SOCIALIST APPEAL APRIL 27, 1940 Page Order Out of Chaos. By Leon Trotsky The article printed below was issued as a pamphlet by psychologically drawing them into their murderous enterprise. The imperialist slaughter has erupted into a civil war. The the Supreme Council of Soviets in Moscow In 1919. It was Internationalism which had for decades served as the official better the capitalist war has trained the workers how to handle written at the front lines of the Civil War by the head of banner of the most powerful working class organization, seemed rifles, the more decisively are they beginning to apply these the Red Army. It is particularly appropriate today when to have disappeared instantaneously in the fire and smoke of the rifles for their own goals. However, the old slaughter is not yet Europe and the world has once again been plunged into the world slaughter. Later it re apevated groups in various counas a weak and flickering bloody chaos of the Second World War. EDITOR.
tiny flame among disconnected, liquidated; here and there new bloody clashes along the old national and state lines still flare up and threaten to spread into a tries. All the learned and the unlearned priests and lackeys of new contlagration. At the moment when Communism is already From the lands where they were hurled by the German plunthe bourgeoisie tried to depict these groups as the dying rem celebrating its first victories and is fully justified in not fearing derers, German soldiers are streaming homeward. The German nants of utopian sects. But the name of Zimmerwald (3) had isolated defeats, the yellow tongues of nationalist flames still soldiers are attacked by half baked Polish regiments; they are already evoked echoes of alarm in the columns of the entire erupt from underneath the volcanic soil.
disarmed and sometimes beaten. The Anglo French and the bourgeois press. The revolutionary internationalists marched Americans tighten their death grip on Germany and take carealong their own road. Above all, they gave themselves a clear Inferno of National and Social Conflict ful count of her feverish pulse. This does not prevent them from accounting of the causes underlying the events.
Poland, only yesterday herself strangled, dismembered, torn demanding that her government send the remnants of German troops to engage Soviet Russia in battle and prevent the latter Betrayal of Official Social Democracy and bled white Poland seeks today in a final and belated drunken fit of nationalism to plunder Prussia, Galicia, Latvia and from liberating territories occupied by German imperialism.
The prolonged era of peaceful bourgeois development with White Russia. Meanwhile, the Polish proletariat is already build The Belgians, whose country was only yesterday crucified by its day to day struggle of the trade unions, with its reformist ing its Soviets.
German imperialism, are today seizing purely German Rhenish Serbian nationalism seeks a robber satisfaction for ancient provinces.
many millioned organization, opportunist at the top, which slights and wounds in territories settled by Bulgarians.
Semi pauperized, Roumanians, despoiled by their ruling swincurbed with heavy chains the revolutionary energy of the pro Italy grabs at Serbian provinces.
dlers, whose capital is alternately the prey of Germans and the letariat. By dint of historical events the official social democracy, The Czechs, who have just freed themselves from underneath Arglo French, are themselves seizing Bessarabia, Transylvania born under sign of the social revolution, became transformed the German Hapsburg boot, drunk with the pseudo independence and Bukovina into the most counter revolutionary force in Europe and in the proffered them by the mighty sharks of Imperialism, are vioTrans oceanic American regiments sit on the tip of our famwhole world. It became so intertwined with the national state, lating the cities of German Bohemia and massacring Russlans in ipe stricken and icy North wondering why they were brought its parliament, its ministers, its commissions; it became so ac Siberia. The Czech communists are sounding the alarm there.
customed to its friendly enemies the bourgeois and middle class The streets of Berlin, only so recently proud of its severe parliamentary swindlers that at the outbreak of the bloody Wall Street Is Growing Uneasy orderliness, are swept by the sanguinary waves of civil war.
catastrophe of the capitalist system it could perceive nothing Events pile on events, the map of Europe changes uninter(1) French troops have landed in Odessa. 2) while great areas save the threat to national unity. Instead of calling upon the ruptedly, but the most profound changes are occurring in the of France itself are occupied by American, English, Australian, proletarian masses for an assault against capitalism, it called consciousness of the masses. The very rifle which was yesterday and Canadian troops who treat Frenchmen like they would them to defend the national state. This social democracy of used in the service of national imperialism serves today in the the Plekhanovs, Tseretellis, Scheidemanns, Kautakys, Renaudels, colonials same hands the cause of social revolution. Wall Street, which Poland, resurrected after almost a century and a half of and Longuets, mobilized in the service of imperialism every national prejudice, all the slavish instincts, the entire scum of has long and skillfully fanned the European bonfire so as to oblivion, strains with a kind of feverish impatience to engage enable its bunkers and industrialists to warm their hands at its the Ukraine and Prussia in battle and provokes Soviet Russia chauvinism, everything dark and corrupt which had accumulated fames, now sends to Europe Its chief clerk, its supreme broker, in the souls of the toiling and oppressed masses during centuries its methodical rogue, Wilson, to investigate at Arst hand whether American Colossus Bestrides Europe Ruins of slavery.
things have not gone too far.
The American President Wilson, a philistine and hypocrite It was clear to the party of revolutionary Communism that Only recently, the American millionaires laughed in their on whom the white stitching still shows, an oily (Quaker vegethis colossal historical blackmail would terminate in a terrible clean shaven chins and rubbed their hands: Ha ha! Europe has table oil) Tartutte criss crosses blood drenched Europe as the collapse of the ruling cliques and their retinues. To evoke in the become a madhouse, Europe exhausted, bankrupt; Europe is supreme representative of morality, as the Messlah of the Amermasses a martial upsurge, a readiness for self sacrifice, and becoming transformed into a cemetery of old culture. We shall ican Dollar: punishing, pardoning, and arranging the fate of the finally even the mere ability to spend years in the filthy stinking tour its ruins, buy up its treasured monumenta; lavishly tip the peoples. Everybody beckons to him, invites him, implores him: mud of the trenches, it was necessary for the rulers to arouse august scions of all the European dynasties! European competiin the masses enormous hopes, monstrous illusions. The disilluthe king of Italy, the reigning, perfidious Georgian Mensheviks, tion will vanish. Control over industrial life will pass completely the debased and solicitous Scheidemann, the mangy tiger of the sionment and embitterment of the masses would inevitably as into our hands, and the profits from the whole world will begin French middle class, Clemenceau, all the strong boxes of the Lonsume proportions commensurate with the scope of this deceit. flowing into our American pockets.
don City and even Swiss midwives. With his trouser cuffs primly The revolutionary internationalists (they were not yet called doomed to live in close proximity but were incapable of estab Communista) foresaw this and upon this forecast they based turned up, Wilson walks over the bloodpools of Europe with the But, at present, the snide chuckle is beginning to stick in the throat of the Wall Street Yankees lishing peaceful forms of collaboration blessings of Wall Street that has so well played the last stake their revolutionary tactic. They steered a course toward the social revolution of the European lottery, he unites Jugo Slave with Serblans; apCapitalism Plunges Into Slaughter The Communist Order Raises Its Head praises the crown of the Hapaburgs; between two pinches of Internationalism Versus Imperialism Meanwhile, capitalism quickly outgrew the national frameAmid the European chaos, the idea of a new order, the Comsnuff rounds out Belgium at the expense of plundered Germany munist Order, is raising its head ever more imperiously and and ponders the possibility of drafting orang outangs and ba work. The national state served it only as a springboard for the Two conscious minorities the imperialist and international powerfully. In the clash and din of bloody imperialist, nationalboons to save Christian culture from the barbarism of the Bol leap. Capitalism soon became cosmopolitan at its disposal were ist declared a war to the death against each other. And before ist and class conflicts, the peoples most backward from the revsheviks.
world wide means of communication Its agents and servants their combat was transferred to the city streets in the shape of olutionary standpoint are slowly but unswervingly beginning to Europe resembles madhouse. And at first glance it seems spoke in all tongues and it sought to plunder the peoples of the open civil war, it unfolded in the consciousness of millions upon fall in step with those who have already left their first victories as if the inmates themselves are unaware half an hour in ad earth regardless of their language, color of skin, or religion of millions of toilers. These were no longer parliamentary conflicts, behind them. From a prison of the peoples which Czarist Russia vance whose throat they will cut and whom they will next emtheir priests. While the middle and petty bourgeoisie, together which even in the best days of parliamentarism educated the was, it is turning before our very eyes with the liberation of brace. But in the stormy of this chaos one irrefutable with broad circles of the working class, still continued to remain masses only to a very limited extent. Here the entire people, Riga, Vilna, Kharkov. into a free federation of Soviet Republesson is to be discerned the criminal responsibility of the in the atmosphere of national Ideology, capitalism developed into down to its darkest and most inert depths, were seized by the lics. 4)
bourgeois world. Everything now occurring in Europe was pre imperialism, into an urge for world domination.
steel claws of militarism and violently plunged into the mael There is no other way out, no other road for the peoples of pared for during the past generations, by its economic system, The world slaughter from its very beginning presented the strom of events.
the former Austro Hungarian empire and the Balkan peninsula.
its state relations, its system of militarism; by the morality and terrible spectacle of the combination of imperialism with nation Imperialism was challenged by Communism which said: You Soviet Germany will enter as a member into this family which philosophy of the tuling classes, by the religion of all the priests. alism; the omnipotent clique of financial capital and heavy in have now shown the masses in action what you really are and sooner or later will include in its ranks Soviet Italy and Soviet The monarchy, the aristocracy, the clergy, the bureaucracy, the dustry succeeded in harnessing to their chariot all the feelings, what you are capable of doing. My turn is next. The great France. The transformation of Europe into a Federation of Sobourgeoisie, the professional Intellectuals, the masters wealth, passions and moods produced by the bond of nationalism, by the combat between Imperialism and Communism is decided not by viet Republics is the sole conceivable solution of the needs of and the rulers of states it is they who have prepared and are unity of language, by common historical tradition and above all, paragraphs of reform, not by parliamentary ballots, nor by the national development of great and small nations, which is not preparing those incomprehensible events which make old cul by common existence in a national state. Taking to the highroad strike reports of trade unions. The events are written in steel tured. Christian Europe seem like a madhouse.
for robberies, seizures, and manslaughter, the imperialists of detrimental to the centralist requirements of economic unificaand every step of the struggle is sealed with blood. This alone tion first of Europe and then of the whole world.
each contending camp proved capable of instilling in the popupredestined that the struggle between Imperialism and Com Bourgeois democrats dreamed in their time of a United States Imperialism, Nationalism, Communism lar masses the idea that the struggle presumably involved na munism would not be settled within the limits of formal democtional independence and national culture. Just as bankers and of Europe. These dreams have found a hypocritically belated racy.
The European chaos is chaos in form only: in substance echo in the speeches of the French social patriots in the first expressed in it are the supreme laws of history which is now big manufacturers exploit small shopkeepers and workers, so period of the last war. 5) The bourgeoisie proved incapable of destroying the old to make way for the new. The population of imperialism subjected completely to itselt the nationalist and The Solution Cannot Be Postponed unifying Europe because it could counterpose to the unifying chauvinist feelings and goals by pretending that it was serving Europe now uses the very same rifles in fighting for different. To solve the basic tasks of social development through unand safeguarding them. It was this terrible psychological charge tendencies of economic development only the dividing will of tasks and different programs which correspond to different his versal suffrage would, under present conditions, when all ques national Imperialism.
that fed and sustained the great slaughter for four and one torical epochs. Basically they are reducible to three: Imperialtions are posed point blank, signify a cessation of the struggle ism, Nationalism, Communism.
half years.
between the mortal class enemies. It would mean an appeal to Only Socialism Can Unify the World This war began as a gang fight between the great capitalist Communism a Unifying Force an arbitrator in the person of those intermediate and primarily To unify the peoples it is necessary to free economic life bandits over seizures and the division of the world this is prepetty bourgeois masses who either have not yet been drawn into from the fetters of private property. Only the dictatorship of cisely the sum and substance of imperialism. But in order to But Communism emerged on the scene. It had in its time the struggle or are participating in it semi consciously. But it is the proletariat is capable of bringing the demands of national plunge the many millioned masses into the struggle, to bait them likewise arisen on national soil simultaneously with the awaken precisely these masses who were deceived by the great lie of development into their natural and legal boundaries and emagainst one another, to fan in them the spirit of hatred and ing of the workers movement at the very first and still uncer nationalism, who were bled white by the war, who have lost bracing all nations in a unification of working collaboration. This fury, Ideas and moods dear to the deceived and doomed to tain beat of the capitalist machine. With the doctrine of Comtheir heads and only seck for a way out, who are subject to the unification will take shape precisely as Federation of the destruction masses were required.
munism the proletariat opposed itself to the bourgeoisie. And most diverse and contradictory moods these masses cannot be Soviet Republics of Europe on the basis of the free self deterThis hypnotic medium at the disposal of the imperialist ban while the latter soon became imperialist and a force for plunder. accepted as authoritative arbitrators by Imperialism, all the less dits was provided by the idea of nationalism. The reciprocal bond ing the world, the advanced proletariat, on the contrary, became so by Communism, nor even by themselves. Why then not tem. no solution. This alliance will be directed against England should of the people who speak one and the same language, belong to internationalist and a force for world unification porize and postpone the solution of the dispute until the bewil the latter lag behind the continent in her revolutionary developone and the same nation that constitutes a great force. This The imperialist bourgeoisie represented numerically an in dered intermediate masses come to their senses and draw all ment. Together with Soviet England the European Federation bond did not make itself felt so long as people lived a patriarchal significant minority of the nation. It maintained itself, it ruled the necessary conclusions from the lessons of the war? How?
will direct its blows against the imperialist dictatorship of North life in their villages or provincial regions. But the more bourgeois and dominated so long as it was able through the ideas and In what way? Artificial interludes are possible in combats be America so long as the trans oceanic republic remains the Reproduction developed, the more it tied village to village and the moods of nationalism to keep broad petty bourgeois and work tween athletes; on the arena of a circus or on the tribune of public of the Dollars long as the triumphant snorting of Wall provinces with the cities, all the more did the people drawn into ing masses in thralldom. The internationalist proletariat consti parliament. but not in a civil war. The more aggravated all the Street is not turned into its death rattle.
its maelstrom learn to value a common tongue this great medi tuted another minority at the very opposite pole. It had every relations, all the needs and all the misfortunes become as a Bloody chaos still stands over Europe. The old is combining um of material and spiritual communion Capitalism ught just that it could tear the majority of the result of the imperialist war, the less objective possibility there with the new. Events pile up on events; and blood accumulates entrench itself first and foremost on a national foundation and people from the spiritual yoke of imperialism.
is for leading the struggle into the channels of formal democ on blood. But from this chaos, ever more resolutely and boldly engendered powerful nationalist movements: in atomized Ger But up to the last great slaughter of the peoples even the racy, the simultaneous and universal counting of noses.
emerges the idea of the Communist Order from which the bourmany, in dismembered Italy, in harrowed Poland, in Austria best and most perspicacious leaders of the proletariat never sus In this war you, Imperialism, have shown what you are geoisie will be saved neither by its Versailles conspiracies, nor Hungary, among the Balkan Slavs, Armenia.
pected how powerfully the consciousness of the popular masses capable of and now my turn has come. shall take power into its hired gangs, nor its voluntary flunkies of class collaboration By means of revolutions and wars, by hook or crook with a was swayed by the prejudices of bourgeois state rule and the my hands and show the still vacillating, the still bewildered and social patriotism, nor by great trans oceanic patron of hole here and a patch there, the European bourgeoisie solved habits of national conservatism. All this was revealed in July, masses what can do, where can lead them, what want and all the capitalist stranglers.
part of the national problem. unified Italy, a unified Germany, 1914, which without exaggeration became the blackest month can give them.
It is not longer the spectre of Communism that hovers over without German Austria but, by way of compensation scores of in world history; not only because kings and the stockbrokers This was the slogan of the October insurrection of Com Europe as was the case seventy two years ago when the Comkings, were created. The peoples of Russia were bound together were able to unleash the war but because they succeeded in munism; this is the meaning of the terrible war which the Spar munist Manifesto was written It is the ideas and hopes of the by the steel tentacles of Czarism. Austria and the Balkans were gaining inner sway over hundreds of millions of popular masses, tacists have proclaimed against the bourgeois world on the bourgeolsle that are being transformed into a spectre. Comconvulsed by a bitter internecine struggle of nations who were duping them, spinning a web about them, hypnotizing them and streets of Berlin munism now strides over Europe in flesh and blood.
day. In many cities they woners of Chicago were brought to (1) Comrade Trotsky is referring to the January 1919 uptheir demand, and in others they trial as a result of this deliberate rising of the Berlin workers and soldiers. It was provoked by succeeded in appreciably cutting plot of the Chicago bosses to the treacherous policy of the social democratic government of down their hours of work. break the movement. Four of the Ebert and Scheidemann. The government had issued an order But it was in Chicago that the unionists Sples, Engel, Parsons, and economic organization for the the cry for an eight hour day, strike centered. The size and the and Fisher were hanged. Many removing the incumbent independent social democrat from his By MARVEL SCHOLL post of the Berlin chief of police. The workers replied by mass May Day, 1940, marks the fiftieth anniversary of that first working class.
demonstrations. Within 24 hours a general strike was declared.
great international working class holiday when the workers of States. From the very heginning union in the world was organized remething elects had many far May Day began in the United from 1827, when the first trade militancy of the workers demon others went to prison.
This was the bosses answer to the movement was headed by a revolutionary committee comthe workers militancy.
od of Karl Liebknecht, Ledebour, and Scholtze. This comevery nation went into the streets, on May 1, 1890, to strike of the factory system here, the in PhiladelphenyintherMechave: The bosses of Chicago, their BECOMES INTERNATIONAL mittee had the support of the Spartacists and of the Berlin orfor the legal establishment of the eight hour day. Four years workers began their fight against until 1884, when the first conven: police and their government deganization of the Independent Social Democrats. The authorities before that, however, the first May Day had been celebrated that when the DAY OF STRUGGLE IN 1890 began negotiations with the workers and at the same time mothem by their employers. Theized Trades and Larbor Unions of were ready to take to the streets But contrary to their expectat bilized military forces from bourgeois youth, White Guard atuin the United States.
first demand was for a ten hour the United States and Canada to fight for their needs, it was tions, the Haymarket Riots, in dents, and non commissioned officers of the old Hohenzollern The history of May Day is the history of the organized day. In 1821, without the benefit Hatersimplified to the American necessary for the bosses at all stead of killing the labor move army. On January 11, under the leadership of Noske the bloody labor and revolutionary movement of the world, its rises and cordwainers New Yorke went on resolution setting May 19 1886 as costs to curb and kill the organ: ment, only increased its tempo. suppression of the workers uprising began. On January 15, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered by the officers downfalls, its martyrs, its leaders and its mis leaders. strike. During the trial of their a day for mass strikes for the ized labor and workers political In 1889 the convention of the AFL set aside May 1, 1890 as convoying them to prison.
study of that history contains many valuable lessons for the leaders for conspiracy later, it sight hour day. The National con May the police fired into another day mass strikes on (2) The landing of the French troops in Odessa took place workers of today.
was brought ou that the normal born Union, organized as agtederathe picket line at the McCormick the eight hour issue. During the early in January 1919, as part of the general Allied plan to aid working day for these men was tion of trade unions in 1886, the Deering plant, killing four and same year, the International Denikin against the Soviets.
The first gigantic May Day strike occurred on May 1, from nineteen to twenty hours.
Workingman Congress, the Sec. 3) The Zimmerwald conference was held in Switzerland in 1886, in the United States and grew out of more than fifty During the next two decades Knights of Labor, had all passed wounding scores of the strikers.
On May gigantic massay 1, 1990 should be an inter Left Wing at this Conference headed by Lenin issued a mantSeptember 1915 on the initiative of the Italian Socialists. The the number and militancy of the resolutions and organized their the American workers for a many political issues were added. strikes over the ten hour cay forces around this demand.
protested the brutality of the po national working man holiday, festo to the workers of the world calling upon armies then shorter work day. From its very slogans for May Day parades were so great that many indus May 1, 1886 is a day which will lice. The meeting was peaceful when all those who tolled for fighting for imperialist aims to turn their guns against their inception, May Day as a workers and demonstrations today include tries had to grant it. In 1837 long be remembered by both the and just about to adjourn when their living should come out on own bourgeoisie.
holiday has been recognized as a (1) international working class President Van Buren finally de workers of the world and the em suddenly the police attacked the strike for the eight hour day and (4) with the outbreak of the revolution in Germany, the political Institution. The struggle solidarity. 2) universal suffrage, creed that all government employing classes. In every large crowd. Someone threw a bomb, for other important political isGorman troops occupying Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, White to establish the legal limit for a (3) the ending of colonial oppres ployees work ten hours a day. city in the country workers laid killing a sergeant. When the sues for which the workers of the Russia and the Ukraine rushed home, and the Red Army was working day to eight hours was a sion. 3) the right to the streets, Scarcely had this demand been down their tools and took to the smoke of battle cleared, seven po world are still fighting, able to advance without meeting any serious resistance May 1, 1890 saw one of the political battle. To this original (4) the freeing of political pris won on a more or less widespread streets to fight for the legal es lice and four workers were dead. 6) For the current version of this dream one need only demand, as the years passed, oners. 5) the right of political scale than the workers took up tablishment of the eight hourl Most of the militant labor lead. Continued on Page 8) refer to the bourgeois press, especially of the Allied camp.
How May Day Began posed