"The Communist," formerly the Left Wing organ of the Chicago Socialists, in its edition of April 1, 1919, bitterly assails Victor L. Berger of the Right Wing:
"A vote for Berger is a vote of pitying contempt for our Bolsheviki and Spartacan comrades. A vote for Berger is a vote approving his repeated and uncalled-for condemnation of our class-war comrades of the I. W. W.--condemnation persistently offered to prove Berger's own eminent respectability. A vote for Berger is a vote of scoffery against the St. Louis platform--a vote of apology for the platform, dissipation of its meaning, and disavowal of its essential spirit. A vote for Berger is a vote for the International of German Majority Socialism. A vote for Berger is a vote for petty bourgeois progressivism as the essence of Socialism; it is a vote against identification of the Socialist Party with the revolutionary mass aspirations. A vote for Berger is a betrayal of all the efforts, sacrifices and dreams of those whose lives have gone into the socialist movement as torch-bearers of proletarian triumph over capitalist exploitation, from Marx to the humblest comrade fighting today in the ranks of the revolutionary class struggle. "As far as this election is concerned there is nothing to be considered about Victor Berger, past and present, except the ideal Socialism which has become unchangeably attached to his name. If the American Socialist Party is to be a party of Berger-Socialism, then indeed, the Socialist movement will not die in America. No, it is the Socialist Party that will die."
As we shall see presently, these prophecies of disruption were soon fulfilled.