The Left Wing has certainly been more honest than the Right. The "Reds" comprising it favor direct action, that is, strikes and disturbances, rather than the use of the ballot, hoping thus to bring our country into such a critical condition that they may precipitate a rebellion, and then, though in a minority, assume control of the government by a sudden coup d'état, as the Bolsheviki did in Russia. The Left Wingers opposed the "immediate demands" in the Socialist Party platform, preferring to work for dictatorship rather than for social reforms. They despised the politicians of the Right Wing, calling them yellow, reactionary, hypocritical, capitalistic Socialists, and telling them that their place was with the newly formed Labor Party, which had already praised the Socialists and invited them to join its ranks. The Lefts expressed a fear that the leaders of the Right would, if our Government were overthrown, turn against them just as the Scheidemann-Ebert group turned against the German Spartacides. The fight between the two factions became severe about the beginning of the year 1919.
"The Revolutionary Age," Boston, February 15, 1919, speaking of the disturbance in the Socialist Party, and explaining the fundamental principles of the Left Wing said:
"The American Socialist Party is in a condition of feverish theoretical activity. Pressing problems are being met in a spirit of self-criticism. New forms of action in the social struggle are being accepted. Old methods, old tactics, old ideas, which in the test of war have proven incapable of furthering the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, are being seriously analyzed and repudiated.
"The membership of the Socialist Party, the majority, is instinctively class conscious and revolutionary. It was this membership that compelled our officials to acquiesce in the adoption of a radical declaration against war--which most of the officials sabotaged or converted into an innocuous policy of bourgeois pacificism. When the Bolsheviki conquered, the majority of our officials were either hostile or silent; some weeks before, the 'New York Call' had stigmatized the Bolsheviki as 'anarchists.' But the membership responded; they forced the hands of the officials, who became 'me too' Bolsheviki, but who did not draw the revolutionary implications of the Bolshevik policy. These officials and their machinery baffled the will of the membership; more, the membership baffled itself because it did not clearly understand the theory and the practice implied in its instinctive class consciousness and revolutionary spirit.
"While our National Executive Committee accepts the Berne Congress and refuses to call an emergency National Convention, locals of the party are actively engaged in the great struggle, turning to the left, to revolutionary Socialism. Groups within the party are organizing and issuing proclamations, determined that the party shall conquer the party for revolutionary Socialism. Two of these proclamations were published in the last issue of 'The Revolutionary Age.' They deserve serious consideration and discussion.
"The manifesto of the Communist Propaganda League of Chicago is a concise document. Its criticism of the party is summarized:
"'The Party proceeds on too narrow an understanding of political action for a party of revolution, its programs and platforms have been reformist and petty bourgeois in character, instead of being definitely directed toward the goal of social revolution; the party has failed to achieve unity with the revolutionary movement on the industrial field.'
"Its proposals for democratizing the party--mass action in the party--are excellent; it repudiates the old international and the Berne Congress, and asks:
"'Identification of the Socialist Party with class conscious industrial unionism, unity of all kinds of proletarian action and protest forming part of the revolutionary class struggle; political action to include political strikes and demonstrations, no compromising with any groups not inherently committed to the revolutionary class struggle, such as Labor parties, People's Councils, Non-Partisan Leagues, Municipal Ownership Leagues and the like.'"
In order clearly to understand the big fight that has disrupted the Socialist Party, further explanations of the principles of the Left Wing are necessary. "The Revolutionary Age," from which the above quotation was taken, was first published in Boston, its editor being Louis C. Fraina. In the summer of 1919 it combined with "The Communist," of New York City, and, still maintaining its former name, became the national organ of the Left Wing of the Socialist Party.
In the article just quoted reference was made to "mass action." This, according to "The Revolutionary Age," is to be the main weapon used by the rebels in precipitating rebellion. The July 12, 1919, issue of the same paper explains mass action and shows how it is to be used. The article, written by Louis C. Fraina, reads in part as follows:
"Socialism in its early activity as a general organized movement was compelled to emphasize the action of politics because of the immaturity of the proletariat....
"All propaganda, all electoral and parliamentary activity are insufficient for the overthrow of Capitalism, impotent when the ultimate test of the class struggle turns into a test of power. The power for the social revolution issues out of the actual struggles of the proletariat, out of its strikes, its industrial unions and mass action."
Industrial unions of course means the union system of the I. W. W., and not the craft unions of the American Federation of Labor.
The article continues:
"The peaceful parliamentary conquest of the state is either sheer utopia or reaction....
"The revolution is an act of a minority, at first; of the most class conscious section of the industrial proletariat, which in a test of electoral strength, would be a minority, but which, being a solid, industrially indispensable class, can disperse and defeat all other classes through the annihilation of the fraudulent democracy of the parliamentary system implied in the dictatorship of the proletariat, imposed upon society by means of revolutionary mass action....
"Mass action is not a form of action as much as it is a process and synthesis of action. It is the unity of all forms of proletarian action, a means of throwing the proletariat, organized and unorganized, in a general struggle against Capitalism and the capitalist state....
"The great expressions of mass action in recent years, the New Zealand general strike, the Lawrence strike, the great strike of the British miners under which capitalist society reeled on the verge of collapse--all were mass actions organized and carried through in spite of the passive and active hostility of the dominant Socialist and labor organization. Under the impulse of mass action, the industrial proletariat senses its own power and acquires the force to act equally against capitalism and the conservatism of organizations. Indeed, a vital feature of mass action is precisely that it places in the hands of the proletariat the power to overcome the fetters of these organizations, to act in spite of their conservatism, and through proletarian mass action emphasize antagonisms between workers and capitalists, and conquer power. A determining phase of the proletarian revolution in Russia was its acting against the dominant Socialist organizations, sweeping these aside through its mass action before it could seize social supremacy....
"Mass action is the proletariat itself in action, dispensing with bureaucrats and intellectuals, acting through its own initiative; and it is precisely this circumstance that horrifies the soul of petty bourgeois Socialism. The masses are to act upon their own initiative and the impulse of their own struggles....
"Mass action organizes and develops into the political strike and demonstration, in which a general political issue is the source of the action....
"The class power of the proletariat arises out of the intensity of its struggles and revolutionary energy. It consists, moreover, of undermining the bases of the morale of the capitalist state, a process that requires extra parliamentary activity through mass action. Capitalism trembles when it meets the impact of a strike in a basic industry; Capitalism will more than tremble, it will actually verge on a collapse, when it meets the impact of a general mass action involving a number of correlated industries, and developing into revolutionary mass action against the whole capitalist regime. The value of this mass action is that it shows the proletariat its power, weakens capitalism, and compels the state largely to depend on the use of brute force in the struggle, either the physical force of the military or the force of legal terrorism; this emphasizes antagonisms between proletarian and capitalist, widening the scope and deepening the intensity of the proletarian struggle against capitalism....
"Mass action, being the proletariat itself in action, loosens its energy, develops enthusiasm, and unifies the action of the workers to its utmost measure....
"Moreover, mass action means the repudiation of bourgeois democracy. Socialism will come not through the peaceful, democratic parliamentary conquest of the state, but through the determined and revolutionary mass action of a proletarian minority. The fetish of democracy is a fetter upon the proletarian revolution; mass action smashes the fetish, emphasizing that the proletarian recognizes no limits to its action except the limits of its own power. The proletariat will never conquer unless it proceeds to struggle after struggle; its power is developed and its energy let loose only through action. Parliamentarism, in and of itself, fetters proletarian action; organizations are often equally fetters upon action; the proletariat must act and always act; through action it conquers....
"The great war has objectively brought Europe to the verge of revolution. Capitalist society at any moment may be thrust into the air by an upheaval of the proletariat--as in Russia. Whence will the impulse for the revolutionary struggle come? Surely not from the moderate Socialism and unionism, which are united solidly in favor of an imperialistic war; surely not from futile parliamentary rhetoric, even should it be revolutionary rhetoric. The impulse will come out of the mass action of the proletariat....
"Mass action is equally a process of revolution and the revolution itself in operation."
The March 22, 1919, issue of "The Revolutionary Age" published the Manifesto of the Left Wing section of the Socialist Party of New York, from which several important quotations are hereby taken: