Left Wing Manifesto
Encyclopedia
The Left Wing Manifesto is the name rather confusingly bestowed upon two distinct programmatic documents of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party
Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party
The Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party was an organized faction within the Socialist Party of America in 1919 which served as the core of the dual communist parties which emerged in the fall of that year — the Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party of America.-Precusors:A...

 during the factional war in the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...

 of 1919. The first document, the "Left Wing Manifesto of the Left Wing Section of Local Greater New York" was the program over which the split of the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...

 into Left and Right factions was fought. It was created in January 1919. The second document, the "Left Wing Manifesto of the Left Wing National Council," was a more obscure document produced at the end of June 1919, well after the factional battle lines had been hardened. This latter document was used as a pretext for prosecutions of several key radical leaders by the state of New York.

"Left Wing Manifesto" issued by Left Wing Section, Local Greater New York

At the end of 1918, following the termination of American participation in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and in the wake of the party's poor showing in the November elections, a radical faction emerged in the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...

. This group sought to transform the parliamentary SPA into a revolutionary socialist
Revolutionary socialism
The term revolutionary socialism refers to Socialist tendencies that advocate the need for fundamental social change through revolution by mass movements of the working class, as a strategy to achieve a socialist society...

 organization comparable to the Bolshevik organizations springing up across Europe.

In January 1919 a joint meeting of representatives of all the SP branches of Local Greater New York was called. The meeting was chaired by Julius Gerber
Julius Gerber
Julius Gerber was a leading Socialist Party of America party official and politician during the first two decades of the 20th century. Gerber headed the important Socialist Party unit for New York City and its environs from 1911 through 1922...

, Executive Secretary of Local Greater New York who did his best to steer the meeting away from the passionate discussion of strategy and tactics which the Left Wing members so anxiously desired. When delegates from Queens attempted to win the floor at 11:30 pm, only to be ruled out of order, a number of radicals bolted the hall and gathered in a meeting room of their own. A City Committee of 14 was elected, with Max Cohen
Maximilian Cohen
Maximilian "Max" Cohen was an American socialist politician of the early 20th Century. Cohen held a series of important posts during the pivotal year of 1919, including Secretary of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party for Local Greater New York, Secretary of the Left Wing National Council,...

 named as Executive Secretary. The group was to compose a manifesto and wage a campaign to win over the rank and file of the party to the ideas of revolutionary socialism. It was this group which wrote the famous Left Wing Manifesto, a document extensively revised by Louis C. Fraina
Louis C. Fraina
Louis C. Fraina was a founding member of the American Communist Party in 1919. After running afoul of the Communist International in 1921 over the alleged misappropriation of funds, Fraina left the organized radical movement, emerging in 1930 as a left wing public intellectual by the name of Lewis...

, editor of the weekly newspaper of the Left Wing Section, Local Boston, The Revolutionary Age
Revolutionary Age
The Revolutionary Age was an American radical newspaper edited by Louis C. Fraina and published from November 1918 until August 1919. Originally the publication of Local Boston, Socialist Party, the paper evolved into the de facto national organ of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party which...

.


The document begins:
Prior to August, 1914, the nations of the world lived on a volcano. Violent eruptions from time to time gave warning of the cataclysm to come, but the diplomats and statesmen managed to localize the outbreaks, and the masses, slightly aroused, sank back into their accustomed lethargy with doubts and misgivings, and the subterranean fires continued to smoulder."


This "Left Wing Manifesto" was published in pamphlet format and was hotly debated throughout the American socialist movement prior to the split of the Socialist Party at the 1919 Emergency National Convention
1919 Emergency National Convention
The 1919 Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party of America was held in Chicago from August 30 to September 5, 1919. It was a seminal gathering in the history of American radicalism, marked by the bolting of the party's organized left wing to establish the Communist Labor Party of...

 held in Chicago during the first week of September.

"Left Wing Manifesto" issued by the Left Wing National Council

The second so-called "Left Wing Manifesto," followed the first and took inspiration from it, but was altogether different in content. This second Left Wing Manifesto was issued on the authority of the National Council of the Left Wing and was published in its final form in the July 5, 1919, edition of The Revolutionary Age. The publication of this document by the organized Left Wing section was used as the basis of prosecution of C.E. Ruthenberg, I.E. Ferguson, Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin "Ben" Gitlow was a prominent American socialist politician of the early twentieth century and a founding member of the Communist Party USA. From the end of the 1930s, Gitlow turned to conservatism and wrote two sensational exposés of American Communism, books which were very influential...

, and others for violation of the New York Criminal Anarchism statutes.

This document begins:
The world is in crisis. Capitalism, the prevailing system of society, is in process of disintegration and collapse. Out of its vitals is developing a new social order, the system of Communist Socialism; and the struggle between this new social order and the old, is now the fundamental problem of international politics."

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