t was his part with an amused smile to show that
"industrial organization," "industrial action," "mass action" and
"general strikes" really mean nothing in the Socialist Party's
manifestoes, platforms and programs, and that his party's affiliation
with the Third (Moscow) International was a mere meaningless, friendly
gesture. But these party utterances and acts meant all and even more
than they said to the party's rank and file and confederates.

It was brought out in the testimony at Albany on February 10, 1920, that
the minority report of the Emergency Convention, decreeing affiliation
with the Moscow International, had been adopted by a referendum vote of
the party's rank and file, 3,495 votes for to 1,449 against. The wording
of this report, here given in part from Trachtenberg's 1919-20 Labor
Year Book, page 411, is another of those brilliant attempts at
camouflage for which the "Yellow" Socialists are famous:

"Any International, to be effective in this crisis, must contain
only those elements who take their stand unreservedly upon the
basis of the class struggle, and their adherence to this principle
is not mere lip loyalty....

"The Socialist Party of the United States, in principle and in its
past history, has always stood with those elements of other
countries that remained true to their principles. The manifestoes
adopted in national convention at St. Louis (1917) and Chicago
(1919), as well as Referendum 'D,' 1919, unequivocally affirm this
stand.[K] These parties, the majority parties of Russia, Italy,
Switzerland, Norway, Bulgaria and Greece, and growing minorities in
every land, are uniting on the basis of the preliminary
convocation, at Moscow, of the Third International. As in the past,
so in this extreme crisis, we must take our stand with them.

"The Socialist Party of the United States, therefore, declares
itself in support of the Third (Moscow) International, not so much
because it supports the 'Moscow' programs and methods, but because:

"(a) 'Moscow' is doing something which is already challenging world
imperialism.

"(b) 'Moscow' is threatened by the combined capitalist forces of
the world simply because it is proletarian.

"(c) Under these circumstances, whatever we may have to say to
'Moscow' afterwards, it is the duty of Socialists to stand by it
now because its fall w