Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wzw2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-17T02:16:22.769Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Revolutionary Communism in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Gordon S. Watkins
Gordon S. Watkins
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

On October 15, 1919, a press dispatch from Buffalo, New York, indicated that the primary election returns in that city gave an average of about three hundred votes to the three candidates whose names appeared on the ballot as representatives of the Communist party, the protagonist of the soviet form of government in the United States. The total number of votes cast was 54,000, which shows that the Communist vote was insignificant, numerically. Newspapers ridiculed the diminutive radical vote. All phenomena have a genesis, and it is the fact that a Communist ballot was cast rather than the quantitative character of the vote that has significance for the student of political philosophy and action. To those who saw the revolutionary left wing of the old Socialist party organize the Communist party and the Communist Labor party in Chicago during the first week of September, 1919, this initial appearance of the revolutionary Communists in American political life presages important developments. The event was heralded by revolutionists in this country and in Europe as the emergence of a new era in the political and economic life of the United States. The widespread dissemination of ultra-radical propaganda in connection with recent strikes is further evidence of the revolutionary purposes of Communists in America.

Optimistic prophecies are prevalent to the effect that bolshevism will find no fertile soil in the United States, since American workmen are too prosperous to become susceptible to revolutionary political and industrial philosophy. Similar predictions were voiced even on the floor of the Socialist emergency convention and the Communist Labor party convention last September.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , February 1920 , pp. 14 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1920

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Estimate of Mr. Otto Branstetter, Executive Secretary of the Socialist party, in a letter to the writer, October 14, 1919.

2 The Communist, September 27, 1919, p. 2.

3 The Communist Labor Party News, September, 1919, p. 1.

4 See an article by the writer on “The Present Status of Socialism in the United States,” Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 124, No. 6 (December, 1919), pp. 821–830.

5 Report of Fraina, Louis C., international secretary of the Communist party of America, to the executive Committee of the Communist International. The Communist, October 11, 1919.Google Scholar

6 The Communist, September 27, 1919, pp. 1, 6; The Communist Labor Party News, September, 1919, p. 1.

7 Manifesto of the Communist Party, The Communist, September, 1919, pp. 6–8.Google Scholar

8 The Program of the Communist Party, The Communist, September 27, 1919, p. 9Google Scholar; The Program and Platform of the Communist Labor Party, The Communist Labor Party News, September, 1919, p. 2.Google Scholar

9 Fraina, Louis C.Revolutionary Socialism—A Study in Socialist Reconstruction, p. 213.Google Scholar

10 Manifesto of the Communist Party, The Communist, September 27, 1919, p. 7.Google Scholar

11 Program of the Communist Labor Party, The Communist Labor Party News, October, 1919, p. 2.Google Scholar

12 The Program of the Communist Party, The Communist, September 27, 1919, p. 9.Google Scholar

13 Ibid.

14 The Communist Labor Party News, October, 1919, p. 2.

15 Fraina, op. cit., pp. 178, 179.

16 The Communist, September 27, 1919, p. 2.

17 Cf. The Programs, Platforms, and Manifestoes of the Communist Parties, and Revolutionary Socialism—A Study in Socialist Reconstruction, by Louis C. Fraina.

18 Manifesto, Program, Constitution, etc., of the Communist Party, 1919, p. 12.

19 Fraina, op. cit., p. 187.

20 Special Report on Labor Organization, The Communist Labor Party News, October, 1919, p. 2Google Scholar; The Program of the Communist Party, The Communist, September 27, 1919, p. 9.Google Scholar

21 Manifesto of the Communist Party, The Communist, September 27, 1919, p. 8.Google Scholar

22 Cf. Fraina, op. cit., p. 220.

23 Manifesto of the Communist Party, The Communist, September 27, 1919, p. 8.Google Scholar

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 Fraina, op. cit., pp. 214, 217.

27 Mr. C. E. Ruthenberg, Executive Secretary of the Communist Party, in a letter to the writer, November 20, 1919.

28 Fraina, op. cit., p. 137. The italics are ours.

29 Fraina, op. cit., p. 143.

30 The Communist Manifesto, translation by Mr. Samuel Moore, p. 12.

31 Fraina, op. cit., p. 220.

32 Cf. Ibid.

33 Fraina, op. cit., p. 217.

34 Cf. “The Russian Revolution,” by Lenin, N., The New International, June 30, 1917Google Scholar, and Revolutionary Socialism—A Study in Socialist Reconstruction, by Louis C. Fraina.