The Threat to the Labor Movement/Section 20
The Role of the Socialist Party Officialdom.
IN giving the whole conspiracy against militant trade unionism a "spirtual" character the socialist press and bureaucracy has a special role to play. It is being played, not very wisely, but certainly with an enthusiasm which only the smell of the fleshpots in the upper circles of labor officialdom can evoke in the breasts of the high priests of a party whose chief leader, Morris Hillquit, is numbered among the wealthy elite of Riverside Drive.
The socialist party leadership has found its niche at last. It is that of flunkeying to the flunkies of American imperialism in the labor movement.
For some time, beginning exactly at the moment when the American Federation of Labor officialdom discovered that the only real opposition to American entry into the war came from the left wing of the socialist party which made up the great majority of the Communist Party later, there has been an approach on the part of the socialist bureaucracy and the ruling group of the A. F. of L.
It was marked first by the cessation of opposition by socialist party members, who were at the same time officials of needle trades unions, to the A. F. of L. machine. Opposition candidates of the socialist type, backed by the needle trades and Jewish trade union bloc, were no longer nominated in A. F. of L. conventions.
Then came the expulsion policy against militant unionists in which socialist or former socialist union officials joined heartily and, as in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, took the initiative. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers' officials, to which anything savoring of A. F. of L.ism had been anathema hitherto, also instituted the expulsion policy.