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VOL. V. 290 JULY, 1926 NO. 9.

Whose Revolution Is It?By Bertram D. Wolfe

a child comes of age, he has the rightto claim his inheritance. And it is a test of

the maturity of the working class when it be-gins to claim its inheritance from past revolu-tions.

One of the earliest articles of Lenin, writtenin 1897, concerns itself with this very question.It is entitled: "What Inheritance Do We Reject."It disputes step by step with the Populists theinheritance from past bourgeois revolution-aries. "We are definitely more consistent andtruer guardians of the inheritance than the Na-rodniki (Populists), he declares, and he thenadds. . . . "to keep the inheritance by nomeans signifies that one must limit himself towhat he has inherited." This article by theyouthful Lenin was a definite declaration thatthe Russian working class was coming of ageand claiming the inheritance that the Decem-

TABLE OF CONTENTSPage.

Whose Revolution Is It? By Bertram D. Wolfe.. 387The British General Strike, by Robert Minor 393Lessons of the Moscow Uprising, by V. I. Lenin.. 397The Tasks of the Party in the Light of the C. I.

Decision, by C. E. Ruthenberg 40iThe Furriers' Strike, by Ben Gitlow 406China's Period of Organization, by Wm. F, Dunne 410Trade 'Union Insurance, by Wm. Z. Foster 413Agrarian Relations in America, by N, Ossinsky.. 4161877—The Bloody Year, by J. Sultan 419The Persistent "Mexican Question," by Manuel

Gomez 424Marx and the Trade Unions, by N. Auerbach 423Review "*31

brists, the "enlighteners" and the earlier gene-ration of Populists had left to it.

We Claim Our Inheritance.

Judged by this test, the American workingclass is still immature—stlil infantile leftist. Itdoes not claim its heritage. It does not disputewith the bourgeoisie, and particularly the petty-bourgeoisie (the "back to 1776-ers") for itsshare in the inheritance of the first Americanrevolution. This year, the Workers (Commu-nist) Party intends to claim this inheritance onbehalf of the American working class. It in-tends to proclaim that our class has come ofage and demands its heritage.

This year is the 150th anniversary of theAmerican revolution of 1776. If the averageconscious worker is asked whether the Ameri-can working class should commemorate the an-niversary, his answer is an indignant "NO!"

"It was a bourgois revolution," he will de-clare. "It created our present capitalist gov-ernment. The constitution is a capitalist con-stitution. The Declaration of Independence isbunk. The revolutionary fathers representedthe interests of landowners, merchants andcapitalists. It's not our revolution. It gave theworking class nothing but exploitation. Wehave nothing to commemorate."

Last year the Russian working class celebrat-ed the 100th anniversary of the Decembrist up-rising of 1825. The same workers who wouldcondemn the celebration of 1776 by the Ameri-can workers thought the celebration of the De-cembrist uprising right and proper and to a lim-ited extent joined in the celebration. Yet theDecembrist uprising of 1825 in Russia was anuprising of a few nobles and generals. If it hadsucceeded it would have developed a capitalist

388 W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

government or, more properly speaking, a li-beralized feudal government where capitalismcould develop more freely.

Again there is the French revolution. It alsowas a bourgeois revolution. Its leaders out-lawed the laJbor unions. It created the govern-ment that rules France today in the interest ofcapitalism and imperialism. Yet not only dothe conscious French workers commemoratethe revolution of 1789, but even the workers ofother countries commemorate it, build upon itsachievements and draw revolutionary inspira-tion and lessons from it.

"We are trying to bring up our youth in thespirit of the deepest respect for the outstandingrepresentatives of the great French revolution,"declared Zinoviev in his lectures on the "Historyof the Russian Communist Party." "We under-stand their class character. We know that whilethe revolution sent a monarch to the guillotine,it also enforced laws against labor unions. Nev-ertheless, these representatives of the greatbourgeois revolution were the first shock troopsof struggling humanity; they broke thru thedams of feudalism and thereby opened the wayto the spring floods of the proletarian revolu-tions."

The rejection of the heritage of the firstAmerican revolution is one of the signs of whatLenin named "infantile leftism." There is atendency on the part of an immature left wingto "throw out the baby with the bath." Tothrow out the dirty water of parliamentary op-portunism, it dumps out the baby as well—-theparticipation in parliamentary campaigns. Re-acting against opportunist platforms, it rejectspartial demands altogether. Rejecting the bunkwith which the American revolution of 1776 hasbeen surrounded and the uses to which it is putin breeding chauvinism, rejecting also the re-actionary slogan of the petty bourgeois liberals—"Back to 1776"—it renounces its revolution-ary inheritance as well and declares that thereis nothing in 1776 which can be carried for-ward toward 1927 and beyond. Such purelynegative reactions to incorrect tactics and pro-grams is a natural and wholesome first reactionof an undeveloped working class. But it mustoutgrow these reactions if it is to grow up.Hence, in the year 1926, on the occasion ofthe 150th anniversary of the first American rev-olution, it is appropriate that the Americanworking class should grow up sufficiently todebunk the history of 1776, throw away thechaff of chauvinism, mystification and reactionand keep and use the wheat of revolutionarytraditions and methods and lessons.

• "Debunking" the Revolution.And there is much debunking to be done. The

average Fourth of July "celebration" would bebetter named a "silly-bray-tion." The official

orators of the Sesquicentennial will portraythe revolutionary fathers as demigods, the rev-olution as a glorious vindication of the eternalrights of man, the institutions created as class-less and eternal and unimprovable.

A first examination of the revolutionary"fathers" reveals them to be for the most partsmuggling merchants fighting against the re-strictions on trade set by the British govern-ment, "bootleg" manufacturers illicitly fabricat-ing and selling articles that the British law for-bade them to make or sell, land speculators try-ing to lay their hands on land which belongedto the British Crown or which had been awardedto Canada by the Quebec acts, men of wealthand affluence who continued to own slaves af-ter "all men were created free and equal." Theeternal rights of man prove to be the class in-terests of certain classes struggling for dom-inance as against another set of dominant class-es. The glorious phrases of the Declaration ofIndependence to the effect that "all governmentrests upon the consent of the governed" did notprevent the rulers of the newly freed land fromcontinuing the property and other qualificationsfor suffrage and putting over a constitution il-legally and secretly drafted by the consent onlyof a small minority of those who were to begoverned under it. If the right of the "pursuitof happiness" which the Declaration declares in-alienable still stands, it is 'because "pursuing"does not necessarily mean catching up. If, inthe pursuit of your happiness, you find that youhave to picket a shop, you may find that your"inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness"may be taken away from you also.

But in this the revolution of 1776 is no ex-ception to other bourgeois revolutions of whichEngels wrote: "We know today that this king-dom of reason was nothing more than the ideal-ized kingdom of the bourgeoisie; that this Eter-nal Right found its realization in bourgeois jus-tice; that this equality reduced itself to bour-geois equality before the law; that bourgeoisproperty was proclaimed as one of the essen-tial rights of man; and that the government ofreason. . . . came into being and could onlycome into being, as a democratic bourgeois re-public. The great thinkers of the eighteenthcentury could not . . . . go beyond the limitsimposed upon them by their epoch."

But as soon as we have said that the Revolu-tion of 1776 was a class revolution which pro-duced certain class institutions and which mademany promises which it did not and could notfulfill, then we have cleared the ground for acloser examination of the real nature of therevolution, the things it achieved and the thingsit represents.

Causes of the Revolution.The dominant class in England at the time of

the Revolution of 1776 held to the mercantilist

J U L Y , 1 9 2 6 389

economic theory that colonies exist to produceraw materials for the mother country and toprovide markets for its manufactured goods.During the latter part of the colonial period awhole series of laws were adopted by Parlia-ment regulating the shipping trade and manu-factures of the colonies in such a way as tofoster the commercial and business interests ofEngland. The Navigation Acts, framed for thepurpose of building up the British merchantmarine and navy, gave a monopoly of colonialcommerce to British ships. The Factory Actsforbade the manufacture of hats, woolens andiron, and the exportation of such manufacturedarticles. The Trade Laws compelled the colo-nists to export certain goods to England only,and to purchase certain other things only inEngland. Prohibitive taxes were placed uponother articles when not imported from Eng-land. Thus the revolution was in the first placea revolt against a whole series of laws whichlimited the productivity of the colonies, deniedthem the right to manufacture what theypleased, to <buy where they could buy mostcheaply, to sell where they could sell most pro-fitably, and to produce, ship and trade withoutrestriction. As in all revolutions the existingframework of government and social structurein the interest of certain British classes had be-come a fetter upon further development of theproductive forces of the new world and the fet-ters had to be broken if social progress was tocontinue.

James Oneal in his "Workers in AmericanHistory" dismisses the leaders in the struggleagainst these laws as "smugglers." That theywere smugglers there is no doubt. Lalor's "En-cyclopedia of Political and Social Science" right-ly declares: "Nine-tenths of their merchantswere smugglers. One quarter of all the sign-ers of the Declaration of Independence werebred to . . . . the contraband trade. . . .Hancock was the prince of the contraband trad-ers, and with John Adams as his counsel was ap-pointed for trial before the admiralty court ofBoston at the exact hour of the shedding ofblood at Lexington." Yet it must not be over-looked that this smuggling was a violation oflaws which hindered the further developmentof production in America and that by thairsecret and open struggle against these laws theywere fighting for social progress.

A second cause of the American revolutionwas the limitation on western land sales. Thethin strip of coastal settlements that made upthe thirteen colonies was destined to spread overa whole continent. But the British king, backedby certain interests in America, was for limitingthe settlements to the coast where they couldbe more easily controlled, more easily taxed andregulated, and whereby a cheap supply of laborwould be assured (since laborers could not leavefor unoccupied lands) and whereby the price of

coast lands would go up in value since the sup-ply of land was limited. Laws were passed for-bidding purchase of land from the Indians (inthe name of protection of the Indians) andgranting the Western lands to Canada.

James Oneal dismisses the opponents of theseacts as "land speculators." He points out, andrightly, that Washington, Hamilton and Morriswere interested in land speculation and that"Washington had good reasons for being a reb-el, as he had surveyed lands outside of the royalgrant and in exceeding the powers of his com-mission was liable to persecution as a law break-er." But he does not point out at the same timethat the poor frontiersmen, the pioneers who oc-cupied small farms on the Western frontier andwho made up the bulk of the army of the revo-lution, were also interested in fighting theselaws. And as "squatters" who had occupiedland in defiance of the laws, they were also"land thieves." These land thieves and specula-tors were also fighting the battle of progressagainst laws that put fetters upon the develop-ment of the productive forces of the colonies.

A third cause of the revolution was the papermoney question. During the French and Indianwars British merchants had bent over largequantities of goods on credit and rich planters,importers and merchants in America were alldebtors to British merchants. These classeshad been fighting against the issue of cheap pa-per money as a means of settling on easy termsthe debts of the colonial poor but now that theywere debtors they united to issue large quanti-ties of paper currency. The British merchantssucceeded in passing a law limiting and pro-hibiting this practice. This cause, generally ig-nored by orthodox historians because it showsthe revolutionary fathers trying to escape pay-ing then- debts, was one of the prime causes ofthe American revolution and, like the land is-sue, united rich and poor alike in a commoncause.

A fourth cause of the revolution was objectionto British taxation. "Taxation without repre-sentation" was undoubtedly a fraudulent slo-gan. It was not the intention of those who rais-ed it to give representation to everybody whopaid taxes. What they objected to was the sizeof the taxes, the articles on which they werelevied, the objectives of the taxes in placing re-strictions on trade in "niggers," rum, molassesindentured servants (stamp tax) and other com-modities, and the purpose of the taxes—to makethe royal governors independent of the coloniallegislatures by paying their salaries out of royaltaxes in place of legislative grants. In one case,they even objected to the lowering of a tax—the tax on tea—because it enabled the BritishEast India Company to' undersell the tea smug-glers. The Boston Tea party was nothing butthe dumping overboard of the tea in question.

390 W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

Taken all together the British laws for thegoverning of the colonies and their exploitationin the interest of certain British wealthy andruling classes hampered the industrial life ofthe colonies and fettered the further develop-ment of the productive forces of America. Fur-ther industrial evolution was impossible withoutrevolution. So revolution had to come—andit came. This disposes of all the current bunkabout America being "unrevolutionary," of theAmerican method being "not revolution butevolution," of the natural unnaturalness of rev-olutionary methods to the Anglo-Saxon and allthe other masterclass twaddle that masque-rades as sociology and history.

A Minority Revolution.All the available evidence tends to prove that

the revolutionaries were a minority of the popu-lation. Most of the "aristocracy," the large land-owners of the coast with the exception of theplantation owners of the South, almost all of-fice-holders, the clergy of the Church of Eng-land, the more eminent lawyers and physicians,and the "legitimate" merchants—large mer-chants who did no smuggling—these were theactive Tories or royalists. The Tory party in-cluded, in the words of the historian Jameson,"more than half of the most educated, wealthyand hitherto respected classes." With them wasa great indifferent mass having no great inter-est in change. They provided over 25,000 col-onial troops to the British army. The active rev-olutionists were the smuggling merchants,manufacturers and speculators in western land,backed by the small farmers, frontiersmen andartisans, who were won to their cause by suchissues as paper money and thru the glitteringand vague promises of the Declaration of Inde-pendence.

How could the minority of the populationwhich made up the revolutionary army fightagainst the combined forces of a more or lessequal number of active counter-revolutionariesand the British regular troops more numerousand better equipped and supplemented by hiredHessian soldiers.

Dr. Ramsay, a contemporary of the revolu-tion, writing of North Carolina, says: "Therewas an ardor and an enthusiasm in the friendsof Congress that was generally wanting in theadvocates of royal government." A rising socialclass whose victory means social progress al-ways has "an ardour and enthusiasm" general-ly lacking in the counter-revolutionists.

This in part explained the victory of therebels.

If the American colonists were divided, theinhabitants of the mother country were also.The Whigs (party of the new merchant-manu-facturer class) in England were fighting againstKing George and his system of government.Pitt and Burke and Fox and a host of other,ma-jor statesmen opposed the colonial policy and

supported the revolutionists. Lord Howe, whocommanded the British troops in America dur-ing the first critical years of the revolution, wasan avowed Whig and when it was too late wasrecalled and tried for treason because he aban-doned Boston to George Washington, made noeffort to come in time to the relief of Bourgoyneat Saratoga, and did not try to crush Washing-ton's miserable, ill-equipped little army after re-peatedly defeating it in New York and NewJersey. "Thruout the revolution the favoritetoast at banquets of American officers was'General Howe'."

During the latter years of the revolution,France, Spain and Holland came to the aid ofthe American forces, the revolutionists havingmanaged to utilize not only differences in theBritish ruling classes but also conflicts of inter-est between England and other countries aswell in the strategy of the revolting colonials.There is a little "Leninist" lesson in winning al-liances for a revolution.

A Revolutionary Revolution.Finally, the revolution succeeded above all

because it was truly "revolutionary" in its meth-ods. "The people who write histories," says S.G. Fisher in his "True History of the AmericanRevolution," "are usually of the class who takethe side of the government in a revolution; andas Americans, they are anxious to believe thatour revolution was different from others, moredecorous, and altogether free from the atroci-ties, mistakes, and absurdities which character-ize even the patriot party in a revolution. Theyhave accordingly tried to describe a revolutionin which all scholarly,' refined, and conservativepersons might have unhesitatingly taken part;but such revolutions have never been known tohappen."

The. truth of the matter is that our revolu-tion of 1776 was carried out as a class dictator-ship with all the accompaniments of force andrevolutionary terror that the ruling class his-torians of today attack in the case of SovietRussia and that the polite liberals deplore.

Dictatorship.All revolutions create alongside of the regu-

larly constituted government their own uncon-stitutional, extra-legal revolutionary authoritythat unites the revolutionists, mobilizes theirforces for resistance to the legal authority andforms the germ of the future government if therevolution succeeds. In the bourgeois revolu-tions of the continent these "dual authorities"as Lenin called them, were the clubs of Giron-dins and Jacobins in the French revolution andthe clubs of workers in the revolutions of 1848.In the Russian revolution the revolutionary au-thority that challenged the legally constitutedgovernment is to be found in the Workers' andPeasants' Councils or Soviets.

J U L Y , 1 9 2 6 391

In the American Revolution of 1776 the dualor revolutionary authority was to be found firstin the Committees of Correspondence and thenin their national delegate bodies called Con-gresses. The Committees of Correspondencewere small, local, unofficial groups of revolu-tionaries, formed to develop and unite resist-ance on all-colonial scale against objectionableBritish measures. They held meetings, sent outemissaries, carried on correspondence, super-vised the boycott of British goods, tarred andfeathered and otherwise punished those whobroke the boycott or who informed on smug-glers or other violators of British law, carried ona constant propaganda and in the later periodmobilized and drilled volunteers and secretlygathered supplies of ammunition and developeda spy system to reveal the movements of Britishtroops. They are analoguous to the provincialclubs of the French Revolution or to the localSoviets of the Russian revolution. From an-other standpoint, they correspond to locals orsections of a revolutionary political party. Theyacted as the unifying vanguard of the revolu-tionary forces.

As the revolutionary movement developed andthe day of open revolt approached, they chosedelegates to national "congresses." The firstof these was the Stamp Act Congress called toplan resistance to the tax known as the StampAct. Of this Congress the historian Beardrightly says:

"The Stamp Act Congress was more than an as-sembly of protest. It marked the rise of a newagency of Government to express the will of Ameri-ca. It was THE GERM OF A GOVERNMENTWHICH IN TIME WAS TO SUPERSEDE THE GOV-ERNMENT OF GEORGE III. IN THE COLONIES."This is strangely reminiscent of the words of

Marx:"And the clubs, what were they but a coalition of

the entire working class against the entire bour-geois class, the formation of a workers' state againstthe bourgeois state. . . . so many constituent as-semblies of the proletariat and as many detachmentsof an army of revolt ready for action?"As to suffrage, there was no pretense of let-

ting anybody vote for these committees of cor-respondence and congresses except revolution-aries, just as exploiters and counter-revolution-aries were not permitted to vote for delegates tothe Soviet congresses. On this Beard says:

"Such agencies were du ly formed by the choice ofmen favoring the scheme, all opponents being ex-cluded from the elections."The committee of correspondence and Con-

gresses also "passed laws" and the committeesexecuted them by a sort of summary or revolu-tionary justice which is technically known as"revolutionary terror."

Every one of the "horrors" of the Russianrevolution were repeated, including some ofwhich the Russian revolution was innocent. Theland and property of the loyalists was confiscat-ed without indemnity. As to freedom of thepress:

"Loyalists or Tories who were bold enough tospeak and write against the Revolution were sup-pressed and their pamphlets burned. . . . A fewTories were hanged without trial, and others weretarred and feathered (this is a peculiar Americansport.—B. D. W.). One was placed upon a cake ofice and held there 'until his loyalty to King Georgemight cool.' Whole families were driven out of theirhomes. . . . Thousands were blacklisted and sub-jected to espionage. . . . Those who refused (tosupport the revolution.—B. D. W.) were promptlybranded as outlaws, while some of the more danger-ous were thrown into jail. . . ." (Beard.)All loyalists were driven out of the State Le-

gislatures much as Cromwell "purged" the LongParliament, as the Jacobins drove out the dele-gates of the Girondins or as the Bolsheviks ex-pelled the counter-revolutionaries from the Con-stituent Assembly. It seems that the methodsof all revolutions are alike—revolutionary.

In this connection it is interesting to hear thetestimony of a very conservative historian, Dr.James Sullivan, Assistant Commissioner of Edu-cation of the State of New York. Speaking atColumbia University recently, he said:

"Just as at present we are wont to speak with a kindof horror of the Soviets of Russia without realizingthat our own committees of correspondence duringthe Revolution were almost counterparts of the pres-ent Russian system. . . . outside of the execu-tions, for practically two-thirds of the revolutionaryperiod our Soviets ruled with much the same cruelty,rigor and summary justice that the modern RussianSoviet 'has practiced."

We can pardon Dr. Sullivan his little weak-ness as to executions (in Russia they are call-ed executions, in the United States "lists of theslain in battle") in view of his unusual clarity inpolitical analysis. In spite of his proviso as toexecutions, he was roundly hissed by his re-spectable audience, as the New York Times re-ported.

The Results of the Revolution.It is false to pretend, as many working class

writers do, that the American revolution of 1776,since it did not live up to the glowing promisesof the Declaration of Independence, did not ac-complish anything. I can only briefly list a fewof the results in an article that is already toolong. The revolution freed the colonies fromEngland, freed the western land for settlementand thereby raised the standard of living of thecolonials, broke the fetters upon the expansionof production and released the gigantic produc-tive forces that are now at hand for social usewhen the workers take them, lessened to alimited extent the area of slavery, made thefirst weak steps in lightening the lawsagainst debtors, disestablished the Church andintroduced greater religious toleration in manyof the colonies, effected a much wider and moredemocratic distribution of the land than hadexisted previously, extended the suffrage slight-ly altho the property qualification for voting wasnot finally iaboMshed in all states until after 1840,forced the Bill of Rights into the American Con-

392

stitution, set up a republican form of govern-ment which for its day was the most advanced,and served as a revolutionary inspiration to theEuropean bourgeoisie in the French revolution.

What it did not do, it is needless to recount,except by way of debunking the nonsense of thecapitalist apologists who pretend that it dideverything that any "sane" man can desire. Itdid not do what a bourgeois revolution can notbe expected to do. It did not free the wageslaves. It did not even free the chattel slaves.It did not keep all its fine promises. It did notintroduce even "complete" bourgeois democracy(there is no such thing as complete bourgeoisdemocracy). It did not abolish classes. It didnot introduce socialism. It was only the firstAmerican revolution.

Whose Revolution Is It?Whose revolution is it? The master class

of today rejects it. They shudder at its revolu-tionary methods and conceal them. They re-ject its revolutionary traditions. They violatethe Bill of Rights, calumniate or falsify its most,advanced leadership, distort and disfigure itsmen and its acts. They are ashamed of itsmethods and its traditions.

A socialist speaker in New York was arrestedin 1918 for publicly reading the provisions of theConstitution which guarantees freedom ofspeech and press. A Communist speaker inPittsburgh who tried to read the Declaration ofIndependence was pulled in. "I didn't writethat," he protested to the policeman, "ThomasJefferson wrote it."

"Well, I'll pull you in first," answered thecop, "and then I'll go back and get this here guyThomas Jefferson."

The bourgeoisie is arresting the revolution-ists of 1776 and rejecting its heritage!

Whose revolution is it? I maintain that it isour revolution. The working class of today isthe inheritor of all past ages. It does not re-ject the past. It takes what is good from thepast and upon it builds the future. We need notgo abroad for all of our revolutionary traditions.Some of them at least we can find in a body ofAmerican tradition. We are the inheritors anddefenders of the Bill of Rights today. The bour-geoisie does not need, does not desire freedomof press, freedom of speech, freedom of assem-blage. We as a revolutionary class strugglingfor power become defenders of those freedoms.We are the inheritors and defenders of the right

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

of revolution to change a government that hasbecome obnoxious and tyrannical. In a singlesentence that is all that is declared in the De-claration of Independence. We should salvageand utilize the traditions of dictatorship andrevolutionary struggle that the revolution hasbequeathed and that the bourgeoisie rightly re-jects. There is a tradition of struggle against"tyrannical" laws, there is a tradition of strug-gle against a system of fetters the further de-velopment of the forces of production and thefurther progress of society.

The Left Wing in the American RevolutionAnd finally there is the left wing. As in the

French Revolution, as in every revolution, notall of the revolutionaries are the same. Theleaders of 1776 range all the way from the aris-tocratic Washington and the monarchial Ham-ilton (the Mellon of his day), thru the demo-cratic Franklin and Jefferson and the free-think-er, Tom Paine, to the champion of the poorfarmers and imprisoned debtors, Daniel Shays,who started a new revolution against the newlyformed government as soon as he had helpedcomplete the old one against King George. Wecan say with Zinoviev:

"We understand their class character. . . Never-theless these representatives of the great bourgeoisrevolution were the first shock troops of strugglinghumanity; they broke thru the dams of feudalism(imperialist-feudalism in this case) and therebyopened the way to the spring floods of the proleta-rian revolution."

Discover America!This year, on the one-hundred-and-fiftieth an-

niversary of the American revolution of 1776 itis time that the American workingclass beginsto "discover America" and its body of nativerevolutionary traditions. It is time that we grewup and like the youthful Lenin disputed with thebourgeoisie for our heritage. We are the revo-lutionaries of our day and they the counter-rev-olutionists. In the words of Lenin we can say:"We are definitely more consistent and truerguardians of the inheritance than you." Andto the "back to 1776-ers," the Norman Thom-ases and LaFollettes we can add in the words ofLenin: "To keep the inheritance by no meanssignifies that one must limit himself to what hehas inherited."

"Back to nothing," we can answer. "We usethe past to build the future, not to block thepresent. Forward to Communism. . . ."

After all it is only the first American Revolu-tion. . . .

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The British General StrikeBy Robert Minor

"T REFUSE to 'believe that the general strike will reallyA take place. It is a continental notion, and the British

workingman is too sensible a being . . ." wrote asmug English gentleman, at the beginning of May. Thegentleman was wrong only because he spoke someyears too late. It used to be true that it couldn't hap-pen in England. A better -man has expressed the one-time unreadiness of the 'British labor movement to con-duct a mass struggle, in the following words:

"Imperialism has a tendency to create privilegedranks also among the workers and of separatingthem from the broad masses of the proletariat.

"It should be observed that in England the tend-ency of Imperialism to split the working class, toincrease opportunism among them and also to bringabout a temporary stagnation of the labor move-ment, expressed itself much earlier than at the endof the Nineteenth and the beginning of the Twen-tieth Centuries. For two great typical characteris-tics of Imperialism existed in England since themiddel of the Nineteenth Century: great colonialpossessions and a monopolistic position in the worldmarket. Marx and Engels for several decades sys-tematically studied this relation of opportunism inthe labor movement to the imperialistic characteris-tics of capitalism. For instance, on October 7, 1858,Engefs wrote to Marx: 'The English proletariat isactually becoming more and more bourgeois, so muchso that it appears that this most bourgeois of allnations evidently wants to bring things about to thepoint where it will have a bourgeois aristocracy andbourgeois proletariat alongside of the bourgeoisie.Of course, this is to a certain degree natural on thepart of a nation exploiting the whole world.' "

—Lenin, "Imperialism."That a general .strike was impossible to England was

a reasonable view as long as the entire working classwas saturated with the ideology of imperialism, andwhile its upper and leadling strata, in control of theorganized labor movement, shared relatively well inthe exploitation of half the world 'by the British bour-geoisie. But in April, 1913, Lenin could write:

"In recent times, England has been completely de-prived of her monopoly. The former relatively bear-able conditions of life given place to extremeimpoverishment as a consequence of the high cost ofliving. The class struggle is becoming acute to aconsiderable degree, and simultaneously with thisthe basis of opportunism and the propaganda ofLiberal-Labor politics among the workers is beingundermined."In the world war England struck the death blow at

the then most dangerous rival in imperialism: Ger-many. But only to find that the war ushered in theperiod of 'proletarian revolution, and at the same timerobbed England of the dominant position which had madeher immune to revolution.

The decline of British capitalist economy since thewar, giving place to the hegemony of the capitalist im-perialism of the United States, has made it inevitablethat attacks are made on the standard of living of theworking class, and that the British proletariat begins to

cease to toe what British bourgeois gentlemen call "sen-sible." A comparatively .rapid series of events develop-ed the working class toward proletarian consciousness.

"Classic England" and Force.But "England is traditionally peaceful and orderly."England is the prototype of modern capitalist coun-

tries. The English revolution of extreme violence andcivil war from 1642 to 1660, which cleared the way forthe conquest of the world market, for the industrial revo-lution and the modern factory system under a govern-ment of the capitalist class (with a nominal monarch),was completed one hundred years before the Americanand French revolutions. The violence of Cromwell in1642-1660 made it possible for the English bourgeoisie

.to pass over the periods of civil war of the French in1789 and of Europe in 1848. It was possible to "'muddlethrough" the Chartist crisis in the 1830's and to wetdown the British working class movement with the lootof India, Africa, and the Pacific. By enslaving half a'world England had "freedom" at Borne; by sweatingMown and black colonials, England had a relativelyprosperous—and "prosperous-thinking"—upper stratumof the home working class. The epoch of modern im-perialism found England still the mightiest of empiresand still possessing the name of "classic" democracy.The heroic traditions of the British.'bourgeois revolutionwere lost in the darkness of centuries, the traditions ofthe Chartist movement lost in the shadows of reform.And the new tradition of a patriotic labor movement—living as a lesser partner in the looting of the colonialempire—Ibecame firmly fixed. The martial face of Eng-land was 'turned outward toward the colonial world, notinward toward the English masses. The enormous bu-reaucratic and military machine which was necessaryto hold power in continental states, was unnecessary inEngland, and therefore, absent. The dominant positionof British capitalism made it possible to rule the Britishworking class with compromises. British labor proceed-ed in the "democratic" way.

In the third quarter of the last century it was possibleto conceive of England being an exception to the rulethat the working class must shatter the bureaucraticand military machine of the state. It was during theParis Commune of 1871 that Marx wrote to Kugelmannthe famous passage in which it was implied that Englandmight at that time toe considered an exception to therule of the violent "shattering" of the capitalist state:

"If you will look at the last chapter of my Eight-eenth Brumaire, you will see that I declare the nextattempt of the French revolution to be: not merelyto hand over, from one set of 'handles to another,the bureaucratic and military machine—as has oc-curred hitherto—but to SHATTER it; and it is thisthat is the preliminary condition of any real people'srevolution on the Continent. It is exactly this thatconstitutes the attempt of our heroic Parisian com-rades."Lenin, commenting on the above quotation, wrote:

". . . First, he confines his conclusions to theContinent. This was natural in 1871, when Englandwas still the pattern of a purely capitalist country,

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without a military machine and, in large measure,without a bureaucracy.

"Hence Marx excluded England, where a revolu-tion, even a people's revolution, could be imaginedand was then possible, without the preliminary con-dition of the destruction 'of the available ready ma-chinery of the state.'

"Today, in 1917, in the epoch of the first greatimperialist war, this distinction of Marx becomesunreal, and England and America, the greatest andlast representatives of Anglo-Saxon 'liberty,' in thesense of the absence of militarism and bureaucracy,have today completely rolled down into the dirty,bloody morass of military-bureaucratic institutionscommon to all Europe, subordinating all else to them-selves. Today, both in England and in America, the'preliminary condition of any real people's revolu-tion' is the breaking up, the shattering of the 'avail-able ready machinery of the state' (perfected inthose countries between 1914 and 1917, up to the'European' standard)."

Lenin, "The State and Revolution."However, we can now add to the foregoing quotations

of Marx, Engels and Lenin, a quotation from the officialannouncement of the British government of May 7, 1926:

"All ranks of the armed forces of the Crown arehereby notified that any action they may find it nec-essary to take in an honest endeavor to aid the civilpower will receive both now and afterwards the fullsupport of his majesty's government."The ibourgeois press frankly paraphrased this order

with the words: "Don't hesitate to shoot." (N. Y.Times, May 16.)

This pronouncement of the post-war bureaucratic-mili-tary machine of Great Britain on the occasion of thegeneral strike in 1926 is a "literary" contribution worthyof ibelng compared to those of Marx and Lenin. But itwas not only a piece of writing; it was put into action; •heavy bodies of troops in full trench equipment weremoved extensively during the general strike, and notonly for "moral" effect but also for military actionagainst the workers; in the Poplar district of Londonthey were actually used, according to reports.

The British bourgeoisie, with its state bureaucracy,its professional military machine and its subsidiary fas-cist organizations of violence, demonstrated beyond ashadow of question that any advance of the struggle to-ward the taking of power by the working class wouldhave been met by the bloodiest civil war.

The years of the "'peaceful British" tradition are atan end.

Forerunners of the General Strike.

A SERIES of developments, sketched in last month'sissue of the Workers' Monthly by Comrade William

F. Dunne, brought Great Britain rapidly toward the ter-rific event of the first British general strike. The myr-iad of transformations by the world war, the RussianRevolution, the formation of "Councils of Action" byBritish labor to prevent the intended declaration of waron the Soviet Republic (the Councils of Action havingalready shown the rudiments of the phenomenon of"dual power")—all of these events were preparing theground. When it became necessary for the British bour-geoisie to call upon the right wing "labor leadens" toconduct the capitalist government on its behalf, a con-siderable disillusionment in regard to parliamentarymethods resulted. The example of the Russian revolu-tion ibegan at last to have its effect when the upwardtrend ol Soviet economy began to show a sharp eon-

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trast to the downward trend of their own standard ofliving. The trade union delegation went to Russia, andits report upon returning had a profound effect amongthe masses. The attacks by the bourgeoisie continued,and the coal crisis, not solely a British crisis, but a worldcoal crisis, fixed the point of greatest friction.

The Scarborough congress of the British Trade UnionCongress brought to a head much of the accumulatingmaterial for a reorientation. In spite of some verydistinct failures, in spite of the failure to get rid of the"heroes of Black Friday," there was something donewhich partially reflected the deep-going changes: TheBritish Trade Union Congress adopted the principle ofthe right of colonial units to self-determination even tothe point of separation from the empire. Second: Acertain increase of the powers of the General Council ofthe Trade Union Council, which 'was a move away fromthe loose, federative form and toward the centralizedform which would bring the entire lalbor movement ofGreat Britain under a single general staff, enabling con-certed action and the centralized responsibility necessaryto a general strike. (That the leadership which formedsuch a general staff remained dominantly the traitorsof the past, was a fatal weakness in the result). Theendorsement of a campaign for World Trade Union Unitythrough a joint committee of Russia and British work-ers, was both an effect and a cause of rapid acceleration.

In July, 1925, came "Red Friday," when the right wingleaders were forced to agree that the entire British La-bor Movement would stand behind the coal miners inresisting the cut of their living standards. But still thedecision of "Red Friday" for solddaric action remained tobe executed by the "heroes of Black Friday."

The declaration of solidarity on "Red Friday" in Julyshowed the leaders of the British 'bourgeoisie the neces-sity on their part, not to precipitate the struggle imme-diately, ibut to delay it by resorting to the subsidy until

• May 1 of this year.Against May 1 the government prepared with system

and energy.The most impressive features of this period of the

events were: (1) the bold, energetic preparations ofthe bourgeoisie and government, and (2) the callousand even openly stated, dogged determination of theright wing leaders of the trade unions that NO prepara-tions should ibe made by the working class. Accordingto an advance excerpt from a book soon to be publishedby A. J. Cook, secretary of the Miners' Federation, "'therewere certain leaders who were determined that no pre-parations should be made. Most notable among thesewas J. H. Thomas, who argued that any preparationswould only encourage the government to make ready.Everybody knew that the government had made fullpreparations."

The formation of the "Order for the Maintenance ofSupplies" was the organization of a monster strike-break-ing body, largely of the middle and upper class youth,'was the preparation as nearly as possible for a combina-tion of strike-breaking and fascist violence. The exist-ing fascist organization was absorbed into an officialpolice force.

These preparations did not fail to alarm the rank andfile of the trade unions, and a wave of discussion of thenecessity for organizing an armed workers' guard sweptthrough the entire field of organized labor. That thiswas not supported from the top by the leadership of theunoins is the index of the treason of those leaders.

In its period of respite the capitalist class throughthe government meved to destroy or paralyze the small

J U L Y , 1 9 2 6

British Communist Party. The effort was to arrest theentire 'Central Committee of the Party; twelve were ar-rested, itried and imprisoned for "fomenting mutiny inthe armed forces of the crown." But to the astonish-ment of the bourgeoisie, the arrests only served to mob-ilize the working class behind their arrested comrades,the workers recognizing that this was a preliminaryattack connected with the coming struggle.

To the further dismay of the bourgeoisie, for some "in-explicable" reason the big May Day parade in Londonwas headed by the Communists and Communist sympa-thizers from Battersea.

In Great Britain during the months proceeding thegeneral strike it was proven beyond any argument thatthe tactics of the Communists for work in the tradeunions are sound. The left wing movement in Britaintakes the name of the Minority Movement. Led by suchmen as George Hardy, Nat Watkins, Tom Quelch andTom Mann, the Minority Movement had already obtainedthe organized support of one-fifth of the trade unionistsof Great Britain, the conference of the left wing inMarch having represented 950,000 organized workers.

Was the General Strike a Political Struggle?The British general strike 'brought a controversy as to

whether the strike was of political nature. Open ene-mies said that the strike was political, that it was pro-ducing the phenomenon of "dual government," whilethe supposed "leaders" of the strike (secretly its ene-mies) strenuously denied any political character in thestrike, saying that it was one of purely economic de-mands and that it would not in any way extend intopolitical character.

The General Strike Was of Political Character.The 'bourgeoisie and the government, knowing how to

handle the right wing leaders, terrorized them by point-ing out the inevitable political significance of the generalstrike. Baldwin expressed it:

"The government has found itself challenged byan alternative government."—N. Y. Times, May 4.Baldwin meant that the strike if continued, must dis-

pute the power of the bourgeois state; and, knowing thenature of the right wing leaders, he offered this as anargument that they must discontinue the strike.

Being unwilling to carry the strike to its inevitable de-velopment, and yet compelled to pretend to be carryingon the strike, the right wing leaders had to pretend thatthe strike had no political significance; but with thesewords on their lips, they in fact recognized that thestrike struggle was political, and proceeded to destroythe strike.

When the pressmen of the "Daily Mail" refused toprint that scurrilous capitalist newspaper with an edi-torial attacking the workers, the whole question—thepolitical question—of "freedom of the press" became theprecipitating incident of the general strike. Sharply be-fore the eyes of the whole working class of Britain itwas demonstrated that freedom of the press is not someabstraction of rhetoric, not a matter of negative permis-sion, but a question of possession of printing plants,paper, etc. In order to have solved the question of th.3press—in order to have obtained Freedom of the Press(Oh! sacred Anglo-Saxon words!)—for the great massesof Britain, for all but the small circle of millionaire pub-lishing house proprietors and their clients, it wouldhave been necessary for British Labor to confiscate allof the big newspaper plants, paper supplies, etc., and,before thiis> to create the necessary authority, at first"dual" to, and then superior to, and suppressing, thebourgeois state authority.

395

The Communist International recognized in advancethe political nature of the struggle that was coming.On April 25, it issued a manifesto which contained thefollowing passage:

"The miners' strike would mean a general strikeand a general strike cannot remain an economicstruggle, that is to say, the proletariat will fightagainst the capitalists, class will fight against class.The British bourgeoisie, the British government willmobilize all forces of the state, as the fundamentalquestion of capitalist society are involved, as thequestion of private property is raised and the wholecapitalist state apparatus will be used to defend pri-vate property. The workers are seeing with growingfury how the government is coming forward moreand more brutally on the side of the capitalists, howit is organizing special troops against the workers,how the government is affording help in the organ-izing of fascist groups. The struggle for wages andworking conditions will raise in the minds of theworking class the question of power."

Politics and the Army.

But we must understand the full significance of thepolitical character of the general strike. As the army(and in the case of Britain, the navy) would be thefinally decisive element, it was necessary to draw the sol-diers and sailors into a correct political position towardthe general strike. The army, after the long periods ofunemployment in Great Britain, had become of the esti-mated composition of about 97 per cent working classand included 10,000 young unemployed coal miners. Thisarmy, as the ultimately decisive element in relation tothe general strike, should have been gotten to take itspolitical position in regard to the strike, free fromcoercion fby the government, which was not a neutralelement. The government did not neglect to use everymeans of influencing the army. The right wing tradeunion leaders refused to make any approach to the armyto secure its support of the workers, because the tradeunion leaders did not want to have the army support theworkers. The mere suggestion of the trade unions send-ing delegations to regiments of troops to ask theirsympathy for the strike seemed to the right wing leadersof the Trade Union General Council as toe most unspeak-able treason. To their view, the loyalty of the army tothe government which was fighting the strike was neces-sary. It was necessary in order to give the governmentthe ultimate power to break the strike.

An address to the army by the Trade Union General'Council would have been an acknowledgement of thepolitical essence of the strike; that is, that the workers'organs did not acknowledge the government's right todispose of the army, that the question of state power wasat issue.

The Communist Party issued the famous leaflet, "Don'tShoot!" which formed the basis of the conviction andimprisonment of twelve members of its central com-mittee.

'Comrade Trotsky, in answering a critic of his recentbook on England, has pointed out that:

" . . . a real transference of power from the handsof one class to those of another depends to an Incom-parably greater degree on the British army and navythan on parliament. The fight for power of the prole-tariat must therefore be a fight to win over the navy.

"It is necessary that the seamen—not, of course,the admirals, but the stokers, electrical engineers,sailors and other workers know of and learn to un-

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derstand the tasks and aims of the working class.All difficulties must be surmounted in order to findthe way to them. Only by indefatigable, systematicpreparatory work can a situation be created in whichthe bourgeoisie will no longer be able to rely on thenavy in its struggle. Unless this condition is fulfilledit is nonsense even to speak of victory."—Inprecor,June 3, 1926.

The Right-Wing Leaders.The Manifesto issued by the Communist International

on April 25 said:". . .. The working masses are ready to fight, buttheir leaders are partly hesitant; some of them arebetraying the fight before the battle. THE RIGHTWING OF THE LABOR PARTY AND OF THE GEN-ERAL COUNCIL ARE SHAMELESSLY WORKINGFOR A NEW 'BLACK FRIDAY.' MacDONALD andHODGES have openly gone over to the side of thebourgeoisie; MacDONALD has come forward againstthe strike and HODGES advocates the lengthening ofthe working hours. Even the General Council, towhich falls the roleaof General Staff, declared on theeve of the conflict that it did not demand any increasein its powers, in spite of the decisions of Scarbor-ough."Commenting further on the actions of the reformist

leaders, the rejection of the united front by the executiveof the Amsterdam International, the fact that even theLeft leaders of the Labor Party and the trade unions•were showing themselves not up to the situation, themanifesto continues:

". . . The Communist International is convinced thatthe international labor movement wil l prove its soli-darity by deeds, if the general council places itself atthe head of the movement. IT IS THE HISTORICALDUTY OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL TO "TAKEOVER THE LEADERSHIP OF THE STRUGGLE.If the General Council abstains from the fight andfollows the way of base compromise, it will takeupon itself a great historical responsibility."The British bourgoisie—and the shrewd American cor-

respondents—were as conscious as was the CommunistInternational that the right wing leaders were workingfor the single purpose of defeating the strike. On May 3a correspondent of the New York Times, cabling fromLondon, spoke of "J. H. Thomas, affectionately known as'Jim' by political opponents as well as friends."

Mr. Thomas, while supposed to be leading a generalstrike, was quoted by an American correspondent onMay 9 as saying publicly:

"If the people who talk about a fight to a finish carriedit out in that sense the country would not be worth hav-ing at the end of it.

"I have never disguised and I do not disguise now thatI have never been in favor of the principle of the generalstrike."

A New York Times correspondent from London on May8 cabled of: "Ramsey MacDonald and J. H. Thomas, whonever really wanted the general strike and who wereforced ahead by more radical elements of the organizedlabor movement."

J. A. Cook, secretary of the Miners' Federation, wasavoided like poison by the right-wing leaders, who pulledoff their treason in secret conferences in the offices ofthe government, not notifying 'Cook and apparently play-ing a game of hide-and-seek to prevent his foreknowl-edge of conferences to be held. Cook begged the TradeUnion General Council to co-opt two representatives ofthe Miners' Federation, but the General Council refused.Speaking to a meeting of miners in South Wales, Cook

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

said:"We have been fighting not only against the gov-

ernment and the owners, but against a number oflabor leaders, especially the political leaders, whoseposition has been compromised. . . . I have hadthe experience of being bullied in colliery offices; Ihad experience in 1920 and in 1921 in meeting variousprime ministers, but never have we been bullied bythe employers or the government to the extent thatwe were bullied by certain trade union leaders toaccept a reduction in wages. The government knewthat, and the owners knew it. One man on the otherside said to me: 'The T. U. C. will help us,' and theprime minister on more than one occasion publiclythanked the T. U. C."Double dealing of the most abandoned sort was going

on from the moment that the struggle became certain.On the first of May at 9 p. m. Secretary Cook of theMiners learned, entirely by accident, that the negotiatingcommittee of the Trade Union Congress were at thatmoment closeted with the prime minister in the govern-ment offices without having notified the miners' repre-sentatives. Already on the first of May the right-wingleaders were selling out the British workers. At thistreachersous conference they agreed to a formula whichmeant that on the day of the opening of the strugglethe right-wing leaders agreed to a reduction of wagesand to district agreements.

On Sunday, May 2, while the whole world was ringingwith the news of the coming general strike in supportof the miners' fight against a reduction of pay or length-ening of hours, a small sub-committee was again insecret conference with Baldwin, and the following for-mula was drawn up:

"We will urge the miners to authorize us to enterupon a discussion with the understanding that theyand we accept the report as the basis of a settle-ment, and we approach it with the knowledge that itmay eventually mean a reductipn of wages."This was treason, but it was perfectly logical treason.

There were only two courses to take: The decline ofBritish capitalist economy, and especially the crisis inthe coal industry, had sharply brought the necessity tochoose between two courses: "(1) The complete resist-ance to all wage cuts and the consequent sharpening ofthe class struggle up to the point of the workers organ-izing to take po-wer from the capitalists, and (2) theadaptation of the workers to the conditions of capitalismon the down grade by the continuous acceptance ofwage cuts."

The right-wing leaders preferred to serve their masters.But the tremendous labor struggle in Great Britain has

not ended, but, on the contrary, is now (at the time thisis written, June 21) at a sharp period in the form of astrike of more than one million coal miners. Therepercussions of a strike of more than a million coalminers in Great Britain (twice as many as struck in thegreat American coal strike of 1922), are today, contraryto all pretenses, penetrating the vitals of the British cap-italist system.

The first necessity today for American workers is—SUPPORT THE BRITISH COAL MINERS! Especiallyin every American trade union, this means moral andFINANCIAL support with the utmost speed and gener-osity.

The Question of "Foreign" Aid.The bourgeoisie has implanted in the minds of the

working class very firmly the idea that it is "unnatural"and "treasonable" for workers engaged in a desperate

(Continued on page 400.)

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Lessons of Moscow UprisingBy Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin

book "Moscow inx December 1905" (pub-lished at Moscow, 1906)has come out at a mo-mentbeenassimilation of the ex-perience of the Decem-ber uprising is an essen-tial task of the workers'party. To our regret thisbook is a "barrel of honey with a spoonful oftar"—most interesting material despite its in-completeness—but incredibly slovenly, incredib-ly trivial deductions. Of these deductions weshall speak separately, but now let us turn tothe contemporary political topic of the day—tothe lessons of the Moscow uprising.

The chief form of the December movementin Moscow was a peaceful strike and demon-strations. The overwhelming majority of theworking masses' activity participated only inthese forms of struggle. But just this Decem-ber action In Moscow has shown plainly thatthe general strike as an independent and mainform of struggle has outlived itself, that themovement with elemental, unrestrainable forcesurges out of these narrow frames and createsthe highest form of struggle—the uprising.

All the revolutionary parties, all the unionsin Moscow, in declaring the strike, recognizedand even felt the inevitability of its transforma-tion into an uprising. On the sixth of Decem-ber it was decided by the Council of Workers'Deputies "to strive to transform the strike in-to an armed uprising." But in fact, all organ-izations were unprepared for this; even the coal-ition Council of the fighting companies (on theninth of December!) spoke of the uprising asof something remote, and undoubtedly thestreet fighting went on over its head and with-out its participation. The organizations laggedbehind the growth and the swing of the move-ment.

The strike grew into an uprising first of allunder the pressure of objective conditions whichpiled up after October. To catch the govern-ment unawares by the general strike was al-ready impossible; it had already organized thecounter-revolution, which was prepared formilitary actions. And the general march of theRussian revolution after October and the suc-cession of events in Moscow in the Decemberdays have strikingly affirmed one of the pro-found propositions of Marx: the revolution goesforward by the fact that it creates a solidifiedand strong counter-revolution; that is, it com-

This article by Lenin, published in the "Proletari-ya" on August 29, 1906, discusses the general strikeOf December, 1905, in MOSCOW, which developed intoan UpHsing. ,t traces the development from the

se"era' strike int° the higher form> Since the British

general strike has brought to the front tfie «uestion

°\e *™r* strike' thi.s ana|ysis * Leni" becomes

of pecuhap interest at th'* time- ™e Lamination of af e w ° r d s in the artlcle has been unavoidable.

pels the enemy to resortto ever more extrememeans of defense and inthis manner it works outever m o r e powerfulmeans of attack.

December 7 and 8:Peaceful strike, peace-ful demonstrations ofthe masses. Evening ofDecember 8: The siege

of the aquarium. Afternoon of December 9:The assault by the Dragoons upon the crowdat Strastnaya Square. In the evening: Thewrecking of the house of Fidler. Feeling is ris-ing. The unorganized street crowd builds, quiteelementally and hesitantly, the first barricades.

December 10: The beginning of artillery fireat the barricades and into the crowd on thestreets. The constructing of barricades be-comes confident, already not isolated but un-questionably of a mass character. All the popu-lation is upon the streets; ,^the entire city inthe main centers is being covered with a net-work of barricades. In the course of a fewdays there opens up a stubborn guerilla strug-gle between the companies and the troops, astruggle which wore out the troops and com-pelled Dubasov to plead for reinforcements.Only toward the 15th of December did the pre-ponderance of the governmental forces becomecomplete, and on the 17th the Seminov troopsdemolished Pressnya, the last stronghold of theuprising.

From the strike and demonstrations to iso-lated barricades. Prom isolated barricades tomass construction of barricades and to streetfighting with the troops. Over the heads of or-ganizations, the mass proletarian struggle pass-ed from the strike to the uprising. In this con-sists the greatest historic acquisition of the Rus-sian revolution attained by the December of1905—an acquisition bought, like all precedingones, at the price of greatest sacrifices. Promthe general political strike the movement waslifted to the highest stage. It compelled thereaction to go to the limit in resistance, and bythis it brought nearer by a gigantic step themoment when the revolution also goes to thelimit in the application of the means of attack.For the reaction there is no further to go thanthe artillery fire upon the barricades, the hous-es and the street crowd. For the revolutionthere is still further to go than the Moscow com-panies; there is much, very much further togo, in width as well as in depth. And the revo-lution has gone far ahead since December. The

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basis of the revolutionary crisis has become im-measurably broader; the cutting edge must besharpened now more acutely.

The change in the objective conditions of thestruggle demanding the transition from thestrike to the uprising, was sensed by the prole-tariat earlier than by its leaders. Practice, asalways, went ahead of theory. Peaceful strikeand demonstrations all at once ceased to satisfythe workers, who asked: What next? Who de-manded more aggressive action. The directiveto construct barricades came to the outlyingregions with enormous delay while barricadeswere already being constructed in the center.The working masses set to work but were notsatisfied with that, and—asking: What next?they demanded aggressive action. We, the lead-ers of the social-democratic proletariat, showedourselves in December to be like that chief ofthe army who so absurdly disposed his regi-ments that the greatest part of his troops didnot participate actively in the battle. Theworking masses looked for and did not finddirectives in regard to mass actions.

Therefore, there is nothing more shortsightedthan the view of Plekhanov which was seizedupon by all opportunists, that it was not advis-able to begin an untimely strike, that "theyshould not have resorted to arms." On the con-trary, it was necessary more resolutely, ener-getically and aggressively to resort to arms; itwas necessary to make clear to the masses theimpossibility of a mere peaceful strike alone,and the necessity of a fearless and ruthless arm-ed struggle. And now we must finally, openlyand to everybody's hearing, acknowledge the in-sufficiency of political strikes, must agitateamong the very broadest masses for the armeduprisings, not covering up this question withany sort of "preliminary stages," not throwingany veil over the question. To hide from themasses the indispensability of a desperate,bloody, destructive war as the immediate taskof the coming action, means to deceive bothoneself and the people.

Such is the first lesson of the Decemberevents. Another lesson concerns the characterof the uprising, the method of conducting it,the conditions of the coming over of the troopsto the side of the people. In our midst, in theright wing of the party, an extremely one-sidedview is wide-spread in regard to this transition.One cannot pronounce for a struggle againstthe modern army; it is necessary that the armybecome revolutionary. It is self-understood thatif the revolution does not assume a mass char-acter, and does not catch hold of the army it-self, then there can be no talk of a seriousstruggle. It is self-understood that work in thearmy is indispensable. But it is impossible toconceive this coming over of the army in theform of some simple, isolated act coming as aresult of conviction on the one hand and con-

W O R K B R S M O N T H L Y

sciousness on the other. The Moscow upris-ing clearly shows us how stereotyped and dead-ly is such a view. Indeed it is inevitable inevery truly popular movement that the vacilla-tion of the army leads to a sharpening of therevolutionary struggle, to the real struggle forthe army. The Moscow insurrection demon-strates to us, precisely this most desperate, mostcurious struggle between the reaction and therevolution, for the army. Dubasov himself de-clared that only 5,000 out of 15,000 Moscowtroops were reliable. The government held thewavering troops with the most varied and des-perate measures, persuaded them, flatteredthem, bribed them with the distribution ofwatches, money and such things, debauchedthem with vodka, deceived them, intimidatedthem, locked them in the barracks, disarmedthem, and snatched away from their midst bytreachery and violence, soldiers suspected of be-ing the most unreliable. And it is necessary tohave the courage to acknowledge directly andopenly that we have found ourselves lagging be-hind the government in this respect. We werenot capable of utilizing the forces at our dis-posal for such an active, daring, enterprisingand offensive struggle for the wavering armyas that which the government carried on andcarried through. We prepared, and we shallstill more persistently prepare, the mental"making over" of the army. But we wouldshow ourselves miserable pedants if we were toforget that in the moment of insurrection a phy-sical struggle for the army is also necessary.

The Moscow proletariat gave us, in the De-'cember days, excellent lessons in the mental"making over" of the army—for example, onthe 8th of December, upon Strastnaya Square,when the crowds surrounded the Cossacks,mixed with them, fraternized with them and in-duced them to ride away. Or on the 10th, atPressnya, when two girl workers, carrying thered banner in a crowd of ten thousand, dashedout to meet the Cossacks with the cry: "Killus! We shall not give up the banner while weare alive!" And the Cossacks became confusedand trotted away while the crowd shouted:"Long live the Cossacks!" These examples ofcourage and heroism must be forever imprintedon the consciousness of the proletariat.

But the following are examples of our back-wardness as compared to Dubasov. On the 9thof December, along Bolshaya Serpukhovskayastreet, soldiers march, singing the Marseillaise,to join the insurrectionists. The workers senddelegates to them. Malakhov gallops up tothem at break-neck speed. The workers werelate, Malakhov arrived in time. He delivered afiery speech, he caused the soldiers to waver,he surrounded them with dragoons, led themto the barracks and locked them in. Malakhovcame in time, but we did not, although in twodays, in response to our appeal, 150,000 men

J U L Y , 1 9 2 6\e who could and should have organized the

patrolling of the streets. Malakhov surround-ed the soldiers with dragoons, but we did notsurround the Malakhovists

We could and should have done it and thesocial-democratic press had already long ago(in the old Iskra) pointed out that

That whichhappened on Bolshaya Serpukhovskaya streetwas duplicated, apparently, in its main outlines,before Nesvizhsky barracks and before theKrutitsky barracks and during the attempts ofthe proletariat to "pull out" the Ekaterinoslavtroops, and during the sending of delegates tothe sappers in Alexandrov, and during the re-turning of the Rostov artillery which had start-ed on the way to Moscow, and during the dis-arming of the sappers in Koloma, etc. At themoment of insurrection we were not equal toour tasks in the struggle for the waveringarmy.

December obviously confirmed still anotherprofound proposition of Marx that had been for-gotten by the opportunists: That insurrectionis an art and that the chief rule of this art is—desperately daring, relentlessly decisive offen-sive. We have not sufficiently assimilated thistruth. We ourselves have not sufficiently learn-ed and have not sufficiently taught the massesthis art, this rule of offensive at whatever cost.We must now with all energy recover what waslost. It is not sufficient to form groupings withrespect to political slogans, there is necessaryanother grouping with respect to armed insur-rection. Whoever is against it, whoever doesnot prepare for it, must be ruthlessly thrownout of the ranks of partisans of the revolution,must be thrown over to its adversaries, to thetraitors and cowards; for the day is approachingwhen the force of events, when the environ-ment of the struggle will compel us. to separateour enemies from our friends by this test. Notpassivity must we preach, not simple "waiting"for the time when the army will "come over";no, we must ringingly proclaim the indispensi-bility of a daring offensive and

and themost energetic struggle for the wavering army.

The third great lesson which Moscow hasgiven us touches upon the tactics and organiza-tion of forces for the insurrection. Militarytactics depend upon the level of military tech-nique—this truth was masticated and put intothe mouths of the Marxists by Engels. Militarytechnique now is not the. same as it was in themiddle of the 19th century. To operate againstartillery with crowds and to defend barricadeswith revolvers would be stupidity. And Kautskywas right when he wrote that it is time to re-vise, after Moscow, the conclusions of Engels,Moscow having put forward "new barricade tac-

399

tics." These tactics were the tactics of guerillawarfare. The organization conditioned by suchtactics was of mobile and exceedingly small de-tachments: Units of ten, three, and even oftwo. One can often meet among us at presentsocial-democrats who snicker when the talk isabout five and of three. But the snickering isonly a cheap means of closing one's eyes to thenew question of tactics and of organization,called forth by the street struggle in the faceof modern military technique. Read thoroughlythe account of the Moscow uprising, gentlemen,and you will understand what connection the''units of five" have with the question of "newbarricade tactics."

Moscow brought forth these tactics, but wasfar from developing, far from expanding in anybroad, any really mass dimensions. The mem-bers of the fighting groups were few, the work-ing masses did not receive the slogan of daring.attaek'S and did not apply this slogan; the char-acter of partisan detachments was too uniform,their arms and their methods were insufficient,their knowledge of how to lead the crowd washardly developed at all. We must make up forall of this, and we shall make up for it in learn-ing from the experience of Moscow, propagat-ing this experience among the masses, stimu-lating the oreativeness of the masses them-selves for the further development of this ex-perience. And that guerrilla war, that mass ter-ror which is going on in Russia everywherealmost incessantly since December, will un-doubtedly help us to teach the masses the cor-rect tactics for the moment of insurrection.The social democracy must acknowledge andaccept into its tactics this mass terror, ofcourse, organizing and controlling it, subordin-ating it to the interests and conditions of thelabor movement and of the general revolution-ary struggles, throwing aside and ruthlesslychopping off that "hoodlum" distortion of thisguerilla war which was so excellently and soruthlessly dealt with by the Moscowans in thedays of the uprising and by the Letts in thedays of the renowned Lettish republics.

In the most recent time military technique ismaking further new steps forward. The Japan-ese war brought out the hand grenade. Thearms factory has placed upon the market theautomatic rifle. The one as well as the otheralready begins to be applied with success inthe Russian revolution, but in a measure farfrom sufficient. We can and must utilize theperfections of technique to teach the workers'detachments

With the participation of the work-ing masses in the city uprising, with the massattack upon the enemy, with the decisive skill-ful struggle for the army which wavers stillmore after the Duma, after Sveaborg and Kron-stadt, with the assured participation of the vil-

400W O R K E R S ( M O N T H L Y J U L Y , 1 9 2 6 401

lage in the common struggle—the victory willbe with us in the next all-Russian armed insur-rections !

Let us, then, more widely extend our workand more courageously formulate our problems,assimilating the lessons of the great days ofthe Russian revolution. At the base of ourwork lies the true estimate of the interests ofthe classes and of the needs of popular develop-ment at the present moment. Around the slo-gan of the overthrow of the czarist power andthe convocation of the Constituent Assemblyby the revolutionary government, we are group-ing and will group an ever greater part of theproletariat, the peasantry and the army. Thedevelopment of the consciousness of the mass-es remains, as always, the basis and main con-tent of all of our work. But let us not forgetthat to this general, constant and basic task,such moments as Russia is living through noware adding peculiar and special tasks. Let usnot be transformed into pedants and philistines,nor excuse ourselves from these peculiar tasksof the moment, these special tasks of the pres-ent form of struggle, with meaningless refer-ences to our constant duties, unchanging underall conditions and at all times.

Let us remember that the great mass struggleis drawing near. This will be the armed insur-rection. It must be, as far as possible, simul-taneous. The masses must know that they areentering into an armed, bloody, desperate strug- sgle. Contempt for death must spread amongthe masses and secure the victory. The of-fensive against the enemy must be most ener-getic; attack, and not defense, must become theslogan of the masses, the ruthless exterminationof the enemy becomes their task; the organiza-tion of the struggle takes a mobile and flexibleform; the wavering elements of the army willbe drawn into the active struggle. The partyof the conscious proletariat must fulfill its dutyin this great struggle.

The British General Strike(Continued from page 396)

struggle, for example in England, to accept financial helpfrom "foreign" workers, and particularly from workersin the Soviet Republics. MacDonald, Thomas, Hen-derson, Clynes and Varney literally trembled before thesolemn incantation of the Duke of Northumberland, that

"this is a conflict between those who love their coun-try and those who ally themselves with its enemies."But the experience of facing the concrete problem has

gone far toward destroying this absolutely fatal tabooamong the masses of the British workers. After thebetrayal of the general strike, it was no longer possibleto give any potency to the "Soviet gold" taboo in respectto the coal strike. Dispatches to the American capitalistpress indicate that the contributions from many countries—tut particularly from the trade unions of the SovietRepublics, are enabling the British miners to hold outfirmly.

Yet something of this dangerous taboo, with which thecapitalist medicine-men may again paralyze British laborremains. Slave ideology is not removed in a single week.

Relying upon this, the British government addressed amemorandum to the Soviet government based on theidea that the Soviet government had intruded into Britishaffairs when the Soviet trade unions sent money intoEngland for the use of strikers.

A large dramatization of the anti-imperialist, the realprolertatian, attitude, was called for by the situation.The Presidium of the Union of Soviet Lat>or Federations(according to the New York Times of June 18), in con-nection with a demonstration against the British memo-randum, issued a protest, saying:I "This interference of the British government in theI mutual relations of the Russian and English workersf is an attempt to infringe the freedom of our working• class to give fraternal aid to the workers of otherJ countries in whatever form and to whatever extent

it is deemed necessary."The Union of Soviet Labor Federations expresses

; a decided protest against the interference of the Eng-, lish government in the affairs of the Russian workers. and declares that organized labor in our working re-• public will not allow anyone to dictate its line of

conduct."To demand that the Soviet government forbid the

Soviet Federations to help their class brothers is toi show an entire lack of comprehension of the spirit; and existence of the Soviet power.j "The Labor Federations of the Soviet Union declare/ that they helped, are helping and will help the strik-] ing workers of England because the affair of theS English miners is our affair, whatever may be the

opinion of the British government supporting themine owners.

"Down with interference in our mutuat relationswith the English workers!

"Hands off the Soviet Labor Federations!"

The issuance of this statement can be called a mile-post in the history of labor. It sharply enlightens andhelps to consolidate one of the big gains of the generalstrike experience; not the hegemony of a national bour-goisie over "its own" proletariat, but the internationalrelations of the work class is the inviolable thing.

The British general strike was by treachery defeated,but the British labor movement -was nevertheless carriedforward by tremendous stages, through exactly this gen-eral strike.

The Communist Party of Great Britain will growrapidly as a result of the great action, and every effort ofthe government to destroy the Communist Party willcertainly only draw greater support to the Communistsamong the boad masses of organized labor. The alreadysplendidly begun work of building the left wing can butgo ahead more rapidly, and the basis for the eliminationof the yellow leadership of the unions and of the LaborParty has been laid by themselves. The open road ofBolshevism alone lies ahead.

Of course, the victory of the British workers is out ofthe question until the right wing leadership is overthrownand a strong Communist Party of Great Britain leadsthe struggle. The phenomenal successes of the BritishCommunist Party in the period preceding the generalstrike have been striking. A detailed account of theparty's activities and tactics in the general strike oughtto be the center of this article, but information is lacking.The Workers' Monthly hopes to have such an accountin a later number.

The Tasks of the Party in the Light ofthe Comintern

By C. E. Ruthenberg.

May 26, 27, 28, 1926.

I. THE INNER PARTYSITUATION.

rnHE theses of the Enlarged•*• Committee of the Com-munist International pointout that the role which the United States is essaying isthat of the "saviour" of the world capitalist order.

This country has become the dominant imperialistcapitalist power. It is with the aid of the loans and in-vestments of the American capitalists that the partialand temporary 'stabilization of European capitalism hasbeen achieved. Every European country looks to theUnited States for the loans and capital with which toavert financial crises and to rehabilitate its industry.American capitalism, through its loans and investments,through the debt settlement made by the governmentunder the pressure of the great banking houses, whichactually represented partial cancellation of the wardebts, is trying to save European capitalism from theundermining forces which were let loose by the WorldWar, and at the same time trying to save itself.

American imperialist domination is extending itself toall 'parts of the world. In Latin-America, in Asia, thepower of the American capitalists, as wielded throughloans and investments, is constantly increasing.

In considering the status of the capita-list order asa world system we can say that American capitalism isthe most powerful force fighting against the proletarianrevolution.

The Role of the Party.

This fact is emphasized by the Communist Interna-tional in its resolution on the controversy within ourParty. The role which American capitalism is playingin the struggle against the proletarian revolution, placesa great responsibility on the Workers (Communist)Party.

It is our task to carry on the revolutionary struggleagainst this mighty capitalist power, to mobilize theworkers against it, and finally to overthrow and de-stroy it.

It is in the light of this task and this responsibilitythat we must consider the decision of the CommunistInternational in regard to the controversy and factionalstruggle which has been going on in our Party for thepast two years.

We are still a very weak Party, compared to the greattask and responsibility which we must fulfill. We mustwork in a labor movement which, compared to that ofEurope, is still very backward in the development ofclass consciousness. We must fight the mightiest capi-talist foe which exists.

This article is a comprehensive summary of thereport of the Political Committee given by Com-rade C. E. Ruthenberg, general secretary of theParty, at the plenary session of the Central Com-mittee of the Workers (Communist) Party, held

If. in addition to the greatdifficulty which we have toovercome in the objectivecondition in which we areworking, we are unable to

mobilize our full strength for the struggle because ofour inner factional fighting, then indeed the outlook forus is dark.

Effect of the Past Fact ional Struggle.We all know that the result of the factional struggle

which has raged in the Party for two years now, hasbeen a serious deterrent to the building of the Party in-fluence among the working masses and to developingthe organized strength of the Party. The greater partof our energy and strength was drawn into the factionalfight in place of being directed against our capitalistenemy.

Comrade Zinovlev declared, in his closing speech inthe Enlarged Executive Committee of the CommunistInternational, that if the factional struggle in our Partycontinues, there was great danger, of the temporary dis-appearance of the organized Communist movement inthe United States.

We all realize that our Party cannot stand furtherfactional fighting. We must find a means of unifyingthe Party and directing its energies into constructivework among the masses.

The Decision of the Comintern.The decision of the Communist International empha-

sizes over and over again that the factional struggle inour Party must come to an end. It "lays down a basisfor cooperation in the Party work of the comrades whohave hitherto supported various groupings.

The division of work established by the Cominterndecision is an unusual one so far as a Communist Partyis concerned. To create within the Central Committeeof the Party a sub-committee with a majority made upof comrades previously in opposition, was a step whichonly exceptional conditions could justify. The Com-intern believed that these conditions existed in ourParty and that such a step was necessary in order tocreate the condition for common work within the Party.

The present leadership of the Party will carry outthis decision in letter and sipirit.

Unifying the Party.It has been the attitude of the comrades at present

charged with responsibility for the leadership of theParty, from the beginning of their taking up this re-sponsibility, that the factional alignment in the Partymust be eliminated and the Party unified for commonwork. We have consistently ^followed the policy ofachieving this goal.

402 W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y J U L Y , 1 9 2 6 403

The decision of the Communist International establish-es the fact that 'substantial successes were achieved inthis work, and 'endorses these efforts. Our policy in thefuture will be to carry on the work of the Party in sucha manner that this work can be completed.

We must broaden the leadership of the Party anddraw into it every comrade who can contribute to thatleadership. We must try to draw into responsible Partywork every comrade capable of carrying on such workwithout any discrimination based upon the previousfactional alignment.

The Party tasks are so great that the services ofevery comrade who can contribute to the upbuilding ofthe Party are needed and should be used in the Partywork.

Naturally, the greatest responsibility in carrying outthe decision of the Communist International and carry-ing on the Party work in such a manner as to eliminatethe factional struggle, rests upon the comrades entrustedwith the majority in the Political Committee of theParty. We recognize that responsibility, and we willendeavor to direct the Party policy in such, a way, andsupport isoidi an inner Party line, as will create in theParty the conditions for (the ending of the factionalstruggle. We will give the opportunity for full partici-pation in the Party leadership to all the comrades ir-respective of previous groupings.

At the same time we must, however, have the co-O'peration of the comrades who have previously been inopposition. They must work with us in banishing thefactional atmosphere and creating the condition forco-operation and common work.

It cannot be expected that all of the bitterness andstrife which has existed in the Party for so long aperiod can be banished over night. We will have diffi-culties to overcome. We will, however, approach theproblem in the spirit of overcoming and eliminating thefriction growling out of past conflicts, and if we co-oper-ate da -this spirit, we can quickly create in the Partya new atmosphere: that of uni ty and work.

The basis of such co-operation and the broadeningof the leadership of the Party, is agreement on the linewhich the Party must follow. This line has been clearlyestablished by our convention and in the decision of theCommunist International.

On the basis of the policy accepted by the Party andin the spirit of the decision of the Communist Inter-national, our Party can go forward into a new periodof united work and common struggle against our capi-talist enemies and for the upbuilding of the revolution-ary mass movement in the United States. The Plenumshould mark such a new beginning in the Party life,the beginning of a period of achievement, of a forwardmovement by the Party.

II. THE ECONOMIC SITUATION IN THEUNITED STATES.

IN order correctly to formulate our policies and tac-tics in relation to the present situation, we must take

as the basis the economic situation and the prospectsfor the immediate future. Without such an estimatewe cannot lay down the correct line for the Party.

Capitalism in this country has been enjoying a per-

iod of economic prosperity. What are the indicationsso far as a continuation of this prosperity is concerned?

There are signs that we have reached the peak ofthe present period of high production and big profitsfor the capitalists, and that the trend from now on willbe downward and not upward.

This does not mean an immediate period of economiccrisis, but rather that the tendency is toward a periodof depression such as we had, for instance, in the year1924 and during part of 1925.

Capitalism in this country has had a number of upsand downs since the end of the war. The cycle of thesechanges has been in much shorter intervals than be-fore the war. The period of great prosperity followingthe end of the war was succeeded by the deep-goingcrisis of 1921-22, which was accompanied by wide-spreadunemployment, the open-shop drive and great industrialconflicts. Then in 1923, there was an upward move-ment bringing fairly good conditions for a period ofsomething over a year. This was succeeded by the de-pression of 1924, which extended into the spring of 1925.This latter depression, however, was not of the deep-going character as the crisis of 1921. In 1925 industryagain reached a high level.

Thus we see that during the years since the end ofthe war and since the exceptional prosperity of the im-mediate post-war period, American industry has gonethrough a quick succession of depressions and highlevels of production. The present indications are thatindustry is again tending downward, and that withinpossibly a year we "will have another period of depres-sion.

Indications of this tendency are to be found, for in-stance, in steel production, which usually acts as thebarometer showing the direction in which industry isgoing. During 1925 steel production reached an un-usually high level, passing above 100% of the theoreti-cal level of capacity production. During the first fourmonths of this year -production of steel has fallensteadily and is now again below 90%. Advance ordersplaced in the steel 'mills have fallen from month to monthfor the past four months.

During the month of April we find that employmentin manufacture as reported to the United States De-partment of Labor shows a falling off of 1%.

Reports of the building industry also indicate thatthe boom period of this industry which extended up tolast year is over. New permits for building issued in40 of the principle cities show a decline. The buildingindustry for the past couple of years has, been operat-ing on the basis of production of six billion in new build-ings each year. A large part of this activity was dueto the fact that building in several lines was neglectedduring the war period and in the years immediately fol-lowing the end of the war, because firstly, the build-ing industry 'was mobilized to create new war industry,and secondly, because of the excessively high prices fol-lowing after the close of the war. The shortage ofhouses and apartments seems now to have been madeup, and the building industry is heading for a period oflower production.

Another factor in the situation is the agriculturalcrisis. The farmers are passing through a difficult per-

iod with debts and mortgages increasing, and the mi-gration to the cities from the land is increasing again.When we remember that the farmers consume, in theform of agricultural implements and tools, more than40% of the steel production in the United States, theeffect of the agricultural crisis upon industry in generalbecomes clear.

Another factor in the situation is the difficulties whichare developing in connection with the installment sales.The installment business has developed tremendouslyin recent years. It has been extended to lines of mer-chandise not previously sold on the installment plan.A part of the stimulation which industry has had in thelast few years has been due to this tremendous develop-ment of selling on the installment plan. Warnings arebeing sounded in financial circles that the Installmentbusiness is overdeveloped, that the discount houseswhich handle the notes of the installment business havereached the limits of their capacity to discount thesenotes. A curtailment of the ability of the firms sellinggoods on ithe installment plan to discount their noteswill result in a curtailment of installment selling, withthe natural consequences of curtailment in productionin the industries producing goods sold on this basis.

The general estimate Which we can draw from thisa,nalysis of the situation is that, while at present indus-try is still producing at a high rate and while it willprobably continue to do so for some months, yet pro-duction is on the downward curve toward a depressionwhich 'will make itself felt in a developed form pos-sibly within the next twelve months. There are no signsthat the depression will be a crisis such as We had in1921-22, but rather a period of such slowing down of in-dustry as in 1924.

Special Crises in Industry.

While industry generally has been enjoying a periodof high production, certain portions of industry have notshared in this general prosperity, due to special con-ditions in the given industry.

This has been true of the coal mining industry where,due to overdevelopment, the industry is in a state ofcrisis. In coail mining, we also have the phenomenonof the industry drifting from the northern union fieldsto the southern non-union fields, which has accentuatedthe crisis.

There is also in the coal mining industry the addi-tional factor of the great development of the use ofelectricity generated through water power.

The textile industry is facing a situation similar tothat of the coal industry. The industry is moving fromthe north to the south and at the same time changets instyle have resulted in reduced orders for the industry.The needle trades are in a state of crisis due to the fac-tor of style, and the movement of the industry from thelarge centers to small towns.

It is in these industries, which have been goingthrough crises or partial crises, that we have had thegreat struggles of the workers, and it is in these indus-tries also that our Party has made its greatest gains.

The Workers' Struggle.

The economic conditions outlined above have tended

towards reawakening the spirit of struggle among theworkers of this country. In the industries which haveshared in the high level of economic well-being, there isa tendency for the workers to demand to share in thisprosperity in the form of increased wages. Thus wehave, for instance, a movement of the railroad workersfor the higher 'wages, and the struggle of the 158,000anthracite -coal workers for higher wages and full recog-nition of their union (the anthracite coal regions arenot deeply involved in the general crisis of the coal in-dustry because of the special character of their product).

In those industries involved in special crises we have,on the other hand, the resistance of the workers againstthe attempt of the capitalists to make them bear theburden of the losses of the industry through lower wages,longer hours and worse working conditions.

With the present developing mood of the workers todemand a bigger share in the still existing prosperity,and with a depression in the offing, we may look for-ward to another period of sharper struggle between theworkers and the capitalists. The coming of the de-pression will undoubtedly be the signal for attemptsagainst the standards of the workers. It will result inresistance and wide-spread strikes.

Such a situation creates a favorable ground for theParty to take the leadership in the struggle of the work-ers and through fighting for their immediate demandsextend its influence and strengthen itself.

III. THE POLITICAL SITUATION.rpHE great victory which 'the capitalist reactionaries•*• scored in the election of Coolidge in the 1924 presi-dential election has been followed by an aggressive useof the poltiical power consolidated in the hands of thecapitalists through this big victory.

President Coolidge has more frankly espoused the capi-talist program than his predecessors. The law-makingpower of the government has been openly and continu-ously used to strengthen the position of the capitalists.The president's message to congress for the first timeacknowledged the partnership of the government withthe great trusts and corporations. All appearance offighting against mergers and trustification has beenabandoned and the government sponsors trustified busi-ness.

Tax law revisions were made so as to relieve the bigcapitalists of the burden of taxes, and thus opened theway for greater accumulation of new capital.

The debt settlements with the war debtors have re-sulted in cancellation of from 20 to 75% of the debtsowing this country. The partial concellations weremade in the interest of the international banking housesand for the purpose of strengthening American andEuropean capitalism.

At the same time the program of legislation directedagainst the workers is being put through congress. Theadoption of the Watson-Parker bill, the proposal forthe registration of foreign born workers, the proposalfor legislation on the mining industry similar to theWatson-Parker bill, are the offensive programs of thecapitalists against the workers.

With this open offensive of the capitalists in the use

J U L Y , 1 9 2 6 405

404

of the state power, signs of developing differences withinthe capitalist camp have made their appearance.

On two major issues, recently, there have been votescutting across the party lines.. This was true on tieworld court issue and in relation to the Haugen bill forrelief of the farmers. In the vote on the world court wefind expressing itself the opposition between that parto£ finance capital which, is primarily interested in inter-national loans and investment and which desires theentry of the United States into the world court andleague of nations as a guarantee for its loans and in-vestments, and capital which is primarily interested inindustry and which sees no gain for itself in having thiscountry become involved in the international collectionagencies. In the second instance, the Haugen bill, wehave the opposition of the middle class farmers againstthe predominant big capitalist interests which are rulingat Washington.

Another issue which will :play a big part in the strug-gles within the capitalist Class is the question of thetariff. The international banking houses with their loansand investments in Europe desire a lower tariff in or-der to create the condition which will enaible their debt-ors to repay them, and the only possibility of their do-ing this is through selling in the United States. Hence,the tendency to favor the lower tariff in these circles.Naturally this will be resisted by the industries whichare profltting from the tariff. These economic conflictsbecome the basis for struggles with the capitalist partiesand, together 'wittti the open use of the governmentalpower by the capitalists against the workers, createsthe condition for a new momentum in the developmentof the movement of the workers and exploited farmersfor independent political action.

The Labor Movement.The organized labor movement of this country has

undoubtedly moved far towards the right, as is estab-lished in the analysis of the Enlarged Executive Com-mittee of the Communist International. The approvalgiven to the various forms of class collaboration suchas labor banking, the B. & O. plan, the tendency toavoid strikes and to enter into agreement for all formsof arbitration, establish this fact clearly. At the sametime we have the development of company unions, shamforms of industrial democracy, stock^selling and otherschemes through which efforts 'are made to tie the work-ers to the capitalist machinery of -production.

While tine acceptance and approval of these schemesto prevent the 'workers from carrying on an open classstruggle ill their Interest shows that the bureaucraticleaders of the labor movement have become the lackeysof the capitalists, at the same time we must not over-look the social significance of the fact of the movementby the 'capitalists to extend these sham forms of par-ticipation by the workers in the ownership and controlof industry. We must ask ourselves why is it that thecapitalists are making these tremendous efforts to ex-tend these forms of class collaboration.

If we approach the question from a Marxian stand-point, we must come to the conclusion that the highlydeveloped collective, monopolized industry in the UnitedStates necessarily will give 'birth to a demand among theworkers for greater participation in the control of this

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

industry. Fundamentally it is the development of sucha yet unconscious and unclear desire on the part of theworkers for 'greater participation in the control of in-dustry 'which the capitalists are meeting through thesham forms which have had such a great developmentrecently.

It is the task of our Party in such a situation to de-velop a clear program for actual control of industry bythe workers and set this against the sham forms of-fered by the capitalists. Such a program would be theBest method of fighting against the class collaborationschemes of the capitalists.

There is also the likelihood that this question will re-sult in division within the labor bureaucracy itself, be-tween those who fully accept and support the capitalistprogram as now developing and those leaders in thetrade unions who oppose the making of the union anauxiliary of the capitalist machinery of production.

IV. THE WORK OF THE PARTY.What are the tasks of the Party in the light of this

situation, They are not new. They have already beenlaid down in our statement of Party policy. What isnew is that we must take up the tasks with greater en-ergy than ever before in order to take full advantageof the favorable situation which is developing for ourwork.

Work in the Trade Unions.

The work in the trade unions remains the major taskof the Party. WTe must win the organized workers forthe revolutionary class struggle. To do that we mustestablish our contacts on the basis of the existing de-velopment of class 'Consciousness in the labor movement.Then, from that starting point, build up a left wTingmovement which we can, in the process of work andstruggle, draw closer to us. We have outlined our pro-gram for this work. We 'have based it upon the realitiesof the present situation. Now we must transform it intoaction. It 'Still remains part of ithe duty of the Partyto draw its members into the trade unions where theyare not already organized in the unions, and then to or-ganize them into fractions, which can systematically ap-ply the Party policies and aid in the crystallization ofbroad left wing movements in the trade unions.

Organization of the Unorganized.

The 'period of prosperity is a period in which thework of organizing the unorganized can be undertakeswith prospects of success. The indications are that therestill stretch before us some months before the economicdepression will set in to such a degree as to interferewith this work. WTe must make th.e most of the oppor-tunity which we have in this respect. We have gainedsome experiences as the result of our work in the pastsix months and this must be turned into account in car-rying forward this work. The organization of the unor-ganized is part of our program for the winning of theorganized labor movement for the revolutionary classstruggle. The 'workers brought into the trade unionsthrough our organizational efforts, both in stimulatingthe existing unions and 'through direct independent ef-fort, will strengthen the left wing in the labor unions.

The United Labor Ticket.

The campaign for a united labor ticket must be givenmajor attention by the Party. The congressional andstate elections .this year will stir up new interest inpolitical affairs among the workers. The open action ofthe Coolidge administration against the labor movementhas created the foundation for a new momentum for themovement for a labor party.

Our Party must see to it that this year there are laborcandidates on the ballot in every state and congressionaldistrict where we have Party organizations. We havenot set hard and fast rules as to how the labor ticketshall be placed on the ballot. We will support exist-ing farmer-labor parties, where they 'have been organ-ized. We will endeavor to create united front confer-ences to nominate united labor tickets where the groundis sufficiently prepared and the conditions ripe for thenomination of a ticket on this basis. If we cannotachieve either one of these forms of developing a unitedfront movement in the election campaign, we will nom-inate candidates on our own Party ticket and conduct acampaign directly under the Communist banner.

It should be possible for us to rally several hundredthousand votes for independent political action throughthis campaign. That will be a forward movement forlabor in the United States. If we throw sufficient en-ergy into this work, we may be able to drive this ex-pression for independent political action up to a halfmillion votes. That is within the realms of possibility.Such a vote for united labor candidates would be a bigstep forward for the labor movement in this country.We must put sufficient drive into the movement to makethe election campaign this year count in the develop-ment of a class movemnet for independent political ac-tion among the American workers.

Agricultural Work.We have again made a beginning in our work among

the farmers. The crisis in the agricultural field createsfavorable conditions for the progress of this work. Asthe Party strength increases, it must give more supportto the development of the movement among the farmers.It must establish its nuclei among the agricultural work-ers and poor farmers, and make them the starting pointfor a broader mass movement against capitalism on thepart of the farmers.

The DAILY WORKER.

We have considered fundamentally the situation inwhich The DAILY WORKER finds itself. We have care-fully scrutinized our paper with a view of finding itsweaknesses and developing the form that will enable itto become a .mass labor paper, while not sacrificing itsCommunist editorial policy. The improvements must becarried through and the Party must be placed behindThe DAILY WORKER organizationally so that we maymake it a more powerful instrument in our work in thiscountry.

The anti-imperialist campaign, the work among wom-en, the work of the Young Workers' League, the workamong the Negroes, are phases of our work which must

be co-ordinated with the major policies of the Party andaid us in developing a real movement for this country.

Building the Party.

We have not, also, given sufficient attention in thepast to the strengthening of our Party organizationally.This becomes more than ever a question which musthave systematic and persistent fallowing up since theParty reorganization. Our Party, organizationally, is stillvery weak. We must teach the new Party units how tofunction. Until we do this, the reorganization will notbe fully effective.

A number of thousands of Party members have drop-ped out of the organization through failing to registerin the reorganization. There has been too much of atendency to accept this without an energetic campaignto draw these members back into the reorganized Party.Many of them can be won back for the Party work. Thiswork must be undertaken immediately.

In addition to these efforts to strengthen the Party,we 'must carry on an energetic campaign for new mem-bers to be drawn into the Party orgnaiization from theshop by the new Party units. We can greatly strength-en our organization and thus fit it for undertakinggreater tasks in the work i£ given the proper attention.We must take full advantage of the extention of theinfluence and prestige of the Party to build the Partyorganiz ationally.

New Progress for the Party.

Our Party is breaking the isolation in which it hasfound itself now for nearly two years. The Party hasfor the first time actually undertaken the organizationof the unorganized workers and has achieved successesin this field. The Party has become the leader in greatstrikes of the workers.

In the campaign for the protection of the foreign bornworkers, the Party has successfully applied the unitedfront tactics and has drawn hundreds of thousands ofworkers with it into common struggle.

The opportunity which lies before us is favorable forthe growth of the influence of our Party as the leaderof the labor movement and for building the Party or-ganizationally. What is now needed is that we throwour full energy into the work of taking advantage of thefavorable conditions which are developing.

This requires of us the liquidation of the factionalstruggle within the Party. It requires of us that all theforces within the Party, irrespective of previous group-ings, be drawn into constructive work for our movement-

This is the goal towards which all our efforts mustbe directed. The present leadership of the Party, tak-ing the decision of the Communist International as itsbasis, will carry on the work of the Party in this spirit,and with the co-operation of all the leading comrades,irrespective of previous groupings, will develop such aninner Party line as to carry forward to a successful con-clusion the work of mobilizing the whole Party strengthfor mass work 'and liquidation of factionalism.

"Unity and Mass Work" is the slogan under which ourParty will go forward.

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406

The Furriers Strike—A Victory for the4(Miour Week

The Left Wing from Opposition to LeadershipBy Ben Gitlow

New York Fur Workers' Union was thefirst union in the United States of any im-

portance to come under the leadership of theCommunists and of the Left Wing. This unionhas approximately 13,000 members. The NewYork union functions in an industry that pro-duces 80 to 85% of all the fur garments manu-factured in the United States. This accountsfor the position the New York union holds inthe International Pur Workers' Union of NorthAmerica and Canada. It is the financial back-bone of the International and comprises over75% of its membership. The International, how-ever, is not controlled by the Left Wing. At thelast convention the Sorkinites, who were theallies of the Left Wing, broke away and unitedwith the reactionaries and the Socialists andgained control of the organization. The Inter-national Fur Workers' Union is therefore in thehands of the right wing machine that still main-tains its hegemony over the majority of needletrade unions.

The Original Demands of the Furriers.Early in January the New York Furriers' Un-

ion presented the following demands to themanufacturers:

1. Forty-hour, five-day week.2. Thirty-two-hour week during the slack periods.3. Equal division of work thruout the year.4. Unemployment insurance fund to be raised by

contributions from the manufacturers at the rate of3% of the wages paid, distribution of the fund to becompletely in the hands of the union.

5. Manufacturers to be punished for failing toobey the agreement,

6. A twenty-five per cent increase in wages overthe present minimum scales.

7. All skins must bear the union label.8. Foremen must not be permitted to work in the

shops on skins.9. Shops to be inspected by the representatives

of the union.

The Manufacturers Reject the Demands.The demands were rejected by the manufac-

turers who are divided into three associations—the Greek Fur Manufacturers' Association, theUnited Fur Manufacturers and the AssociatedFur Manufacturers, Inc. The Associated FurManufacturers, Inc., represents the big domin-ating manufacturers, those financially mostpowerful. This association succeeded in unit-ing all the others in a common struggle against

the workers. The bosses followed up their re-jection of the workers' demands by declaring alockout of the workers employed in the shopsof the Associated Fur Manufacturers, Inc. Thiswas answered by the union with a strike of allthe 12,000 workers employed in the shops ofthe three associations.The United Front of the Right Wing and the

Bosses.The strike which was fought out most bitterly

and lasted 17 long weeks would have been set-tled much sooner had the manufacturers notdepended upon the following two factors fromthe very beginning of the strike:

1. The manufacturers had assurances from theRight Wing and the Socialists represented by theJewish Daily Forward that the Left. Wing Com-munist leadership during the course of the strikewould be discredited and eliminated, thus enablingthe Right Wing to gain control of the strike situationand pave the way for a satisfactory settlement in theinterest of the manufacturers.

2. The manufacturers were assured by the sameelements that the funds of the union were insufficientfor carrying on a long struggle and that if the manu-facturers would prolong the struggle the strike wouldcollapse on account of lack of funds.

The manufacturers opened the attack uponthe strike by raising the cry of Bolshevism.They declared the strike did not involve tradeunion questions, that the leaders of the strikedid not represent the workers but were Com-munists, that the demands presented were notin the interests of the workers, but in the in-terest of Communism, and that undoubtedly thestrike was being engineered by Moscow and thatthe Communist leaders were receiving fundsfrom that quarter. The Right Wing took upthe cry of the manufacturers and made it theircry thus forming a united front with the bossesagainst the workers. The Jewish Daily Forwarddeclared that the Communist leaders were moreinterested in the championing of their particu-lar political views than they were in fightingfor the demands of the workers. They chargedthat the demands presented by the Communistleaders to the manufacturers were Utopian de-mands and that the Communist leaders mightas well have demanded that the shops be turnedover without compensation to the workers.

The united front of the bosses against thestrikers included the Tammany Hall city gov-

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eminent through the police and courts, the Sor-kin, Winick elements on the joint board of theNew York Furriers' Union, the majority of theofficials of the International Fur Workers' Un-ion, the Right Wing machine in the needletrades, the Beckerman reactionary forces in theAmalgamated, the Socialists dominated by theJewish Daily Forward and Morris Hillquit, andthe reactionary burocratic machine of theAmerican Federation of Labor.

The Forces of the Workers.Against this formidable united front of the

bosses the union had to depend first upon itsown forces, their determination and militancy,and second, upon a united front of all honestworking class elements in support of the strike.The Furriers' Union did not take a sectarianposition in the face of this formidable opposi-tion. To have done so would have resulted incertain defeat. The Furriers' Union insistedthat it was part of the recognized labor move-ment of the United States, the American Feder-ation of Labor. The union answered the chargethat it was not part of the labor movement bygetting the Central Trades and Labor Councilto officially indorse the strike. All elements ofthe working class movement were officially in-vited to address strike meetings and support thestrike. It was this policy pursued thruout thestrike that accounts for the successful tacticsused in conducting the strike to a victoriousconclusion. The union never abandoned theofficial labor movement. It entrenched itself sowell in the American Federation of Labor thatevery attempt to dislodge it failed. In spite ofevery provocation of the Right Wing to forcea break between the union and the AmericanFederation of Labor the union maintained itsposition. It did not fall a victim to the splittingdualistic opposition tactics so often resorted toby militants in the American Labor movementin similar situations.The Leadership of the Union and the Rank

and File.This policy of the union was backed up by a

Left Wing leadership composed of a large num-ber of Communists, and by a militant fightingrank and file. The union was fortunate in hav-ing a solidified capable leadership. ComradeBen Gold is a young, astute, capable and ener-getic mass leader. From the beginning of thestrike he had the complete confidence of themasses. He was ably assisted by ComradesGross, Shapiro, Warshofsky and others. In thisstrike the rank and file fought and not the hiredsluggers and professional gangsters formerlyused. The rank and file picket committee dis-played the finest qualities of proletarian sacri-fices and courage. The picket committee wasbacked up by the whole membership of theunion. Militancy and mass action characterizethe Left Wing methods of conducting this

407

strike. It was not unusual to witness from fiveto ten thousand workers on the picket line. Thestrikers fought against cut throats, sluggers,gunmen, and brutal clubbing police. Hundredsof workers were arrested. Many are now un-der very heavy bail. Some have been sent toprison.The Role of the Needle Trades Right Wing, the

Forward and the Socialist Party.

The needle trades Right Wring saw an oppor-utnity in the Furriers' strike to recuperate thepower it had lost. The Left Wing had succeededin conducting a successful opposition fight intwo organizations, very strategically situated.From an opposition the Left Wing became theadministration, first, in the New York Furriers'Union, and then in the International Ladies'Garment Workers' Union in New York. Thesetwo Left Wing administrations have charge of amembership of approximately 78,000 workers.The Right Wing fully recognizes that, if theLeft Wing administrations can prove that theycan in addition to managing the affairs of theorganizations, lead the workers successfully instruggles against the bosses, then the Left Wingwill not only establish itself permanently in theorganizations it now controls but will so winthe confidence of the masses in the needletrades that the continued dominance of theRight Wing burocracy will be menaced. TheFurriers' Union of New York must therefore notbe allowed to win the strike. Everything mustbe done to sabotage and smash it. It wasrecognized that the strike could not be success-fully attacked by the Right Wring in the Fur-riers' Union alone. The situation demanded thatthe whole Right Wing in the needle trades withthe assistance of the Socialist Party under thedriving leadership of the Jewish Daily Forwardwould be necessary for this well thought-outconscious plan to betray and smash the strikein order to discredit the Left Wing. These ele-ments became, in the fight against the LeftWing, the direct strike-breaking agents of thebosses. A few events wall prove this conten-tion.

At the beginning of the strike the Forwarddifferentiated between the strikers and theCommunist leadership that was "misleading"the workers. This campaign to break down theconfidence of the workers in their leaders andthus the morale of the strike, it conducted underthe guise of supporting the strike. The Social-ist Party did not object to this underminingwork of the Forward and by its silenceacquiesced.

Early in the strike the Right Wing leaders ofthe Fur Workers' International Union met inthe office of the International together with arepresentative of the Forward and adopted thefollowing dastardly plans for smashing thestrike.

40S

1. That the Forward shall print news to the effectthat the workers are dissatisfied with the strikeleadership and the manner in which the- Communistleaders are conducting the strike.

2. That Abraham Beckerman, manager of theNew York joint board of the Amalgamated Cloth-ing Workers' Union, shall supply sluggers who shallbeat up innocent strikers and that then the Forwardshould charge that the non-Communist strikers arebeing beaten up by the express orders of the Com-munist strike committee.

3. That the officers of the International who areright wingers, shall take over the leadership of thestrike.

4. That the strike funds shall be attached so thatthe Communist leaders shall not have the wherewith-all to carry on the struggle.

5. That the Fur Manufacturers' Association inwhose interest the moves were to be made, shall con-tribute $100,000.Did the Socialist Party repudiate this nefari-

ous plot and condemn the Forward? Follow-ing the exposure of this plot Norman Thomasrepudiated the activities of the Forward and ral-lied to the defense of the strikers. The officialspeakers of the Socialist Party, however, whoaddressed the strikers at their meetings nevercondemned the action the Forwrard but insteadminimized the importance of the leadership,deprecated the quarrels which they termed per-sonal quarrels between leaders, stated that theold leaders had rendered service and made sac-rifices for the union and in general spread pes-simism. In this case the silence of the SocialistParty and its failure to repudiate was nothingelse than an indorsement of the schemes of theRight Wing to smash the strike. It was there-fore not surprising that during the course of thestrike many workers abandoned the SocialistParty, that demonstrations took place againstthe Forward and that the representatives of theWorkers (Communist) Party were given themost enthusiastic welcome.

When the Right Wing tied up the funds ofthe union the International Bank controlled bythe Right Wing of the International Ladies'Garment Workers' Union, the Jewish Daily For-ward and the Socialist Party carried out direct-ly upon the advice of Morris Hillquit their ordersto keep the money from being turned over tothe General Strike Committee. Morris Hillquitadvised the bank to withhold the funds evenafter the Joint Board of the Union had madethe necessary legal changes required in the per-sonnel of the custodian of its funds. The re-cognized leader of the Socialist Party here alsoplayed the role of strike breaker and used alabor bank not in the interests of labor butagainst labor.

The Left Wing Must Fight as a United Force.Many more cases could be cited but it is use-

less. Important are the lessons to be drawn.The Right Wing now attacks with its unitedstrength. The Left Wing in the needle tradesmust learn to do likewise. The failure of theI

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

Left Wing in the needle trades to properly sup-port the Left Wing fight in the Amalgamatedmade possible the advent of Beckerman, themost reactionary force in the needle trade un-ions. The craft attitude on the part of the needletrades Left Wing must be abandoned. The LeftWing must fight as a united force for the en-tire industry and must broaden out from a localto a national scale.

The Role of President Green and the AmericanFederation of Labor.

The plots of the Right Wing, the Jewish DailyForward and the Socialist Party were shatteredagainst the solidarity and determination of therank and file. The Right Wing and the bosseshad to bring in fresh forces against the strikers.The result was that Hugh Frayne, organizer ofthe American Federation of Labor, andWilliam Green, President of the A. F. of L., werebrought into the strike arena. A letter was sentby the International officers to all the members)of the New York Fur Workers' Union. The let-ter intimated that a satisfactory settlement wasin sight and that announcement of the termswould be made at a meeting in Carnegie Hallat which Green would speak. In addition to re-iterating the deep concern of the Internationalofficers in the strike the letter also enclosed aballot which was to be returned unsigned to theinternational officers, upon which the workerswere to vote whether or not the Internationalofficers should have the right to negotiate a sat-isfactory settlement of the strike. This maneu-ver failed because the General Strike Committeeto the surprise of the right wing did not boy-cott the meeting but instructed the strikers infull force to attend and give a concrete -demon-stration of what they think of the new methoddevised, to betray the strike. The leaders ofthe strikers were debarred from the hall. Thesame fate was experienced by every recognizedLeft Winger and Communist. Hugh Fraynecould not still the demand that Gold be permit-ted to speak. The rank and file gave its an-swer. The meeting had to be adjourned. Themaneuver with the A. F. of L. was defeated.President Green's prestige received a seriousblow. He had to retreat and make peace withthe leaders of the strike. Following the meet-ing in Carnegie Hall that could not be held,Hugh Frayne made public the basis upon whichthe strike was to be betrayed. They were asfollows:

1. The old agreement shall form the basis for asettlement.

2. Elimination of overtime work as much as pos-sible.

3. A three-year agreement.4. No apprenticeship from Feb. 1, 1926, to Feb.

19, 1928.5. No sub-contracting.6. A ten per cent increase over the present mini-

mum, wage scales.

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7. At the end of two years there shall be oneminimum wage scale instead of two.

8. A 42-hour, 6-day week, 4 hours' work to be doneon Saturday.

Hugh Frayne rushed to the Central Tradesand Labor Council of New York and had themwithdraw their indorsement of the strike. Heplanned to settle with the manufacturers on theeight points, order the workers back to theshops and if they insisted on striking to declareit an o-utlaw strike and to use the tactics ofBerryism to smash it. The leadership of theFurriers' Union, however, were not to be caughtnapping. They got Green into conference.They insisted on their official standing and re-cognition by the American Federation of Labor.An agreement was reached in which the eightpoints were rejected, a mass meeting arrangedto be held at which President Green was tospeak and indorse the strike together withShachtman, the president of the International,and Ben Gold, the leader of the strikers. Theseevents prove that to have boycotted the Car-negie Hall meeting would have been a left sec-tarian tactic which would have permitted theRight Wing and the A. F. of L. to isolate theLeft WTing leadership and betray the strike. Atthe 69th Regiment Armory, President Green,representing the reactionary old class-collabora-tion forces, the reigning reactionary burocracyof the A. F. of L., spoke along with Gold, theyoung Communist, the Left Wing leader repre-senting the militant revolutionary new forcesarising in the American labor movement. AndGreen had to listen to the thunderous applausefor Gold and the Left Wing he represents.

Green a few weeks later returned to NewYork in order to act as a go-between betweenthe manufacturers and the strikers. He cameto "settle the strike." According to the pressreport, Green acted as a sort of impartial chair-man. This is a new angle on class-collabora-tion—the labor burocrats acting as peace agentsbetween the workers and the bosses and not aschampions for the workers' demands.

The Forty-Hour Week.What Green's position was to the demands

of the workers at the negotiations is not pub-lically known. However, following the breakingup of negotiations, Green came out with an in-dorsement of the main issue of the strike—the40-hour week. The Furriers' Union used thisindorsement by Green of the forty hours to builda broad united front in support of the furriers'strike on the basis of support of a fight to es-tablish a forty-hour, five-day week thruout in-dustry. A forty-hour mass meeting was held inMadison Square Garden. Twenty thousandworkers were present. The Central Trades andLabor Council of New York officially indorsedthe forty-hour week and had speakers presentat the meeting. Indorsements came from all

409

over the country. The Left Wing became thechampion of the shorter work week. The strikenow had the backing of all organized labor. Allthe maneuvers of the bosses, the Right Wing,and the reactoinary burocrats to break thestrike had been defeated. The bosses had torecognize the fact. They had to deal with theLeft Wing. The end of the strike is a victoryfor the forty-hour, five-day week and a victoryfor -the Left Wing. The Left Wing has emergedfrom an opposition to a leader of the masses inthe struggle against the bosses.

The Terms of Settlement.

The strike was settled upon the followingterms:

The basic 40-hour week, which is so important tothem for the protection of their health, has beenwon. They still have their ten legal holidays, onlythree without pay and these in the dull months. Theyhave a 10% increase in their minimum wage scalesand a ^classification of work which makes a furtherpay raise for a great many of them. No workers canbe discharged the week before a holiday—the em-ployers' old trick to avoid payment for the workers'day off. No apprentices are to be taken on for twoyears.

Overtime is not allowed, except during the fourmonths from September to December, inclusive,when employers may hire workers for four hours ex-tra on Saturday—at extra pay. There is to be no sec-tional contracting. Other points agreed upon dealwith the more technical phases. The contract runsfor three years, retroactive to Feb. 1, 1926, when theold agreement expired.

In addition an agreement was reached that allthe scabs are to be discharged and their futuredisposition left in the hands of a special com-mittee of the union. This is the first time sucha provision has been won by a union.

The announcement of the terms of the settle-ment was greeted with wild enthusiasm by theworkers. It was a victory, a clear-cut one. Theprovision to exclude apprentices for a period oftwo years is very unfortunate and is to beseverely criticized. The Left Wing does notfavor the policy of the reformist leaders- ofunions of skilled workers towards the youth.The Furriers' Union has depended much in thestrike upon the fighting calibre of its youth. Tointerpret the clause as an exclusion justifica-tion would be a serious mistake. Rather theunion with this clause should be free to adopta well working policy of regulating the entranceof youth workers into the trade.

The Fur Workers' Union has won a victory.It faces new struggles. The victory of the strikemust be turned into a victory to win the Inter-national Fur Workers' Union and to pave theway for unification of the Left Wing forces inthe needle trades, for a national movement, andfor the amalgamation of all the existing needletrade unions into one powerful union for the en-tire industry.

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

41U

China's Period of OrganizationBy William F. Dunne

TWO months ago the great capitalist news ser-vices were telling gleefully of the prospec-

tive downfall of the workers' and peasants' gov-ernment in Canton, recording the defeats of theKuominchun—the people's army—predictingthe 'break-up of the people's party, Kuoming-tang, praising the military genius of Chang Tso-lin, Japan's emissary in Manchuria and cele-brating the alliance between Chang and Wu PeiFu, Great Britain's tool for the time being, andwho also flirts with U. S. imperialism when Brit-ish influence wanes.

The capture of Pekin by Chang Tso-lin wasduly noted, the retreat of the national army thruNankow pass towards Kalgan was hailed as theend of all resistance to China's imperialist ene-mies and the mouth of world capitalism beganto water at the thought of the rich pickingsthat were to be had in pacified China.

Nothing is easier to over-estimate than theimportance of military victories in the strug-gle that is taking place in China and especiallyis this true of victories gained by the imperial-ist forces over the still very poorly organized,equipped and disciplined peoples' armies.

It is easy, extremely so, when the wish isfather to the thought, to believe that the strug-gle of the Chinese masses for their liberationcan be decided solely by force of arms.

The imperialists of Japan, Great Britain andAmerica probably have learned to their sorrowin the last two months that the armed strugglebecomes at times of secondary importance andthat defeats in the military field serve a usefulpurpose for the Chinese masses in that duringand following these periods they turn their en-ergies to such equally effective means of com-batting imperialism as the organization and ex-tension of the trade union movement, the or-ganization of peasants' leagues—in general theconsolidation of the mass forces supporting thenational liberation movement without which nosuccessful military enterprise can be under-taken.

Following the defeat of the First Peoples'Army by Chang Tso-lin and its retreat fromPeking, the immediate task of the national li-beration forces was to prevent a juncture ofthe main forces of the armies of Chang Tso-linand Wu Pei Fu.

This task was accomplished successfully withthe result that a number of Wu Pei Fu's gen-erals refused to lead their troops in aid ofChang. The news of these defiances of Wu'sorders was carried by the capitalist press andthe six week period in which Wu remained in-active in the face of repeated demands for as-

sistance from Chang, allowed the Peoples' Armyto take up and consolidate strong positions tothe north and west of Peking from which itnow threatens to oust Chang.

The latest news as this is written is that Wuhas ordered one of his generals to lead some80,000 troops to reinforce Chang, but it isdoubtful if this troop movement will take place.There is evidently great disaffection amongWTu's troops. He has been forced to dismiss theleader of the Honan army, Chin Yu-now, butdid not execute him. That WTu did not followthis pleasant Chinese custom as did Changafter the mutiny of Kuo Sung-lin is substantialevidence that his authority is far from that ofan unchallenged dictator.

Without any actual account of the details(the capitalist news services either do not knowthem or will not tell them) what has happened,can be outlined from a knowledge of the basicstrategy of the national liberation movementworking thru its most active sections—the Chi-nese Communist Party and the Kuomintang.

Roughly, this strategy is as follows:1. To isolate the imperialist forces in the

coast cities.2. To surround and isolate the imperialists

and their militarist allies in the interior.3. To increase the mass pressure on these

imperialist centers until the existence of for-eign forces in China is made impossible.

This strategy is being carried out systematic-ally by the following methods:

1. The organization of and strikes by un-ions in the coast cities (Shanghai and Shang-tung) boycotts of imperialist enterprises andimperialist centers (Hongkong).

2. The extension of union organization andcentral labor councils into imperialist or semi-imperialist territory (Peking, Tientsin, Hankow,etc.)

4. Organization of peasants' leagues andmass resistance to tax collections by the mili-tarist tuchuns.

5. The organization of students and thelower middle class against the imperialists inthe main centers in co-operation with the work-ers.

6. The organization of a national army ofliberation supported by the workers and peas-ants and the close connection of the militarycampaigns with the economic and political is-sues of the national struggle.

7. The consolidation of a workers' and peas-ants' government in Canton as a solid base forthe national liberation movement in all of Chinaand the extension of the authority and influence

J U L Y , 1 9 2 6

of this government to the southern provinces.The horrible conditions which prevail in Chi-

nese industry have made possible the rapid or-ganization of the workers on the basis of de-mands for better wages and working conditionsand more job control.

The speed with which the economic strug-gles of the young Chinese labor movement de-veloped into political struggles has astonishedthe world, but it is explained by the fact thatthe Chinese masses can only better their condi-tions substantially by driving out the imperial-ists and achieving national independence. Theimperialists are the chief enemy and it was na-tural that the Chinese labor movement, in opencombat with the foreign capitalists, should de-velop a definite political character.

The great mass of the Chinese population of440,000,000 are workers and peasants and theoverwhelming majority of these are peasants.Not only does the national liberation movementhave to base itself on the workers and peas-ants, but it has also to allow the most disciplinedsection—the working class—to lead the move-ment and adopt a program directed againstlandlordism and feudalism.

The Chinese national liberation movementtherefore, takes on a revolutionary characterwith the workers in the lead.

Certain conflicts have developed within theKuomintang between the middle class and theproletarian elements, but the workers have al-ways come out victorious because the ChineseCommunist Party and the left wing of the Kuo-mintang have been able to prove to the massesthat opposition to the minimum demands of theworkers and peasants is sabotage of the strug-gle for national liberation and in effect gives aidand comfort to the imperialists.

The work of the Chinese Communist Partyamong the peasantry, correct in tactics and re-sults because of the correct approach to theproblem of the role of the peasantry, will prob-ably serve as an example to all parties in col-onial countries where some forms of feudalismstill persist and perhaps as well to Communistsin more advanced countries.

The estimate of the situation and the policypursued by the Chinese Communist Party in co-operation with the workingclass section of theKuomintang (endorsed in its general lines atthe Second Congress of the Kuomintang held inJanuary of this year) towards the peasantry isas follows:

The fundamental problem of the Chinese na-tional liberation movement is the peasant prob-lem. The victory of the revolutionary demo-cratic tendencies of the Chinese national libera-tion movement depends upon the degree towhich the masses of the 400,000,000 Chinesepeasantry are drawn together with the Chineseworkers and under their leadership into a de-cisive struggle.

411

The Chinese peasantry live under incrediblybad conditions.

The penetration of foreign capital into thecountry has undermined the patriarchal rela-tions in the country side.

The extremely backward development of agri-culture makes it impossible for the increasingpopulation in the agricultural regions to gain aliving from the land.

The continued civil war between the militaristcliques places an intolerable burden on thepeasant masses.

The importation of cheap foreign made goodsruins the handicraft tradesmen.

Millions of peasants suffer from land famineand either are, or are becoming, pauperized.They suffer from a shortage of land, exorbitantland rents and the continual exactions of themoney lenders.

The peasantry is burdened with enormousland taxes, which with the practice of collect-ing these taxes a number of years in advance,takes away the little surplus the peasants mightotherwise save.

In addition to all the above there are thesalt taxes collected for the benefit of the foreignpowers, special taxes on necessary goods andthe customs barriers set up between the coun-try and the towns.

The factors mentioned have made of thegreat mass of Chinese peasantry a potentiallyrevolutionary force which needed only elemen-tary education as to the source of their wrongsand energetic organization to become a greatdriving force against imperialism and its agentsin China.

In the light of the foregoing, the immediatetasks which presented themselves to the ad-vanced section of the national liberation move-ment were:

1. To show to the peasantry thruout Chinathat only a workers' and peasants' government,firmly based on an alliance of the two moscpowerful sections of the population, could im-prove substantially the position of the mass ofthe peasantry.

2. To bring the peasantry into the strugglewith the workers and the national liberationmovement by combining the necessary econo-mic and political demands with the war on themilitarists and imperialists.

3. To centralize the existing peasant organ-izations, broaden them, extend these organiza-tion thruout China and give them a militantcharacter.

4. To take advantage of the fact that thefeudal .character of Chinese agriculture andgovernment has made impossible the develop-ment to any great extent of strata among thepeasants whose differences are so great thatthey cannot be reconciled in order to wage acommon struggle against militarism, feudalismand imperialism and therefore to organize in the

412

whole countryside united revolutionary peasantcenters which can arouse and lead the wholepeasant mass in the ght against all enemies ofthe Chinese masses.

From this distance and with the informa-tion at hand it is manifestly impossible to tellin detail what has been done to carry oat thisprogram or the exact extent of the successessecured.

But the capitalist press news services furnishus with a guide. We know that the people'sarmy (Kuominchun) after its defeat before andretreat from Peking, has been reorganized andis once more a powerful force.

We know that Wu Pei Fu's army was para-lyzed for six weeks, that great sections of it,perhaps the decisive sections, together with anumber of military leaders, refused to enter thestruggle in aid of Chang Tso-lin around Peking.

WTe know that the revolutionary-democraticgovernment in Canton has not only retained itscenter and freedom of action but that most ofSouth China has rallied to it.

These facts, and particularly the crisis in theranks of Wu Pei Fu's forces, indicate that theorganizations of workers and peasants are be-ing extended and that where this is done theimperialist and militarist armies lose whatevermass base they have and collapse.

It is not too optimistic to expect that inSouthern and Central China the imperialistforces will soon lose all freedom of movementand enter a period of decline ending in a com-plete debacle.

In Manchuria the situation is somewhat dif-ferent. In this rich territory, whose develop-ment began with the construction of the Chi-nese Eastern Railway and the Russo-Japanesewar, and which in 1923 exported 2,232,000 tonsof wheat, beans, soy-beans and oil-cake, ChangTso-lin, with the aid of Japan, has made him-self master.

A powerful middle and capitalist class has de-veloped around the agricultural and export in-dustry and the national liberation movement inManchuria is very weak.

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

It is the ambition of Chang and his Japanesebackers, with sympathetic support from theprosperous Manchurian merchants and bankers,to extend his power south and west—to becomethe ruler of all China.

But altho financially strong and with a pow-erful army, Chang Tso-lin is not a real men-ace to the national liberation movement. HisJapanese imperialist connections are so well-known that as in the case of Wu Pei Fu, analliance with Chang discredits and defeats itsmaker.

The liberation movement will isolate Changin Manchuria and when it has united the restof China it will crush him.

The process of unifying the Chinese massesis going forward steadily and we should notbe fooled into believing that in this period thepurely 'military struggles are decisive. This isnot the case. The decisive factor in the Chi-nese situation is the steady growth of the labormovement, the extension of the peasants'leagues, the growing strength of the alliance ofworkers' and peasants' organization, the closerrelations of the army with the masses—in aword, the welding of the Chinese masses into aninstrument for their own liberation from theirnative and foreign oppressors.

The strength of the Chinese national libera-tion movement is reflected in the statementmade by Chao Chin-chu, minister to Italy, inGeneva, June 1, following ;a charge of corrup-tion against the Chinese government preferredby the British representative on the opium com-mission, Sir Malcolm Delevigne.

Said Chao Chin-chu to the spokesman of theBritish Empire:

"You insult my government and I am not afraidto insult yours.

"Today I have the courage to make a statementpublicly against the foreign interference with China'sinternal affairs. I can inform the commfttee thatthe time is nearing an end when China will tolerateany longer the interference of foreigners."

J U L Y , 1 9 2 6 413

Trade Union InsuranceBy Wm. Z. Foster

(~)NE of. the most pronounced features of thenew orientation of the trade union buroc-

racy towards an elaborated and intensified classcollaboration, is trade union life insurance. Thishas developed within the past three years.There are the John Mitchell Life InsuranceCompany, which operates among the coal min-ers of Pennsylvania; the Union Cooperative In-surance Association, which was founded by theInternational Brotherhood of Electrical Work-ers and which confines its business to the mem-bers of that union; and finally, the Union LaborLife Insurance Company established by actionof the American Federation of Labor and pro-posing to do a general life insurance business,not only among the ranks of organized laborbut also among the unorganized workers thru-out the United States and Canada.

The A. F. of L. and Trade Union Life Insurance.

The Union Labor Life Insurance Company,which is by fair the most important of the threenow in existence, is the outgrowth of a reportto the Portland, 1923, convention of the A. F.of L., calling that body's attention to the pos-sibilities of the trade unions getting into thelife insurance business. The El Paso A. F. ofL. convention, in 1924, heard a further reporton the proportion, which painted in glowingcolors the marvelous field of opportunity offer-ed to the unions in selling life insurance.

Enthused by this early promise of wealth, theconvention endorsed the life insurance business,instructed its insurance committee consistingof Matthew Woll and George W. Perkins, to calla general conference of all A. F. of L. tradeunions to consider the launching of a labor lifeinsurance company. Accordingly, a meeting ofthe representatives of 50 international unionswas held in the offices of the American Federa-tion on July 25, 1925. This conference unani-mously supported the plan for the unions to gointo the life insurance business, stating:

"Life insurance is absolutely safe and the mostprofitable business known; the wage earner at pres-ent pays more for insurance than he ought for theprotection received; there is a need for a labor in-surance company; a labor insurance company doesnot interfere but enhances the value of trade unionrelief and benefit provisions by extending insur-ance to families and dependents; that insurance isessentially a co-operative enterprise; and that thetrade union movement is well-fitted and equipped tooperate an insurance company^owned and controlledby organized labor."

Following this conference, steps were takenimmediately to form the Union Labor Life In-surance Company. This organization is nowselling $600,000 worth of stock in preparation

for going into business. The bulk of the stockis already subscribed for and this company willsoon begin actual operations. It practically rep-resents the trade union movement in the insur-ance business. Matthew Woll, the president ofthe company, says it is organized as closely un-der the direction and control of the A. F. of L.as the laws of the latter organization will per-mit. The company is incorporated in Mary-land and its offices are in the A. F. of L. Build-ing in Washington, D. C.

Other Trade Union Insurance Companies.

The John Mitchell and the Union Co-opera-tive Insurance companies are more or less tres-passers on the general movement. They are inopen competition with the Union Labor Life In-surance Company, at least so far as their re-spective spheres of activity are concerned. Thereare a number of others of these life insurancecompanies either being considered or in processof formation by other trade unions.Trade Union Capitalism and the Insurance

Schemtes.

This movement for workers' life insurance isan important phase of the trade union capital-ism now developing in the unions. Other phas-es are labor banking, house building, owner-ship of office buildings, coal mines, etc. It isno accident that the trade union life insurancescheme was first put forth in 1923, just whenthe labor banking movement was making itsspectacular advances. During 1925, ten newlabor banks were formed, making the total 35for the entire country, with total resources ofover 200 million dollars. The labor banking andtrade union insurance movements are closelyintertwined and related to each other, even asother ordinary capitalist banking and insurancecompanies are a part of one general financialsystem.

The advocates of trade union life insuranceadvertise in season and out that it is co-opera-tive in character. They do this in order to tradeon the mass support which is readily ralliedaround the slogans of the co-operative move-ment. But such assertions are not true. Thereis nothing co-operative about the trade unionlife insurance companies. The control is or-ganized strictly on a capitalist basis. The rankand file of the stockholders and insurance pol-icy holders have no control over the companies.The majority of the stock is in the hands ofthe trade union burocrats entirely.

The Union Lat>or Life Insurance Company isselling 12,000 shares of stock at $50.00 pershare. This is disposed of on the following

414

basis: International unions may each buy asmuch as 800 shares; local, city, and state tradeunions may buy up to 80 shares each; and in-dividual trade unionists not more than 10 shareseach. Already a majority of the stock has beenpurchased by the conservative international andlocal unions, and is already safely in the handsof the big eurocrats who control them. TheUnion Labor Life Insurance Company is domin-ated by a handful of big stockholders, the sameas any other capitalist insurance company. Andto anyone who knows the calibre of our tradeunion leadership, it need not be pointed outthat these burocrats will use to feather theirown nests the enormous sums of money theywill collect thru this insurance company. Tradeunion life insurance, like trade union capitalismin general, is an effort of the union burocracyto get hold of the workers' savings. There arelarge numbers of workers who manage to savea certain amount out of their wages. The to-tal amount of such savings is problematical.But it is certainly very large. Matthew Wollclaims that trade union members in 1924 paid125 million dollars for life insurance, which is avery important form of workers' savings. Ifthis figure is correct for the 3,000,000 organizedworkers, then the total of 30,000,000 organizedand unorganized workers must now be invest-ing at the very least 750 million dollars yearlyin life insurance. For a long time the employ-ers have been aware of the gigantic sums in-volved in the workers' savings, and have care-fully organized to get control of them thru sav-ings banks, popular insurance companies, fra-ternal societies, stock selling schemes, etc. Nowthe trade union burocrats have awakened tothe existence and significance of the workers'savings and are organizing, on the basis of theirprestige and influence as trade union leaders, toinduce the workers to turn their hundreds ofmillions in savings over to them instead of tothe regular capitalists. Hence the growth of la-bor banks, labor investment companies, work-ers' insurance companies, etc. A great prize isat stake. The trade union capitalists have theireyes on billions, which they hope to assemblethru their various schemes of trade union capi-talism.

The Appeal of Trade Union Insurance.

The trade union life insurance companies arebeing organized on a typically American "getrich quick" plan. Their literature overflowswith appeals to the workers' cupidity. They tellthe workers that the way "to build up a so-ciety" is thru investment in life insurance; lur-ing profit-sharing schemes are outlined, inwhich the workers are to reap the fabulousprofits that the insurance business will produce.The Union Labor Life Insurance Companypromises its present investment on the gilt-edged stock. To dazzle the workers, it paints

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

the following glowing picture of the new ElDorado, trade union life insurance:

"Life insurance is a marvelously increasing busi-ness. In the United States and Canada, at the endof 1874, there were less than 850,000 policies in force.1924 closed with over 92 millions. The amount ofinsurance in force in that period of time increasedfrom 2 billions to 67 billions. The business writtenin the respective years increased from 150,000 pol-icies to 18J4 millions. From 362 millions, the in-surance business increased to 14% billions. Withinthe same space of time the premium receipts increas-ed from 92^. millions to 2|/4 billions. The assetsincreased from 400 millions to over 11 billions. Andthe payments to policy holders from 68 millions to1>4 billions. These figures exclude fraternal andassessment insurance, which had its great start inthe first decade of the half century period and Whichhas increased from 1% billions in 1885 to 11 billionsat the end of last year."The local trade unions are also invited as or-

ganizations to come into these rich financialpastures, where billions are thrown around sofreely in the statistics. Instead of letting theirmoney vegetate in banks at 3% or 4% interest,they are urged to buy insurance company stockand thus to join the movement for trade unioncapitalism. They are assured that there is nodanger. Says the prospectus:

"By becoming shareholders, trade unions will alsocome into a financial union. This will not only per-mit them to provide insurance to the workers at lesscost than they are now required to pay, but by rea-son of ever-increasing reserves and financial re-sources, labor will be able to engage and assist inhousing and other projects of incalculable value tothe workers and free them from the present impo-sition of usurious practices that workers are forcedto submit to."That's the idea. Labor will buy out the capi-

talists. All that is necessary for the workersto do is to turn their hundreds of millions ofdollars in savings over to the trade union buro-crats and they will do the rest by investing andcontrolling these funds as they see fit in vari-ous capitalistic ventures.

The Grip of the Burocracy.The Union Labor Life Insurance Company is

firmly in the grip of the old Gompers' buroc-racy. The idea of trade union capitalism ori-ginated among the so-called progressives, suchas Hillman, Johnston, and Stone; but the ultra-reactionaries were quick to realize its value asa means to further their personal interests andthey have seized the leadership of the move-ment, especially in the field of life insurance.Matthew Woll is president of the company, andits secretary is George W. Perkins, president ofthe Cigar Makers' Union whose chief claim tofame is that for 20 or 30 years he regularlynominated Gompers for president at the A. P.of L. conventions. The executive committee ofthe company is reactionary thruout, being com-posed of Woll, Perkins, Steward, Flaherty,Lynch, Ryan, and Burke. The board of directorsis also almost solidly Gompersistic, altho a coupleof unimportant places are provided for the "pro-

J U L Y , 1 9 2 6

gressives" by the inclusion of Johnston of theMachinists and Sigman of the Ladies' GarmentWorkers. The advisory committee, headed bythe notorious New York labor leader, financier,capitalist politician, Peter J. Brady of Tam-many Hall, is overwhelmingly reactionary.Among the 40 members of this committee areto be found the names of such men as VictorOlander, James Wilson, J. M. Ritchie, W. M.Short, W. B. Bryan, Sarah Conboy, Ed. Flore, J.P. Holland, J. P. Frey, J. J. Manning, B. M.Jewell, Dan Murphy, B. A. Larger, etc. Sand-wiched in among this galaxy of betrayers oflabor are to be found the names of the "pro-gressives," John Fitzpatrick and James Maurer.The Union Labor Life Insurance Company is aunited front of the ultra reactionaries and the"progressives" with the former in full controland the latter serving as lures to give thescheme an air of respectability so that it will beadopted by the masses in the trade unions. Thewhole program has the unqualified endorsementof the Socialist Party.

Effects of Trade Union Insurance.Such schemes as the Union Labor Life Insur-

ance Company must exert a highly deleteriouseffect on the trade unions. They tend to divertthe workers' attention from fighting the em-ployers, and to transform their economic or-ganizations into capitalistic organizations intocapitalistic business institutions. They culti-vate false notions about class peace and theharmony of interests with the employers. Theyfoster the dangerous illusions that the workerscan buy their way out of capitalist wage slave-ry. They degenerate the whole trend of the la-bor movement and weaken its fighting spirit.Such schemes lead to a great intensificationof every phase of class collaboration betweenthe burocrats and the employers, by directlylinking up the burocrats, thru their millions ofdollars invested, with many capitalistic enter-prises, most of them violently hostile to even thesimplest forms of primitive trade unionism. Thefusion of the Engineers' Bank with the great.Wall Street "Empire Trust Company," and theoperation of scab coal mines in Kentucky bythis same union, are only samples of what willhappen when the program of trade union capi-talism gets well under way. It is idle to expectthat the trade union burocrats will fight theemployers when they are bound together withthem in hundreds of joint business institution?If it is not checked, trade union capitalism willparalyze the labor movement.

One of the worst of the many bad features ofthe new life insurance and other forms of tradeunion capitalism is that they enormouslystrengthen the reactionary labor burocracy andmake it virtually independent of rank and filecontrol. Consider, for example, the Union La-bor Life Insurance Company: Its by-laws pro-vide that 16 out of the 24 of the members of

415

the board of directors shall be the representa-tives, that is, the burocrats, of the internationalunions. Once elected, these directors become le-gal entities and cannot be removed by action ofthe unions as such. They can only be removedby a majority vote of the stock, and it is easyto imagine how impossible it would be to se-cure such a majority, which is already control-led by the upper burocracy, to displace somefavorite reactionary in case he were defeatedin his union.

The growth of trade union capitalism willmake it increasingly difficult to defeat the con-trolling burocrats in the unions. They will havealmost limitless patronage and money at theirdisposal wherewith to maintain themselves inpower. If the new life insurance company isa success, it will create hundreds of fat jobs inthe various industrial centers. These will all beappointive, and the price for such appointmentswill be for the holders to help keep the labormovement lined up in support of the big buro-crats and their capitalistic program.

Whenever the left wing becomes threateningin any section of the unions, the burocrats, withthe enormous funds at their disposal, will beable to put hordes of agents in the field to con-trol the elections, to pack the conventions, andto otherwise dominate the situation. Even withtheir present meager financial resources, whichthey use unscrupulously to defeat democracy inthe unions, the trade union burocrats are ex-ceedingly difficult to displace. But once theyget the resources of a whole series of tradeunion capitalistic institutions behind them, theywill become virtually invincible. Trade unioncapitalism kills the fighting spirit of the unionsand delivers them over to the employers boundhand and foot in the grip of a reactionary buro-cracy. Trade union capitalism opens the doorwide for company unionism.

Tasks of the Left Wing.The left wing cannot rest idle while the buro-

crats are slipping the noose of trade union capi-talism around the labor movement. The militantand progressive elements must organize in andaround the Trade Union Educational Leagueand make war against trade union capitalism,even as aggressively as against its twin evil, theB. & O. Plan of unionism. The workers must bearoused against the danger of trade union capi-talism, with its insidious appeal to the workers'cupidity. In every local union and city centralbody, and in all the international union conven-tions, the fight against this menace must becarried on.

But the left wing campaign against tradeunion capitalism cannot merely consist in point-ing out its negative, destructive features. Theremust also be provided a solution for the prob-lem which gave trade union capitalism birth—

(Continued on page 430)

416W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

Agrarian Relations in AmericaBy N. Ossinsky

'THE purpose of the fol-lowing investigation is

to throw light upon thetendencies of Americanagrarian economy. Econ-omists have a habit ofrepresenting the UnitedStates as the classic landof the so-called "laborprinciple"—that is. a landwhere the owner of theland also works it andwhere the capitalist principles of the concentra-tion of property and exploitation cannot be foundto any large extent in agriculture. The followingconclusions, based upon official sources, especiallythe material of the 1920 census and the publica-tions of the department of agriculture, will showin how far such pretensions are justified.

1. Who Possesses the Land of the UnitedStates?

The entire territory of the United States ex-tends over 1,903 million acres. If we subtract the122 million acres upon which cultivation is impos-sible (deserts, swamps, soil under cities, etc.), wehave 1,781 million -acres used for agriculturalpurposes (including cattle raising.)

In 1919 this 1,781 million acres belonged to thefollowing categories—farmers, private non-farm-ing enterprises, federal government institutions,other state and social institutions—in the propor-tions shown in Table I.

N. OSSINSKY, former Commissar of Agriculturein the Russian Soviet Republic, is one of the mostprominent agronomists in the world. The investi-gations, some of the results of which this articlepresents in a very sketchy fashion, were undertakenduring a special trip of several months' durationthruout the United States. The complete reports ofthe investigation are recorded in the Russian jour-nal "The Agrarian Front" and in the internationalscientific organ "Unter dem Banner des Marxism us."The following is but a sketchy condensation of thewealth of material contained in the full reports.

belongs to farmer-own-ers—large, middle, andsmall. One-fifth of theland belong to farm ten-ants. The other half be-longs to owners who donot" themselves cultivatethe soil but hire out oroperate it through wagelabor.

It is significant to notedistribution of the

forests.the

Less than one-third belongs to farmersmore than one-fifth belongs to the government.The other half (47.2%) belongs to private com-panies.

Grazing land in the dry regions of the West be-longs to farmers to the extent of hardly 28% : tothe government, about 43%. (This constitutes theonly land in America now used for colonizationpurposes). Thirty percent belongs to the rail-roads, to the great "cattle companies, and to privateenterprises in general. These private enterprisesown 30% of the grazing land in the better wellirrigated regions.

2. The Size of the Farms.According to the above it appears that in 1919

the farmers as a whole (including tenants) owned946 million acres of 53.1% of the entire agricul-tural area of the United States. How is this landdivided among the big. middle, and small farmers

CultivatedOwner Land

Farmers . -365 (100%)

Total 365 (100%)

F<15522891

9483

crests(32.1%)(47.2%)(18.8%)

(1.9%)(100%)

Table 1.Distribution of Agricultural Territory.

(In millions of acres.)Desert Other

Grazing Land163 (27.8%)172 (29.3%)185 (31.5%)

67 (11.4%)587 (100%)

Grazing Land148

70I U

1 ̂-Lo

231

(64.1%)(Qfl ^ca>\O /C J

1 ^ K<^}\) . U /O !

(100%)

Miscellaneous115 (100%)

115 (100%)

Total946470276

891,781

(53.1%)(26.4%)(15.5%)( 5.0%)(100%)

From this table it follows immediately that26.4% of the entire land belongs to private non-farming enterprises, 20.5% to the federal_andstate governments and other social institutions,and no more than 53.1%—that is, somewhat morethan half—could be found in the hands of farmers.As we shall see below 20.9% (374 out of1,781 million acres) of the entire land is in thehands of tenants. This means that the farmersworking their own land possess, in the UnitedStates, no more than 32.2% of the entire agricul-tural area.

In other words, less than one-third of the land

and what are the tendencies of development ofthese categories between the year 1910 and 1920?Let us examine Table II.

Table II.Land in Possession of Farmers (including tenants).

(In millions of acres.)

Categoriesof farmers 1900 1910 1920

Small Farmers 147 (17.5%) 157 (17.9%) 163 (17.1%)

Middle0Farmers 193 (23.0%) 205 (23.4%) 195 (20.4%)(100-174 acres)

J U L Y , 1 9 2 6

Big Farmers 301 (35.9%) 349 (39.7%) 378 (39.6%)(175-999 acres)fjatifundia 198 (23.6%) 167 (19.9%) 221 (23.1%)(Over 1000 acres)

Total 839 (100%) 878 (100%) 957 (100%)

What do we learn from this table?1. In 1920 the great estates made up 63%

(39.6% plus 23.1%)of the entire agricultural ter-ritory. Surely these enormous farms were notbuilt up on the "labor-principle." Moreover, itmust be remembered that among the smaller farms(less than 175 acres) there are many capitalistenterprises (dairy farms, vegetable farms, orch-ards, etc.)

2. Between 1900 and 1910 capitalist farms de-clined. (In the South the great plantations weredivided up, leased or sold). Between 1910 and1920, however, the development was again stronglyupwards.

3. Conservatively estimated, 40% of the farmland belongs to strongly capitalistic enterprises.About 25% belongs to very great farmers, 20%more to middle farmers, and 15% to small farm-ers. The small farmers, however, own over a halfof the number of farms in the country.

3. Owners and Tenants.Let us now consider the nature of the land cul-

tivator. Here we have essentially three categor-ies: full owners, part owners, and tenants. Thefull owner works his own farm; the part ownerowns land but he hires more land to be able toextend his economy; the tenant owns no land atall. The relations of these three categories areexpressed in Table III.

Table III.Land in Possession of Farmers.

(In millions of acres.)

CategoriesPull owners .Part o"vmersFull tenants

Total

431125195751

1900(51.4%)(14.9%)(23.3%)(100%)

465134221820

1910(52.9%)(15.2%)(25.8%)(100%)

461176265902

1920(48.0%)(18.4%)(27.7%)(100%)

From the figures it appears that the possessionof the full owners grew very slowly (indeed be-tween 1910 and 1920 there was a diminution of4,000,000 acres). At the same time, however, thelands of the part owners and tenants grew con-tinually and quickly—for the first category an in-crease of 42,000,000 acres, for the second of44,000,000 acres for the period between 1910 and1920. This increase was not at the expense of theland formerly operated by full owners but tookplace through expansion to lands hitherto unculti-vated. In other words, the entire increase in cul-tivated land in the ten years went to part ownersand full tenants.

According to the structure of the economy wecan regard the full owner as the "typical" averagefarmer altho the figures for this category hide agreat many capitalist enterprises. The part own-

417

ers are mostly big enterprisers who utilize themomentary state of the world market for theextension of the cultivation of certain grains andhire the needed additional land for that purpose.The full tenant is on the average a small farmerwho works a portion of the time for the land ownerin the form of rent payment. It therefore appearsthat the element that can in any way be associatedwith the "labor-principle" possesses no more thana quarter (48% of 53.1%) of the entire agricul-tural territory. The rest of the land is cultivatedon something very different from the "labor-prin-ciple." If now wTe recall that among the full own-ers there are many big capitalists the number of"working farmers" who own their own land inAmerica is very small indeed.

A word or two about the tenants. Not all ofthem, of course, are small landowners. Accordingto the 1920 figures it appears that 49.2% of allrented farms were found in the hands of tenantsrenting but one farm; 50.8 % in the hands of thoserenting more than one farm, 25.4% of the farmsin the hands of those renting five or more farms.The farmers of this last category can hardly becalled "working farmers;" they are in truth capi-talist enterprisers.

4. Land as a Commodity.We have seen that in 1920, 27.7% of the total

agricultural territory was found in the hands offull tenants. From this alone it follows that agreat part of the land in America is passing fromhand to hand. But this is not all. We have seenthat there is a great number of partial landown-ers who are also partial tenants. If we add therented land of the full tenants to the rented landof the partial tenants we get as follows:

Table IV.

Rented Land (in the hands of non-owners)

(Percentage.)Categories 1900 1910 1920

Rented cultivated land.. 37.5 41.0 43.SEntire rented land 34.2 35.6 39.3

In 1920, therefore, the proportion of rented landreached almost 40% (39.3%). And, if we considernot land in general but land actually cultivated(and this is the point), we reach the conclusionthat about 44% of the entire agricultural area iscultivated by persons who are not owners of theland. As a matter of fact the figures are higher.Of course they do not reach the English levelwhere, in 1914, 90.2% of the agricultural area wasin the hands of tenants. But they practicallyreach the Belgian level (54.2% in 1910) ; they arehigher than in Ireland (36% in 1910), or in Ger-many (12.7% in 1907.) Apparently land is a verymobile affair in the United States.

These figures in themselves, however, do not tellthe whole tale. It is necessary to find out howfrequently the tenant changes land. On the aver-

418

age, a farmer remains no more than four or fiveyears on a rented piece of land. In 1922, 27% ofthe tenants changed their farms. It would not betoo much to say that the American tenant farmerleads a wandering life.

These facts are associated with the change inland ownership in general. Even the full ownerdoes not remain very long on his farm. He isalways ready to sell his farm (not as in Europewhere farms generally pass from generation togeneration). According to an official investigator"most American farms change hands every genera-tion and a considerable number of farms changehands several times in the period corresponding tothe average business career." Investigations haveshown that over 88% of the farmers (full owners)bought their farms and only 12% inherited them orobtained them otherwise. The American farmerspeculates on the increase of land values and isalways on the lookout for a good customer forhis farm. For this reason too, he is hesitantabout renting out his farm for too long a period.

Land in America is thus drawn into the streamof comodity exchange. Of course commodity ex-change in itself is not capitalism but it is a funda-mental condition for capitalist relations.

5. The "Agricultural Ladder": Farm Laborer—Tenant—Owner.

Under such conditions it would be absurd tospeak of the dominance of the "family-labor-prin-ciple" in the United States. On the other handthe idea of the so-called "agricultural ladder" isvery wide spread. This implies: the land doesnot pass on thru inheritance—the farmer buysit for money; hence every farm hand (farm la-borer) can acquire the status of an independent

(Continued

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

possessor. Didn't Henry Ford start out as anerrand boy? Just so can any sensible, hard-work-ing man, thru hard work, thrift, and businessability, get hold of some capital and mount theladder: farm hand, tenant, owner.

There can be no question that once upon a time,when there still were wide stretches of unculti-vated land and when the situation of America onthe world market was favorable, such "climbingthe ladder of success" was a widespread fact. Eventhen, we must remember that such "climbing" waslargely accomplished thru speculation — an en-terprising man would stake a claim, wait tillland values rose, then sell out at huge profit, rakeup the money and go still farther West to getdown to more solid business.

The situation today is, of course, entirely dif-ferent altho speculation of this sort was stillpossible only a few years ago (colonization hadnot come to a complete end and the war boom of1916-20 prevailed). As a matter of fact, accordingto the census of 1900, 44.% of all owners hadbeen tenants and 34.7 % had been farm hands. Of100 tenants in 1910, 33 had already become ownersin 1920—in other words, had ascended the ladder.Until a few years ago this "ladder of success" un-deniably existed.

But we must not fail to examine the other sideof the picture. First, according to the 1920 cen-sus, 42% of the owners had never been either ten-ants or farm hands. Secondly, according to thesame census, 47% of the tenants became tenantsimmediately and did not pass thru the stageof farm hands. Even, therefore, according to the1920 figures, "climbing the ladder" was not a com-mon phenomenon.

in next issue)

J U L Y , 1 9 2 6 419

1877-"The Bloody YearBy J. Sultan

THE RUSSIAN PEASANT—The Past and the Future

lyrODERN American capitalism was born inthe Civil War. The American Civil War

(1861-1865) was a struggle for political power.The young capitalist class that had developed inthe northern states sought control of the na-tional government in order to 'be able to ex-tend its system to strengthen its economic base.The semi-feudal class in the southern statesthat had dominated the union up to that timerefused to let power slip from its hands. In theCivil War these two ruling classes crossedswords and the capitalist class of the northemerged the victor.

The victory in the Civil War lent wings toAmerican capitalism. The class of the big bour-geoisie seized complete control of the politicalmachinery of the state and used it to multiplyits wealth. In the years of the Civil War andthe first decades succeeding there grew up thepowerful capitalist industries. In this periodof time too there were born those giganticfortunes that are now in control of these indus-tries.

From its earliest years the capitalist classknew how to issue slogans to deceive the mass-es and throw them into action for its own ends.While workers and farmers were falling by thethousands on the battle-fields at Antietam,Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, the industrialand commercial capitalists were standing be-hind the scenes and manipulating the war in or-der to fill their money-bags. The war demandgave them the opportunity to do this and theCivil War years were years of extraordinaryprosperity for the northern states.

When the Civil War was over the Americancapitalists became complete masters of the stateapparatus and prosperity was well on its way.The triumphant capitalists with the help of thegovernment started a mad race to swallow thecontinent. The net of railways that began tobe built towards the end of the Civil War kepton extending until the whole country was cover-ed with a web of iron rails. In order to buildthese railroads the government presented therailroad companies with a territory larger thanmany a European country. Besides this thegovernment granted millions to these companiesin the forms of subsidies and bond guarantees.

Hand in hand with the development of rail-roads went the phenomenal growth 'of Americanindustry as a whole. The following table pre-sents a comparison of the growth of Americanindustry in the decade preceding the Civil Warand the decade following it.

The Development of Industry.

Inc. in Inc. in Increase Increaseno. of no. of in wage in

Period factories workers payments production1850-1860 .... 14.2% 37.0% 60.0% 85.0%1860-1870 .... 79.6% 56.0% 104.7% 124.4%

"It was the time when the American dollarocracyof beef, pills, soap, oil, or railroads became the world-wide synonym for the parvenu and the upstart. Inliterature it produced the cheap wood-pulp, sensa-tional daily, the New York Ledger type of maga-zine, the dime novel, and the works of Mary J.Holmes, Laura Jean Libby, and 'The Duchess.' Inindustry its dominant figures were J. Gould and JimFiske. In politics it evolved the 'machine,' the wardheeler, and the political boss." (A. M. SIMONS.Social Forces in American History, pp. 307-308.)

The Origins of the Modern Labor Movement.

The workingclass was the only class that gotnothing out of the great capitalist feast afterthe Civil War. When the masses of workersleft the army upon demobilization and returnedto industrial life, they found a great change inthe conditions under which they were forcedto work. The individual boss was beginningto disappear. His place was taken by the cor-poration or trust. Great masses of workerswere forced to sell their labor power to thesetrusts.

True, there was work enough. The condi-tions, however, were much worse than in thetimes of the individual boss, and the wages, incomparison to rising prices, were lower thanever. For the masses of workers who under-stood the nature of organization from their mili-tary life the new conditions naturally meanta strong tendency in the direction of labor or-ganization. Many of the "International" unionsof today were born in the decade following theCivil War.

The following table shows the growth in thenumber of unions from December, 1863, to De-cember, 1864, just when the Civil War wasabout to end.

The number of members in the unions in1872 reached 300,000. Most of them were al-ready united in a national organization, "TheNational Labor Union," organized in 1866.

The Industrial Crisis of 1873.

The inherent economic laws of capitalism puta quick stop to this (unprecedented prosperity.The mad race of American capitalism came to asudden end in 1873. A crisis due to the tre-mendous over-production in all branches of in-dustry marked the end of the epoch. The crisis

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of 1873 was one of the worst in the history ofAmerican capitalism. The hard times lasted foralmost seven years.

Growth in Number of Trade Unions.

State No. of Unionsin 1863

Connecticut 2

DelawareIllinois iKentucky 2Indiana 3

Maine 1

Maryland ~~Massachusetts "Michigan *Missouri *New Hampshire 3New Jersey . 4New York ™Ohio IPennsylvania i»Rhode Island 1

Tennessee "WisconsinVermont 'Virginia ^J

Total ....

No. of Unionsin 1864

61

108

1771

42995

10741644721

1

270

In the train of the crisis came, as usual, un-employment, hunger and misery. The bossesutilized the paralysis of industry and the greatmass of the unemployed in order to reducewages. In the textile industry, for example,wages decreased to half in the seven year per-iod from 1873 to 1880. The new labor organ-izations did not have the strength to resist theattacks of the bosses, particularly the big trusts.In most cases these organizations fell apart en-tirely or dragged out the most miserable exist-ence. There could be no question at all of main-taining an organized resistance. The numberof national unions fell from almost thirty toeight or nine, and these eight or nine lost mostof their members. The Machinists' Union losttwo-thirds of its members; the Cigar Makers,four-fifths; the Coppersmiths, six-sevenths. InNew York the number of organized workers fellfrom 44,000 to 5,000. So helpless were theworkers that their standard of living fell everlower and lower until the "free" workers livedunder worse conditions than had the Negroslaves before the Civil War.

The Revolt of the Railroad Workers.

Nowhere else was the pressure of the capital-ists so pronounced as in the railroad industry;nowhere else did the inhuman exploitationarouse such bitterness and resentment amongthe workers as here. The workers were treatedworse than cattle. There was absolutely nolimit to the hours of labor. In many cases theworkers were obliged to work two or three daysin the week and spend the rest of the weeksomewhere off in a small village at their ownexpense. The miserable wages they got were

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

hardly enough to cover these expenses and thefamilies of the railroad workers were in an ac-tual state of famine. The wages were supposedto be paid monthly, but very frequently monthafter month went by without any payment ofwages.

Immediately after the panic that broke out in1873 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company cutwages 10% and shortly after another reductionof 10 % was announced to go into effect the firstof June, 1877. The New York Central followedsuit and also cut wages 10%. Here the wagecut was to go into effect the first of July. TheBaltimore and Ohio declared a wage cut for the16th of July.

A few months before the railroad magnateshad attempted to destroy the railroad unionsentirely. The two strikes that the Brotherhoodof Locomotive Engineers had carried on in April,1877—one against the Boston & Albany and theother against the Pennsylvania—were both lost.The railroad capitalists used this defeat of theunion hi order to destroy it entirely. The presi-dent of the Pennsylvania 'and Reading orderedthe engineers on the Pennsylvania line to with-draw from the union entirely or leave their em-ployment. Outwardly the workers submitted,but in secret they were preparing a strike sup-posed to begin April 14. This plan failed, thanksto the Pinkerton spies that the bosses sent intothe union. When the strike broke out the rail-road company was already provided with strike-breakers. This last defeat of the union smash-ed the Locomotive Engineers entirely. The otherrailroad brotherhoods, the Brotherhood of Rail-road Conductors, founded in 1878, and theBrotherhood of Railroad Firemen, founded in1873, were too weak to play any role whateverin the industry.

As soon as the Pennsylvania announced thatwages would be cut in June the workers select-ed a committee consisting exclusively of loco-motive engineers. Towards the end of May thiscommittee had a,n interview with the presidentof the company. The president assured the com-mittee that the old wages would be restored assoon as "times got better." The committee ac-cepted the president's statement, but the work-ers on the line declared openly that the com-mittee had considered only the interests of theengineers. The workers on the railroads hav-ing their terminals in Pittsburgh began to or-ganize a secret union of railroad workers toresist the coming wage-out.

The leader of the new organization wasa young conductor. On June 2, 1877,he organized the first local of the newunion in Alleghany City, and became the gen-eral organizer of the union. In a short time hesucceeded in organizing sections of the unionon the Baltimore and Ohio, on the Pennsyl-vania, on the Erie, on the Atlantic and on theGreat Northwestern. The new union took as

J U L Y , 1926

its task the consolidation of the workers in thechief railroad unions "into one solid body inorder to call a strike simultaneously on all rail-roads."

According to this plan the strike was to be-gin on July 27. Forty organizers were sent outfrom Pittsburgh to inform the various sectionsabout the day of the strike. However, on the25th of June there took place a meeting of theunion at which there was such great differenceof opinion among the leaders that a part de-clined to participate in the strike that was plan-ned. As a result, naturally, the whole move-ment collapsed and the new union had very lit-tle influence on the coming events.

Battles, Captured Stations, Storm and Strife!

Thus all organized attempts to resist the ter-rible exploitation of the railroad magnates end-ed in failure. The hate and the fury of the rail-road workers against their exploiters,- however,grew from day to day and finally found expres-sion in a spontaneous unorganized strike thatwas soon transformed into an open war betweenlabor and capital. "Never did the UnitedStates stand so near to civil war as in the daysof the railroad struggles," wrote PresidentHayes concerning the strike.

The strike broke out on July 17 at Martins-burg, West Virginia, on the Baltimore and Ohioline, the day following the putting into effecton the 10 % wage reduction. The railroad work-ers refused to allow any trains to go thru un-less they got their old wages back. The statemilitia summoned to Martinstourg refused toprotect the scabs that the railroad companywanted to bring in. To a certain extent eventhe militiamen had helped the strikers and fortwo days the workers held power at that pointon the railroad line. Governor Matthews ofWest Virginia appealed to President Hayes tosend federal soldiers to crush the strike and acompany of two hundred federal soldiers soonarrived in Martinsburg to protect the scabs withwhom the railroad company was manning thetrains.

Like a wild fire the strike spread, reaching allthe other sections of the line and the more im-portant points were soon in the hands of thestrikers. In Baltimore on the 20th of July tookplace the first bloody encounter between therevolting railroad workers and militia.

The governor of Maryland ordered two regi-ments of militia to leave Baltimore for Cumber-land where the strikers had seized the controlof the railroad. The workers of Baltimore weredetermined not to let the militia reach that city.One of the two regiments succeeding in reach-ing the depot by stealth and making for Cam-den from where they were able to reach Cum-berland. The second regiment, however, wassurrounded by thousands of workers who be-sieged the barracks and would allow no one to

421

leave the building. The militiamen attemptedto break thru the crowd, but were met with ashower of stones. They answered with bulletsand succeeded in making for the depot. Thearoused workers besieged the depot and set iton fire and then would not permit the firemento put it out. It would have gone pretty badlyfor the militiamen had not the Baltimore po-lice arrived and helped the firemen. It was notin vain that the New York Evening Post com-plained in an editorial that "we cannot closeour eyes to the fact that the governmentalpower of the state did not succeed in maintain-ing order."

The bloodiest encounters, however, betweenthe workers and the militia took place in thestate of Pennsylvania, chiefly around Pitts-burgh.

The strike on the Pennsylvania had quiteother causes. The reduction of wages had beenput over smoothly a month before and a smallstrike that had broken out in Alleghany Citywas quickly suppressed. Now the companyfound a new way of exploiting the workers alittle more, a way that meant throwing half ofthem out of work entirely. On the 19th of Julythe company issued an order that the numberof cars making up a freight train should be in-creased from 17 to 34. This meant that aboutthe same number of workers that had previ-ously taken care of 17 cars would now be incharge of 34.

Encounters in Pittsburgh—Workers OvercomeMilitia.

On the 19th of July, early one morning whenthe management of the railroad company inPittsburgh made an attempt to carry out thisorder, the crews of several freight trains re-fused to start trains going; they captured theswitches and would not let any trains leave thecity. The number of strikers kept on growingevery hour and in the evening several thousandmen were on strike.

The working population of Pittsburgh cameto the aid of the strikers and the governor cameto the aid of the company. Three regiments ofinfantry and a battery of artillery were dis-patched for Pittsburgh and the federal govern-ment sent in six hundred soldiers from Phila-delphia in order to suppress the revolt of theworkers.

The struggles between the workers and themilitia were many and bloody.

"This was no ordinary crowd that can befrightened with arrest," we read in the appealthat the city of Pittsburgh later addressed tothe legislature with the aim of being releasedfrom the damages that the Pennsylvania Rail-road claimed. "This was no ordinary riot. Itwas an insurrection against which the militarywas powerless. Even the soldiers had to seeksafety behind the walls of a round house whence

422

they were dispersed because of the fury of themob and then were forced to leave the city."

The battles between the workers and the mili-tia in Pittsburgh began on the 21st. The mass-es of thousands of workers were not at allfrightened at the soldiers and met them withshowers of stones. Without any warning what-ever the soldiers shot into the workers and 26fell dead and dozens wounded.

The soldiers emerged victorious from the firstbattle, but not for long.

A few hours later the workers returned tothe battle-field, this time not unarmed. Theyseized all weapons they could lay their handson and besieged the -depot in which the soldierswere hidden. The soldiers retreated and en-trenched themselves in the round house. Thestrikers were determined to drive the federalsoldiers out of the city and so they returned toattack again early on the 22nd. Somewherethey had obtained a cannon and they made pre-parations to bombard the round house. Thenthe officers announced their surrender and theywere escorted by the workers out of the city.

As may be imagined the bourgeoisie of Pitts-burgh were scared almost to death and beganto organize to resist the workers. In the abovequoted appeal to the Pennsylvania state legisla-ture we read: "The leading citizens understoodthe danger and met it in an organized way.They created a committee of safety and collect-ed $51,000 in cash in order to protect propertyand to restore order."

This committee of safety persuaded the gov-ernment to send two new regiments of soldiersto the city. The workers were now exhaustedand were not in the position to take up the newstruggle. With the help of the army the Penn-sylvania Railroad Company triumphed this time.

The struggle now began to burst out in doz-ens of other cities, in Reading, Harrisburg,Scranton, Altoona and Wil'kes-Barre. As farwest as Chicago and Cincinnati great battlestook place between the workers and the militia.

"A crowd numbering several thousand peo-ple," reads the report in the New York EveningPost for the 24th of July, "assembled along theReading Railroad line and began stopping acoal, freight and passenger train, only permit-ting mail trains to proceed. At 8 o'clock lastevening seven companies of the Fourth Regi-ment National Guard of Pennsylvania, arrivedand went along the railroad to Penn St. Whilein the deep cut extending from Walnut twosquares to Penn St. the soldiers were assailedwith stones and immediately began fighting.The bullets flew among the people in the neigh-borhood, among whom were many respectablecitizens, as well as ladies and children. Fivepersons are known to 'have been killed, and from18 to 25 wounded, several of them mortally. Anumber of other persons are supposed to havebeen wounded who escaped in the crowd.

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

Among those wounded are seven members ofthe police force, some of them seriously. . . .

"The mob broke into the armory of the Read-ing rifles and captured all their guns. They alsotook all the weapons from a gunstore."

The same day we read in the Evening Postan account of the events in Harrisburg. "Yes-terday afternoon word was sent to the mob thatdetachments of the Philadelphia Regiment onthe western side of the river were prepared tosurrender their arms, providing they were guar-anteed protection. About four o'clock a crowdabout one hundred crossed the wagon and footbridge to be present at the capitulation of thetroops. When the militia observed the mob theywere panic stricken, supposing that they wereto be attacked, and they retreated up the Sus-quehanna River as rapidly as possible. In anhour or two communication was establishedwith them when arrangements were perfectedfor their surrender to the mob, which occurredsoon after. The mob then hurried on their pris-oners and amid cheers marched them throughthe main street of the city to a hotel where thecaptured militia were fed. The captors carriedthe arms of their prisoners.

"At 11:30 last night an armed mob took pos-session of the Western Union Telegraph office."

On the 25th of July the Evening Post reportsthat in Cincinnati "the mob attacked the Gen-eral Police Station last night and endeavored tofree two of their ringleaders who had been ar-rested, and it required almost a third of the po-lice force to overcome them."

Gigantic Demonstrations and Encounters inChicago.

In Chicago the strike paralyzed the entire rail-road traffic; practically the whole working pop-ulation of Chicago came to the support of thestrikers. Tremendous demonstrations in whichtens of thousands of workers participated tookplace in the Chicago streets.

The dry reports of the Evening Post give onlya suggestion of what took place in the city inthe days of the strike.

"The railroad strikers took up a line of marchin Chicago this afternoon, and men of othertrades joined them until nearly 30,000 personswere assembled.

"All railroad traffic is at standstill."And on the 27th of July:"The meeting which was to have been held by

the Communists on Market St., was broken, upby a force of police after a battle in which stonesand sticks and blank cartridges and bullets wereused.

"At about 7 o'clock in the evening a bloodyriot began at the corner of 16th and HalstedSts., where the police in attempting to dispersethe crowd were overpowered and compelled totake refuge in the Round House of the Chicago,Burlington and Quincy Railroad."

J U L Y , 1926

A ND so the strike began by forty railroadworkers in a small town in West Virginia

spread like wild fire and in a few days embracedthe entire land. It became a general strike ofthe railroad workers—the first general strike inAmerica.

From New York to San Francisco raged thestruggle between labor and capital, for the rail-road strike was something more than a strike ofthe workers in one industry—it was an armeduprising of the American workers against thecapitalist order. And the American capitalistsunderstood very well that it was a struggle forthe very foundations of capitalist rule in Ameri-ca and so they made preparations for a new civilwar. A short telegram from San Francisco inthe Evening Post throws light on the prepara-tions made by the capitalists.

"Yesterday evening there took place in theChamber of Commerce a large meeting of themost prominent citizens of San Francisco.

"It was decided to organize a committee ofcitizens to co-operate with the military and withthe police in case of necessity. A committee of24 was selected to organize the citizens."

We have already noted that the revolt of theworkers in Pittsburgh was crushed when the

423

bourgeoisie of that city organized themselvesand created a fund of several thousand dollarsto fight the strikers. Such "committees ofsafety" and "committees to co-operate with themilitary and police" were created in every townand village where the struggle penetrated.

The first insurrection of labor against capitalin America was suppressed. The workers werestill too weak to cross swords with the Ameri-can capitalists. In their hands the capitalistshad the state power; the workers, however, hadno centralized organization to carry on thestruggle and to bring clarity, consistency, andsystem into it.

After this first revolt of the American work-ers there followed new bloody struggles betweenlabor and capital in America. How untrue isthe statement often heard in certain circles thatthe American working class has no revolution-ary traditions! The official leadership of thelabor movement seeks to hide these revolution-ary traditions of the Americna working class.The conscious revolutionary workers of Ameri-ca recall with honor and pride the first courage-ous fighters against capitalism in the UnitedStates.

From an old wood cut.

FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Tar and feathers for a British sympathizer who bought the hatedstamps.

424W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

The Persistent "Mexican Question"By Manuel Gomez

(Continued from May issue.)

HTHE "Mexican Question" came permanentlyto the fore in our generation not simply, as

the amiable writers of travel books would haveit, because the Mexicans do not understand Eng-lish and the people of the United States do noteat chili, but because of the requirements ofU. S. capitalist industry expanding upon an im-perialist basis. Mexico as a source of importantraw materials and as a field for the investmentof surplus capital were the first considerationsin twentieth century U. S. aggression.

Mexico and the U. S. Empire.

To the economic-business factors confined todirect exploitation of Mexican territory wereadded strategic factors. American imperialismdeveloped further. Even while individual groupsof capitalists were pursuing strictly limited pur-poses in Mexico, the political subjugation ofCaribbean and Central American countries wasunder way. Swiftly and unmistakably the sche-matic outline of empire in the western hemi-sphere began to unfold itself with Mexico as anobvious converging point. Cuba, Porto Ricoand Panama had already been seized by theUnited States. American marines planted thestars and stripes in the territory of Nicaragua.Santo Domingo was occupied. The Negro re-public of Haiti was "pacified." The policy ofmilitary intervention in Latin America becamea definite part of the concept of the MonroeDoctrine.

But war is another matter—and everyoneagrees that large-scale intervention in Mexicomeans war. How costly such an undertakingwould be was indicated in the tests of the Per-shing expedition and the occupation of VeraCruz. Mejxico is a country of 15,000.000 peo-ple with a territory as large as all the states ofthe United States east of the Mississippi. Gen-eral Peyton C: March has declared that it wouldtake 1,000,000 men and two years to conquerand "pacify" the Mexican nation. Thus Mexicoescaped the fate of those around her.

Nevertheless, Mexico, whose rich territorylies contiguous to the United States and is a vi-tal connecting link with the coveted lands far-ther south, plays a primary role in all imperial-ist calculations in this country. For economicbusiness reasons, for strategic reasons of em-pire—Wall Street desires Mexico more ardent-ly than it desires any other unconquered areain the western world.

Mexico's Line of Development.

Meantime, Mexico continues to follow a lineof development of its own. Our neighbor on thesouth is making use of its present unique posi-tion to fortify herself for the future. While await-ing the next political assault from the "colossusof the north," Mexico is grappling earnestly withthe all-important problem of economic self-suf-ficiency, of independence from foreign bankersand industrialists. She has embarked upon aprogram of economic resistance constituting aserious challenge to the program of foreigncapital — and this circumstance makes the"Mexican Question" all the more urgent forAmerican imperialism, for it foreshadows a pos-sible ultimate development which would allowMexico to slip thru its fingers entirely.

Fundamental factors in the progress of Mexi-can economic development provide the main-spring for what is going on.

The revolution which overthrew Porfirio Diazwas anti-feudal and agrarian, but not anti-for-eign. When Carranza rose in arms against Huer-ta, the Mexican revolution had already taken ona consciously nationalistic form. Indeed, ifCalles should conduct his foreign relations inthe same bellicose manner as Carranza—todaywhen the aggressive imperialism of the UnitedStates is one of the marks of the epoch—the in-tervention avalanche from the north would beupon him in no time. Nevertheless, the econo-mics of the present situation in Mexico embodya more serious challenge to Wall Street andWashington than all the stubborn blustering ofCarranza. There are two principal reasons forthis. First, the signs of a developing nativecapitalism in Mexico; and second, the 'begin-nings of development of an independent nation-al economy with a base broader than that ofthe strictly capitalistic classes.

The Beginnings of a Native Mexican Bourgeoisie

Great changes have taken place in Mexico inthese last few years, visible even at the firstglance. Capital cities of most of the states haveenlarged their suburbs on the near plains andin the capital city of the republic the popula-tion has increased tremendously. Walking thruthe streets of Mexico City at the hour whenworkers are going home from their jobs, youcannot fail to be impressed by the rush ofcrowded street cars and "camiones" branchingout in all directions. According to official gov-

J U L Y , 1 9 2 6

ernment figures, the Mexicaa republic now has112 sugar refineries, 142 cotton mills, 36 woolenmills, 75 large shoe factories, 222 cigar and ci-garette factories operating on a commercialscale, 68 hydro-electric plants, as well as im-portant paper mills, iron and steel foundries,soap factories, etc. Like the mining and oil in-dustries, most of the industries listed here areunder the domination of foreign capital butgreat numbers of large individual plants areowned by Mexicans. This is especially true inthe cotton industry, the shoe industry, the pa-per industry, the sugar industry, the cigar in-dustry and the soap industry. In the veryshadow of the foreign enterprises, which stilldominate Mexican economy and which in factpress forward more surely than ever, native en-terprises are springing up.

Only a few years ago revolutionists were in-sisting, not without reason, that there was nonational bourgeoisie in Mexico. In the largersense even today the Mexican bourgeoisie isstill struggling to be born. But there is quite adefinite middle class crystallization. The Mexi-can chambers of commerce now have a rela-tively large Mexican membership. Reinforcedby a whole army of petty bourgeois burocrats,professional men and intellectuals, the bour-geois elements have acquired something like auniform ideology and are pushing forward on allfronts. They find themselves in direct conflictwith the imperialism of the United States. Thestruggle of the Mexican national bourgeoisie tobe born is a struggle against foreign monopolyof Mexican resources, industrial productionand credit.

"We must insist by all means in our defenseagainst the imperialistic capital," wrote Senor RafaelNieto in March of this year, shortly before his death."I have the absolute conviction that if we allow an-other billion dollars of foreign capital to be investedin Mexico, in the same form it has been investedthus far, that is by buying outright the land and itsnatural resources, and securing the undisputed con-trol of our industry, we might as well resign oureconomic independence right now. A few bitter in-stances in our contemporary history justify thisdread.

"We need the foreign capital, but we must notsecure it by surrendering to it our economic independ-ence. The Mexican government intends to solvethis giant problem—with the Law of Foreigners, theOil Law, the Irrigation Law, etc.—and the logical re-sult will be that the future foreign investments willsatisfy themselves with securing a reasonable profitand little by little they will delegate to Mexicans theresponsibility and control of their industries. This isabsolutely necessary for the future autonomy of therepublic."

Senor Nieto, a former Assistant Secretary ofFinance in Mexico and a typical representativeof the middle class, expresses the ideology whichis dominant in this class in Mexico today. Hedied last April while serving as Calles' ministerto Italy.

425

The Policy of Calles.

It is necessary to appreciate recent capitalistdevelopment in Mexico to understand the gov-ernment of President Calles. Calles will be ac-cused of giving in to U. S. imperialism in the re-cent conflict over the oil and land laws. Ofcourse, he did give in. Yet it is a mistake tobrand him as an agent of imperialism, as manyradicals in this country and Latin America havebeen doing. There is too much in the admin-istration of President Calles that does not gowith such a characterization.

I have myself frequently insisted that theclassic representative of petty bourgeois nation-alism in the Mexican revolution was Carranza,who was opposed more determinedly by theUnited States than any other leader. Carranzawas overthrown by the Obregon-de la Huerta-Calles combination and this was a defeat fornationalism, greeted with unconcealed joy inWall Street and Washington. However, the Ob-regon-de la Huerta-Calles support was of a dualnature. It included workers and peasants sys-tematically and stupidly rendered hostile by theCarranza regime, whose reasons for revolt werequite different from those of the favored friendsof foreign capital.

The agrarian revolution—with its inevitablyanti-imperialistic orientation—continued to de-velop further. The working class of the townsfound itself in a strategic position as a resultof the confusion reigning in the ranks of itsbourgeois enemies after the collapse of Carran-za. Altho Obregon tried to change it, the Mexi-can atmosphere continued to be "radical." Itbecame still more so after the failure of the re-actionary uprising of de la Huerta in the lastweeks of 1923.

Here was a new rallying ground for the strug-gle against U. S. imperialism. The shatteredforces of the petty bourgeoisie pulled themselvestogether and reorientated themselves toward theworkers and peasants. They were not the sameelements who had been with Carranza in 1914,for Carranza had in truth been a petty bourgeoisleader without a petty bourgeoisie. It was to aconsiderable extent a new grouping, which isreally only now finding its feet. These newly-made business men, government burocrats andpoliticians, are now making a definite bid forleadership in the broad national movementagainst imperialist domination.

Calles represents the movement for the crea-tion of an independent national economy inMexico under the leadership of the petty bour-geoisie, and as such, he is an enemy of U. S. im-perialism. He is not always an uncompromis-ing enemy, however—first, because he has theexample of Carranza before him and is afraidof a head-on collision; second, because Mexico

426

needs capital and until there is some substan-tial prospect of native Mexican accumulation itwill have to come from abroad; third, becausehe dare not cut off all ties with the UnitedStates for fear that the "radical" Mexican work-ers and peasants will relegate the insecurelyweak petty 'bourgeoisie to the background.

The Calles Program.

In a country like Mexico the middle classforms far too narrow a base for the construc-tion of a national economy. Calles recognizesthis fully. His governmental program—the firstreally well-worked out constructive programthat has appeared in Mexico—assigns an im-portant role to the workers and peasants, althoalways with an eye to middle class hegemony.That is what I referred to earlier in the presentarticle when I spoke of, "the -beginning of devel-opment of an independent national economywith a base broader than that of the strictlycapitalistic classes."

Calles' nationalist program is clearly set forthin a long series of official acts which piece to-gether in a surprisingly consistent whole. Themore important of them are the following:

1. FOREIGN RELATIONS.

(a) Controversy with United States over attemptto regulate Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution(oil and land laws).

(b) Orientation toward Latin America. (Movefor Latin American congress; official explanations ofU. S.-Mexican conflict to Latin American countries;raising of Mexican legation in Guatemala to rank ofembassy; similar move with regard to Argentina,etc.)

(c) Close relations with the American Federationof Labor. The A. F. of L. appears to Calles as theonly existing substantial organized force in the Unit-ed States itself which may be used against the im-perialists.

(d) Continuation of diplomatic relations with theUnion of Socialist Soviet Republics. (Calles some-times takes an ambiguous and even provocative atti-tude with regard to Soviet Russia—first, in order tosatisfy the demands of the A. F. of L., and second,to discourage proletarian revolution in Mexico, butthe bare fact of uninterrupted diplomatic relations isa circumstance of importance).

2. INTERNAL-POLITICAL.

(a) Official support to the Labor Party and CROM(Mexican Federation of Labor). (Appointment ofMorones as Secretary of Industry, Commerce and La-bor; appointment of Morones' supportersvto minorposts of all sorts; subsidy of Labor Party papers;support of Morones against ex-Governor Zuno ofJalisco, etc.).

(c) Application of the laws striking at the rootsof power of the Catholic Church.

(d) Persecution of radical labor and peasant lead-ers, disruption of independent unions, etc.

3. INTERNAL-ECONOMIC.

(a) Economy program—reduction of the army—balancing of the budget—resumption of interest pay-ments on the foreign debt. /

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

(b) Establishment of the sole bank of issue.(c) Establishment of farm-loan banks.(d) Establishment of co-operatives.(e) Distribution of permanent titles to lands par-

titioned out in "ejidos" (peasant communities).(f) "Ley del Patrimonio de Familia"—step to-

ward individual peasant ownership as against the"ejido."

(g) Oil and land laws (under Article 27)—"Leyde Extranjeria."

(h) Irrigation works, on co-operative basis or un-der government control.

(i) Local road-building program.(j) Law exempting from all taxes Mexican busi-

ness concerns formed with a capital of 5,000 pesosor less.

This is plainly a program for building up a na-tional economy in Mexico which would be inde-pendent of foreign capital. It would be basedupon co-operation among petty-bourgeois, peas-ant and working-class elements under state pa-tronage.

Can Calles' Program Succeed?

Can such a program succeed? Certainly notif it is followed out precisely as President Callesintends. The Mexican middle class could leadin the creation of a national capitalism only atthe cost of great sacrifices by the workers andpeasants. Already Morones has obliged workersbelonging to the Crom to accept reductionsin wages, on the ground that it is necessary tohelp Mexican capitalism in competition withthe United States. This is called the method ofthe "rea juste" and it is one of Calles' schemesfor the accumulation of Mexican capital. Simi-lar reasons are given for attacks on Communistsand attacks on militant elements in the labormovement generally. Capitalist newspapers,business men,. government and Crom laborleaders tell the workers day in and day out that"class collaboration" is a national necessity—"class collaboration," that is, for the benefit ofthe middle class. Calles and his friends takeup the slogan of the "united anti-imperialistfront" and brandish it as a club to force theworkers and peasants to accept the hegemonyof the petty bourgeoisie in the nationalist strug-gle. But Mexico is overwhelmingly an agricul-tural country and the agrarian revolution is stillin process. For this reason alone, if for noother, it wil be impossible at the present timeto put a damper on the radical atmosphere ofMexico. The Mexican masses have not sufficientconfidence in the middle class to allow it to carrythru its own national program. Moreover, ithas neither the requisite resources nor the cour-age, nor the ability.

The Hegemony of the Workers and Peasants.

The petty bourgeoisie has given body andform to the economic struggle against imperial-ism, and is necessary to any constructive pro-

J U L Y , 1 9 2 6

gram of Mexican nationalism. But the workersand peasants must dominate the alliance. Onsuch a basis—with the center of gravity shiftedto the workers and peasants—who can say thatMexico will not be able to work out her owneconomic solution while at the same time offer-ing effective resistance to the imperialist press-ure of the United States? Mexico has enormousnatural resources. She has, considering thestage of development of the country, a well-dis-ciplined working class. She has a peasantrywhich is already being organized on a nationalscale. Workers as well as peasants are skilledin the use of arms. With proper leadership anda proper constructive program — embracingmany of the points brought forward by Presi-dent Calles—Mexico may be able not only tomaintain herself as an independent nation at thevery door of the greatest imperialist power ofthe world but to become, far more actively thanin the past, an organizing center for the wholeLatin American resistance to imperialist dom-ination.

Much would depend upon the complicated bal-ance of forces in the United States and in theworld at large. American imperialism onlymakes truce with Mexico. It obviously does notaccept the present situation. Every step to cur-tail Wall Street privileges in Mexico and to buildup an independent national economy places thepersistent "Mexican Question" a little higher upon the American agenda.

Considerations that might have led Wall Streetand Washington to temporize a few years agodo not have the same weight today. In theperiod since the World War, U. S. capitalistshave fallen heir to a position which puts theUnited States in the forefront of consciouslyimperialist powers. American imperialism iseverywhere on the offensive. Its aggressionsreach into Europe, Asia and South America. Itis impossible to appreciate the recent series ofadventures of American imperialism in LatinAmerica—from General Lassiter's invasion ofthe City of Panama to the Pershing-Lassiter"arbitral" expedition in Tacna-Arica, and includ-ing the latest U. S. assault upon the sovereigntyof Mexico herself—without expecting a deter-mined drive for the complete subjugation ofMexico.

We must realize all that is at stake in thisconflict. We must be prepared to lend solidsupport to Calles in his struggles against Ameri-can imperialism, at the same time calling uponour comrades in Mexico—and thruout LatinAmerica to point out to him that if he is sin-cere in his nationalist program he must relyfrankly upon the important revolutionary andconstructive elements of the Mexican popula-tion—the workers and peasants, who cannot besacrificed to a small group of petty bourgeoisand whose sacrifice would constitute the betray-al of Mexican nationalism.

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42SW O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

The Trade Unions in the TheoreticalSystem of Karl Marx

By N. Auerbach(Continued from June issue.)

The Tasks of the Trade Unions.

T ET us now return to our original question:Can we find in the Marxian system—as far

as we are able to judge from our present knowl-edge—a justification for the existence of eco-nomic organization? The answer is very brief:No, only are such organizations possible butthey are nectessary for the regulation of thesale of the commodity labor-power so that inthe constant fluctuations of the markets it willbe sold at its value in spite of the counter-act-ing tendencies of capitalist production.

The necessity of trade unions within the capi-talist wage-system is emphasized by Marx againand again in his writings and speeches touch-ing on the subject, above all in "Value, Priceand Profit," and "The Poverty of Philosophy."Repeatedly he defends the role of the trade un-ions as against the liberal and "socialist" econ-omists who cry out against the "threat" theseorganizations hold out for the "pure" play ofthe "holy" law of supply and demand.* "Assoon, therefore, as the laborers learn the se-cret, how it conies to pass that in the samemeasure as they work more, as they producemore wealth for others, and as the productivepower of their labor increases, so in the samemeasure even their function as a means of theself-expansion of' capital becomes more andmore precarious for them; as soon as they dis-cover that the degree of intensity of the com-petition among themselves depends wholly onthe pressure of the relative surplus-population;as soon as by Trades' Unions, etc., they try toorganize a regular co-operation between em-ployed and unemployed In order to destroy or toweaken the ruinous effects of this natural lawof capitalistic production on then1 class, so sooncapital and its sycophant, political economy, cryout at the infringement of the eternal and so tosay sacred law of supply and demand."

As a consequence of the double role of the"free" worker (the prerequisites of every formof capitalist production) as well as of the mono-polistic position of the capitalist owing to theindustrial reserve army, it naturally follows thatthe commodity labor-power can become reallya commodity on the plane with other commodi-ties only when its sellers are no longer forcedto get rid of it at any time or under any condi-

tions whatever. Expressed paradoxically: Onlythe abolition of free competition renders freecompetition possible.

From an understanding, therefore, of thebasic elements of the capitalist economy it fol-lows that the regulation of the labor supplyis the foundation for every form of trade unionactivity. A rational distribution of work, un-employment support of various kinds, in short,any sort of benefits that help to prevent demo-ralization of the workers—all these are valu-able features that enrich the basic activity ofthe trade unions. Only when the antagonismsbetween the employed and the unemployed sec-tions of the workingclass, only when the com-petition among individual workers are removedand transformed into solidarity against the com-mon enemy, only then can the trade unions takeup the competitive struggle with the capitalists,a struggle for the most favorable sale of labor-power. The aim of the trade unions is there-fore the substitution of the collective labor con-tract for the individual and this reaches itshighest point in "collective bargaining." In thisconnection it must be remembered that we canspeak of a labor contract only when there existssome organization to take part in the forma-tion of the contract; for, as long as the individ-ual worker stands defenceless at the mercy ofcapital, he must necessarily give in to everydemand of the boss under pain of destruction.The special field of activity of coalitions istherefore, the struggle for the stabilization orthe raising of the price of labor-power, that is,the wage struggle.

Such activity is generally mostly a matter ofreacting to previous actions of capital, as Marx,showed in his speech to the general council ofthe International.* The most important of thesecases will be mentioned here.

The value of labor-power can be changedthru changes in any of the three factors thatdetermine it: Length of the working day, in-tensity, of labor**, productive power of labor. Ifthe working day is increased, the other factorsremaining the same, the workers must neces-

*Capital, vol. 1, p. 702.

^Published by Bernstein in 1907 as "Lohn, Preisuhd ^Profit" (in English as "Value, Price and Profit.")

**lncrease in the density of labor, increased in-tensity of labor, means a greater expenditure of labor-power per time interval. This results in an increase inthe value of labor-power in contradiction to increases inproductivity that are followed by decrease in the valueof labor-power.

J U L Y , 1 9 2 6

sarily strive for a corresponding increase inwages; unless the price of the labor-power isto sink below its value there must be an in-crease in wages not merely corresponding tothe increase in the working day but even ex-ceeding it for "man, on the contrary, decays ina greater ratio than would be visible from themere numerical addition of work."* If theincrease in the working day reaches a certainstage no making up thru wage increases is pos-sible since the degree of exploitation of thelabor-power destroys all possibility for normalconditions of reproduction. These methods ofincreasing the absolute surplus-value, such fa-vorites in early times, retreat to the backgroundin the period of highly developed capitalism incomparison with the extraction of relative sur-plus value which can be submitted to no legallimitations. The most common of these formsthe increase in the density of labor, also impliesan increase in the daily value of labor-powerand thus calls for a corresponding wage in-crease.

The most complicated, but also the most pro-fitable method of increasing the surplus valueat the expense of the worker—a method thatplays a particularly prominent role in developedcapitalism—is the increase of the productivepower of labor. This may be the cause as wellas the result fo wage movements and has thegreat advantage, from the point of view ofprivate capitalism, that it is the levels for techni-cal progress. In the end this, of course, re-dounds to the advantage of the workingclasssince "it provides the necessary material con-ditions for the economic reconstruction of so-ciety."**

The increase in the productivity of laborbrings with it effects and counter-effects ofmany kinds, depending upon the particularbranch of production dealt with. A decrease inproductivity in agriculture means an increase inthe value of labor-power and therefore wage in-creases if the condition of the worker is notto be worsened. On the other hand, an increasehowever, the mass of the products as well asin productviity means a decrease in wages; as,the mass and rate of surplus value have in-creased, it becomes the task of the trade unionsto take a stand against th elowering of wagesand to attempt to maintain the former positionof the worker in the social scale thru obtaininga share in his increased productive power, thatis, thru preventing the sinking of his "relative"wages.*** Increases in the productive power oflabor in industry play a different role accord-ing to whether the commodities in question aredirectly or indirectly involved in the consump-tion of the worker or not. In the former casethey have the same effects as changes in pro-. /

*Value> Price and Profit, page 108.**Value, Price and Profit, page 126.***Value, Price and Profit, page 103.

429

ductive power in agriculture; in the latter casethey have no effect at all upon the relations ofthe paid and unpaid portions of labor and there-fore, upon the rate of wages.

Alongside of these occasions for changes inwages, all to be traced to changes in the valueof labor-power, there is a special form of ex-ploitation that plays a great role in the tradeunion struggle—that is the "graduated wage."The necessity for fighting against this type ofwage is very clear for it is the aim of the capi-talist to limit in every way any increase of thetotal daily or weekly wage thru diminishingthe piece work rate as soon as the quantity ofproducts passes beyond the average. The de-crease of piece work wages demands the mostenergetic resistance on the part of the tradeunions, particularly in view of the fact that anyincrease of production is possible only thru theintensification of labor which, unless it is equal-ized thru a wage increase, means the sinking ofthe price of labor-power below its value.

As a general rule, all these factors operatesimultaneously and so the changes that resultare the consequences of all of them together.To unaccustomed eyes it is difficult indeed tograsp the casual relations—and so the wagemovements themselves are often looked uponas the original factor. Essentially, however, itis almost always a case of the resistance ofthe workers to the exploitation tendencies ofcapital which, were it not for such successfulresistance, would permanently depress the priceof labor-power much below its value—as in-deed was the case before the rise of labor or-,ganizations.

Trade unions must not, however, remain sat-isfied with realizing the full value of labor-power. They must always strive to raise itsvalue. And here the fundamental differencesbetween the Marxian conception and the Lassal-iean theory of the "iron law" become especiallyevident. Of course, even Lassalle could not help »note the real differences in the "necessary"wages in certain epochs of history and in thevarious periods of capitalism; but his systemprovides no explanation whatever for this phe-nomenon. For who is able to stop the iron na-tural law from—in the end— automatically wip-ing out every rise in wages that may arise fromthe advantage of the moment? What power isthere that can smash this principle of natureand cure the workers of their "cursed lack ofdesires?"* But these things take on quite adifferent aspect when examined from the pointof view we used as the basis for understandingthe economic activities of labor organizations.Here there is no talk of any mechanically "regu-lating" natural law. Just as a social relation—the capital relation—lies at the basis of the

*This slogan of the "cursed lack of desires" wasthrown forth by Lassalle in the struggle of the workerswithout any consideration of its consequences.

130

economy of today, so also are wages determinedsocially. For wages contain not only the physi-ologically determined element but also the ele-ment determined socio-historically. Marx em-phasized this latter element (the socio-histori-cal). Only in unfavorable circumstances dowages reduce to the minimum, their proportionto the surplus value being in general determined"by the relative weight that capital on the onehand and the resistance of the workers on theother can throw in to the scale."

It is thru emphasizing this element that Marxshows us the possibility for and also the way toincreasing the value of labor-power.

The most usual case is the one noted above.If labor succeeds in counter-acting or at leastin limiting to a certain point the sinking ofwages resulting from an increase in productiv-ity in agriculture and in mass production—which really means that it succeeds in maintain-ing the price of labor-power above its new (low-er) value—and if it is isuccessful in maintain-ing this wage level for a considerable time, thenthe value of labor-power is really raised as aresult of the expansion of the moral-historicalelement. But this does not exhaust all prac-tical possibilities. The greatest field of activityof the trade unions in this connection is pre-sented in the periodical crisis of capitalism, thetheoretical and practical significance of whichwill be presented in another connection. In thelast analysis everything helps increase the valueof labor-power that tends to extend the needs ofthe workers and so we must include here manytypes of educational and cultural institutionsand organizations.

(Continued in next issue.)

Trade Union Insurance(Continued from page 415.)

that of a means to handle the workers' savings.These savings exist; their total is enormous;and they are full of dynamic possibilities. We

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

cannot ignore them. We cannot advise theworkers to turn their savings over to the capi-talists nor can we tolerate the trade union bu-rocrats getting hold of them and poisoning theunions with them. The workers themselvesmust control their own savings thru genuine co-operatives, based upon the principle of everymember having one share of stock and one votein the co-operative enterprise. Such must beour program. We must oppose the foundationof new trade union capitalist institutions andwe must fight against the extension of thosenow existing. We must demand the severanceof these organizations, such as labor banks, in-surance companies, investment companies, etc.,completely from the trade unions and other or-ganizations and their transformation into realco-operatives with rank and file control. Wemust fight against the investment of the work-ers' funds in any form of capitalistic enterprise.We must propose investment of these funds inthe industries of the Soviet Union.

The reactionaries who organized the UnionLabor Life Insurance Company, knowing thestand of the left wing against trade union capi-talism and hoping to forestall the rank and fileopposition to their present autocratic control,'argue in their literature and speeches that anyother form than a capitalistic stock companyis impossible at the present. But they say:"When successfully established, the companymay easily be converted into a mutual form oforganization." But the workers will do well notto be deceived by such hypocrisy. Once thislife insurance company is established on thepresent basis, the reactionaries who control itcompletely will never let it go. The time to makethe fight for democratic control, that is, real co-operative organization, is now. We must fightagainst the establishment of the Union LaborLife Insurance Company. Trade union capital-ism is the very worst way of meeting the prob-lem of organizing the workers' savings. It mustbe nipped in the bud or it will bear fruit that willpoison the whole body of organized labor.

ReviewOil

A Review by H. M. WICKS.OIL IMPERIALISM: By Louis Fischer. One volume,

256 pp. New York. International Publishers, $2.00.

"jyrOST writers dealing with the subject of oil and 1m-•"J. perialist policy dismiss those regions nationalizedby the Soviet Union as belonging to another world andtherefore, outside the pale of the conflict that admittedlyrages over oil in every other part of the globe known tocontain this desriable substance.

Louis Fischer, in his book just off the press, provesthat even the nationalized oil fields of Baku, Grosni,Em'ba and Maikop, have been the object of many of themost titanic diplomatic conflicts of recent years.

Utilizing a narrative style, that holds the interest ofthe reader throughout the entire book, the author tracesthe history of the conspiracies of .the two great rivals inthe oil world—Standard Oil and the British Royal DutchShell, with their numerous allies and subsidiaries—against the Bolshevik government of Russia and againsteach other.

Particularly commendable is his analysis of the policyof the United States government toward recognition ofthe Soviets. That sartorically immaculate statesmanand former secretary of state, Mr. Charles Evans Hughes,whose towering moral indignation against the Bolshevikswas one of the outstanding world phenomena in therealm of diplomacy during the administration of thelate Harding has his hypocritical baptist whiskers re-moved and we see the oliferous visage of a puppet ofthe Rockefeller monopoly.

Standard Oil became particularly incensed at the Bol-sheviks because they would not recognize its claimto nationalized oil land that it had purchased from theconcern of Nobel Brothers (Russian citizens under theold regime). The Rockefeller interests entered into thedeal on the gamble that the Soviet government wouldfall. When the government of the Bolsheviks did notexpire, according to the expectations of the agents ofthe American oil trust, then the government was in-duced to adopt an extreme anti-Soviet policy.

While Standard Oil was vainly trying to secure prop-erty purchased from a concern that did not own it, theBritish Royal Dutch Shell began to maneuver, in theyears of famine In Russia, to get a monopoly on Bakuoil. The story of this conflict is dramatic. Fischer re-lates how Standard Oil entered into a conspiracy withFranco-Belgian interests at ithe Genoa conference toseize nationalized Russian property; how in 1923 Stand-ard Oil outmaneuvered the Royal Dutch Shell in an in-ternational oil conference and forced it, against its will,to take the lead in an attempted blockade of Russia,how the rivalries of the two giant combines preventedits realization and how, finally, the British concernviolated the pact and eventually forced the other oilgroups to accept its policy.

At the time of Its direst need, when industry was atits lowest level, when grim famine stalked the land, therapacious imperialist powers refused to extend any aidto the Soviet Union.• In sipite of its weak position economically, the Soviet

diplomats remained true to Communist principles andrefused to yield and open the door for a return of im-perialist plunderers even in the Caucasus.

Against almost insurmountable obstacles the econo-mic life of Russia began to ascend. While the fight be-tween the imperialist giants was raging the Soviet Un-ion set about the task of building its own productive

forces until today the value of the Baku and Grosni fieldshas increased far beyond the expectations of all tlhe oilexperts of the world.

The liberal terms that were offered the oil combinesa few short years ago cannot be expected. Not only isoil being produced in sufficient quantities to supply theneeds of Russia but many of the European nations aredepending exclusively upon oil from the nationalizedfileds and it is doubtful If Baku and Grosni will ever beutilized for concessions to foreign groups.

With Emba, where production has not yet begun, it isdifferent, but even there no such terms as were offeredin 1922 will be granted to foreign capital. Says Fischeron page 237:

"Exhausted by famine, civil war and blockade,the Soviets were ready, in 1922, to conclude almostany bargain that would give them immediate reliefeven though it might ultimately redound to the detri-ment of the nation. Now these compelling circum-stances are 'gone forever'."Most interesting to American readers is the changed

attitude of Standard Oil, that force of circumstances,the result of the amazing economic recovery of Russiaunder a Communist government, brought about. Of lateStandard Oil has "seen the light," has abandoned itsfoolish attempt to claim ownership of fields purchasedfrom people who did not own them, and is diligently ad-vocating recognition of Russia in order that it may haveat least an equal chance with the Royal Dutch Shell inconcessions that are still available.

The author publishes correspondence between Ivy L.Lee—(publicity agent and "adviser on public relations"to the Standard Oil—and many statesmen and businessmen urging recognition of the Soviets. His correspond-ence still retains the hypocritical mask of capitalism andhe pretends to favor recognition on moral grounds inorder to bring Russia "back into the family of nations,"but "the odor of petroleum clings heavily about the sta-tionery on which at is written."

Another most interesting chapter for revolutionists isthe one that relates the manner in which the BritishRoyal Dutch Shell subsidized the mensheviks (yellowsocialists) and incited uprisings against the Soviets inGeorgia in order to pave the way for that oil combine.This also explains why Mr. Phillip Snowden, his wifeEthel, and that forlorn philistine bigot, J. Ramsay Mac-Donald, shed crocodile tears over the crushing of theseimperialist hirelings by the Soviets.

The only point in the book that will not meet with, ap-proval of Marxians is the concluding paragraph wherehe speaks of the new "Oil Age."

Oil plays an important role today because it has be-come Indispensible to industry—'but it is only as an aux-iliary, a fuel that it is important. To interpret this asthe Oil Age is to indulge in metaphysics and abandondialectics. Imperialism today is based upon the col-onies and the imperialist rivalry between Britain andthe United States would continue if all the oil wells inthe world suddenly became dry. Furthermore, the intro-duction of new and less expensive fuels (a remote pos-sibility) would liquidate the struggle for oil, but wouldleave imperialism intact. The conflict over oil is onephase of the general conflict'of rival imperialisms andthe history of the next generation will be read in thelight of the increasing antagonism between the greatpowers and the accompanying class struggle on thepart of the workers In the home countries and the op-pressed colonials against all forms of imperialism.

All in all, the book stands alone among the works onthe conflict over oil and we cannot too highly recom-mend it to our readers.

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