THE MILITANT United Front on Unemployed Published Twice a Month by the Communist League of America (Opposition)
PRICE CENTS VOL. IV, No. (Whole No. 63)
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 15, 1931 AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF AMERICA Mooney Betrayal by Unity of action by the working masses in the strug Within the capitalist world the contradictions are thus the Labor Bureaucrats gle for the unemployed millions requires first of all united growing and multiplying; the class struggle will increase action of the workers vanguard. The National Committee in intensity. There can be no solution to the unemployTwo men have been in the prisons of Call of the Communist League (the Left Opposition) is in ment problem under capitalism. The solution can be found fornia for some fifteen years now, as in favor of such a unity of action. As a means of bringing only the socialist revolution, and finally only on a world nocent of the crime for which they were it about we submit to you the following analysis of the scale.
convicted as any man who walks the streets.
problem and a concrete program of action. We ask your In its ruthless efforts to find a way out American capiTheir names are known to the working serious consideration, and that of all Party members and talism has embarked upon its savage campaign of slashing class in every part of the world. Around them, at various times, have been created class conscious workers, to this appeal for a common strug wages and crushing any workers resistance. Its main fire movements of thousands, of hundreds of gle.
is concentrated on the Communist vanguard. In the serithousands and more, who have marched the Unemployment is increasing and with it increases the ous matter of correct Communist policy for the unemploystreets, who have raised their voices in inability of the capitalist system to provide the workers ment problem this outstanding feature of the moment must militant protest at their imprisonment, who with the means of existence. The number of workers who be given first recognition. Secondly, we must recognize have demanded in unmistakable language that the two be released immediately. Their search in vain for a job mounts ever higher. This is a the present defensive character of the general working names have become a banner of working problem of great proportions for the American working class movment. There is not a widespread workers radiclass struggle. For Mooney and Billings class movement, and particularly of its revolutionary sec calization. nor a revolutionary upsurge of the American have for more than a decade symbolized the tion, the Communists.
masses at the present time. To proceed from such a crime of American capitalism against The crisis still continues in its downward sweep. As fictitious analysis can lead only to fundamentally false our class, the abyss of bourgeois class jusyet there is no change in this course. Even the bourgeois conclusions and isolation of the Communist forces. But tice.
economic experts are extremely cautious in their predic the situation is full of promising potentialities for a rise This has been known to every progressive minded worker in the country: Mooney tions. But they have with brutal frankness demanded a of the labor movement, for its entering into more active and Billings alone are a sufficient revelation further reduction in the general cost of production, which resistance and struggle for its needs. By means of a corof the cynical hypocrisy of all those who means essentially further wage cuts. The capitalist owners rect policy the Communist forces can connect up with this prate of justice for rich as well as poor of industry, utilize the unemployment situation to play the main stream they can help to prepare effectively for this under capitalism. Mooney and Billings were unemployed against the employed. They see in the situa new rise and give it to a positive direction.
sent to prison and have been kept there The endeavor to keep the unemployment movement only because of their activity in the labor tion an opportunity to force downward the standard of movement and spite of the fact that not living of the workers in order to increase their own profits. within the narrow bounds of the Trade Union Unity League one year has passed since their trial with From the standpoint of the proletariat the organization is wrong. This policy hems in the movement instead of out new evidence being piled up to prove of a militant movement of resistance, uniting the widest broadening it. It is false to center the unemployment protheir guiltlessness and the fact that the masses of workers, stands first on the agenda.
gram, and the activities and demonstrations, around the whole case was a vile frame up of the masIt is not only America involvement in world deceptive opportunist petition campaign to Congress. And ter class.
The Treachery economy that has produced the present crisis. It it is doubly false to represent the Social Insurance bill of the Bureaucrats grows, the same as any former crisis, with deadly pre as a panacea for unemployment. Such departures from But what has not been so widely known cision out of the capitalist system of production itself. Marxism only create reformist illusions. militant strugabout the case is a feature of it which exceeds all others in shamelessness, duplicity This must not be forgotten. Ever so often crisis recurr when gle for real and immediate relief is indispensable, and this and crime against labor: the treachery of the production cycle reaches the saturation point and the requires the closest unity of employed and unemployed.
the American labor leadership. The revolu market is glutted. This is fundamental contradiction of The slogan of hunger marches. at a time when this unity tionary vanguard has known of this black capitalism. In recent years rationalization and speed up is far from established, may tend to separate the unempage in working class annals; others have of the workers has rapidly increased the productive capac ployed from the employed and thus to narrow the struggle.
felt it indistinctly but without much proof ity. This only made the contradiction more acute. The The net result of these errors is a situation in which at hand; the bulk of the workers has not realized it at all. Yet the facts are there result has been a great excess of means of production on the demonstrations become demonstrations only of the small as large and real as life: from the very be the one hand, and an excess of laborers without employ Communist vanguard as an easy target for policemens ginning of the historie case, the overwhelm ment and without means of existence on the other.
clubs while the main body of the working masses stands ing majority of the American labor leaders To present this as the final crisis of American capi aside as passive bystanders. We must follow the opposite have worked hand in hand with the capitalists and the capitalist politicians, not talism would be false. It is still the world dominant power road, we must first of all endeavor to unite the working only to keep Mooney and Billings in prison, within a declining capitalist imperialism. It is preparing masses, with the Communist vanguard in the lead, in the but to put them there in the first place.
now by all possible means to climb out of its economic dif struggle for the unemployed. In this struggle, those at Rarely has DeLeon classic phrase, ficulties upon the backs of the workers of America and work, suffering under the ravages and degradations of the the labor lieutenants of the capitalist abroad. But so much more, in order to maintain its exist capitalist offensive, must have their place side by side with class. been invested with more eloquent ence, does it need an industrial reserve army the un the unemployed. Given such direction, no policemens clubs significance than by the whole record of employed. This army will hence be with us as a permanent can beat back the movement.
the Gompers and Green school of labor phenomenon; millions of workers condemned to remain with Our principle object is and remains the proletarian chieftains in the Mooney Billings case. The defense of the latter, at every stage of the out work and without means of existence.
revolution. Our agitation and tactics must naturally vary struggle, has been confined to a small secThere will be more crises of capitalist production. to correspond with the objective developments, with the tion of devoted, courageous militant work They have already become world wide in character. The rhythms of the ebbs and flows, the upward and the downers who encountered the direct sabotage of ranks of the unemployed are augmented everywhere, except ward curves of the working class movement. In each spethe labor bureaucracy at every turn. How in Russia where capitalist unemployment has disappeared. Continued on page 3)
many have known of this great betrayal!
Very few, we have said. And this ignorance has been caused not only by the conspiracy of the labor leaders, but to a certain extent by so many of those false libThe decision made by the leadership of Unwilling or not able to meet this situa that Johnstone and his colleagues conducted eral friends of the prisoners, who feared tion with the adoption of a correct policy the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union to antagonize influential authorities. But a violent sham battle against this and simof mobilizing the workers, and especially this recedes into the background in the to drop the economic demands in the New ilar methods and labelled them the acme of drawing into the struggle those workers face of the revelations finally made in full York dressmakers strike, which we an.
still following the Right wing union, the of Lovestoneite opportunism.
Now, made by Tom Mooney himself and by his Defense nounced in our last issue, has been com Industrial Union leadership is now planning desperate by the poor results of their course, Committee in a pamphlet just made public pletely confirmed, and not only the fact of to take another, even falser step, which is they are resorting to the very same steps.
under the title: Labor Leaders Betray Tom the change, but also the bad results which fathered by desperation and mothered When the great majority of the dressmakers Mooney.
it would inevitably entail. strike based by an inherent opportunism. At the last remain unmoved as yet by the strike call The Agents of the Frame Up on a struggle to improve the rotten working meeting of the Trade Union Unity Council. and that is the case now the pulling It takes your breath away, this docu and wage conditions of the dressmakers and in the Union strike committees them committees can only result in alienating ment does! As relentlessly as the judicial would undoubtedly arouse a consideroble selves, the old, reactionary and discredited and antagonizing the workers against the bloodhounds of California capital ran down section of the workers to follow the strike policy of pulling committees for the strike Left wing movement. The proposal must be Mooney and Billings, so does Mooney im call of the union. As it is now, the an is being put for adoption. In the best of rejected forthwith by the rank and file Left placably pursue the record of misdeeds of nouncement that it would be what amounts cases, these pulling committees as a substi wingers. The plan we proposed in our last the reactionary bureaucracy which American to a simple strike for union recognition tute for the response of the workers, is a issue, for making the struggle a real strike capital has foisted upon the labor move has had the effect of a cold shower on the sign of lack of belief in the workers them for the economic conditions of the workers, ment. With fact heaped upon document, needle trades workers as a whole, and selves; in the worst case, it is a sign of or failing that, to transform the strike comand document upon fact, he erects a crush has served to set back the whole strike the weakness of the response which the op mittees into organization committees to ing tombstone to any claims the labor movement. Two very clear manifestations portunists seek to make up for by coercing prepare a sound basis for a struggle in the skates may make to defending the inter indicate this: the triumph with which the the majority near future, must be adopted. It is not yet ests of the working man. He marshalls Right wing liquidators of Loves bone Should the Left wing adopt this pro too late. The Johnstones, Sazers and Hyand parades them before our view. Paul camp have greeted the change in policy as posal it would undoubtedly have disastrous mans are taking the road that ends the Scharrenberg, of the California State Fed a vindication of their opportunist policy, effects. It is the policy which the old lead discreditment and weakening of the Left eration of Labor; Carthy, czar of the and secondly, the spiritlessness and fewness ership of the needle trades Left wing wing. The ranks of the movement must building trades; Brouillet, who was of the workers who have thus far rallied Zimmerman, Wortis, Gold and 00. made take the union off this road and on to the (Continued on page 2)
to the Industrial Union for the strike. notorious. It is only a few months ago highway of victory.
False Steps in the New York Dressmakers Strike Preparations