The Semi Monthly Organ of the Communist League of America (Opposition)
MILITANT VOL. II. No. 11 NEW YORK, July 1, 1929.
PRICE CENTS GASTONIA New Split Begins Lovestone is Expelled IN THIS ISSUE THE FIGHT FOR GASTONIA LOVESTONE IS EXPELLED BRITISH LABOR GOVERNMENT The eyes of all enlightened workers must turn to For the development of this struggle on a national TROTSKY ON RADEK day to Gastonia, North Carolina, the scene of the first scale and on a broad basis all sectarianism must be THE PROGRESSIVE CONFERENCE great battle for the unionization of the South and the cast aside. All efforts must be directed toward the MAY DAY PUTSCH IN BERLIN attempt to halt this work by the time honored method mobilization of all conscious and progressive forces REVOLUTION IN INDIA of murder frame up against nearly a score of the in the working class and all sympathetic elements BEHIND THE SCENES IN THE RUSSIAN strike leaders headed by Fred Bcal. The attempt to around the communists for the help of the Gastonia PARTY railroad the strike leaders is the outcome of the raid workers. Any other policy is hopelessly futile, against LOSOVSKY VERSUS LOSOVSKY on the strikers tent colony on June which resulted the interests of the workers and condemned in adin the fatal shooting of the chief of police, the leader vance to defeat.
of the raid. This raid, with its tragic consequences, Our way is clearly indicated by the experience of was the culmination of weeks of provocation, Czarist previous struggles as well as by the relation of forces oppresion and lynch law invoked against the strikers and the tested fighting methods of communism. The by the authorities ander the control of the mill owners. management of the Passaic strike, despite minor That fatalities did not occur sooner is proof of the erors was a brilliant exemplification of these methods restraint and discipline of the workers. That finally, which must be revived and emulated in the present after they had been starved, beaten. evicted and situation. The Communists at the head of that historic The falling apart of the Right Center Bloc in the driven into a tent colony they fought back in self struggle utilized the tactics of the united front with defense is testimony to their courage which all class brilliant success. Thereby a broad supporting move Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Interconscious workers will applaud. Gastonia has written ment was created in which great masses of non national is already finding ite inevitable expression in its name already on the bright pages of American communist workers took part, along with the symp the Communist Party of the United States. Jay Lovelabor history. The workers there have fought and are athizing and liberal elements whose aid in the stone, yesterday the leader of the Party and comradefighting not for themselves alone but for the cause of circumstances was very valuable. The Passaic strike in arms of Foster in the war against the Communist all the expoited who aspire to organization and free conferences throughout the country which provided Opposition, has been expelled by the new Political Budom. Their support and defense is a duty of the Amer the material and moral reserves of support for the reau manufactured recently in Moscow. At the same ican working class. It must become a burning issue striking workers at Passaic, and the methods whereby time, Bertram Wolfe was suspended from the Potiof the labor movement.
they were created, are good examples for our guiding tical Bureau of which he was a member. These actions, The unionization of the newly industrialized South, line now.
together with similar ones to follow, were already eviproceeding through blood and fire, is a work of pro The great Sacco Vanzetti agitation is another excel. dent from the tone and content of the spurious enfound importance for the future of our labor move lent example of how the Communists, despite their lightenment campaign carried on in the Party press ment. Every step forward in this field has a numerical weakness and lack of direct influence over since the receipt of the open address of the Execustrengthening and invigorating influence all around. the masses, are able by correct tactics to organize tive Committee of the Communist International. They These workers must not be compelled to fight alone. hundreds of thousands of workers and set them into represent the beginning of a new split in the Party.
Widespread, national support is the duty of the hour. motion on a class issue. The Communists, as the deLovestone Wolfe Gitlow and Company are undoubtThe Communists, the most dynamic element in the cisive element in the International Labor Defense, in edly leading a split away from the Party to the Right, working class, have played their part in the vanguard were indubitably the leading and organizing of the battle at Gastonia. In contradistinction to re this vast campaign. If this had been done at the start the logical conclusion of their whole past course of formist neglect and treachery they have fought at the of the fight Sacco and Vanzetti would have been petty bourgeois corruption and opportunism, a course head of the struggle of the workers. Experience here saved. The key to the successful work of mobilization in which they were continuously supported by the Staagain shows that it is the revolutionaries who fight in the Sacco Vanzetti case as in the Passaic strike lin Executive Committee of the Communist Internamost aggressively and courageously for the smallest consisted in subordinating names and forms to the tional. They are obviously allied with the Right Wing reforms in the conditions of the workers.
movement, in appearing as the defenders of the in the International, led by Bucharin. Rykov and their faction. They will undoubtedly bring forward a BranBut the Communists cannot and should not wage general interests of the workers and not simply of dler platform of tactics for the American movement this fight alone. And the newly industrialized Southern partisan aims and in the organization of non comworkers must not be separated from the older and munists and even anti communist workers for the which will clash with the new left policy of the parbetter organized workers of the north, not even from struggle on that ground. These methods alone made ty all along the line. The Lovestone faction is strongly those who only partly understand the issues at stake. the movement possible and indirectly brought a entrenched in the party apparatus and in the leading This will only isolate the struggle and condemn it to hundred times more credit and prestige to the Comcircles of the Needle Trades group of opportunists, defeat. The issue of Gastonia has become a national munists than could have been gained by any ballyhoo and is already waging an effective internal struggle of factionalism and sabotage against the decision of the issue which cries out for the formation of the broadest of self praise.
possible supporting movement. The local struggle must All this holds good in the present struggle. Nothing and the new leadership made to order by it.
become a national struggle and gain the support of has happened in the meantime except to confirm this At the opportune moment Lovestone and Wolfe will be the working class. The advancement of unionization truth. The extent to which this is realized and applied able to deal a heavy blow in the open.
among the Southern workers and the lives of the in practice will have a decisive bearing on the scope The enlightenment campaign throws no light arrested strikers and strike leaders depend on this. and effectiveness of the struggle for Gastonia.
whatever on the actual processes at work and only prepares the ground for deeper convulsions. Its explanation of the new events is false and superficial from start to finish. What is taking place in the American Communist Party, as in the Communist International as a whole, is the splitting of the movement, The anti Fascist movement in this country, and in of Lenin, for a leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, the disintegration of its forces, the smashing of its the rest of the world, is experiencing a tumultous dis for a founder and leader of the victorious Red Army, prestige and recruiting powers among the workers. We cusion and dissension. The subject involved is the re for a founder and leader of the Communist Internatio are witnessing the culmination in the American Party port that Teruci, chief of the Fascist militia and Italo nal. Stalin has only imprisonment and exile in Si of the disruptive influence of Stalinist centrism on the Balbo, one of the most notorious hangmen of Fascism, beria and deportation to the White Guards in Turkey. International movement. Only those who understand and Minister of Airways in Italy, upon his arrival with PARTY this can help the movement back to the path of Lenin.
MEMBERS PROTEST BALBO an airplane squadron of Fascista in Odessa, RECEPTION was given an enthusiastic reception by the Soviet authorities. According to the United Press reports. Bal.
On Friday, June 21, 1929, at the district member. tion the sole weapons of the newly appointed Organization measures, suppression and falsificabo and his fellow blackshirts had a banquet tendered ship meeting of the Itallian comrades in New York leaders cannot cope with the disintegration. They to them in Odessa which was attended by the official and vicinity at the Workers Center, the question of only strengthen and deepen it. They sow pessimism head of the Soviet Air Fleet and other notables.
the Russian reception to the famous fascist murderer, and discouragement in the ranks. The Party members Thousands of the best sons of Italian labor were of the Itallian comrades protested against the action hope for peace and unity while the whole situation maItalo Balbo, was heatedly discussed for hours. Many vote without understanding or conviction in the vain murdered, assaulted and imprisoned by Mussolini butchers. It is Italo Balbo whose name is an impreca. of the Stalin regime, the most energetic voice of tures new and fiercer factional struggles. Stalinism he who ordered the murder of the anti Fascist priest, Union City, New Jersey: When he declared: It was within and weakened it enormously before its enemies.
Don Minzoni, for which he was tried and released. It shameful to receive Balbo! he expressed the feelings was he who has the biood of scores of Italian revoluof numerous Itallian comrades who have had to hang Formal discipline as a cover for political impotence tionists on his hands. Wherever he goes he is pursued their heads and be unable to reply to the taunts of and bureaucratic rule has played itself out. Organizaby the curses of the working class. When he came to New York, which has raised a hue and cry about the tion measures have lost their effectiveness. The only Argentina some time ago, the demonstrations of the salvation of the movement lies in ideological clarificaworkers against him aised such a Balbo reception.
commotion that tion and a reunification of the cominunist ranks on two of them were killed by the reactionaries. In New that basis. The communist workers need to know what York City, when Balbo came here he was met with a is really behind the crisis, to think and to act with demonstration of infuriated workers at the City Hall, PICNIC conscious purpose. The cablegram leadership, without at the Plaza Hotel and at the dock when he sailed.
political strength, without independence, without abiMany of the Itahan workers in the city felt the clubs arranged by the lity and without courage cannot create the conditions of the Tanmany Hall police who protected Balbo. In New York Branch of the Communist for this. The communist workel will win their way to Greece and Bulgaria through which he has just passed, no reception was accorded him.
League of America a. Leninist understanding of the situation only in revolt against them.
in PALISADES PARK, After the death of the martyred Matteotti, a session of the League of Nations in Geneva took place, during ON SUNDAY, JULY 14th The party needs a real discussion of the three conwhich Mussolini came forward with outstretched palm Directions: Take Fort Lee Ferry flicting political lines which are now clearly revealing 130 to Emile Vandervelde, the Belgian social patriotic themselves: The Right, the Centrist and the line of the St. On the Jersey side take Hudson River car prime minister. Vandervelde said: don give my Communist Opposition. The Party needs to smash to Dalia Boulevard. From Dalia Blvd. ten mihand to Matteotti murderer. Even the yellow 80through the artificial limits of the fake enlightennutes walk to end of Seventh St. Palisades cial democ dervelde did not dare to shake the ment campaign and compel a real political discussion Park. From the Jersey side of Fort Lee Ferry hand of blo la fury of the workers.
of the issues and the viewpoints. This is the way out auto service from to P.
But Stalin hle to give Italo Balbo of the crisis. This is the way to the consolidation of the. There will be eats. and fun. recept unist forces and a ife for the TICKETS 95 Banquet for Balbo. Exile for Trotsky then nagrade nale