2 SOCIALIST APPEAL OCTOBER 1940 Resolution On Proletarian Military Policy TROTSKY MEMORIAL FUND LAUNCHED BY DELEGATES Adopted At Plenum Conference Held In Chicago, September 27 to 29 Capitalism has plunged the world into a horrible vortex of war and militarism. This testifies hot to the vitality of capitalism but to its fatal weakness, its incapacity to regain sta.
bility. The epoch of the death agony of capital ism and the beginning of social transformatlon is an epoch of universal militarism. It can be brought to an end only by the definitive victory of the proletariat. This is the essential feature of the present world situation. The intervention of the United States in. the present war, or its clash with a victorious Germany or Japan at a later date, is predetermined by all the circumstances. All the realistic leaders of American capitalism clearly understand this. Only a few pacifist fools have the slightest doubt about it. The two main groups in the camp of imperialismi interventionist and so called isolationists differ only in regard to military strategy. Both are agreed on the policy of prep.
aring to fight and grab. The stupendous arms rogram adopted by Congress has and can have only one meaning: military aggression in the near future on a world scale.
The question whether German Iinperialism, having conquered Europe, can or cannot attack the United States has nothing to do with the real issue. The very existence of one aggressive and expanding imperialist power in the modern world is an attack on the others. The United States, as an imperialist power living its foundations throughout the world, is attacked any where a rival power attempts to seize a market, a plece of territory or a sphere of influence.
Whether the United States directly intervenes in the present European war, or defers open milltary action for another point of attack is only a secondary consideration in evaluating the per spective. The real course is clear: imperial ism is preparing with all possible speed to put its strength and its weakness to the test of war on a colossal scale.
THE FUNDAMENTAL LESSON In the epoch of militarism great questions can be decided only by military means this is the fundamental lesson of the developments of the present war.
The agents and apologies of democratic im.
perialism the social democrats, the centrists, the trade union reformists and the pacifists All the air wich lamentations over the smashing military victories of Hitler and spread the sentiments of pessimism and prostration.
We Fourth Internationalists thrust aside these trattors and panic mongers with hatred and contempt. Our task is to ascertain what has been destroyed and what has been proved by the momentous events in Europe and to draw the neces.
sary conclusions for the future struggle.
REFORMISM CANNOT LIVE TODAY In the first place the victories of the fascist war machine of Hitler have destroyed every plau.
sible basis for the illusion that a serious struggle against faecism can be conducted under the leader ship of a bourgeois democratic regime. The war in Europe, as previously in the Spanish rehearsal, has shown up the hollowness, the rottenness and the contemptible cowardice and greed of the whole ruling stratum of the bourgeois democrats. They are unwilling to sacrifice anything but the lives of the duped masses. To save their personal lives and their property they were ready in one country after another to capitulate to fascism and seek its protection against the wrath of their own On the 1940 Elections menting the general political transitional program of the party. imperialism prepares for war, materi ally and ideologically, without waiting to decide in (Continued from Page 1) hy Farrell Dobbs, National Labor advance the date when actual hostilities shall be analogy between exploitation in Secretary, showed that the party gin or the precise point of attack. The workers the factory and exploitation in was prepared to carry the new vanguard must likewise prepare for wat without the army. We re against the ex policy deep into the ranks of the the workers movement. Pacifism, in all its forms, under the Hitler Stalin pact; and certain to be dependence on speculative answers to these see ploitation of the workers in the working class. The systematic ondary questions. The militarization of the coun factory, said Comrade Cannon work of the last five months, since is no more than a protest in time of peace against abandoned tomorrow when Stalin so orders, it war; in the face of actual war at thruate the he finds it necessary to switch partners. The try in preparation for war is taking place before but as long as we can end it the April convention, in transworkers like sheep, unarmed and defenseless and pacifism of Browder and the pacifism of Thomas our eyes. All our work and plans for the future we go into the factory, adapt our forming the party into a proletar.
selves to reality, we go with the ian organization, showed its good without a program, Into the slaughter. to our stem from different roots bat are identical in must be based on this reality.
masses and share all their ex. results. Perhaps the most strikepoch, which is completely dominated by militar their betrayal of the interests of the working THE FUTURE BELONGS TO US periences in order to influence ing example was the change in ism, negative protests against war are of no avall class. Under the rule of a modern Imperialism them in The first stages of militarization and war prerevolutionary direction. New York City, which before whatever. The proletariat requires a positive pro which is already erring to the teeth, an abstract We must defend the interests of April had been the stronghold of sent enormous difficulties to our party because the working class in the army as the petty bourgeois opposition, but gram which takes the facts of war and militarism, fight against railitatiam ia at best Quixotic.
we have to swim against the stream. The party we do in the factory. We counter which now has 43 of its mem.
the characteristic features of decaying capitalism, as the starting point for practical actions. OUR PROGRAM FOR THIS PERIOD will be tested in a preliminary way its capa pose our program to that of the berst in the trade unions, half city to recognize these difficulties and hold firm boss in the factory, in the army of them worker youth. The 148 The first impact of the war in Europe revealed The revolutionary strategy can only be to take when the struggle is hard and the progress slow, Just as we don want stool participants in the Plenum. Cona petty bourgeois centrist tendency in the Socialist this militarism as a reality and counterpose a class Only a party fortified by the great principles and pigeons as officers of our ference, a cross section of the par Workers Party which took shape as a faction, program of the proletariat to the program of the world associations of the Fourth International unions, so we don want them ty throughout the country. preUnder the leadersh! of Barnham and Shachtman imperialists at every point. We fight against senddominantly activists in the trade will be able to do this.
as officers in the military forthis mlaority faction waged a disruptive struggle ing the worker solders into 41 le without proper unions, were vivid evidence of the We are not a party like other parties. We mations in which the masses in the party and attempted to overthrow the progress reported by Comrade training and equipment. We or pose the military are exploited. The firm, bold alone are equipped with a scientific program of Dobbs.
direction of worker soldiers by bourgeois officers Marxist doctrines in favor of journalistic impromilitants in the unions men Marxism. We alone retain an unshakable confi.
visations. The disruptive struggle of the BurnThe party membership is the who have no regard for their treatment, their like the picket captain are the dence in the socialist future of humanity. We stuff of which revolutions are men we want as officers of the ham Shachtman faction culminated in their de protection and their lives. We demand federal alone are ready to meet the universal militarism made not only in its class comsertion of the party in a typical petty bourgeois funds for the milliary training of workers and of decaying capitalism on its own terms and lead worker soldiers.
recoil against the discipline of the proletarian worker officers under the control of the trade un We didn want this war, any position but in its age. The aver.
majority of the party. The open repudiation of the proletarian struggle for power accordingly. more than we want exploitation as a perfe20 years. The party ions. Military appropriations? Yes but only for socialism by Burnham within less than two months the establishment and equipment of worker trainThe war in its course will utterly destroy all in the factories, but so long as has experienced a 23 growth in other workers parties, all. half and half move the workers aren ready to end.
One of the most heartening facts after he had deserted the party was only the lo ing campa! Compulsory military traning of work ments. But it will only harden the bona fide party it, we ll fight by their sides, we ll which comrade Dobbs was able gical sequel to the course he followed in the ers? Yes but only under the corriol of the trade of the Fourth International and open the way be the best oldiers as we are the to report that the cireulation party struggle. Burnham betrayal of socialism unions!
for its growth and eventual victory.
best workers in the factory. We of the SOCIALIST APPEAL has confirmed to the hit the party characterization Such are the necessary cone ate slogans for ask only the right to express our been doubled during the period The future belongs to the party of the dictator of this pretentious mountebank and the petty the present stage of the preparation of ship of the proletariat, the party of the Fourth opinion, to have the right to win since the April convention bourgeois faction he organized and maneuvered perialism for war in the near future. They con International. It needs only to be true to itself a majority to our opinion.
into a split.
Trotsky Memorial Fund stitute a military transitional program supple hold firm, dig in and prepare the future. Only those who go through hell with the soldiers will be After a thorough discussion of Since the party convention the seceding faction able to influence them. We the organizational problems facea has evolved consistently in the direction of tradididn want this war, but we by the party, the delegates de tional left socialist anti militarism which at botPLENUM CONFERENCE RESOLUTION are not afraid of the war. cided to launch a Trotsky Memor.
tom is only a form of pacifism. The resolute The question of military policy al Fund to underwrite a realistic struggle of the party majority against the Burnhad been discussed in the branch program for expansion of the par: ham Shacht man faction, and its decisive victory es for nearly two months, on the ty work to carry out Comrade in the struggle, were the necessary conditions for basis of a draft resolution of Trotsky last words.
fered by the National Committee. total of 3, 195 was pledged the survival of the party. An unrelenting antaThe discussion at Chicago showed on the spot by the various hranch gonism to the desertere on every point is no less that the question had been delegations, many of them stating necessary. The party cannot have the slightest Participation in the November elections is diereason for conciliation on any point with the The same considerations hold for that grotesque throughly clarified and that com that their branch quotas would faction of deserters inspired by petty bourgeois tated to us by our Marxist conceptions of the sect, the Socialist Labor Party.
plete agreement prevailed in the probably be revised upwards when fright before the stern realities and complexitles tasks of a revolutionary party. Although the main It is also impossible to give critical support party. The vote on the resolution they returned home and explained was unanimous.
the program of expansion to their of the developing war.
energies of the party are devoted to the mobili. in the elections to the Communist Party. Its zation of the proletariat in mass action against union smashing policies which continue in its The organization report, made branches. In addition, there were some branches which were not ADAPTING OUR TACTICS TOWAR the capitalist class and its state apparatus, that present pseudo left period as in its openly prorepresented or did not name a mobilization is served by participation in elec Roosevelt period its role as Stalin agent under SWP Protests quota. The final figure for this The imperialist war is not our war and the toral activity. Revolutionary electoral activity stage of the Trotsky Memorial the Hitler Stalin pact, the subordination of the militarism of the capitalist state is not our milltakes the form of tribunes of the people, sumFund will, therefore, h! 5, 000 tarism. We do not support the war and militarvarious Communist Parties to the GPU as was Effort to Ban or more when all reports are in ism of the imperialists any more than we sup moning the masses to struggle, not merely at the glaringly revealed in the assassination of ComThe National Committee recomport the capitalist exploitation of workers in the polls on election day, but everywhere at all times. rade Leon Trotsky, make the Communist Party CP From Ballot mended that the fund drive be Electoral activity is a secondary, but neverthe.
factories. We are against the war as a whole the object of hatred to many of the most procompleted by the end of the year.
just as we are against the rule of the class which less important form of revolutionary activity. gressive workers. The hatred of the honest pro Not the least of the signs of conducts it, and never under any circumstances (Continued from Page 1)
gressive workers against the Communist Party the new stage of the party was RESTRICTIONS PREVENT US!
vote to give them any confidence in their conduct.
must be distinguished from the patriotic hostility reminded forcibly that chickens the splendid efficiency with which of the war or preparation for it not a man, not One of the results of the capitalist prepara of the chauvinists against the Communist Party do come home to roost. the Chicago brancbes executed tions for the war, has been the further developa cenit not a gun with our support. Our war The hatred felt against the Communist Party by During hearings on the meas their duties as host to the Ple ment of almost insurmountable restrictions to Arrangements is the war of the working class against the capl.
many honest progressive workers testifies to their ure, Bi Schneidermann, state sec. num Conference talist order.
prevent minority. Workers parties from finding profound class instinct. These factors make im retary of the Communist Party for housing and feeding the dele.
But only with the masses is it possible to a place on the ballot, especially for candidates possible any electoral activity in support of Stalwhiningly reminded Governor rates and halls for the Plenum for the presideney. The National Committee was inist candidates.
son that the governor had been and the Conference, a well. at conquer power and establish socialism; and in elected with the active aid of the tended mass meeting Friday night these times the masses in the military organiza compelled to recognize that our party is too At the same time, especially in the present Communist Party. To his charges to greet the delegates and a bansmall to expend the funds and forces necessary tions are destined to play the most decisive role election campaign, we have the elementary class that Governor Olson had solicited quet Sunday night which gaily to secure a place on the ballot for our presiden concluded the week end everyof all. Consequently, it is impossible to affect the duty to defend the rights of the Communist Party the assistance in his cam tial candidates because of these restrictions.
course of events by a policy of abstention. It against the chauvinists who are attempting topaign two years ago, the Governor thing went off like clock work.
Back to the Branches is necessary to take capitalist militarism as an If our party did not itself formally participat rule it off the ballot, hound its election campaign replied coldly the next day that established reality which we are not yet strong in the elections, it might under certain conditions workers, etc. Against the capitalist class and its be didn know Schneldermann, or the country to bring the new enough to abolish, and adapt our practical tactics give critical support to the eandidate of another wouldn recognize blm 1f they program of activity, first to their agents, we unconditionally defend the Communto it. Our task is to protect the class Interests party. Such a candidate would never be that of ist Party. firm policy of defending the demo happened to meet.
Despite telegrams of protest farclass, the delegates went off with branches, then to the working of the workers in the army no less than in the a bourgeois party. We no more support a Willkie cratic rights of the Communist Party will also factory. That means to participate in the mili.
or Roosevelt than support an employers repre go far to separate the red baiters from those outnumbering those of approval heads held high and minds and the Governor declared immedihearts resolved to carry out our tary machine for socialist ends. The proletarian sentative in a union election. The only candidate progressive workers whose hatred of the Com ately after the special session ad enormous responsibilities in the revolutionists are obliged to take their place be we could conceivably support is that of a party munist Party stems from their class conscious journed that he would sign the spirit in which Leon Trotsky livside the workers in the military training camps ness.
representing a section of the working class whose bill if it met with his idea of ed and died. It is all on our and on the battlefields in the same way as in the augmented vote would be generally understood what such a measure should be shoulders now, Comrade Cannon to signify progress for the labor movement. UnOUR LOCAL CAMPAIGNS like.
factory. They stand side by side with the masses had reminded us. But in truth fortunately, however, no such party is participatof worker soldiers, advance at all times and under The bill had the backing of no one among the delegates and So far as formal participation in this elecall circumstances the independent elass point of ing in the present election campaign.
tion is concerned the is participating in both bourgeols parties, explicitly participants needed that reminder.
view, and strive to win over the majority to the this election mainly through those state and local in an endorsement by the State They had come to take it upon NO OTHER PARTY TO SUPPORT idea of transforming the war into a struggle for candidates whom some sections of the party have! Democratic Central Committee, their shoulders. And they went their socialist emancipation.
The Socialist Party is not such a party. It is been able to place on the ballot. Our main activi Implicitly through a plank in the art carrying that historie respon.
a hopeless anachronism, a fading vestige of the ty on a national senle is to put forward our pro platform of the Republican state sibility, not as a burden but a WE GO WHERE THE WORKERS GO past, a petty bourgeois pacifist sect. It has scarceI privilege.
gram on all the burning issues of this epoch of organization, Under conditions of mass militarization the 1y any influence in any section of the labor move war and militarism.
revolutionary worker cannot evade military exment. It would indeed be absurd for us to supploitation any more than he can evade exploitaport in the elections a party which has far less election campaign means a lost opportunity for tion in the factory. He does not seek a personal influence in the labor movement than we have. our party. The only way to prevent the loss of solution the problem of war by evading mill.
Norman Thomas is rightly understood to be a similar opportunities, not merely in the electoral personality with a personal following which rep field, but in others as well, is the speedy mobiliza.
tary service. That is nothing but a desertion of class duty The proletarian revolutionist goes resents neither socialism nor the labor movement. tion of our party to transform it from its present with the masses. He becomes a soldier when Any form of support for his candidacy cannot, size and strength into a mass party of the work Trotsky last letters and ar Still another recent article by they become soldiers, and goes to war when they therefore, aid the labor movement in any way. ing class.
ticles make up most of the Trot Trotsky is one. We Do Not go to war. The proletarian revolutionist strives sky Memorial Issue of the Change Our Course, written imto become the most skilled among the worker. Fourth International. monthly med. ately after the capitulation of soldiers, and demonstrates in action that be is magazine of the Socialist Work France.
PLENUM CONFERENCE RESOLUTION ers Party. It is the October num most concerned for the general welfare and prober, out next week.
Trotsky had devoted most of tection of his comrades. Only in this way, as in his time during the last period the factory, can the proletarian revolutiopist gain Joseph Hansen, secretary to of his life from the May 24th the confidence of his comrades in arms and beTrotsky, has written for this me. attempt on his life until August come an influential leader among them.
morial issue the moving story of 20th to exposing the murder mathe last days at Coyoacan. His chine of the GPU. Some of his The total ware waged by the modern imperialists, and likewise the preparations for such wars, By decision of the April, 1940 convention of It recommended to our party that only a limited article With Trotsky to the letters and comments on the May the party, the National Committee was instrueted period should remain in which suspended memEnd, will undoubtedly remain 24th attempt are collected in the require compulsory military training no less than bers would have time to reconsider their refusal the death of Trotsky.
the most authoritative account of October issue of the Fourth Into take disciplinary action against the Burnhamthe appropriation of enormous funds and the subternational.
Shachtman Abern group if that group failed to ordination of Industry to the manufacture of ar At the end of that period those still refusing to accept the convention decisions should be uncon written in the last weeks of his Sixteen of Trotsky letters, abide by the decisions of the convention.
mamente. As long as the masses accept the war preparations, as fs ludubitably the case in the In accordance with those instructions, the ditionally expelled from the party.
life, include three which he wrote United States, mere negative agitation against National Committee on April 22 suspended those The period recommended by the Emergency on August 20, the day that Stalthe military budget and conscription cannot by members of the Burnham Shachtman Abern Conference has now elapsed. Meanwhile, since In murder machine struck him itsell, yield serious results. Moreover, after Congroup who, following the convention, refused to their suspension, the Burnham Shachtman Abern down.
gress had already appropriated billions for armaaccept the decisions of the convention. The Na group has undergone a political evolution which An unfinished article, which he ments and was certain to pass a conscription bill tional Committee by suspending rather than ex has widened the chasm between them and the had been dictating that day, is without serious opposition, such negative agita pelling the undisciplined members of the petty Fourth International. Burnham has drawn the published in its rough form for tion against conscription was somewhat belated bourgeois opposition. save them an opportunity final conclusion to the position he elaborated for despite the fact that it was never and easily degenerated into mealy mouthed paci.
to reconsider their refusal to alide by convention his group, and has openly deserted to the class sky most profound and novel fism. This proved to be the case with the organ.
decisions and to return to the party. In the course enemy. Shachtman and Abern lead a petty bour thoughts on the menace of fascism ions (Th of the ensuing months a number of the suspended MEXICO CITY In a sudden Socialists, Lovestoneites, etc. geois semi pacifist sect. After the passage of It is especially important.
affiliated with the preposterous conglomeration comrades have reconsidered their refusal, have nearly six months it is, therefore, time to draw Trotsky pointed out in the text, reversal of forces in the Execuwhich calls itself the Keep America Out of War declared their adherence in action to convention a conclusion to this question and put an end to or the workers of the United tive Committee of the Mexican Committee a vile and trencheours tool of the decisions while remaining free to defend their any possible ambiguity or confusion.
States.
Confederation of Labor, Lombardo democratie Imperialists. The hypocrisy of their political views in subsequent party discussions, The plenary session of the National Commit Questions put to Trotsky con Toledario, Stalinist backed secrepacifism is indicated by the fact that, simulta and have on this basis been restored to full mem tee declares that those suspended members whc cerning the new problems arising tary, was forced out.
neously, they declare themselves in favor of the bership rights.
have not up to this time signified their willing United States, and his answers, lazquez, who has been waging a He was succeeded by Fidel Ve.
victory of Britain. Equally treacherous is the The Emergency Conference of the Fourth ness to a side by the decisions of the April con never before published, make anpurely pacifist agitation of the Stalinists, em International, convened in May, 1940, endorsed yention are hereby unconditionally expelled from other feature of this issue of the struggle against the Toledano che ployed today on behalf of Stalin foreign policy the decisions of the April convertion of the the party. Fourth International.
que for some time.
people.
We must recognize. however, that the 19:30 Fourth International Trotsky Memorial Issue Out Next Week No less complete and devastating has been the destruction of the traditional reformist labor move.
ment. At best, this traditional movement the parties and the trade unions was pacifist in char.
acter. That is, it was designed for peace, not for war. Parties which confined themselves to protests against the horrors of war, and did not seriously conduct a struggle for power to end the system which causes war such parties were completely helpless when submitted to the test of war. The same proved true of the outwardly imposing trade unions. All concepts of peaceful, gradual, reformist progress within the framework of capitalism, and all parties and organizations which represented these concepts in any degree, were smashed like a house of cards BOLSHEVISM ALONE STANDS UP The war in Europe has once again, and more categorically than ever, posed the fundamental alternative of the epoch of wars and revolutions: either the dictatorship of fascist capitalism, or the dictatorship of the proletariat. The attempt of the European workers, under the influence of the reformist labor bureaucracies, to find in de mocratic capitalism a third alternative, led to catastrophe. The third alternative has been destroyed in blood and fire. But the program the workers fight for power has not been destroyed.
When the workers of Europe rise again and rise they will that program will be their banner.
These are the fundamental lessons of the war. Bolshevism alone, which aims to direct the workers movement to the seizure of political power by revolutionary Means, stands up and gains strength under the test of the great new events. War and militariem which crush all other organizations and discredit all other programs, only provide a new verification of the premises of Bolshevism. The military epoch has room only for parties which inspire the workers to scorn all hall measures to stop at nothing, and to carry their struggle through to the very end. These are parties of a new type having nothing in com.
mon with the reformist pacifist parties of the traditional labor movement. Such a party is the Socialist Workers Party. Its program can be described in one phrase: dictatorship of the prole.
tariat.
RIDDING OURSELVES OF PACIFISM The certainty that the United States also will be dominated by militarism confronts the party with the categoric necessity to purge itselt of all remnants of beral, petty bourgeois pacifist tendecies and conceptions carried over from the past, in particular from the left social democratic movement. Pacifism is a debilitating poison in On the Shachtman Abern Group TOLEDANO OUT AS MEXICAN LABOR CHIEF