Americans by Choice

by John Palmer Gavit

ULTRARADICAL MOVEMENTS NONPOLITICAL

From the beginning of any really radical movement in this country, its unity of spirit has been broken by profound differences of opinion as to the effectiveness of the appeal to the ballot box. For more than half a century the anarchists and other advocates of “direct action” in the labor movement in America have been telling the more conservative elements that it would be of no use to resort to political measures, to the election of public officers pledged to carry out radical programs.

“The moment you succeed in winning enough votes to elect any considerable number of your candidates, the representatives of the capitalists will throw them out and nullify your victory.”

The great service which the New York State Assembly in 1920 rendered to the ultraradical wing of the Socialists when it ejected legally elected Socialist members of that house of the state Legislature was in the verifying this prediction. It strengthened the hands of the “Reds” not only all over this country, but all over the world. It made it just that much harder for moderates everywhere to convince workingmen that their grievances could be remedied by parliamentary action; that it was really worth while for them to pay any attention to the ballot box.

The history of the Socialist parties in America is checkered with the ups and downs of the controversy over this question. In every labor organization since the beginnings of the Labor movement in America there has been a continuing warfare between those who advocated political action as the means to social reform, and those who scorned anything except economic pressure and even terrorism. It is a curious fact that in the line-up on this issue, Mr. Gompers and the American Federation of Labor logically belong with the direct-actionists; he and his supporters always have opposed the entrance of the Labor movement as such into politics. It is only fair to add, however, that one of his principal motives was that of keeping the solidarity of labor from being broken by the ordinary appeals and influences of the politicians.

The National Labor Union of 1864, the Knights of Labor of 1869, the International Working People’s Association of 1883, the Sovereigns of Industry of 1874, the Workingmen’s party of 1876, the organizations of brewery workers and miners, the American Railway Union, the American Labor Union, the Socialist-Labor party—in fact, virtually all the general labor organizations from the beginning of them until to-day—have fought back and forth over this question. And the abiding fact which remained after every battle seems to have been that the tendency of the Americans and the foreign born longest in the country on the whole has been to favor action through the ballot box and parliamentary methods generally; the distinctively foreign elements have inclined to favor economic and industrial measures, with the “lunatic fringe” running on toward “direct action,” sabotage, and the methods of the terrorist.

The World War brought this division sharply to a head. It split the Socialist party and drove out of it most of the American-born moderates; it led to the attempt by these moderates and many of the former Progressives to organize the “National party” and the “Farmer-Labor party,” which attracted a small following in the presidential election of 1920. The excesses committed against foreign-born citizens of nearly all racial groups in the zeal of the war spirit undoubtedly drove into the extreme radical ranks a large number of foreign-born citizens who in normal times would have been content with political methods and would have diminished in their radicalism as their economic status improved. Doubtless, also, the period of unemployment and industrial depression following the war, ensuing as it has upon a period of unprecedentedly high wages, has tended to encourage radical thought.

But it must always be remembered that the extreme radical movements have directly relatively little political influence. This for two very good reasons: In the first place, experience has not justified the theory of the “Reds” that terrorism in this country will frighten government into concessions. It has, in America, anyway, quite the opposite effect. It alienates public sympathy and impels the average man, normally sympathetic toward the “under dog,” to approve of repressive measures. Furthermore, the members of these ultraradical organizations, although they may be technically citizens, are not voters in any practical sense.