Page:Raymond Augustine McGowan - Bolshevism in Russia and America (1920).pdf/35

 Rh with probable civil war; it means a fundamental change in the use of the government and industry when once the Socialists gain a majority in the government. Political victory at the polls is in their idea the first major step towards this revolution or change.

The Socialist Party has defended the Soviet Revolution, but not because it intends to imitate the Bolshevik methods. In a recent Manifesto it says: "The people of Russia, like the American colonists in 1776, were driven by their rulers to the use of violent methods to secure and maintain their freedom. The Socialist Party calls upon the workers of the United States to do all in their power to restore and maintain our civil rights to the end that the transition from Capitalism to Socialism may be effected without resort to the drastic measures made necessary by autocratic despotism." The Communist, on the other hand, denies that it is possible to introduce Socialism by the exercise of "civil rights." They are a help, he says, in spreading the ideas of Communism, but the revolution itself takes place outside the sphere of "civil rights." Drastic measures are necessary, he maintains, both in autocracies and democracies—in the Russia of the Tsars, in the Russia of the Constituent Assembly, and in the United States.

The attitude of the Socialist Party towards the Moscow, or Communist, International is worthy of special notice. In the August convention referred to above, majority and minority reports upon the international situation of the Socialist Party were made by a committee. The majority report, evading the question of the Moscow International, recommended the formation of another new international association. The minority report recommended that the Socialist Party affiliate with the Moscow International, not for the purpose of supporting the Moscow program and methods in the United States, but because of Moscow's challenge to world imperialism and because of a fraternal feeling towards the So-