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 $B 363 666 
 
 1907 
 
 
REPORT 
 
 OF THB 
 
 SOCIALIST 
 LABOR PARTY 
 
 Of the United States of America 
 
 I ' TO THE =5==a=ss=s=s 
 
 INTERNATIONAL 
 CONGRESS held in 
 
 STUTTGART 
 
 AUG. 18-25, 1907 
 
REPORT 
 
 Socialist Labor Party 
 
 Of the United States of America 
 
 TO THE 
 
 International Congress 
 
 HELD IN 
 
 Stuttgart 
 
 August 18-25, 1907 
 
Si rf 
 
To the International Socialist Congress of Stuttgart, 
 August 18, 1907. 
 
 Greeting : 
 
 This year's report of the Socialist Labor Party to the com- 
 rades of the world, assembled in International Congress, is, 
 in the very nature of things, so close a continuation of the re- 
 port presented to the Congress of Amsterdam, held three years 
 ago, that the latter report would have had to be more than re- 
 ferred to. It would have had to be quoted from extensively. 
 Owing, however, to the accident that caused the said report to 
 the Amsterdam Congress to be omitted from the volume pub- 
 lished by the International Bureau containing the reports 
 presented by other nationalities, and having, moreover, re- 
 ceived from the International Bureau the promise that the 
 omission would be rectified by the speedy publication of the 
 said report, the Socialist Labor Party of America deems it 
 best to introduce its this year's report with the citation in 
 full, at this place, of its report for 1904. 
 
 There is a further reason that induces the Socialist Labor 
 Party to reproduce at this place its Amsterdam report. Too 
 busy at home, and holding moreover, that the battles of the 
 American Movement will have to be fought out in America, 
 and not in the columns of papers abroad, the Socialist Labor 
 Party has abstained from entering into competition with the 
 unfriendly writers to European papers from this country. The 
 consequence has been a generally inhospitable atmosphere in the 
 European Socialist press, inhospitable towards the Socialist 
 Labor Party, with the further consequence that the European 
 comrades have been left in substantial darkness upon the great 
 issue that is being fought out here in America. Whether the 
 Socialist Labor Party is right or wrong, the facts in the strug- 
 
 M5i05669 
 
^le cia/ijol Jail to be of interest to the students of the Inter- 
 ia^ional M^^vement. Considering it, accordingly, of importance 
 to the fulness of information for the International Move- 
 ment that at least a sketch, but authoritative and furnished 
 by the S. L. P. itself, be available, the same is hereby pre- 
 sented with the report to Amsterdam as its basis. That report 
 was as follows : 
 
 To the International Socialist Congress of Amsterdam, August 14, 
 
 Greeting. 
 
 To judge by the frequent expressions of astonishment from 
 European sources at what they call the backwardness of the Social- 
 ist Movement in America a backwardness which they judge wholly 
 by votes the conclusion is warranted that essential features of 
 America are not given the weight that they are entitled to, or are 
 wholly overlooked. What these features are the country's census 
 furnishes the material to work upon, and, again, the immortal genius 
 of Karl Marx supplies us with the principle to guide us in the selec- 
 tion of the requisite categories of fact and with the norm by which 
 to gauge and analyse the material thus gathered. 
 
 In the monograph "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," 
 the proletarian insurrection of 1848 is used as a text for the fol- 
 lowing generalization : 
 
 "Nations enjoying an older civilization, having developed class dis- 
 tinctions, modern conditions of production, an intellectual conscious- 
 ness, wherein all traditions of old have been dissolved through the 
 work of centuries, with such countries the republic means only the 
 POLITICAL REVOLUTIONARY FORM OF BOURGEOIS SOCIETY 
 not its CONSERVATIVE FORM OF EXISTENCE," and this grave 
 fact is brought out forcibly by contrasting such a country, France, 
 with "the United States of America, where true enough, the classes 
 already exist, but have not yet acquired permanent character, are 
 in constant flux and reflux, constantly changing their elements and 
 yielding them up to one another; where the modern means of pro- 
 duction, instead of coinciding with a stagnant population, rather 
 compensate for the relative scarcity of heads and hands; and finally, 
 where the feverishly youthful life of material production, which has 
 to appropriate a new world to itself has so far left neither time nor 
 opportunity to abolish the illusions of old." 
 
 This was written in 1852. The giant strides since made by Amer- 
 ica, her fabulous production of wealth, rise in manufacture and agri- 
 culture that practically place her at the head of all other nations 
 in this respect, in, short, the stupendous stage of capitalist devel- 
 opment that the country has reached, would seem to remove the 
 contrast. It does not. These changes are not enough to draw con- 
 clusions as to the stage of Socialism that may be expected. The 
 above passages from Marx explain why, and they indicate what other 
 factors need consideration before a bourgeois republic has left behind 
 
it its "conservative form of existence" and entered upon that "po- 
 litical revolutionary" stage of its life, without which a Socialist 
 Movement can not be expected to gain its steerage way. These 
 factors the "permanent character" and, therefore, "intellectual con- 
 sciousness" of the classes, due to the "traditions of old having been 
 dissolved through the work of centuries"; the maturity of life of 
 material production which, no longer having "to appropriate a new 
 world to itself," has the requisite time and opportunity "to abolish 
 the illusions of old," etc., also require consideration and their 
 status ascertained. They are essential to a final and intelligent con- 
 clusion. A rough and rapid sketch of the facts that throw light upon 
 these factors will clarify the situation. 
 
 Since the census facts of 1850 on which Marx drew, the continental 
 area of the United States has been widened by not less than 1,057,- 
 441 square miles, or not far from doubled what it was in 1850; as 
 a result, the center of population, which in 1850 was at 81 deg. 19 
 min. longitude, or 23 miles southwest of Parkersburg in the present 
 State of West Virginia, has since shifted westward fully four degrees 
 of longitude, and now lies six miles west of Columbus, Ind.; and as 
 a further or accompanying result, the center of manufacture which 
 in 1850 lay at 77 deg. 25 min. longitude, near Mifflintown, Pa., haa 
 since steadily traveled westward until it has to-day reached 82 deg. 
 12 min. longitude near Mansfield in central Ohio. Nor has the west- 
 ward move stopped. One more fact of importance along this line 
 of inquiry will suflace to aid in forming an idea of the meteorologie 
 lay of social conditions, so to speak. While as late as 1880, thirty 
 years after Marx' monograph, the census returned 55,404 water 
 wheels and no electric motors, ten years later the water wheels had 
 fallen to 39,008 and the electric motors, starting then, have since 
 risen to 16,923 and steam power in proportion. The situation, brought 
 about by these facts, may be summed up by the light of the quaint 
 report that played-out locomotive engines, which once did service on 
 our city elevated roads and have been discarded for electric motors,, 
 now are drawing trains on the railroads in China! Machinery and 
 methods of production, discarded in more advanced centers, are con- 
 stantly reappearing in less advanced localities, carried thither by the 
 flux of our population westward. It goes without saying, that un- 
 der such conditions, not only is the population still not "stagnant", 
 not only is there still a "constant flux and reflux", not only is there 
 still a "constant changing" or "yielding up to one another" by th 
 classes, but that still the odd phenomenon is visible in America of 
 families with members in all the classes, from the upper and pluto- 
 cratic class, down through the various gradations of the middle class, 
 down to the "house -and-lot"-owning wage slave in the shop, and 
 even further down to the wholly propertiless proletariat. It goes; 
 without saying that, under such conditions, there still is in America 
 that "feverishly youthful life of material production" and that, ac- 
 cordingly, "the illusions of old" have not yet had time to be wiped 
 out. Nor has the immigration from Europe aided matters. On the 
 whole it has fallen in with the stream as it flows. It is, fqr in- 
 stance a conservative estimate that if one-half the Europeans, now 
 located in Greater New York and who in their old homes pronounced 
 
themselves Socialists, remained so here, the Socialist organization 
 m the city alone would have not less than 25,000 enrolled members. 
 Yet there is no such membership or anything like it. The natives' 
 old illusions regarding material prospects draw the bulk of the immi- 
 grants into its vortex , 
 
 It goes without saying that such conditions point to the existing 
 bourgeois republic of America as still traveling in the orbit that Marx 
 observed it in during 1852, at the CONSERVATIVE and not yet the 
 POLITICAL REVOLUTIONARY form of its existence. In short, 
 these conditions explain why, as yet, despite the stupendous devel- 
 opment of capitalism in the country, a numerically powerful Socialist 
 Labor Party, such as such a capitalist development might at first 
 blush mislead the casual observer into expecting, does not and can 
 not yet exist. Incidentally, these conditions throw valuable light 
 upon the nature of the "revolutionary movements" that periodically 
 spring up, whose discordant waves angrily beat against the Socialist 
 Labor Party, and whose mouthpieces make so much noise abroad. 
 It explains, for instance, the flaring up of the Single Tax Movement 
 with its 300,000 votes in the eighties; it explains the Populist Move- 
 ment of a decade later, in the nineties, with its 1,200,000 votes; it 
 explains the latest of the serial in direct line of succession, the so- 
 called Socialist or Social Democratic Movement of this decade with 
 its 250,000 votes. The first two have already passed away, and the 
 latter--after adopting a ''revisionist" platform and a trades union 
 resolution, which its own delegate to this international congress, Mr. 
 Ernst Untermann, admits in the "Neue Zeit" of last May 28th, to 
 be "a covert endorsement of the American Federation of Labor, which 
 meant nothing else than a thrust at the American Labor Union, 
 which had seceded from the former organization in order to EMAN- 
 CIPATE ITSELF FROM THE DOMINATION OF THE REACTION- 
 ISTS AND HANDMAIDS OF THE CAPITALISTS," and which, with 
 stronger emphasis, the "American Labor Union Journal" of May 26th, 
 a hitherto upholder of the said so-called Socialist party, deliberately 
 brands as "COMMITTING THE PARTY TO SCAB-HERDING" may 
 be said to have fairly entered upon the period of its dissolution. Each 
 of these movements successively set itself up as the AMERICAN So- 
 cialist Movement and waged violent war against the Socialist Labor 
 Party during their flickering existence, and then dragged down and 
 throttled by the umbilical cord of the illusions that are born from 
 the conditions in the land sketched above after living their noisy 
 day, regularly and fatedly entered upon their period of dissolution, 
 never, however, without regularly leaving behind a more or less solid 
 sediment for the Socialist Labor Party, whom, on the other hand, and 
 as regularly, during the period of their rise and growth, they cleansed, 
 by drawing to themselves, of unfit and unripe elements that, in the 
 intervals,, had gravitated to the S. L. P. Thus, since its incipient vote of 
 13,337 in 1890, the first year of its real existence, the vote record of 
 the Socialist Labor Party, during the following presidential or na- 
 tional campaign years, presents the following table: 
 
 In 1892 21,157 votes; 
 
 In 1896 36,564 votes; 
 
 In 1900 34,191 votes. 
 
 6 
 
In 1902, not a presidential year but the nearest so far approach 
 thereto through State elections, the vote again rose to 53,763. 
 
 If proper weight is given to the social conditions sketched above, 
 another circumstance of much weight will transpire the circum- 
 stance that in America, the small vote of a bona fide Socialist or- 
 ganization is no criterion of its strength, of the work it does, or of 
 the Socialist sentiment in the land, in short, it is no criterion of the 
 proximity or distance of the crowning event, of the dethronement of 
 the capitalist class. In America capitalist morality has invaded the 
 hustings. The chicanery practised by the ruling class in the factory, 
 the retail shop or their legalized gambling dens, known as "stock 
 exchanges", has been introduced by them into the electoral field, and 
 there sways supreme. The laws they have enacted to keep their 
 respective parties from cheating each other would furnish a living 
 Montesquieu with a matchless theme for a matchless chapter on "The 
 Spirit of Legislation." Of course, the spirit of these anti-fraud elec- 
 tion laws directly warrants the contending parties of the ruling class 
 to ignore, aye, to violate them against a bona fide party of Socialism. 
 The unseating of a Congressman for fraudulent election practices is 
 not unknown, but it is never practiced except by the majority against 
 the minority party when the former needs the seat. Such a thing 
 as the unseating of a capitalist class member of the Reichstag for 
 fraud and ordering a new election at which a Socialist candidate is 
 elected, as has happened in Germany; or the unseating, for similar 
 reasons, of a Count Boni de Castellane, the sharer, through marriage, 
 of our American capitalist Jay Gould's millions, as recently hap- 
 pened in France, strikes our American capitalists, and all others who 
 are swayed by their modes of thought, as incomprehensibly silly. 
 They understand it as little as Western people understand the senti- 
 ment of a Japanese soldier to rather die than surrender to the Rus- 
 sians. What that means to a vote that really threatens the ruling 
 class is obvious. Obvious, consequently, is the fact that the day 
 of the Socialist vote is not yet. The capitalist corruptionists thwart 
 to-day the fiat of the ballot. But monkeying with the thermometer 
 never yet affected the temperature. 
 
 Accordingly, the criterion of the seaworthiness of a Socialist Move- 
 ment in the waters of American conditions is the character of its 
 agitational, educational, and organizing propaganda; the quantity and 
 quality of the literature it soaks the country with; the strictness of 
 its self-imposed discipline; the firmness and intrepidity of its posture. 
 The Socialist Labor Party has for now four years published the only 
 Socialist daily paper in the English-speaking world the Daily People ; 
 for the last thirteen years it has published a weekly the Weekly 
 People. These, besides the vast literature that it publishes through 
 its press much of it original, much of it translations of the best 
 that the revolutionary movements in other languages have produced 
 are standard in the English-speaking movement. They breathe the 
 uncompromising spirit that American conditions render imperative to 
 a Socialist Movement unless it is ready either to render itself ridicu- 
 lous, or to betray the working class with revisionist flap-doodleism. 
 Accordingly, the Socialist Labor Party never withholds a blow at 
 Wronc lest it make an enemy, or lose a friend. It yields to no lures. 
 
If, in other countries conditions allow, or, perchance, require a differ- 
 ent course, not so here: the Socialist Labor Party of America hews 
 close to the line. In its war upon the capitalist class, the Party 
 allows not itself to be used as a prop for that class: whether the cap- 
 italist formation appear in the shape of a Trust, or in that of a 
 revamp,ed bourgeois guild, sailing under the false colors of "Trades 
 Unionism," the Party ruthlessly exposes both IT EXPOSES BOTH 
 even though workingmen may hold stock in the former, the Trust, 
 as the so-called Trades Union of the Amalgamated Iron and Steel 
 Workers do in Carnegie's United States Steel Corporation; and even 
 if it be workingmen who constitute the rank and file of the re- 
 vamped bourgeois guilds sailing under the flag of Trades Unionism, 
 and thereby keep the working class divided by the Chinese Walls of 
 prohibitive high dues and initiation fees, or other guild practices, as 
 many so-called Trades Unions do. The unflinching attitude imposed 
 upon a bona fide party of Socialism in America is incomprehensible 
 to the successive waves of alleged revolutionary movements and 
 American reformers generally, who with the tenacity of a disease turn 
 up and turn down on the country's political stage. Being incomprehen- 
 sible to them, the Socialist Labor Party is the object of their violent 
 animosity, and is successively pronounced dead by them, on paper. 
 The Socialists of Europe will understand this phenomenon when 
 they are told that the identical epithets which the Millerand-Jaures 
 revisionists of France bestow upon the Parti Socialiste de France 
 (U. S. R.) "ill-natured," "narrow," "intolerant," etc., etc., have 
 been and continue to be bestowed with monotonous regularity by 
 these American "revisionists" upon the Socialist Labor Party. 
 
 It is this "ill-nature," "narrowness," "intolerance," etc., that is 
 urging on the day of the dethronement of the American capitalist 
 class. At the time of the McKinley assassination in 1901, for in- 
 stance, when the capitalist class tried to profit by the event to root 
 up all impulse towards its overthrow, all voices with one exception, 
 that had at all seemed in opposition to class rule, were silenced, 
 they dared not utter themselves. That solitary exception was the 
 voice of the Socialist Labor Party. Scores of its speakers were 
 arrested and otherwise persecuted, yet they held their ground and 
 triumphed over the attempt to throttle the voice of the proletariat. 
 Capitalist development in America is now rapidly overtaking and 
 overcoming the obstacles that Marx enumerated for the conservative 
 form of the American bourgeois republic to enter upon its political 
 revolutionary form. Things are ripening rapidly. When the day of 
 the vote shall have arrived for the Socialist Movement of America 
 that vote will be counted or the men whom the Socialist Labor 
 Party is gathering and drilling WILL KNOW THE REASON WTIY. 
 The backwardness of the Socialist Movement in America is on the 
 surface only. Whatever the thermometer of the Socialist vote, 
 monkeyed with by capitalist corruption, may register, the tem- 
 perature is rising. 
 
 The S. L. P. platform demands and the Party's every act is in 
 strict accordance with the demands the unconditional surrender of 
 the capitalist class; and the Party is guided exclusively by the 
 Polar Star of the principle that the emancipation of the working 
 
 8 
 
class must be the work of the working class itself. The Party 
 takes nothing less because it knows that anything less means Re- 
 visionism. 
 
 [APPENDIX.] 
 
 The passage in the article of the "American Labor Union Journal", 
 quoted in the above report, is worth reproducing in full in that it 
 illuminates a goodly portion of the umbilical cord that fatedly drags 
 down and throttles all these alleged "American Socialist" movements 
 which periodically rise against the Socialist Labor Party. This is the 
 passage: 
 
 "The men who spoke in support of the resolution (the substitute) 
 from Ben. Hanford to Hilquit did not attempt to reply to these ar- 
 guments. They kept up a constant reiteration of the charges that 
 those who opposed the resolution are opposed to trades unions, which 
 was a thousand miles from the truth, the facts being that the op- 
 position was not to trade union indorsement, but to the kind of 
 trades unionism it was sought to indorse. AS IT STANDS THE 
 SOCIALIST PARTY IS COMMITTED TO SCAB HERDING, organ- 
 ization of dual unions, misleading! of the working class, the ex- 
 penditure of union funds to defeat Socialist candidates, the segrega- 
 tion of the working class into craft units which are powerless to ac- 
 complish anything AND IT HAS BEEN COMMITTED TO THIS BE- 
 CAUSE A FEW AMBITIOUS EASTERN COMRADES WERE ANX- 
 IOUS TO MAKE THINGS PLEASANT FOR THEMSELVES IN 
 THE PURE AND SIMPLE UNIONS." 
 
 And in a subsequent article, June 2, the same paper explains in 
 what consists the *'making of things pleasant for themselves" by 
 the Eastern members, the dominant element, in its party. It says : 
 
 "The rank and file have no axes to grind. They have no induce- 
 ment TO CRAWL LIKE WHIPPED CURS AT THE FOOT OF A 
 NATIONAL LABOR FAKIR. The rank and file are not SEEKING 
 PREFERMENT in pure and simple bodies. They are not SEEKING 
 A DELEGATION ABROAD, nor are they after AN ORGANIZER'S 
 COMMISSION in fakirdom. They have no PAPERS TO PEDDLE 
 in fakirdom" in short, the umbilical cord of the private and guild 
 interests of that eastern and dominant element of the so-called So- 
 cialist, alias Social Democratic, party is of a nature that must in- 
 evitably betray the working class, and, consequently, throttle the 
 said party as its lineal ancestors did. 
 
 New York, July 15, 1904. 
 
 DANIEL DE LEON, 
 Delegate of the Socialist Labor Party of the 
 United States of America. 
 
 By order of the National Executive Committee, S. L. P. 
 HENRY KUHN, 
 
 National Secretary. 
 
 It is apparent from the above that the field of the American 
 Labor Movement is cut up into warring militant factions. 
 Such a sight suggests the idea of chaos and of a waste of 
 
 9 
 
energy. The election returns seem to lend confirmation to 
 the idea of wasted energy. A few instances would seem strik- 
 ing illustrations. They are taken mainly from the State of- 
 New York, where the feud between the two parties of Social- 
 ism started. 
 
 At the gubernatorial election in the State of New York in 
 1898, just before the Socialist Labor Party split and the 
 Socialist party was started in this State, the Party vote was 
 22,301; last year, that is, eight years later and seven years 
 after the split, the poll of the two parties together amounted 
 to only 26,375, or barely 4,000 more. But small as this in- 
 crease is, it is misleading. The real trend of affairs is revealed 
 by comparing the gubernatorial poll of the two parties for 
 1904, and for last year. In 1904 the two polled together 45,233 
 votes ; in 1906, 26,375 votes. A loss of 18,858, towards which 
 loss the Socialist Labor Party contributed 4,624, and the 
 Socialist party 14,506 votes. 
 
 In 1896, before the split, the Socialist Labor Party polled 
 for Congress in the Ninth Congress District (a New York 
 City district), 4,371 votes; last year, that is ten years later 
 and seven after the the split, and the Socialist Labor Party 
 having left the field free to the Socialist party candidate for 
 Congress in that district, he polled only 3,.586 votes 785 
 less. The total electorate of that particular district had, it 
 is true, declined since 1896, nevertheless ten years agitation, 
 extraordinary opportunities, but seven years conflict produced 
 an absolute loss of 785 votes. 
 
 A third instance may be furnished by one of the Assembly 
 districts in New York City. In the district formerly known 
 as the Sixteenth Assembly and now substantially embraced in 
 the Sixth Assembly, the Socialist Labor Party polled, for the 
 Assembly in 1899, 2,141 votes; last year, that is, seven years 
 later and since the split, the combined votes of the two parties 
 was only 471 strong. In other words, there was a heavy rela- 
 tive loss, and an absolute loss amounting to 1,670 votes. 
 
 10 
 
Looking over the rest of the country, substantially the 
 same results are obtained^ wherever such comparisons are 
 feasible. The vote in Colorado, where Wm. D. Haywood, 
 now imprisoned in Idaho, was placed at the head of the So- 
 cialist party ticket last year, and imparted to the ticket a 
 fictitious value, only accentuates the rule by the seeming ex- 
 ception. The conflict of the two parties has acted unfavorable 
 upon their total poll. The Socialist Party, which ran up, two 
 years ago, to about 400,000 has since then steadily receded 
 more or less markedly everywhere; about the same experience 
 being that of the Socialist Labor Party with its 34,172 poll 
 of 1904. 
 
 Such facts and figures would seem to furnish ocular 
 proof of the belief that the existing political conflict is but a 
 wasteful, if not a barren, consumer of Socialist energy. For 
 all that the belief is erroneous. Out of this very conflict the 
 foundation is rising for a mighty Socialist Movement econ- 
 omic as well as political. While personal animosities may be 
 developed and seem to play a leading role, they are not a 
 cause. The cause is a conflict of two opposing principles. 
 For the ascertaining of the correct one all sacrifice of vote and 
 of effort we hold is well spent. 
 
 The two great principles that lie at the bottom of the strug- 
 gle within the Socialist and Labor Movement in America are 
 these : 
 
 One is that the political movement of Socialism can not if 
 it would, and should not, if it could, ignore the economic ; and 
 that no healthy or successful political movement of Socialism 
 is possible in this utterly capitalist nation, unless it is founded, 
 banked and based upon a healthy economic or union move- 
 ment. This principle, in short, holds that in America a bona 
 fide political movement of Socialism can only be the reflex 
 of an equally bona fide, that is, revolutionary economic move- 
 ment. 
 
 The other principle is that the political movement of So- 
 il 
 
cialism should not, if it could, and could not if it would, 
 have anything to do with the economic movement. It preaches 
 "Neutrality/^ towards the Unions, and considers Unionism 
 a transitory manifestation. 
 
 All the dissensions, occasionally even bloody, in the Socialist 
 and Labor Movement in America, are traceable to the clash of 
 these two conflicting principles. The Socialist Labor Party 
 fathoming the profundity of the Marxian thought that 
 ^^only the Trades Union can give birth to a true political party 
 of Labor,^^ and recognizing, as a consequence, the economic 
 organization as the embryo of future society, therefore, the 
 Might behind the Eight proclaimed by the ballot holds to 
 the former principle. As a consequence the endeavor of this 
 Party has been unflagging for the foundation of bona fide 
 Unionism in the land. 
 
 The Trades Union field in America, was found by the polit- 
 ical movement of Socialism to be pre-empted by what is called 
 craft or pure and simple Unionism. This system of Unionism 
 organizes the crafts, not simply as units, but as autonomous 
 and sovereign bodies. The fundamental error of this system 
 of economic organization was soon found to be desirable by 
 the capitalist class. The craft union rendered all economic 
 movement fruitless. If, indeed, the wages in these Unions 
 were ever found higher than among the unorganized, the price 
 that the Union paid for such higher wages was to divide the 
 working class hopelessly. In the first place, the craft Union 
 deliberately excluded the majority of the members of the trade 
 from participation through apprenticeship regulations, high 
 dues, high initiation fees and other devices. In the second 
 place, each of these craft Unions, in turn, could earn its 
 Judas pence only by allying itself with the employer each time 
 that some other craft was at war with the employing class. 
 It is superfluous to enumerate the long catalogue of deliberate 
 acts of treason to the working class at home and abroad, and 
 the shocking corruption that such style of "Unionism" was 
 
 12 
 
bound to breed. Suffice it to say, as proof, that these craft 
 Unions are found amalgamated with an organization of cap- 
 italists, known as the "Civic Federation/^ the purpose of which 
 is to establish "harmonious relations between Labor and Cap- 
 ital/' These craft Unions are mainly organized in the Amer- 
 ican Federation of Labor. 
 
 A political movement of Labor and what else is a polit- 
 ical party of Socialism but a political movement of Labor? 
 can recruit its main forces only from the camp of the work- 
 ing class. It is an inevitable consequence that the feuds bred 
 by craft or pure and simple Unionism, in the Labor Move- 
 ment had to be transferred to the political movement. Under 
 such circumstances not only was the working class split polit- 
 ically among the several political parties of capitalism, but 
 its divisions were finally reflected into two hostile parties of 
 Socialism one, the Socialist Labor Party, though recognizing 
 the different spheres of the political and the economic wings 
 of the movement, yet closely and avowedly linked with the 
 economic ; the other, the Socialist party, proclaiming "Neu- 
 trality" in Unionism, as a consequence of the theory regard- 
 ing the transitoriness of the Union. 
 
 The feature of the course of events, or what may be called 
 the fruit of this conflict, in the Socialist and the Labor field 
 of America since the Amsterdam Congress lies in two preg- 
 nant happenings. 
 
 The first was the springing up in 1905 of the "Industrial 
 Workers of the World," a revolutionary economic organiza- 
 tion that planted itself upon the class struggle, and, having 
 taken that advanced point, until then held only by the Social- 
 ist Trade and Labor Alliance, went further along the evolu- 
 tionary line, rejects the craft system of organization, and set 
 up the INDUSTRIAL systcm. This move was a loud proclama- 
 tion of the permanent mission of Unionism. It laid the foun- 
 dation for the constituent bodies in the government of the 
 Socialist Kepublic; it was the first practical preparation in 
 
 13 
 
America for the Eevolution that will lead society out of the 
 economic storm of Capitalism into the haven of the Co-opera- 
 tive Commonwealth. 
 
 The second happening was the meeting of the New Jer- 
 sey Unity Conference, held in the State of New Jersey by an 
 equal number of representatives of the Socialist Labor Party 
 and the Socialist Party of that State, during the months of 
 December, 1905, January, February and March, 1906. The 
 resolution of the Amsterdam Congress, calling upon the rival 
 political parties, in whatever country such were found, to unite 
 and present one party of Socialism against the parties of cap- 
 italism, contributed its share to this event. But the current 
 in that direction had begun to set in before then. It is fore- 
 shadowed, if not indicated, by the passages in the Amsterdam 
 report of the Socialist Labor Party, reproduced herein in fuil, 
 containing literal quotations from Labor publications that had 
 thitherto fraternized with the Socialist party. The theory 
 of "Neutrality" in Unionism had exhibited itself in practice 
 as an error doomed to land into the perversest of "Partisan- 
 ship" in Unionism. During the preceding six years from 
 the time that it was raised to a tenet of political Socialism as 
 against the tenet held by the Socialist Labor Party "Neu- 
 trality" had approved itself in practice, as it never could 
 otherwise have approved itself, a mask for reactionary Union- 
 ism, and a badge for that mischievous politicianism that is 
 mainly responsible for the so-called Anarchists, who, in fact, 
 are advocates of physical force only. Indignant at the mis- 
 conduct of the politicianism that attends whatever Socialism 
 is not planted on the economic organization of Labor, men 
 blinded with anger wash out the bath with the baby reject 
 political agitation itself while rejecting its abuse. The shatter- 
 ing of the theory of "Neutrality" opened the perspective for 
 the full appreciation of the historic mission of Unionism, ac- 
 cordingly it led straight to the shattering also of the compan- 
 ion piece of "Neutrality" the theory regarding the "transi- 
 
 14 
 
toriness of Unionism." Before the Unity resolution of Am- 
 sterdam, even before the assembling of the Chicago Conven- 
 tion, which reared the Industrial Workers of the World, some 
 of the most valuable elements in the Socialist party had be- 
 gun to draw nearer to the Socialist Labor Party. The Am- 
 sterdam Unity resolution, closely followed by the organiza- 
 tion of the Industrial Workers of the World, broke the ice. 
 The immediate result was an invitation, issued by the 1905 
 annual convention of the Socialist party of New Jersey to 
 the Socialist Labor Party of the same State to consider the 
 basis for political unity in America. The deliberations of 
 the New Jersey Unity Conference, which have been issued 
 in book form by the Conference, are a landmark in the Amer- 
 ican movement. The manifesto issued by the Conference to 
 their New Jersey constituents with virtual unanimity it 
 received the vote of all the twelve Socialist Labor Party dele* 
 gates, and of all the Socialist party delegates, except one >. 
 contains the following passage : 
 
 "The Conference holds . . . that without the polit- 
 ical movement is backed by a class-conscious, that is, a prop- 
 erly constructed economic organization, ready to take and hold 
 and conduct the productive powers of the land, and thereby 
 ready and able to enforce, if need be, and when need be, the 
 fiat of the Socialist ballot of the working class that without 
 such a body in existence, the Socialist political movement will 
 be but a flash in the pan, successful at best, in affording polit- 
 ical preferment to scheming intellectuals, and thereby power- 
 ful only to attract such elements. On this specific head the^ 
 Conference moreover holds, that a political party of Socialism 
 which marches to the polls unarmed by such a properly con- 
 structed economic organization, but invites a catastrophe over 
 the land in the measure that it strains for political success, 
 and in the measure that it achieves it. It must be an obvious 
 fact to all serious observers of the times, that the day of the 
 political success of such a party in America, would be the day 
 
 IS 
 
of its defeat, immediately followed by an industrial and finan- 
 cial crisis, from which none would suffer more than the work- 
 ing class itself. 
 
 "The Conference holds that for the Socialist political move- 
 ment to favor A. F. of L. craft Unionism is to bluntly deny 
 Socialist principles and aims, for no matter how vigorously 
 the A. F. of L. may cry 'Organize! Organize!' in practice 
 it seeks to keep the unorganized, the overwhelming majority 
 of the working class, out of the organization. The facts can 
 ^easily be proved to a candid world. High initiation fees, limi- 
 tation of apprentices, cornering the jobs for the few whom 
 they admit into the organization, are but a few of the meth- 
 ods used to discourage organization, which results, not only in 
 lack of organization, but by the craft form of what organ- 
 ization they do have, they isolate the workers into groups, 
 which left to fight for themselves in time of conflict, become 
 the easy prey of the capitalists. On the other hand, the readi- 
 ness with which certain portions of the exploiting class force 
 their victims to join the A. F. of L. is sufficient condemnation 
 of the organization. 
 
 "By its own declarations and acts, the A. F. of L. shows that 
 it accepts wage slavery as a finality; and, holding that there 
 is identity of interest between employer and employe, the 
 A. F. of L. follows it out by gladly accepting the vice-presi- 
 dency of the Belmont Civic Federation for its president, 
 Gompers, thus allying itself with an organization fathered 
 by the capitalist class for the purpose of blurring the class 
 struggle, and for prolonging the present system which is 
 cornered on the exploitation of labor. 
 
 "For these reasons the Conference concludes that it is the 
 duty of a political party of Socialism to promote the organ- 
 ization of a properly constructed Union, both by elucidating 
 the virtues of such a Union, and by exposing the vices of craft 
 Unionism. Consequently, and as a closing conclusion on this 
 "head, it rejects as impracticable, vicious, and productive only 
 
 i6 
 
of corruption, the theory of neutrality on the economic field.. 
 The Conference, true to these vie^s condemns the A. F. of L. 
 as an obstacle to the emancipation of the working class. 
 
 "Holding that the political power flows from and is a re- 
 sult of economic power, and that the capitalist is entrenched 
 in the Government as the result of his industrial power, the 
 Conference commends as useful to the emancipation of the 
 working class, the Industrial Workers of the World, which, 
 instead of running away from the class struggle, bases itself 
 squarely upon it, and boldly and correctly sets out the Social- 
 ist principle that the working class and the employing class 
 have nothing in common, and that 'the working class must 
 come together on the political as well as on the industrial 
 field, to take and hold that which they produce by their 
 labor.' '' 
 
 Submitted by the representatives of the two parties to a 
 referendum vote of their respective New Jersey constituencies, 
 the manifesto was unanimously approved by the New Jersey 
 membership of the Socialist Labor Party, but was rejected 
 by a majority of the Socialist party membership of the State.. 
 The matter, however, did not end there; nor could it. The 
 work done by the New Jersey Conference has since slowly per- 
 colated beyond the boundaries of New Jersey and reached 
 large numbers of the members of the Socialist party in other 
 States. The result has been a variety of propositions, the most 
 pointed of which is that which came last September from the 
 New Orleans, La., local of the Socialist party. The New 
 Orleans proposition calls upon the National Executive of the 
 Socialist party to submit to a referendum of the national 
 membership the question of inviting the Socialist Labor Party 
 to elect a national committee for the purpose of conferring 
 with a similar national committee of the Socialist party look- 
 ing to the national unity of the two parties. The New Or- 
 leans proposed resolution has received considerable support 
 from the Socialist party organizations in other cities, and may- 
 
 17 
 
possibly reach in the course of the year the stage of submis- 
 sion to a general vote of that party. In the meantime, how- 
 ever, many of the best members and groups of members in 
 the Socialist party, too impatient to await the slow process 
 of the referendum, and considering their party hopelessly 
 wedded to the A. F. of L., are daily withdrawing from the 
 Socialist party, joining the Socialist Labor Party and issuing 
 printed statements of their reasons for so doing. This has 
 happened notedly in Minnesota, Ohio and the State of Wash- 
 ington, besides a large number of cities throughout the land. 
 While, however slowly, this development is steadily and 
 soundly proceeding within the militant field, outside of that 
 field American capitalism is doing its work to perfection. It 
 is creating the conditions that breed the atmosphere which 
 ripens the revolutionary fruit. What those conditions and 
 that atmosphere are may be gathered from two utterances 
 both taken hot from the capitalist oven. Addressing a ban- 
 quet of capitalists last December, Leslie M. Shaw, at the 
 time the Secretary of the Treasury in President Roosevelt's 
 <3abinet, said : "Fall upon your knees and pray to God to save 
 us from our prosperity." About a month later, on last De- 
 cember 28, the New York "Sun," an alert organ of the cap- 
 italist class ever ready to recommend the most ferocious atroc- 
 ities against workingmen on strike, struck this note of warn- 
 ing: "We have had such years of prosperity and progress as 
 were never known in the history of the nation," and yet "there 
 is a greater unrest and a greater uneasiness in the air than 
 there was before Sumter was fired on" the firing on Sumter 
 ushered in the Civil War. 
 
 II est un age dans la vie 
 Ou chaque reve doit finir. 
 Un age ou Tame recueillie 
 A besoin de se souvenir. 
 
 The dream that our people have so long been fondled in, 
 
 i8 
 
concerning the delightfulness and the stability of capitalist 
 institutions in America, is fast evaporating; the dream con- 
 cerning the efficacy of pure and simple Unionism, that is, of 
 a Unionism grounded on "fraternal relations between Capital 
 and Labor,'' together with the companion dream of pure and 
 simple political Socialism, that is, the Socialism that marches 
 to the ballot box unequipped with the Might of the Industrial 
 organization of the Working Class, this double dream also 
 is lifting from the public mind. Coupled to this come the 
 recollections of bitter and hitherto not understood experiences 
 crowding upon the mind. For these combined reasons the 
 Socialist Labor Party considers of supreme importance the 
 strictest present adherence to the sociologic chart outlined by 
 the combined philosophy of Marx and Morgan. Hence, also 
 the attitude of the Socialist Labor Party towards the Paris, 
 or Kautsky resolution of 1900. In view of the fact that the 
 resolution, offered upon this head by Daniel De Leon, the 
 delegate of the Socialist Labor Party at the Amsterdam Con- 
 gress, also happens to have been left out of the official records 
 of the Congress, and as a means of further elucidating the po- 
 sition taken by the Socialist Labor Party, both at home and 
 towards the International Movement, the said Socialist Labor 
 Party resolution, is here produced in full: 
 
 "Whereas, The struggle between the working class and the 
 capitalist class is a continuous and irrepressible conflict, a 
 conflict that tends every day rather to be intensified than to 
 be softened; 
 
 ''Whereas, The existing governments are committees of the 
 ruling class, intended to safeguard the yoke of capitalist ex- 
 ploitation upon the neck of the working class; 
 
 "Whereas, At the last International Congress, held in Paris 
 inlOOO, a resolution, generally known as the Kautsky resolu- 
 tion, was adopted, the closing clauses of which contemplate 
 the emergency of the working class accepting office at the 
 hands of such capitalist governments, and also, especially, 
 
 19 
 
presupposes the possibility of impartiality on the part 
 
 OF THE RULING CLASS GOVERNMENTS IN THE CONFLICTS BE- 
 TWEEN THE WORKING CLASS AND THE CAPITALIST CLASS ; and 
 
 "Whereas, The said clauses applicable perhaps, in coun- 
 tries not yet wholly freed from feudal institutions; were 
 adopted under conditions both in France and in the Paris 
 Congress itself, that justify erroneous conclusions on the na- 
 ture, of the class struggle, the character of capitalist govern- 
 ments and the tactics that are imperative upon the proletariat 
 in the pursuit of its campaign to overthrow the capitalist sys- 
 tem in countries, which like the United States of America, 
 have wholly wiped out feudal institutions ; therefore, be it 
 
 "Resolved, First, That the said Kautsky resolution be and 
 the same is hereby repealed as a principle of general Socialist 
 tactics ; 
 
 "Second, That in fully developed capitalist countries like 
 America, the working class can not, without betrayal of the 
 cause of the proletariat, fill any political office other than 
 such as they conquer for and by themselves/' 
 
 Such as above roughly outlined is the lay of the land in 
 general, and in particular, here in America. Different diag- 
 noses may be and still are made from different quarters, re- 
 sulting in different methods. The methods dictated by diag- 
 noses different from the diagnosis of the Socialist Labor Party 
 have each in turn, however promiseful at the start, shrivelled 
 and proved ineffective. Ever ready to overhaul and re-exam- 
 ine its tenets, and ever overhauling and re-examining them, 
 the Socialist Labor Party pursues its undeterred career with 
 an eye single upon the goal the emancipation of the pro- 
 letariat. While it thus labors 
 
 20 
 
The dreamers who gaze while we battle the wave 
 
 May see us in sunshine or shade; 
 Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark 
 
 We'll trim our broad sail as before. 
 And stand by the rudder that governs the bark. 
 
 Nor a^k how we look from the shore! 
 
 Representative of the Socialist Labor Party of America on 
 the International Socialist Bureau. 
 
 Daniel De Leon. 
 
 New York, January, 1907. 
 
 By order of the National Committee of the Socialist Labor 
 Party. 
 
 Frank Bohn, 
 Nat'l Sec'y. 
 
 21 
 
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