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"shall be limited to legislative bodies, such as municipal councils, state legislatures, and national congress." This is the Communist position. In the legislative chambers we meet the legislative representatives of the capitalist class, and fight them on the political issues of the class struggle. We do not assume responsibility for the capitalist state; in fact, our attitude makes it clear that our purpose is to destroy the bourgeois parliamentary state through the mass action of the revolutionary proletariat. To participate in elections for all offices is to strengthen the dangerous idea that we can gradually transform the capitalist state into an organ of the proletariat, gradually "grow into" Socialism.

THE PARTY CONSTITUTION 1

1. NAME AND PURPOSE

Section 1. The name of this organization shall be THE COMMUNIST PARTY of America. Its purpose shall be the education and organization of the working class for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the abolition of the capitalist system and the establishment of the Communist society.

2 The Communist Party is now a fact. It calls upon every conscious worker to rally to its support. Our first requirement is to build a solid, disciplined, while (so in original) organization. Then the revolutionary struggle. Comrades-act!

CZARISM AND AMERICAN FREEDOM $

And will the Communists be dismayed by the deportations and the raids and the terrorism of the minions of profit?

It is the time-honored recourse of decadent power. It is another such historical episode as that of Louis XVI declaring his absolute power and the inviolability of the feudal rights before the State-General on June 23d-when the Bastile was about to fall on July 14th!

Go on with your petty persecutions if you dare. It is within your hands to determine the mode of the class conflict in the United States. Deporting and jailing a few hundred agitators the teachers of the masses will only breed blind fury. But the mass life will have its say!

The day of the people has arrived! Czarism is doomedeverywhere. Freedom must prevail - everywhere. The free

The Communist, Sept. 27, 1919. The Communist, Sept. 27, 1919. •The Communist, Nov. 15, 1919.

dom of Communism, of a society rid of profit oppression, of a ety of freely co-operating workers!

The answer of the Communists to the White Terror: Long the Social Revolution! On to the Federated Soviet Republic the world!

PROGRAM OF COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA LEAGUE1

The Communist Propaganda League of Chicago came into xistence on November 7, 1918, first anniversary of the Russian Set Socialist Republic, and the very day of the German

revolution.

A group of Socialist Party officials and active party members. a together for consulation as to ways and means for giving the American Socialist movement a revolutionary character in hary with all the significance of November 7th, the most gloridate in all history. At the hour of that little meeting bedreigned in the streets of Chicago by premature celebration of

The calling of this meeting during the mass tumult of verber 7th is prophetic of the revolutionary vision which bht these comrades together. On that day the seething protariat ruled Chicago by sheer force of numbers. One thing ane was needed to give this mass expression identity with the tarian uprisings of Europe - one thing; the revolutionary

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THE COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA LEAGUE is an organn for the propagation of the revolutionary idea. The zation of tomorrow is with unorganized masses who greeted Dews of peace and revolution in Germany with what may afy be described as the greatest spontaneous expression of mass went ever witnessed in America. To give direction and teration to the advancing and irresistible army of the prole taat is the mission to which this league is dedicated..

PROGRAM

Waspek as members of the Socialist Party to other Socialists, tay in the interests of the party itself; fundamentally in entert of a truly revolutionary proletarian movement in the Ted States

"

Te who have organized this league, in common with likeSocialists throughout the country, are imbued with the

The Communist, Apr. 1, 1919.

thought that the Socialist Party, as it presently functions, falls short of its possibilities in leadership and unity to the revolu tionary proletarian elements in the United States.

There are certain well-defined lines of criticism of Socialist Party tactics and principles which have long been familiar to all thoughtful American Socialists; that the party proceeds on a too narrow understanding of political action for a party of revolution; that its programs and platforms have been reformist and petty bourgeois in character, instead of being definitely directed toward the goal of social revolution; that the party has failed to achieve unity with the revolutionary movement on the industrial field; that the party organization of itself is too cumbersome for quick response to new situations and opportunities for propaganda; that the stand against proletarian participation in imperialistic wars has not gone the full length of its own logic; that there has been compromising reservation in accepting the international leadership of the Bolsheviki of Russia; and, gen erally, that the modes of Socialist functioning have not taken sufficiently into account the mass action of the proletariat which alone can bring revolution, but instead there has been blind reliance on balloting and pure parliamentarism as the weapons of revolution a reliance which the experience of the past two years makes particularly empty.

Converting these different criticisms into affirmative propositions, we present the following program as the immediate basis of our activities:

"1. Alliance and co-operation only with revolutionary Socialist and labor elements in international affairs, such as the Communist Party (Bolsheviki) of Russia.

"2. Socialist propaganda only on the basis of the revo lutionary class struggle; a Socialist movement built only on revolutionary proletarian adherents. And end of petty bourgeois reformism as the basis of the Socialist Party activity.

"3. Party policies and platforms free from hypocrisies and planks' to catch votes; platforms only as statements of revolutionary aims.

"4. Furtherance of such changes in political forms as are in line with the needs of proletarian-controlled industry, not of political changes based on bourgeois democracy.'

"5. Identification of the Socialist party with class-conscious industrial unionism.

LL

6. Unity of all kinds of proletarian action and protest forming part of the revolutionary class struggle. Political action to include political strikes and demonstrations, and to be in co-operation with industrial mass action.

7. No compromising with any groups not inherently committed to the revolutionary class struggle, such as Labor parties, People's Councils, Non-partisan Leagues, Municipal Ownership Leagues, and the like.

8. The proletariat to be organized to oppose all wars of imperialism, though declared for defense of country? or for democracy,' and to carry this opposition to the extent of refusal of service under conscription, and to general strikes. The workers to engage only in wars of proletarian revolution and in wars to repel attacks against proletarian

governments.

9. A sense of realism as to the limited possibilities of the ballot as a weapon of revolution, or fights for ‘justice' in capitalist courts and dependence primarily on mass power and mass action of the proletariat.

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10. Centralized party organization, corresponding to the Lighly centralized imperialist control to be overthrown.

"a. Organization for quick action and immediate response to new situations by having a National Executive Committee composed of paid party officials and propagandists with s in the national headquarters.

"b. Definite and easy control by the party membership of all party officials.

"e. Control by the party organization of all Socialists eited to public office.

d. Control by the party membership, through the regular executive committees, of all official party publications; not by independent special committees or trustees.

"e. Establishment of a Central Lecture Bureau, and of a press and Information Bureau.

f. Standardization of party platforms, propagania. dues, and methods of organizations."

Is of November 27, page 2; October 25, pages 1, 2, 5; her 6, pages 4, 6, 7; September 27, pages 3, 13, 15; Novem15. -ge 1; April 1, page 3.)

2. THE COMMUNIST WORLD

(OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY, LOCAL GREATEB NEW YORK)

Editor: Maximillian Cohen; Associate Editor: Bertram D. Wolfe; Business Manager: Geo. Ashkenouzi; Executive Secretary: Harry M. Winitsky; Circulation: Weekly 16,000.

(Note: The executive secretary is now serving a term of five to ten years in Sing Sing prison on his conviction of Criminal Anarchy. The associate editor is out on bail, and the editor is a fugitive from justice.)

YOUR SHOP

It should be your shop (or factory, your store, your mill, your mine or your railroad), yours to work in, yours to produce in, yours to manage with the help of your fellow-workers.

You spend most of your waking hours in the shop. The conditions under which you work and produce determine your life, your happiness.

If you and your fellow-workers controlled the shop, determined the hours of labor, the working conditions, and apportioned the rewards for the services rendered, you would be able to create the conditions that would bring happiness to you. You would so arrange your work that you would not have your life sapped by long hours and bad working conditions and so that the wealth you produced would be yours, yours to secure the enjoyment of good food, good clothing, a good home, and the opportunity for education and healthy recreation.

There is enough wealth produced to give these things to all who work. But the capitalists own the shops that should be yours. The capitalists make you work long hours under bad working conditions; they take from you as their profit the lion's share of what you produce.

They will do that as long as they own and control, the shop. There is no hope as long as the shop is not yours.

Workingmen everywhere are learning this. The workingmen of Russia have shown the way. In Russia the shops, as well as all other means of production and distribution, belong to the workers.

The Russian workers organized their power. They created shop committees in every plant and united these in workers' councils. Thus they built up the means for united action. When the crisis came they were prepared to use their mass power. Before their mass power the government of the capitalists and landowners

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