BolshevismBourgeoisieCapitalismLeninRosa LuxemburgSocialismSovietStrikeSyndicalismTrotskyWorkers MovementWorking Class

6 THE REVOLUTIONARY AGE Saturday, February 22, 1919 The Day of the People PON his release from the Kaiser bastile the By Eugene Debs dyed the whole earth is a new set of heels to grind doors of which were torn from their hinges into his exploited bones and a fresh and lusty vampire by the proletarian revolution Karl LiebFrom The Class Struggle to drain his life blood.
knecht, heroic leader of the rising hosts, exclaimed: Away with all such perfidious doctrines; forever The Day of the People has arrived. It was a mag prevailed. Some intermediate class invariably sup away with such a vicious subterfuge and treacherous nificent challenge to the Junkers and an inspiring planted the class that was overthrown and the peo betrayal!
battle cry to the aroused workers.
ple remained at the bottom where they have been The people are ready for their day. THE PEOPLE, From that day to this Liebknecht, Kosa Luxem since the beginning of history. They have never say.
Yes, the people!
burg and other true leaders of the German proletabeen ready to rid themselves of their despots, rob Who are the people? The people are the working riat have stood bravely at the front, appealing to the bers and parasites. All they have ever been ready class, the lower class, the robbed, the oppressed, the workers to join the revolution and make it complete for has been to exchange one brood of vampires for impoverished, the great majority of the earth. They another to drain their veins and fatten in their misery. and those who sympathize with them are THE PEOPLE, by destroying what remained of the criminal and corold regime and ushering in the day of the people. That was Kerensky doctrine in Russia and it is Then and they who exploit the working class, and the merScheidemann doctrine in Germany. They are both cenaries and menials who aid and abet the exploiters, for their day, and Ebert and Scheidemann and their false prophets of the people and traitors to the work are the enemies of the people.
crowd of white livered reactionaries, with the sanc ing class, and woe be to their deluded followers if That is the attitude of Lenine and Trotzky in Rustion and support of the fugitive Kaiser, the infamous their vicious reaction triumphs, for then indeed will sia and was of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Junkers and all the allied powers, now in beautiful the yokes be fastened upon their scarred and bleeding Germany, and this accounts for the flood of falsealliance, proceeded to prove that the people were necks for another generation.
hood and calumny which poured upon the heads of not yet ready to rule themselves by setting up a bourWhen Kerensky attempted to side track the revthe brave leaders and their revolutionary movement geois government under which the working class olution in Russia by joining forces with the bourfrom the filthy mouthpieces of the robber regime of should remain in substantially the same state of slav geoisie he was lauded by the capitalist press of the criminal Capitalism throughout the world.
ish subjection they were in at the beginning of the whole world. When Scheidemann patriotically rush The rise of the working class is the red spectre in war.
ed to the support of the Kaiser and the Junkers at the bourgeois horizon, The red cock shall never And 110w upon that issue as to whether the terthe beginning of the war, the same press denounced crow. Anything but that! The Kaiser himself will rible war has brought the people their day or whether him as the betrayer of Socialism and the enemy lauds him to be pitied and forgiven if he will but roll his eyes its appalling, sacrifices have all been in vain the the people. And now this very press heavenward, proclaim the menace of Bolshevism, and battle is is raging in Germany as in Russia, and the the heavens as the savior of the German nation! appeal to humanity to rise in its wrath and stamp out near future will determine whether revolution has Think of it! Scheidemann the traitor has become this curse to civilization.
for once been really triumphant or whether sudden Scheidemann the hero of the bourgeoisie. Could it And still the curse continues to spread like a reaction has again won the day.
be for any other reason on earth than that Scheide raging conflagaration it leaps from shore to shore.
In the struggle in Russia the revolution has thus mann is doing the dirty work of the capitalist class? The reign of Capitalism and militarism has made of far triumphed for the reason that it has not compro And all this time the prostitute press of the robber all peoples inflammable material. They are ripe and mised. The career of Kerensky was cut short when regime of the whole world is shrieking hideously ready for the change, the great change which means he attempted to turn the revolutionary tide into re against Bolshevism. It is worse than Kaiserism the rise and triumph of the workers, the end of exactionary bourgeois channels.
is the burden of their cry. Certainly it is. They ploitation, of war and plunder, and the emancipation Lenine and Trotzky were the men of the hour and under their fearless, incorruptible and uncompromis stored to his throne than to see the working class rise and pave the way for it by organizing the workers ing leadership the Russian proletariat has held the to power. In the latter event they cease to rule, their industrially and politically to conquer Capitalism and usher in the day of the people.
fort against the combined assaults of all the ruling graft is gone and their class disappears, and well do class powers of earth. It is a magnificent spectacle. they know it. That what we said from the beginn In Russia and Germany our valiant comrades are It stirs the blood and warms the heart of every rev ing and for which we have been sentenced as dis leading the proletarian revolution, which knows no olutionist, and it challenges the admiration of all loyalists and traitors.
race, no color, no sex, and no boundary lines. They the world.
Scheidemann and his breed do not believe that the are setting the heroic ex. iple for world wide emulSo far as the Russian proletariat is concerned, the day of the people has arrived. According to them ation. Let us, like them, scorn and repudiate the day of the people has arrived, and they are fighting the war and the revolution have brought the day of cowardly compromisers within our own ranks, chaland dying as only heroes and martyrs can fight and the bourgeoisie. Mr. Bourgeois is now to take the lenge and defy the robber class power, and fight it die to usher in the day of the people not only in Rus place of Mr. Junker to evolute into another Junker out on that line to victory or death!
sia but in all the nations on the globe.
and by while Mr. Wage Slave remains From the crown of my head to the soles of my feet In every revolution of the past the false and co where he was before, under the heels of his master, am Bolshevik, and proud of it.
wardly plea that the people were not yet ready has and all he gets out of the carnage in which his blood The Day of the People has arrived!
himself The Revolutionary Strike Movement THE spirit of revolt, larger and more intense, is of threats nor curses issued by the higl: priests of bourgeois society can repress the pressure of the proletarian masses. Even in countries wliere the revolution is not yet in action and has not unfurled the Red Flag, where the demon gods of bourgeois society Itave not yet been hurled from their pedestals, even there the growing protest of the working masses may any day fare up into action, colored by a red light.
The big British strikes, at Belfast and in the Glasgow district, and the strike inovement in London, were stern warnings to the British bourgeoisie. They are at an end, but they are still a threat, and new strikes are developing. The press organs of British plutocracy are shouting at the top of their voices that entrenching itself in the minds of the workers, and that the events in Belfast and Glasgow are warnings that Red Days inay come as they did in Petrograd and Berlin.
The labor movement in England is slipping away from the control of the official and reactionary trades unionism. The leadership of the movement is passing into the hands of the factory committees (Shop Stewards) and these representatives of the workers declare openly that the Russian methods are their own.
In Paris, under the very nose of the Peace Conference, a strike was recently declared by the workers and employees of almost all the city transportation system. Whether this strike was crushed by the police and the military, we do not know; we are in the dark, for the vigilant eye of the censor allows only fragmentary news to pass concerning the workers movement in Europe. But a New York paper the other day printed a Paris dispatch which we are ready to believe that the germs of Polshevism are penétrating the capital of the world.
No wonder, therefore, that even the Peace ConBy Nyemanov Then there have been great strikes in Brussels, in Sweden and Switzerland, and in far off India. In ference is discussing the solution of the labor the Central Powers the revolutionary movement is problem. Even the aristocratic diplomats will have to still active. Events in Spain have so shaken the bourget busy with dirty work.
geoisie that the report comes of Lenin being in BarDifficult times have come for the bourgeoisie, dan celona! South America is a treinble with strikes and gerous and fraught with great events.
revolutionary agitation.
The old capitalist world is writing in mortal agony.
Industrialism in Australia new life is bursting forth. And where the movement has not yet assumed the stormy form of The conference of the One Big Union, the name revolutionary protest, the troubled conscience of the under which the Industrial Union movement is makmasters of bourgeois society sees the red hand of the ing great strides in the Commonwealth, held at Sydproletarian revolution which is writing on the wall ney a short time ago issued an appeal to the returnthe stern words prophesying the coming end of our ng soldiers and sailors. The manifesto deals with the present social conditions which will confront these men on their Thandtmine.
are not at all calm in the United States.
ganization in co operation with the workers, along priests, runs here and there in search for culprits the lines of the Russian Soviets and the councils of who are disturbing social peace. Bankers and merorkers and Soldiers which are developing so rapchants are lavishly spending money to fight the Bolidly in many European cour ries. The concluding shevik menace. The Department of Justice is alert.
paragraphs of the document are as follows: Hundreds of fighters in the cause of labor are being The only means to redress these evils is strong thrown into jail; others are being deported. The and effective industrial organization. The One Big Espionage Act is still in force but strikes and revUnion is the one form of organization which will olutionary agitation multiply.
enable us to resist the nuance of profiteering and The American bourgeoisie expects, and is preparing insure for all a a decent livelihood.
for, the advent of stormy weather. Strikes assume industrial organizations avith other to link up with the revolutionary character.
The American bourgeoisie hears the thunder peals being made by the employing class, against which we of the coming storm. Obeying the instinct of selfmost emphatically warn you, to divide the workers preservation, it resorts to the use of the old methods into antagonistic camp camps, with the view of reducing in hope of crushing the movement. The capitalists vrages and still further plundering all other sections are strong and organized, while the American workof the community. We live in critical times, when ing class is still learning. still not aclept in mass action.
events are moving rapidly. We can, by united effort, Strikes are still isolated in character. But it is develsecure more complete economic and social freedom oping: The revolutionary strike movement developthan we have ever before possessed. Should we ne ing all over the world is having its expression in our glect our present opportunities the shackles of indus country. The European methods of proletarian strugtrial servitude will be riveted upon us and upon you, gle must become international, are becoming interand the forces of reaction triumph.
national.