Page:Raymond Augustine McGowan - Bolshevism in Russia and America (1920).pdf/31

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Bolshevism in Russia and America
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The Communist Party.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party says that "the proletarian class struggle … is a political struggle in the sense that its objective is political—overthrow of the political organizations upon which Capitalist exploitation depends, and the introduction or a proletarian State power." The Program says that the Communist Party "aims to direct this (class) struggle to the conquest of political power, the overthrow of Capitalism, and to the destruction of the bourgeois state." "The Communist Party shall keep in the foreground its consistent appeal for proletarian revolution, the overthrow of Capitalism and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat." But, they say, "it is not a problem of immediate revolution. The revolutionary epoch may last for years and tens of years." Meanwhile the party will engage in political elections to spread the party principles and will nominate candidates for legislative offices only. If the party gains a political office, its representative "shall not introduce or support reform measures," but merely agitate the party principles. The party will participate in strikes for the purpose of agitation, for the development of strikes into general strikes, and for the development of the latter into a proletarian dictatorship. The party constitution says that "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." The Communist society is explained to be a society based on "industrial self-government of the communistically organized producers."

The Communist Labor Party.

The Communist Labor Party prepared a much briefer platform and program. In the platform it gives as its purpose, "the organization of the workers, as a class