BolshevismBourgeoisieCapitalismDemocracyMarxismSocialismSocialist PartySovietStrikeWorkers PartyWorking Class

123 OCTOBER 15, 1921 THE WORKERS COUNCIL OCTOBER 15, 1921 122 THE WORKERS COUNCIL The American Coal Miners Labor Dictatorship Is Historical Necessity By LOUIS ENGDAHL TH HE press reports told us briefly that affiliation ve been a Socialist for years, replied Howatt.
with the Red Trade Union International was It was the same Howatt that saw mingling with rejected by the United Mine Workers Convention at an audience of Kansas coal miners during the presIndianapolis, Ind. without discussion.
idential campaign of 1912. He wasn even one of the speakers.
An effort was made to create the impression that this was another victory for reaction; another crushDuring the war Howatt turned social patriot with ing defeat for progress.
the rest, and was part of that expedition sent to This was the first time that real internationalism Europe to fight radical, anti war sentiment in Engmade itself felt in the gatherings of the American land, France and Italy. But, if am not mistaken, coal miners. The voice of the world fraternity of he sickened of the antics of his fellow patriots, among labor was heard all the way from Moscow to Indianwhom were Spargo, Kopelin, Russell, and Bohn.
apolis.
Howatt fight in the miners union since the endTo be sure, that voice should have been louder.
ing of the war shows that he is practically all that Better organization of insurgent forces should have is left of the pre war radical leadership.
forced the issue to debate on the floor of the convenThis does not mean that the American coal miner tion. But the man who might have made himself is less radical now than he was before the war. It heard, Alexander Howatt, spokesman for the coal does not mean that the mass of the membership is miners of the southwest, had gone to serve a jail senless progressive.
tence at Pittsburgh, Kans. for violation of the inIt merely means that the leadership failed the rank dustrial court law. No one came forward to fill the and file in the hour of crisis, as is always the case.
breach.
It means that a new leadership must be brought into existence. This will inevitably develop.
Suffering from an attack of conscience, the conThis new leadership will grow out of the young vention in its closing hours voted to send Howatt as members of the organization. The work to develop its delegate to the next International Mining Con it, to mould it into a solid, smoothly working, powergress to be held in England.
ful machine, must be started at once. It must be inIf Howatt gets out of jail in time, and journeys spired by the principles and tactics of the Red Trade to England, he will hear much of the Red Trade Union International, Union International at the World Mining Congress. don believe that the United Mine Workers What effect will this new outlook have upon him? has ever had an internal organization fighting for What message will he bring back. principle. The pre war sallies of the radicals were Howatt was one of that numerous group of Social haphazard affairs. Little attention was paid to the ists who swayed conventions, of the American coal election of convention delegates, to the ideas that miners before the war in support of socialistic and they would fight for.
radical resolutions. This year he alone remained after The big fights, the stirring campaigns in the miners the wave of war jingoism had swept the miners union, were waged for the jobs, for places as interunion with its half million members.
national, district and sub district officials. These ofTake for instance Illinois before the war. There ficials are elected by referendum, and all the methods was John Walker, Duncan McDonald, Adolph of Tammany Hall are brought into play in the strugGermer, James Lord, Frank Hayes, not to men gle for victory.
tion a host of others. Practically every other state While the importance of the election of the proper had a similar quota. What has become of them? officials must not be minimized, greater emphasis should Walker gravitates from the old parties to the Farmer be placed on deciding the tactics and principles of the Labor Party. McDonald went over to the Farmer organization. This is up to the delegates elected to Labor Party. Germer, following his role of Noske the international, district and sub district conventions.
at the split of the National Socialist Party in Chicago, All members of the United Mine Workers in symin 1919, decamped to New York, where he is an act pathy with the world struggle of the Red Trade Union ing secretary of the Lord is Gompers man as International should be linked up immediately, from head of the of mining department. Hayes, the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania across the namost promising of all, who rose to be vice president tion, to the soft coal pits of the state of Washington.
of the miners international union before he was 30 They should be united on definite policies, they should years of age, was last heard from in a sanitarium, have trained spokesmen, backed by powerful support Thus has a once strong and promising leadership been from a well educated rank and file.
dissipated.
This power, if properly organized, should make Howatt, of Kansas, in the pre war days, was one itself felt at the special convention to be held at Inof the most quiet of the reds.
dianapolis in February, to take up the question of was talking to Howatt in the lobby of the Eng wage negotiations with the private owners of the nalish Hotel, at Indianapolis, during one of those pre tion coal mines.
war conventions.
The activity or lack of activity NOW of the radicals Why, didn know you were a Socialist, broke in the miners union decides what progress the workin one of the more conservative delegates from the ers organized in the American coal mining industry Pennsylvania anthracite regions.
will make during the year 1922.
By DONALD MCLEOD THI HE principle of the dictatorship of the prole and free assemblage were withheld from the strikers.
tariat is inextricably bound up with the RusPublic officials in the strike area acted openly as sian Revolution.
agents of the Steel Corporation, often arbitrarily offering strikers the choice between going to jail or It is impossible honestly to accept and praise the going back to work.
Revolution without also accepting the principle which furnishes the only possible theoretical justiMobilize Against Workers fication for the present form of the Soviet govern Whenever the existence of the capitalist state is ment.
threatened, whenever its prosperity is seriously enThe dictatorship of the proletariat has been criti dangered, it inevitably assumes the form of a cised from two standpoints. Reformists simply re bourgeois dictatorship.
iterate the familiar bourgeois arguments in favor England is perhaps the most liberal country in the of democracy, conveniently forgetting that all world, so far as its normal domestic political and Marxist theory is based upon the promise that deeconomic relations are concerned.
mocracy is a fiction, so long as the economic domi But, as soon as the transport and railway workers nation of class by class persists.
threatened to strike, not for any revolutionary purThe elements in the international Socialist move pose, but merely in order to assure a bare living ment, which shrink equally from reiviniom. and wage to the striking miners, the government hurriedly revolution, generally contend that proletarian dicta mobilized troops, paraded tanks up and down the torship, while it may be necessary in backward streets of London and thereby gave the treacherous Russia, is both unnecessary and undesirable in more leaders of the Triple Alliance an excellent excuse for advanced countries, where the industrial workers, betraying the striking miners and calling off the at the time of the revolution, may be expected to strike.
form a majority of the population.
It is not only in periods of stress and crisis that the capitalist state may fairly be called a dictatorCapitalist or Workers Dictatorship? ship. In normal times the power of the minority over Now, it is simply absurd to raise the issue of de the majority is safeguarded by an elaborate machinery mocracy versus dictatorship: for no true democracy of corruption and oppression.
exists to day.
The schools, the press, the churches, the theatres The various capitalist states are bourgeois dictaand movies, all the agencies of instruction and amusetorships; Soviet Russia is a proletarian dictatorship. ment are utilized by the bourgeoisie in order to inThe vital difference between Soviet Russia and still the capitalist mentality into the masses.
the capitalist states is that the Soviet government If any teacher, preacher or editor is naive enough is consciously preparing the way for the institution to believe in the validity of the bourgeois slogans, of genuine democracy, whereas the capitalist states, free thought, free speech, etc. he is certain to be however far they may go on the road of social re very speedily reprimanded by his superiors and either form, can never become genuinely democratic.
silenced or expelled from his position.
For capitalism is rooted in two principles: per Anyone who believes in the ballot as a possible petual inequality thru the inheritance of wealth and instrument of liberation for the oppressed workers is the exploitation of the weak by the strong.
still hugging the delusions of eighteenth and nineIf these two principles were abolished, capitalism teenth century theorists who had no conception of would cease to exist.
the enormous power which large accumulations of capital would vest in the hands of a comparatively If anyone doubts the essentially dictatorial character of the present capitalist regime in America he small number of wealthy men.
should read the story of the steel strike of 1919, as It is absurd to speak of free elections in a capitalist told in the Report of the Interchurch Commission, country. The ruling class exerts innumerable means and in the books of William Foster and Mary of pressure upon the voters.
Heaton Vorse.
Here it is sufficient to mention one of the more The steel strike could not, by the widest stretch obvious methods of coercion. At the time when the of imagination, be interpreted as a movement tariff was the chief issue between the two major against the American political state.
parties in this country manufacturers would often force their workmen to vote the Republican ticket It was an effort to gain extremely modest industrial objectives, such as the eight hour day, the right by threatening to close their plants if the Democrats were returned to power.
of collective bargaining, etc. by the use of peaceful Whatever methods of coercion the Bolsheviki have and orthodox trade union methods of agitation and employed they have not been accused of condemning organization.
workers of other parties to idleness and starvation.
But the steel workers were tre ted as brutally as But this is just wh the capitalist ling class can if they had announced the establishment of a Soviet do, and has done; and under capitalist law there government as the purpose of the strike.
All the so called constitutional rights of free speech sacred right of property ownership as he sees fit, even is no way to prevent an individual from exercising his