THE MILITANT Weekly Organ of the Communist League of America (Opposition PRICE CENT Vol. IIINO. 23, Telephone: DRYdock 1656 NEW YORK, Saturday, June 14, 1930.
BACK TO LENIN! MATONAL CONVENTION OF THE CP.
MANIFESTO TO THE RANK AND FILE AND SEVENTH NATIONAL CONVENTION OF THE Left Needle Workers Convention Meets Rally to Weekly The Second National Convention of the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union met in New York City last Saturday and Sunday, June 7th and 8th. There were over four hundred delegates present of whom 307 hailed from New York. According to official reports 200 shops sent delegates from New York City. In other words this is an indication of the lack of Left wing organization in the thousands of New York shops which were not represented.
The two days of the convention were devoted to combatting the Lovestoneites, without any intelligent discussion of the actual needs of the union. The General Executive Board that was elected was continuation of the Stalinist factionalism which is undermining the Left wing influence in the unions. Not only were onehundred percent members of the Stalin faction and their pliant supporters elected to office but even Party members who at one time or another had happened to express a word of criticism or were unfortunate enough to harbor an independent thought were eliminated from the in spite of their superior experience.
We go to press just as the convention concluded and are therefore compelled to hold over for the next issue a thorough and detailed analysis of the course and perspectives of the Industrial Union.
The crisis in the Party, manifest to and the creation of a huge army of the unrationalization, wage slashing, and in genall but the sell contented, bureaucracy, de employed are having the effect of wiping eral an offensive upon the workers stanmands the most serious attention of all out this illusion in the minds of broad dards of living, can only hasten cess.
gections of the working clang. The sharp Communist workers. It is to aid them to Imperialism can re create a break through the rigid barriers erected contrast between the previous prosperity bourgeois working class in this country, by the ruling regime in the Party for the and the misery of unemployment which such as England had at the opening of worthless pre convention discussion that and hangg like a Damoclean sword over the century, only by enslaving the rest the Left Opposition addresses this appeal has cut into more than million workers of the world the mere endeavor of which to the Party membership the rest of them, is Jolting the working and involves the most violent military class out of its bourgeois stupor. deep revolutionary eruptions.
There is a widening gap between the going process of radicalization 18 begin Under the pressure of these developpossibilities for the strengthening of the ning to take place. The process will be ments, the American workers are moving movement in the United States and the acaccelerated by the exhaustion of the pros away from bourgeois influence and idecomplishments that the leadership has to perity reserves of the workers. The atThere ology, and their former passivity, The increase in Party member.
record.
tempts of American capitalism to issue out is a growing mood for struggle and millship and influence over the workers corof its crisis by a re adjustment of its in tancy. The huge demonstration on March responds less and less to the activity of dustry for more effective competition on and even the smaller ones of May Day the Party. There is not a single mass the world market, attempts which spell. Continued on Page 3)
organization of the workers where the Party has succeeded in consolidating or advancing its position in the past year or two, be it in the Left wing untons, in the conservative of and independ dent unions, in the cooperatives, in the numerous language fraternal orders. etc.
New York Lea ds the way!
etc. In the ranks of the Party itself there is a deadening passivity, an indifference As we go to press, we are informed that the New York Executve of the Communist League (Opposition) has met in response to our appeal for 2, 000 to and a growing dissatisfaction with the maintain the Weekly Militant, and has pledged a sum of 700. 00 toward this end prevailing Party course, which are preA Day Pay from every member of the Branch was accepted as an immediate action.
vented from completely paralyzing all acIn addition, the Branch members will proceed to canvass sympathizers with special tivity only by feverish administrative lashings and the ever harder measures of the lists, and will Inaugurate house to house collections and other means to assure it control commission, quota of 500. 00 being raised in the given time.
New York has set a good example. We look forward with confidence for In the upper strata of the Party, new ailerunte pledges and results throughout the country. leaders appear every day and old leaders disappear or are demotad without The Militant has been a fighting guide to the Communists and left wing in the Party or working class knowing any.
their struggle against the labor bureaucracy of the of and the labor leaders thing about it until they are informed by of the Hillman Beckerman crew.
the official press. The suppression of all The Militant has fought for the organization of the masses of vuorganized initiative and the complete dependence of workers into labor unions on a militant industrial basis.
all activity upon decrees from above make the Party immobile, and the leadership enFor the Unemployed deavors to make up for the Party fail.
The Militant has conducted a campaign on behalf of the unemployed millions ure to meet situations in time by plunging under the slogans of work or compensation, for social insurance, the six hour day 1t unprepared into adventures and con.
and the five day week, etc. and has mercilesslessly and accurately shown up the sequent debacles.
thread bare prosperity of the imperialist regime of Hoover and Company.
The Party immobility and the leadThe Militant has maintained a consistent position for revolutionary Comership adventurism is the more danger munism, for the preservation and defense of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. It has ous because of the broad perspectives for with equal vigor combatted the revisionist theories, the opportunism and bureaucracy the growth of Communism in the country. that have been nourished by and grown to huge proportions under the directions Apart from the historical causes, the of the false disciples of Lenin. the Staling and Bucharins.
immediate reasons for the bourgeois, class.
for the Opposition collaborationist ideology and political backThe Militant has espoused the cause of the Russian Opposition the Bolshevik.
wardness of the American workers have Leninists led by Trotsky who, in prison or in exile, maintain the struggle for the been the relative prosperity it enjoyed in preservation of the proletarian dictatorship and who struggle for the regeneration of the past few years and the privileged posthe Party of Lenin on its October basis.
ition it occupied in comparison with the The Muitant fights for the building of a revolutionary Communist Party in European and Asiatic working class. The the United States on a Leninist foundation, as against the caricature of one as American workers have developed for the developed by the Fosters and Lovestones.
better part of a decade under the illusion The Milltant as a WEEKLY publication, has been better able to carry on of a permanent prosperity.
these historic tasks than in its early days as a semi monthly paper, The Economic Crisis Last week, we spoke of the danger and possibllity of a return by the Militant The collapse of the stock market, the to existence again as a semi monthly. We deep going decline and crisis in industry, sympathizers to render us financial assistance that we may continue as a Weekly called upon our readers, mebers and Militant in the forthcoming period, and to solidify our position.
Our Appeal For Unity of Communist Ranks We need 2, 000. 00, over and above our regular income of subscriptions, bundle payments, etc. to ingure our existence as a Weekly publication for the next six months.
We raise before the Party convention We believe that we can count upon your support.
the question of restoring the Party memRespond generously for the maintenance of the WEEKLY MILITANT.
bership of the expelled comrades of the Help raise the 000. 00 Fund for the WEEKLY MILITANT.
Opposition on the basis of the foregoing SEND YOUR CONTRIBUTION AT ONCE TO THE MILITANT, 25 Third Ave, statement of aims and views. We also proNew York pose to the Convention that it take a stand for the reestablishment of the Unity of the Communist International by calling for the The Militant reinstatement of the Russian and Inter25 Third Avenue national Opposition, and for the immediate New York, New York cessation of those measures which espec.
Dear Comres. ially undermine the Party and the ProletEnclosed please flad. as my contribution to the mainten.
arian Dictatorship and strengthen the enance of the WEEKLY MILITANT emies of the working class the arrests, exile and banishment of the Russian Oppo.
NAME sition.
FROM THE PLATFORM OF THE COMMUNIST OPPOSITION ADDRESS ADOPTED. CHICAGO) MAY 20, 1929.
CITY STATE Save Georgia Class War Prisoners One of the most brazen examples of American capitalist class justice is the attempt to send to the electric chair the six militant workers, Powers, Gilmer Brady, Henry Storey, Joseph Carr, Mary Dalton and Anna Burlak, the last three of whom are members of the Young Communist League, at Atlanta, Georgia. The Southern Bourbons threaten to deprive them of their lives for holding meetings of Negro and white unemployed workers and for distributing Communist literature! For this they have resurrected from the archives of 1861 an unused law on insurrection.
The iudictment is so astounding that it seems almost incredible. But if anyone thinks this is just some farcical trickery with which the reactionaries of Georgia are trying to amuse themselves let them at once drive this dangerous Illusion out of their head. These legal lynchers are in deadly earnest. They want the blood of the workers. They hope to terrorize the Negro and white workers, and prevent organization for better conditions. They want to maintain the South as the stronghold of feudal reaction while the most modern mo thods of industrial exploitation are developed. But they live in the past.
The alarm must be sounded. The work ers of America must be aroused to the terrible fate which await these six workers in the prisons of Atlanta, if the bloodhounds of the South are permitted to carry through their murderous plans, Remember Sacco and Vanzetti! Remember Mooney and Billings!
MILITANT OUTING Menbers of New York Branch Communist League (Opposition) and sympathizers will have an outing Sunday, June 16, at Hunter Island. Hikers will meet a Pelham Bay Park Station at 10:30 a.