"The Proletarian Party and Its Work," by John Keracher. [Jan. 1929] Keracher, the leading figure in the Proletarian Party, outlines the organization's history and political philosophy in the loosest of terms in this article which first appeared in the Jan.-Feb. 1929 issue of the Party's official organ, The Proletarian.
AUGUST 1929
"Lovestone’s Appeal to Party," by Max Shachtman [Aug. 15, 1929] Jay Lovestone was expelled from the Communist Party USA late in June 1929 for violation of party discipline by leaving Moscow without permission and factional activity. The first key factional document of Lovestone and his co-thinkers was an "Appeal to the Comintern," published as a broadsheet newspaper. This document reproduces an outsider's perspective of the split and the document, an article by Trotskyist leader Max Shachtman published in the organ of the Communist League of America (Opposition), The Militant. Shachtman declares that "Less than one-tenth" of the appeal of the Lovestone-Gitlow group "is devoted to any differences in platform or principle it may or may not have with the present leadership and line of Stalin and the American Party leadership" and indicates this is "entirely characteristic of the present unprincipled struggle between the Right and Center wings of the Communist movement." He asserts that "Lovestone was put out of the way by Stalin because he was an American base for Bukharin, just as Bukharin and Stalin put Fischer, Maslov, Treint, and Neurath out of the way because they were bases for Zinoviev in 1925. All the other accusations against Lovestone are afterthoughts." Shachtman recounts some of the major events of the Lovestone split, emphasizing the connection of Max Bedacht with the factional activities of the grouping up to his 11th hour capitulation in Moscow.
NOVEMBER 1929
"The 'Achievements' of the CC Plenum: Statement of the Communist Party-Majority Group." [Nov. 15, 1929] From Nov. 6-8, 1929, the Communist Party USA held the first plenum of its Central Committee in nearly 11 months. This is the critique of the changes and policies of the CPUSA established at this CC plenum by the Communist Party-Majority Group, headed by former CP Executive Secretary Jay Lovestone. The plenum approved a "new line" thesis, which the CPMG characterizes as "the most shameful document in the history of our Party," including erroneous views of the international situation and the domestic economic situation, as well as a vague program which utterly underestimated the Negro question and the agricultural situation. Furthermore, the CC added 12 new members to replace those expelled in the recent party controversy, resulting in 9 of 15 places on the Political Committee for the "bankrupt, discredited Foster Group."
"Lovestone, Wolfe & Co. Stand Naked in the Marketplace: Unsigned Editorial in The Daily Worker, Nov. 30, 1929." A heated and rather nasty front page editorial from the pages of the CPUSA's daily. Bukharin's capitulation and admission of having made "dangerous errors" in the USSR "has left the latest recruits to the ranks of the enemies of the working class and of the Communist Party of the United States -- Lovestone, Wolfe & Co. -- stark naked with their renegade sores exposed in the marketplace where capitalism purchases its servants," the Editorial declares. The "counterrevolutionary hope" of a split in the CPSU around Bukharin is said to have "gone glimmering. That the actions of Comrade Bukharin, with the opportunist, pessimist platform upon which he then stood, could bring a split in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was never more than a desperate wish on the part of the enemies of Communism and the working class who found temporary refuge in the ranks of our world Party." The editorial quotes Lovestone's charges that the present leaders of the Comintern were "political ignoramuses" marked by "unprincipledness" and responds in kind with specific charges: "Lovestone speaking of 'unprincipledness!' This is surely a sight for gods and men! The young gentleman who began his career as a police probation officer, who, true to his training in this broad field of anti-working class activity, added fresh laurels by appearing as a state's witness against a comrade in 1920, who found his way into our Party by methods best known to himself but of which others are not entirely ignorant -- the petty bourgeois careerist who systematically corrupted the younger and weaker elements of our Party and who only 8 months ago called Salome-like for the head of Bukharin in the vain belief that he could thereby save his own." Lovestone and his political associates Bert Wolfe and Ben Gitlow are called "petty bourgeois gentlemen" and "counterrevolutionists." "Fortunately for the American working class our Party was strong enough to expose and drive these treacherous elements from its ranks," the editorial trumpets.
DECEMBER 1929
"Lovestone Ends His 'Isolation,'" by Earl Browder [Dec. 23. 1929] Article from the Communist Party's daily press attempting to denigrate expelled party leader Jay Lovestone as a participant in an international alliance of Right Wing elements. Browder makes much of a $100 donation received by Lovestone from "Mexican comrades" as "blood-money" from "a choice collection of scoundrels" and renegades who were ultimately "supported and financed by Wall Street." All this serves as precursor to the main event, Browder's dusting off of the 1920 Winitsky Trial affair, in which Lovestone testified under subpoena from the prosecution, only to be accused of party treason. Browder asserts that Lovestone "received immunity from prosecution by agreeing to testify; his testimony was referred to by the judge in charging the jury as the basis for a verdict of guilt against Winitsky. About that time there were several splits in the underground party, and in the confusion Lovestone escaped from having to answer to the Party for his conduct." Browder notes that the affair was, years later, brought before the International Control Committee of the Comintern, which "after reviewing the case, declared that Lovestone had been guilty of conduct impermissible in a Communist" -- but which closed the case without sanctions, in light of so much time having passed and Lovestone having been accepted into the top leadership. "Under normal circumstances the case would have been closed even now. But Lovestone has shown by his present renegacy, by his slanderous attacks upon the Party and Comintern, and by his open collaboration with the enemies of the revolutionary working class, that his testimony for the state in 1920 was not an accident," Browder states.
