1) Confusion
regarding the nature of the revolutionary role of the Party, with
tendencies to make the industrial unions the leading fighting force
of the proletariat; (2) Wrong theories of the composition of the
future dictatorship of the proletariat, with tendencies towards the
Syndicalist trade union state; (3) Underestimation of the resistance
power of capitalism and theories of accomplishing the revolution by
the folded-arms general strike; (4) Underestimation of the struggle
for immediate political demands and tendencies towards anti-par-
liamentarism; (5) Neglect of work within the mass trade unions and
a Utopian belief in dual industrial unionism; (6) Underestimation
of the importance of the farming, Negro and lower petty-bourgeois
masses as united front allies of the proletariat. Further sectarian ten-
dencies were: against the Labor Party in principle; overstress upon
the religious question, and the ignoring and flouting of American
traditions and culture.

These various theoretical and practical errors of the Left wing
worked greatly to hold back the progress of the Party. They tended
to break its contacts with the masses and to push the Party into
sectarian isolation. And, added to this, they handicapped the fight
against the Right wing, for Right opportunism cannot be defeated
with "Left" sectarianism. But the overwhelming responsibility for
the failure of the Socialist Party is to be found in the rank oppor-
tunism of the dominant petty-bourgeois leadership, and not in the
weakness of the Left. Despite its many errors the Left wing was
basically correct in its striving for a class struggle policy. It was the
healthy Party core, and only through the correction of its short-
comings and the development of its general program of class struggle
was it possible to build the Socialist Party into a revolutionary party.
It must be added, however, that the political line of the Right
wing in no sense served to correct the errors of the Left wing.
Its tendency was to drag the Party off in another direction, to the
swamp of Right opportunism.

The long-continued struggle between the Right and Left wings,
the highlights of which I shall now proceed to relate, placed the
issue squarely: shall the Socialist Party be a party of petty-bourgeois
reform or of proletarian class struggle? The cleavage was funda-

29

M*L-

mental and the protracted fight took on the character of class struggle
within the Party. So that during the various splits in many local
branches the line of division passed almost exactly between the
proletarians and non -proletarians, the working class elements going
with the Left wing out of the Party. That the Socialist Party failed
to become a revolutionary party is primarily an expression of the fact
that the Left wing was defeated in its struggle for control of the
Party and was compelled to build a new, revolutionary organization,
the Communist Party.

Early Phases of the Inner-Party Struggle

Hardly had the Socialist Party come into existence in 1901 as a
result of the historically justified split away from the deadly sectarian-
ism of the Socialist Labor Party than the fatal control of the re-
formist lawyers, doctors, preachers, journalists, etc., asserted itself.
And, likewise, as the corrective to these baneful elements and ten-
dencies, the revolutionary Left wing of the Party slowly began to
take shape and to voice its program. With the passage of the years
the cleavage between the Right and Left wings of the Party became
more pronounced, until finally the inevitable complete break came.

The first sharp division in the Party on a major scale occurred
in 1905 over the question of industrial unionism which, then as now,
was bound up with the whole question of militant trade union
policies. The Left wing, repelled by the reactionary leadership and
program of the A. F. of L., was for establishing new and inde-
pendent revolutionary industrial unions, and the Right wing, opposed
to fighting policies generally, was against it. Under the leadership
of Debs, Haywood and De Leon (Socialist Labor Party) the In-
dustrial Workers of the World was formed in Chicago in 1905. In
his autobiography Haywood notes the division between Right and
Left over the LW.W. convention, stating that "None of the poli-
ticians of the Socialist Party, such as Berger, Hillquit, Spargo or
Hayes, took part".*

The factional struggle soon spread from the question of in-
dustrial unionism to many phases of the Party's theory and practice.
The period in question was one of growing working class organiza-
tion and class consciousness under the fierce pressure of expanding

* Bill Haywood's Book, p. 182.

30

American capitalism. It was a time of many bitter strikes, of which
the bloody Chicago teamsters' strike of 1905, with 21 killed and 451
wounded, was an example. Since 1898 the A. F. of L. had increased
its membership from 270,000 to 1,550,000. The Socialist Party
also reflected this rising tide of working class militancy, its mem-
bership increasing from some 12,000 in 1901 to 41,479 in 1909
and its influence rapidly growing in the trade unions.

The Left wing demand for a class struggle policy by the Party
became stronger and stronger and new Left leaders developed. In-
creasingly the clash grew between the revolutionary elements and
the petty-bourgeois leadership. The former wanted to make the
Party into a real fighting instrument of the working class, the latter
wanted to follow a policy of reformism and compromise. Tension was
acute, especially in several states in the Far West, where the best or-
ganized and most revolutionary sections of the Party were located.
The first serious split occurred in the Pacific Northwest early in 1909.

The split took place in Everett, Washington. The leader of the
Lefts was Dr. H. T. Titus, editor of the Seattle Socialist, and the
head of the Right wing was Dr. E. J. Brown, in later years Mayor
of Seattle on a fusion ticket. The struggle centered around the
question of reformist petty-bourgeois domination of the Party, and
against the suppression of the revolutionary elements and their pro-
gram of struggle. The Left wing was supported mostly by lumber
workers,. city laborers and "stump" farmers; whereas the Right wing
drew its support chiefly from the petty businessmen, intellectuals,
skilled workers and farmers.

The Left wing had behind it a majority of the Party members,
but when the convention assembled, the Right wing, which con-
trolled the Party machinery, had managed to scare up a majority of
the delegates. A split ensued and in consequence there were two
Socialist Parties in the state. Whereupon, the opportunist-controlled
National Executive Committee recognized the Right wing claims,
excluding the Lefts, including myself, from the Party.

This blow of the Right wing Socialist Party leadership was char-
acteristic of their growing war against the revolutionary element in
the Party. Its consequence was, of course, seriously to injure the
Party. Hundreds of the best members, not only in Washington, but
also to a lesser extent in Oregon, Idaho, and California, were driven
out of the Party and never returned to it. Most of them (like my-

31

self) joined the I.W.W. and became Syndicalists. The whole affair
was a criminal waste of good proletarian fighters, the real builders of
the Party, by the reformist leadership. But this rupture was soon to
be followed by another — also forced by the opportunist Socialist
Party policies and leaders and far more disastrous to the Party' —
the big national split of 1912.

The 1912 Split ;

In this period the working class was in a state of great foment
The trade unions were growing rapidly and conducting many bit-
terly-fought strikes. The I.W.W. was achieving a spectacular ad-*
vance with the Lawrence textile strike and several other big struggles.
The Socialist Party was growing rapidly and making fast headway
in gaining leadership in the trade unions. It was also the time of
the Roosevelt Bull Moose movement. All this militancy and struggle
of the toiling masses emphasized the futility of the reformist policies
of the Socialist Party leadership and stressed the need for a program
of class struggle. But the opportunist leadership clung firmly to their
reformist line. The struggle between the Right and Left wings of
the Party quickly spread and sharpened.

The Left wing, grown strong in this period of mass awakening,
had built a national movement around the International Socialist
Remewy published by the Kerr Co., and the chief figures of which
were Bill Haywood and Mary Marcy. This center circulated the
works of Marx and Engels, routed revolutionary speakers, printed
revolutionary pamphlets and developed the Left wing theory and
practice on current events. Inevitably this Left center came into
direct conflict with the National Office of the Socialist Party, which
systematically played down revolutionary theory and agitation of
every sort and poured out a flood of reformist propaganda.* In
consequence a struggle for organizational control of the Party

* The flock of Socialist Party Right wing intellectuals produced lots of
books and pamphlets, but not one important Marxian work. The books of
Myers, Russell and Sinclair, although full of valuable factual material, were
but Socialist muckraking. Hillquit's books were only academic Marxism, and
those of Simons and Oneal presented an opportunist conception of American
history. Ghent and London, in their books, Benevolent Feudalism and The Iron
Heely produced notable works, but they also were saturated with opportunist
conceptions.

32

developed, and the whole situation came to a climax in the May,
1912, Socialist Party convention.

The immediate program of the Left wing in this crucial fight
centered around three major issues: against the opportunist petty-
bourgeois control of the Party; for a policy of militant industrial
unionism; and against the parliamentary opportunism and vote-
catching policies of the leadership. The Left wing program at this
stage was stated in Haywood's and Bonn's pamphlet, Industrial
Socialism. This program contained many characteristic semi-syndical-
ist errors, such as underestimation of the role of the Party and of
the importance of partial political demands, illusions about dual
industrial unionism, etc., but the essence of it was the traditional
and correct aim of the Left wing to give the Socialist Party a policy
of class struggle.

The outcome of the convention was a major defeat for the
Left wing, which was beaten on all its main questions. Firstly, it
lost in the matter of displacing the opportunist leadership, because
during the pre-convention elections so many petty-bourgeois elements
got themselves elected as delegates that the convention was infested
with and completely dominated by all sorts of careerist lawyers,
journalists, doctors, etc. Secondly, it lost also on the question of
industrial unionism; for although the convention indorsed industrial
unionism in principle, it took no steps to put it into effect through
correcting the opportunist practices of the Party leaders in the A. F.
of L. and by liquidating the dual unionism of the Left wing.

But the Left wing suffered its decisive defeat on the general
question of parliamentary opportunism. The Left wing's essential
position was against the Party's being merely a vote-catching body,
and wanted it to become a revolutionary propaganda organization
and lead in developing broad mass struggles, especially on the eco-
nomic field. But the Right wing was skillful enough to evade the
main issue. It shifted the attack away from its own political oppor-
tunism and narrowed the fight down to an assault upon the Left
wing's advocacy of sabotage. Sabotage at the time was very popular
in the French Syndicalist movement and it had been taken up by
the I.W.W. and the Left wing of the Socialist Party. It was the
poorest possible issue for the Left wing to defend and the convention
voted 190 to 91 against it, adopting the notorious Article II, Section
6, amendment to the Party constitution, which ran:

33

"Any member of the Party who opposes political action or ad-
vocates crime, sabotage or other methods of violence as a weapon
of the working class to aid in its emancipation shall be expelled
from membership in the Party,"

The basic meaning of all this ran far beyond the suppression of
the advocacy of sabotage ; it meant that the Party leadership had re-
jected the policy of class struggle and had turned still deeper into
the reformism that was killing the Party. Its lawyer-doctor-preacher
heads were determined to wipe out the revolutionary tendency in the
Party and they followed up this convention victory by having Hay-
wood recalled by referendum from the National Executive Council
Thus, Bill Haywood, the revolutionary fighter who was worth
several carloads of the opportunist intellectuals who were running
and ruining the Socialist Party, was not deemed worthy of sitting
upon the Party's executive. The elimination of Haywood was a
logical climax to the leadership's long and fatal war against the Left
wing and its program of class struggle, the war that brought about
the historic failure of the Socialist Party.

The outcome of the 1912 convention was a real disaster to the
Socialist Party, one from which it never fully recovered. The deadly
grip of the petty-bourgeois leadership was strengthened and their
opportunist policies more deeply intrenched. A sort of silent split
developed, thousands of the best proletarian members, Haywood
among them, quitting the Party in disgust, never to return • many of
them going to Syndicalism and the I.W.W. Thus the Party was
drained of its best blood, and the loss of all these workers and basic
Party builders soon showed itself in a real decline of the organiza-
tion. The Party dropped in membership from 118,045 in 1912 (the
highest point it ever reached in all its history) to 79,374 in 1915. Its
national election vote fell from 897,011 in 1912 to 585,113 in
1916. And, of decisive importance, its previous rapid advance in the
trade unions was stopped and the Socialist Party lost its opportunity
to win the leadership of the A. F. of L. Reformism had dealt a
mortal blow to the Socialist Party.

The 1912 split, however, could not be the decisive fight between
the reformist and revolutionary forces in the Socialist Party. The
Second International, which was not yet discredited by its betrayal in
the World War and in the accompanying revolutionary struggles, still
had great prestige as the revolutionary organization of the working

34

class, as the Party of Marx and Engels. Hence its ultra-opportunist
American section also retained the power to attract revolutionary
workers. Moreover, the Socialist Party Left wing, still saturated with
sectarian and Syndicalist tendencies, was as yet insufficiently developed
ideologically to build a separate revolutionary party. So, with the
great vitality and persistence which bespeaks the correctness of its
revolutionary line, the Left wing, recovering from the disastrous
1912 defeat, began once more to build the Socialist Party and to
organize its forces and program within it. But the opportunism of
the Socialist Party leadership was soon to cause a complete break
between the reformist Right and the revolutionary Left and to call
into being the Communist Party.

The 1919 Sflit

The 1919 split in the American Socialist Party was part of the
world-wide break between the reformist and revolutionary elements
in the Second International, the split that gave birth to the Com-
munist International. It was the inevitable culmination of the grow-
ing antagonism for years past between the revolutionists and the
opportunists in the world Socialist movement. It was directly caused
by the Second International's support of the World War, by its'
antagonism to the Russian revolution, and by its betrayal of the
revolutionary struggles of the workers in Germany, Hungary and
other European countries at the close of the war.

These great world events, of course, had profound repercussions
in the American Socialist Party. They brought to the breaking point
the long-developing tension between the Right and Left wings of
the Party and made it impossible for the mutually antagonistic re-
formist and revolutionary elements to live within the one political
organization .

In the vital question of the war, as we have seen, the Left wing
of the American Socialist Party had energetically opposed the whole
war-time course of the Second International, condemned the action
of its parties which supported the war, and strongly resisted Ameri-
ca's entry into and prosecution of the war. But the Right wing
leaders of the Party, under cover of radical phrases, compromised
with the war situation in a typical reformist manner. This brought
to an acute stage the struggle between the two groups.

35

The controversy within the Party over the Russian revolution
also added fuel to the spreading conflagration. The rapidly growing
Left wing heartily supported the revolution and accepted its great
revolutionary lessons, including the fundamental principles laid down
by Lenin. But the Right wing hated the Russian revolution as the
very victory symbol of the revolutionary spirit which they had fought
against for so many years in the American Socialist Party. They
rejected Lenin's teachings and placed the works of this greatest
revolutionist since Marx upon the banned books list, where they still
remain until this day. All of which deeply embittered the Left wing.

The growing struggle between the Right and Left wings of the
Party was further spread and intensified by Social-Democracy's
betrayal of the German revolution at the end of the war through
the liquidation of the Soviets set up by the workers, soldiers
and sailors. This treacherous action, which saved capitalism through-
out central Europe and to which the present-day Hitler can trace
his power, met with the approval of the American Right wing and
the bitter hostility of the Left.

Thus, in this series of great events the Socialist Party, in the
United States as well as abroad, was hopelessly split ideologically
by the reactionary course of its opportunist leaders. The long years
of struggle within the American Socialist Party, as in other coun-
tries, had come to a climax. The two wings of the Party were at
open war with each other. It was the parting of the ways between
the two conflicting tendencies within the Party; between the policies
of class struggle and class collaboration; between the revolutionists
who were determined to overthrow capitalism and the opportunists
who wanted to reform it.

Inevitably the deep ideological split also took on organizational
form. And logically it was the Right wing, in line with its long
struggle to kill the revolutionary tendency, that took the actual
initiative in splitting the Party. Briefly, the break developed thus:
The revolutionists, led by C, E. Ruthenberg and organized first in
the Socialist Propaganda League (Boston, 1915) and later in the
Left wing of the Socialist Party (New York, June, 1919), had
the support of the majority of the Party membership and in 1919
they elected 12 out of 15 members of the National Executive Com-
mittee of the Socialist Party. But the Right wing, which controlled
the Party apparatus, repudiated this election and, in order to dom-

36

inate the approaching Emergency Convention, suspended several
language federations and the whole Michigan State Party organiza-
tion (much as the A, F. of L. Executive Council lately ousted
the C.I.O.). At the convention itself in Chicago, August 30, 1919,
the Rights, with the help of the police, expelled all known Left wing
delegates.

The split was thus completed. At last the Right wing had suc-
ceeded in its historic aim of getting rid of the revolutionary element
from the Socialist Party. But the ruinous consequences to the Socialist
Party of this criminal expulsion of the Party's best forces, its very
life blood, were not long in showing themselves. The 1919 split
turned out to be even more disastrous to the Socialist Party than that
of 1912. Within a year the Party's membership dropped from 104,-
822 to 26,766* and by 1927 it had fallen to but 7,425. The in-
fluence of the Party in the trade unions declined swiftly, and its vote
in the Presidential elections of 1928 (262,805) was hardly more
than 25 per cent of its vote in 1920. Socialist representation in state
and local legislative bodies fell to but a small fraction of its former
strength. The Party went generally into decay, and its once extensive
press was almost wiped out. Its opportunist leaders, with the Left
wing no longer on hand to restrain them, completely abandoned all
fight against the A. F. of L. reactionaries and joined with them in
their whole program of B. & O, plan speed-up, labor banking, ex-
pulsion of Communists, anti-Soviet slander, etc. Thus, reduced
almost to zero in numbers, influence and revolutionary principle, the
bankrupt Socialist Party drank to the dregs the bitter cup of its
opportunist petty-bourgeois leadership, with their fatal reformist
policies and relentless war against the Left wing.

The Communist Party

In consequence of the 1919 split the flag of socialism passed
from the hands of the Socialist Party. By twenty years of oppor-
tunism and failure the Socialist Party petty-bourgeois leaders had
shown that they would make no fight for revolutionary socialism.
A new Socialist standard bearer, a revolutionary party, was neces-
sary and it was formed, the Communist Party.

* In the summer of 1921, the last detachment of the Left wing", the
Workers Council group (Engdahi, Trachtenberg, Finnish Federation, etc.)
also quit the Socialist Party.

37

In previous splits — 1909, 1912 — the expelled Left wing be-
cause of its ideological undevelopment had either liquidated itself
into I.W.W. Syndicalism or dribbled back individually to the So-
cialist Party. But not so in 1919. The revolutionaries, acquainted
now with the principles of Leninism and educated by the great events
of the war and the post-war revolutions, had matured theoretically*
By 1919 the Left wing had cleared up, or was rapidly doing so, its
traditional semi-Syndicalist errors on such questions as the role of
the state, the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the seizure
of power, the role of the Party and the trade unions, etc. In short,
as Alex Bittelman says, it had advanced "from vague Left Socialism
and general proletarian militancy to the definite and solid founda-
tions of Leninism".* Hence, on August 31 and September 1, 1919,
in Chicago, the split-off Left wing of the Socialist Party organized
itself into two Communist Parties. Between these, however, there
was little difference in principle; so, finally, two years later, they
fused into one united Communist Party.

Here is not the place for a history of the Communist Party.
The student can find this in Bittelman's Fifteen Years of the Com-
munist Party y Browder's Communism in the United States and What
Is Communism? y Bimba's History of the American Working Class
and my forthcoming book From Bryan to Stalin, In this study of the
Socialist Party I cannot give even an. outline of the Communist
Party's development and policy,

Suffice it to say that the Communist Party has based itself firmly
upon the class struggle policy which the Socialist Party throughout
its history rejected. It has come forward energetically in the measure
of its strength as the leader of the masses in their daily fights against
the capitalist exploiters, and it has systematically cultivated revolu-
tionary Marxism-Leninism among its own membership and mass
following. And the general result of this correct policy of class strug-
gle is the present unity, growth and expanding influence of the
Communist Party.

As was to be expected, the development of the revolutionary
Party in the greatest stronghold of capitalism was no bed of roses.
On the one hand, there had to be overcome, with the help of the
Communist International, the harmful semi-Syndicalist sectarian

* Fifteen Years of the Communist Party,

38

conceptions inherited by the Left wing from the past, and this was
not accomplished and a revolutionary program developed without
sharp internal struggles and many serious errors in the practical
work of the Party. And, on the other hand, there had to be with-
stood the fierce attacks of the capitalists and their agents, including
severe governmental persecution, widespread expulsion from the
trade unions and industry by reactionary union officials working
with the bosses, etc.

But the Communist Party has prospered in spite of all these
difficulties. It is now unified and healthy, and its membership and
influence are constantly increasing. The Party's recent membership
figures show: 1930— 7,500; 1931—9,000; 1932—14,000; 1933
—18,000; 1934—26,000; 1935—30,000; 1936—41,000, plus
11,000 members in the Young Communist League or 52,000 in all.

Wherever the fight is hottest there the Communist Party is to
be found organizing the toilers for a united front stand against the
exploiters. Not to mention its many big struggles of past years, in-
cluding the long fight for amalgamation and the Labor Party; the
fight against the B. & O. plan; the long struggle against corruption
and gangsterism in the unions; the big 1930-33 fights of the unem-
ployed; the many strike struggles of 1933-35, notably the San Fran-
cisco strike, etc. The Communist Party, with its broad united front
policy, is playing an active role on every front in the class struggle.

Here I can mention only a few of the Communist Party's chief
• current activities: At the present time it has mobilized the support
of at least 5,000,000 workers and others in support of the Workers
Unemployment Insurance Bill (H.R. 2827). It is playing an impor-
tant part in the American Youth Congress, which at its convention
in Cleveland, July 3, 1936, had 1,400 delegates representing a
membership of 1,700,000. The Communist Party is likewise a vital
factor in the American League Against War and Fascism, a move-
ment which held its Third Congress in Cleveland in January, 1936,
with an attendance of 2,070 delegates from 1,840 organizations of
3,291,906 members. The Party's role was also one of significant
importance in the organization of the great united front National
Negro Congress in Chicago, February, 1936, of 1,817 delegates
representing 1,200,000 members organized in trade unions, churches,
youth clubs, etc. In all these united front movements the Commu-
nist Party is an official participant. It is also taking an active part in

39

the present big drive of the C.LO* to organize the steel, auto, rub-
ber, and other mass production industries. In addition, the Party is
active in developing the Farmer-Labor Party movement. This was
acknowledged when, at the May 30, 1936, Farmer-Labor confer-
ence in Chicago, attended by prominent leaders of the Minnesota
Farmer-Labor Party, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, many
local labor parties, etc., the Communist Party delegates were offi-
cially seated.

A most important present activity of the Communist Party and
an evidence of its growing mass influence is its militant fight against
the suspension of the C.LO. unions by the A. F. of L. Executive
Council. Up to the present writing 20 state federations, 70 central
bodies, several international unions and hundreds of locals have
protested the suspension. The masses of trade unionists are enraged
at the attempt of Green, Hutcheson and Co. to split the labor move-
ment, and the Communist Party has been very active in crystallizing
this mass resentment into concrete action. The C.LO. to date has
bestirred itself very little in organizing this protest, and as for the
Socialist Party, prostrated by its hesitant attitude and internal chaos,
it has made virtually no fight whatsoever to preserve the unity of the
trade union movement.

The growth and accomplishments of the Communist Party are,
of course, very modest in comparison with the great revolutionary
tasks ahead. The Party also still has many weaknesses and insuffi-
ciencies that have to be corrected. But the important thing is that the
Party is on the right track, its fundamental program of class strug-
gle is correct, its policies of the broad united front are successful, and
it is learning to apply them effectively. This is amply proven by the
revolutionary Communist Party's record of growth and progress, in
comparison with the historical failure of the reformist Socialist Party.
The Communist Party is becoming a major political factor in the
country, while the Socialist Party flounders along in crisis and de-
cline. All of which goes to show that in the many long years' fight
between Rights and Lefts in the American revolutionary movement,
the Lefts were profoundly correct. Not along the road of reformism,
but of class struggle is the way the workers have to go to achieve
socialism.

40

CHAPTER FOUR

The Present Situation in the Socialist Party

The Turn to the Left

A S WE have seen, the present crisis in the Socialist Party is not a
matter of recent development. It is the piled-up result of long
years of wrong policy, of Right opportunism, of flagrant violation
of the Marxian class struggle policy which was fundamentally neces-
sary to build the Socialist Party. But' in the last three years there
has been something of a change in the Socialist Party's traditional
trend. That Party has shown fresh Left tendencies, and with them
some signs of renewed growth and activity.

Among the more marked of these tendencies were an overhauling
of the Socialist Party's theoretical line, which resulted in the adop-
tion of a more Left statement of principles at the Detroit, 1934,
convention; greater mass activity in the daily class struggle, espe-
cially among the unemployed; a growing tendency towards united
front movements with the Communist Party; a growth of the
Party's membership from 10,389 in 1931 to 19,121 in 1935; an
increase in the national election vote to 883,341 in 1932, as against
262,805 in 1928; the defeat of the "Old Guard" as the Party
leadership, and the split with these elements at the Cleveland 1936
national Party convention.

A number of forces combined to bring about the new Left ten-
dencies in the Socialist Party. The most decisive of these was the
great radicalization of the proletariat during the past few years —
marked by the many big struggles of the unemployed, the huge
strike wave, the expansion of the unions, the growth of Labor
Party sentiment, the formation of the C.LO., the widely spreading
mass discontent with capitalism as a system, etc. This basic mass
radicalization movement naturally had its effect upon the Socialist
Party by forcing it, especially from the pressure of its new proleta-
rian members, into activity and into a more Left position. Another
very important factor in the Socialist Party's reawakening was the
shameful surrender of German Social-Democracy in face of the rise
of Hitler, This development, followed soon afterward by the vic-

41

■■■■BH

I

tory of fascism in Austria, exposed the utter bankruptcy of social
reformism and stimulated the Left tendency, not only in the Ameri-
can Socialist Party but also in many other parties of the Second
International. Another basic factor greatly encouraging Left devel-
opments in the Socialist Party was the continued success of the
Soviet Union. The victorious Soviet government, the fruit of Com-
munist policy, stands out in glaring contrast with the great defeat
of the whole line of the Socialist reformists and consequently has
a revolutionizing effect upon the proletarian members of the Social-
ist Party, The growth of the popular front movement in Spain and
France in the past two years had a similar result. And, finally, the
growth of the American Communist Party, in contrast with the
crippled Socialist Party, has a big influence in developing Left senti-
ment among the Socialist Party working class members.

The Communist Party welcomes the new Left tendencies in the
Socialist Party for the good and obvious reason that every increase in
revolutionary sentiment and organization is fundamentally advan-
tageous to the working class and hence also to the Communist Party.
And in supporting the new Left trends in the Socialist Party a
central task is to analyze and evaluate them. The question before us
here is to learn whether in its new orientation the Socialist Party has
succeeded in overcoming the ruinous reformist policies which it pur-
sued for a full generation and which have reduced it to its present
critical position.

The Socialist Party's Petty-Bourgeois Leadership

First let us consider the question of leadership. In previous pages
I have pointed out what a disaster it was for the Socialist Party to
have been dominated from the outset by a petty-bourgeois leader-
ship of lawyers, preachers, doctors, etc. They were the chief source
of the opportunism that hamstrung the Party throughout the years.
What has happened to the Socialist Party then in this respect in its
new Left turn?

Here we get an unfavorable answer. The situation remains sub-
stantially as before. True, a raft of these petty-bourgeois reformists
quit the Party in the 1936 Right wing split, formed the People's
Party and are now waging war against the Socialist Party, There
are new, young leaders developing in the Socialist Party, but still the
Party is heavily dominated by non-proletarian elements. This was

42

manifested at the Cleveland convention, with its many preachers,
lawyers, etc., and it is also expressed by the petty-bourgeois make-up
of the Socialist Party National Executive Committee. Of the eleven
members in this committee four are lawyers, four are preachers and
two professors; only one is proletarian, and he is a trade union offi-
cial. Compare this Socialist Party non-working class leadership with
the Political Committee of the Communist Party which is composed
of 1 1 members, all proletarians.*

The Communist Party is not in principle against the membership
of middle class intellectuals. Such intellectuals, when they are revo-
lutionary, have a great contribution to make to the working class
movement. This was brilliantly demonstrated by the life work of
Marx, Engels, Lenin and many others. But not by the type of oppor-
tunist intellectuals that have always shaped the policies of the Ameri-
can Socialist Party. Throughout its entire history these petty-bour-
geois reformists have been a barrier in the way of the Socialist Party's
developing a healthy class struggle policy and, despite the new Left
trends, that barrier still ^exists. The proletarianization of the leader-
ship of the Socialist Party is a fundamental necessity in order for that
organization to develop towards a strong and revolutionary party.

Next we turn to the question of policy. I shall state the question
concretely: In previous chapters I have pointed out in considerable
detail, how the inability of the Socialist Party to build itself into a
strong revolutionary party during its long history must be ascribed
to its failure to carry out a Marxian class struggle policy, that is, (a)
its failure to come forward aggressively as the mass leader of the
working class in its struggles for everyday economic and political
demands; (b) its failure to educate and develop a solid body of
trained Marxian revolutionaries as the backbone of the Party. Now
let us see whether or not the Socialist Party, with its recent Left turn,
has liquidated these two fatal reformist weaknesses or shows indica-
tions of doing so.

1. The Question of the Daily Mass Struggles

The answer to this question must be negative. The Socialist
Party's new line, especially in its latest developments, does not make

* The Socialist Party National Executive Committee is still more un-
representative in that it contains no Negro, women or youth members j whereas
in the Communist Party top committees these elements are fully represented,

43

for increasing its leadership of the masses in their daily economic and
political struggles. Throughout the history of the Socialist Party prior
to 1934, as we have seen, the openly Right wing reformist policy of
the Party, the tendency for the opportunist petty-bourgeois leaders
to soft-pedal and compromise all struggles of the workers, was the
obstacle that prevented the Socialist Party from becoming the daily
mass leader of the proletariat. The Party has not, despite its new
turn, been able to free itself of this traditional reformism. It has
only succeeded in adding new forms to its reformist line.

Thes>e new forms of reformism consist of a tendency towards
sectarianism. The sectarian tendency dresses itself up with many
revolutionary phrases, but it is opportunistic just the same. And it is
no less fatal to effective mass work than open Right opportunism. It
has been especially manifest in the past year and has already done the
Socialist Party much harm. Unless it is speedily corrected it will have
deadly effects upon the Socialist Party by still further isolating it
from the life and struggles of the masses.

A. The New Socialist Party Sectarian Reformism

There is at present great theoretical confusion in the Socialist
Party, what with groups of "Old Guard" reformists, Thomasites,
Hoanites, "militants", Trotskyites, Lovestoneites, and a minority of
developing Leninists all advocating their respective policies and
struggling for control of the Party, while the split-off "Old Guard"
makes war from the outside. The dominant voice in the inner-
party chaos is that of Norman Thomas. He is the outstanding theo-
retical leader of the Party and he is especially active in injecting the
new elements of sectarianism into the general reformist line of the
Party. His program boils down to a curious combination of Right
and "Left" sectarianism superimposed upon a basic structure of the
old discredited class collaboration of the Second International,

It is not surprising that there should develop sectarian tendencies
of revolutionary phrasemongering among the Socialist Party mem-
bership. Unquestionably, the proletarian members of the Socialist
Party in their new Left mood want to make a revolutionary organ-
ization of their Party, but with no solid Marxian training as a
background, they drift off into mere revolutionary phrase-making
instead of making a sound revolutionary policy. It is what Lenin
called the infantile sickness of "Leftism". This tendency is worsened

44

^^■■■^^^■■B

by the petty-bourgeois opportunist leadership of the Party which
systematically diverts the workers 5 revolutionary moods into mere
radical phrase-making and thus avoids real mass struggle. They con-
tinue their opportunist line in a different form.

At first glance it may seem astonishing that a pronounced advo-
cate of the new sectarian tendency should be Norman Thomas,
who hitherto has always been an open Right opportunist. But such
"Left" vagaries are not uncommon on the part of Socialist middle-
class intellectuals all over the world. I need only refer to the case
of the ultra-opportunist C. E. Russell joining with Debs in warning
against opportunism in the Socialist Party in their pamphlet Danger
Ahead y or the case of the reformist Frank Bohn lining up with Bill
Haywood in the 1912 inner-party fight, or the recent instance of
A. J. Muste, who in a few years completed the cycle of preacher —
progressive trade unionist — Left Socialist — Trotsky ite and then back
to preacher again. Right opportunists can easily fly over to "Left"
sectarian positions.

The sectarian danger in the Socialist Party was greatly increased
by that Party's recent absorption of the Trotskyite group. Just at
the time when these counter-revolutionary elements were being
proved to be terrorists and assassins the Socialist Party saw fit to
take them to its bosom. But it will inevitably pay dearly for this
mistake in loss of strength and influence. The Trotskyites, who are
finding easy pickings in the confused, chaotic Socialist Party, are
tending greatly to turn that organization into an anti-Communist,
anti-Soviet sect. This will drive the best worker elements out of the
Socialist Party and will further weaken its contacts with the masses.
Not long since the French Socialist Party also made the mistake
of swallowing the noisome Trotsky group, but it soon had to relieve
itself of the poisonous, indigestible mess, and the American Socialist
Party will have to do the same if it is to develop into a healthy party.

B. Underestimation of Immediate Demands

Now let us look at the practical application of the Socialist Party's
new mixture of sectarianism and Right reformism, of which Thomas
is the great champion. The heart of Thomas' theorizing is to the
effect that inasmuch as capitalism is now breaking down the fight
for partial economic and political demands is relatively unimportant
and that the immediate issue upon which all attention should be con-

45

centrated is the basic revolutionary question of socialism versus capi-
talism. His position, in substance, is that the workers cannot satisfy
their most immediate needs or protect their most elementary rights
short of establishing a socialist society. Thomas says, "The immediate
demand of the Socialists is socialism."*

Now all this sounds very revolutionary, especially coming from
Norman Thomas who only three years ago was enthused over the
"steps toward socialism" of Roosevelt. But actually it is only radical
phrasemongering. Its general effect is to weaken the struggle of the
workers and to play into the hands of the bosses. Its continuance
will make havoc with what membership and standing the Socialist
Party still has left.

Thomas' playing down of immediate partial demands goes
counter to the whole need and trend of the revolutionary movement.
His line is one of mere agitation, not struggle. The fight for partial
demands is the starting point for all revolutionary struggle. And
never did they play such a vital role as they do now, with the workers'
civic, working, and living standards being so viciously attacked by
the growing fascist reaction. As the Communist Party correctly
stresses, a militant defense of the workers 3 immediate interests is the
first condition for the development of the struggle against capitalism
as a system. It is only in such fights that the workers can develop
the necessary understanding, confidence and organization. When
Thomas puts out his slogan, "If reform is the way out, better stick
with the Roosevelt administration", and then backs this up by soft-
pedaling the fight for the immediate issues confronting the toiling
masses and by concentrating upon mere agitation for the establish-
ment of socialism, he abandons the present-day fighting field of the
revolutionary movement and reduces the whole struggle for socialism
to an empty abstraction. He not only undermines the present-day
fight of the workers but the ultimate aims of the working class as
well. In the name of socialism he hamstrings the fight for socialism.
And the effect of it all upon the Socialist Party is still further to
isolate it from the life and struggles of the masses and thus to push
it along the fatal road of sectarianism. It is also water on the mill
of the counter-revolutionary Trotskyites who are struggling to con-
trol the Socialist Party.

I

* Radio speech, Oct. 20, 1936.

46

C. The Retreat Before Fascism

Consequent upon his failure to perceive the fundamental impor-
tance of the fight for immediate demands in the development of the
revolutionary struggle in general, Thomas abandons the field in the
face of advancing fascism. With his constant harping upon the one
string of "socialism versus capitalism" he quits the real revolutionary
battle which, in its present preliminary stages, is now being waged
around the central question of "democracy versus fascism". Is this;
not as clear as day in France and Spain? There the workers and their
allies, who in their overwhelming mass would remain unresponsive
to sterile and academic talk such as Thomas > about establishing:
socialism forthwith, are nevertheless drawn into revolutionary ac-
tivity by their fight against the attacks of the fascists upon their
present civic, working, and living standards. Their movement begins
as a defensive fight for the most elementary immediate needs, their
wages, their right to organize, the national independence of their
countries, etc., but it soon passes over to a counter-offensive struggle
for major objectives making definitely towards a revolutionary clash
with capitalism.

Thus in France the workers and their allies were not content
simply with setting up the Blum government as a defense against
fascism but carried their counter-offensive much further, adding;
3,000,000 new members to the trade unions, securing wage increases,
shorter hours, vacations with pay, etc., etc. And in Spain this whole
revolutionary trend is even more marked. Who can doubt but that
the masses in these countries, starting from their defense of their
democratic rights and developing their counter-offensif e, have made
huge strides in the direction of the final struggle for socialism?
And the same general rule applies to the United States. When
Thomas does not see the question of progress versus reaction, of
democracy versus fascism, as the issue of immediate struggle, he
fails to see the present-day revolutionary struggle in general and
he lives in a realm of reformist sectarian abstractions.

Where Thomas' blindness on the issue of democracy versus- \
fascism leads to in actual practice is shown by the tragically ridicu-
lous position of the Socialist Party in the 1936 Presidential election
campaign, which is still going on as I write this. The situation is that
the Liberty League and other great capitalist interests, which embody-
the real threat of fascism and of which such figures as Coughlin,,

47

Smith, Talmadge, etc., are satellites, are bitterly opposed to Roose-
velt's concessions to the toiling masses, meager though they were,
and they are almost solidly behind Landon. Roosevelt has served
them welL His proudest boast is that he saved the capitalist system
by the New Deal. But the big exploiters are determined to find an
even more convenient instrument for putting across their ultra-
reactionary program, a program which inevitably leads in the direction
of fascism.

""* It is clear that the Republican candidate Landon, with his false-
face of liberalism and his tutelage by the fascist Hearst, is the spokes-
man of the main fascist danger in this country. Although he
himself is not definitely a fascist and while his victory would
not result immediately in the establishment of fascism, it would,
nevertheless, undoubtedly stimulate enormously the employers' re-
actionary offensive and greatly facilitate the growth of fascist ten-
dencies, f in line with the realities of the situation, therefore, the
Communist Party has correctly singled out Landon as the chief
expression of the fascist menace and urges his defeat. But this
by no means implies endorsement of Roosevelt. On the contrary, the
Communist Party points out that with his constant service to re-
actionary finance capital Roosevelt is an ardent defender of capital-
ism and is no barrier to fascism. It advocates the formation of a
united front anti-fascist Farmer-Labor Party and, in the absence
oT such a party, in the present elections, it calls upon the masses
to vote for the Communist Party candidates, Browder and F ord. \

But Thomas can see no fascist- danger in Landon. Quite tHe
reverse: he concentrates his main fire against Roosevelt and gives
direct support to Hearst's man, Landon, The fascist-like election
strategy of the Republican Party and its heavy financial backers is,
through the candidacy of Landon, to put something of a liberal
face upon their reactionary program and thus to delude the masses.
But Thomas, instead of joining with the Communists, trade union-
ists, liberals, etc., in exposing this dangerous demagogic trick, pro-
ceeds to give it practical support,

Thomas aids the capitalist demagogy by absolving Landon of any
taint of fascism and accepting this pseudo-liberalism at its face value.
He assails the Communists for ascribing a fascist tendency to Landon
and he can see the trend towards fascism only in such figures as
Coughlin, Smith, etc. Says Thomas, "The fascist demagogue will talk

48

like Huey Long or maybe like Lemke, but not like Landon or
Knox".* This attitude constitutes direct aid to the fascist Hearst's
candidate, as it tends to disarm the masses and lure them into the
demagogic trap set for them by fascist-minded big capital.**

But Thomas goes further than this. He also undertakes to cleanse
Landon's big financial supporters themselves of any suspicion of
fascism. This he does with doubly fallacious argument. Firstly, he
presents the deadly reformist illusion that fascism is a movement
of the middle class,*** instead of its being basically the movement
of finance capital, with the middle class serving as its tool; and
secondly, he makes the ridiculous assertion that the Republican Party,
the party of monopoly capital, instead of tending on towards fas-
cism and further monopolization, is actually trying to turn back
the wheels of time and return to the period of relatively free com-
petition, to the individualistic capitalism of the nineteenth century.
He declares, "Landon, or the forces and interests behind him which
are stronger than Landon, are in the strict sense of the word re-
actionary. They want to go back to an older capitalism".**** Thus,
Thomas would have the workers believe that finance capital presents
no real menace of fascism, but is actually a barrier against it.

Consequent upon this absurd analysis, Thomas arrives at the
conclusion that it makes no difference whether Roosevelt or Landon
is elected. But in reality the weight of his argument favors Landon,
and gives him direct support. Indeed, Thomas finds a characteristic-
ally ridiculous reason for the election of Landon when he says: "Con-
ceivably a Landon victory might put iron in labor's blood."*****
When Hearst, to elect Landon through a Red scare, lyingly alleged
that the Communists were supporting Roosevelt, Thomas at once
rushed into print and seconded Hearst's charge. Small wonder then

* Quoted in Daily Worker, July 13, 1936.

** Thomas 1 * acceptance of Landon's demagogic pretenses of liberalism was
evidenced by his much publicized letter to Landon asking him to state more
precisely his position towards labor. For this service to Landon, Thomas was-
heartily praised by Hearst and the whole Republican press and roundly con-
demned by many spokesmen of labor.

*** "The essential thing about fascism in Europe is that it is a middle
class movement, directed nominally as much against international bankers or
plutocrats as against organized workers." After the New Deal — What? p. 144.

**** Socialist Call> Sept. 12, 1936.

***** Ibid.

49

that Hearst, the chief American fascist, should quote him approvingly
in his great chain of papers. And it is significant that with the Re-
publicans in the election campaign fiercely denouncing not only
Browder, but also such people as Frankfurter, Tugwell, Ickes,
Wallace, Lewis, Hillman, Dubinsky, and even Roosevelt himself,
as dangerous Communists, they exempted Norman Thomas entirely
from their attack. In Mineola, New York, the Republican city au-
thorities refused a public building for a meeting of the American
Labor Party (to which 450,000 New York trade unionists are
affiliated) on the ground that it was Communistic, but they freely
allowed the use of the hall the following night to the Socialist Party,
with Norman Thomas as speaker.

The 1936 national elections constitute the sharpest class divisions
in American history. On the one side, there is the greatest aggrega-
tion of capital that has ever backed any American political party and,
on the other, an unprecedented concentration of the toiling masses.
Although the opposing class line-up and program are as yet by no
means complete and clear-cut, this election fight amounts to the first
real battle between the forces making for fascism and those fighting
against it. And in this important situation the Socialist Party finds
itself on the wrong side of the barricade. For this it is already pay-
ing dearly in lessened prestige and influence, and it is being exposed
still further to the Trotskyite poison within its tissues.

D. A Reactionary Peace Policy

The new trend in the Socialist Party has not given that Party
a revolutionary peace policy. True, the Socialist Party makes a great
show of radicalism in its attitude towards the war that now threatens
to deluge the world anew with blood. But in reality its policy in this
vital matter is only its traditional reformist line, with the new sec-
tarian trimmings. Its wrong attitude stands in the way of the
Socialist Party doing real anti-war service and of its developing
mass leadership on this fundamental issue. The membership of the
Socialist Party are, of course, genuinely in favor of peace but their
Party's program is not a true peace policy. And this wrong policy in
the struggle against war is made all the worse by the growing in-
fluence of the Trotskyites in the Socialist Party.

Briefly, the war situation is this: Fascist Germany, Japan and
Italy in an imperialist drive to acquire markets, natural resources

50

and colonies, and to smother their own internal crisis, are developing
a great bloc for a war offensive against various other countries as
occasion dictates, among them the capitalist democracies of France,
England, the United States, Spain, Czechoslovakia, etc., as well as
against the Soviet Union. It is a basically different situation from
that prevailing on the eve of the 1914 World War. At that time
two mutually warlike and aggressive groups of imperialist powers
confronted each other; but now the capitalist democracies, colonies
and socialist U.S.S.R., which all want peace, are definitely on the
defensive in the face of the militant fascist offensive.

Should the fascist aggressors succeed in their war plans of mass
slaughter and subjugation, it would be a crushing blow to liberty in
every country. Their murderous attack aims to extinguish all
semblances of labor organization and civil rights in Europe and to-
reduce the living standards of the toiling masses to coolie levels;
it also menaces the political independence of many countries, and its-
most central objective is to drown the Soviet government in the
greatest bloodbath in history. The fascist offensive threatens the very
existence of modern civilization and its success would be a major
disaster to the human race.

In the face of this ultra-dangerous situation the Soviet Union
leads the struggle for the maintenance of peace. It seeks to develop
a combined defensive by the socialist and democratic forces of the
world, on the basis of a program of collective security, to stop the
war which the fascists are preparing so deliberately. And more and
more the world's labor movement and the democratic countries are
rallying to this program. But this struggle has still greater implica-
tions than that of saving the world from a horrible slaughter. It
also dovetails with the fight of the revolutionary movement for
socialism at the present time. Should the combined peace forces be
able to prevent the war it means that the advance of socialism thereby
will be greatly facilitated in every country; and if they have to
defeat militarily the fascists in a war forced by the latter it will
surely be a prelude to proletarian revolutions in many countries. The
struggle to preserve democracy and to maintain peace is also, for the
toiling masses, the fight for socialism.

But the so recently super-revolutionary Thomas will have none
of this. He repudiates all efforts to force the American government
to take a stand with other democracies against the fascist aggressors

51

and he likewise rejects this policy for European nations. With a
pseudo-radical gesture he sweeps away the correct revolutionary
strategy of the Communist International and the Soviet Union,
Echoing the a Red imperialism" slanders of Kautsky and the lies of
Hitler that the U.S.S.R. is the real source of the war danger,
Thomas denounces the Communists and other advocates of collec-
tive security against the fascist barbarians as "crusaders for a new
holy war". He sneers at the peace struggle led by the Soviet Union
to halt the war-making fascists as being merely preparations for "a
*good' war between capitalist nations".* Then he plumps for the
American bourgeois imperialist policy of "neutrality" and "isolation",
the policy mask behind which American capitalism hides its aggres-
sive aims.

Thomas* policy of "keeping out of it" is, in plain English, a
shameful surrender before the attack of Hitler, Mussolini & Co.
It is an abandonment of the embattled revolutionary labor move-
ment of Europe. Thomas' determination not to actively assist the
workers of Europe in case of a fascist-made war he justifies by the
following puerile argument:

"It should be remembered that there is no particular virtue in
helping- an 'innocent' nation [one of those attacked by the fascists —
W.Z.F.] by enabling the du Pont family to sell powder to them at
a great profit."**

The readiness of Thomas to betray the Soviet Union in case
of war is clearly shown in the following disgraceful statement:

"Is not Russia today strong enough to take care of herself with-
out asking workers in other lands in her behalf to accept the terror
and futility of one more c good } war?"***

The American imperialist policy of "isolation", which Thomas
accepts with a flourish of much radical phraseology, cannot prevent
war nor keep the United States out of war if and when it comes.
"The way to keep America out of war is to keep war out of the
world", correctly says the Communist Party. And this can only
be done by an organized struggle for peace on the part of the anti-

* After the New Deal — What? p, 218.
** Ibid.y p. 140.
*** Ibid., p. 136.

52

war forces of the world against the mad-dog fascist war-makers.
The great present task of the revolutionary movement is to mobilize
the workers and their allies for this struggle against war, and it is
a task that the Communist Parties are everywhere loyally fulfilling.
But the Socialist Party, with its "stay out of it" American capitalist
neutrality theories, has abdicated mass leadership in this struggle for
peace and is objectively lending support to the fascist war-makers in
Europe and this country.

E. A Sectarian Labor Party Policy

The matter of breaking the masses away from the two capitalist
parties and building a great Farmer-Labor Party is a fundamental
necessity to combat the advance of reaction and fascism in this coun-
try. And never was the sentiment so strong as now among the
workers for such a party. But hesitancy and delay in the matter are
highly dangerous. Because the A. F. of L. trade union bodies, upon
whom the principal responsibility falls for launching such a party>
have failed to act we see huge masses of discontented workers, small
farmers, etc., falling under the control of the Coughlins, Lemkes,,
Townsends, etc., in their incipient fascist third party which is openly
aiding Landon reactionaries in the election campaign. It is the great
task of the Farmer-Labor Party, the American form of the People's
Front, to prevent the huge toiling masses who are seething with dis-
content from being trapped by reactionary and fascist demagogues
and to give these masses a powerful anti-fascist political weapon. It is
because of these vital considerations that the Communist Party is a
constant and militant fighter for the establishment of the Farmer-
Labor Party.

But here again on this basic issue the Socialist Party still follows a
reformist policy highly detrimental to its development of mass leader-
ship and effective struggle. In previous pages I have pointed out that
the Socialist Party with its preacher-doctor-lawyer leadership fol-
lowed for many years a sectarian anti-labor party policy that was.
disastrous to the Socialist Party's development as a mass proletarian
party. For a few years there was a tendency to correct this disastrous
policy, but now the Socialist Party, with its outbreak of sectarian
phraseniaking, is falling again into the historical mistake of an
anti-labor party policy.

53

— .

It is true that the Socialist Party does lip service to the question
of the Farmer-Labor Party, but that is about as far as it goes* In
practice the Socialist Party follows a line inimical to the Farmer-
Labor Party, This manifests itself by the Socialist Party's systematic
opposition to all steps leading towards the actual formation of the
Farmer-Labor Party. It hinders the Farmer-Labor Party by insisting
upon an unduly radical program for it and by putting forth pessi-
mistic arguments that there is as yet no mass basis for such a party.
Besides, the Socialist Party takes little or no active part in the now
necessary preliminary agitation and organization steps — the building
of local and state parties, Farmer-Labor Party conferences, etc. —
and often actually resists these movements. Thus the Socialist Party
declined even to attend the important Chicago, May 30, conference
called by the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and it assumed an atti-
tude of sharpest hostility towards the American Labor Party of New
York, which is an important indication of the trend of the Com-
mittee fdr Industrial Organization towards a national Labor Party.
And highly significant of its sectarian attitude, the Socialist Party in
its most important 1936 election campaign document, the Party plat-
form, does not even raise the question of the Farmer-Labor Party,
an omission which puts forward the emaciated and half-lifeless
Socialist Party, as the only political perspective, organizationally
speaking, for the American working class and its allies.

The Socialist Party never, at any time, fully freed itself from
the harmful illusion which it held for many years that the Labor
Party was a rival party, a competitor to the Socialist Party. And
now, with the new wave of sectarianism in the Socialist Party,
this long-imbedded wrong conception gains fresh ground. This is
clearly shown by the platform omission of the question of the
Farmer-Labor Party. It is also evidenced by the fact that at the 1936
convention of the Socialist Party 64 delegates (against 119) voted
opposition in principle to the- Labor Party. The baneful and growing
influence of the Trotskyites in the Socialist Party greatly increases
this anti-Farmer-Labor Party trend. Thus the Socialist Party raises
a high barrier of sectarianism that blocks its way to mass influence
and leadership on the fundamentally important issue of the Farmer-
Labor Party.

54

F. Thomas' Defeatism

To the foregoing instances of sectarian trends and openly oppor-
tunist hang-over policies from the past that still remain in the mass
work of the Socialist Party many others of similar character could
be added. The same narrow line is to be observed increasingly in the
Socialist Party's work in the trade unions, among the unemployed,
in the youth activities, among the sharecroppers, etc. And the general
effect of it all is, during the past year or so since the sectarian trends
have become more pronounced, to cut away the Socialist Party's
already greatly weakened mass influence and to reduce still further its
badly shattered membership.

It is characteristic of Norman Thomas' role in the Socialist Party
that, with his great show of radical phrasemongering, he should find
the way to distort into a sterile sectarianism the Socialist Party prole-
tarian membership's desire to make their Party truly revolutionary.
In every important situation Thomas seems to have the unhappy
faculty of finding the way to inaction and surrender. He is a
confirmed prophet of pessimism and defeatism. But fortunately his
non-fight way is not the way of the masses. For them the class
struggle is not merely a matter of philosophical speculation 5 their
very lives and liberties are at stake, and they will fight notwithstanding
the surrender advice of Thomas.

Many examples might be cited of Thomas' non-struggle policies.
Thus, for instance, when Roosevelt promulgated his N.R.A. Thomas
promptly called upon the workers not to strike. Happily, however,
they disregarded his counsel of passive reliance upon Roosevelt and
carried through successfully one of the greatest strike waves in
American history. Again, in his book, As I See It> Thomas was at
great pains to show, in his defense of purely parliamentary tactics,
that armed action by the workers has been rendered obsolete and
impossible by the development of the airplane and other modern
military weapons. But the workers of Spain, against whom the great
bulk of the trained army revolted, are now giving a glorious negative
to Thomas' surrender propaganda. Thomas' abandonment of the
European workers' fight for peace is also a non-struggle policy that
the masses will reject. And now in his new book, After the New
Deal — What? Norman Thomas not only sees fascism as inevitable
in the United States following the next serious economic crisis., 11 ' but

* He says, "The only hope of bourgeois democracies to escape fascism is
to escape this crisis." After the New Deal — What? p. 154.

55

more or less universal after the world war that is now brewing.
But again the workers will disappoint this monumental pessimism
of Thomas. They will never accept his inevitability-of-fascism
theories. They will have a big word to say before fascism can possibly
succeed in this country, and what realist can doubt that the next
world war, instead of being followed by a spread of fascism, will
give birth to a new wave of proletarian revolutions that may well
crack the capitalist system all over Europe?

Thomas' new sectarianism has its roots in this basic pessimism,
in his glaring lack of faith in the fighting ability of the working
class and its allies. His whole conception is an escape from the hard
realities and severe tasks of the class struggle into the easy realm of
glittering radical generalities. But it is a path that the working class
will never tread. It will not fit itself into Thomas' narrow sectarian-
ism, defeatism and crass opportunism. On the contary, it will forge
ahead along its line of militant mass struggle and leave the Socialist
Party, if that Party persists in its present policies, sitting in sterile
isolation.
2. The Question of Cultivating the Revolutionary Forces

In the foregoing pages we have seen that the Socialist Party, with
its new turn, has not succeeded in developing a policy that would
bring it forward in a leading position among the workers and other
toiling masses in their everyday struggle against the capitalist ex-
ploiters. Thus it still fails in the first essential for the establishment
of the class struggle policy that is fundamentally necessary in order
to build a strong revolutionary party. Now let us see what the So-
cialist Party is doing with regard to the second essential of such a
class struggle policy- — the building up of a strong body of Marxist-
Leninist understanding in and around the Party. Here, again, as we
shall see, our question will receive a negative answer: the Socialist
Party is also not succeeding in this most basic need.

A. Reformist Theoretical Weakness

Prior to 1934, the authoritative pronouncement of the Socialist
Party analysis and policy was the statement of principles adopted in
the Party convention of 1924. This was a typical social reformist
document of the period ; it might well have been the basic program
of any of the parties of the Second International. It was more con-

56

:servative even than the 1920 statement (which was adopted under
the influence of the Russian Revolution and the great post-war up-
heavals) and it contained all the theoretical misconceptions and
opportunist policies that have led to the practical bankruptcy of the
Second International in the face of the Russian Revolution on the
one hand and the rise of fascism on the other.

The 1924 Socialist Party statement, a product of the Coolidge
"boom" period, was not a program of proletarian revolution, but
of the gradual growth of capitalism into socialism. The document
rejects the Marxian analysis of the capitalist state as the instrument
of the bourgeoisie and the revolutionary necessity for setting up
the dictatorship of the proletariat — instead it is based upon the oppor-
tunist theory that the present state is a democratic people's state by
means of which socialism can be built. The 1924 program also
holds forth not a Marxian perspective of class struggle culminating
in the overthrow of capitalism and the "expropriation of the expro-
priators" without compensation, but the Bernstein conception of class
collaboration, the conquest of the state by peaceful means and the
purchase of the major industries from the capitalist owners.

The Detroit, 1934, statement of principles, written as I have
pointed out under the pressure of the great American strike wave
of the early Roosevelt years and in face of the bankruptcy of the
German Socialist Party before Hitler's attacks, broke sharply with
the extreme Right reformist Socialist Party conception of 1924.
The new program was still full of confusion and far from being
revolutionary, but it was nevertheless a big advance over the pre-
vious document.

The 1934 program rejected the reformist theory of the capi-
talist "people's state", began to speak of the "bogus democracy of
capitalism", and made a confused approach to the question of the
dictatorship of the proletariat by vague theorizing about a future
"workers' democracy". The program also cast grave doubts on the
efficacy of purely democratic and legal methods of struggle and
declared that it was prepared if necessary to "carry the revolutionary
struggle into the camp of the enemy". It also took a more militant
stand against war, pronouncing itself in favor of "massed war re-
sistance", and it made a more correct estimate of the first socialist
state, the U.S.S.R. This relatively Left program was. adopted by
the Detroit convention only after a fierce resistance by the "Old
Guard" leadership, who denounced it as Communistic.

57

The Detroit, 1934, program represented progress in the direc-
tion of a revolutionary basis for the Socialist Party's work. But the
Cleveland, 1936, Socialist Party convention took some steps back-
ward by substantially watering down the Detroit document.
Throughout its history the Socialist Party has opportunistically
swayed back and forth in its statements of its basic principles, varying
them widely according to the temporary moods of the masses.
The Party was at the time no longer feeling the heavy mass
pressure that it had experienced in 1934, so the 1936 Socialist
Party convention, as always dominated by lawyers, preachers, doc-
tors and other middle class intellectuals, who were alarmed at their
own radicalism of 1934, characteristically decided to remove
some of the "objectionable" features of the 1934 program.
They also hoped that this "concession" would placate the enraged
"Old Guard" Right wing of the Party led by Louis Waldman, Abe
Cahan, James Oneal, then on the verge of a split.

The Detroit convention had before it a proposed program sub-
mitted by the Left wing at the Socialist Call Institute, a document
which, despite its many elementary theoretical errors, would have
brought the Socialist Party substantially nearer to a correct Leninist
position.* But the convention rejected this document and, instead
of continuing the Party's progress Leftward, pushed it off again to
the Right. The 1936 convention toned down the 1934 declaration
of principles by modifying several key paragraphs in a manner con-
siderably minimizing the necessity for a program of militant class
struggle and placing more reliance upon bourgeois democracy .^These
retreats to the Right Norman Thomas calls an "improvement".**

In considering the status of the Socialist Party with regard to
revolutionary theory attention must be focused upon its leader,
Norman Thomas. In reality, so great is his influence that the Party
is guided far more by what he says than by its formal declaration
of principles. And Thomas' whole theoretical line makes against a
revolutionary program; it works directly counter to the development
of a body of Marxian revolutionary understanding in and around
the Socialist Party; it cultivates reformism and sectarianism and it
creates favorable conditions for the growth of Trotskyism.

* For a detailed analysis of this document and an estimate of the general
theoretical position of the Socialist Party, see Alex Bittelman's pamphlet,
Going Left, Workers Library Publishers, New York.

** After the New Deal — What? p. 221.

58

The viewpoint of Norman Thomas is a melange of "Left'
liberalism and Bernstein revisionism, heavily tinctured with Trotsky-
ism, and this incongruous mixture he calls "socialism". Thomas, the
present "Left" leader of the Socialist Party, is even less a Marxist
than was the former Right opportunist Old Guard party head,
Hillquit. Not only is the basic theoretical work of the great Marxists,
Lenin and Stalin, rejected completely by Thomas, but he also blithely
challenges offhand even the most fundamental principles of Marx
and Engels. Thus, for example, in a few lines and with a wave of
the hand, he casually brushes aside the Marxian conceptions of
historical materialism and of the class struggle and also the Marxian
theories of value.

<£ . . , these things do not prove that all this old world needs is
to accept Marxism with its materialist conception of history, class
conflict and theory of value."

"Not only is the concept of economic determination inadequate to
the weight Marxists often put upon it but so is the more vehemently
held dogma of the class struggle." *

Thomas* latest book, After the New Deal— What? y is only a
restatement of the traditional reformist line of the Socialist Party,
with the addition of his new sectarian tendencies. It contradicts even
the relatively mild "Left" line of the 1934 Party statement of
principles. Thomas shows in it that the great lessons of the Russian
Revolution, the rise of fascism and the bankruptcy of the opportunist
line of the Second International are quite lost upon him in the matter
of working out of a Socialist policy in the United States.

In Thomas' latest book we find a repetition of the old social
reformist avoidance of mass class struggle and the customary oppor-
tunist conception of the gradual growth of capitalism into socialism.
He even repeats the antique and discredited reformist plan of buy-
ing the industries from the capitalists, as he proposes "to offer some
compensation to the expropriated owners". ** Thomas retains a child-
like faith in the efficacy of capitalist democracy as the means of
accomplishing socialism. He completely disregards the lessons of
fascism in Europe, which prove conclusively what Marx and Lenin
said many years ago, that the capitalists, including the militant

* America's Way Out, pp. 133 and 138.
** After the New Deal — What? p. 163.

59

American brand, will never allow themselves to be ousted through:
the workers and their allies merely obtaining parliamentary majori-
ties, but will resort to arms to defend their rulership. Thomas pins',
his hopes in the American capitalist democracy (with a bit of patch-
ing up here and there). He is thus an ardent advocate of American
exceptionalism. Just how little a revolutionist Thomas is, despite all.
his pother about socialism, was shown by a revealing statement he-
made in June, 1936, to The N em York Times:

"In this country we want no dictatorship, we want no revolution,
there are ample constitutional ways of bringing about the change
[to socialism — W.Z.F.] in a peaceful and legal manner."

From all the foregoing it is clear that the Socialist Party, as a
party, is not basing itself upon revolutionary theory; and as Lenin
says, without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary
movement. With its present babel of conflicting group reformist
theories — Old Guardism, militantism, Lovestoneism, and counter-
revolutionary Trotskyism, the Socialist Party does not develop a
program of militant daily mass struggle nor can it build up the in-
dispensable core of revolutionary Marxian fighters. What progress,
it is making towards these essential goals comes from the pressure
of the incipient Leninist-Stalinist minority in the Socialist Party.
Especially does Thomas' mish-mash of opportunist theorizing stand
in the way of the ideological advance of the Socialist Party. To be-
come a revolutionary party the Socialist Party would have to over-
come its shallow opportunist theories and base its policies firmly upon
the study and propagation of the work of the great revolutionary
leaders of the working class — Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.

B. Hostility Against the United Front

A fundamental aspect of the failure of the new leadership of
the Socialist Party to cultivate the revolutionary force of the working
class is its hostility towards the united front. In this anti-united front
attitude there are elements of the new Socialist Party sectarianism,
but the main constituents of it are remnants of the traditional war
of the opportunistic Socialist Party leadership against the Left wing.

The question of unity is now one of most burning necessity
to the working class in view of the growing offensive of the fascist
reaction. At its recent Seventh World Congress in Moscow the

60

Communist International understood this clearly, saying: "At the
present historical stage it is the main and immediate task of the in-
ternational labor movement to establish the united front of the
working class.' 5

The Communist Parties all over the world are working actively
to develop such unity of labor's forces. And that they are not striving
in vain is demonstrated by the great united front movements in
France, Spain, Austria, Italy, etc. In first line, all these movements
are based upon formal united front agreements between the Socialist
and Communist Parties.

The need for unity within the ranks of labor is also acute in the
United States, and the Communist Party is the leading fighter for
the united front. As part of its campaign for an eventual broad
united People's Front of labor and its allies in the Farmer-Labor
Party it attaches great importance to a general united front with
the Socialist Party, based upon a program of struggle for immediate
demands, but also looking forward to the amalgamation of the two
parties into one organization on the basis of a revolutionary fight
for socialism.

Notwithstanding that the united front question played a big
role in the recent defeat of the "Old Guard" leadership the present
Socialist Party leaders, however, resist the striving of the Commu-
nist Party for a general united front. Thus they rejected the Com-
munist Party proposal for a joint Socialist-Communist Party ticket
in the 1936 national elections. Harking back to the traditional
Socialist Party opportunist policy of war against the Left and con-
ciliation towards the Right, they work on the theory that joint action
with the Communists is a hindrance rather than an advantage. They
only go as far in the direction of the united front as they are pressed
by their proletarian rank and file among whom the Communist Party
united front policy is very popular. The official Socialist Party stand is
against a general united front with the Communist Party, but it
does occasionally accept united front actions on individual issues.

On such questions as the Socialist Party and Communist Party
have developed united front actions, including the amalgamation of
the two unemployed organizations into the Workers Alliance, the
defense of the Mooney, Scottsboro and Herndon cases, joint Socialist
Party-Communist Party action in various unions, local mass demon-
strations, etc., have been almost uniformly highly successful. The

61

^^^^MHHB

BBSHHnHHHHI

workers joyfully supported the unity in action of the two organiza-
tions, and the whole experience to date has gone to show that broad
united front activities by the two parties on a sound program could
be a powerful factor for progress in the labor movement.

But Norman Thomas, with eyes Right, wants little or rone of
that. In his latest book he says :

"Our fundamental task is not to unite Socialists, Communists and
what we call progressives, already numerous enough to stop fascism,
in one anti-fascist bloc. All of us together are, alas, too few;" *

With such characteristic confusionist arguments does Thomas
justify his opportunist rejection of the united front and place obstacles
in the way of labor's unity. In one breath he admits that the pros-
pective united front forces are "already numerous enough to stop
fascism" and then, in the very next breath, he bemoans that "All of
us together are, alas, too few".

Negative results of this Socialist Party anti-unity line are to be
seen in various united front movements, including the Farmer-Labor
Party, the National Negro Congress, the National Youth Congress,
and the American League Against War and Fascism. In these move-
ments the Socialist Party policy (save in the case of individual So-
cialists who disregard their Party's line) boils down pretty much to
one of mere fault-finding, sectarian proposals and even actual ob-
struction. The anti-united front tendencies in the Socialist Party are
being strengthened by the growing influence of the counter-revolu-
tionary Trotskyites.

Thomas, who is so conservative on the united front question in
the United States, suddenly becomes super-radical on the united front
internationally, which is only another way of opposing this policy.
A la Trotsky, he is much alarmed that the Popular Front move-
ments in France and Spain are not revolutionary enough and he
criticizes them for Right opportunism. Thus, characteristically, at a
big New York united front demonstration the Socialist Party, in
the name of vague proposals for a workers' Spain, not only refused
specifically to endorse the Spanish People's Front government, which
was fighting guns in hand against fascism, but even tried to force
the Communist Party to agree not to carry slogans or make speeches
bearing; such endorsements. But Thomas' narrow sectarian concep-

* After the New Deal — What? p. 214.

62

tion of the People's Front, if followed in Europe, could only have the
effect of surrendering to the fascists the farmers and city middle
class elements now in the Popular Front, for which decisive, gift
the fascists would rejoice. The Popular Front movement, despite its
many weaknesses as yet in practice, is sound in principle. It is the
correct revolutionary strategy in the given situation. It is the path
by which the anti-fascist masses can develop basically the greatest
possible struggle here and now, and it is also the strategical means
by which the proletariat can gather around itself the maximum
forces for the eventual revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist
system. It is giving new revolutionary hope, organization and fighting
spirit to the masses demoralized by the ideological bankruptcy of the
Second International.

The Socialist Party's openly opportunist resistance to the united
front policy in the United States and its sectarian, but no less oppor-
tunist, attempt to narrow down the People's Front in Europe is a close
relation of the "Old Guard's" anti-united front policy, and it is in
line with that of the most reformist sections of the Second Interna-
tional. It demonstrates that the Socialist Party has not yet learned
how to develop the revolutionary forces, its new leadership not having
vanquished the reformist hang-overs from the past in this funda-
mental respect. The anti-united front tendencies in the Socialist
Party are a real barrier to its becoming a strong mass party and a
leading fighting force.

; C. Unfriendly Attitude Towards the Soviet Union

In a previous chapter I have shown that one of the most fatal
mistakes in the whole history of the Socialist Party, one that under-
mined the Party from within and alienated the best revolutionary
elements from without, was its years-long attitude of hostility towards
the U.S.S.R. The bitter struggle that the Socialist Party "Old Guard"
petty-bourgeois leaders so long led against the first socialist country
was a basic expression of their general war against the Left wing
in their own Party and against every other manifestation of revolu-
tionary spirit and program.

The Socialist Party of today, despite its new turn, has not freed
itself from this fundamental error. Such antagonism to the U.S.S.R.
is, in final analysis, antagonism to proletarian revolution in general.
Although its rank-and-file membership are distinctly friendly to the

63

Soviet Union, there still remains much of the old reformist anti-
Sovietism in the official policy of the Socialist Party. The Socialist Cdl y
for example, has long been a happy hunting ground for renegades
like Zam, the Trotsky ites and various other professional slanderers
of the U.S.S.R. Their lies are cut from the same cloth as those of
Hearst and Green, but often outdo the latter in insidious mis-
representation.

Norman Thomas, the decisive leader of the Socialist Party, is
especially to be criticized for his unfriendliness towards the Soviet
Union. His attitude regarding the U.S.S.R. or "Russia", as he calls
it in bourgeois fashion, is about 1 per cent grudging endorsement
and 99 per cent cynical criticism. It is not to be expected, of
course, that a reformist Socialist should accept uncritically the Soviet
government and its program, but he certainly should appraise it fairly
and honestly, and this Thomas does not do. The U.S.S.R. has always
welcomed sincere criticism, an example of this being the warm
greeting it gave to the recent splendid book by the Webbs, Soviet
Communism: A New Cwili%atton? } which contains no little, honest
but mistaken, criticism of the Soviet system.

Thomas approaches the question of the Soviet government from
a biased, antagonistic standpoint. Its gigantic achievements politically,
industrially, socially leave him cold and super-critical. He sneers at
the warm and loyal defense Communists make of the first socialist
country, the great world stronghold against fascism, when he says,
"Russia is a kind of holy land to all Communists".* He has never
taken the trouble to visit the U.S.S.R. (although thousands of Amer-
icans have done so) to study the situation at first hand. Whenever
he writes about the Soviet Union Thomas reflects in his own special
way whatever anti-Soviet slanders happen to be afloat at the time.
Almost any liberal bourgeois writer can be depended upon to make
a fairer and more objective estimate than he of the Soviet Union.

In these crucial days of threatening war danger, with the Soviet
Union menaced from both east and west by strong and ruthless
fascist powers, it is the duty and interest of every revolutionist to
draw closer to the U.S.S.R. and. to give the most active support to its
peace policy. But Norman Thomas, typically, has not the slightest
sense of any such need. On the contrary, he seems to consider that
now, when the U.S.S.R. is so heavily attacked, is the best time to

* After the New Deal — What? p. 211.

64

go sniping against it. His slanderous misrepresentation of the Soviet
Union during the Ethiopian war was a scandal. His reception of
the great new Soviet Constitution was frigid and skeptical — a new
capitalist charter for New York City would evoke more .enthusiasm
and fairer consideration from him. His reaction to the case of the
Trotsky-Zinoviev terrorists was to put the Soviet government, not
these murderers, on trial. And so it goes on every Soviet question,
always Thomas is to be found casting doubts and insinuations upon
the good faith of the Soviet government. He could gulp down with-
out blinking the treacherous MacDonald and Hindenburg govern-
ments, but the revolutionary U.S.S.R. government can do nothing
to suit him. And, as we have seen earlier, in his demand that "Russia"
stand alone against its enemies and not call upon the workers of
other countries for active assistance, he is threatening to abandon the
Soviet government altogether in case of war.

The revolutionary stature o"f a party can be measured by its
attitude towards the U.S.S.R. This is because the Soviet government
is the revolution in life, the crystallization in flesh and blood of revo-
lutionary theory and practice. The anti-Soviet tendencies in the
leadership of the Socialist Party are expressions of the reformism
with which the Party is afflicted. They are diluted "Old Guardism",
remnants of the traditional opportunist war against the Left wing,
and they are dangerously akin to Hearst's Sovietphobia. They sum
up as part of the Socialist Party's general failure to cultivate and
organize the revolutionary forces.

It is high time that the Socialist Party put an end to these anti-
revolutionary trends. They have done incalculable harm to the So-
cialist Party ever since the November, 1917, revolution and they
still continue to work their evil effects. The Socialist Party can never
be on a sound mass basis until its leaders stop sniping at the U.S.S.R.;
it can never become a revolutionary party until it gives, as a Party,
to the Soviet government and its struggle for peace that hearty
support which springs spontaneously in all revolutionary parties and
which wells up naturally in the heart of every revolutionary worker.

The Perspective of the Socialist Party

Now let us see to what general conclusions our analysis of the
history and present situation of the Socialist Party has led us.

Firstly, we have seen in Chapter I that the basic reason why the

65

Socialist Party has not succeeded historically in building itself into a
strong mass revolutionary party is because it has followed a policy
of reformism instead of one of Marxian class struggle. We have
also seen that this opportunist line originated with the petty-bourgeois
intellectuals who dominated the Socialist Party and systematically
tried to make of it some kind of a semi-demi-progressive party.
Then, in Chapters II and III, we have seen concretely how the
Socialist Party, in the thirty-odd years prior to the development of
its new Left turn in 1934, had continuously violated both major
essentials of the necessary class struggle policy: (a) by its failure to
come forward militantly as the leader of the toiling masses in their
daily economic and political struggles, and, (b) by its failure to build
up a solid body of Marxian understanding in the Socialist Party and
among its mass following. And we have also seen how, step by step,
this persistent reformist policy prevented the Socialist Party from
growing and gaining broad mass 'influence and how it finally led
to several splits and to the deep decay which the Party suffered for
ten years prior to 1934.

Now, in Chapter IV, we have just checked over the present gen-
eral line and condition of the Socialist Party to learn whether, since
its 1934 turn Leftwards, the Party has overcome the reformist errors
of its past and has laid the basis for a sound Marxian policy of class
struggle. And the conclusion we are compelled to arrive at is a
negative one. The old disease of opportunism still afflicts the Socialist
Party, although it has taken on some new sectarian forms.

To begin with, the present day Socialist Party has not succeeded
in proletarianizing its leadership, although it has freed itself of many
opportunist doctors, lawyers, professors, etc., in the "Old Guard"
split. As since its beginning, the Socialist Party leadership remains in
the hands of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals. And the general ten-
dency of these officials goes to thwart the revolutionary purposes of
the proletarians in the Party and to keep the Party on a reformist
course, masked by revolutionary phrasemaking and Trotskyist coun-
ter-evolutionary maneuverings.

We have also seen in the present chapter how the present So-
cialist Party leadership still violates the two major essentials of the
indispensable Marxian class struggle policy. Firstly, by its perpetuation
of old reformist hang-overs and the introduction of the new sec-
tarian opportunism, illustrated through its grossly wrong attitude on

66

the question of the relation of the fight for immediate demands to the
fight for socialism, its defeatist attitude in the struggle against fascism
and war, its anti-Labor Party policy, etc., this leadership prevents
the Socialist Party from coming forward in a leading role in the
daily mass struggles of the workers and thus condemns the Party
to isolation and impotence; and, secondly, by its gross neglect, re-
visionism, and antagonism towards the theoretical works of Marx,
Engels, Lenin and Stalin, by its hostility to the united front policy,
by its consolidation with the discredited Trotskyite disrupters, and
by its unfriendliness towards the Soviet Union, the Socialist Party
leadership hinders the growth of the class conscious body of revolu-
tionary fighters without whom the Socialist Party can never succeed.
The general consequence of this failure of the new Socialist
Party leadership to correct the traditional and disastrous reformist
line of the Party has been, instead of liquidating the Party crisis, to
intensify it, especially during the past year. The Socialist Party is very
sick from opportunism and Thomas' new "cure" is as bad as the old
disease : indeed it is only the chronic ailment of reformism manifesting
itself through new symptoms. The Socialist Party crisis spreads,
deepens and becomes more threatening. The Party membership is
rapidly declining, now being probably not more than half of the
19,121 that it was last year. The "Old Guard" split has wrought
havoc with the Party organization in Ohio, Indiana, California,
Washington, Oregon, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, etc.,
and the Party is threatening to collapse in many other localities.
The effects of the split are made worse by Thomas' silly sectarian
policies and the anti-revolutionary work of the Trotskyist elements,
all of which drive away many serious and honest workers. The
Socialist Party is torn with factionalism, with half a dozen groups
struggling for leadership ; the Party is deeply confused theoretically ;
discipline is practically non-existent; pessimism is rampant, and there is
a general falling away of members who are disgruntled and dis-
gusted. Naturally also, the mass influence of the Socialist Party has
rapidly waned; its 1936 election vote will be greatly reduced and,
actually, in the trade unions, even those led by Socialists for many
years, it has been almost wiped out.* In short, the Socialist Party

**A typical example: In the I.L.G.W.U. Local 22, New York, with
30,000 members, a traditionally Socialist Party controlled union, the Socialist
Party anti-Labor Party policy was rejected by a vote in the ratio of 15 to !.

67

is now, as the fruit of its long-continued opportunist policies, in a
most serious crisis.

Now as to the future; Is the Socialist Party on the way to col-
lapse, or. has it within it the possibility of a renaissance and growth
into a strong party of real value in developing the fighting force of
the proletariat and its allies? To this query the only answer that can
correctly be given at present is that both positive and negative factors
are at work in shaping the Socialist Party and that the fate of the
Party depends upon which of these forces becomes definitely
dominant.

Among the positive factors — that is, those making for a strong
and revolutionary Socialist Party — the most basic one is the constant
pressure upon the Socialist Party from the radicalization of the
masses of workers. Faced by the surging capitalist reaction which in-
creasingly tends in the direction of fascism, these masses, harassed by
unemployment, low wages, abridged civil rights, etc., are compelled
to fight. Hence, they press militantly upon the trade unions, the
growing Farmer-Labor Party, and all other labor organizations, in
order to utilize these bodies as fighting weapons in their growing
struggle against the capitalist exploiters. It was this mass pressure,
in first line, that brought about the Leftward trend in the Socialist
Party, with its defeat of the "Old Guard", adoption of the Detroit,
1934, declaration of principles, etc., and it is this force which, in
opposition to the present trend of the Socialist Party leadership, pro-
vides the general basis for the defeat of sectarian reformism and
Trotskyism in the Socialist Party.

Dovetailing with this constructive force are the effects, on the
one hand, of the open bankruptcy of the reformist, class collabora-
tion policy of the whole Second International in the face of rising
fascism and, on the other hand, of the great successes, domestic and
foreign, of the Socialist Soviet* Union, the growth of the Popular
Front movements in Spain, France, and the general united front
policy of the Communist International — all of which developments
tend to press the Socialist Party in the direction of a policy of Marxian
class struggle.

Another major positive force making for a fighting Socialist
Party is the revolutionary example and stimulation of the Communist
Party. The C. P. U.S. A. manifestly has every reason to want the
Socialist Party to develop in a revolutionary sense, for this means

68

greatly to increase the power of both parties and to draw them
closer together. Therefore, the Communist Party cooperates with
the Socialist Party wherever possible, meanwhile making and receiving
criticism in a friendly spirit. The Communist Party does what it can
to strengthen the Leninist elements within the Socialist Party; it
seizes upon every practical occasion to initiate joint united front cam-
paigns of the two parties and other labor groups; its whole policy
looks forward to the eventual amalgamation of the Communist
Party and Socialist Party into one party upon the basis of a Leninist
revolutionary program.

But there are also at work powerful negative forces that check
these constructive elements and tend to push the Socialist Party
deeper into the quicksand of opportunism. Among these negative
forces is the important fact that the Socialist Party has not succeeded
in proletarian izing its leadership. At the Party's head, as of yore,
stands a group of opportunist petty-bourgeois intellectuals. These
elements act as a real barrier to the translation of the revolutionary
moods of the Socialist Party's proletarian members into terms of a
Marxist-Leninist policy for the Party.

Next there is the negative force of the traditional reformist line
of the Socialist Party. The destructive opportunist policies which, as
we have seen in detail, have through the course of the years brought
the Socialist Party to the brink of ruin, still remain basically in effect.
Their new sectarian trimmings by no means mitigate their disastrous
consequences upon the Party.

And then there is that new malignant disease of the Socialist
Party, the plague of Trotskyism. The admission of the counter-
revolutionary Trotskyites was an injection of deadly poison into the
life tissues of the Socialist Party. They are not only worsening every
traditional weakness of the Party but are introducing a whole series
of new difficulties for it.

Of these positive and negative forces, of which I have cited only
those of a major character, it must be admitted that the negative
ones are now in the ascendant. Corroding and destructive, they are
rapidly isolating the Socialist Party from the masses and disintegrating
its organization. It is certain that with its present leadership and
policies the Socialist Party is on the way to impotence. Unless both
are changed, unless the forces that produced the 1934 Left turn
and overthrew the "Old Guard" can go forward to their necessarj

69

imtBHSamn

goal by giving the Socialist Party a revolutionary leadership and
policy, the Socialist Party's days as an important factor in the labor
movement are over. In their time both the Socialist Labor Party and
the Industrial Workers of the World were militant organizations
that played a progressive role in the developing revolutionary move-
ment. But they failed to learn the lessons of the class struggle of
their period and did not adapt themselves to the changing fighting
needs of the workers. So they became isolated from the advancing
masses and fell into decline and sectarian mummification. Is the
Socialist Party doomed to travel the same fatal path?

70

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