Both the Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party are strongly Bolshevist. The Communist Labor Party is decidedly more in favor of the I. W. W. than the Communist Party; but the main differences between these two parties seems to be a matter of race, language, and especially of personal jealousy and dislike among the leaders.
For years the Socialist Party and the Socialist Labor Party have remained separated from each other, so that now, with the two new parties, the Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party, there are four parties of rebels, all plotting a revolution against our National Government, while the great body of the American people sleep and dream.
Quite a number of educated people in the United States, including the editors of some of our leading dailies, seem to think that the remnant of the Socialist Party is not at all a Bolshevist organization and not at all revolutionary in character. They are very much deceived, having let the crafty, deceptive, hypocritical leaders of the Right Wing fool them badly. The Left Wingers have indeed been much more open in admitting their intentions to overthrow our government by force of arms. They are dangerous, but perhaps not nearly so much so as the slippery "Yellows," cunning weasels of the imported Russian Hillquit type, who, though they do not talk as openly as the "Reds," are spreading their subversive principles on every side, and especially among the less educated classes of our people, into whose minds they instil the spirit of hatred between employers and employees, while at the same time encouraging strikes, wherever they can, with the hope of overthrowing our Government when conditions become sufficiently critical. Both parties of the Socialists and both parties of the Communists, along with the I. W. W., are all revolutionary in the strictest sense, and the sooner the American people wake up to the fact and take some intelligent action to stamp them out, the better it will be. It is not yet too late, but soon may be.
The Bolshevist Socialists of Russia and the two new parties of Socialists that at Chicago in September, 1919, seceded from the mother party, have all adopted the name, "Communist," which "The Call," New York, July 24, 1919, informs us was used by Marx and Engels, the founders of modern Socialism, adding that though the name is somewhat confusing, inasmuch as the word has another and a distinct meaning in English, still, "wherever it is used it means revolutionary Socialists as distinguished from Social patriots and mere parliamentary Socialists." Is this definition an alibi for Hillquit and Berger?
Many persons have hastily assumed that the main reason why the Left and Right Wings of the Socialists fought each other like cats and dogs was that the Right Wing members of the party are opposed to Bolshevism. This is nonsense. The Socialist papers of the country, Right and Left, with the possible exception of the once powerful "Appeal to Reason," which in recent years has fallen into great discredit among Socialists because it favored our entrance into the World War--have been and still are advocating Bolshevism every day. If anyone has any doubt, let him read any of the rebel sheets.
The Socialist Party of St. Louis, in its appeal for party unity, published in "The Call," July 19, 1919, informs us that the Socialist Party is whole-heartedly with the Russian Bolshevists and their cause:
"Promptly, and notwithstanding all obstacles and persecution, the Socialist party hurried to the front in defense of the cause of our Russian Comrades. Mass meetings were held, demonstrations in behalf of Soviet Russia were arranged, our Socialist press gave all possible support to counteract the sinister work of the American capitalist press."
Eugene V. Debs, many times the presidential candidate of the Socialists and the idol of "Reds" and "Yellows" alike, has all along been an ardent Bolshevist. Listen to these words of his in his article, "The Day of the People," published in many Socialist papers in the early part of 1919, and taken by us from the March number of "Party News," the official organ of the Socialist Party of Philadelphia:
"In Russia and Germany our valiant Comrades are leading the proletarian revolution, which knows no race, no color, no sex and no boundary lines. They are setting the heroic example for world-wide emulation. Let us, like them, scorn and repudiate the cowardly compromisers within our ranks, challenge and defy the robber-class power, and fight it out on that line to victory or death!
"From the crown of my head to the soles of my feet I am Bolshevik, and am proud of it."
The report of the Right Wing majority of the old National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, made to the National Emergency Convention, and here quoted from "The Call," September 3, 1919, contains the following defense of their Bolshevism, against the aspersions of the Left Wing leaders who had challenged the committee's attitude toward Russia: