An editorial, likely by John Reed, attacking the Socialist Party’s leadership in aping the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the capitalists in fighting the Left Wing’s support among the Party’s language federations.

‘Deporting the Aliens’ from The New York Communist. Vol. 1 No. 8. June 7, 1919.

THE National Executive Committee has to obey Hillquit’s for a split in Socialist Party by the arbitrary suspension of seven Language Federations, approximating some 30,000 members, or one-third the entire membership of the Party. This action is taken without any notice and no hearing has been held to decide on the facts in the case. The chief “crime” of which these federations were guilty, according to the bald story emanating from the National Office in Chicago, was “an organized systematic attempt to carry pending referendums in the interest of the Left Wing”. In other words the N.E.C. punishes the Language Federations for agitating for their ideas, just as the capitalist courts punish Socialists for propagating their philosophy.

We are informed that this action was taken after nearly two days had been given to the matter, and that it followed the consideration of a “mass of documentary material accumulated in the National Office”. We can imagine the howl about “democracy” which would go out from this same office if the District Attorney announced that after considering a mass of documentary material for nearly two days he had decided to indict the N.E.C. Surely there are enough “famous” lawyers on the N.E.C. to know that this method–where the prosecutor, judge and jury are one and the same, and where the defendant is not even apprised of the fact that he is under charges, much less given a hearing is not in accord even with the bourgeois conception of “justice”. It is claimed that Stilson of the Lithuanian Federation, appeared and acted for the whole seven groups, but even the most gullible will find it hard to believe that on such an important question the seven Federations would agree to only one representative, and particularly a representative of one of the numerically smaller groups, to state their respective cases.

The whole matter stands revealed as a shameless piece of bureaucratic high-handedness and, in view of the way in which the vote for the new Executive Committee is swinging to the Left, an eleventh-hour attempt of the old committee to perpetuate itself in office. If the rank and file of the Socialist Party condones this action, then we can congratulate the seven Federations on being removed from the contamination of a Party which is disgracing the name of Socialism, and is attempting to drag the movement down to the level of the worst element in American machine politics.

In itself the action of the N.E.C. is enough forever to condemn its perpetrators, and the weak chauvinism of the excuses it puts forward for that action merely adds to the offense. “It has been charged” says The Call, “that the Party has been helpless and defenseless in this campaign of misrepresentation owing to the inability of English-speaking members to read the various language publications and reply”. Thus the Party has been helpless because the English-speaking members did not know it was being attacked and therefore could not reply. The foreign-speaking members, we suppose, are incapable of judging facts for themselves and are completely at the mercy of “corrupt foreign writers” because forsooth no English-speaking comrade stepped forward and set them right. Poor, ignorant foreigners, no wonder the National Security League despises you!

When the American Government began to deport alien agitators The Call put a little picture of the Statue of Liberty on the front page much as Mr. Hearst puts little American flags in his paper and began to sob about “democracy”; but now that the National Executive Committee decides to deport the foreigners from the Socialist Party, The Call reveals its true sentiments in its headline over the story. “N.E.C. Suspends Defiant Groups of Foreign Born,” it shrieks, stressing the fact that these groups are aliens, and implying that foreign born groups will only be tolerated if they are not defiant. This is exactly the National Security League idea–foreigners can only remain here so long as they are submissive.

Interviews in the capitalist press given by members of the Right Wing who apparently desire to have their names kept secret, covertly hint that there is to be an Americanization of the Socialist Party, and that the Bolshevik elements are to be eliminated.

The Tribune, tells how it learned at The People’s House that “It is the demand of the Party leaders and the Right Wing as a whole, that the American Socialist movement be set free to develop in accordance with American conditions, with American reality and American psychology.”

Just as when Walling, Bohn, Russell, Stokes, Spargo et al left the Party they used the prevailing psychology to incite the people against the movement, so today the Right Wing is attempting to use the rage worked up by the capitalist press against the foreigners to discredit the Left Wing. But they are misrepresenting the American section of the Party. All through the country the Socialist Party is swinging to the Left, irrespective of nationality. Just as the Socialist Party has been a composite of all the nationalities in the country, so the Left Wing is composed of all the nationalities in the Party. The Americans are not behind the others. We of the Left Wing are not concerned with the nationality of the membership, nor do we consider that nationality is one of the issues now being fought. Americans understand Socialism as well as any other nationality, and in the nature of things it is Americans who will dominate the Socialist movement in America; otherwise the future of the movement in this country would be very black indeed. But in the past many Americans who mistook Socialism to be a return to the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy wandered into the Socialist Party, and naturally these will remain with the Right Wing, and will ultimately swing it into a future Liberal, or if they become radical, Labor Party. For the loss of such as these we have no regrets. Their place is not in the Socialist movement and the sooner this is made clear the better for both them and the movement.

The American working class must be the backbone of the Socialist Party, and we of the Left are indifferent as to whether the members of that class are direct descendants of the Pilgrim fathers or are the latest immigrants from the outside world. Socialism is not a matter of nationality; it is these very “leaders” who encouraged the division of the Party into Federations for their own political ends, who are now endeavoring to discriminate against these very Federations. The Socialist Party in the future will be a party of the workers in America, and no divisions will be necessary, save perhaps an occasional language branch where the non-English speaking members will be taught English and then turned over to function directly in the movement.

The New York Communist began in April, 1919 as John Reed’s pioneering Communist paper published weekly by the city’s Left Wing Sections of the Socialist Party as different tendencies fought for position in the attempt to create a new, unified Communist Party. The paper began in a split in the Louis Fraina published Revolutionary Age. Edited by John Reed, with Eadmomn MacAlpine, Bertram Wolfe, Maximilian Cohen, until Reed resigned and left for Russia when Ben Gitlow took over. In June, 1921 it merged with Louis Fraina’s The Revolutionary Age after the expulsion of the Left Wing from the Socialist Party to form The Communist (one of many papers of the time with that name).

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thecommunist/thecommunist1/v1n08-plus-bug-jun-07-1919-NY-comm-greenwood.pdf