The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-12-30
THE PARTY DISCUSSION CONTINUED
THE L0FOLLETTE REVOLUTION


third party becomes a possibility And
since LaFollette is a warm admirer of
the A. F. OF L. president, Mr. Com
pers would go with flying flags and
glazing trumpets into the camp Of the
new party, having taken good care,
however, that the w. P. and the r.. F.
L. P. have no place in this iIIustrious
gathering. And again; LaFollette may
be very qiberal and unprecedented. But
serely he is much too good a mathe-
matician not to know that numerical
ly the support of the A. F. of L. ma
chine is much more important than
that of the leaders of the class con-
scious workers !"
On December so:
g. !. For the simple reason that
there will be no third party Of the
kind we are dreaming of, LaFollette
will have the masses behind him just
as little as did all other would-be
Moses of the petty bourgeoisie, and
without the masses he will not leave
his republican flesh pots !"
g. 1t is a long way to Tipperary.
There are no short cuts. There is
only one way, the straight-and there
fore the shortest way--to mass educa-
ton and to mass movement Of the
proletariat. He who believes that mass
parties can be Unanswered out Of the
ground is in danger of losing his way
and going dangerously astray.
g.. And because we are in favor
of this mass education along the
straight path we wholeheartedly sup
port the F. f. l.. P. which will bring
those elements within the circle of
our influence, with whom we can and
must work, whom we must reach if
we wish to create a strong and in
elusive labor and small farmer party"
On January 2, under the title, Good
News from Chicago:
This proposition is fraught
with grave dangers for our party and
for the entire labor movement in the
United States 1t is based upon a Tin
our opionion absolutely false) concep-
ton of the existing political situation,
upon an incorrect understanding of
the intentions of the radical bourgeois
politician of the LaFollette-Borah type
and gross exaggeration of the in
fiuence of the left wing in bourgeois
third party :"
On January II, this was followed
by an article in answer to an editorial
published in the Hungarian 'Ui
Elore" entitled, "The Workers Party
and the Middle Glass;" from which
we quote the following:
a.. Our Hungarian party organ at
tempts to create the impression that
the supporters of the third party al
lance were in favor, and the OPP
ponents Of this unnatural union
against the bringing of the factory
workers into contact with the petty
bourgeoisie. That, of course, is not
he case. We, too, are very definite
ly in favor of reaching the farmer
and the townsman who is doomed to
disappear in the proletariat with our
propaganda, of making them, If not
members of the Communist Party at
least sympathetic toward it. Not only
do we not oppose propaganda among
the farmers, but we have always &C
lively supported IT,. The writer of
the Elore article overlooks another
fact which is strongly emphasized in
the thesis of the G. 2. G. majority,
namely, that 1t is not the purpose of
this move to win the middle class or
working class elements, but that the
going into the LaFollette alliance is
intended only as a maneuver by which
the proletarian elements are to be
separated from the petty bourgeois
party and turned over to a working
class party. That would mean not
only that we will not attempt to bring
the LaFollette movement under the
influence Of our Communist ideas and
line of thought, but that, on the con-
trary, we turn them into our most in
tense enemies, embitter them by rep
resenting ourselves to them in the
role of the splitters of great united
front movement, thus hindering the
very things which Stain and the EIore
editors consider asolutely essential for
the success Of the American revolu-
ton :"
Need we say more to prove the ut
ter fallacy Of the argument that the
New York group was opposed to third
party participation because it was so
much like LaFollette. that It was
afraid to lose it's identity? Is there in