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(e) To find a common basis for the uniting of all existing economic and political organizations based on the class struggle.

(f) To mobilize all members who can serve as organizers to fill the demand for men and women who can organize bodies of workers along the lines indicated above.

(g) To direct the activities of local Party organizations in assisting the workers whole-heartedly in their industrial battles, and making use of these battles as opportunities for educating the workers.

(2) That a National Committee on Labor Organization be elected by this Convention, which shall co-operate with the local committees above mentioned. In addition, the National Committee shall be charged with the task of mobilizing national support for strikes of national importance, and shall endeavor to give these a political character.

(a) It shall collect information concerning the revolutionary labor movement from the different sections of the country, and from other countries, and through a Press Service to Labor and Socialist papers, shall spread this information to all parts of the country.

(b) It shall mobilize on a national scale all members who can serve as propagandists and organizers who cannot only teach, but actually help to put into practice, the principles of revolutionary industrial unionism and Communism.

CHAPTER VII

Socialist Labor Party

Prior to 1898 the leading Socialist organization claiming to be a political party was the Socialist Labor Party, which in that year had gained its zenith, polling 82,204 votes throughout the United States. During that year a bitter controversy arose with organized labor, which resulted in a split in the party, the rigid discipline exacted by Daniel De Leon being in large measure responsible for the differences which arose. As pointed out in Chapter I of this subsection, the bulk of Socialist adherents left the party to form the nucleus of what afterward became the Socialist Party of America. Those who remained in the old organization continued to function as the Socialist Labor Party, under the leadership of Daniel De Leon.

The Socialist Labor Party as it exists today is a small group, effective for its propaganda and for its connections with the Workers' International Industrial Union. The aims and purposes of this party differ very little from those of the Socialist Party of America. They both desire the creation of a co-operative commonwealth and favor industrial unionism as opposed to trade unionism of the type of the American Federation of Labor. Though the two parties profess to differ fundamentally, in the final analysis very little difference between them may be discerned.

The party stands for the overthrow of the present system of government, by the use of industrial action to be made effective by organizing the workers in industrial unions and by the carrying on of the class struggle. Its purposes and objects are manifest from a reading of the platform adopted at the national convention on April 30, 1916, which is as follows:

"We hold that the purpose of government is to secure to every citizen the enjoyment of this right; but taught by experience we hold furthermore that such right is illusory to the majority of the people, to wit, the working class, under the present system of economic inequality that is essentially destructive of their life, their liberty, and their happiness.

"We hold that the true theory of economics is that the means of production must be owned, operated and controlled by the people in common. Man cannot exercise his right

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to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness without the ownership of the land on, and tools with which to work. Deprived of these, his life, his liberty and his fate fall into the hands of that class which owns these essentials for work and production.

"We hold that the existing contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation the latter resulting from the private ownership of the natural and social opportunities-divides the people into two classes: the capitalist class and the working class; throws society into the convulsions of the class struggle; and perverts government in the interests of the capitalist class.

"Thus labor is robbed of the wealth it alone produces, is denied the means of self-employment, and, by compulsory idleness in wage slavery, is even deprived of the necessaries of life.

"Against such a system the Socialist Labor Party raises the banner of revolt, and demands the unconditional surrender of the capitalist class.

"In place of such a system the Socialist Labor Party aims to substitute a system of social ownership of the means of production, industrially administered by the working class,— the workers to assume control and direction as well as operation of their industrial affairs.

"This solution of necessity requires the organization of the working class as a class upon revolutionary political and industrial lines.

"We, therefore, call upon the wage workers to organize themselves into a revolutionary political organization under the banner of the Socialist Labor Party; and to organize themselves likewise upon the industrial field into a revolutionary industrial union in keeping with their political aims.

"And we also call upon all other intelligent citizens to place themselves squarely upon the ground of working class interests, and join us in this mighty and noble work of human emancipation, so that we may put summary end to the existing barbarous class conflict by placing the land and all the means of production, transportation, and distribution into the hands of the people, as a collective body, and substituting the Co-operative Commonwealth for the present state of planless production, industrial war and social disorder -

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