64 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE LABOR PARTY 65 Truly, the Socialist majority leaders bear upon their souls not a little of the responsibility for the dastardly murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.
The Proletarian Revolution of Germany The immediate future of Germany lies shrouded in darkness. But the discouraging result of the elections to the National Assembly and the increasing boldness with which the counter revolutionary and militaristic elements are raising their heads seem to indicate that the people of Germany are still far from the peaceful era of development into the Socialist state that this National Assembly was to usher in.
There will be no peace in Germany, there can be no peace until the revolutionary proletariat, realizing the futility of democratic government, hand in hand with the capitalist class, will arise once more to overthrow the uncrowned kings that are preparing to take control of the nation.
Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht are dead. But the spirit they and their comrades have awakened will live on in the hearts and minds of the German proletariat, in the hearts and minds of the revolutionary working class of the world.
Out of their ranks new leaders will come, new leaders, who, like those honored dead, have confidence and faith in the destiny and in the power of the working class.
purpose of placing difficulties in the way of Socialist propaganda, while they themselves conducted all sorts of wire pulling for their own party.
In local politics, Mayor Thompson has gradually lost his following in the Board of Aldermen, the Republicans of his own party as well as the Democrats.
That led him to seek for support in the Chicago Federation of Labor, and a consequent fraternization between him and the Federation officials ensued.
It was agreed to force the Board of Education with whose members the Mayor had been engaged in an active and lengthy controversy into submission by appointing five labor leaders from the Federation of Labor to office. They were convinced that the Board of Aldermen would not dare to oppose the nomination of these men for fear of losing the labor vote at the next election.
But, contrary to all expectations, the Board of Aldermen took up the challenge and refused to sanction the appointment of the labor leaders the Board of cation, This was the immediate cause for the founding of the Independent Labor Party.
Circulars were sent out to all parts of the country, calling upon organized labor to follow the example of Chicago. The Illinois Federation of Labor Convention greeted this new departure, in New York the Chicago example found immediate imitation.
The above shows clearly that the new born political party owes its origin, not to an increasing clearness of understanding among the rank and file or organized labor of the class lines of our social structure, but simply to an accidental, factional fight among politicians in the course of which organized labor happened to receive a slap in the face.
Without this purely factional fight in Chicago, Fitzpatrick and his ilk would have been perfectly content to remain Democratic politicians to the end of their days, and the creation of a Labor Party might still rest in the lap of the future.
Undoubtedly, however, it would have come, sooner or later.
It was inevitable that, at some time or another, the ruling class would be forced to tell organized labor openly: So far and no The Labor Party By DREIFUSS (Chicago)
So the founding of the so called Independent Labor Party for Chicago has become an actual fact.
The remarkable feature of its formation is the fact that the first impetus came not from the workers, but from among the highest officials of the Chicago Federation of Labor.
Hitherto these officials have always been democratic politicians, who used the slogan No politics in the union for the sole