Leon Trotsky and Louis C. Fraina were collaborators during Trotsky’s short 1917 New York residence. At the March 5, 1917 meeting of the city Socialist Party of New York to discuss policy against the war, Fraina and Trotsky proposed a resolution in the spirit of the Zimmerwald Left pledging to disrupt the imperialists’ war. The resolution was defeated 107 to 79. In this letter to the New York Call, Louis Fraina protests that quorum did not exist at the meeting and demands the minority resolution be mailed to Party members for a vote. The letter and resolution below.

‘Minority Report to the New York Socialist Party’ by Louis C. Fraina and Leon Trotsky from the New York Call. March 18, 1917.

Editor of the Forum:

I was disappointed in The Call’s report of the general party meeting of Local New York (March 5) to discuss a program of action on the war crisis. There was a distinct line of cleavage in the meeting, an important cleavage. Your statement regarding the minority report of Leon Trotsky and myself would indicate that our report was a minority report on the resolution as a whole. It was not. Comrade Trotsky and myself agreed substantially with the majority report, except in the portion dealing with action if war should come. This was the most important part of the deliberations, as the general meeting was originally called to discuss and lay down a program of action in the event of war.

As the minority report, after a full discussion, was defeated by the small margin of 22 votes, it seems, in my opinion, that the minority report should have been published in full. The action of the party meeting was not final, inasmuch as a quorum was not present; and it is now up to the membership of Local New York, as a whole, through the forms instituted by the organization, to ratify or reject the action of the party meeting. Accordingly, it is only fair play to the membership and the minority report that the membership should have this minority report before them in their deliberations.

The issue is a very important one and readers of The Call should have all the facts. I, therefore, subjoin the minority report in full. Louis C. Fraina.

Minority Report.

(a) We pledge ourselves and our organization to resist all efforts at recruiting, by means of mass meetings, street demonstrations, an aggressive educational propaganda, and by any other means in accord with Socialist principles and tactics that may suggest themselves.

(b) We shall support all strikes during the period of war. We urge the organization of strikes against the mobilization of industry, under the guise of which the ruling class deprives the workers of their civil and industrial rights, and we shall, individually and as an organization, do all that lies in our power to encourage and support these strikes, and adopt other means that may hamper the mobilization of industry for purposes of war.

(c) In the event of conscription being forced upon the people of this country by the ruling class, we pledge ourselves to resist conscription, and support by all means in our power mass movements of the people organized to refuse compulsory military service.

(d) Aside from these special measures against the war, we declare that we shall not allow the class struggle to relax; moreover, we affirm that the general revolutionary class struggle shall proceed with new vigor and increased intensity during the period of war.

The Socialist Party of Local New York, in short, declares war upon war and the measures adopted by government for purposes of war. No “civil peace”! No truce with the ruling class! War does not change the issue, but emphasizes it. War against capitalism! On with the class struggle!

Leon Trotsky, Louis C. Fraina.

The New York Call was the first English-language Socialist daily paper in New York City and the second in the US after the Chicago Daily Socialist. The paper was the center of the Socialist Party and under the influence of Morris Hillquit, Charles Ervin, Julius Gerber, and William Butscher. The paper was opposed to World War One, and, unsurprising given the era’s fluidity, ambivalent on the Russian Revolution even after the expulsion of the SP’s Left Wing. The paper is an invaluable resource for information on the city’s workers movement and history and one of the most important papers in the history of US socialism. The paper ran from 1908 until 1923.