o this final
struggle.

"Down with the imperialistic conspiracy of capital!

"Long live the International Republic of the Proletarian Councils!"

As will be seen when we study the I. W. W., the above is the program of
the world-wide conspiracy of a single class, a minority of society, to
carry out the cynical purpose of I. W. W.'ism--to "take possession of
the earth and the machinery of production."

Morris Hillquit, a Right Wing leader of the Socialist Party of America,
declared that "The Communist Congress of Moscow made the mistake of
attempting a sort of dictatorship of the Russian proletariat in the
Socialist International and was conspicuously inept and unhappy in the
choice of certain allies and in the exclusion of others."[E]

Quoting this, Max Eastman, in the article from which we have taken so
much, makes the following reply:

"How can he expect them to be any more indefinite and generous in
their invitation than they were? In every country where there was a
doubt as to what groups had stood true to the revolutionary
principle and the principle of Internationalism, they so indicated
the alignment as to leave every Socialist free to consider himself
their ally who seriously and courageously desired to. This was what
they did in America. The S. L. P. (Socialist Labor Party), the
Socialist Propaganda League, the I. W. W. and in the Socialist
Party 'the followers of Debs!' Could they in a brief word open the
door wider to American Socialists, unless they wished to admit
prominent members of the Socialist Party who were known to have
repudiated them, as Berger did, declaring his solidarity with the
Mensheviks who were waging war on them?"

CHAPTER V

BIRTH OF THE COMMUNIST AND COMMUNIST-LABOR PARTIES

On June 24, 1919, the Left Wing Conference assembled in New York City.
The purpose of the Conference was for the first time to unite the forces
of the Left Wing throughout the country and to decide upon a common plan
of action against the Right. For some time there had been a growing
desire among the members of the Left for the formation of a new party to
be known as the Communist Party. The Michigan State organization and the
different Russian-speaking federations, which had either been expelled
or suspended, were particularly anxious for a new party. Then, too, many
members of the Left Wing throughout the country beli