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their hearts the closing words of the
declaration, adopted at the last National Convention, which endorses
the Alliance and urges the Party
membership to carry the revolutionary spirit into the unions; and,
turning their eyes heavenward, they
meekly asked: In what way have we
violated the Party declaration? A
partial truth is the worst lie. They
know they are garbling the Party's
utterances. The passage they quote
is only the conclusion of an argument, the premises of which declare
the A. F. of L. and K. of L. to be
hopelessly corrupt and the buffers
for capital against the endeavors of
the working class. The Party stands
squarely upon these principles; the
element that has faith in it upholds
them with enthusiasm, despite
troubles and inconveniences; the
element, on the contrary, that has
no faith in the Party, tries to ignore
them and, despite their re-endorsement throughout the land, struggles
against them as inconvenient, even
to the extent of misquoting the Party, and demands that we "bore from
within."
And yet this is not all. The element that has no faith in the Party,
that, accordingly, is extremely
punctilious about first "being able to
vouch" for the facts furnished by
other Party papers, that element is
seen taking the "facts," furnished
by bourgeois Democratic party papers, without verification, and liking them so well as even to multiply
them by three, thus trying to make
the workers believe that they pay
$100 taxes a year, in violation of all
fact and all science, and thus playing directly into the enemy's hands.
And finally we find that element
reaching, logically enough, the point
of trampling the Party platform under foot, as they do in this matter
of taxation, and going even so far as
attempting to make the Party in this
country subordinate to the Party in
Germany. That is their contention
when the Party platform, which upholds the unquestionable principle
that the taxes come from that part
of the products of labor that labor
is fleeced of anyhow by the capitalist class, is rubbed under their
noses. You have heard Stahl on that
subject. He no longer pretends to
have respect for the platform. He
asked: Was that platform ever submitted to a general vote? And his
confreres, the Volkszeitung Germans, answered "Nein!" (No), and,
accordingly, care not to uphold that
platform. I ask: Were any of the
German platforms, from which are
taken the local pro-taxation planks
that they quote, ever submitted to a
general vote of the party in Germany? No! There is no referendum
in the German party. There the
party conventions decide, their decision is final. Think of the degrading position to which they want to
lower the Party of America! The
platform, adopted here, is to be
treated as null because, forsooth, it
was not submitted to a referendum,
but the platform declarations of
Germany, never adopted here and
never submitted to a referendum
even there, they are to be binding
here! Altogether a position in keeping with total disrespect for, and no
faith in, our Party! The other element, however, that HAS faith in
our Party, respects the Party, holds
high its platform and banner, and
moves on convinced that the S. L. P.
IS THE Party of emancipation in
America. (Hisses from the Volks-
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