THE MILITANT Published Twice Month by the Communist League of America (Opposition)
NEW YORK, June 15, 1931 PRICE CENTS VOL. IV, No. 12 Whole No. 71 NEXT ISSUETHE WEEKLY publication de biene my rate Thousands on Strike Against Wage Cuts in Western Pennsylvania With its next issue, to be dated Saturday July 4, 1931, The Militant will begin have to we and deserve all possible working class effort on their behalf. Relief is needed for the striking miners who already for a long time have existed on the starvation level.
Workers should send such support to the Miners Relief Committee at 611 Penn Ave. Pittsburgh, Pa.
In this situation of growing strike, growing militancy of the miners and increasing revolt against the old machine there are real possibilities for a movement which may assume titanic proportions.
There are real possibilities for a union built on a class basis, functioning under the Iranner of militancy and able to embrace all the coal miners. The slightest concession to the outfit of John Lewis will be wrong. To the miners it should remain clear that now is the time to bend all fort to direct the various movements of revolt against the old bureaucracy, of strugvle against the inhuman conditions and of efforts to organize in various sections into one mighty stream for the building an all emrbacing class union. It is necessary to particularly emphasize once again need of amalgamation of the various sec tional unions being organized together with the National Miners Union into one such organization. It is incumbent upon Communist miners to unite for the achieve ment of this goal as a part of the fight to a finish against capitalism. A, The Spanish Bourgeoisie Acts. Against Labor ward is made possible only by the greatest sacrifice on the part of the growing group The miners strike against inhumanbureaucratic administration which of comrades and sympathizers of the Communist Left Opposition.
starvation conditions, from its inception stifled the up till now.
which began two weeks ago in Western The miners are on the march. move The progress indicated by the publication of the Weekly Militant can hardly be Pennsylvania has been spreading rapidly ment of real vitality has commenced, exand is At the momoverestimated. The need for a more frepressing itself in different forms in different of writing there are nearly 20, 000 minquent issuance of our organ has never been ent parts of the country. In Harlan, Keners out. They are fighting with a militancy greater. Confronted by the situation in the tucky, 18 000 miners already struck early in labor and revolutionary movements, preequal to the most glorious examples of May against starvation conditions. In American labor history. This holds bright gnant with great events, all the obstacles Illinois there is a revolt against the treason prospects for further extention as the min of the Lewis Fishwick Walker reactionaries.
that stand in the way must be surmounted ers elsewhere begin to learn that this is This movement found reverberations in the or pushed aside. The voice of the Marxist their battle as well.
southern part of West Virginia and Ohio wing of the movement must now be heard In another article in this issue where sections of a new union are being orlouder and more often. We cannot stand still. Events are multiplying in their signgive some figures of slashing of the miners ganized in opposition to the old Lewis unificance and The Militant must forge ahead wgaes. These are taken from the Bureau ion. It found reverberations also in Into keep pace with them.
of Labor Statistics compilation. We no diana and in the southwestern states where tice that during the period March 1930 to also new union formation is taking place.
The capitalist world is in the throes March 1931 213, 000 Bituminous coal miners The is definitely discredited of its severest crisis since the outbreak have suffered a 16. percent. reduction. Re in the eyes of the rank and file miners who of the war. The statesmen of the old order cently the Department of Labor con have learnd the lesson from the treasonare frantic in their impotence. The rotten ciliator, Emmaline Pitt, expressed herself as able career of its officialdom. The capitaledifice of capitalism is crumbling under horrified at the starvation and wretched ist forces, particularly in Pennsylvania, are their feet. In one country after another, living conditions of the miners and the now crying out for re establishment of the the elements of a revolutionary crisis are terrible brutality of the coal and iron Lewis union. The bosses prefer no union maturing and the day nears when the propolice as well as the state Cossacks. Miners at all, but they will always be ready to acblem of power is once more to be posed have been existing on the starvation level. cept the union of the of brand of acutely for the revolutionary proletariat of The most ruthless methods have been used leadership and policies when they are Europe. Everywhere, the social democratic to smash their organization.
threatened with the alternative of the rank agency of anpitalism is manifesting its In western Pennsylvanin the National and file taking matters into their own hands treachery and bankruptcy. Only the revoluMiners Union has assumed the leading role. and forming a militant union.
tionary Communists can deliver humanity With a genuine mass basis being accepted In western Pennsylvania the jails are from the toils of misery and exploitation.
and a genuine union democracy applied being filled with militant miners. In HarIt is here that the great contrast of there are prospects for success for the lan Kentucky, 50 of them are in prison, 20 the present decade is located: the gap beJ. But for this it will be necessary charged with murder in the first degree.
tween the revolutionary possibilities and to avoid the mistakes of policy and the All of these class war victims need defense the inability of the official Communist movement to seize these possibilities and utilize them to the maximum. The extension of this gap will involve the greatest setback to human progress. The reformists of all shades, inside and outside the rev.
PARIS the Left Opposition.
olutionary movement, are intent upon widThe news that reaches us from Madrid We have written last week that the ening this gap. The Marxist wing of Comconfirms the notice appearing last week in president of the Council, Alcala Zamora munism, the Left Opposition, was born out all the papers and according to which 17 and the ininister of the interior, Miguel Maura, Communists were arrested in a saloon durannounced of the struggle to close this gap by regenrepressive measures orating the Communist movement, by purging a meeting. Our Madrid comrades write against the extremists of the Left. that ing It of opportunism, of adventurism, of us: After your delegate had delivered his is, against our Opposition comrades who, 1ts bureaucracy, by shifting it back to the lecture at the cafe meeting place of the in the absence of a Communist party, are granite foundations laid for the proletarian Madril Agrupacion. the police prohibited guiding with their feeble means the sponmovement by Marx, Engels, Lenin and the owner of the cafe from giving us the taneous struggles of the revolutionary proTrotsky.
hall for our meetings without authorization letariat of Spain. Zamora and Maura have The hope of the future lies in Com from the police (Direccion General de kept their promise: to break the spirit of munism, in the Communist movement. All Seguridad. On May 15 the police arrested the rebellious masses to leave them without the greater significance is therefore to be 17 of our comrades who were in the cafe leadership and to throw them into confuattributed to the work of those rebels who and they are now at the disposal of the sion, the provisional government has arhave banded together to strengthen Commilitary judge. Among those arrested is rested the best Communist militants. Our munism by restoring its revolutionary pripour comrade Lacroix and other militants of comrade Lacroix who was released hardly ciples. In the United States this work has three weeks ago by the revolutionary workbeen done by The Militant, in the face of fulfill this task far better than the semiers of Valencia, after having suffered long all the obstacles deliberately placed in its monthly. Events which yesterday could months of detention in the prisons of the path, despite the many sided attacks, de only be mentioned and sometimes belated dictatorship which considerably impaired spite the hopes of its numerous foes that ly will be mirrored more completely and his feeble health, is today Incarcerated by its days were numbered. But our work hag more in time in the columns of the Weekly the republican socialist government.
been but a small part of what it must be. Every effort will be made by the Weekly to With Lacroix, other militants, less exIt must be doubled and trebled, deepened deal with the important, the decisive strug perienced but just as devoted as he is to and extended to broader spheres.
gles in the labor movement as a whole. The the proletarian cause are incarcerated in The working class and the revolution outstanding political events of the day will the prisons of the republic. Our duty, the ary movement in the United States stand be treated from the Marxian standpoint in duty of every revolutionary worker, is to at the crossroads. The naroctic effects of the Weekly with greater promptitude and stir the opinion of the working class of Festerday prosperity are beginning to detail than before. The problems of the every country and to raise a vigorous prowear off. The working class drugged by Soviet Union, the workers fatherland, the test against the repression of the Spanish the illusions of the bourgeoisie is rising out problems and struggles of the Communist bourgeoisie wlose victims are today the Its long sleep. Its first battles of resist International and its American section, best revolutionary militants.
ance to a capitalist classs seeking to un will find an objective analysis in our colThe Role of the Bourgeoisie load its difficulties upon labor have al umns. The life of the Left Opposition The Spanish bourgeoisie, supported by ready revealed its profound and hardly tap throughout the world will be recorded faith the social democracy, is beginning to play ped resources of militancy and its capac fully.
an openly and «ynically reactionary role.
ity for action. Communist movement, The step to The Weekly has been made The provisional government which is rer aware of the possibilities, capable of util possible, we said, by sacrifice of our vealing itself more more as the watchIzing them, united on a principled basis, supporters. The greatest, most pressing dog of the feudal capitalist bourgeoisie, is would be in a position to guide this awak problem is still to be solved: the problem deciving the popular masses by its hypoening working class. Coming events may of maintaining the Weekly on a strong critical and lying decrees. As soon as the follow in such an order that the historic basis. Just as the publication of the Milirebellious workers and peasants begin to ally backward working class of the United tant requires the written contributions of stir, the provisional government publishes States may leap to the forefront of the all our comrades, so its maintenance de a dozen decrees in which it promises, in international proletariat. The Communist mands their constant assistance. Every nebulous and intentionally equivocal terms movement, which has so tragically missed reader must become a supporter a member the confiscation of certain lands under certhe opportunities of yesterday, must not be of our small army of fighters. It is to tain conditions; the confiscation of the allowed to miss those of today and tomor them that we make our appeal to increase wealth of the fallen monarchy: the separarow.
the circulation of The Militant, to spread tion of the church and the state; the punThere lies the main task of the Mill its influence, to extend its circle of read ishment of those responsible for the dictant and the Left Opposition as a whole: er as widely as possible.
tatorship, etc.
to train up the revolutionary vanguard, to Swift, generous, steady support is im The next day, after these decrees have olarify its purpose and to strengthen its perative to maintain The Weekly Militant. played their role as narcoties dulling the action. The task cannot be postponed. It The first step is being taken. the advance vigilance of the masses, the government hy presses down upon the whole movement must be kept up. Every comrade to his a final word. puts of these radical rewith an urgency that cannot be denied. task!
forms to the Greek Calends of the ConThe Weekly Militant will be able to THE MILITANT. stituent Cortes.
But on May 10, the workers of Madrid and the provinces went out into the streets to have the wil of the exploited masses reskud by direct action. They theneivas punishe:1 the most hated enemy of the people the clergy. Thereupon, republicansocialist government took off its mask of laymanship and democracy and savagely repressed the demonstrators. It directed the point of its repression against the extremists of the Left. that is against the Opposition Communists who have taxed themselves with elaborating political and Seidl program corresponding to the vite: interests of the rebellious mas. it8, cápale of making their demonstrations with a clear sighted Wadership which ermits the masses to conduct their revo:utionary actity better and with greater success The arrest of the revolu: ionary milttants can only increase the anger of the workers. Indignation runs high in workers circles and the campaign of proLest against the arbitrary act of the minIstry is growing in the trade unions. The workers of all tendencies organized in the reformist trade union (General Union of Labor) or in the anarchist trade unions (National Confederation of Labor) must re member that the socialist leaders, Caballero, Prieto and de los Rios share the same responsibility in this arbitrary act as Zamora and Maura. The Spanish workers today must demand a reckoning from those who claim to represent them in the provisional Bornment. The socialist ministers hiva ranged themselves openly on the side of the bourgeoisie against the workers, against the best defenders of the proletariat interests. Every enlightened worker understands this now. But this truth must be told to every stratum of the exploited people. The revolutionary propaganda of all the Spanish Communists, regardless of their tendency must reveal to the workers and peasants throughout Spain the treasonable role which the socialist ministers play in the provisional government.
It is very important that in this reyolutionary struggle unfolding under extremely painful conditions, the Spanish Communists should remain abandoned to themselves and isolated from the proletarian movement of other countries. The Spanish Communist movement counts (Continued on page 8)