"The most important question before the members of the Socialist Party just now is the referendum on the majority and minority reports on international relations. Comrade Trachtenberg has argued in the columns of 'The Call' in favor of the minority report, and Hoan of Milwaukee for the majority, and Comrade Warshow has argued against both. "A careful examination of the position taken by both Hoan and Warshow fails to reveal why the minority report should be voted down. Comrade Hoan is naturally very much concerned at the possibility that 'in the coming political battles the capitalistic henchmen will flaunt in your face that the above is the program of the Socialist Party' (referring to the statement in the governing rules of the Communist International that the revolutionary era compels the proletariat to make use of mass action). "The important thing, according to Hoan, is not whether the minority report is right or not, but rather what will the effect be at the next election. In this respect he is typical of the pure and simple political Socialist.... "In one breath Comrade Warshow calls for a new International to which shall be admitted all Socialist parties of the world who believe in the class struggle, and in the next he defends the Socialists supporting a coalition government. How can one subscribe to the doctrine of the class struggle and at the same time approve of Socialists joining in a coalition government, which of necessity will not be the agent of the workers but of the class with which the workers are at all times at war?.... "In all our official declarations, including the Chicago manifesto, we have voiced our support of the Bolsheviki. In our meetings and in our literature we have taken our stand solidly with our Russian Comrades, our friends, the Left Wingers to the contrary notwithstanding. "Why, then, hesitate to affiliate with them?"
Thus, whether or not Berger's policy of dissimulation prevailed--and his wholesale slaughter of dues-payers with the ax of the Executive Committee had shown all who opposed him what they might expect--it remained true that identification with the Bolshevist principles and tactics of Lenine and Trotzky was what the present members of the Socialist Party in America "have professed and believed in during the past critical years" and was in accord with "all" their "official declarations," their "meetings" and their "literature."
The base ingratitude of Berger toward those who have followed and supported him; the gross, incredible savagery of his egotism in turning to rend those he had discipled into revolutionaries the moment their allegiance to the principles he taught them stood in the way of his cowardice and ambition; his butcher insensibilities in making his party's Constitution a "scrap of paper" and the party a shambles for the hewing down of two-thirds of his "Comrades;" his burlesque effrontery in posing in the convention as a law-and-order man, railing at his own victims as "anarchists"--these daubs of color paint the cubist portrait of Wisconsin's mock hero, one of the meanest caricatures of human life that ever swaggered on a political arena.
When the two Wings of the Convention raised the question, "Who called the cops?" Berger's pale and innocent figure rose with the trembling remark: "If they had not been here yesterday morning we would not be here now. The two-fisted Reed and the other two-fisted Left Wingers would be here." He took pains to have the delicate pathos of his martyrdom sketched into the Executive Committee report he signed, "Victor L. Berger, in addition to a sentence of 20 years, has four more indictments pending against him, besides being refused his seat in Congress. All the Socialist candidates for Congress in Wisconsin and the