web/book review: early communist literature

It's 1919, the First World War has just ended, millions of workers still have in their minds all the waste and death from that war. The economy is slow. But strikes are taking place everywhere. Winnipeg is having its General Strike. The Russian Revolution only happened a couple of years before.

In the United States of America, a new party formed. It was a communist party. And it published this leaflet below.




above: screen shot from the internet archive, just click on "read online" to view document.




The above leaflet doesn't seems very outdated. It discusses its split from the Socialist Party, which had become controlled by its Right wing. The leaflet attacks the tepid reformist platform of the Socialist Party.



The communists were not the only people to attack the Socialist Party:


The IWW also viewed the reformist party in a bad light. Today the equivalent of the Socialist Party of old is the New Democratic Party of today. In Manitoba the provincial NDP have become more and more right wing.

Before there was even a communist party, or the Russian revolution for that matter, was the Socialist Party. A publication discussing its newspaper the appeal to reason, is also among documents hosted on the Internet Archive website.




The Internet Archive has a huge selection of books available online, including Project Guttenburg selections.


Just type in "communist" in the search bar and a ton of communist and anti-communist documents come up, produced by hollywood, chambers of commerce, the FBI, house of un American activities, and of course communist parties themselves. Among them, a history of the Young Communist International (including early history of WFDY) and Why every worker should join the Communist Party.