The Socialist Party
The Socialist Party Jj/rom address delivered by Louis Waldman at the tenth anniversary New Leader dinner, April 15, 1934. IT is appropriate that a program for the Socialist Party should be...
...We have in the past formed united fronts with the AFoL., the IWW...
...I am writing this now by way of saying something which has been in my mind for sometime...
...To bring the "larger program" into the alliance is cc^ain to divide the groups a)id to destroy the alliance ifjfprwed...
...It represents a beginning in social legislation...
...This document begins by stating that "The Socialist Party can become the effective instrument for bringing about Socialism only if it changes its present principles and tactics...
...He never thought he was particularly important and probably would have agreed with London that the best, way to get wide circulation for his piece was to drop his name off and put London's on...
...We are not much impressed...
...The people will look for new outlets...
...The legislation enacted, under the New Deal has in many respects broken with established legal and government traditions in the United States...
...Though none of them indorsed it, the three editors of the World Tomorrow—Reinhold Nie-buhr, Devere Allen and Kirby Page—devoted considerable space in the magazine to discussion of it...
...He is a blind, mindless machine of murder...
...Editor's Corner Review of and Comment on Events Here and Abroad...
...the We putes over I Positivism | risings ag« ploitation, 4 the victoria striker" J the only to colUI | again 'collal before the gripped the strong unil 1 ascended out Learning the task 0<J migrants, *• meager fil* earned bfj...
...Jack London clipped out the piece from the Chicago Daily Socialist...
...That view is the old free will doctrine aubstituted for the material realism of the Socialist philosophy...
...There is a story well worth the telling in picturesque lives of many Socialist agitators, And there is a story, truly, genuinely American, in the unselfish service and life-long devotion of the early Socialists through the Middle West and West who bravely bucked their country when three was a crowd on any Indiana and Ohio street corner...
...John Chamberlain, in reviewing Comrade Hillquit's book in the New York Times, remarked that we have "an amazingly complete literature" covering pre-war Socialism...
...The other course favored by the 47 has always brought war and sterility and it can bring nothing else...
...Bukharin, Trotsky1 and others have been quite frank in support of a party dictatorship, not a dictatorship of the proletariat...
...If he is ordered to kill his fellow citizens, his neighbors, his friends, his brothers and sisters, his father and mother, he fires without question and slays without sympathy...
...2.50...
...On the contrary, no alliance of organizations to support specific issues can be a success if it permits each group to drag in the "larger program" that divides them...
...During the war the leaflet popped up again...
...There is no life of Victor Berger, whose working-class journalism alone is a story which certainly should be recorded, and a model for as all...
...The good soldier obeys orders...
...We disagree with certain policies of the party, but this program merely adds to the confusion...
...As to the use of state power "to transform capitalist society into Socialist society by means of the dictatorship of the proletariat," the party, if it is to remain a Socialist Party, cannot and will not adopt any such declaration...
...They declare that the party must now "prepare for life or death...
...One may admit our slow growth without accepting this program...
...Most emphatically the Socialist Party must reject both of these propositions...
...The final chapter consists of hiaiafter-dinner speech at the New York state convention of the party in July, 1932, an address that profoundly affected every comrade fk Been Worth' and those i will never I now one get Comrade Hi forebodings afflicted him him from the He begins squalor in 1 workers of including W up...
...Three times he worked over this part of his talk, and I am quoting here from the first draft: "Young man, the lowest of all ideals is the military ideal...
...This pamphlet confirms our view of the group...
...Then the opportunity of the Socialist Party will come...
...jjjMal "A Good Soldier"-And Old Socialist Pioneers By Florence W. Bowers MANY years ago my father, \V...
...D. Wattles, wrote a little piece (or the Chicago Daily Socialist which he called "A Good Soldier," a few paragraphs worked over from one of his Socialist talks, "The False Ideal of Patriotism...
...The program for the Socialist Party must direct its attack upon industrial autocracy under private ownership and management, and hold out to the workers another diet tive to prev but a broad and real del Civil libe left wing | the bourge which must capitalist sj gram must Civil libertii before the \ i>into existeni tained at | pioneers for are dispense and under And even th cannot fore social systei ties is tyrai The asse councils" u to serve as tion" is hist is -u per fir i« the Socialist the Bolshevil ask the S« such a deck the Socialist Morris Hillquit's Of Early Anv Loose Leaves from a Busy Life...
...He is not a self-directing man...
...That is Communist doctrine...
...In fact, it is to be stabilized and perpetuated...
...The writer referred to its as "A sickly Communism hobbling on crutches between two movements, not knowing where it is going...
...The slow advance of the party is given as one reason why this program is necessary...
...This rich material, it seems to (Continued on Page Bight) Louis Waldman Takes Up Issues Before Fifth Year of the Depression and the S This appraisal should not blind ns to the basic truth that the Roosevelt policies do not and were never intended to challenge the fundamental industrial and commercial relationships...
...Shortly after his death, however, Fred Strickland wrote to the Chicago Daily Socialist and protested against the use of London's name on the leaflet, asserting that London might have given small credit to the Socialist propagandist who wrote it...
...death is imminent, it would appear that Work for these measures is trivial compared uilh the need of averting an early funeral...
...It will show the country that regulated capitalism leaves untouched the vital social problems...
...I think he'd have enjoyed this a lot...
...There is no middle road...
...They would support these "so-called reforms" to draw workers to us, to impose burdens upon capitalism "greater than it can bear," and to give labor "a sense of strength through these partial victories...
...Whether judge"3 by the character of its ownership—it is not privately owned—W by its editorial policies, this- papfec more closely than any other publication in the English language reflects the policies and principles of the party, Ttle triumph of Hitler and the rise of the Dollfuss dictatorship brought disaster to the Socialist parties of Germany and of Austria...
...If the authors had said that councils may be of service in a period of transition, that would be good Socialist reasoning, but to say that they are "historically suited" for the purpose in this or any other country is for us to bind ourselves to what experience may prove to be- historically unsuited to our task...
...Its sponsors live in a twilight zone between Communism and Socialism...
...They still want a united front that will include the Communist Party "with full recognition of the right of difference of opinion and free criticism <rf the larger program of participating elements," despite the Madison Square Garden meeting, and for "struggle on specific issues...
...My answer is that if the Socialist Party changes its "present principles," it will not be a Socialist Party...
...The failure of the New Deal, already foreshadowed, will' bring disillusionment to the masses...
...The resolution obtained about a half-dozen votes...
...There is *iot, for instance, a complete and satisfactory life of Eugene V. Debs, such as Carl Sandburg, let us say, might produce if he worked as hard on Debs as he worked on Lincoln...
...It is on record that a comrade in Topeka, Kans., was given "six months for distributing 'a Good Soldier,' by Jack London, to drafted men...
...I regard The New Leader as the official organ of the organized Socialist movement...
...Critical and Otherwise -By James Oneal The Program of the 47 •"PHE editor is asked by F'anc,is A. Henson to comment * on a pamphlet entitled "An Appeal to the Membership of the Socialist Party," signed by 47 members of the party who are announced as "The Revolutionary Policy Committee...
...In this they assume what the Bolsheviks- deny and they deny what the Bolsheviks affirm...
...Our program must clearly state that when Socialists acquire power they will not establish any dictatorship...
...Even Lenin warned against the romanticism of slavishly copying from other countries...
...But the sharp turn in our national affairs the last year has created new psychological as well as economic problems for us...
...He worked on it up to a few weeks before his death, tu iIu'J^BL year 1924, whenB HalMri the party was al- Hillquit lied with the organized workers and fanners in support'of an independent presidential ticket...
...It received some praise from Comrade Norman Thomas, though he apparently disagrees with it...
...Austria did not take the middle road, but death came to the movement just the same...
...This "plot" was 3xposed, just in time, by the Chicago Herald-Examuier in which I found "A Good Soldier" quoted as "evidence...
...One of its sponsors in the committee that considered the party agenda in New York City some weeks ago presented a resolution tn favor of civil war...
...What justification is it for murder that a' man has carried out the orders of some other murderer higher up...
...New York: Macmillan...
...I'M IS volume is not the complete hook that our late Comrade Hillquit had intended to write...
...In considering "The Road to Power" the authors mix much that is commonplace in Socialist thinking, and thus say nothing new, with the romanticism of workers' councils, dictatorship of the Russian type, the struggle for the 30-hour week, unemployment insurance, abolition of child lnbor, etc...
...This, of course, raised fundamental questions of tactics and principles ml hi n the Socialist movement of the world...
...The Socialist movement of the world, because of the world-wide depression and fhe rise of Fascism, is facing a flux of ideas, but we, believe that this program contributes little to clarity...
...PHE 47 take over the idea of workers councils as "his* torically suited to serve as the organs of liberation...
...The Road to Power...
...The middle road was taken by Germany and led to death...
...he is an automaton in the hands of the power which uses him...
...If he is ordered to shoot down a hero, a patriot, a benefactor of his kind, he fires without hesitation...
...During the days of Woodrow Wilson's ''watchful waiting," and when troops were mobilized along the Mexican border, London had the "Good Soldier" printed as a throw-away and saw to it that thousands were distributed among the soldiers there...
...From this I received a letter from Charmian London, Jack's wife, in which she said that Jack didn't know W. D. Wattles and saw no harm in dropping off his name...
...In the issue of April 12 of the World Tomorrow there is published an "An Appeal to the Socialist Party" signed by 47 members, a declaration by the "left wing" of o'ar party...
...IT is appropriate that a program for the Socialist Party should be discussed at a New Leader annual dinner...
...I have an old composition hook of his in which he had scrawled some outlines of this talk, and from his notes on "the military ideal" grew the "Good Soldier" which The New Leader reprinted on April 7th and credited to Jack London...
...and even Anarchists on specific questions and never at any time was the "larger program" of each brought up as an issue, That is why each group was able to cooperate...
...They are tossed between doubt and fear and are unable to decide whether they belong to one or the other...
...We believe that the Austrian workers did right to fight, but that even civil war insures victory the Austrian defeat stands as a denial...
...Although this was written in perfect good faith, it is not true, as witness the names he mentions whose contributions we have thus far: Upton Sinclair, Charles Edward Russell, Art Young, Lincoln Steffins, Emma Goldman, Floyd Dell, Brand Whitlock, etc...
...Legend, however, has given him the credit...
...Personally, I do not know that London himself ever used his name in connection with it...
...Party and Proletarian Dictatorship •"THEY approve proletarian dictatorship in the Russian * sense as "preeminent, unique among the nations-of the world...
...They will extend the principles of democracy into industry...
...By Morris Hillqirit...
...Only a small portion of the workers of Russia are admitted to the party and every year there is an expulsion of tens of thousands of members who in one way or other fail to satisfy the party dictatorship...
...The events at home in the last year complicated these questions within our own party...
...Later, in 1919, quantities of the leaflet were seized in Chicago as "part of a plot to blow up the Loop, the Union League Club and the Chicago Club...
...On the contrary, the profit and wage system, the source of poverty and exploitation, insecurity and war, will not be disturbed...
...In the achievement of this aim it is necessary to acquire possession of the state power so as to transform capitalist society into Socialist society by means of the dictatorship of the proletariat...
...The waiter believes that the party is in part responsible, but to stress this and ignore •pacific American conditions would be to ascribe the objective factors outside our movement to the party, Its workers and leaders...
...The aim of Socialism is the abolition of the profit system and the establishment of a system of collective ownership and democratic management of the socially1 necessary tools of production and' distribution...
...It is the "specific issues" alone that can bring the groups together and it is the "larger program" of each that divides them...
...No one will quarrel with this but one wonders why these working class measures are supported when it is declared that we "must now prepare for life or death...
...I i Now I think father would have been very much amused by all this...
...The last four paragraphs are casual references to the peri 0d since 1924, leaving a gap of nearly ten years...
...Its authors declare: "The aim of Socialism is to establish a Workers' Republic...
...The pamphlet is available for a nickel in the Rand School Book Store or from the committee at 554 West 114th Street, New York City...
Vol. 17 • April 1934 • No. 16
