tiary for not less than five nor more than ten years. The leaders of the party, however, have not given up their work.

Various of the party publications are appearing sporadically, published clandestinely in different plants, and it is evident that constant vigilance must be exercised in order to prevent the party from effecting a reorganization and pursuing its destructive plans.

Up to the time when the party fell under the band of the authorities it reported 58,000 dues-paying members, of which 35,000 belonged to the Russian Federation. It is estimated that not more than 16,000 were members of English-speaking branches.

Before closing the description of the activities of this party, it is necessary to refer to the action taken by the Young People's Socialist League in a National Emergency Convention which was held in the city of Rochester on the evening of December 28, 1919. A new constitution was adopted at this convention, which resulted in an affiliation between the Young People's Socialist League and the Communist Party of America. We quote from this instrument as follows:

"We call on the youth of America to join with us in exerting every effort and making every needed sacrifice toward the realization of these aims.

"ARTICLE I. NAME

"Section 1. This organization shall be known as the Independent Social League of America affiliated with the Third International.

"ARTICLE II. OBJECT

"Section 1. The object of this organization shall be to draw into a compact body all young people interested in the emancipation of the working class. Its foremost and primary function shall be to train them in the principles of International Communism."

(Stenographer's minutes, Committee Hearings, page 1888

1889.)

This organization is of particular interest because it shows the systematic way in which the leaders of the Communist movement seek to influence the minds of young people so as to train them. to take part in the revolutionary program which they have adopted.

APPENDIX

CHAPTER V

Official Documents

1. Joint Call for Constituent Assembly. 2. The Communist Party Manifesto.

Document No. 1

JOINT CALL FOR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY TO ORGANIZE COMMUNIST PARTY OF AMERICA (Issued by the National Organization Committee and the National Council of the Workers Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party).

In this the most momentous period of the world's history capitalism is tottering to its ruin. The proletariat is straining at the chains which bind it. A revolutionary spirit is spreading throughout the world. The workers are rising to answer the clarion call of the Third International.

Only one Socialism is possible in the crisis. A Socialism based upon understanding. A Socialism that will express in action the needs of the proletariat. The time has passed for temporizing and hesitating. We must act. The Communist call of the Third International, the echo of the Communist Manifesto of 1848, must be answered.

The National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America has evidenced by its expulsion of nearly half of the membership that it will not hesitate at wrecking the organization in order to maintain control. A crisis has been precipitated in the ranks of revolutionary Socialism by the wholesale expulsion or suspension of the membership comprising the Socialist Party of Michigan and Massachusetts, locals and branches throughout the country, together with seven Language Federations. This has created a condition in our movement that makes it manifestly impossible to longer delay the calling of a convention to organize a new party. Those who realize that the capturing of the Socialist Party as such is but an empty victory will not hesitate to respond to this call and leave the "Right" and "Center" to sink together with their leaders.

No other course is possible; therefore, we, the National Left Wing Council and the National Organization Committee, call a convention to meet in the city of Chicago on September 1, 1919, for the purpose of organizing a Communist Party in America.

This party will be founded upon the following principles:

1. The present is the period of the dissolution and collapse of the whole capitalist world system, which will mean the complete collapse of world culture, if capitalism with its unsolvable contradictions is not replaced by Communism.

2. The problem of the proletariat consists in organizing and training itself for the conquest of the powers of the state. This conquest of power means the replacement of the state machinery of the bourgeoisie with a new proletarian machinery of

government.

3. This new proletarian state must embody the dictatorship of the proletariat, both industrial and agricultural, this dictatorship constituting the instrument for the taking over of property used for exploiting the workers, and for the reorganization of society on a Communist basis.

Not the fraudulent bourgeois democracy - the hypocritical form of the rule of the finance-oligarchy, with its purely formal equality—but proletarian democracy based on the possibility of actual realization of freedom for the working masses; not capitalist bureaucracy, but organs of administration which have been created by the masses themselves, with the real participation of these masses in the government of the country and in the activity of the communistic structure - this should be the type of the proletarian state. The workers' councils and similar organizations represent its concrete form.

4. The dictatorship of the proletariat shall carry out the abolition of private property in the means of production and distribution, by transfer to the proletarian state under Socialist administration of the working class; nationalization of the great business enterprises and financial trusts.

5. The present world situation demands the closest relation between the revolutionary proletariat of all countries.

6. The fundamental means of the struggle for power is the mass action of the proletariat, a gathering together and concentration of all its energies; whereas methods such as the revolutionary use of bourgeois parliamentarism are only of subsidiary significance.

In those countries in which the historical development has furnished the opportunity, the working class has utilized the regime of political democracy for its organization against capitalism. In all countries where the conditions for a worker's revolution are not yet ripe, the same process will go on.

But within the process the workers must never lose sight of the true character of bourgeois democracy. If the financeoligarchy considers it advantageous to veil its deeds of violence behind parliamentary votes, then the capitalist power has at its command, in order to gain its ends, all the traditions and attainments of former centuries of upper class rule, demagogism, persecution, slander, bribery, calumy and terror. To demand of the proletariat that it shall be content to yield itself to the artificial rules devised by its mortal enemy, but not observed by the enemy, is to make a mockery of the proletarian struggle for power struggle which depends primarily on the development of separate organs of the working-class power.

a

7. The old Socialist International has broken into three main groups:

(a) Those frankly social patriots who since 1914 have supported their bourgeoisie and transformed those elements of the working class which they control into hangmen of the international revolution.

(b) The “Center," representing elements which are constantly wavering and incapable of following a definite plan of action, and which are at times positively traitorous; and

(c) The Communists.

As regards the social patriots, who everywhere in the critical moment oppose the proletarian revolution with force of arms, a merciless fight is absolutely necessary. As regards the As regards the "Center" our tactics must be to separate the revolutionary elements by pitilessly criticizing the leaders. Absolute separation from the organization of the "Center" is necessary,

8. It is necessary to rally the groups and proletarian organizations who, though not as yet in the wake of the revolutionary trend of the Communist movement, nevertheless have manifested and developed a tendency leading in that direction.

Socialist criticism has sufficiently stigmatized the bourgeois world order. The task of the International Communist Party is to carry on propaganda for the abolition of this order and to erect in its place the structure of the Communist world order. Under the Communist banner, the emblem under which the first great victories have already been won; in the war against imperialistic barbarity, against the privileged classes, against the bourgeois state and bourgeois property, against all forms of social and national oppression- -we call upon the proletarian of all lands to unite!

PROGRAM OF THE CALL

1. We favor international alliance of the Communist Party of the United States only with the Communist groups of other countries, such as the Bolsheviki of Russia, Spartacans of Germany, etc., according to the program of Communism as above outlined.

2. We are opposed to association with other groups not committed to the revolutionary class struggle, such as Labor parties, Non-Partisan leagues, People's Councils, Municipal Ownership Leagues and the like.

3. We maintain that the class struggle is essentially a political struggle by the proletariat to conquer the capitalist state, whether its form be monarchistic or democratic-republican, and to destroy and replace it by a governmental structure adapted to the Communist transformation.

4. The Party shall propagandize class-conscious industrial unionism as against the craft form of unionism, and shall carry on party activity in co-operation with industrial disputes that take on a revolutionary character.

5. We do not disparage voting nor the value of success in electing our candidates to public office-not if these are in direct line with the class struggle. The trouble comes with the illusion that political or industrial immediate achievements are of themselves steps in the revolution, the progressive merging of capitalism into the co-operative commonwealth.

The basis of our political campaign should be:

(a) To propagandize the overthrow of capitalism by proletarian conquest of the political power and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

(b) To maintain a political organization as a clearing-house for proletarian thought, a center of political education for the development of revolutionary working-class action.

(c) To keep in the foreground our consistent appeal for proletarian revolution; and to analyze the counter-proposals and reformist palliatives in their true light of evasions of the issue; recognizing at all times the characteristic development of the class conflict as applicable to all capitalistic nations.

(d) To propagandize the party organization as the organ of contact with the revolutionary prole ariat of other lands, the basis for international association being the same political understanding and the common plan of action, tending toward increasing unity in detail as the international crisis develops.