Nearly every accusation of ‘terrorism’ on the part of the ruling class is an admission to their own terrorism. Ruthenberg on the Palmer Raids and the first ‘Red Scare.’

‘Who Are The Terrorists?’ by C.E. Ruthenberg from The Communist (Minority Faction). Vol. 2 No. 5. May 8, 1920.

TERRORISM is the first expedient of despotism. It has no doubt shocked many Americans who do not realize the inevitable bitterness of the class struggle, just now coming into its sharper stages in the United States, how readily our sons of the “sweet land of liberty” could perform the role made familiar by the officials of czardom and kaiser rule. The gentle, scholarly, pious. Mr. Wilson quickly adjusted himself to the statesmanship and militarism of finance- imperialism, since his mind must follow the inevitable development of capitalism, scorning the only alter- native, a new industrial and social system.

Attorney General Palmer, a member of the Quaker group of pacifists, blossoms forth as the most drastic, reckless, unscrupulous prosecutor in any country today. In Hungary or Germany, Palmer would be directing executions by the thousands on the least suspicion of Communist sympathy, just as in America he seeks deportations by the thousands on the flimsiest pretexts of fact and law.

The mentality of this man Palmer is neatly epitomized in his sententious declaration that thousands of agents have come here from Russia to preach dictatorship of the proletariat “in a land where there is no proletariat”.

Palmer evidently expected to become president of the United States by the good fortune of having the front of his home shot away by a bomb. Those who followed the story of that bombing are still wondering about its curious details. Of course we do not say that Palmer tried the advertising stunt of doing it himself. Such things happened under similar police methods. But there is no proof that Palmer threw his own bomb. Nor is there the least proof that anybody else did. That is where the matter rests except that Palmer builds campaign speeches around his lucky bomb.

For the observance of May Day, this year, Palmer announced a whole string of bombs. Whatever he did with them has not yet appeared in the newspapers. That anybody else was in this bombing party as principal or accessory has not been announced. It was Mr. Palmer’s own little affair, and fortunately for the intended victims the May Day celebration as it actually occurred did not include Mr. Palmer’s special stunt.

But our Quaker terrorist is after all quite a “piker” alongside of Leonard Wood. A few hundred deportations, a few thousand jailings, a careless bombing or two, this record pales before the warrior presence of the stolid soldier-politician whom Wall Street is staking for the presidency.

We have had ample opportunity to observe that every time anybody utters solemnities about “law and order” that something strenuous has been done or is about to be done to take a whack at the labor movement. Say the Wood supporters: “The uncertainty of the hour makes one leading issue for this campaign and that issue is Law and Order.” Then is quoted a resolution passed by the American Bar Association:

“Now be it therefore resolved that the liberties of the people and the preservation of their institutions depend upon the control and exercise by the Federal, State and municipal governments of whatever force is necessary to maintain at all hazards the supremacy of the law and to suppress disorder and punish crime.”

Then the query: “What candidate is as competent and experienced to carry out this resolution as General Leonard Wood?” Not much is left for the imagination. The mighty warrior of Gary distinction, the warrior who made a grand stand play about quit- ting his campaign to array “law and order” against the railroad strikers, this is the ideal candidate of American imperialism today. Never mind the “issues” which may go into the fake platforms, never mind the complexities of international affairs, just to pay attention and “disorder” “crime” at home and elect a president accordingly. In other words, we have come to the time when all “issues” are reduced to one real issue, the fight for capitalistic privilege, euphemistically described as the people’s liberties and institutions, against the working class assertion, labeled “crime” and “disorder”.

If we have a Wood for president and a Palmer for Attorney General, and a like-minded official family generally, as is more than likely, it may become somewhat clearer to a few millions in this country that the government is a police institution in behalf of the system of capitalist-imperialism. Things will happen, as they have already been happening in connection with every labor assertion of serious proportions, which will sharply emphasize the true character of our “democratic” government. Congress will only be discussed in the comic papers. “Law and order” will rage throughout the land and then what? Well, one can begin to imagine the heavy tramp of the marching millions, as the light bursts through which transforms the beast of burden into the human being who demands the right to live as master of his own destiny, himself and his coworkers together.

Terrorism and unlimited force, this is the program against the working class assertion. Today “law and order” threatens even the right to strike, as in Kansas. There have been several important anti-strike judicial decisions; anti-strike proposals keep coming up before Congress, and the weird extensions of the use of injunctions continue.

And there will still be the high privilege offered “the people” of voting for the supreme police officers, so that the unlimited force can be applied in behalf of “their” liberties and “their” institutions.

The Communists scorn either the fear or the use of terrorism. They appeal for working class education and organization, for class consciousness and its effective organization expression in industry, for the mass array and action against capitalism and all the institutions which defend it.

This ‘The Communist’ was a split from the Communist Party of America in April, 1920 by Charles Ruthenberg, Jay Lovestone, and others, referred to as the Central Executive Committee group, over the majority’s reluctance to unite with the Communist Labor Party as mandated by the Communist International. Laying the groundwork for the May 1920 Bridgman, Michigan convention that would form the United Communist Party, this version of ‘The Communist’ only lasted three issues. The new UCP stuck with tradition and called their official journal…’The Communist. Emulating the Bolsheviks who in 1918 changed the name of their party to the Communist Party, there were up to a dozen papers in the US named ‘The Communist’ in the splintered landscape of the US Left between 1919 and 1923. All them claimed adherence to the new Third International and sought that body’s endorsement. They were often published at the same time and in the same format, making it somewhat confusing to untangle their relationships.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thecommunist/thecommunist4/v2n04-a-apr-25-1920.pdf