CHAPTER VI

Communist Labor Party

In the latter part of August, 1919, a divergence of opinion arose in the National Left Wing council over the issuance of a joint call for a convention to organize the Communist Party which has previously been described.

The majority of the delegates of the Left Wing conference held in New York City in June, 1919, had decided that the policy of the Left Wing should be to organize for the purpose of capturing the national emergency convention of the Socialist Party which had been called for the latter part of August in that

year.

The delegates to that conference from the Language Federations having withdrawn because of this decision, succeeded later ir inducing the majority of the National Council of the Left Wing to abandon its attempt to control that convention, and to issue a joint call for a convention to organize a Communist Party. Certain members of the National Council, as well as a large number of locals and branches which had endorsed the Left Wing movement, still retained the hope of capturing the Socialist Party machinery, or at least, of influencing its decision at the coming convention.

The August 23d issue of the "Revolutionary Age" announced the simultaneous resignations from its staff of John Reed, Eadmonn MacAlpine and Benjamin Gitlow, due to their opposition to the joint call referred to above.

Pursuant to the policy of attempting to participate in the Socialist Party Emergency Convention, certain of the Left Wing delegates presented themselves as delegates to that convention when it convened on August 30, 1919, in Chicago.

Reports of that convention, from various party organs, indicate that the credentials committee of the Socialist Party refused to seat these delegates and they were excluded from the convention.

A description of what transpired there appears in the "Class Struggles" issue of November, 1919, page 389, in an article entitled "Convention Impressions" by William Bross Lloyd. The excluded Left Wing delegates thereupon met in a separate convention.

"The first thing the Left Wing delegates to the Emergency Convention did," says William Bross Lloyd, "was to appoint a

See Addendum, Part I.

committee of five to meet the Organization Committee of the Communist Party and later a like committee of the Communist Convention for the purpose of seeking unity." These regotia tions came to nothing, and the delegates organized themselves into a Communist Labor Party Convention. The Communist Party is criticized for several reasons. First, because it is controlled by the Russian Language Federation with a membership of 35,000 out of a total of 58,000 of that party's membership. Second, because the remaining portion of the Communist Party were members of the expelled State organization of Michigan and the followers of the National Council of the Left Wing which approved of the call of the Communist Convention. Mr. Lloyd, commenting on the situation, says, "These Russian Federations openly regard themselves as the only Simon-pure 'Bolsheviks' in the world not even excluding Russia. Yet they broke from the Conference on a question not of principle but one of clique control. Yet they united with Michigan, a purely political parliamentarian non-Bolshevik organization, disbelieving in industrial unionism, industrial organization of working class political power and in mass action. All through July the Federations were maligning the Left Wing Council as centrists, as a fetid swamp. Meanwhile, the council was maligning Michigan as parliamentarian and non-Bolsheviks and both Michigan and the Federations as petty political intriguers.

The National Council (Left Wing) was elected under carefully drawn instructions which made it an administrative, ministerial body and in no sense an Executive Committee with power to act on questions of policy. Those instructions were to organize to capture the Socialist Party at the Emergency Convention, and, failing that, afterwards to organize a Communist Party. The Council advertised for money to carry on that work. And in August, the Council publicly renounced the struggle to control the Socialist Party and joined with Michigan and the Federations in calling the Communist Convention. In so doing it violated. its instructions and exceeded its authority and if any unexpended funds so secured by advertisement were expended in the Council's new venture, these funds were misapplied." (Pages 392 and 393 of "Class Struggle.")

These are the reasons given for the failure of the promoters of the Communist Labor Party to unite with the Communist Party

Convention. The convention elected A. Wagenknecht executive secretary; and as members of the National Executive Committee, M. Bedacht, of California; Alexander Bilan, Ohio; Jack Carney, Minnesota; L. E. Katterfeld, Kansas; and Edward Lindgren of New York. Alternates, L. K. England, Illinois; Edgar Owens, Illinois. Labor Committee, Charles Baker, Ohio; Benjamin Gitlow, New York; R. E. Richardson, Utah; and Arne Swabeck, Washington. International delegates, John Reed, New York, and A. Wagenknecht, Ohio.

National Headquarters were opened at 3207 Clark Ave., Cleveland, Ohio.

The convention adopted a platform and program for the party. The platform contains the following provision:

"The Communist Labor Party of the U. S. A. declares itself in full harmony with the revolutionary working class parties of all countries and stands by the principles stated by the Third International formed at Moscow. . . . The Communist Labor Party proposes the organization of the workers as a class, the overthrow of capitalist rule and the conquest of political power by the workers. The workers organized as the ruling class, shall, through their government, make and enforce the laws; they shall own and control land, factories, mills, mines, transportation systems and financial institutions. All power to the workers!

To this end we ask the workers to unite with the Communist Labor Party for the conquest of political power to establish a government adapted to the Communist transformation."

The program of the party restates the principles of the Third Moscow International:

"1. The present is the period of the dissolution and collapse of the whole system of world capitalism. Unless capitalism is replaced by the rule of the working class, world civilization will collapse.

"2. The working class must organize and train itself for the capture of state power. This capture means the estab lishment of the new working class government machinery, in place of the state machinery of the capitalists.

"3. This new working class government- the Dictatorship of the Proletariat-will reorganize society on the basis of Communism, and accomplish the transition from Capitalism to the Communist Commonwealth.

"4. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat shall transfer private property in the means of production and distribution to the working class government, to be administered by the workers themselves. It shall nationalize the great trusts and financial institutions. It shall abolish capitalist agricultural production.

"5. The present world situation demands that the revolutionary working class movements of all countries shall closely unite.

"6. The most important means of capturing state power for the workers is the action of the masses, proceeding from the place where the workers are gathered together in the shops and factories. The use of the political machinery of the capitalist state for this purpose is only secondary."

It must here be noted that the objects and methods advocated in this program are identical with those stated by the Communist Party. A slight difference, however, may be noted in the following:

"7. In those countries in which there is a possibility for the workers to use this machinery" (political machinery) "in the class struggle, they have, in the past, made effective use of it as a means of propaganda, and of defense. In all countries where the conditions for a working class revolution are not ripe, the same process must go on."

In other words, the promoters of the Communist Labor Party see greater advantage in using the present political machinery of government for the purpose of propaganda in view of present conditions than do their comrades of the Communist Party. The party however is distinctly revolutionary. They state:

"1. We favor international alliance of the Communist Labor Party only with the Communist groups of other countries, those which have affiliated with the Communist International.

"2. We are opposed to association with other groups not committed to the revolutionary class struggle.

"3. We maintain that the class struggle is essentially a political struggle, that is, a struggle by the proletariat to conquer the capitalist state, whether its form be monarchial or democratic-republican, and to replace it by a governmental structure adapted to the Communist transformation.

"5. We favor organized Party activity and co-operation with class-conscious industrial unions, in order to unify industrial and political class-conscious propaganda and action. Locals and Branches shall organize shop branches, to conduct the Communist propaganda and organization in the shops, and to encourage the workers to organize in One Big Union.

"6. The Party shall propagandize industrial unionism and industrial union organization, pointing out their revolutionary nature and possibilities.

"7. The Party shall make the great industrial battles its major campaigns, to show the value of the strike as a political weapon."

A special report on labor organization was made to the convention. In it revolutionary industrial unionism is defined as "organization of the workers into unions by industries with a revolutionary aim and purpose; that is to say, a purpose not merely to defend or strengthen the status of the workers as wage earners, but to gain control of industry."

After stating that labor, and labor alone, is industrially responsible, the report makes the following recommendations:

"I. That all Locals shall elect Committees on Labor Organization, composed so far as is possible of members of Labor Unions, whose functions shall be:

"(a) To initiate, or support, the creation of Shop Committees in every industry in their district, the uniting of these Committees in Industrial Councils, District Councils, and the Central Council of all Industries.

(b) To propagandize and assist in the combining of craft Unions, by industries, in One Big Union.

"(c) To bring together in the centers of Party activityLocals and Branches- delegates from factories and shops to discuss tactics and policies of conducting the class struggle.

(d) To propagandize directly among the workers on the job the principles of Communism, and educate them to a realization of their class position.

"(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.