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APPENDIX

CHAPTER VI

Official Documents

1. Platform and Program Communist Labor Party.

Document No. 1

PLATFORM AND PROGRAM COMMUNIST LABOR PARTY

PLATFORM

(1) The Communist Labor Party of the United States of America 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.

(2) With them it thoroughly appreciates the complete development of capitalism into its present form of Capitalist Imperialism with its dictatorship of the capitalist class and its absolute suppression of the working-class.

(3) With them it also fully realizes the crying need for an immediate change in the social system; it realizes that the time for parleying and compromise has passed; and that now it is only the question whether all power remains in the hands of the capitalist or is taken by the working class.

(4) 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, organ

ized 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!

(5) The Communist Labor Party has as its ultimate aim: The abolition of the present system of production, in which the working class is mercilessly exploited, and the creation of an industrial republic wherein the machinery of production shall be socialized so as to guarantee to the workers the full social value of the product of their toil.

(6) To this end we ask the workers to unite with the Communist Labor Party for the conquest of political power to estab lish a government adapted to the Communist transformation.

PARTY AND LABOR PROGRAM

Part I

The Communist Labor Party of America declares itself in complete accord with the principles of Communism, as laid down in the Manifesto of the Third International formed at Moscow.

In essence, these principles are as follows:

(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 establishment 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.

Communist society is not like the present fraudulent capitalist democracy - which, with all its pretensions to equality, is merely a disguise for the rule of the financial oligarchy - but it is a proletarian democracy, based on the control of industry and the state by the workers, who are thereby free to work out their own destiny. It does not mean capitalist institutions of government, which are controlled by the great financial and industrial interests, but organs of administration created and controlled by the masses themselves; such as, for example, the Soviets of Russia.

(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.

(7) In those countries in which there is a possibility for the workers to use this 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 workingclass revolution are not ripe, the same process must go on.

(8) We must rally all groups and proletarian organizations which have manifested and developed tendencies leading in the direction above indicated, and support and encourage the working class in every phase of its struggle against capitalism.

Part II

(1) The economic conditions in every country determine the form of organization and method of propaganda to be adopted. In order efficiently to organize our movement here, we must clearly understand the political and economic structure of the United States.

(2) Although the United States is called a political democracy there is no opportunity whatever for the working class through the regular political machinery to effectively oppose the will of the capitalist class.

(3) The years of Socialist activity on the political field have brought no increase of power to the workers. Even the million votes piled up by the Socialist Party in 1912, left the Party without any proportionate representation. The Supreme Court, which is the only body in any Government in the world with the power to review legislation passed by the popular representative assembly, would be able to obstruct the will of the working class even if Congress registered it, which it does not. The Constitution, framed by the capitalist class for the benefit of the capitalist class, cannot be amended in the workers' interest, no matter how large a majority may desire it.

(4) Although all the laws and institutions of government are framed and administered by the capitalists in their own interests, the capitalists themselves refuse to be bound by these laws or submit to these institutions whenever they conflict with these interests. The invasion of Russia, the raids into Mexico, the suppression of governments in Central America, and the Carribean, the innumerable wars against working class revolutions now being carried on all those actions have been undertaken by the Administration without asking the consent even of Congress. The appointment by the President of a Council of National De

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fense, the War Labor Board, and other extra constitutional governing bodies without the consent of Congress, is a direct violation of the fundamental law of republican government. The licensing by the Department of Justice of anti-labor strike-breaking groups of employers such as the National Security League, the American Defense Society, the Knights of Liberty, the American Protective League- whose express purpose was the crushing of labor organization and all class activities of the workers, and who inaugurated in this country a reign of terror similar to that of the Black Hundreds in Russia was entirely opposed to the principles of the American government.

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(5) Moreover, the War and its aftermath have demonstrated that governing power does not reside in the regularly-elected, or even the appointed officials and legislative bodies. In every State, county and city in the Union, the so-called "police power is shown to be superior to every law. In Minnesota, Wisconsin and many other states, so-called Public Safety Commissions and similar organizations were constituted by authority of the Governors, made up of representatives of Chambers of Commerce and Employers' Associations, which usurped the powers of Legislatures and municipal administrations.

(6) Not one of the great teachers of scientific Socialism has ever said that it is possible to achieve the Social Revolution by the ballot.

(7) However, we do not ignore the value of voting, or of electing candidates to public office, so long as these are of assistance to the workers in their economic struggle. Political campaigns, and the election of public officials, provide opportunities for showing up capitalist democracy, educating the workers to a realization of their class position, and of demonstrating the necessity for the overthrow of the capitalist system. But it must be clearly emphasized that the chance of winning even advanced reforms of the present capitalist system at the polls is extremely remote; and even if it were possible, these reforms would not weaken the capitalist system.

Part III

(1) In America the capitalist class has never had a feudal aristocracy to combat, but has always been free to concentrate its power against the working class. This has resulted in the

development of the American capitalist class wholly out of proportion to the corresponding development in other countries. By their absolute control of the agencies of publicity and education, the capitalists have gained a control over the political machinery which is impossible to break by resorting to this machinery.

movement.

(2) Moreover, in America there is a highly-developed Labor This makes it impossible to accomplish the overthrow of capitalism except through the agency of the organized workers.

Furthermore, there is in America a centralized economic organization of the capitalist class which is a unit in its battle with the working class, and which can be opposed only by a centralized economic organization of the workers.

(3) The economic conditions of society, as Marx foretold, are pushing the workers toward forms of organization which are, by the very nature of things, forced into activity on the industrial field with a political aim- the overthrow of capitalism.

(4) It is our duty as Communists to help this process, to hasten it, by supporting all efforts of the workers to create a centralized revolutionary industrial organization. It is our duty as Communists, who understand the class struggle, to point out to the workers that upon the workers alone depends their own emancipation and that it is impossible to accomplish this through capitalist political machinery, but only by the exercise of their united economic power.

PROGRAM

(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 democraticrepublican, and to replace it by a governmental structure adapted to the Communist transformation.

(4) Communist platforms, being based on the class struggle, and recognizing that this is the historical period of the Social Revolution, can contain only one demand: The establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

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