The Red Conspiracy

by Joseph J. Mereto

Judge Haas of the Municipal Court of Gary thus commented on those arrested in the demonstration:

"All except Capolitto have failed to become citizens. All except him and one other tried to evade war service in our army, endeavoring to sneak out on the ground of not being citizens of this country. All they seem to want is to come over here and make trouble--out of twenty-one gun-toters who have been brought before me, nineteen have been foreigners and not even citizens."

The leaders of the Marxian movement, both in the United States and abroad, testify that to be a Socialist is to be a plotter against all existing forms of government. Marx and Engels, for instance, confess the truth of this in their celebrated "Communist Manifesto," which they addressed to their followers over half a century ago, and which is looked upon even today by the rank and file of the party as embodying the fundamental principles of International Socialism. "The Communists," we are told, "everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things" and "disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be obtained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution."

We are indebted to the late August Bebel, the leader of the Socialists of Germany, for the confession that "along with the state die out its representatives--cabinet ministers, parliaments, standing armies, police and constables, courts, attorneys, prison officials, tariff and tax collectors, in short the whole political apparatus. Barracks and other such military structures, palaces of law and of administration, prisons--all will now await better use. Ten thousand laws, decrees and regulations become so much rubbish; they have only historic value." ["Women Under Socialism," by Bebel, page 319, of the 1904 edition in English.]

"The People," New York, May 13, 1900, in speaking of the relation of Socialism to existing forms of government, including our own, affirms that "while there is a very general idea that Socialism means an extension of the powers and functions of government, still this is a very natural and dangerous misconception, and one that ought to be guarded against." "Socialism," it adds, "does not mean the extension of government, but on the contrary it means the end, the elimination of government."

The "International Socialist Review," Chicago, February, 1912, together with many other magazines and papers current at the time, called attention to the fact that William D. Haywood, who for a long time had been before the eyes of the public on account of his revolutionary utterances and writings, declared in a speech at Cooper Union, in New York City, that the Socialists were conspirators against the United States Government.

"The Call," April 1, 1919, in an editorial note says that "the whole system of government in the United States, Federal, State and Municipal, seems to be out of date."

Though the men who march behind the red flag, singing the Marseillaise of the French Revolution, usually deny to the general public, for reasons of political expediency, that the Socialist movement is a violent and revolutionary one, it is evident to those who have read their books, magazines, and papers, that the use of the ballot and education are not the means on which they rely finally for the establishment of their visionary commonwealth. Violence is advocated and habitually practised by the Socialists who constitute the Industrial Workers of the World, whose banner with the inscription, "No God, No Master," has brought them into disrepute all over the country. Jack London, a Socialist widely known in the United States and England as a novelist, furnishes us with excellent reasons for believing that the International Socialist Party approves of violence and assassination, and thereby reaffirms its allegiance to the base principles of the French Commune. Writing in the "International Socialist Review" of August, 1909, Jack London made the following comment on the progress of Socialism in Russia:

"Our comrades in Russia have formed what they call 'THE FIGHTING ORGANIZATION.' This FIGHTING ORGANIZATION accused, tried, found guilty and condemned to death one Sipiaguin, Minister of the Interior. On April 2, he was shot and killed in the Maryinsky Palace. Two years later the FIGHTING ORGANIZATION condemned to death and executed another Minister of the Interior, Von Plehve. Having done so it issued a document, dated July 29, 1904, setting forth the counts of its indictment of Von Plehve and its responsibility for the assassination. Now, and to the point, this document was sent out to the Socialists of the world, and by them was published everywhere in the magazines and newspapers. The point is, not that the Socialists of the world were unafraid to do it, but that they did it as a matter of routine, giving publication to what might be called an official document of International Revolutionary Movement."

August Bebel in "Unsere Ziele," page 44, expresses his sentiments on the subject of violence quite as frankly as Jack London. "We must not shudder," he tells us, "at the thought of the possible employment of violence; we must not raise an alarm cry at the suppression of existing rights, at violent expropriation, etc. History teaches that at all times new ideas, as a rule, were realized by a violent conflict with the defenders of the past, and that the combatants for new ideas struck blows as deadly as possible at the defenders of antiquity. Not without reason does Karl Marx, in his work on 'Capital' exclaim: 'Violence is the obstetrician that waits on every ancient society which is about to give birth to a new one; violence is in itself a social factor.'"