THE MILITANT Fight Back the Boss Offensive!
Published Twice a Month by the Communist League of America (Opposition)
VOL. IV. No. NEW YORK, JANUARY 1, 1931, PRICE CENTS «Order Prevails Throughout Spain»
alongside with a percent drop in employment a percent slump in payroll total, or a percent wage reduction for the month of November alone. Per capita earnings in manufacturing industries, the report reads, in November 1930 were percent lower than in October. Still more serious are the general index figures for the entire year of November 1929 to November 1930: Employment Pay totals Nov. 1929 94. 95. Nov. 1930 76. 68. While employment fell 18. points payroll totals dropped fully 26. points. discrepancy which indicates the cut that the bosses have already made into the living standards of the American workers, and which reveals the seriousness that this trend will asume in the future.
Against this careful and well planned offensive of the bourgeoisie only a solid and compact united front of the workers and jobless can be effective. Every step, in order to strike back must be organized on the broadest possible scale. If ever the slogans of the class struggle could be brought home to the American proletariat it is now.
But this cannot be accomplished by simply expecting the workers to rush to the revolutionary banner under the threat of being denounced as fascists or socialfascists but by going to the workers, by entering every mass organization in which they are to be found, by fighting for their support, by pointing out the way them constantly and persistently. The only way to encounter the bosses offensive now is by organizing the fighting defensive of the workers. SAM GORDON 99. Malkin Welcomed Back As the present world crisis grows in In the United States, despite the fake roads. Only Green and the high priests of scope and intensity, gripping one industry industrial conefrence called by Hoover last the of have kept their part of the after another furrowing its way to the very year, despite the promises made by the bargain, by doing their best to obstruct and core of the complex capitalist structure, a bosses to retain the high living standards prevent anything resembling a struggle on good deal of ideological hardware under the workers the wage cut drive, though the part of the workers.
goes a process of rapid corrosion. Not so still cloaked, has already made terrific in The Department of Labor announces long ago, American rationalization scientific management and the technical revolution were the inspiration of the entire capitalist world. This wave of enthusiasm undulated from the desperate Right wing of the bourgeoisie, the Fascists to its most servile Left, the Social Democrats, who Andres Nin, Leader of Spanish Left Opposition, Arrested and in Danger pointed to America as the workers para The Madrid coup Etat attempted by the The revolutionary situation has not been dise.
bourgeois republicans, headed by the avia liquidated. The economic crisis has not Today when the super capitalist Arca tor Franco, has been crushed by the Ber been solved. The fighting moods of the dia has blown up, with millions of workers enguer dictatorship without much difficulty. workers have not been entirely dampened.
pounding the pavements with an unpre In Jaca, the attempted uprising has met The official Communist Party, character.
cedented tie up in trade and an overloading with a similar fate. The iron fist has de istically enough with all its talk of the of warehouses while countless families go scended upon the militant labor organiza third period. was caught entirely ununfed, unclothed and unprovided for a dit tions, their headquarters raided, their lead awares by the events of recent weeks. It ferent song is being sung. Capitalist spokes ers arrested and imprisoned, and the strikes had been taught in recent months, under men today speak with alarm of techno which were assuming a distinctly political Manuilsky tutelage, that a partial strike logical unemployment. ask themselves character have been suppressed by violence. is of vaster import than a revolution of whether technical and managerial im The republican bourgeoisie, failing and what he called the Spanish type. The provements do not cause unemployment fearing to rely upon the masses who alone Left Opposition however, has been very after all, etc. few simple figures tell can overthrow the monarchy and lead the active in the struggle, particularly in the the story: revolution to a decisive conclusion, has Barcelona working class where it has conVol. of Indus. Vol. of Fact. made a pitiful debacle. One camp, further siderable influence. number of our most Year Produe. Index Emp. Index. visioned and fearful of the mass movement active comrades, including Pedro Lavid 1923 101 104. of the workers that would be aroused by and others, have already been sentenced to 1924 95 96. a popular insurrection has rallied to the 1925 imprisonment.
104 decrepit monarchy of Alfonso and the 1926 108 101. Further, we read the following alarmbrutal dictatorship of Berenguer. The other, 1927 106 98. ing report in the Barcelona correspondence equally contemptuous of the masses in 1928 by the well informed Jules Sauerwein to the 111 97. whose name they pretend to speak, and 1929 118 101. New York Times of December 23 1930, who whom they prefer to have act as soldiers In the six years between 1923 and 1929 quotes Don Ignacio de Despujol captainobeying without thinking, has made the the index of production rose 17 points, the general of Catalonia.
feeble and theatrical attempt to stage a index of employment, at the same time fell The result was an easy task when the novel revolt from the air which failed to points! So striking is the contrast, so disturbers began marching against the geninspire the masses to insurrection and was telling the consequences that even among darmerie. There was no violence to speak of as ineffective as a spent rocket. The prothe capitalists large number are seized With and we quickly arrested the ringleaders.
letarian leadership of the revolution, which panic. Senator Wagner, for instance, quotAmong them was a notorious disciple of ing these figures before the Senate, conis still to be consolidated showed a fatal Trotsky who spent a long time in Russia absence and unpreparedness.
cludes: and is a Soviet agent here now.
An Unstable Dictatorship Into every home that the problem of unemployment has entered it has brought The power of the Berenguer dictatorNin In Danger!
with it a doubt as to the validity of an ecoship, however, remains extremely tenuous. The reference is unmistakably to comnomic system which permits such catastroIt was constituted on the pledge to restore rade Andres Nin, leader of the Spanish Opphies to happen. It is as yet only a doubt, those measures of democracy which the position, and one of the principal founders but if we do not take the action that seems Primo de Rivera regime had so high hand of the Communist Party in Spain. For years, obvious and essential that doubt will maedly abrogated. But the first step towards he was secretary of the Red International of ture into an adverse conviction.
a loosening of the bonds, combined as it Labor Unions. steadfast supporter of the Discounting the interplay of politics was with the accentuation of the economic Opposition, this irreproachable rebel was directed against the Hoover administration, crisis in the country, unleashed the dor finally expelled from the Soviet Union the fear expressed and the concern with mant forces of the proletarian movement borders a few months ago by the Stalinist the problem of technological unemployuntil acute strike struggles were raging apparatus. The bourgeois press has frement remains genuine nevertheless, and from one end of the land to the other.
quently reported concerning his activity are doubtlessly shared by the capitalist Harrassed on one side by the repub in Barcelonia which he managed to reach class as a whole. What the Senator does lican movement, on an other by the Catal after being expelled as a counter revolunot make clear is how the bosses intend to onlan separatists, on the third by the re tionist by the His arrest now tind an issue out of the straits imposed vivified labor movement, and in general by means a serious blow to the whole labor upon them by this crisis. Theoretically the popular dislike of the monarchy and the and revolutionary movement. Every efthe bosses plan of action has been voiced dictatorship, the Berenguer regime imme fort must be bent by the militants in all very clearly by one of the most prominent diately showed that it was distinguished countries to force release of comrade representatives of German capital, Dr.
from its predecessor only by more militant Nin and the other rebels imprisoned by the Friedrich Lemmer, in the Deutsche Wirt violence. In the first important test of Berenguer dictatorship.
schaftzeltung of last February.
arms it has issued the victor. But it will The Spanish revolutionists need the The Theory of Capitalist Offensive be of brief duration it the forces maturing support of the international working class. Rationalization wrote Dr. Lemmer, for new skirmishes and insurrections come Let us raise our voices in protest against means substitution of labor costs. Since to a head.
the murderous work of the Spanish bourthe productive apparatus is today over In the work of suppressing the revogeoisie which has already occupied a numdeveloped. further progress in rational lutionary movement, even at its initial stage ber of districts with the notorious Foreign ization. is unthinkable. Invoking the of political strikes against the dictatorship, Legion, composed of janissary scum of law of diminishing utility he concludes the Berenguer regime has been able to three continents, for the purpose of supthat rationalization becomes ever less and rely and how could it be otherwise. The less profitable. and urges as an antidote pressing the workers movement.
upon the warm support of the social democause of Spanish labor is the cause of every to the 1lls of rationalization a wage cutcrats and reformist trade union leaders of worker.
ting drive all along the line.
the General Union of Workers. Like their This is the basic strategy of the bosses brethren everywhere, they are in favor of in the present crisis: to utilize the division violent revolution only in one country, of forces and the demoralization brought the Soviet Union bat vigorously opposed into the working class by unemployment to an insurrection against their own bour We have just received the following in order to shift further the burden from geoisie. In all the important strikes that alarming report about our comrade Kote their own shoulders by slashing the wages broke out after the fall of Primo de Rivera Zinzadze, a sterling Bolshevik fighter who of the workers still in industry. This is the Reformists played the servile game of was exiled by the Stalinist apparatus for their plan in Germany, this is their plan scabs by fighting against the extension of supporting the struggle of the Opposition.
here and everywhere. In Germany the strike aims beyond the narrow limits of a For some time now he has been in a very wage cutting campaign has already assum trade union struggle. Their kin in the dangerous condition, which we mentioned ed huge proportions in the recent past. The ranks of the anarcho syndicalists have ar in a recent issue of the Militant. The restrikes in Mansfeld, in the Northwest the dently supported other section of the port follows: recent Berlin metal workers strike, were bourgeoisio, the republicans. There is no It is a month now that comrade Kote all part of the weak resistance organized reason at all to believe that there will be Zinzadze has been in a dying condition. In by the treacherous refo which the any change on their part in the coming this time he has suffered two blood hemorcampaign has swept aside.
struggles rhages were accompanied by heart attacks, hundred workers, members and sympathizers of the Communist League and members of the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union, gathered at Grand Central Station on December 20, to greet comrade Maurice Malkin upon his release from Comstock prison, where he served two years of the term to which he had been sentenced as one of the defendants in the Mineola frame up. From the Station the comrades marched through the streets, singing revolutionary songs, until the headquarters of the Communist League at 84 East 10th Street were reached. An impromptu get together was held, which gave way, later in the evening to a comradely gathering of dozens of workers to celebrate the releaso of Malkin and his return to the ranks of tho active fighters for the Left wing in the trade unions and the Communist Opposition which he was one of the first to icin.
The New York branch of the League has decided to hold a formal New Year entertainment and dance to which all workers are invited to greet Malkin. It will be held on December 31, at the Militant Hall, 84 East 10th Street, when the New York Reds can get together for a hearty good time. Comrade Malkin will speak. The entertainment with music and dancing and eats, begins at o clock.
Comrade kote Zinzadze Life in Danger!
so that he was almost strangled. The doctors offer little hope for his recovery. The only hope of saving him, according to the doctors, is an absolute change of climate such as is offered by Suchum. The climate of Crimea where he is located, is fatal.
Comrades have for a long time been endeavoring to obtain his transfer Suchum.
For two months, Ordjonikidze has promised to get the transfer for him, but so far no permit has been received. It will probably arrive when comrade Kote Zinzadze has died.