"Mr. Lee was next asked to explain what was meant by the pledge of the Socialist anti-war faction to support 'mass action' against conscription. He answered that the general strike was included in the term 'mass action,' but that the word contemplated other methods as well.
"'Is it part of the Socialist Party plans to use the general strike to back up political action?'
"'If the circumstances should exist which made that necessary, I take it that it would be construed so,' said the witness.
"Mr. Conboy was unable to pin the witness down to a definition of what circumstances would make the Socialists resort to direct action. Mr. Stedman interrupted:
"'There was a bill to nationalize the railroads,' he said. 'The men went on strike to reinforce their demands. I can see the miners and the whole working class going on a strike protesting against the Government paralyzing them rather than taking the mine owners by the collar. That will be general. If the working class made such a demand to reinforce a general political demand for the relaxation of such an injunction, the Socialists would stand side by side with them everywhere. Personally, I think the mining situation was an instance where there should have been a general strike.'"
It is important to emphasize the proofs that the Socialist Party of America has openly committed itself to the sanction and advocacy of "industrial" violence in furtherance of its avowed intention "to wrest industry and the control of the government of the United States" from the whole American people and place them in the hands of a special class. For since the wholesale arrests of "Reds" by the Department of Justice were made, followed by the institution of the inquiry into the qualifications of the five Socialist Assemblymen at Albany, a new, general movement became discernible among the radicals, a movement to disguise their real principles, camouflage their plan of action and carry their propaganda "under ground."
Hillquit, Victor L. Berger and the other shrewd leaders of the Socialist Party realized early in 1919 that the programs of violence against this country, flaunted openly by the Left Wing leaders, would bring down the hand of the Government upon the conspirators. As early as April 19, 1919, Julius Gerber, Executive Secretary of the New York Local of the Socialist Party, in a private letter which we quote from the Left Wing "New York Communist." May 1, 1919, stated that "the control of the party by these irresponsible people will make the party an outlaw organization, and break up the organization."
Yet the call for the Third (Moscow) International had cunningly classified the Socialists of the world into three groups, a Right, a Center and "the Revolutionary Left Wing." This last group included the friends of Moscow, the elements of the Third International; and those credited to it in America, who received invitations to the Moscow Conference of March 2-6, were the Socialist Labor Party, the I. W. W., the Workers' International Industrial Union and "the elements of the Left Wings of American Socialist Propaganda (tendency represented by E. V. Debs and the Socialist Propaganda League)." The group of the Right, the other extreme, was completely condemned by the Moscow call as "avowed social-patriots who, during the entire duration of the imperialistic war between the years 1914 and 1918 have supported their own bourgeoisie."
But the "Center" was described as "represented by leaders of the type of Karl Kautsky, and who constitute a group composed of ever-hesitating elements, unable to settle on any determined direction and who up to date have always acted as traitors." "In regard to the 'Center,'" the call continues, "the tactics consist in separating from it the revolutionary elements, in criticizing pitilessly its leaders and in dividing systematically among them the number of their followers." The Left Wing leaders in America, however, ignoring the recognition of a "Center" in this country, lumped together and designated as the "Right" all their Socialist opponents, the special followers of Hillquit, Victor L. Berger and the other "bosses" of the Socialist Party; but they certainly followed the tactics of "criticizing pitilessly its leaders." (See the Moscow call in Chapter III and the details of the Left Wing fight in Chapters III, IV and V.)
These facts explain the course pursued by Hillquit and his fellow-leaders. In the first place they had to get rid of the Left Wing leaders whose "control of the party" would make it "an outlaw organization and break up the organization." This they accomplished by wholesale expulsions and suspensions, as we have seen in earlier chapters. But in the second place they had to prepare a sufficiently strong public declaration of the real revolutionary principles of their party and a sufficiently explicit identification of the party with the Moscow International to satisfy both the rank and file of their followers and Lenine and Trotzky in Russia, while yet not going far enough to incriminate themselves with the awakening suspicions of our National and State Governments. As a result we have the utterances of the Emergency Convention of August-September, 1919, where every compromising word was still only a hint of the principles and plan of action carefully concealed behind it.
Even so, the leaders soon realized that they had revealed too much of the truth for their safety; while the wholesale arrests, indictments and deportations of radicals evidently convinced these cunning plotters that the old-time disguises and hypocrisies of Hillquit, Victor Berger and the other foxes of the party were the only safe tactics for revolutionists in America. Thus Ludwig C. A. K. Martens, the Bolshevist "ambassador," himself led the retreat in his smooth lies to the United States Senate Foreign Sub-Committee, to the effect that the dictatorship in Russia no longer regarded it as necessary to urge those affiliated with it in other countries to overthrow the existing governments. Undoubtedly he had made the American situation perfectly clear to Lenine and Trotzky.
The reappearance of Morris Hillquit in the Assembly case at Albany, on February 17, 1920, and his appearance on the witness-stand as "an expert on Socialism," was a similar attempt to repair the breaches with camouflage. It was his part with an amused smile to show that "industrial organization," "industrial action," "mass action" and "general strikes" really mean nothing in the Socialist Party's manifestoes, platforms and programs, and that his party's affiliation with the Third (Moscow) International was a mere meaningless, friendly gesture. But these party utterances and acts meant all and even more than they said to the party's rank and file and confederates.
It was brought out in the testimony at Albany on February 10, 1920, that the minority report of the Emergency Convention, decreeing affiliation with the Moscow International, had been adopted by a referendum vote of the party's rank and file, 3,495 votes for to 1,449 against. The wording of this report, here given in part from Trachtenberg's 1919-20 Labor Year Book, page 411, is another of those brilliant attempts at camouflage for which the "Yellow" Socialists are famous:
"Any International, to be effective in this crisis, must contain only those elements who take their stand unreservedly upon the basis of the class struggle, and their adherence to this principle is not mere lip loyalty....
"The Socialist Party of the United States, in principle and in its past history, has always stood with those elements of other countries that remained true to their principles. The manifestoes adopted in national convention at St. Louis (1917) and Chicago (1919), as well as Referendum 'D,' 1919, unequivocally affirm this stand.[K] These parties, the majority parties of Russia, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Bulgaria and Greece, and growing minorities in every land, are uniting on the basis of the preliminary convocation, at Moscow, of the Third International. As in the past, so in this extreme crisis, we must take our stand with them.
"The Socialist Party of the United States, therefore, declares itself in support of the Third (Moscow) International, not so much because it supports the 'Moscow' programs and methods, but because:
"(a) 'Moscow' is doing something which is already challenging world imperialism.
"(b) 'Moscow' is threatened by the combined capitalist forces of the world simply because it is proletarian.
"(c) Under these circumstances, whatever we may have to say to 'Moscow' afterwards, it is the duty of Socialists to stand by it now because its fall will mean the fall of Socialist republics in Europe, and also the disappearance of Socialist hopes for many years to come."