The Vagaries of Communism
Stolberg, Benjamin
December 30, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 205 THE VAGARIES OF COMMUNISM By BENJAMIN STOLBERG THE fourth annual convention of the Workers' party of America was held in Chicago from August 21 to...
...Its first efforts were to "capture the united labor ticket" of the incipient La Follette movement...
...There is no better way of leading up to the present struggle within American Bolshevism than by sketching the predicaments of Foster since he assumed its leadership in 1921...
...The reason for creating this paper party was as simple as it was absurd...
...A party which is in dictatorial power can stand such rifts...
...The Communist International finally appointed Grusev to come here and to adjudicate the quarrel as chairman of a "parity committee...
...The Federated Farmer-Labor party was thrown into the waste basket...
...But during the last two years these diverging tendencies became ever more difficult of reconciliation...
...Factionalism was in the air throughout 1923...
...Ever since the Soviet revolution the task of the Russian government and the Russian Communist party (which in 1919 was enlarged into the Communist In* ternational) have been clearly contradictory...
...Of course La Follette repudiated the fake party...
...Furthermore, he suspects Foster's syndicalist tendencies, for syndicalism is national rather than international and economic rather than political...
...On the other hand the Communist International with an appearance of endorsing the minority policy felt that "not the rejection of a struggle for the labor party, but an adjustment and further development of our [sic] tactics in this struggle are called for by the present situation in America...
...The other faction was mindful of the political character of the Workers' party and was still for "a fake united front in the political field with American labor," the word "fake" indicating that its desire to collaborate with "burgeois third party movements" was purely opportunstic...
...The Communist press acclaimed La Follette's virtues...
...All he wants the Workers' party to do is to make the kind of noise, which to him is worth approximately $100,000 a year: to break up Socialist meetings...
...Bitterly Foster "complied," stating that he will take his case to Moscow in the hope that the Communist International may reverse itself...
...Alexander Bittelman, a representative of the Communist International with the Workers'1 party, xdescribes in his report at the last Communist convention the reaction of the American Bolsheviks to Zinoviev's cable—"All our tactics, all our literature, all our slogans during the months of January to May were based on this general idea of a third party alliance and then, at a certain moment, the Communist International said to our party—'you cannot do it' . . . We were confronted with the necessity of reorienting ourselves practically within twenty-four hours...
...Foster was expelled from the Socialist party in 1909...
...In 1920 Foster founded his third syndicalist effort, the Trade Union Educational League, which is now the "industrial department" of the Workers' party...
...December 30, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 205 THE VAGARIES OF COMMUNISM By BENJAMIN STOLBERG THE fourth annual convention of the Workers' party of America was held in Chicago from August 21 to August 30...
...William Z. Foster was reflected the national chairman...
...And finally: "the executive committee [of the Communist International] demands that all personal polemics between the two sides should cease . . . and that the representatives of the . . . majority and minority should . . . conclude a fraternal peace and work in Communist cooperation...
...Oracularly it gave its blessings to both factions, and both factions interpreted it as an "endorsement...
...which renders only the more amazing his weakness, amounting to tragi-comic genius, in permitting himself to be manoeuvred into doing one day the very things he preached against the day before...
...Finally, last January, the situation came to a break in the Russian Communist party...
...When it was brought out in 1921 that he had been at the secret communist meeting in the Michigan woods, he decided to throw in his fortunes openly with Bolshevism...
...He is against political action...
...It is entirely a reflection of Zinoviev's personal politics in the Communist International...
...Although the struggle had no local significance, it succeeded in splitting American Bolshevism into two groups...
...His program became known as the "majority program," because he had with him two-thirds of the central executive committee and about three-fourths of the Bolshevik membership by national referendum...
...But it makes good political hokum for the time being for Zinoviev in Russia...
...And at present Mr...
...As was to be expected, the realistic tendencies of the Soviet government were bound to win out against the utopianism of the Communist International...
...By 1923 the Workers' party was well organized...
...Grusev, alias Mr...
...He has the rare gift of reducing complicated movements into lucid and dramatic logic, usually fallacious, since it argues merely his latest shift toward the "wild men" in his camp...
...Foster's last hope of "boring from within" the seemingly significant political movement in American labor went glimmering...
...Indeed, since then he has been deposed even from the nominal chairmanship...
...Foster chose to range himself on the side of those who were urging "the further Bolshevization of the Workers' party...
...A ludicrous analogy to the Russian situation was created, supposedly in the light of American conditions...
...In rejecting Foster's program Zinoviev wound up with the threat that "non-compliance means expulsion...
...In America," decided the Communist International, "the regular work of the party in the trade unions must be considered now as the fundamental work...
...Yet, today he is the head of a political party...
...Foster was its avowed leader...
...Foster is singularly gifted in all attributes of leadership save one...
...All this was advocated in the name of "Leninism...
...He was having his way, when on August 28, a cable reached the convention from Zinoviev: "The Communist International is highly dissatisfied with the majority...
...the "Federated FarmerLabor party" might...
...From mid-summer, 1923 to May, 1924, Foster bent every effort uto bore from within" the swelling La Follette movement...
...He lost out in the American Federation of Labor even before the collapse of the 1919 steel strike which he had organized...
...Of course, the very championship of any cause by the Communists hurts it in this country...
...Given desk space, his inexhaustible energy enables him to carry his temporary Utopia into every corner of the labor movement...
...Most of the Communists in this country then were neither workers nor intellectuals nor Americans...
...He wrote long "theses" in the Communist press, elaborately proving how absurd his position had been a year ago...
...And it began to play its "revolutionary strategy" in our labor movement...
...Zinoviev cabled to "capture" by all means this meeting of "workers and poor farmers" and to form "a united political front" with American labor, in spite of Foster's advice that the Workers' party ought merely to affiliate with the other labor groups...
...Trotzky's position was branded as "Trotzkyism," "counter-revolutionary" and "opportunistic," and he lost his cabinet position...
...The Russian revolution completely swept him off his feet...
...The Russian government had become stable enough to engage in imperial expansion, while the Communist International maintained its appeals for international revolution...
...Zinoviev, whose own political fortunes are tied up with the Communist International, protested that Bolshevism must not compromise its international revolutionary ideal...
...Trotzky openly accused Zinoviev of revolutionary incompetence and advocated the subservience of the Russian Communist party (which is practically the Communist International) to the interests of Russian realities in domestic and foreign affairs...
...The only thing about him which is not naive is his enormous theoretical and practical knowledge about labor...
...But henceforth Foster's leadership will be largely nominal...
...Stalin, whose position as chairman of the organization committee of the Russian Communist party gives him the whole patronage power of the government, is gradually swinging away from Zinoviev...
...Both Zinoviev and Trotzky pleaded in the name of "Leninism...
...In October, he even had to "comply" in the reorganization of the Workers' party in a way which abolished his chairmanship...
...But M. Grusev, alias P. Green, then official representative of the Communist International in this country, quickly disillusioned him...
...Hence his order to the Workers' party not to become entangled with the "petty burgeois La Follette movement...
...He knew what he wanted and then impatiently disregarded his own judgment...
...He is the prey of the "lunatic fringe" of his own radical efforts...
...He knows that the "drive toward industrial unionism" is a wormlike process...
...Early in 1921 he went to see the Russian leaders, who received him graciously, partly on account of his long radical career but mainly because he was an intellectual working man of Yankee-Scotch-Irish descent...
...The job of the Communist International was Utopian—international social revolution...
...This faction also wrapped itself in the mantle of "Leninism...
...The Communist International also issued a lengthy statement "on the American question...
...His prestige as the leader of American Bolshevism received a fatal blow when his "majority program" was countermanded by a cable from Zinoviev on August 28...
...to stage "protest" meetings against Mr...
...The task of the Soviet government was all along to deal realistically with Russian national life and its foreign needs...
...Foster hoped against hope that La Follette might permit his endorsement by the Federated FarmerLabor party which was to meet in presidential nominating convention in June, 1924...
...The Workers' party there and then organized a fictitious Federated Farmer-Labor party (a name legally too long to go on the ballots of most states) thus bluffing "a united front with American labor...
...But he "complied...
...to propagandize disruptive "slogans" in our labor movement...
...In his need for moral and material support he turned to the then recently organized Communist International...
...But even before La Follette came out against it, Zinoviev suddenly cabled early in May, 1924, that the Federated Farmer-Labor party schedule was to be torn up...
...But Zinoviev, who had been part of the Bolshevik machine since 1903, was able to win out against Trotzky, who had joined the Bolshevik party as late as 1917...
...Zinoviev feels now that "the minority is closer to us," in spite of its "opportunism," because he had to compromise with his revolutionary orthodoxy at home...
...Ruthenberg headed the "minority program," which recommended "the united front" with American labor in the political field, though American labor refused "to unite" and the third party movement as a question of practical politics had been snowed under in the Coolidge election...
...He wants to amalgamate all the trades in each industry into one big union...
...Both factions were then advised to unite in a "struggle against Lore's opportunism...
...And Foster was even weak enough to become the presidential candidate of the Workers' party, running on a "revolutionary platform...
...He knows that there is no revolutionary chance in this country...
...Of the twenty-one new members of the central executive committee, eleven are against him...
...The referendum of the membership of the Workers' party was overridden...
...But the connection entangled him, against his will, in all the "underground" communist factions at the time...
...to fish in the murky waters of our race problem...
...Why did Zinoviev order the Workers' party to tear up the paper Federated Farmer-Labor party...
...Foster tried desperately to keep his Moscow relations in the background, appreciating that they would destroy his chances of "boring from within" our labor movement...
...We demand that the minority gets at least 40 percent representation on the central executive committee and at least 50 percent on all committees and subcommittees...
...His International Trade Union Educational League died the same way in 1916...
...The party press was in ferment with all these fantastic struggles...
...The fact is that an intelligent, indigenous and consistent program in American labor, no matter how radical, does not interest Zinoviev...
...At first he insisted that the cable was a "fake...
...His sincerity is shown in his ascetic devotion to his changing winds of doctrine, though within the last two years he has been rationalizing his constant self-reversals into a rather meretricious "opportunism...
...to indulge in antiBritish propaganda in general...
...Lenin's genius was able very effectively to make use of these two contradictory tendencies...
...Trotzky is very much back in office...
...Lore's "counter-revolutionary" crime consisted in his gentle resentment at the quixotic behavior of his comrades...
...He expects the Workers' party to be an adjunct to his own political machine in Moscow...
...Why did he insist on its strictest revolutionary orthodoxy...
...Its central executive committee, which has complete control over all communist activities in this country under the avowed direction of the Communist International, was enlarged from thirteen to twenty-one members...
...In Russia this struggle dealt with realities, yet it was not fratricidal...
...But "boring" is far too slow for his arduous nature...
...He is fundamentally a syndicalist...
...Unfortunately for him, Bolshevism is an international movement, whose political game is played 6,000 miles away with complete disregard of our national situation...
...At the last convention of the Workers' party Lore was duly expelled and with him went the German Communist press and constituency...
...And every time he failed for the same reason...
...And so Zinoviev is now telling his American comrades that they "need not demand nor even expect that [there] . . . will be immediately a revolutionary" movement in America...
...But the repercussion of this struggle here threw the Workers' party into fantastic convulsions...
...206 THE COMMONWEAL December 30, 1925 But Zinoviev insisted...
...He objected...
...Saklatvala's exclusion from the Interparliamentary Union...
...His Syndicalist League of North America died after a few months of existence in 1912...
...He protested all the more vigorously, because he was being blamed for the failures of the Communist uprisings in Germany in 1918 and 1923, in Italy in 1920, in Hungary in 1919, and in Bulgaria in 1923...
...He saw in this issue a chance to revert to his syndicalist tendencies and to push his Trade Union Educational League, which became active in disruptive campaigns in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, among the shop crafts, the miners, the shoeworkers and other trade unions...
...Green, the official agent of Zinoviev in this country, is "pointing out" the "dangers" of the "Foster tendency...
...In the answer to this question lies the secret of the socially pathological absurdities of the Communist movement in this country, which has deteriorated since then, until last January it became a mere vicious factional struggle...
...A Communist party could never hope uto unite" with the third party sentiment which was then developing...
...Non-compliance means expulsion...
...He is an excellent promoter...
...And so he scares these "masses" by revolutionary chimeras which effectively keep him out of the labor movement...
...Foster felt that the clear referendum victory of his majority program entitled him to a proportionate majority on the new executive committee...
...And poor Bill Foster is so deeply involved in the politics of the Communist International that he is forced to "comply" in these revolutionary antics against his own conscience and good judgment...
...Foster and Ruthenberg and other Communist leaders made several pilgrimages to Moscow...
...And so Foster attempted the "capture11 of the Farmer-Labor party...
...This struggle has absolutely nothing to do with American conditions...
...He quit the I. W. W. under fire in 1911...
...Both factions joined in vilifying Ludwig Lore, whose "second and a half international counter-revolutionary tendencies" were referred to as "Loreism...
...The result of his effort was to disrupt it and to drive out all the responsible trade unionists whom he wished to hold...
...Hence his slogan of "boring from withki the masses pf American labor...
...Both factions bitterly reviled "Trotzkyism...
...After this "liquidation of Loreism" was over, the real struggle between Foster and Ruthenberg began...
...Since then he has changed his position on at least five different occasions, every time against his own judgment and at the behest of the Communist International...
...This stand was a direct affront to Foster...
...One faction advocated "the further Bolshevization of the Workers' party" or, in plain English, purely economic propaganda among the trade unions for one big unionism, for strikes, for revolts against the present labor leadership and the rest of the syndicalist program...
...The Farmer-Labor party met in convention in Chicago in July, 1923...
...which was an endorsement of the majority...
...The minority is closer to us and more communistic...
...And in order to have a Trotzky to revile, they created one in the person of Ludwig Lore, editor of the New Yorker VolksDecember 30, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 207 zeitung, the German Communist daily...
...He and Charles E. Ruthenberg, the secretary of the party since 1921, are also on the enlarged executive committee of the Communist International...
...The Communist International has had to modify its red talk...
Vol. 3 • December 1925 • No. 8
