AnarchismBolshevismBourgeoisieBujarinCapitalismCentrismCominternCommunismLeninLeninismMarxismSocialismSovietStalinStalinismURSSWorkers MovementWorkers PartyWorking ClassWorld WarZinoviev

August 15, 1929.
THE MILITANT Page strug. justice of the capitalists. There were undoubtedly YEARS AFTLR millions of workers who could not convince themselves PEACE TALK to the very last minute that the Massachusetts reSacco and Vanzetti actionaries would dare to go through with their hideous murder plans. The execution revealed to them that Smoke screen for War This August 23rd will mark two years after the the ruling class hesitates at nothing to consolidate and The temporary suspension of cruiser building by the night when life was burned out of two of the finest retain its power to exploit the working class. The MacDonald government in England, followed by the spirits ever devoted to the great cause of the working execution revealed to them the fact that the courts, Hoover regime in the United Staates, as a result of the class. On that night the cultured, respectable and juries, the whole system of American democratic conversations between the Laborite and Dawes, the frock coated elite of Massachusetts civilization, and justice is an instrument in the hands of one class American Ambassador at London, has opened a new Fullers, Lowells and Thayers threw the switch that alone for the persecution of another class; that in era of peace and harmony for the hundredth time sent a fatal current through the tortured bodies of timidation, terror and legal murder are not the least since the World War. The liberal capitalist press, led Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The great by the Nation and New Republic, are puffing themof the weapons of the bourgeoisie.
thinkers and the masters who are kind enough to rule selves blue in the face with glee. The socialist press, Sacco and Vanzetti were murdered because they were us looked on with open approbation or with a silence trailing a poor second as usual, is welcoming the acworse than assent. It will teach the damned Reds working class fighters, devoted, selfless, and without tion as a further peaceful step towards the brotherhood a lesson.
fear. They were made an example of. They were of man and the abolition of bloodshed and turmoil.
led to the electric chair in the face of the protest of THE LESSON OF CLASS JUSTICE Norman Thomas opens up on the first page of the New literally millions of workers in every part of the world.
But it also taught hundreds of thousands of AmeriLeader with pious joy in his heart at the thought of the The American capitalist class, feeling secure in its can workers a big lesson. The deadly electrical flame that seared the martyrs gave ghastly illumination almighty power, did not want to lose face by yielding 30, 000, 000 saved for the prosperity of his beloved taxpayer every time a cruiser is discarded, and on the last to the pressure of the people.
to the whole structure of prejudiced, vengeful class page the cynical Oneal chuckles with maudlin editorial The fight for lives the two martyrs proved approval of the drubbing Hoover administered in his ful days. The man whom Stalin has appointed to over again that the working class can gain nothing by letter clever and deadly in its logic to MeNutt. lead the fight against the war danger, was for win accomodating itself to the limitations of its class enemy, the commander of the American Legion.
ning the last war at all costs. bought either 450 the capitalists. The well meaning liberals. the yelor 500 worth of bonds made dozens of speeches and low socialists, and the anarchists who were so perA WORLD ARMED TO THE TEETH carried on a regular campaign in the stock yards to turbed by the storm of the workers mass movement, We have had enough of these new eras. however, help make he loans a success.
who wanted to fight for Sacco and Vanzetti by being to be more than sceptical of their realization either These are the credentials which qualify him to respectable and very legal in the eyes of Coolidge, through MacDonald or Hoover. World capitalism has denounce us as counter revolutionists and rene Fuller and Thayer, only stood in the way of the been disarming regularly, every half year, since the gades. They are not unlike the credentials of other gle and helped to lull the workers into false security end of the World War, disarming to such an extent, leaders of the Stalin slander squad throughout the and delusions that led to inaction. Wittingly or un in fact, that history can find no parallel for a world International.
wittingly, they played the cunning game of the Fullers.
bristling so belligerently with the most efficient armIn 1921 the left tide in the labor movement was It was they who sought to split the united defense aments as today. The sum total of all the disarmflowing and Foster discovered the Russian Revolu movement, who sought to soft pedal on the militant ament conferences up to the present day has been the tion and that not without considerable persuasion struggle, who sought partisan ends by fighting in every scrapping of old, outmoded and useless weapons of and inducement. When Ralph Chaplin and the writer way against the Communist elements who were the war, the expenditure of ever increasing proportions went to see him early in that year he was still hesi leaven and backbone of the movement. That must be of national budgets for chemical and air equipment, a tant and evasive. He replied to a direct question as remembered.
continual series of small wars of the big powers to his belief in the proletarian revolution with the THE MOVEMENT MUST BE REVIVED against their smaller victims, and preparations for strange words, as remember them: Well, used to big wars against each other or unitedly against the have a lot of faith. walked twenty miles once to vote That gigantic movement which rallied hundreds of Soviet Union.
the Socialist ticket.
thousands and more to its banner showed that the The present proposal to discard a few cruisers has His entry into the Party in 1921, following a trip healthy class instincts of the American workers had not been entirely blunted by a false prosperity and bows and arrows in the Spanish American war. All about as much significance as an agreement to discard to Russia and an agreement to support and build up the was an undoubted advantage to the democratic illusions. It proved that the American the cruisers in the world may be scrapped without it movement just emerging from the underground and workers can be aroused to march in unison for their inaking very much difference, for as Mr. George Young, seeking contact with the masses. His trade union class interests. Such a movement must be rivived.
noted member of the British Labor Party and an old prestige and connections were a great factor in giving It is an imperative need. Sacco and Vanzetti were not hand at diplomacy under half a dozen British governlife to the trade union tactics adopted at the Unity the first and not the last. The capitalist class is ments, said at the Williamstown Institute of Politics: convention earlier in that year and which retain their working to make Gastonia another Boston. It still Cruisers will soon be about as useless as battleships.
validity today. Even his conceptions of dual union keeps Mooney and Billings buried in California. It He continues. as the cause of all the evils in the radical move still takes its toll of the Centralia for defend In tackling the most expensive and least efficient ment served a purpose in correcting the sectarian ing themselves from American Legion lynchers. Scores branches first, the danger is that more and more there currents on this question.
of other workers in this country and thousands through will be a concentration on the most novel and efficient As a Party leader he failed to justify the hopes out the world, add to the number of victims of capitalist weapons, the submarines, the airplanes and poison gas.
placed in him and was not long in demonstrating that class justice. For all these, and for those to come, the Moreover, these novel weapons to which national he had learned more from Gompers than from Lenin. workers must be aroused to protest and act, the move armaments may be reduced in ten or twenty years, His methods were marked by an ingrained and in ment must be gathered and built.
depend for their effectiveness on rapid and ruthless offensives against His inability to put any question curable dishonesty The defense of the imprisoned imilitants is the first civilian population. Therefore the net result of the present movement may be to make squarely, his systematic muddling and misrepresenta duty of the working class. stubborn fight for the warfare wholly destructive to civilization, and history tion of issues and his subordination of the task of release of the class war fighters will serve as the teaches us that the more destructive weapons of war educating the Party to the immediate aim of secur monument we erect to Sacco and Vanzetti. Their names become, the greater the temptation to use them. ing votes in faction sad effect on the have been imperishable symbols of revolt. Their mur. New York Times, August 5, 1929. workers around him. Their political development was der was the last word spoken on them by their exe Mr Young is correct when he indicates that the arrested in its most elementary stages, and what be cutioners. The working class has not yet spoken its junking of cruisers is merely one way of improving the came finally crystallized as the Foster faction was al last word.
efficiency of war.
ways a picture of political impotence. His influence Honor to the glorious fighters who have fallen!
as a political in the Party dwindled progressive We never forget.
AMERICA PACIFISM IN EUROPE ly and the new role of leadership he now enjoys could There is yet another reason for America pacifism The reaction in the Communist International repre Bucharin Formally Ousted ested in having the European powers pay their debes sented by the dominance of apparatus Centrism, is to Uncle Shylock. Heavy military and naval expendflowing now and Foster is riding with it. In political The official Party press has finally announced that itures diminish the chances of rapid repayment of questions his chief characteristic has been adaptability, the Tenth Plenum of the decided to relieve debts to the United States. Without for a moment surincapacity to withstand pressure and maintain a posi Bucharin, Humbert Droz, Serra and Gitlow from the rendering its secretariat, and to expel Lovestone, Jilek, and Comrade tion as a minority. He has always been fighting for aggressive intentions in Europe, the United States is all to the good when less money is Maurice Spector from the Executive. Comrade Specpower but always sacrificing or adapting his position spent by European capitalism on war preparations and tor is the only one of those named to be expelled for to the exigencies of that fight. record of the various more is left to pay the American debt. As a his support of the Bolshevik Leninists (Opposition. positions he has taken on disputed Party questions concession, the United States can even afford to discard would be a chart of shifts in pressure from one side The removal of Bucharin, which seems to have been ship for ship in return. The American impertaHists are to another in the course of the struggles. He used to the sole accomplishment of the Tenth Plenum, is of as well aware of the following fact as we are: In case be against dual unions to a dogmatic extreme intol little interest now. The delegates to the sessions had of a of a war, it not the superiority by even a half a erable for one who tried to view the labor movement nothing to say about it and the mechanical raising of dozen units of this or that arm of warfare that will from a Marxist standpoint. Now the Left tide in the their hands was the purest and most needless formality. decide the victory, but the tremendous predominance of Comintern has carried him to a a directly opposite po For the last five years Bucharin has been praised to American industry over that of any other power. We sition. The same on the question of the progressives. the skies by the Right Centrist bloc in the Comintern. are not living in the days of knights in armour, and It is really hard to believe that the man who talks He was put into Zinoviev place as chairman of the is the steel mill and the chemical plants that decide so radical now was an ally and more than an ally when Zinoviev joined in the Opposition Bloc in the outcome of a military conflict.
of Fitzpatrick few short years ago. the Russian Party. At the Sixth World Congress, held Modern capitalism can just as soon disarm and in Comintern policy, which under the present regime only a year ago, Bucharin was the spokesman for the inaugurate permanent peace as it can stop exploiting is apt to come anytime on 24 notice, will find Executive Committee and for the Russian Party. He the working class. Militarism and war are inseparable Foster on the bandwagon ahead of everybody shoutgave the political report, and the program report. He parts of capitalism itself. MacDonald pacific gesting for the new line and denouncing anyone who was re elected chairman. His removal from the ures and Hoover balloons full of hot air serve a good holds on to the slogans he is promoting today. No was decided in secret caucus by Stalin a long time gao. purpose to the master class: they help to delude the one would welcome a new shift in policy to the Right His actual removal took place some months ago, again masses into bitterly false hopes of peace under capmore than Foster. He has an innate conservatism and by Stalin decision. The Tenth Plenum only served italism. It is not in disarmament negotiations that talks radical now, because he must, with tongue in to rubber stamp enthusiastically the decision with American capitalism shows its real face. It is in its cheek, like an atheist priest repeating his prayers.
which they had nothing to do. When the Opposition brutal oppression of the islands of the Caribbean and Foster fits well into the world machine of Stalin and The Militant reported that Bucharin was already the Pacific, its military invasion of Nicaragua, its which has replaced the original staff of Lenin In slated for removal, the official Stalinist press, and all boldly aggressive challenge to the European powers ternational. Between nis present role and his old one of the functionaries from Stalin to Foster and Love contained in the Hawley Smoot tariff, and in kindred there is an intimate connection. Such leaders will last stone, accused us of counter revolutionary slander and actions. Capitalism will be disarmed only when it is as long as Centrism maintains itself in the Interna speculation on differences in the Russian Party, swept out of its seat of power. The Russian workers tional and will go down with it.
which they swore did not exist!
have shown the way. struggle had force new change hours