The Red Conspiracy

by Joseph J. Mereto

If Moscow's "programs and methods" are only the minor reason for supporting Moscow, what is the major reason for this "support?" What is the Third (Moscow) International "doing" which "is really challenging" the "world," arraying the "forces of the world" against it and thus making its own "fall" a serious possibility? We examine (see Chapters III and IV and the present chapter) the Third (Moscow) International's call to the March, 1919, Conference and the manifesto sent out from it, and we see what it has done in challenge of the rest of the world. It has declared war against the rest of the world and its existing governments, the "Entente Powers," "The White Terror of the bourgeoisie," as it calls them in the "Manifesto of the Moscow International" published in the "New York Call" of July 24, 1919, from which we here quote; and against these "Entente Powers," "The White Terror," the manifesto continues, "Against this the proletariat must defend itself--defend itself at all costs! The Communist International calls the whole world-proletariat to this, the final struggle! Down with the imperialist conspiracy of capital! Long live the International Republic of Proletarian Soviet!" (Ibid.)

Thus complete identification with this proletarian declaration of war against the "Entente Powers" was the major aim of the Socialist Party of the United States in voting for affiliation with Moscow. This is the principal ground on which it "declares itself in support of the Third (Moscow) International" and proclaims it to be "the duty of Socialists to stand by it now." Just as Hillquit differed from the Left Wingers, now his "communist brethren," not "on vital questions of principles," but only "on methods and policy," opposing their "movement" "not because" it was "too radical" or "would lead us too far," but simply because its "specific form and direction, ... its program and tactics," would "spell disaster," so Hillquit's Party supported the Third (Moscow) International "not so much because" of its "programs and methods" as because what it was "doing," its war-declaration and marshaling of the world's proletarian forces against the "Entente Powers," was "really challenging world imperialism."

Is not one mind, one aim, one intent, one purpose and hatred consistently evident in all these utterances? And thus we understand the vehemence of the Chicago Manifesto of September 4, 1919, "largely based upon one suggested by Morris Hillquit," as the "Call," New York, of September 5, 1919, says. The following quotation from the Chicago Manifesto, as printed in the "New York Call" of September 5, 1919, and also in Trachtenberg's Labor Year Book, 1919-1920, pages 413-14, shows that the Socialist Party of America completely repudiates the so-called "Moderate" Socialists, and supports the Bolshevist and Communist violent revolutionists:

"The Socialist Party of the United States at its first national convention after the war, squarely takes its position with the uncompromising section of the international Socialist movement. We unreservedly reject the policy of those Socialists who supported their belligerent capitalist governments on the plea of 'national defense,' and who entered into demoralizing compacts for so-called civil peace with the exploiters of labor during the war and continued a political alliance with them after the war. We, the organized Socialists of America, pledge our support to the revolutionary workers of Russia in the maintenance of their Soviet Government, to the radical Socialists of Germany, Austria and Hungary in their efforts to establish working-class rule in their countries, and to those Socialist organizations in England, Italy and other countries who during the war, as after the war, have remained true to the principles of uncompromising international Socialism."

Just as the Moscow Manifesto cries out, "Long live the International Republic of Proletarian Soviet!" so does Hillquit's manifesto, adopted September 4, 1919, by the Socialist Party, "hold out to the world the ideal of a federation of free and equal Socialist nations." A common zeal for the violent overthrow of the world's existing non-Socialist governments, in order to set up a world-empire of Socialism, is the major feature of the Socialist Party's unity with the Moscow plotters and incendiaries.

But while Moscow's "programs and methods" are "not so much" the concern of the American Socialist Party as the "federation of ... Socialist nations," yet these Moscow "programs and methods" are themselves also distinctly adopted and enthusiastically followed by the American Socialists.

The Moscow Manifesto ("New York Call," July 24, 1919) lays down two great principles of action, one of method, the other of means. Here is the method: "The revolutionary epoch demands that the proletariat should employ such fighting methods as will concentrate its entire energy, viz., the method of mass action, and lead to its logical consequence--the direct collision with the capitalist state machine in an open combat. All other methods, e.g., revolutionary use of bourgeois parliamentarism, will in the revolution have only a subordinate value."

Here is the means: "A coalition is necessary with those elements of the revolutionary workers' movement who, though they did not previously belong to the Socialist Party, now, on the whole, take up the standpoint of the proletarian dictatorship in the form of the power of Soviets, e.g., some of the sections among the Syndicalists." (Ibid.)

The American "Syndicalists" are the I. W. W.'s, and their methods are those of "industrial action" by means of industrial unionism. In other words, they are seeking to organize "One Big Union" in order, as the "Preamble" to their Constitution asserts, to "take possession of the earth and the machinery of production." These are the methods and means recommended by the Moscow International to the rabid Socialists affiliated with it all over the world.

These methods and means, urged by the Moscow Manifesto, were evidently adopted in Hillquit's manifesto, which led, by the party's adoption of it, to the American Socialist Party's strong commitment of itself at Chicago to "strongly organize" on "industrial lines" the "bulk of the American workers" into "one powerful and harmonious class organization" ready for "industrial action." The preamble to the Constitution, also adopted at the Emergency Convention of 1919, according to Trachtenberg's Labor Year Book, 1919-1920, page 410, stresses the same thing: