SOCIALIST APPEAL Tuesday, April 4, 1939 SOCIALIST APPEAL Vol. III, No. 21 April 1938 Published twice a week by the SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASS at 116 University Place, New York, Telephone: Algonquin 8547 Subscriptions: 00 per year; 00 for six months, Foreign: 00 per year, 50 for six months. Bundle orders: cents per copy in United States; cents per copy in all foreign countries. Single copies: cents, Bronx and Manhattan subscriptions are: 50 for six months; 00 for one year. Reentered as second class matter February 16, 1939, at the post office at New York, NY, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
IN THIS CORNER Editor: MAX SHACHTMAN Associate Editors: HAROLD ROBERTS FELIX MORROW Staff Members: EMANUEL GARRETT JOSEPH HANSEN Business Manager: STANLEY FIGHT WITH THE SOCLALIST WORKERS PARTY FOR: job and a decent wage for every worker. Open the idle factories operate them under workers control. Twenty Billion dollar Federal public works and housing program. Thirty thirty! 30 weekly minimum wage. 30hour weekly maximum for all workers on all jobs. Thirty dollar weekly old age and disability pension. Expropriate the Sixty Families. All war funds to the unemployed. people referendum on any and all wars. No secret diplomacy.
10. An independent Labor party.
II. Workers Defense Guards against Vigilante and Fascist attacks.
The Struggle in China We Are Not Pacifists The pacifist usually shares the outlook of the American capitalist: he does not oppose the profit system, he is against the working class taking matters into its own hands, etc. His pacifism consists of be lieving that the present world order should be main tained without the use of force. He is blind and indifferent to the day by day coercion of the dollar and the cop, of the school, press and radio, over the minds and bodies of the workers.
And when war does come, and it becomes plain that part rcel of the profit system to which the pacifist is not opposed, then the pacifist usually ends up by finding idealistic reasons for supporting the war We are not pacifists. The revolutionist is as far from the pacifist as he is from the war monger. We are the most consistent, most determined, opponents of the capitalist war makers. But there are.
war It took place at home, in Spain itself. The hand that wielded the dagger was that of the Spanish Stalinist, social democrat and anarchist leaders. They, trusted by the masses, looked to for leadership, drove the dagger home.
Had these leaders been revolutionists, they would have taught the Spanish masses this fundamental thought, now almost forgotten by the labor movement, but once clearly grasped, in the days of the Russian By Max Shachtman Revolution and the ensuing heroic years of revolutionary struggle in Europe.
At bottom, the dispute between the so called sotaIn any civil war or war for liberation, the side of tionists and the advocates of collective security is reaction usually commands material instruments of either meaningless, unimportant, or entirely beside the point with which workers are really concerned, namely, warfare far superior to those available to the progress.
stopping or lighting war.
ive side. To leave the issue of victory solely to the Where it is not a patent absurdity, isolationism in purely military struggle means, therefore, certain victhe modern world is a patent fraud. In so far as the fory for reaction. Consequently, the progressive side negative criticism of that position goes, it is easily can win only if, to its military resistance, it adds a accomplished. The idea that the United States, with its political offensive.
tremendously powerful position in world economic and political life, can, or does, or will remain isolated The Russian Red Army was victorious against the interventionist armies of the whole world, not because from any important conflict is preposterous. The Sem of it had superior military equipment it did not have Utah may have been able to pursue an isolationist and could not have had that. but because of its life a hundred or more years ago, Modern American imperialism, regardless of the statesmen at its helm, superior political resources. The Soviets demoralized simply cannot, does not, will not.
enemy armies by revolutionary propaganda, created in surrections behind the interventionist armies, inspired Nobody Likes War guerilla warfare, roused workers throughout the world The collective security advocates are simply the to stop intervention. And the Soviets could do this only traditional defenders of imperialist booty, in new because, prior to that, they had made a proletarian rev.
gulse and with strange recent recruits. No more on less sane person, however reactionary and this goes olution, had given the workers the factories, the peas.
also for Fascists is in favor of war for its own sake.
ants the land, and the whole world a new hope for the Even the Fascists, we repeat, because however med future they may seem to be, they are not unaware of the This is the lesson that now applies directly to fact that a large scale modern war is a risky and expensive affair. That is why, in their own way, the Fascists too are for collective security. Thus, Mus solini and Hitler are for collectively securing the Blackshirt conquest of Ethiopia. They are for collectChina is engaged in a titanic struggle against enively securing the Nazi conquest to having Eng of Czechoslovakia slavement by the Japanese imperialists. Every blow They would not object for a struck at the imperialists in China is a blow against land and France and all the other Democracies Join them in the collectivity.
world capitalism, a blow that materially aids the cause The democratic advocates of the policy merely of working class emancipation everywhere. That is why want to secure collectively not their conquests of we support with all our strength the heroic struggle of 1938 1939, but the booty they acquired in 1918 1910 and the Chinese masses and make the cause of Chinese na in the preceding decades. There, fundamentally, is the tional liberation our own.
difference between them and the Fascists on this For more than a century that great nation of 400, point.
All over the world there 000, 000 people has been the target of the imperialist Why the working class sbould fight to secure are still maimed victims England rule over, let us say, South Africa, or Bel pirates of the West, of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Itke these of the last world gium over the Congo, any more than the German and the United States. Japan robber war in China workers should fight to secure Hitler rule over the during the last seven years has been fought to bring slaughter. Young men broken in body and spirit to Czechs, is not intelligently demonstrable.
the material and human resources of the country unfeed the Moloch of capitalist The isolationists differ from the collective secur der the monopolistic control of the Japanese industriityites as the last war showed in that they refuse war. Behind them come the to assist either one of the two sets of their imperialist alists and financiers.
new generation of young rivals: the Anglo French or the Germano Italian. Let When the British, French, and American govsters, who are being trained them fight it out to the point of exhaustion, so that ernments prepare to challenge this Japanese drive, it is in advance to wear gas if we intervene later on it will be as Indiaputable not because they are interested in the cause of Chinese masters of them both. Why should we now to our masks, to grow accustomed liberation but because they want to enslave the Chinese selves down to helping one of our competitors against to horrors, to death, and the another one?
people themselves.
constant presence of bloody To take either of the two positions is, therefore, to That is why it is the grossest and most dangerous. conflict, so that they too will take a stand for imperialism and, consequently, for war.
treachery to place the fate of the Chinese people in the be ready to become cannon hands of these gangsters, to depend on the British Democratic Rights Do Matter fodder on the battlefields of and American fleets to defeat the Japanese, to tell the Is there, then, no way in which to stop Fasciam, to Chinese masses that in Washington and London they the new war. This is what stop Hitler advances, to stop the war which we all have firm and friendly allies.
capitalism offers succeeding realize is so imminent? Can we, then, take the position generations of youth!
that it doesn matter a particle whether we live, so to The Chinese capitalists and landowners have alsay, under Hitlerism or Rooseveltism, Fascism or ways made common cause with the foreign capitalists capitalist democracy?
against their own workers and peasants who are There is a way to smash Fascism and war! There is among the most exploited in the world. They are fight a difference, an important one, between Fascism and bourgeois democracy. Those who attribute to the rev ing the Japanese now only because the Japanese cap.
olutionary Marxists the view that it doesn matter to italists are too hard pressed to be able to share the the workers which political regime they live under, is loot with them. They tried for five years to compro. By Eugene Debs deliberately distorting our position.
mise, surrendered vast territories without a struggle The democratic rights which the workers enjoy.
in part only, to be sure, but nevertheless in part, under offer battle battle which has been ill organized and capitalist democracy they are deprived of altogether sabotaged by corruption, treachery, and misleadership.
by Fascism. But the whole point is that these rights The real job of carrying the fight through to its not only cannot be extended and made more genuine.
but they cannot even be preserved in their present victorious conclusion will rest with the Chinese masses vitiated form, if the workers continue to support in the. not with the Chinese exploiters.
slightest degree the power, the rule, the state of the Twelve years ago these same leaders, Chiang Kai. Since my characterization of the bellied parasites.
bourgeois democrats.
Shek Co. sold out to the imperialists and they will soldier in the Jingo edition (as But while have not a drop of Wherever we look today, we see that these gentle he hired assassin of his capital do so again at the first favorable opportunity. That is blood to shed for the oppressors men are interested first and foremost in the preservaist master. Ed. have been of the working class and the rob tion of capitalist private ownership. Roosevelt, for why the independent organization of the workers and asked if was opposed to all war bers of the poor, the thieves and example, reiterates his allegiance to capitalism on all peasants of China under a banner and with a revolu and if would refuse to be a looters, the brigands and murder occasions. Democracy interests them only in the tionary program of their own, is the firmest guarantee soldier and to fight under any cir ers, whose debauched misrule is second, tenth or fiftieth place. And when and where. such democratic rights as the right to free speech, that the war will be fought through to the end and cumstances, and to make my an won. The victory of the Chinese workers and peasants son. No, am not opposed to all heart full to shed for their vic assembly, press, the right to organize, strike and tims when it shall be needed in picket, conflict with the Interests of capitalist prop will give an enormous impulse to.
war, nor am opposed to an the war for their liberation. erty, the former are nonchalantly more often, brutal under all circumstances, and any am not a capitalist soldier; ly and eynically suppressed for the sake of the latter, declaration to the contrary would am a proletarian revolutionist. This elementary and ever so important truth, the disquality me as a revolutionist. do not belong to the regular professional democrats in the labor movement systemWhen say am opposed to war mean ruling class war, for the army of the plutocracy, but to atically conceal from the masses.
the irregular army of the people.
ruling class is the only class that refuse to obey any command to But War Ends These Rights Today, when we seem closer than ever before to makes war. It matters not to me fight from the ruling class, but Take the democrat Daladier. He is against the the brink of a world catastrophe, the struggle to free whether this war be offensive or will not wait to be commanded to German dictators. Good. To ight them, to preserve defensive, or what other video the world from this horror becomes one of frightful fight for the working class. French imperialist interests, he asks for the powers cuse may be invented for it, I am opposed to every war but of. a dictator! In his war for democracy, he starts urgency am opposed to it, and would be one: am for that war with heart out by refusing to guarantee in any way the demoBecause capitalism can work, can keep the shot for treason before would and soul, and that is the world cratic rights of free speech, free press and assembly, wheels going, can keep millions in sufficient food, it enter such a war.
wide war of the social revolution. And under modern capitalism, this is absolutely in the turns to bloody wars, wars for markets, raw materials, If were in Congress would In that war am prepared to fight order of things. Tomorrow, it will be Roosevelt turn be shot before would vote a dolcolonies, profits.
in any way the ruling class may to do the same. The bourgeois democrats thus pave lar for such a war as to my position.
make it necessary, even to the the road for Fascism! Fascism can be stopped only by The bosses have no other way out if they are going have no country to fight for; barricades.
fighting these spurious democrats. and this is preto keep themselves in control of the gigantic machinery Capitalist wars for capitalist my country is the earth; and There is where stand and conquest and capitalist plunder am a citizen of the world.
cisely why the workers need an independent class of production which capitalism brought into being where believe the Socialist Party movement, an independent class struggle.
must be fought by the capitalists would not violate my prin stands, or ought to stand, on the The machinery has become too big for them so they themselevs so far as am conciples for God, much less for a question of war.
What holds for the struggle against Fascles try to cut it down, they depress the living standards. cerned, and upon that question crazy Kaiser, a savage czar, a de From the Appeal to Reason, doubly true for the struggle against war. It Daladier When pressed by recurring crises, the biggest the bourgeois democratic type tramples so rudely there can be no misunderstanding generate king, or a band of pot September 11, 1915.
upon democratic rights even before war breaks out.
bosses bring the workers under the heel of Fascism how many of these rights will he allow to be exercised in order to destroy the meager rights permitted them after war breaks out? We have seen and we know under the more elastic form of democracy. But this enough to say with complete sureness that the political does not solve the crisis and pushes them relentlessly regime of the democracles during the war and that of the Fasclat states, will be as different as two eggs.
into wars from which they hope to emerge with (Continued from page 3)
To seize strategical positions in with nothing but kindness. am enough loot to keep them going tie prostrate will coincide precise China is one thing: to subdue absolutely apart from Mexican This is not our way out, workers! We can take over ly with the time of Franco domi. China is another. Japan would political life, but follow the efBOOK ON THE LAST WAR nation.
never dare to challenge Soviet forts of the Mexican people to Beard, Charles The Devil Theory of War. 50 work! he can make it satisfy the needs of all the The Menace of Japan antagonism, evident to everyone, dependence with ardent symFay, Sidney Origins of the World War. 00 Grattan, CH Why We Fought. 98 people in the world! We can make it grow to heights You ask how serious a menace between the leading clique of the pathy.
Hart, Liddell. The War in Outline. now undreamed of! We can end wars forever, end Japan is to the England Kremlin and the Soviet people. am finishing a book on Stalin, Europe Under Arms. human suffering, end the degradation that makes us and the United States. Japan is the regime of Stalin, which is which will appear this year in Kantor, Emanuel. The Evolution of War.
not capable of a war on a great weakening the can make the United States, England and Loris, Achille The Economic Causes of War. 00 grub like animals in the dirt, unable ever to raise our scale, partly for economic rea a Soviet Japanese war possible.
Monat, Diplomacy and Peace. 50 eyes to the skies and to begin living like thinking sons, but above all for social reaother countries. The book is a What would be the results of Lenin Imperialism the Imperialist War, 00 political blography of Stalin and Creative men and women!
sons. Not having emancipated it. this war?
has as its objective an explanaWintringham, The Coming World War 00 All this we can do by crushing the parasites who self up to now from the heritage cannot believe for a single tion of how a second or third PAMPHIRTS live off our labor, by destroying the profit system that Lenis War and the Second International. of feudalism, Japan represents the instant in the victory of Japan. rank revolutionary can appear at Liebknecht, Karl Militarism.
breeds only starvation amid plenty, war and death and the voir explosionsanto any one think that the most indubitable the hand of the country when the War and the Fourth International suffering amid limitless opportunities for human spects it calls to mind the Tearist collapse of the medieval regime The book will show, in particular, War and the Workers John West happiness.
empire on the eve of 1905.
of the Mikado and of the Bona how and why the former Bolshe Pro War Coramuntem Verites This is the goal of the Fourth International the Japan leading circles atteinpt partist regtme of Stalin.
Zetkin, China The Totlors Agent War. 200 vik, Stalin, is now completely ripe mighty goal of world cmancipation and to our to escape from the Internal conOn Sale at banner of struggle against war, against Fascism, for the tradictions by the setzure and pil. My Work in Mexico for an alliance with Hitler LEON TROTSKY LABOR BOOKSHOP tage of Chion. But the internal On my life in Mexico can right to live freely, we summon all the workers and contradictions make external que communicate very little. On the Coyoacan, 28 East 12th Street New York City exploited of the world!
cese on a great scale unfeasible part of the authorities have met March 18, 1999 08 Wars We Are For and only when reste de die langs In What War Shall Take Up Arms and Fight?
There are wars in which we have willingly fought, and in which we will willingly fight again.
The war of the workers and peasants of Spain against Franco and his Italo German backers was our war. Not only our Spanish comrades, but comrades from all over the world gave their lives in the fight against fascism.
The war of the Chinese masses against the Jap anese warlords is our war. Our Chinese comrades support it wholeheartedly, as do we and Fourth Internationalists the world over The coming war of the peoples of India against British imperialism is our war, likewise the struggle of Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Jamaican and other West Indian Negroes, the native Africans, the Arabian people, against the British Empire.
The coming war of Syria and North Africa and Indo China against the French Empire is also our war.
and Haitians suppressed by United States marines, and with the entire Latin American world now writhing under the boot of Yankee imperialism.
We are for the war of the German people against Hitler, and the armed struggle of the Italian people against Mussolini.
In short, we are for wars of liberation. At this stage of world history this means: wars of colonial peoples against their imperialist oppressors, and civil wars of the working class and poor farmers against their owh capitalist class.
To liberate the peoples of the earth is the one thing worth fighting for. And in that fight, it would be senseless to abstain from using the weapons which, in any event, the oppressors everywhere already use against the oppressed: the weapons of modern warfare.
To depend on these weapons alone for victory, however, means sure defeat. That we have just learned anew from.
in The Fight for World Emancipation The Lesson of Spain Trotsky Stand On War Issue 00 Pravda, Stalin personal organ, explains the Span.
ish debacle as resulting from a foul stab in the back, dealt by the British and French diplomats.
Pravda use of metaphor is extremely revealing.
Who stabs in the back? Not a known enemy, for he is never permitted to get behind us if we can help it. We fight him face to face. But the Stalinist apparatus dinned into our cars day and night throughout the period up to Munich that is up to nearly the end of the Spanish civil war that the only salvation of Spain lay in securing the support of the British and French democracies. Stalin funkies ordered us to believe that the Chamberlains and Daladiers were possible friends Daladier they pictured to us throughout as already a friend. Stalin, it was, who was stabbed in the back by those he chose as friends!
But the Spanish workers were stabbed in the back, not by France and England, but by those who insisted by propaganda and the bribery of Russian 27ta furst, by rope and faggot later that the Spanish workers and peasants must stake everything on setur loc 15e