The Red Conspiracy

by Joseph J. Mereto

"The rebuke of the National Executive Committee was in the form of an amendment to the original motion to adopt its report. The amendment carried by 63 to 39....

"Perhaps Frederick Haller expressed the general sentiment of the convention when he said:

"'We must endorse this supplemental report of the National Executive Committee, but we must go back to our constituents and tell them that we gave the National Executive Committee hell.'"

These "constituents," the rank and file, determine the character of the party, and not the thimble-rigging games of their political leaders, who support themselves and have "made a good thing" out of Socialism by carrying water on one shoulder for gullible voters, and on the other for their credulous disciples. This is not the first time that self-serving, hypocritical teachers, in compassing sea and land to make proselytes, have made them twofold more the children of hell than themselves.

The National Emergency Convention of 1919 affords still other evidence of the mind of the rank and file of the Socialist Party in the report of the committee which investigated the referendum vote of 1919 which the old National Executive Committee had suppressed. The "Call," September 1, 1919, says:

"The report states that on the face of the returns, referendum B and D were carried by large majorities, and a National Executive Committee, consisting of Louis Fraina of New York, Charles E. Ruthenberg of Cleveland, Seymour Stedman of Chicago, Patrick S. Nagle of Oklahoma and L. E. Katterfeld of Cleveland was elected. The returns also showed on their face that John Reed and Louis Fraina had been elected as the party's international delegates and Kate Richards O'Hare its international secretary."

Thus the party was "Red" or Left-Wingish "by large majorities," and was distinctly Bolshevist, as we learn from the "Call's" explanation of "referendum B and D," which "were carried by large majorities."

"Referendum B put the question of holding a National Emergency Convention up to the membership. Referendum D asked the membership to decide whether the party should record itself as being opposed to entering any other international Socialist alignment than that of the Third National [International?] which held its first conference at Moscow early in March.

"Its adoption means that the Socialist party will not take part in any international conference from which the Bolsheviki of Russia and the Spartacans of Germany are excluded, or in which they refuse to participate."

Thus at the Emergency Convention of August-September, 1919, the Socialist Party of America was tied to the will of the Russian Bolshevists and the German Spartacides, who held the powers of approval and veto in deciding what internationals the members of the Socialist Party of America might associate with! A more anomalous product of the double-faced generalship of Berger and Hillquit it would be hard to imagine.

But this is not all. The Moscow Manifesto of March, 1919, was before the Emergency Convention. This Russian Communistic Manifesto is addressed "To the proletariat of all countries" (see Chapter IV) and reads: "We Communists, representatives of the revolutionary proletariat of the different countries of Europe, America and Asia, assembled in Soviet Moscow." Would the Socialist Party of America accept its inclusion among those in "America" thus designated, or refuse? The committee which considered the matter split, bringing in majority and minority reports. The majority report, favored by Berger, considered the Third International as not yet constituted, thus hanging the Socialist Party of America in the air, without fellowship with Moscow, Berne or any other thing--a trapeze performance truly Bergeresque. The minority report, voted for even by a third of the machine delegates in the Emergency Convention, favored affiliation with the associates of the Moscow Conference as constituting the Third International. It was decided to submit both reports to a referendum vote of the party, which should have been taken in January or February, 1920, if the requirements of the party Constitution were followed.

The concern of the Socialist Party managers to keep the facts from the general public, evidenced by their tactics in the case of the five suspended Socialist Assemblymen at Albany, might have led to another unconstitutional delay or manipulation of a referendum. But this was immaterial in determining the mind of the rank and file, as we have documentary evidence showing that the only opposition within the party to a clear-cut Bolshevik committal sprang out of fear either of legal prosecution or of the loss of votes through public condemnation. The following illuminating discussion is extracted from a letter of Alexander Trachtenberg, a conspicuous Socialist, as printed in the "Call" of November 26, 1919:

"The members of the Socialist Party now have before them two referenda--Referendum E, consisting of the various changes in the party Constitution which were decided upon at the Chicago Convention, and Referendum F, on international Socialist relations....

"The question of international affiliation is at this moment probably the most important before the Socialist Party. The two reports which emanated from the convention, known as the majority and minority reports, will no doubt receive very careful consideration by the members....

"A close examination of the two reports reveals that the condition laid down for the International, with which the Socialist party cares to affiliate itself, are the same. Both reports agree that:

"a. The Second International is dead.

"b. The Berne International Conference hopelessly failed in its indeavor to reconstitute the International.

"c. The New International must consist only of those parties:

"1. Which have remained true to the revolutionary International Socialist movement during the war.

"2. Which refused to co-operate with bourgeois parties and are opposed to all forms of coalition.

"In short, both reports agree that the Socialist Party will go only into such an International the component parties of which conduct their struggle on revolutionary class lines. The difference between the two reports is, that while the majority report leaves the matter of the reconstruction of the International hang in the air, the minority report has something tangible to offer. It also more specifically outlines the Socialist policy on the question of international affiliation, and gives several reasons for joining the Third (Moscow) International....

"The Socialist Party of America cannot afford to remain amorphous at the present stage of the building of the new International. It has refused to go with those elements who have either betrayed or were unwilling to remain true to their professions. It belongs among those parties which have remained true to International Socialism and who alone have the right to build the edifice of the new International.

"By voting for the minority report the Comrades will give expression to what they have professed and believed in during the past critical years in the life of the international Socialist movement."