"The truth is that we have not a few members who regard vote getting as a supreme importance, no matter by what methods the votes may be secured, and this leads them to hold out inducements, and make representations which are not at all compatible with the stern and uncomprising principles of a revolutionary party. They seek to make the Socialist propaganda so attractive--eliminating whatever may give offence--to bourgeois sensibilities--that it serves as a bait for votes, rather than as a means for education, and votes thus secured do not properly belong to us."
It is not unfrequently that we hear Socialists appealing to this or that plank of their party platform as proof sufficient that their organization favors or opposes a certain policy. An argument of this sort should have very little weight with careful thinking men, once their attention has been called to the fact that the Socialists have been proven guilty of a base lie by stating in their 1908 platform that the party is not concerned with matters of religious belief. But even if the revolutionists had never inserted in their platform a statement that was untrue, nevertheless the following facts show that their platform planks are very far from being reliable.
The delegates of the party assembled in national convention on May 15, 1908, by a vote of 102 to 33 passed a plank declaring for the collective ownership of all the land. ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party," page 186.)
It was on September 7, 1909, less than a year and four months after the adjournment of the convention of 1908, that the words declaring for the collective ownership of all the land were, by a referendum, stricken from the party platform, while by another referendum it was decided to insert among the principles of the platform that the party was not opposed to the occupation and possession of land by those using it in a useful and bona fide manner without exploitation. ("Proceedings of the 1910 National Congress of the Socialist Party," page 25.)
About eight months after the adoption of this substitute plank, a bitter contest concerning the ownership of "all" the land took place in the National Congress of the party, which was held in Chicago from May 15, 1910, till May 21, 1910. ("Proceedings of the 1910 National Congress of the Socialist Party," pages 220 to 235.) Thus, during the 1910 Congress, notwithstanding the fact that there existed at that time a plank in the party platform guaranteeing the possession of land to persons who would use it in a bona fide manner, the representatives of the party in national congress assembled, being unable to decide whether or not it was to the best interests of the party to abide by this plank, referred the matter to the next convention. ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party," page 235.)
Then, when the 1912 Convention met, it made another change, and declared for the collective ownership of land wherever practicable. ("The 1912 Platform of the Socialist Party"--Cf. "The Call," May 19, 1912.) In addition to this, it stated that occupancy and use shall be the sole title to land. ("The 1912 Platform of the Socialist Party"--Cf. "The Call," May 19, 1912.)
It is noteworthy that the Convention of 1908 had previously voted down this proposition to make occupancy and use the sole title to land, after the proposition had been denounced as being anarchistic, unsocialistic, nonsensical, foolish, and a dream ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party," pages 188, 189 and 191.) One of the foremost opponents of the proposition was Delegate Morris Hillquit, who asked:
"What does the amendment mean? Occupancy and use the basis of title to land. How do we know whether the co-operative commonwealth will infer and arrange it in that way? Aren't we taking a long excursion into the domain of the future and into the domain of speculation? It may be true that the dream of the dreamer may become a reality, if this dream is the dream of the nation. But we have not come here to dream dreams and leave it to the future to realize them or to show them to be just mere pipe dreams.... The Socialist state may just as well decide on an entirely different basis for the distribution of land. It may not at all be bound to our resolution here today that occupation forms a title." ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party," page 189.)
When the Marxians are brought face to face with the charge of adopting a program today, rejecting it tomorrow, hesitating about it on the next day and compromising it on the fourth, as they did in respect to the collective ownership of "all" the land, let them not argue that such changes are to be expected in the evolution of Socialism. They should be forced to confess that they acted in such a way solely to gain votes. Confront them with the speeches delivered in their National Convention of 1908 and in their National Congress of 1910, both by the delegates who advocated the collective ownership of "all" the land and by those who opposed it. For the convenience of the reader passages from some of these speeches will now be given:
Delegate Cannon of Arizona: "I contend that the public ownership of all machinery and land is one of the things for which the Socialist Party is working. If some of the Comrades get up and tell us in Germany they are not working for that, I move that we inform the German Comrades that they are behind the times. The idea of not including the land is nothing more or less than political expediency." ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party," page 175.)
Delegate Payne of Texas: "I want to know if this convention of this movement which we call the great revolutionary movement is going to go down in history as catering to a small middle class of land owners, or are you going to stand for the great proletarian farming class?" ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention on the Socialist Party," page 181.)
Delegate Morrison of Arizona: "Is it possible that we have so far forgotten ourselves, that we will attempt to curry favor with a few capitalist farmers? Why is this resolution here? What is the object of it? What is the purpose of it? Is it to secure votes? Do you hope to deceive some one as to the actual, real program of scientific Socialism? Or are you, in other words, going to lie to the farmers of this country in order to secure their suffrage? Are you going to present something to them that you know is not contained in the Socialist program? Can you afford, as representatives of this great revolutionary party, to do that which in a few years you will be ashamed of? I say no." ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party," page 184.)
Delegate Goaziou of Pennsylvania: "I know we have in this country a growing movement among Socialists who are wanting votes no matter how they will get them. They are willing to put in appeals to the farmers, appeals to the middle class and appeals to everybody, so that they can get votes." ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party," page 209.)
Delegate Thompson of Wisconsin: "We know that there is a very large portion of votes of this country on the farm, under agricultural conditions and environment, over forty per cent. Less than thirty per cent of the votes of this country are under industrial conditions. When we get to the point where we want to do something, we must have some way or other of getting these two forces welded together. We can never win out with thirty per cent of the vote. We will have to have at least a substantial majority, and that we cannot have without the farmers." ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party," page 185.)
Delegate Victor Berger of Wisconsin: "We cannot have Socialism in this country, if we don't get the farmers in some way. If you try to take away the farms of twelve millions of farmers of this country, you will have a big job on your hands. You might as well try to reach down the moon.... You remember how much effort and how many men it cost England to conquer 30,000 farmers, Boers--Boers, mind you--and now try to take the farms from these 12,000,000 American farmers and you will have about a million times harder job. Besides, they don't need to fight. All they have to do is to stop bringing food to Chicago for six weeks, and Comrade Morgan and the rest of Chicago would be knocked out." ("Proceedings of the 1910 National Congress of the Socialist Party," page 230.)
Delegate Simmons of Illinois: "There is just one thing on earth that I will toady to and that is a fact. And when I meet a fact so big as the farmer question in America, a fact that has in it the future of 12,000,000 of people of the producing classes, without whom we stand no more chance of a Socialist victory in this country than we do of changing the orbit of a comet, and when I face a fact as big as that, I don't try to stand in front of it, and howl empty phrases, in the hope that the fact will get out of the way." ("Proceedings of the 1910 National Congress of the Socialist Party," page 231.)