"The Workers' (Communist) Party: What It Is and Why Workers Should Join It," by C.E. Ruthenberg. Text of a small propaganda pamphlet encouraging wage-workers to join the Workers' (Communist) Party. According to Ruthenberg, the W(C)PA comprised the political organization necessary to "give leadership" to the workers' struggle against capitalism and to "direct it along the road that will carry the workers forward to the Workers' and Farmers' Government and victory for the new social order." To advance this task, the W(C)PA would support the daily struggles of the workers and farmers for relief, work to amalgamate craft unions into industrial unions, work to organized the unorganized industrial workers into unions, work for the establishment of and affiliation with a Labor Party, work for Negro organization and the struggle of black Americans for "complete social equality," and fight against American imperialism abroad.
FEBRUARY 1926
"A Communist Trial in Pittsburgh," by A. Jakira [Feb. 1926] Eyewitness account of the trial in Pittsburgh of Edward Horacek, a draftsman and member of the Machinists Union who was arrested and tried for his activities as a member of the Workers Party of America. Horacek was taken as a part of the April 27 and 28, 1923 raids by federal agents, state policemen, and county detectives on the Pittsburgh headquarters of the Workers Party and was the first of 9 defendants to go to trial. Jakira tells the familiar tale of a zealous prosecution with its lying witnesses before a stacked jury and a biased judge. The jury convicted Horacek for having back in 1923 distributed the printed program of the WPA (a registered political party in the state of Pennsylvania) and for having been invoiced for 50 copies of The Liberator, a WPA artistic-political magazine "sold on newsstands and bookstores in practically every city of this country." No articles from The Liberator had been introduced into evidence during the trial to demonstrate that the publication was seditious, nor was any over act by Horacek alleged -- Horacek was simply found guilty of 2 of the 8 charges made against him for his membership in the WPA and for distributing its literature. The conviction meant a potential sentence of 20 years in prison, writes Jakira. Includes a pen-and-ink caricature of Henry J. Lennon, chief of the Pittsburgh anti-red unit, chief prosecution witness in the trial who was accused by Jakira of having perjured himself on the stand.
"About the Annual Meeting of Työmies," by K.E. Heikkinen [Feb. 13, 1926] Summary of the factional struggle in the Finnish Federation of the Workers (Communist) Party of America in the aftermath of the organization's 1925 reorganization program, which put the party on the basis of shop nuclei instead of the previous language federation-based system. The party loyalist Heikkinen uses the term "party crisis" to describe the 1925 situation and writes here to chronicle the downfall of former member of the Central Executive Committee Henry Askeli, who was removed as editor of the party's central region Finnish daily, Työmies (The Worker) as an oppositionist. Reading between the lines, it appears that Askeli defended the semi-autonomy of the Finnish Federation from growing encroachment on the part of the W(C)PA's Central Executive Committee. It seems the Superior, Wisconsin subdistrict of the Minneapolis district was the heart of this oppositional activity, with many on the staff of Työmies supportive of Askeli. Askeli was cashiered at the 4th National Convention of the WPA, held in Chicago late in August 1925. Askeli issued an article or document about one week after the Aug. 30 close of the convention, detailing his own view of the situation, marking a formalization of his oppositional perspective. The editorial staff attempted to defend Askeli from dismissal on technical grounds, according to this article, but the effort was turned aside by a strong majority at the annual shareholders' meeting.
"Black Persecution," by Eugene V. Debs [Feb. 20, 1926] In this article by the Socialist Party's ceremonial "Chairman," Eugene Debs, the problem of racism is again raised, using as the foil the legal lynching of a black Kentuckian recently tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for rape and murder in less than 16 minutes. A bloodthirsty mob of so-called Christians surrounded the courthouse, intent on assuring by scarcely concealed threat of violence the maintenance of white supremacy in the region. Debs charges that in contrast "Many and many a Negro girl, scarcely out of her childhood, has been seduced, raped, assaulted by a Nordic gentleman (!) with a white skin, but it has never been necessary to order out the state militia to protect him against the avenging wrath of his Christian fellow-citizens." He declares that "the whole history of the Negro race in America is one to make the white race blush scarlet with shame. From the time the poor black man was seized in his native land by the brutal kidnapper of the slave-trader, loaded into a boat like a beast and on landing sold like one from the auction block; from that time to the 'Jim Crow' car has been one continuous shameless persecution of the Negro..."Debs states that it is certain that the mob was "without exception" a group of so-called "100% Americans." He adds that "there were few, if any, "ignorant and vicious foreigners" milling around madly intent upon the feast of blood. They were chiefly if not wholly native to the soil, having from the beginning enjoyed all the advantages of Christian culture, and having never been, like the poor Negro, kept under the lash, exploited, robbed, degraded in every possible way to make possible the blessings of such culture and civilization for the white race."
"Report to the 6th Plenum of the Enlarged Executive Committee of the Communist International, February 20, 1926," by Grigorii Zinoviev The massive (31 pages in this format) keynote report of the President of the Comintern to the delegates assembled at the 6th Plenum of the Expanded Executive Committee of the Communist International -- essentially a summary report of CI activity through 1925. Zinoviev reaffirms the idea of the "temporary stabilization of capitalism," likening the situation to that faced by the Bolsheviks after the failure of the 1905 revolution -- that revolution around the world was beyond doubt, but the timetable was difficult to predict. A dual "perspective" was advocated, whereby the move to a new revolutionary period might be either fast (for example, in 2 years) or slow (in 10 years). Regardless, Zinoviev stated, "our diagnosis is the same as before: the death of capitalism, dictatorship of the proletariat within a comparatively short time!" Zinoviev more than once emphasizes the importance of the 3rd Congress of the Comintern (1921) over that of the 4th (1922) and 5th (1924), strongly advocating the continuance of the slogan "To the Masses!" and the unceasing utilization of "United Front tactics." The goal, Zinoviev states, is to win the support of a majority of the working class to the leadership of the Communist Party -- something that was as yet unobtained. With regards to the United States, Zinoviev calls America "but one of the links of world capitalsm as a whole (although the strongest link)" and calls it "the promised land of reformism." He sees a trend among the nations of Europe towards the "Americanization" of the labor movement, attempts to strip the trade unions of their radical political perspective and to reduce them to negotiating devices for purely monetary objectives. Zinoviev criticizes both "Ultra-Left" (anti-United Front) and "Right" (Social Democratic) opposition movements within the Communist Parties, and is critical of the misapplication of United Front tactics by erstwhile well-meaning supporters of the Comintern general line (he incidentally uses that exact term to indicate the broad program of the CI, as opposed to specific details relating to its application). He advocates increased "self-reliance and independence" among the parties of the Comintern, while acknowledging situations in which the CI must "dissolve some CC" and "appoint another in its place" due to "situations when this can not be helped."
"God, the Supreme Shoe Manufacturer," by Robert Minor [Feb. 27, 1926] This article by cartoonist and Workers (Communist) Party functionary Robert Minor was written in conjunction with the ongoing Brockton, MA blasphemy trial of Lithuanian Communist newspaper editor Anthony Bimba minces no words in its defense of "the revolutionary materialist philosophy." The archaic law under which Bimba was charged was a relic of the age "when Massachusetts was a colony and was steadily burning witches, and which in its first form imposed the death penalty for atheists," Minor indicates. Minor observes the relationship of the clergy to the ruling class and asserts that "it is necessary, from the point of view of the manufacturing interests, to make the “people” (that is, the working people) believe in some variation of the god myth." In opposition to this, the Communist "helps to free the working class of the superstitious conception of the universe, thereby helping the workers to direct their energies toward the liberation from the rule of the capitalist class," Minor declares. Minor likens the proceedings against Bimba to the recently completed "Scopes Monkey Trial" and asserts that "Bimba denied the Supreme manufacturer, and all of the little shoe manufacturers of Massachusetts, and their priests and preachers and ethical culturists strike at Bimba in vengeance."
SEPTEMBER 1926
"Socialist Party Fights Unity of Action of Workers," by C.E. Ruthenberg [Sept. 15, 1926] Response by Executive Secretary of the Workers (Communist) Party C.E. Ruthenberg to a directive of the NEC of the Socialist Party to party locals advising them not to participate in united front efforts with the Communist Party. Ruthenberg indicates that this centrally-created instruction was in large measure a reaction to the "many local organizations of the Socialist Party" which "have ignored the policy of the National Executive Committee" and "joined in united front action in the interests of the workers even though those actions were initiated and led by Communists." Ruthenberg points to the formation of local units of the Council for the Protection of the Foreign-Born Workers, to joint action associated with the Passaic textile strike, to trade union work, to common work in defense of political prisoners, and to unified action against racism. "The issue before the Socialist locals is whether they will participate in such united action by the workers against their capitalist exploiters or give up the idea of the class struggle," Ruthenberg declares. He calls on the ailing National Chairman of the SPA, Eugene Debs, to make public objection to the NEC's new statement.
"New Leader Refuses to Admit Fabrication of Stalin’s Speech," by C.E. Ruthenberg [Sept. 16, 1926] On Aug. 14, 1926, the New York Socialist weekly The New Leader published what it purported were direct quotations from a speech by Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks), indicating a deep rift between the two main factional leaders of the Russian Communist Party. This publication was met with a swift official denial of authenticity by C.E. Ruthenberg on Sept. 9, to which pugnacious New Leader editor James Oneal responded with mockery and a refusal to retract (published in full here). Barred from their pages, Ruthenberg attempts to make hay among Daily Worker readers by publicizing Oneal's words: "The Socialist Party has sunk low indeed when it is necessary for it to publish manufactured speeches assigned to Communist leaders in order to carry on the struggle against Communism and Communist principles. The triumph of the proletarian revolution in Russia, the success of the proletarian dictatorship in building a socialist economic system, is becoming so clear to the workers that the Socialists can no longer challenge it on the basis of facts. The alternative is to use manufactured documents such as the capitalist governments have been using against the Communist International."
"Comrade Stalin Exposes Social Democratic Forgery." (Daily Worker) [cable of Sept. 21, 1926] With C.E. Ruthenberg's demand for retraction ignored, General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks) I.V. Stalin takes time to respond to a report in the Socialist Party weekly The New Leader reporting of comments made severely critical of Comintern chief Grigorii Zinoviev. In his cable Stalin denounces The New Leader for having published "falsified concluding remarks." Stalin insists in his communique to The Daily Worker: "I ask you to allow me to state through your paper that the reports of the 'remarks of Stalin' published in The New Leader of August 14, 1926, has absolutely nothing in common with my speech at the plenum of the CC either in contents or in form or in tone, and that this report is thus a most complete and ignorant forgery."
"The Socialist Party Furnishes Its "Insurgents,'" by Bertram D. Wolfe [Sept. 23, 1926] Communist functionary Bert Wolfe takes a look at factionalism and "disintegration going on inside the Socialist Party" in this Daily Worker article. He sees the rightward-tilting Jewish Daily Forward as playing the decisive role in the dwindling Socialist organization, with that paper now having abandoned its opposition to Zionism and making an active play for the support of the petty bourgeoisie and right wing union leaders employing "gangster tactics" against left wing locals in the garment industry. Norman Thomas and the Young People's Socialist League have constituted a "vague and incoherent opposition" to the worst abuses of the ruling faction, Wolfe indicates, with Thomas being retaliated against by being "dumped" into an obscure candidacy and given one column in an otherwise hostile New Leader to "keep him quiet." Wolfe's interpretation of the factional situation which would erupt in the SPA over the next decade is prescient: "The Forward’s crowd is determined to run things with an iron hand and it is questionable how long they will permit even the innocent protests of Norman Thomas and how long they will still find any place for him at all in the ballot for him and in their paper. The only reason they tolerate him at all is because they know that his mild protest acts as a break upon the idealistic elements among the YPSLs, who are disgusted with the Forward’s crowd and its tactics but do not know what to do about it and have not enough initiative to make their own fight and have to look to a man like Norman Thomas for such leadership as he can give."
"Eugene V. Debs -- Hail and Farewell! A Statement on His Death by the International Labor Defense," by James P. Cannon [event of Oct. 20, 1926] Despite the bitter internecine warfare between the rightward-trending Socialist Party of America and the ever-more-shrill and doctrinaire Workers (Communist) Party, SPA leader Eugene V. Debs remained a figure held in high esteem in the opposing camp, as this short memorial by Jim Cannon indicates. "The prisoner of Woodstock and Atlanta was close kin to all persecuted and imprisoned workers," Cannon writes. "Comrade Debs was not one of those who shrug shoulders at the imprisonment of workers as though it were a matter of small concern. He burned with indignation at ever case of capitalist persecution and was always in the vanguard of the fight for its victims, whoever they might be and whatever their political views or affiliations." Cannon declares that Debs "had nothing in common with these elements represented by the Jewish Daily Forward who fire from ambush at the movement for united labor defense. He helped to build where they try to disrupt." Debs remained on the National Committee of the ILD until his death, Cannon notes.
"Eastman Drops His Mask," by Max Bedacht [Oct. 20, 1926] Top Ruthenberg factional lieutenant Max Bedacht takes up the Comintern's cudgel against supporters of the opposition in the Russian Communist Party headed by Grigorii Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky. The target here is former Liberator magazine editor Max Eastman, who had the temerity to publish a factionally-driven work on contemporary Soviet history entitled Since Lenin Died. Eastman is besmirched by Bedacht as "either a forger or a spy" for having "either made up his “documents” out of whole cloth — or he obtained them under false pretenses of friendship to make money out of them by selling them to the enemy." Rather than addressing the documents' content, Bedacht goes after the messenger, declaring "We doubt their genuineness, because we know Eastman." Pressured statements by N.K. Krupskaia and Trotsky undermining Eastman's legitimacy are quoted approvingly by Bedacht. Fortunately Eastman's mercenary "mental excrements on the Russian Communist Party" have been ignored, Bedacht notes, since that organization had already "overwhelmingly repudiated Trotsky and Zinoviev." He continues: "In the exercise of their inner party democracy, the workers organized in the Russian party have declared in overwhelming numbers that they stand with the Central Committee of their party."
"At the Bier of Debs," by Morris Hillquit [delivered Oct. 22] One of the funeral speeches delivered in Eugene Debs' honor from the porch of the Debs house in Terre Haute, Indiana in the afternoon of Friday, October 22, 1926 -- later reprinted in the Socialist press. Hillquit noted that while Debs "was one of the most effective orators of America" what really made the man was his personality. "It was first of all the boundless love of everything that bears human countenance which radiated from him. Not an intellectual love, not an abstract love, but a love that flowed naturally, organically, communicating itself electrically to all who came within the magic sphere of his personal contact. He loved everybody -- the poor and even the rich, the righteous, the criminal, and the outcast. He loved mankind and his very eloquence sprung from his love. He did not merely appeal and convince, he communicated part of himself, part of his very being to his audience."
"A Tribute to Debs," by Morris Hillquit. [Oct. 23, 1926] A short tribute to the Socialist leader written by his friend and comrade and published on the front page of The New Leader at the time of Debs' death. According to Hillquit, Debs was "a crusader and a fighter, but there was no hate in him. His most ardent fighting sprang from his deep and warm love for all that bears human countenance. A pure type of early Christian at his best, he was strangely misplaced in our cold age of selfishness and greed." "Through all the years of his struggles and suffering his frail body was vibrant with flaming vitality. In spite of his advanced age and ill health he was to the last the impersonation of radiant youth in his mental alertness and never-flagging enthusiasm."
"Eugene V. Debs and the Revolutionary Labor Movement," by C.E. Ruthenberg [Nov. 6, 1926] General Secretary of the Workers (Communist) Party C.E. Ruthenberg answers Socialist critics who charge the Communists with misrepresentation and bad faith for conducting memorial meetings in honor of the recently-deceased SPA National Chairman Gene Debs. While acknowledging Debs' place outside the Communist Party, Ruthenberg pointedly remarks that "the Socialists do not care to be reminded of the many times that Eugene V. Debs disagreed with the reformist and reactionary position taken by the Socialist Party. They wish to make the tradition of Debs’ work in the revolutionary labor movement part of the background of the utterly bankrupt Socialist Party and hide it with the mantle of non-class struggle reformism, which is the policy of the Socialist Party today." Ruthenberg then illustrates his point with a series of historical anecdotes from 1910, 1912, 1917, and 1919, in which Debs openly and loudly espoused left wing positions on questions of internal party controversy. Ruthenberg also cites his membership in the Communist-sponsored Labor Defense Council and International Labor Defense as well as the Trade Union Educational League. "Although Debs did not clearly grasp the principles underlying the class struggle and their implications, he was a revolutionary fighter who instinctively took his stand on the side of the worker in every battle," Ruthenberg writes. "In every great struggle in American labor history Debs spoke out his flaming words in support of the workers.
"Debs and SP Policies," by James Oneal. [Nov. 13, 1926] The Socialist Party Old Guard's attack dog locks jaw on the "most revolting performance" of the American Communists in their attempt to "claim Eugene Debs as their own." To this end, two charges were made in a Communist leaflet distributed at a Debs memorial meeting held at Madison Square Garden which stick in Oneal's craw: (1) that Debs was "always on the left wing of the Socialist Party"; and (2) that only in recent years did the SP "permit" Debs to be a member of the SP's governing National Executive Committee. Oneal mocks the first assertion, dumping everything from the Social Democracy in America's colonization wing to Daniel DeLeon's ST&LA to the eccentric anti-union views of two 1904 SP convention delegates to the 1912 syndicalist movement into a single large bin labeled "left wing." Since Debs never followed any of this "topsy turvy conduct," Oneal asserts, the claim of Debs' fidelity to the "left" is absurd. Oneal depicts Debs' later pro-unity position as the result of sentimentality and the cause of unintentional misunderstanding and says that the 1905 decision to help form the IWW was a "mistake," soon corrected. As for the assertion that Debs was only allowed on the NEC in the last years, Oneal convincingly argues that Debs saw his role as a propagandist, not as a party executive, that he was regularly nominated -- and declined -- all such offices as a matter of preference, so that he might concentrate on his main mission. " It is precisely because he was committed to the Socialist Party and its policies that he consented to go to the National Executive Committee in recent years. The fact that he took up work that he disliked and which he had avoided for more than twenty years shows that he was so convinced that the Socialist Party represented his views," Oneal notes.
DECEMBER 1926
"Inner-Party Questions of the VKP(b): A Report to the 7th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI, Moscow -- December 7, 1926," by I. Stalin The 7th Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International [Nov. 22-Dec. 16, 1926] marked the formal removal of Grigorii Zinoviev as head of the Comintern and his replacement by Nikolai Bukharin, close factional ally of Iosef Stalin. At the 18th Session of this plenum, the agenda moved to the USSR and the situation in the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks). Stalin delivered this warmly-received three hour report (republished in 1954 in v. 9 of Stalin's Works as "Once More on the Social-Democratic Deviation in Our Party") to the delegates detailing the development of the opposition in the Soviet party. Stalin characterized this opposition as the by-product of latent bourgeois ideology and a bourgeoisified upper segment of the Soviet working class. Following a path blazed in the years 1911-1914, Stalin states that Trotsky was once again attempting to cobble together an alliance of distinct "oppositions," including this time remnants of the Democratic Centralists, the Workers' Opposition, and Zinoviev's "New Opposition" in addition to his own "Trotskyist" faction. Due to the Russian proletariat's intense hostility to "anti-revolutionary and opportunist elements," the Trotsky-led alliance had "for several years" (i.e. since 1923) been conducting criticism of the Russian Communist Party using "Left" phraseology, according to Stalin. Stalin enumerates a series of points upon which the opposition and the VKP(b) differ, including, first and foremost, whether socialism is possible in the USSR alone. The Opposition is characterized by Stalin as "having no faith in the internal forces of our revolution" and of being "scared by the partial stabilization of capitalism," which it considered to be "a fact which may seal the doom of our revolution." The Opposition bloc launched an aggressive attack on the nature of the Soviet regime, which Stalin depicts as objectively counterrevolutionary, earning the plaudits of Mensheviks and Cadets alike. Isolated in the Party and "thrown into the camp of the opponents of Leninism" by the inexorable logic of their position, the Opposition was compelled to "admit defeat and retire" at the recent 15th Conference of the VKP(b) [Oct.-Nov. 1926]. It was now up to the Enlarged ECCI to "recognize the policy of the [Russian] Party in relation to the Opposition as being correct" and to thus make the defeat of the Opposition international in scope, Stalin declared.
