The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 26, 1924, Page 4

| | Page Four POLITICAL ROMANCING MUST GIVE WAY TO REALISM By ALFRED WAGENKNECT ® have had a period of legal rom- ancing to which the “illegal rom ancing,” so called, of underground days, can not hold a candle. Let's quote Pepper in proof. (Liberator, Sept. 1923) “The bankrupt farmers are overthrowing the most sacred fun- damental law of capitalism, namely, cash payment, and do not pay their debts. The Negroes of the South are making an unarmed Spartacus upris- ing.” And again, same issue: “The coming third (LaFollette) revolution will not be a proletarian revolution. It will be a revolution of well to-do and exploited farmers, small business men and workers. The revolution will nothing but a third debacle and a further loss of the confidence of work- ers’ organizations. Communist polit- ical activity, our efforts to move the masses against the state, certainly does not end at the point that the partliamentary united front becomes impossible. To me the labor party slogan is impossible today. We can now approach the workers with other slogans which surely will also cul- minate in political action, or we are not a Communist Party. We must at least realize that the masses of workers are not as polit- ically advanced as we thought they were, They do not seem to be over- anxious even to get into and remain come thru the ballot and, as Magnus |in the LaFollette party. The tempo, Johnson foretells, THRU FORCE OF |the decline of American capitalism is ARMS.” Well, comrades, the LaFollette rev- olution, for the time, seems to have Passed its peak. And not a shot has yet been fired. And the unarmed | Negro Spartacus uprisings of the south | resulted in a solid Negro vote for Coolidge. Capitalism is on the de- cline, sure enough, but we seemed to have misjudged the tempo of ‘this decline and the political reaction to it, by many a mile. This cross-eyed evaluation of a year and a half ago led us into opportunist swamps, from which we had to extricate ourselves, with a big boost from the Communist International. Take our first “big success” in this skirmish of ours for a labor party. On July 3, 4, 1923 there was organized in Chicago the federated farmer-labor party. It was heralded a “mass par- ty of 616,000 workers and farmers |not at all abreast of Pepper’s imagin- ation. The hoped for political reaction did not materialize. Not only did a mass labor party not materialize. We did not even get a “left class bloc” for our sweat and money. The de- generation of the “LaFollette revolu- tion until today even the railroad brotherhoods rae not for a third party convention, attests to this backward- ness of labor. I am not one of those that are overly in love with this over-emphasis upon the parliamentary united front. I am not against a parliamentary united front, but it constitutes one of the many maneuvers of our party to me, and it may not be a possible maneuver at all times. I do not want to go into this at length, but a crisis of any seriousness in this country may not push the masses towards the ballot box at all. I remember the connected with the new party not) merely formally thru high officials, but thru a rank and file representation.” | And then, the minute we lost a few! high officials, the Fitzpatrick group| in Chicago, and a few other high offi-| cials in various other “strongholds of the labor party idea” the F. F. L. P. wrinkled up and died, the last “optimis tic” report issued being that we had all of a party of 100,000 left—that is, ourselves and our nearest relatives What was our error? We were crazy for a farmer-labor party. We saw im- mense masses where in reality only single crooked leaders stood. The cap- italist crisis was not severe enough to move the workers and farmers towards independent political action. The basis for organization was not wide enough and this was proven when, in the end, we found ourselves biting our own tail and calling it the PF. F. L. P. If I might be permitted a pleasantry, Pepper had peppered, spiced for us the orientation of the Workers Party in the daily struggles and its labor party activities so high ly, that we became dopey and chronic) romancers. Then the month of August gave birth to the ‘dea that if the F. F. L. P. did not go forward towards a mass labor party, it might metamor- phose itself into a mass Communist party. Either way we’d win, so let’s again shout, Hurrah! In other words, the idea was that we could perform the miracle of grabbing a mass Com- munist party in America without con- necting ourselves with masses of workers and permeating them with our ideology. But the F. F. L. P. neither became a mass Communist party nor a mass labor party. A toadstool is what some comrades called it. And having lost out in Chicago we looked for ‘other green fields. Green they were, sure enough. Dakota and the west caught our eye. The industrial east did not move quick enough and so we moved west and grew up with the country. We fell so in love with the farmers that the C. I. had to tell us that such love was not at all legitimate. And wehereas this northwest had a longing in its heart for LaFolette,and being so hot on the trail of a labor party that we would sniff most any place for one, we got the foolish idea that an al- Hance with the LaFollette movement might give us a smell. The C. I de- cided it was not the right kind of a | Here was a_ political smell, this odor of opportunism. So we ran our own Workers Party can. didates, Before last June there was some life in a labor party slogan outside our inflations and extravagancies. A com- ing presidential election interested many. This was yesterday. Today we are confronted with the question of whether we shall have another chapter or two of romance, or whether we shall enjoy a little realism. Shall we attempt the organization of» an- march of the West Virginia miners. manifestation | which, with Communist leadership, could have netted us important re- sults. As Communists we certainly cannot hold that only one straight line, the labor party road, is going to lead us to victory, Our united fronts will be as varied as capitalist offen- THE MINORITY WANTS US TO BE A SECT By MAX LERNER 'VERYONE will remember that in the days after our split with the socialist party, our movement had a tendency towards what Lenin well termed the Infantile Sickness of Left Communism. At that time our reaction towards parliamentarism, in view of our experience in the S. P., was the other extreme. True, we admitted in words the necessity of parliamen- tary work for educational purposes side by side with the other political work of the party. But in action we felt very uncomfortable with par- liamentary action. Today we seem to have the reverse situation. Despite the fact that we had long ago arrived at the conception that political ac- tion was not merely parliamentary ac- tion, that parliamentary action was only a secondary phase of political action, yet our minority at present holds that parliamentary action is political action, or, in so many words, that if we give up the farmer-labor party slogan, we give up political ac- tion, This conception exhibits a dis- tinct state of mind, a state of mind that tends to consider the parliamen- tary field the whole field and the other phases of the political struggle only secondary, whereas the Marxist con- ception is that the parliamentary work of our movement is secondary, The above state of mind is well ex- emplified by a specific instance in the case of one of the local luminaries of the minority. In attacking the C. B.C. thesis, a resolution presented by this comrade speaks of amalgamation be- ing the work of the T. U. E. L., im- plying of course that this was simply a question of shelving the matter to a department of the party and was not a broad party concern. Now, it does not need argument on my part to show that the question of amalgamation is not only a matter for the T. U. B. L. ‘o carry out as a department of the party, but is of broad concern to eyery- one in the party, for the party as a whole to agitate, not alone as an ceonomic slogan but as a political slogan. ‘This question has already been thoro- ly taken up by others. What I wish to point out is the tendency, a very dis- tinct and dangerous one to the right, to make little of one of our most im- portant of political slogans which hap- pens to be also an economic slogan. other F. #. L. &, an aggregation|Ana yet so much noise is being made which Pepper termed “a militant, revo- lutionary§ party”? (August, 1923, Liberator.) Shall we again attempt to gather into a fold the insignificant (when compared with the mass of workers) near-relatives and dub it a labor party? These near-relatives of ours we can get at any time for any action we may undertake. But they are wholly inadequate to alone consti- tute a labor party. Who else can we get at this time in a third attempt? Who else is interested? Who else can we, the Workers Party, interest, vhat with our F. F. L. P. stunt and \\r St. Paul trick still fresh in the “ads of the workers? To again re- * Chicago or St, Paul would mean about parliamentary action which we must repeat again is one of our secon- dary activities. Must we tell the min- ority that the political struggle of the workers in this country will not be fought on the parliamentary field alone? I don’t know. It looks as if our minority which is now drifting so rapidly to the right, will have to take back a good deal of what they have said in the discussion to con- vince us that they do not have to be told this by the party membership in most definite terms, At the last congress of the ©. I. it was brought out that the slogan of a workers’ and farmers’ government which the ©, I, had adopted as # more bee <b eh Sives and the struggles of the work: | ers compel them to be, Today the labor party slogan is dead. There is no possibility of maneuvers in that direction, And if ever again there are, let's hope we engage in them without soft peddling our principles and pushing to the right, but by fol- lwoing the method of the united front tactic to the letter. The minoriy position is creating funny angles in the minds of the mem- bers of the party. It makes a principle of riding the inertia of a past ac: tivity. If the labor party maneuver was good yesterday, it is good today, they say. Dialictics has nothing to do with this kind of reasoning. It is also creating a viewpoint that we must have at our elbow at all times, a farmer-labor party as an ever present side-kick to our party, in which all sympathizers will find temporary heaven. Expose the LaFollette party where the remnants of the farmer-la- bor party are now at home and tell them that is not a good place to live, and so get recruits for the farmer- labor party and then expose the lat- ter by informing these same elements that they are even not yet at home to get members for our party. This seems to be the Ideally mechanical, but impossible united front concep- tion of the minority. The viewpoint that seems present in certain quarters that a farmer-labor party should be had to afford legal protection for our membership must also be deprecated. As one originally opposed to the LaFollette alliance, I feel that the majority position is a turn to the left. It is not sectarian, but steps in the direction of a realization of the actual possibilities of any united front we may make, and a willingness to more accurately evaluate the economic conditions and the resultant reaction of the masses of workers and ex- ploited farthers to these conditions. It means to me that we are at last go- ing to give the Workers Party its rightful place in our maneuvers to emphasize it as the noly militant revo- lutionary party, to give it backbone so that in the future we will not again commit the errors of the past. popular term for the dictatorship of the proletariat had been misused in various countries; that it had been weakened and the real meaning dis- torted. This was pointed out as a very dangerous tendency and it was de- cided that the Communist Parties must use this slogan for what it meant, the dictatorship of the prole- tariat and not some distortion. What happened to this most import- ant slogan in this country during our Many adventures in trying to build “left-wing” farmer-labor parties, as ad- vocated by the minority, is an example of what happened to other of our slog- ans and what will happen to the party. We used or rather misused this slogan of a workers’ and farmers’ government for “our” farmer-labor parties. We gave them this slogan and with it was carried along the mildest 07 concep- tions, that of a parliamentary com- bination. I challenge any one of the minority to prove as to whether, any- where, when we used this slogan as slogans of the farmer-labor parties whether it was understood otherwise. We were willing to distort our most important slogan, a slogan a@opted for simplification of one of our most basic conceptions, in order that we might give it to our F. L. P's. If we ourselves are to create left-wing F. L. P. organizations along the lines of logic of the minority we will ii evitably be led into such debasement of all our other slogans as in the case of this one, This will be done whether we like it or not. It is the logic of such situations as have already been pointed out by Comrade Foster. ‘We had a case in point in the build- ing up of a lone child here in the state of Ohio of which I shall speak in another contribution to this dis- cussion. We have cases in the other and natiénal F. L. P’s, the programs of which we had (o write and the reform- ist conceptions of which we even went as far as to defend (in at least one case during the July 8rd conven- tion). On the other hand, we give the F. L. P’s our slogans distorted; on the other hand we give them our im- mediate demands based on a reform- ist program What, pray, is left for the party except to be truly a sect and for the farmer-labor party we build as a Second-and-a-Half International par- ty to eventually bury our fleshless skeleton? Is our fate to be similar to that of the 8. P. which gave up the Ghost for the “good” of the LaFollette movement It appears to me that if we are allowed to drift as the minority would have us that is where we may land. I feel on the other hand that the majority in our party has the cor- rect Marxist and Leninist conception of the broad political work of a Com- munist Party and the necessary flex- ibility to carry it out, Cebin, Must Be iy THE DAILY WORKER WHAT THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL THINKS OF THE DIFFERENT GROUPS IN THE PART By JAY LOVESTONE, N order to get at the difference be- tween the C. E. C. majority and the present C. BH. C. minority groups one must look into the why and where- fore of the attitudes adopted not only towards the united front farmer-labor tactics, but also towards other pdliti- cal and industrial problems confront- ing the party. se 8 Our Party—Three Tendencies. When one proceeds with such an examination of the outstanding fea- tures of these groups he finds the following characteristics predominant. 1, The group ted by Comrade Fos- ter and dominated by Comrade Can- non is superficial, empiric, non-Marx- ian and in general does not look far enough ahead in its evaluation of so- cial forces and political movements. 2. The Ruthenberg group consists of the more conscious elements, the elements constituting the traditional and -genuine left wing of our party from the very day of its inception in the great split of the socialist party. This group is the more Marx- ian and has a much broader and deep- er political outlook. 3. Om the extreme right of our party stands the Lore group, the left social-democratic group. The Foster group is politically the central group between the left elements of our party found in the Ruthenberg group and the extreme right elements fol- lowing the leadership of Lore. In fact, the Foster group is a sort of a bridge between Two-and-a-Half Inter- nationalism in our party and the old- est and most conscious Communists in our party following the leadership of Ruthenberg. Indeed, the Foster and Lore groups shade and merge in- to each other. In New York, for in- stance, all the Lore followers are an organic section of the Foster group. sive What the C. |. Says. If we examine the various declara- tions of the Comintern on the different groups in our party, we will find that it is precisely the above estimate which was made by the Communist International. Furthermore, an an- alysis of the attitude displayed by the various groups in different situations before the party, shows that the Com- munist International was absolutely correct in its characterization of the different tendencies in the Workers (Communist) Party. Comrade Radek in reporting to the American commission in the presidi- um of the executive committee of the Communist International on May 20, 1924, declared: “With the exception of the group (Lore-Olgin group) which sees absolutely no. political crisis in \merica and does not recognize the .iportance of the agrarian question, with the exception of this group, the two tendencies in the party which have grouped about Comrade Foster and Comrades Pepper-Ruthenberg, aave begun with the conception that America is- now passing thru a very serious political and social crisis.” ** 6 A Correct Estimate. Continuing his analysis of the group- ings in the American party, Comrade Radek declared: “As far as the work of Comrade Foster is concerned, | be- lieve that we may have very serious difficulties with this comra | have read Comrade Foster’s pamphlet in which he sides with Legien in the dis- pute between Kautsky and Legien. | believe that this group does not look far enough,” Likewise, in the review of the “fankruptey of the American Labor Movement,” by Comrade Leder, in the International Press Correspond- ence, Vol. 3, No. 21, February 27, 1923, we find the following: “On the other hand, it appears to me that Fos- ter does not perceive the obliquity of his politico-historical outlook. . . . To sum up, I repeat the opinion al- ready given, that Foster's historical outlook is much too one-sided.” It is for this reason that Comrade Leder, in reviewing this writing of Comrade Foster, declared “that Foster's thesis and his substantiation are both er- roneous.” In the same discussion of the tend- encies in the American party, Com- rade Radek spoke of those who “have uot understood enough of the revolu- tionary propaganda of Comrade Pep- per.” Radek went on to say in his characterization of the two groups that: “The group of Comrades Ru- thenberg and Pepper appears to be more radical because Comrade Pep- per, in his articles has opened up very radical and very revoiutionary perspectives for the development in America.” When insisting that there be no breach in the American party, Comrade k spoke of the Ruthen- berg group as “ti lement of Com- munist consciousness.” i The following concrete examples show that the Communist Internation- al has sized up properly the groupings in the American party. oes Our Unemployment Campaign—Please Wait! 1. In the full C. BE. ©. meeting of Feb. 16, 1924, Comrade Pepper pro- posed a plan to prepare the party to take full advantage of the unemploy- ment situation which in the eyes of | WORKER, by raising the issue “On to revel diy ha oh apd ge Aan ' @veryone equipped with a knowledge |City Hall” against of Marxian economics was developing towards a mass scale. It was not un- til the March 18, C. EB. C. sessions and it was not until after the Foster ma- jority had deferred action on Pep- per’s resolution, that Comrade Brow- der proposed a propaganda thesis on unemployment in which he declared: “We are certain that unemployment on a mass scale will face the work- ing class in the near future. That does not mean that we can say posi- tively that it will be in the summer of 1924, or the winter of 1924-5 or even that it may not hold off until the summer of 1925.” Judging by the lack of response on the part of the C. E. C. majority mem- bers to the unemployment campaign proposals made by the minority mem- mers, one would say that it was Brow: der’s economics and not Marxian eco- nomics which was the basis of our failure to achieve results in the un- employment campaign today. In March the Foster majority could not see the economic slump which assum- ed an acute character as early as May. see Executive Committee Brings “Prosperity.” 2. After the Coolidge election the official prosperity drummers of the American capitalist class became rather noisy. They saw in every rip- ple on the economic surface a torrent of prosperity. The Foster group prac- tically accepted this vulgar bourgeois, unscientific estimate of the political situation when it informed the Com- intern as follows: “Our unemployment campaign yet propaganda stage. Awaiting opportune moment for or- ganization. Coolidge election started high boom stock exchange. General tenor capitalist press business future highly optimistic. Announcing pro- jects large orders railway equipment. Number unemployed decreasing.” The inference of this economic “analysis” is clear. The intention is even clearer, 3. In the attitude towards indus- trial work by the party we find fur- ther substantiation of the Comintern’s correct estimate of the two groups. sMpece st soe ‘ te: Discussion of Our Party’s Immediate Ta pression that the W. P. was using the strike for its own advancement, and that the DAILY WORKER over- emphasized the criticism of Oscar Nel- son, a notorious labor-faker alderman, Here we have a glaring example of the misunderstanding of the role of the Communist Party in the every- day struggles of the workers. se 8 The F.-L. P. This is an organic feature of op- portunism in our ranks, Another phase of this opportunistic, narrow basis of the Foster-Cannon ‘group is its theory of the party bowing before the spon- taneity of the masses. “There is no conscious mass demand‘ for a class farmer-labor party. Therefore, the Communists CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT agitate for such a party’ and MUST NOT utilize this slogan.” This is the burden of the song that the Foster group is singing in the present party controversy. i se Dawes’ Plan and Masses. In the ranks of the American workers there is at this moment no burning hatred of or conscious mass oppositon to the Dawes’, plan. Therefore, in the eyes of. the Foster group itis folly for the central executive committee to at- tempt to work out a program of ac- tion based on the C. I. policy on the Dawes’ scheme which will serve to arouse such hatred thru enthusing these masses in the United States with some Communist consciousness. .* © An Opportunist Ideology. Comrade Stalin has very well char- acterized this attitude towards the spontaneity of the masses as follows: “The theory of spontaneity is a theory of opportunism, the theory of bowing before the spontaneity of the work- ers’ movement, is the theory of actual denial of the leading role of the van- guard of the working class. . . « The theory of spontaneity is the ide- ology of trade unionism.” (Lenin and Leninism, page 43.) sth aE 2 The Bridge to 2.6 Communism. It is this lack of historical perspec- tive coupled with this un-Communist attitude towards the role of the Com- munist Party as the vanguard, as the driving force and the spontaneity’ of the masses in the development of the revolutionary movement and the class struggle that serves as the connect- With'the Foster group industrial ac- | ing link between the Foster group and tivity and mobilization for the same |the Lore group. are an end in itself. Of course, since It would be insuffi- cient and, thereforé, incorrect to'staté Marx declared that all class strug-| that the Foster and Lore! groups have gles are political struggles, the Fos- ter group, in effect, maintains the at- titude that industrial activity per se is political activity. With the Marxian group, the minor- ity of the C. E. C., industrial activities, our work in the trade unions, are only a means to an end, are only a most effective means for the political radi- calization of the masses. We propose to utilize the economic struggles of the workers against the exploiters and to develop a revolt of the work- ing masses against the reactionary trade union bureaucracy primarily be- cause these channels afford us an ex- |cellent opportunity of hastening the establishment of the leadership of the Communist Party over, these masses. As Communists, it is our purpose to unify the struggles of the workers, to lend a conscious character to these struggles and to give apolitical edge to them. se Profintern Instructions Dead Letter. The industrial program prepared for us with the aid of the Profintern last May has been a dead letter. In that program’ our party industrial department was specifically told that “all the struggles of the workers shall be turned into political chan- nels” and that our industrial policy must broaden itself beyond the nar. row confines of trade union conven- tion policy. We were told that our industrial department must not only have convention policies against the bureaucracy but must also have strike policies, policies for the everyday struggles against the exploiters with a view of giving the struggles a po- litical edge. The program of the Profintern is an excellent one. But since its arrival in June it has been a dead letter. se # The Miners’ Convention, The difference between the two groups was evidenced in the C. EB. C. debates on the policy for the last na- tional convention of the United Mine Workers. To Comrade Foster the bat- tle to reinstate Howatt and to democ- ratize the trade union machinery was the central; the dominant struggle. To Comrade Pepper these were very im- portant issues, But the political do- mands were to be stressed. Fight for Howat! Of course! Fight for the de- mocratization of the trade union ma- chinery in order to facilitate the un- dermining of the bureaucracy! Most assuredly! But stress and make a major issue out of nationalization of the mines; out of the demand for goy- ernment maintenance of the disem- ployed miners at full union wages; out of the farmer-labor united front cam- A Mind The Chicago Garment Strike. And in his report to the executive committee on the Chicago garment strike, Comrade Johnstone declared on April 2, 1924, that the DAILY gave the work#rs the im-|ducted as Germans been in an alliance morely for organ- izational reasons best known to them- selves. There is intense sympathy be- tween the ideology of the Foster and Lore groups. Only on this basis can we under- stand the why and the wherefore of the Foster majority and Comrade Lore haying voted for each other’s propos- als and policies at least fifty-nine times. Only on this basis can we un- derstand the fact that the Marxian group in the C. EB. C. did not vote for a single proposal made by or in behalf of the Lore tendency. More than that. Whenever we attempted to correct Comrade Lore’s deviations from the policies of the Comintern we: were called persecutors. It is. especially significant to note that while we were being called persecutors because we insisted on the C. BE. C. complying with the C. L decision regarding the Two-and-a-Half International tendency in the party, members of our group were being removed from responsible party positions and Loreites put in their place. ° Bea, Sg * Radek on Lore. - In the light of this situation the opinion of the Lore tendency enter- tained by the Communist International takes on a particularly - instructive and timely value in the present party controversy. It is in this opinion of the Communist International that we find the basis for the organic unity between the Foster and Lore groups. Thus Comrade Radek spoke of the Lore group in our party in his report before the American commission in the presidium of the B. C. of the C, I. on May 20, 1924: “In conclusion something about the Lore group. I believe that we are not dealing here with personal lapses of Comrade Lore. He has written ar- ticles in which he presents the history of the Communist International com- pletely in the spirit of the Second- and-a-Half International. He repre- sents us as a movement which at first was anti-parliamentarian, for. splits in the unions and then crept out to @ realistic standpoint. Or in an ar- ticle on the Wnglish labor party, Lore says: ‘Poor MacDonald ‘would like to do everything good for the work- ing class, but the liberals won't let him.’ In an article on the revolution he says, ‘Conditions in Germany have long been overripe for the revolution. But the Communist Party, for which there are international difficulties has succeeded in keeping the workers from the revolution.’ ake owe C. E. C. Instructed to Fight Lore. “I believe that behind these mat- ters there is one fact in regard to Comrade Lore. During the war there |were in America German workers, former social-democrats who for. patri- otic reasons, were against America’s participation in the war. Part of the German comrades in America camo to us not as Communists, but as Friday, December 20, 192% entry into the war. And perhaps I am mistaken but I have the impres- sion that Lore represents this section, If he has the support of the Finnish federation, an organization with a top tune of $15,000,000, made up of em cellent skilled workers having more reformism in them than others, For that reason, I believe that the ©, B. C, acted incorrectly when it regarded the lapses of Lore as lapses of a ‘pécu- liar fellow. This is a centristic tend. ency in the party. against which th Cc. E. C. must fight, t *- * @ Lore—Social Democratic. |; “The comrades must oppose Lore in the press, they must attack him. The comrades must not be misled by the fact that in the question of the sup- port of the third party he has. gone along with us. He did so from a tra- ditional social-democratic point of view—hecause of compromises with petty bourgeois parties. We are on no account against such compromises, In a revolutionary situation when the petty bourgeoisie is compelled to adopt revolutionary policies, we are prepared to make compromises. In the elections we were for compromis- es in Russia with the mensheviki or the soical-revolutionaries, But in Lore we have a social-democratic point of view meeting with a Communistic point of view and it would be very wrong if the decision of the executive committee of the Comintern should be so interpreted as if the executive committee puts the banner of the exe- cutive committee into the hands of Lore and would say he represents the point of view of the executive. This is merely a coincidence.” ‘ee Zinoviev Tells Truth About Lore. And Comrade Zinoviev was even more emphatic in his evaluation of the Lore tendency as a menace to the de- velopment of our party to a mass Com- munist Party. We quote from Zin= oviev’s speech at the same session: “As regards Lore; from what I have read, he proves that he isinnocase a Communist. 1! really do not. know whether he belongs in theC. E.C. In the resolution we have said that very Politely. Perhaps we will be compell- ed to tell it to him less politely.. The fact that Lore, too, was against the support of LaFollette is of no mo- ment. We know the manners of the socialdemocrats who hide behind some barricades, who say they are against the work among the farmers because they are orthodox M: . The American party will find ways and means of stating openly what is the matter with Lore.” 3 7 * @ Foster-Lore Alliance Serious Menace : to Party. . aes The danger to the party in the Fos- ter-Lore alliance is inestimable. if the Foster group had a mistaken Communist political point of vew of its own, the matter would be ‘serious enough for our party. But, in fact, the Foster group today lacks a politi- cal point of view. In its alliance with the Lore group, the Foster group; in which there are found a number of comrades who can be of great service to the party, is thus given a political point of view which is dis: tinetly social-democratic, which is de- cidedly non-Communist, as the Com: munist International, has shown: © The menace to the party in the Foster-Lore alliance lies in the fact that a group of comrades who are only beginning to develop a political point of view are being imbued with the spirit of the rankest oppdértun- ism which is the basis of Two-and.a- Half Internationalism, In order to avoid just such a calamity for our party, the C. I. instructed the Foster group to work together with the Ruthenberg group against the Lore tendency, Foster-Lore Alliance Violates C. I. Instructions. . But what has Comrade Foster done to carry out the C. I. instructions;re- garding Lore? I quote from a docu- ment officially signed by Comrade Fahle Burman, executive secretary of the Finnish Federation, and secretly transmitted to Finnish Branch secre: taries from Chicago on Dec. 4,, 1924. This document is a series of instruc- tions to the Finnish branches to send. a full quota to each C, C. C, meeting with the purpose of electing dele- gates and participating in the discus. . sion with full strength, This cl mimeographed six page docu bearing the official imprint federation executive man, was never officially | to the executive secre! party, who by the way maligned in the docum against the Marxian iavelvan «3 the following quotation: “ 1s COM.” * “THE C, E. C. MAJORITY DES ND THE DERSIGNED / i HAS BEEN OF SLIGHTLY OPINION BUT HAS NEARLY OUT EXCEPTION VOTED WITH THE MAJORITY.” ght. And to cap the climax of this anti- Communist alliance comes the eleventh hour endorsement of: the ma- jority thesis by Comrade Lore, after several weeks of “watchful waiting.” to seo whether the full force of Two- and-a-Half Internationalism eens ry s 4)