"The Socialist Party seeks to organize the working-class for independent action on the political field, not merely for the betterment of their conditions, but also and above all with the revolutionary aim of putting an end to exploitation and class rule." And it adds: "To accomplish this aim, it is necessary that the working-class be powerfully and solidly organized also on the economic field to struggle for the same revolutionary goal."
Trachtenberg's 1919-1920 Year Book, page 409, tells us, too, that the party at its Emergency Convention "adopted a series of resolutions," including two described as follows:
"Co-operatives.--Favoring the establishment of co-operatives and recommending that literature be distributed on the subject."
"Economic Organization.--Favoring industrial unionism and establishing a labor department in the party for the preparation of literature and more active work among the labor unions."
We know what the last-mentioned resolution means; and the meaning of the propaganda for "co-operatives" becomes plain when we read in Trachtenberg's same Year Book, page 393, that this co-operative movement has been defined as "The state within a state."
Indeed, these two resolutions, favoring propaganda for "co-operatives" and "industrial unionism," seem to be explained in the "Preamble to the Constitution of the Socialist Party," adopted at Chicago on September 6, 1919. A single sentence in this Preamble, which we quote from Trachtenberg's Labor Year Book, 1919-1920, page 410, tells us what the Socialist Party wants and the means by which it hopes to get it. Here is the sentence: "The workers must wrest the control of the government from the hands of the masters and use its powers in this upbuilding of the new social order, the Co-operative Commonwealth."
Naturally "co-operatives" are favored as a step toward the "Co-operative Commonwealth," which is what the Socialist dreamers want. But in order to set up this new state, the Socialists want "the workers" to do a big job for them, namely, to "wrest the control of" the present Government of the United States and get it out of the way. Thus "the workers" are the means, the tool, which the hair-brained Socialists hope to use, while the proposed method of using these "workers" is to make Socialists of them and line them up in one big "industrial union" ready for "industrial action" when the Socialists crack the whip. We do not think America's "workers" intend to burn their fingers in pulling Hillquit's chestnuts out of the fire; but the lazy drones, the Socialist "intellectuals," as the Hillquitites love to style themselves, certainly hope to ride into power on the back of American labor just as the Bolshevist "dictators," Lenine and Trotzky, rode into power and are still riding on the galled back of the labor slaves of Russia.
It appears, then, that the Socialist Party of America is not merely affiliated with Moscow's "programs and methods" by a referendum vote, but has adopted a similar program and method for its own "supreme task." The only difference is that the Bolsheviks have made their revolution, while the American Socialists are forging the weapon for theirs. Debs' motto is their motto: "I am law abiding under protest--not from scruple--and bide my time."
Perceiving the peril of his party, Hillquit, on the witness stand in the Judiciary Committee's inquiry at Albany, sought in every way to belittle the significance of his and his party's Chicago Manifesto, the Moscow Manifesto, and the evident connection between the two, belittling, also, his party's affiliation with the Third (Moscow) International. How unscrupulous and hypocritical his testimony seems in the light of all the facts!
In his testimony at Albany on February 19, 1920, Hillquit acknowledged the Chicago Manifesto, adopted September 4, 1919, as his own child. "At least ninety per cent of it is my authorship," he proudly said. Having himself imprudently led his party to make open confession, by manifesto, of its plot "to wrest the industries and the control of the government of the United States" out of their present keeping and so completely into the hands of the Socialist Party that it would be able "to place" them "in the control of" a special class, did Hillquit feel that he would be justified on the witness stand in using any extreme of craft which might help to bury the plot out of sight again?
In spite of the fact that the Party Manifesto Hillquit wrote sounds astonishingly like the echo of the Moscow Manifesto, Hillquit, on February 19, 1920, swore that he had never read the Moscow Manifesto when he wrote his ninety per cent or more of the Chicago Manifesto. To this he held even when reminded by Mr. Conboy that all of the Moscow Manifesto but the preamble had appeared in the "New York Call" of July 24, 1919. And he still sought to convey the notion that the Moscow Manifesto had not made any particular impression upon the members of his party prior to the Emergency Convention of September, 1919, in spite of the letter read to him by Mr. Conboy, of which the following is an extract: