In May, 1920, the American Socialist Party held its national convention and passed a resolution supporting the Third International, with the important reserva tion, however, that it did not believe it feasible to adopt the revolutionary pro gram culminating in the dictatorship of the proletariat. In March, 1920, the Third International held its second con vocation in Moscow. Several months af ter that, and after the resolution passed by the American Socialists in May, the Executive Committee of the Third Inter national presented twenty-one points which the American Socialist Party must indorse before it would be admitted to join. Among these points were: that the editors of the Party organs must be men who had declared themselves Communists previously, or, in other words, the pres ent editors must all be dismissed and re placed by members of the Communist Party. The document read like terms presented to a defeated foe by a mighty conqueror. These terms were finally re. jected by the National Executive Com mittee of the American Socialist Party, in December, 1920, and at that time there seemed little doubt that the party mem bership referendum would, when it took place, reverse the previous decision to join the Third International. This will mean the withdrawal of all the Slavic and Finnish affiliated organizations, and reduce the membership of the American Socialist Party to something like 7,000, as compared to a membership which once stood at 140,000. A split had already taken place in August, 1919, in Chicago, when a large minority walked out of the convention hall, and formed the Com munist and the Communist Labor parties, both of which organizations have since been driven underground by the prosecu tions of the state and Federal authorities.
The origin, development and the prin ciples of the chief Socialist organizations having been set forth it remains only to describe briefly several important off shoots of the main official movement. First of these is Syndicalism, which had its origin in the French labor movement. Syndicalism represents a reaction against State Socialism, to which, obviously, po litical action would lead. Syndicalists hold that the State should be practically abolished, as it exists at present, at least, and that the industries should be owned and controlled by the organized workers employed in them. The school teachers should own the schools, the postal em ployes should run the post office and the railroad workers should have full charge of transportation. The American repre
sentative organization of this movement is the I. W. W.
Against this conception there has been still another reaction, originated in Eng land, known as Guild Socialism. The movement is worthy of special notice, for while it remains comparatively small as on organization, it has nevertheless cap tured the younger elements of the British Labor movement. Its program is almost perfectly represented in this country by the Plumb Plan of the American railroad brotherhoods for the nationalization of the railroads.
The Guild Socialist program was first formulated, shortly before the World War, in the writings of G. D. H. Cole, an English writer, and A. R. Orage, editor of the "New Age." The idea is simply a combination of state ownership and control by the labor organizations. The state is to own the sources of raw mate rial and the machinery of production. The workers, organized into "guilds," or industrial unions, are to control, each its own industry, regulating working condi tions and prices. There are also to be consumers' guilds, representing those who will consume the output of the guild fac tories, and these will have charge of dis tribution. Apparently they will have very little to say about the prices they are to pay to the producers' guilds for the commodities they consume. Nor is it definitely stated what value will there be in state ownership of industries with out control. "Guildsmen," as they term themselves, do not emphasize political action. Their plan is to permeate the labor organizations with their idea, cause them to organize on an industrial basis, and, finally, by sheer weight of their economic strength, take over the indus tries.
Another form of Socialism, using the word in its very broadest sense, is Con sumers' Co-operation, whose origin is older than that of Marxian Social ism, and which has ever since pursued its own course. It is the only form of collectivism which has demonstrated itself in actual practice. Here, society as a whole, as a general organization of con sumers, will own and control, while labor will be in the service of society, on the old wage basis, modified by some system of joint-control, in so far as working conditions are concerned. Co-operation, however. has no theoretical program, but follows obediently in the wake of its own successful experiments, though its de clared ideal, in common with all Socialists, is the Co-operative Commonwealth.