The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-12-30
BY LUDWIG LORE.
(ArtIcIe Id

1T will be always a matter of graft
! fcation to me that in the period
when our executive committee and our
party allowed itself to be infected by
Comrade Pepper with the virus of the
third party madness, our group-the
New York group-had not only the po-
litical wisdom to come out immediate
ly against the most dangerous piece
OF opportunism, upon which any revo-
lutionary movement has ever en-
barked, but that it had the courage
to stand up under the wave of popular
disapproval and Official ostracism that
is always the lot of those who dare to
oppose the decisions of our leaders,
before the latter have become con-
WINGED, by the grim logic of circum-
stances, of the error of their ways.
In the discussions during and after
the LaFollette era, various motives
were imputed to me to account for
my stand on the petty bourgeois third
party. Nothing that could say at
this time, believe, could describe my
AuAAphACAbQA BOOlblOn lAldt PAOAABtCu
my opposition more convincingly than
brief excerpts from number of ar
ticles that appeared in the New
Yorker Yolkszeitung on this subject.
On December 8, 1923, Immediately
after the publication of the November
thesis, wrote the following:
a.. They (the present minority say:
Where such third parties, calling
themselves farmer-labor parties, OIL
workers and exploited farmers come
into existence we must become a part
of them. But it must be our policy
to win all workers and exploited farm
ers away from the third party and to
organize them in an f. L. P. class
party
ut is easy to see what the majority
(now the minority Of the executive
committee contemplates. 1t feels, right
Iy, that large proportions of the work
ing class will be drawn by so-called
+. L. P. under the control of petty
bourgeois elements and capitalist po-
liticians, and that it therefore becomes
necessary to adopt tactic of boring
from within similar to that of the T.
U. E. L. in the labor unions But they
overlook the fact that labor unions
and political parties are two widely
different things, which certainly can
not, in practical questions, be judged
by the same standards.
But there is a more important con-
sideration. The American worker must
not be confused. Neither directly nor
indirectly should the Communist move
ment assist in wiping out the class
lines that the socialist movement, in
the many years of its pioneer work,
helped to draw 1t is true, today the
American worker has not class feel
ings. Only a exceedingly small per-
centage knows the word class con
seriousness. Still, in the American par
ty literature as well as in the heads
of the most progressive proletarian
elements this word has a very de.
finite concept which we all have
helped to establish in our fights
against Gompersism, against the John
stonian primary election policy, and
by the propagation for an independent
class policy directed against all CAPT.
talist parties. :"
On December IS an editorial under
the heading, THE District Convention
of the w p" contained the following:
And even then the thesis
which provides for the possible entry
of the Workers Party into a petty
bourgeois third party would have been
voted down had not Comrade William
q. Foster, who had come to the con-
vention as guest, cleverly drawn
the red herring OF anti-Gompersism in
to the debate. This determined num- !
Der Of delegates, who up to this time
had been in opposition to the thesis,
to turn. So. for instance. six delegates
from the Finnish branches, instructed
against the thesis. were won by Eos
ter's illogical Gompers argument"
After expressing the hope that the |
question will go by default, the ar
ticle proceeds:
THE third bourgeois party. will be
possible only If the democratic and re-
publican parties both nominate con-
sentative reactionaries. The republi-
cans have their Coolidge But II
the democratic party should be so |
incredibly stupid as to nominate an
Underwood--i. Q. . reactionary whom |
not even the A. F. Of L. could support