As told in the C.N.T. “Boletin de Informacion”

At every turning point in history supermen appear—fighting leaders and heroes. Francisco Ascaso was the stormy petrel, the fighting leader and hero of the present Spanish Revolution. The admiration with which the world looks today at the Spanish people, their self-sacrifice, their undaunted courage and determination, their valiant struggle for human ideals, must be attributed, to a great extent, to the example set by Ascaso.

Who was Francisco Ascaso? The third son of humble baker, Francisco was born in 1901 in the small market town of Almudevar, in the province of Huesca, which is at present witnessing severe fighting. While still a youth he displayed unusual observation and was endowed with a talent for drawing which caused the village schoolmaster to entertain hopes of making an artist of the baker’s son.

When Francisco was eleven years old his father died and the family were to compelled to give up their business and move to Saragossa. The two eldest sons, Domingo and Alejandre, helped their mother and young sister Marie, but Francisco became and odd-job boy in a bar, where he spent four years working from 16 to 18 hours a day. Here in the hard and practical school of life the young man learned to understand social evils and injustices, and the needs and misery of his own people.

At the age of fifteen, Francisco was apprenticed to a baker, with the intention of following in his fathers footsteps. He had just started his apprenticeship when a baker’s strike broke out in Saragossa. The fifteen year old boy had already so mulch class knowledge that he immediately joined the strikers. One day, meeting a strike breaker in the street carrying bread, the lad urged him to quit work. The strike-breaker refused and in no time the bread basket was rolling in the middle of the road and the loaves in a nearby brook. As a result of this “political act” Francisco spent two weeks in jail.

After his release he found he was finished with the baking trade as no baker in Saragossa would employ this “rebel”. He obtained work as a waiter, however, and spent his leisure hours studying the writings of the great social and revolutionary thinkers.

In 1920, the editor of the Herald De Aragon was killed by an avenging bullet. This man was said to have been responsible for the shooting of seven soldiers during a military uprising in Saragossa. The Government accused the Ascaso brothers of this killing of the editor. His two brothers escaped, but Francisco fell into the hands of the police. Although all the accused could furnish undeniable proof of their innocence, the reactionaries wanted their heads, and the death sentence was pronounced. In view of the energetic protests of the mass of the people, the authorities did not dare to carry out the verdict but contented themselves with condemning Francisco to four years imprisonment, thinking to cure him of his revolutionary ideas.

Ascaso came out of jail bearing on his body the evidence of wounds, blows and lashes. The reactionaries had shown him what was customary in the days of Torquemada. All those tortures to which can be added thirst and hunger had weakened Francisco’s body but strengthened his mind and fighting spirit. As soon as he recovered his liberty, Ascaso became active in a circle called VOLUNTAD (will) which was also the name of a weekly newspaper published by this circle in defense of the first International.

In 1922, Ascaso went to Barcelona, where he got in touch with Juan Garcia Oliver, Rafols, Boix, Vidal, Montserrat, Durruti and others. He was working as a waiter and his spare time was devoted to the movement. He founded the CNT Waiters Syndicate.

Ascaso later left the Catalan Capital to go to La Coruna where he, intended embarking for Bolivia. There he hoped to realize the dream of his youth—to go around wandering as Jack London had done. But in Galacia, Francisco, remembering his true mission and the sad situation of the Spanish proletariat, returned to Saragossa. Here he met again his old friends and opponents of the “Free Syndicates.” In Saragossa, the church, in the person of the Cardinal Soldevile intrigued against the proletariat. The Cardinal was executed by some despairing workers, and again Ascaso along with a few other comrades was put in jail. He remained here from June to December 8th, 1923, when he escaped with 23 friends. Only Ascaso and one of his companions reached France, the other 21 were caught and punished for an offence they had never committed.

Ascaso found new friends, comrades and fighters in Paris. There also he made the acquaintance of his wife Berta. In June, 1924, he embarked with Durruti for Buenos Aires and spread his ideas over almost the whole of South America, at the same time broadening his horizon and acquiring a knowledge of human nature.

Thirteen months later, in July 1925, we see our fighter again in Paris. Here he remained until April 14, 1931, when the monarchy fell. Ascaso’s first thought was to return from his banishment though he realized that the king had gone but the generals remained. Back again in Barcelona he found fertile soil for his ideas. Spain was now a kind of camouflaged democracy, so long as the church and the army retained their old privileges. But July 19th was to be the hour of liberation for Spain. At the head of his fellow comrades and workers, by the side his dear friend Durruti, Ascaso fought on the barricades. He had already conquered half of Barcelona, by July 20th he would have liberated the whole city. In Atarazanas, in the new city of the harbor, Ascaso advanced in spite of the fascist machine guns. A rebel bullet struck him.

Comrade Ascaso is dead. But his work still lives and like lava has spread over Spain. The war front is the place where the fire of his lava burns most fiercely, the front of civil war and social Revolution fed by the living soul and spirit of this man of action—Ascaso!

Transcribed by Revolution's Newsstand

Newspaper reporters, after witnessing bloody police attacks on workers for many years and putting in reports that, as they appeared were little to the liking of labor, organized themselves, and received such beatings as this ANG member did in the strike at the Wisconsin News.

Their union has won in many places. “It will make for honest reporting of labor news,” says this member of the ANG, “but it will take One Big Union to see to it that these honest reports are published.”

It must be admitted out of hand that any consideration of the question whether or not the American Newspaper Guild can make for honest reporting of labor news must at this time be based, to a considerable extent, on speculation—on describing the road ahead by the signs that are now visible.

Among perennial liberals and other incurable optimists, there is a tendency to hail the Guild, as the savior of the labor movement and to shout that at last brass check Journalism has been given a nice coating of pure gold leaf. To make such an assumption, however, is blandly to ignore the purpose, to say nothing of the power, of this movement.

During recent months, these predictions have found sturdy champions among the newspaper publishers. This cry was taken up with gusto as the result of the Seattle Newspaper Guild’s strike against the Hearst owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer, resulting in the suspension of that sheet for fifteen weeks. The nation’s press, for the most part, grew quite panicky at this threat to their purses and bellowed in alarm that the “freedom of the press” was being jeopardized.

One cannot state too bluntly that the pretended fears of the publishers, as well as the rosy hopes of the liberals, are based on a misconception of unionization as it is now practiced within an industrial plant (and a newspaper is an industry) does not mean the control of the type, size or color of the product. True, it may mean a step toward worker control, but at best only a step and we are doing ourselves a disservice if we describe it as a hop, skip and a jump.

While the Guild follows the I. W. W. in allowing for complete rank and file control, it has no revolutionary aims. Let us go to the constitution of the union for a statement of purpose.

“The purpose of the American Newspaper Guild,” says this document, “shall be to advance the economic well being of its members, to guarantee as far as it is able, constant honesty in the news, to raise the standards of journalism and ethics of the industry, to foster friendly cooperation with all other workers, and to promote industrial unionism in the newspaper industry.”

You will note two passages—“to guarantee as far as it is able constant honesty in the news” and “to raise the standards of journalism and ethics of the industry.” These were pounced upon by the publishers, during the outcry against the Seattle and previous strikes to lend weight to the charge that the Guild was attempting to direct the editorial policies of the nation’s press.

While many Guild members believe that their union will be able to make significant contributions to the labor movement, they have been forced to discount these charges by emphatically pointing out that the control of the publication rests with the publisher and that the sole aim of their organization is to see that the editorial workers come in for a measure of economic security.

The publisher well knows this, of course, but it does nothing to endear him to the ANPG. The unionization of editorial workers is detested by these gentlemen for reasons other than the increases in pay and shorter hours that are bound to come, albeit they surely are not eager to make even these concessions.

It would perhaps be well to point out to those unfamiliar with the city rooms of the daily press, that reporters are not usually “told” how a story should be written or what should be left out of the paper and what should be played up. It is an old saying in the craft that any reporter who is too dumb to discover “policy” is too stupid to stay on the pay roll. In other words, all reporters know that the boss is interested in strikes only to lend what assistance he can to the employer and it therefore is wise to waste no energy giving the strikers’ position in the controversy.

One of the characteristics of American journalism, as it affects labor troubles, is that much can be written but under no consideration is one to present a fair, impartial account of what the workers want. Usually strikes are “covered” by picking up hand-outs from the Chamber of Commerce or some Industrial Association. Seldom does a reporter get his information direct from the union and when he does, it is either thrown away by the editor, garbled by a re-write man, stressing an “angle” favorable to the employer, or buried in the market section.

The hostility of the publisher towards organized labor is the principal reason for the prostitution of the word “news” in labor troubles, but there is still another—ignorance of the newspaperman. For the most part, a knowledge of the labor movement is not considered an asset on a newspaper. In fact, the stupidity of some newspapermen on the question of unionism is amazing and while unions are not likely to believe it, I personally know of instances where some blows below the belt were due solely to the lack of knowledge on the part of a reporter who was, in fact, sympathetic to the striking, workers.

It must also be remembered that the working newspaperman is up against the economic question the same as other wage slaves. No matter how independent he may wish to feel, his insecurity is inclined to make him adopt a “protective coloration.” Because it is the safe thing to do, many unconsciously accept the ideas and prejudices of the publisher. These are the last to admit that their attitude has anything to do with holding their jobs.

Here is where the Guild has entered the picture. By giving him some security, the working newspaperman can and has adopted an independent attitude once foreign to all but a few venturesome souls. Then their active participation in the labor movement rapidly conditions their thinking —they sooner or later realize their own status in the economic scheme of things. In brief, they receive a valuable education previously missed. This educating could be better understood, if the reader could see a young reporter attending his first Guild meeting and worrying about the boss —then a few weeks later see him enthusiastically voting a strike and going at this new activity in a deadly serious manner.

No union understands better than the I. W. W. the importance of taking one’s case to the public. In the past many unions could do little to counteract the boss propaganda in the daily press. They were unfamiliar with journalistic tricks and practices and, consequently, they were practically mute at a time when speech was essential.

Whatever else may be laid at the Guild’s door, none can say that it has not been militant. True the fights were forced upon it, but it did fight. As the result, there are today in the United States thousands of labor-conscious newspapermen who will and have lent their services to unions when the time comes for doing what the publishers call “influencing public opinion.”

As this is written, I glance at a stack of newspapers. There are ninety of them. They are the issues of the Guild Daily, published in Seattle during the Post-Intelligencer strike. As far as I can determine, this is the first time in the history of the United States that a group of workers went on strike but continued to work at their usual jobs. Here, certainly, is something for publishers to really worry about and here is an eloquent answer to those who condescendly say that workers need a boss to direct and exploit them.

Within a few moments after the management of the Post-Intelligencer announced suspension, these strikers went to work putting out a newspaper. It hit the streets after a hectic night and some 20,000 were sold. Then, each day during the long strike this paper not only appeared but it grew steadily in circulation and importance. Boycotted by the usual wire services, the nation was covered by the Guild Wire Service, made up of union reporters in every large city in the country. Its policy on all questions was determined by a vote of the entire staff and it gave Seattle residents an unusually complete coverage of the city’s doings. Then, also, labor news was reported accurately for the first time since the suspension of the Union Record. This is probably wandering a bit afield. This article was to discuss the question of the Guild and honest labor reporting and not necessarily the importance in general to unions of organizing this particular group of white collar workers.

One can sum it up by saying that the Guild, as it stands now, will make for honest reporting of labor news, but it will take One Big Union to see to it that these honest reports are published.

-X304230

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

In the world today we hear a great amount of talk and also some degree of organization about and around the issue dubbed "Democracy versus Fascism." Many liberal and humane-minded persons, as well as self-styled radicals, the world over are huddling under the banner of "Democracy" in horrified opposition to Fascism.

In the United States these people supported Roosevelt in the recent elections, side with the "Republic" of Spain, feel a dependent fondness for Great Britain as the fairy godmother of Democracy while she steps designedly into every "situation" with her celebrated "diplomacy," give varying degrees of approval of Soviet Russia, and reserve the hate their simple souls can generate for the black fascist regimes of Italy and Germany.

The philosophy of the out and out liberal of this conglomerate group is that while Fascism is a surly, horrible thing. Capitalism as such is very desirable and should be preserved, albeit improved from time to time.

The "radicals" of this democratic movement are in their hearts not content with Capitalism, but are so frightened by the prospects of Fascism that they are hysterically choosing the fatal Germanic policy of the "lesser evil." Throwing all pretense of radicalism to the winds, these people have crawled out of the dread and darkness of their social cyclone cellars to become the blatant champions of Capitalist Democracy.

The slogan of each group resolves itself into—keep Capitalism, but keep out Fascism!

This slogan, however, is historically incorrect; we cannot keep in Capitalism and at the same time keep out Fascism. Fascism is but the logical development, the irresistible outcome of the class antagonism of Capitalism.

Recent history is bearing this out inexorably. Several nations are already frankly fascist, many more are tending toward that direction. It is a steady albeit uneven, petrifaction of international capitalist society into the hardened forms of fascist death.

Why does fascism everywhere appear as the fated affinity of Capitalism? Why is it that capitalist "Democracy" cannot withstand the attacks of this monster?

It is because Democracy cannot be the theoretically ideal form of government under Capitalism and was not so conceived. The class nature of capitalist society makes this impossible. "Democracy" was the slogan and weapon for the overthrow of feudalism. It cannot be the slogan or the weapon for the frustration of fascism.

At the time of the classic overthrow of feudalism there was no thought of the "Capitalism" of today. All classes subject to the authority and parasitism of the aristocracy and its church—the budding bourgeois, the equally budding "worker," and the peasant were united in a "people’s front" against feudalism.

Because of the authoritative and caste character of feudalism and the intellectual repressiveness of its church, the intellectual and cultural chanticleers of the new day declared the invigorating doctrines of democracy. The "freedom of man" became the inspired rallying cry of the new social order. This, combined with the confused and muddled class interests of the various groups in the "people’s front," none of which had formulated a clearly-defined political and economic policy for itself (and which would have been too weak alone to have imposed it if it had) made democracy the logical pattern of the new political forms.

However, that democracy is not the innate mate of Capitalism is clearly seen by the methods employed by Capitalism everywhere in its development. Where was democracy in the colonial policies and piracies of the democratic nations? Where was democracy in the United States which countenanced chattel slavery naked and unashamed until 1863? Where is democracy up until this day in the industries of Capitalism? Symptomatically defined, Fascism is force and violence. Has not Capitalism always practiced an incipient fascism at the point where its profits are produced?

As for the general domestic democratic forms of government, however, how has Capitalism managed? Ideally unsuited for it, Capitalism has nonetheless in some respects turned democracy into a very powerful aid for itself. Democracy has been of incalculable benefit to Capitalism in its development by serving as a smoke screen for its autocratic exploitation. It has with surprising efficiency served as a social control to combat the rebellion against the concentration process whereby the overwhelming majority of the populace has been reduced to "wage-slavery." Political freedom has obscured industrial serfdom.

In view of this very positive gain from democracy, the capitalist class has with more or less grace subjected itself to the expenses and inconveniences of democracy. Any dangers that might arise through it have been neatly evaded heretofore by outlay to politicians and political parties who have proved themselves very willing to safeguard the interests of the capitalist class and do its bidding with fawning servility.

However, as the relationships of Capitalism are becoming more thoroughly understood, as a pauperized proletariat (actually or relatively) is beginning to stand up in open defiance of its exploiting masters, as strikes and union organizations become larger, as tile ballot box becomes fore-doomed to partial control and eventual capture by the numerically largest group in society—the working class, Democracy must go in order for Capitalism to continue to exist. The bed-rock principle of Capitalism, is the exploitation of the working class, and no group conscious of its subjection and determined to end it can be restrained except by large scale force. Fascism supplies that force—"Democracy" cannot, particularly when its political forms threaten to pass into the hands of the exploited through a "people’s front." When the latter happens, or threatens to occur, or when faced by widespread labor unionism, Fascism will make its supreme bid for power, is in Germany and Spain, as it is preparing to do in France.

The phenomenon of Fascism is not always simple and uniform in its development. There is a great unevenness throughout the world that may serve to mislead tile unwary into the belief that Capitalist Democracy can be preserved and a fascist coup d’etat prevented. President Roosevelt, for example, is regarded in America as bulwark against Fascism. But, Fascism is still out of the saddle in Washington because Democracy is still under the control of the capitalism class. The "radical" reputation of the President has aroused the hopes of the yet confused American proletariat and its members thus remain at least temporarily quiescent under the rule of their capitalist masters. It may be, too, that the "people’s front" in France, timid and largely unwilling to introduce drastic changes, yet holding the confidence of a trusting proletariat, may still continue to serve largely the class interests of the employers without the necessity of a fascist coup for some time.

Is this the kind of democracy we want? A democracy that is suffered because it presides over an exploited and deluded people unaware of their real interests? Fascism will remain submerged only as long as "democracy" remains workable for the capitalist class; that is, as long as the workers remain content as a submerged and exploited class. `Tis small glory in such democracy or the victories achieved in its name.

The Roman Holiday of Fascism can be thwarted not by hurling the pitiful shafts of a sham capitalist democracy against its iron legions. Only the grimly alert, courageous advance of an organization resolutely determined to root out Capitalism can be expected to "mop up" Fascism. Alternatives are few in dangerous situations. The working class has positively no "stake" in Capitalism; but, even if you fancy that you have, the world cannot eat its cake yet have it too. Preserve Capitalism, invite Fascism; build a cooperative commonwealth and smash Fascism. Out of this a new democracy shall arise—the industrial democracy of cooperative labor.

Originally appeared in The One Big Union Monthly (January 1937)

“A fantastic situation!” exclaims one weekly voice of American employers about sit-down strikes.

“We are tired of having to get passes to enter our own factories,” many French capitalists protest.

Employers become powerless in the face of stay-in or sit-down strikes. The iron hand that holds the economic life of thousands becomes putty when confronted by these aroused workers.

The sacred property rights of the industrial tyrant are being questioned, and the absentee owner trembles lest sit-down strikes become more popular.

A new era of working-class solidarity is dawning. The slumbering giant is stirring and testing his chains.

Orthodox unionism is finding itself swept on in the rising tide of solidarity. Workers are spontaneously realizing they have a weapon more powerful than any ever dreamed.

Totally unorganized workers are arising in protest against deplorable conditions and are awakening to the advantages of industrial unionism. The stay-in strikes in June in France were spontaneous and took the trade unions by surprise. French trade unions are said to be enjoying an unprecedented growth due to the overwhelming success of these strikes. One observer writes, “It can be said roughly that the number of trade unionists has gone up from 600,000 to 4,400,000 since June. Some instances: The number of office employees passed from 25,000 to 825,000, the food workers’ union from 20,000 to 50,000, the Galleries La Fayette, which had not one single organized worker, now numbers 2,000 of them. Even the employees of the Banque de France begin to draw up their demands.”

Two thousand British and Welsh coal miners recently preferred to remain underground in the mines until their demands were met.

Miners at Pecs, Hungary, likewise declared a “stay-down” strike to wring concessions from the owners.

Poland, Czechoslovakia, Silesia, India, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico — all of these countries have witnessed within the past year the solidarity of workers united in economic direct action. Sit-down strikes, stay-in strikes, hunger strikes — all these echo a grim determination of militant workers. Workers who refuse to leave underground mines or who remain at their factory benches or in their stores and restaurants and offices while striking — this is the new type of class struggle confronting capitalism.

Even in Fascist Germany, police and Nazi Storm Troops become powerless in the face of sit-down strikes, which have occurred in protest against further wage cuts. The D. K. W. Motor Works at Spandau, and the Motor Works of Bauer and Schauberte in the Rhineland both witnessed successful stay-in strikes recently.

American rubber and tire companies, Bendix Aviation, General Electric, R.C.A., WPA workers in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and elsewhere, Reading Maid Hosiery, Aluminum Co. of America, New York Shipbuilding Co., and many other corporations can testify to the efficiency of sit-down strikes by their lessened profits — and the workers of many of these places can hold up fatter pay envelopes as mute testimony of their success.

Violence, rioting, and bloodshed: for years and years these have been the pet bogeys of union haters. “Terrorism, destruction, and gore” meant the same thing as “strike” to labor baiters. They dragged these skeletons out to dangle before the horrified eyes of scissorbills whenever anyone even whispered “strike” or “solidarity”. “See what will happen,” employers have exclaimed as they reached for the telephone to call their tin soldiers or “private detectives” to come and do some rioting and terrorising for them.

Now, alas and alack, these myths which were so conveniently used by the bosses are being dispelled.

“Business Week” complains, “Sit-downs were so frequent that the union set up a system that placed the striking workers in charge of the plant during disturbances. Men were told off beforehand to guard doors, round up supervisors ‘for safekeeping in case of trouble’ and generally take over the plant.”

Order, self-discipline, and responsibility have universally characterized all sit-down strikes. The employers alone have been directly responsible for any bloodshed or destruction of property — because the workers realized that it is not by these tactics that their strikes are won.

In the recent French sit-down strikes which involved so many industries it is said the machines were preciously taken care of. The furnaces which must never go out were kept going; in the tan-yards the skins remained bathed, and every morning the masons wet the stones of the houses they were building. In short all work that could not be stopped without actual damage to valuable materials or machines was kept going by the strikers.

The workers here demonstrated they can take over and run industries without the parasitic control by a master-class, and that they can run them in an orderly and intelligent fashion. This is one thing capitalism has found itself unable to do: run industry in an orderly and intelligent fashion.

Where workers have not given politicians control of their strike, the sit-down strike has been uniformly and universally successful since the first one — the IWW strike of 3,000 General Electric employees in 1906.

The fact that the ownership of an industry belongs to the workers in that industry, just as the toothbrush he uses should belong to him; the fact that a worker has just as definite a right to the job upon which his economic life depends as he has upon his hair; the fact that the rights of the parasitic class should not include the ownership of tools they never use but upon which others’ lives depends — these facts are all understood by a sit-down striker, though he may not recognize them as such.

The worker at his machine which he refuses either to leave or to operate until his demands are granted, and the factory which continues to be operated by strikers, declare the worker’s right to his machine, and his ability to run it when the shackles of capitalist ownership are shaken off, though at the time it be only temporary.

Where economic direct action and working class solidarity are used in struggles against the master class, the workers will never lose.

“Freedom cannot be gained through intermediaries.”

Originally appeared in The One Big Union Monthly (January 1937)

What prospect is there of French labor insisting on intervention in Spain?

What was the driving force back of last year’s sit-down strikes? Why has a country with such a militant working class adopted compulsory arbitration?

A recognized authority on European labor movements deals with these important questions.

The latter part of May, 1936, the world was startled by an epidemic of strikes in all industries all over France. Unexpectedly and spontaneously millions of workers had revolted against unbearable conditions which had been continually and gradually worsening ever since the World War, undermining and demoralizing the spirit of that once proud, militant, and revolutionary French proletariat.

The amazement of the world was due not so much to the suddenness and the extent of the strikes, as to the new methods adopted and employed by the strikers. “Striking on the job” was put into effect on an unprecedently large scale and with telling effect.

The workers came to the decision that the means of production were no longer to be considered as the exclusive property of the masters, but that they by right belonged as much, or even more, to the workers whose lives and well being depended on these instruments of production and distribution; for, without the workers industry could not exist, and, without access to industry, the working class would perish. So the strikers had decided that in that fight, instead of abandoning the struck factories, shops, mines, railroads, department stores, etc., they were going to remain in them, and make themselves at home in them until the termination of the conflict. “La Greve sur le Tas” (striking on the job) was maintained throughout their extensive struggle.

To be sure, the “new” method employed by the French strikers, was not altogether new. The I.W.W. has propagated and practiced the principle of “striking on the job” ever since it was first organized. The French syndicalists themselves practised it occasionally even before the birth of the I.W.W. And in America, too, the WPA workers have been indulging in it sporadically for the last few years. But it was the strikes of May-June, 1936, in France, that definitely fixed the “sit-down strike” as a regular weapon in the armory of the working class.

By this departure from the ordinary, the strikes in France became first page news for the capitalist press of the world. Well known correspondents wrote the strikes up as “foreign news”, and the Brass Chock press thus unwittingly spread the idea among workers of all lands. The idea was taken up everywhere, even in these United States as we just witnessed in the General Motors strike. This weapon has no legal standing as yet; on the contrary, politicians and jurists seem to be unanimous in outlawing it as a breach of the sacrosanct right of capitalist property. Even the French Popular Front composed of communist, socialist, and radical bourgeois parties, and its government headed by comrade Leon Blum, have declared “sitting strikes” illegal, to be resisted by all the forces of the government.

But, what of it? Have not peaceful strikes and picketing been considered illegal for centuries? They came to be tolerated only when and where the workers were able to muster sufficient force to assert their “rights”.

Was the strike a success? The answer depends on who answers it. The strikes did not aim at revolutionary objectives, they were an explosion of the discontent of the masses. The demands have all been granted and these exceeded by far the expectations of the leaders of the labor unions, who, by the way, had no responsibility in starting these strikes. Briefly the gains were:

1. —‘Collective bargaining and collective contract;
2. —Right of electing shop and job delegates to represent the workers on the job and to adjust grievances and disputes with their employers; the employers not to fire delegates on account of their job delegate activities and the delegates to re¬ ceive their regular wages for time spent negotiating with the employers or their agents;
3. —The 40-hour work week;
4. —Vacations with full pay;
5. —Increase in wages from 7 per cent to 15 per cent, the lowest paid workers to receive the largest increase.

To American members of the I.W.W. these attainments will not appear very imposing and certainly not revolutionary; old-time French syndicalists appreciate these gains in the same way as the Wobblies would. Furthermore they contend that the enforcement of these gains will depend entirely on the strength of organization and the pressure workers will be able to exert, that otherwise the gains will be lost or forgotten. That these fears are justified will appear later in this article.

These same revolutionary unionists, however, unanimously agree that the strikes were a great victory for the working class, quite apart from the gains enumerated above. The working class of France has re-discovered itself, it has regained its former self-reliance and besides it forged for itself a new, efficient weapon, which it will never relinquish, and therefore it is ready to go places. Not since 1906, when after two years preparation the eight-hour day was won by great struggles, including several general strikes, have the masses of the French workers manifested such militancy.

It should be understood that the strikes of last year were not planned, or called by the unions through their regular channels. Most of the leaders of the unions were at the time engrossed with the political schemes of the Popular Front which had just won out in the elections and was busy forming its own government. Strikes of any magnitude would have embarrassed their political business. Small strikes broke out spontaneously in different parts of the country, and the time being ripe for it—the workers’ dissatisfaction having reached its climax—these small strikes spread. The movement got beyond the control of the union leaders— since the bulk of the striking workers were not members of the unions—and it became general. The masses not only took possession of the industrial establishments of France, but of the unions as well. They flocked into the unions so fast that in a few months the membership of the General Confederation of Labor increased from one million to five million members.

The reason why the masses had kept away from the unions is a long story and we can give only a few brief details. Up to the World War, the French Confederation of Labor (C.G.T.) was the outstanding revolutionary working class organization of the world. It was one of the sources of inspiration for the founders of the I.W.W. It was also actively anti-militarist. It commanded the respect and loyalty of the great majority of workers of France whether union members or not. It was a power of the first magnitude in France.

On the eve of the World War the C.G.T. proposed to the German Trade Unions that a general strike be called in France and Germany to prevent mobilization and war. The proposal was coldly turned down. “When the Fatherland is at war, the German worker is a German first of all” was the answer. As a reaction to this many of the influential leaders of the C.G.T. became favorable to defending their country against invasion and from then on they filled somewhat the same role for the French government that the A.F.L. did for the Wilson administration. The best militants, those who remained true to their anti-war principles were jailed or sent to the front line trenches to be murdered. By the tactics of class collaboration and with the aid of the government the C.G.T. grew numerically, but its principles got diluted and its morale weakened, losing its former militant, revolutionary character. The leaders thereafter no longer relied on the organized strength and combativeness of the membership, but rather on bickering with politicians, with the government and with the Labour Bureau of the League of Nations.

After the war, communism too, appeared, creating the usual confusion in the ranks, and after a couple of years of bitter internal struggle the C.G.T. split into two separate confederations (C.G.T. and C.G.T.U.), the latter affiliated with the Red International following the well known zig-zag lines laid down by Moscow. The other (affiliated with the I.F.T.U.) became more and more reformistic and closer to the socialist and radical bourgeois political parties and cliques.

For sixteen years the main activity of the two confederations consisted of fighting each other. Strikes under the reformist C.G.T. were generally disrupted by communists, injecting their senseless slogans such as, “Hands of China” etc. and bitterly attacking the people in charge of strikes, thus creating distrust and defeatism in the midst of strikes. After a strike would be lost or ended with doubtful success, as the result, at least in part, of such meddling, the communists would use that as fresh arguments of the treachery of the “social-fascist” leaders.

On the other hand, the communists kept on calling “political general strikes” in rapid succession until their movement became an object of contempt and ridicule with the great mass of workers. The labor world was thus kept constantly irritated and disgusted with these senseless fights and meaningless strikes. That is why workers, in ever increasing numbers, were dropping away from the unions and their activities.

On account of the fight between the two federations, several large industrial union federations pulled out of them and remained autonomous. Besides, the anarcho-syndicalists, feeling at home in neither of the above groupings, formed their own Confederation, the C. G. T. S. R. (Revolutionary Syndicalist General Confederation of Labor) and affiliated with the I.W.M.A.

The membership of the two confederations dwindled and their influence on the working class approached the vanishing point. The employing class thus got a free hand to deal as it liked with its slaves, and used this unscrupulously over the weakened proletariat.

The French workers are akin in mental makeup to Spanish workers; as a rule they are class-conscious and have a high sense of class solidarity. They finally grew tired of their miserable conditions; tired of waiting for the two confederations to be done with their mutually exterminating struggle and to again take the lead, as formerly, in their struggle against the masters. They began to bring pressure from the outside on the unions to quit their foolishness and create a united labor movement. Invited to meetings, non-members were able to exert this pressure. So strong became the pressure that in spite of past bitter struggles, a Unity Convention was held in January, 1936, and the two confederations and the autonomous federations merged into a single body and affiliated with the I.F.T.U. The anarcho-syndicalist C.G.T.S.R. remained out of the merger.

With unity accomplished it appeared that a new era would begin for French labor. But another difficulty got in the way. Due to the danger of a fascist coup, an agreement was established between the socialist and communist parties, to drive back the fascist attacks. Later this was enlarged to take in the left-liberal bourgeois parties and establish what is known as the Popular Front. Just before the strikes we are considering, the Popular Front won a majority in the French parliament and proceeded to form a government with the Socialist leader, Leon Blum, as the chief.

Even before the new government could began to function the “sitdown” strikes broke out. Most of the important officials of the C.G.T. are members of either the Socialist or Communist parties and as they were busy with political scheming and log-rolling, an extensive strike movement was very inconvenient and greatly embarrassed them.

The workers, however, sensed that that was precisely the opportune time to strike. The Popular Front government, just come into power, could have hardly afforded to use the army of the Garde Mobile against the strikers. They were right. Instead, the government stepped in offering its good offices for mediating peace “among all classes,” as Blum said. The socialist and communist officials of the unions got busy inside the unions to dampen the spirit of the workers and to persuade them against “unreasonable” demands and to lessen the effects of the strikes. With the aid of the government, compromises were effected, and some temporary agreements drawn up. Details were to be settled later by negotiation and arbitration.

Here is where trouble starts anew. Arbitration has been in bad repute with the French workers for as far back as we can remember. Traditional direct actionists, they are suspicious even of voluntary arbitration. In the settlement of last year’s strike it was tried and it did not work. It appears that the workers accepting it always get the short end. Consequently, sit-down strikes broke out afresh in places where disputes were thought of as settled. The socialist Minister of Interior, Salengro, lost his patience and threatened to throw the striking comrades out of the factories by military force.

Voluntary arbitration systems not filling the bill, the socialist-communist government passed a compulsory arbitration law. As with all laws pertaining to labor relations, this, too, is vague. In effect it says, that if an agreement cannot be reached between the workers and employers, and they cannot agree as to a supreme arbiter, the government shall appoint the arbitrator, and the finding of that gentleman shall be binding on both parties to the dispute. Blum blames the necessity for this law on the stubborness of the employers and wants the workers to think that the law is passed as a favor to them. He also hints that as long as he is the government chief, the arbiter will be a member of the C.G.T. But how about when the communist-socialist government of Blum will be followed by a reactionary government? What kind of arbiters will a conservative government appoint to render binding awards in labor disputes? There is plenty of dissatisfaction and turmoil around this business, and plenty of opposition. Blum will find that the French workers are just as unyielding in the matter as the employers.

There is also a great deal of dissatisfaction with the way the government is acting towards the Spanish fight against the fascist invasion. In spite of the merger of the different groups of unions into one, the old fight is continuing just as bitterly as ever before. The masses were able to exert pressure on the two confederations from the outside. They got inside but there they find the fight unequal with the politicians entrenched in strategic functions of the unions. The mass pays its dues but its wishes are defeated by the well oiled machine.

And here we revert to the affiliate of the I.W. M.A., the anarcho-syndicalist C.G.T.S.R. For years past it was a small organization composed mostly of dogmatic anarchists. Before the Unity Convention, syndicalists of different schools could find place for themselves in the two confederations and in the autonomous unions. If dissatisfied with the one, he could transfer his allegiance to the other group and not have to join with the sectarian anarcho-syndicalists. But since unity was accomplished, the same political clique is ruling the entire outfit. Therefore, it is expected that hereafter large numbers of dissatisfied C.G.T. members will flock to the C.G.T.S.R. whose prestige increased greatly among the French workers on account of its close connection with the C.N.T. of Spain. With new elements entering it, it will soon lose its exclusively anarchist characteristic, and there is a good chance that it will eventually play the same role in France as the C.N.T. in Spain, with the C.G.T. in the role of the U.G.T. for the great body of the French working class will not long allow politicians to rule their economic organization, nor lead it into the rut of parliamentary politics.

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

It is about time that someone wrote another “One Hundred Million Guinea Pigs”. In place of horrifying details of sandpaper on your toothbrush, this book should deal with the one hundred million workingclass guinea pigs who in America, past and present, have been dished out an infinite variety of adulterated remedies to keep them sick but satisfied,—all substitutes for the real thing.

The material to select from is wide and varied, for in no realm of human relations are there to be found more substitutes, fake claims, and harmful products than in the field of sociology. For every measure that could possibly aid in the thorough housecleaning of our society, a spurious substitute is offered and pushed before the public. The phenomenon of Fascism alone affords a vast field for fertile study, for Fascism is the grand devil of them all in the black art of adulterated substitution. Its sample wares include such choice items as “national socialism” for socialism, “labor front” for independent labor unionism, race or national struggle for class struggle, to mention a few of the more important ones.

However, since we only suggested the book and are not writing it, let us confine ourselves to one instance in current America that might provide a significant chapter for the proposed volume. We have reference to the current attempt to substitute the C.I.O. for an industrial union movement long championed by the I.W.W.

The C.I.O. emerged upon the scene a little more than a year ago. Why? Back in the “horse and buggy” days the mighty onsurge of solidarity on the part of the workers through the Knights of Labor was stopped by the appearance of the A. F. of L. “The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.” Is the C.I.O., the child of the A. F. of L., coming to the fore to run bona fide industrial unionism into the ground?

The employers’ art of spurious substitution in the labor commodity market was at first exercised entirely on their own initiative in America by those pariahs of the people, the John D. Rockefellers, as an outgrowth of the terrible and magnificient strike of the Colorado coal miners in 1913-14. The Rockefellers, after witnessing fifteen months of heroic struggle on the part of the miners that even wholesale murder of their women and children at Ludlow could not stifle, brought in W. L. MacKenzie King, later premier of Canada, to form the first “company union” in the United States, the Rockefeller Industrial Representation Plan. In subsequent years the “company union” has served with varying success as a substitute for labor unionism in countless industrial establishments of America.

However, since the gaping dent put into Capitalism by the “crash” of ’29, a general awakening of the American working class has occurred. After an interim of stunned stumbling, the workers commenced to organize in earnest.

The unemployed, no longer pleading recipients of charity, organized and clamored for more bread and shelter. Several plants in the mass production industries went out on unorganized but bitterly contested strikes, notably the Briggs body plants in Detroit. The craft-bound A. F. of L. witnessed a large influx of members into its unworkable federal unions. The I.W.W. made some serious inroads into the automobile industry during and immediately following the Briggs strike. The latter organization also conducted a large agricultural strike for higher wages in the martial law-patrolled Yakima Valley of Washington, as well as conducting a construction workers’ strike at Boulder Dam, a seamen’s strike on the Gulf, building strikes in Philadelphia, etc. In addition, several independent unions of a bona fide working class nature were springing up everywhere, such as the M.E.S.A., the Wisconsin Industrial Union, the Union of All Workers in Minnesota, and others.

Against such an arousing working class the employers were beginning to find the camouflage of “company unionism” rather thin.

With the introduction of the NRA, the Government started playing around with the A.F. of L., but found that the rock-ribbed craft structure of the A. F. of L. was so utterly outmoded as to be unfit for the Judas role of old. The piratical prerogatives of the international craft unions upon the federal locals were causing the new recruits to go through the A. F. of L. like a green light. The distressing spectacle of the lumber workers in the West deserting the safe haven of the A. F. of L. for the industrial unionism of the I.W.W., clearly proved the impotence of even “doctored” craft unionism to embrace the aroused workers of America and run them-into the “safe and sane” channels of the A. F. of L. Such experiences early led Generalissimo Johnson of the NRA to declare for industrial unionism. Today this blustery strike-buster is the blatant advocate of the C.I.O., much to the distress and protestation of weary Willy Green. Shocked and offended Mr. Green may not be able to understand why the good General is taking such an attitude, but the General does.

The laissez faire capitalism of old is day by day being pushed into the background. The day of unrestricted “individual enterprise” is fast disappearing. Through governmental pressure the days of suicidal, unplanned production with its disastrous “booms” and “over-production” (as well as rather amateurish handling of labor problems) are diminishing. More and more, despite temporary setbacks, “monopoly”, “regulations”, “standards”, are being introduced into American economic life. A very real “One Big Union” of capital is being evolved in this country in an effort to ‘stabilize” capitalism and secure to the present beneficiaries of capitalism their powers and privileges at the expense of the working class as heretofore. The capitalist system in America is steadily tending towards one gigantic corporation to displace the present big and little corporations.

With the “corporate” trend of capitalism, and its sometimes startling changes in governmental and business procedure from the days of “laissez faire”, it readily can be seen that an industrial union movement growing out from this can be merely a corresponding change in the form of “company unionism”. For the individual “representation plan” of the individual corporation must be substituted a nation-wide “representation plan” to serve the interests of the newly evolving “corporate state”. A One Big Company Union of labor to match the new One Big Corporation of capital!

Is the C.I.O. being groomed as this “One Big Company Union”?

That the C.I.O. may be bitterly fought by some employers does not in the least contradict this question. These employers are still confident that they can go on in the old laissez faire way. They are yet opposed to merging into the “One Big Corporation of Capital”. But, eventually they will see the arrangement as of benefit to them and as their lone salvation, much as an individual worker in a factory being organized by the I.W.W. may at first resist attempts to organize him, only finally to see the point. These employers are conservatives of the old school. Their ranks will continue to diminish, much as their political expression, the Republican Party, is rapidly decaying and is even now practically moribund as far as national politics is concerned.

Another element accounting for the misleading antagonism of some employers to the C.I.O. may well be the ambition of some of the leaders of this latter movement. Capitalism is not in a precisely enviable position at present. It is endangered on the one hand by the stupidity of some of its sections and on the other by the threat of genuine organization on the part of the working class. In order to get personal considerations, would ambitious “labor leaders” be averse to holding the working class for ransom? As it were, blackmailing the capitalist class into assuring them worthy rewards in power and privilege? After all, both Mussolini and Hitler were pretty blustery and did not strike a bargain until they were assured of their perogatives.

For these reasons, and because the substitute must be plausible, the C.I.O. certainly will not fall into the unimaginative routine of a “company union” or a fascist “labor front” until a full-fledged bargain is struck. Furthermore, rank and file impetuosity will provide from time to time certain flare and color to the whole procedure. However, this rank and file activity will become increasingly rare as Mr. Lewis and his lieutenants come to understandings with the various industrial concerns.

Already the chief outcome of the General Motors strike1 is the agreement on the part of the union to outlaw any job action until all avenues of negotiation have been exhausted, meaning conferences between Lewis and the management. When the time comes that Mr. Lewis wins the checkoff and the right to bargain for all the workers in a company’s employ, the rank and file will be caught between the two mill-stones of Mr. Lewis and the employer. The worker, individually and collectively, will find himself helpless in fighting both the employer and the union. A double chain will be around his neck.

Universally organized into the C.I.O., will the American worker find himself bound hand and foot to the system that exploits him? Freedom a myth, will he be an industrial serf forever in his place and receiving such fruits of labor as his masters may in their benevolence choose to bestow upon him?

The socio-economic basis of fascism is the corporate or totalitarian state—one hundred per cent organized industry and parallel industrial organization of the workers. Industrial unionism lends itself very easily to the corporate plans of fascism. Mussolini, the founder of fascism, was guided in his formulation of the fascist state by his experience with the wide-spread “syndicalism” of Italy. He discovered that industrial unionism can be turned upon its head and become industrial bondage.

An industrial union movement can be an instrument of social advancement and happiness for mankind and a bulwark against fascism only if it is thoroughly saturated with a rank and file spirit and adhere in form and practice to democratic control. What is more, it must be based foursquare on the principle of irreconcilable economic antagonism between the employing class and the working class, for only class-consciousness can counteract the totalitarian appeal of fascism. How does the C.I.O. measure up to any of these requirements? Is it a suitable substitute for the I. W. W.?

Will the members of the American working class offer themselves as “One Hundred Million Guinea Pigs”?

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

• 1•NOTE: The conduct and the settlement of the General Motors Strike indicates that the General Motors Corporation represents an employer group that is taking a watchful “on the fence” attitude to the “corporate” tendencies of American capitalism. Despite the heroic determination of the gallant Flint sit-downers, the small percentage of union organization in the G. M. plants would not have prevented the company from engaging in physical efforts to break the strike unless a question of broad social policy were not in the background of the affair. In an ordinary economic struggle the organization of the strikers was much too weak to seriously intimidate the Company, particularly with the support of the Flint Alliance and the old- line A. F. of L. on the side of the corporation.—T. C.

From One Big Union Monthly. April, 1937. Vol. I, №4. P. 25-27.

I.

In the days before fascism was heard of, the question whether socialism was inevitable was sometimes approached from this viewpoint: May not the contradictions of capitalism which make its indefinite continuation impossible, be dissolved by the more complete organization of the employing class, or even by the trend toward the concentration of wealth into the hands of some oligarchy small enough to apply an intelligent paternalism to modern productive forces?

The contradictions were there and were real enough. The swing of the business cycle regularly proclaimed that the growing order and planning inside the factory was not balanced by any such planning in the economy as a whole, and thus the best regulated of plants must periodically close its gates for the lack of market. The market was not there because the growing productivity of labor, which had increased several thousand per cent in the great advance of mechanization since the end of the 18th century, was not balanced by any such increase in the capacity of the proletarized mass of the population to get ad use this wealth, for their living standard at the best times reflected only about twice the purchasing power they had before the industrial revolution.

This disparity was kept within workable limits only by the increasing internal wastefulness of capitalists economy, which often enough spends more to market a product than it does to make it, and by the re-investment of the surplus in new industries at home, or imperialistically, abroad. But every rational growth in capitalism, its trusts and cartels, lessened this easing wastefulness, and the accumulation of capital either enhanced the productivity of labor at home or exploited cheaper labor at the far ends of the earth. The one substantial release on this growing and unused productivity was the military aspect of imperialism which often spent more to gain some object by war that [sic] it would have cost to buy it outright.

The function of industry was social, doing in a large collective way what previously had been done in a small way in men’s homes, but there was little or no social control. Mild-mannered professors were fully aware of this, and likewise aware that much more of the unpleasant disturbance of life, all the way from the increasing nervous disorders to crime waves, was the result of the contradiction between the social function of the productive equipment and its private control. They reasoned optimistically that regulation by commission of democrative [sic] governments would be found increasingly necessary, and would step by step establish the needed balance, thus subordinating socially functioning industry to the public interest and re-establishing the supremacy of human intelligence over the Industrial Frankenstein it had created.

To such liberals, the efforts of labor alike in its strikes or in its building of a philosophy of class struggle, were viewed as just so much more unpleasant disturbance—something that eventually would be regulated or ironed out by a commission appointed in the public interest. The efforts of labor to remedy the great disparity between production and earnings was discussed by such professors under the head of “The Labor Problem.” That there were such workers as the I.W.W. deliberately “fanning the flames of discontent and preaching the doctrine of an irreconcilable struggle between capital and labor”, appeared to such thinkers as a most lamentable thing, as an unintelligent disregard for their text books and their liberal teaching to be excused only by comparison with such other monstrous things as the plug-ugly labor policy of U.S. Steel. To them this class struggle appeared only as another factor holding back their utopia of social regulation by commission in the public interest.

Today this dream of the liberals is fulfilled so far as it can be, in fascism. Now that the omelette is cooked, it is not to their taste, and still mild-mannerdly (sic) as befits them, they ask that the eggs be put back in the shell. The public interest that is being served isn’t their public, and their whole scheme of democracy is squashed. The standard of living under fascism goes down instead of up. Its regulated economy instead of furthering world peace as they had thought a regulated and rationalized economy would surely do, promotes world armament on an unprecedented scale. And man’s intelligence, instead of becoming supreme, is almost completely removed as a disturbing factor in fascist society by being outlawed and sent to a concentration camp.

So there must have been an error somewhere in the reasoning. Were the stresses and strains, the impacts ad blows, the ups and downs of unregulated capitalism due merely to the contradiction between the social function of the productive equipment and its private control? Or did they result fro a quite separate contradiction between productivity and earning? Could the social regulation of the business cycle, even with the most complete restrictions on boom speculation and the best planned postponement of public works to slack times, and the most complete of codes to restrict the insane modern editions of competition, erase the fact that labor does not own what it produces, and that a surplus is produced regardless of whether it be produced evenly or unevenly? And didn’t this contradiction between expanding production and limited earnings only express some still more basic contradiction—that those whose tremendous productive power could undertake the most gigantic tasks of linking oceans, or digging tunnels, or girdling the globe with copper cables, were still powerless to say whether their children should eat or not? Was the labor movements with its persistent demand for “more and more and more” and its philosophy of class struggle, just another unpleasant disturbance of capitalism, a problem to be solved by some commission, or was this labor movement, considered as an element in the historic process, by its continuous struggle for power over production, power over the means of life, the one agent that could dissolve the contradictions of capitalism?

That the answer is yes, is confirmed by an examination of the question: Why doesn’t fascism work?

II.

An examination of the economy of fascism should disclose many things. One very useful bit of information it should yield is what and where this fascism is that we are fighting.

First it should be understood that fascism is not just political dictatorship, not just militant reaction, not just the abridgement of civil liberties, not just the old brought and ready way of trampling on labor, and not just a process of Jew-baiting either. We have had all these things with us before. None of them needed the corporative state; none of them tried to take the whole life in town and regulate it to a plan; none of them sought to invent a new type of society. Neither should fascism be understood as the social realization of a philosophy. Back in 1921 Mussolini said: “During the two months which remain before us, I should like to see us create the philosophy of Italian Fascism.” It was created voluminously within those two months as trimmings for a far more substantial reality.

Fascism is this militant reaction detested by liberals set to the task of realizing the liberal’s regulation of economy in a public interest—the public in fascism as in any other phase of capitalism, being those who pay the regulators.

An examination of who pays to keep fascism going and to get it started will readily disclose that it is not a phenomena confined within the boundaries of Italy, German, or any other nation. Back in 1934 in the “Fortune” article that led to so many disclosures of the internationalism of the armament makers, Adolf Hitler was disclosed as a champion promoted of arms sales on behalf of all the armament makers. Fritz Thyssen, “King of the Ruhr” provided a large part of the fund to get him started. The directors of the large Skoda works controlled by Schneider of France, but in which Vickers-Armstrong of England is also interested, also contributed. And in 1933 before his coup, Adolf paid a most peculiar fine for contempt of court: he had brought suit against a German journalist for stating that he had been financed directly by Schneider-Creusot, French armament makers; in court he was asked the question direct; he refused to answer, and paid 1000 marks fine for contempt of court rather than answer. The French press, controlled by the armament makers, welcomed Hitler with a shriek for further defense, and the investment in Hitler paid well, as France became the leader among nations of the world both for armament and for the export of arms.

Hitler is not only an excellent arms salesman, but quite willing to reciprocate in mustering up adequate means for other nations to participate properly in our mutual extermination. As Wilson Woodside observes in the February Harpers alongside of idle textile mills, margarine factories and packing plants, idle for the lack of a market, the metal industries of Germany are working overtime, and are far behind in deliveries. They are not only arming Germany, but busy making equipment for England as well; and of 668,000 tons of construction underway in German shipyards, 104,00 tons are for Britain. This fascism is an international undertaking and not confined to the internationalism of the armament makers. Fascist economy, for various reasons to be explained later, runs on a deficit; it is not up to non-fascist capitalism in efficiency; it is kept going by the support of world capitalism. There have been direct loans, unpaid. In 1927 Mussolini was saved from a crisis by a $100,000,000 loan floated in the United States. Last year he had Italian interests sell their control of Mosul Oil Fields Ltd., to the British Iraq Petroleum Co. Last September he floated another $236,000,000 loan purchasable only in foreign currency, not officially floated here because under the recent Johnson Act those governments defaulting on war debts cannot borrow here. Such deals, and the complaisant way in which the government of the “democratic nations” have financed exports to Germany and Italy, and the credits directly extended by such exporters, should all set at rest any notion that non-fascist capitalism desires to check the advance of fascism, and may ally itself with labor in order to do so.

The internationalism of fascism has shown itself in many ways apart from these financial transactions. Class conscious capitalists (and despite their professional patriotism they are all by the nature of their investments good internationalists) saw that their press from 1922 on welcomed Mussolini; and the feature writers who howled over the Bolshevik atrocities presented Benito as a rather jovial administrator of castor oil. The international solidarity of capitalist nations and their labor politicians in aiding France in the fascist invasion of Spain, should puzzle only those who forget that in 1934 it was Italian aid in arms and money that upset the liberal government in Austria and drove Vienna’s socialism underground. Hitler states quite openly his willingness to perform a like service for international investors in Czechoslovakia. That this can be done agreeably to all capitalist concerned, is shown by the fascist seizure of the Rio Tinto copper mines in Spain, with the result that shipments previously delivered to Britain are now delivered to Germany; yet there has been no complain lodged by the British owners. Fascism enters the world at a time when capitalism is well developed as a world economy, years after a world war in which allied soldiers were killed with equipment obligingly furnished by their own nations, and long after the typical business unit had become the corporation selling its stocks and bonds and debentures on all the exchange of the world to any buyer who wished to buy. It is most decidedly an international venture, maintained by international support rendered alike morally, politically, and financially.

Why does international capital support these ventures in “deficit economies?” The answer is largely why capital supports government in the first place. To the investor in stock in the proper German enterprises, fascism is not a deficit economy at all. Since 1929 the profits of German employers have raised six-fold, from 500,000,000 to 3,000,000,000 marks. This has come from a cut in wages by over one half. The employers did not get the full advantage of this extra exploitation of labor; a very substantial part of it as of everything has gone to the official racketeers; but even so a six-fold increase in profits is tempting. Wages are down to an average of 25 marks (about $10) per week; but to pay for this service of smashing up unions, stopping all strikes, and restricting civil liberties as must be done to achieve such wage levels, the taxes run to 9,000,000,000 marks or three times the profits. Even this pays only one half the current budget … And beside the taxes there is a tremendous amount of outright graft and forced donations to the Nazis. Incidentally the resources for future exploitation are being ruined. The shortsightedness of Fascist planning is shown by the depletion of the forests that since they days of Bismarck have been nursed with the utmost of care. Says Herr Goering: “The [sic] say I am using up too much of Germany’s forests…but if I have struck too deep into them so far, I shall strike two or three times as deep, for I had better destroy the forests than the nation.” The physique of the working class deteriorates in a manner that will undermine eventually their productivity and their military usefulness. In relation to world economy, a most necessary element for successful exploitation is the inventiveness to keep technique on a competitive par with the rest of the world; the deterioration of German science and learning in general undermines this perhaps most important resource of all; the inventions made in concentration camps do not usually come under the head of the productive arts. But fascism by its very nature does not look far to the future.

Why is fascism economically a failure? Why can’t the complete regulation of capitalist enterprise result in a more efficient use of resources and equipment than the unplanned an chaotic capitalism of the rest of the world? The answer to this question also answers another: Why, if fascism is international endowed, is it so intensely nationalistic?

A planned economy must be relatively self-contained economy. Thus Mussolini’s famous, though unsuccessful, “Battle for Wheat”, his draining of marsh-land, and his latest supreme effort to colonize Italy and Ethiopia alike in the style of the emperors from Constantine on, his adscription of agricultural labor as serfs to the soil. He calls this serfdom “deproletarianization”, but frankly says that Italy must have “genuine peasants attached to the soil, who do not ask the impossible, who know how to content themselves.” It is a form of sharecropping but with payment in kind that takes Italian agriculture back many centuries and results in some 6,000,000 rural workers, according to an official survey made in 1934, living either in caves or hovels, or in houses, as the report put it “almost absolutely uninhabitable.” The same fact is back of Hitler’s battle for “Rohstoffreiheit” —to need no foreign imports of raw materials. You can’t plan capitalism, and keep it a part of a chaotic world capitalism. At the same time to step out of world economy is most uneconomical. With the free interchange of the products of various parts of the earth in an unbridled competition, goods are normally produced where they can be produced cheapest. German pays for “freedom in raw materials” by using ore or 35 per cent iron content which costs four times as much to smelt as Swedish 65 per cent ore—and now she is mining 5 and 7 per cent deposits in the Hartz Mountains! On the first steps along the old “Berlin to Bagdad” route lie bauxite for making aluminum and oil, and these may explain much of the internal politics of this region, as Germany lacks both.
But if the failure of fascist economy is the result of an attempt to replace the use of the world’s resources with the uneconomic spoliation of the fascist nation’s own, then would not fascism succeed should it blossom out, as it threatens to, in a world fascist economy, or even in some region, as these United States, where nature has endowed the land with most of the resources needed? As to the latter, even the United States could not maintain its present population long without imports; there is scarcely any industrial process in which we engage that does not absolutely require some import. But perhaps world fascism is possible. To capitalists it is not a desirable state of affairs; it means that all but a handful of capitalists would be reduced to the universal serfdom; and the regulation of a world would be most costly. Though the bourgeois historians write of the latter days of the Roman empire as a time when the hand of the state was everywhere regulating all things, the modern business man reading such history understands that the hand of the state was everywhere grabbing things too.

World economy could readily enough be coordinated on the basis of a community of interests to effect the highest possible standard of living for all—if run by producers for producers; but to co-ordinate world economy under an iron hell, on the basis of discordant interests, where every petty official of the supreme oligarchy was looking for his graft for doing this dirty work, where everyone was discontent, where the military command was incessantly needed to maintain order and thus made mindful of its own opportunity to become the supreme oligarchy, is to enter a period of even greater chaos and waste than we suffer from now.

Fascism is not a forward looking plan; it is not even to be explained in terms of a far-sighted rationalism on the part of those who support it; it is the blind retreat from the threshold of new order that offers abundance to all, and thus privilege, prestige, and sundry other perverted desiderata of a class society to none. It rallies its support with an irrational appeal, and is not to be fought by any other means than power. The road to fascism is paved with liberal good intentions. Its means of operation is the regulation of the disturbances of capitalism in an alleged public interest. All planned control of economy not vested in labor, and not run by workers for workers, is grist for its mill. Every regulation over workers, whether by union officials or by public bodies on which such union officials sit, is another brick for its world-wide jailhouse. And the materials are being accumulated rapidly the world over.

Against this drift to Mussolini’s serfdom there are tremendous forces that can be rallied—the great dynamic power that has brought the world forward to this alternative of going back to serfdom and family or forward to a greater freedom and plenty. Capital establishes fascism, albeit reluctantly, for the same reason that it establishes and supports any form of government, hollering the while for “more business in government and less government in business. It is done to “police the poor.” It is done on an every increasing and more costly scale because capitalism is ever the breeder of a profounder discontent. Capitalism requires and produces a working class schooled and trained and brought into the contacts requisite for building revolutionary class organization; the most able class that ever his history submitted to exploitation by a class of idlers. It creates abilities that it cannot use; and unused ability is the great disturbing factor that fascism cannot put down.

The contradictions of capitalism—the great basic ones that are involved in the working class struggle for power over the means of life—cannot be ironed out even by an iron heel. They persist as a driving force toward a new society, but as a force that can build this new society only if organized as a class force, on the basis of class struggle, by working vigilantly avoiding every restriction to their own activity, whether from inside their organization or outside it. Therein lies the greater historic role of the I.W.W., more readily visualized today than ever before—by the planned economy of plenty that can be effected by the One Big Union of labor, to complete man’s conquest of nature through the establishment of the supremacy of human intelligence over the Industrial Frankenstein it has created.

Originally appeared in The One Big Union Monthly (April 1937)
Typed up by Erik

Published in the IWW's One Big Union Monthly, August, 1937

Alone, or in coalition with more or less "liberal" bourgeois political parties, the socialists today are in control of the government machinery in a number of countries while yet in other countries they stand in line awaiting in their turn the call of the economic masters to take over the government and to carry on and administer the collective affairs of the capitalists in the respective countries.

The conclusion of the long and destructive World War brought capitalism to bankruptcy, the bourgeois regime stood everywhere discredited physically and morally and in a state of collapse ; everywhere the working class was in open revolt. The only organized force that yet retained some moral prestige was the socialist movement and its trade unions, who, in one country after another gallantly rushed to the rescue of the moribund regime, until recently their professed enemy.

Naturally, the capitalists very graciously allowed the socialists to resurrect and reconstruct the capitalist regime. They were allowed and even invited to form "socialist governments." Times without number these "socialist governments" proved to the master class that they are in the best of positions to save capitalism and to safeguard all their interests not only by the use of brutal military and police forces, but also by their moral prestige over the working class acquired by nearly a century of socialist party and trade union connection within the working class.

To be sure the master class never was conspicuous by its gratitude, as soon as it imagined itself strong enough to rule without the aid of socialists these were discarded, and their governments turned over to the underworld characters, to gangsters parading in differently colored shirts. A few years of experience with the gangsterdom has, however, taught world capitalism the lesson that the socialists make the more efficient and loyal servants of capitalism after all, and at the present time the pendulum is rapidly swinging away from fascism to "socialist" or "Popular Front" governments.

Socialists the world over are proud of the role their parties are playing nowadays, and they look upon their present, internationally approved policy as the acme of "Marxism." Yet, this was not always so.

Before the end of the last century, socialists of all shades were violently and unalterably opposed to the very idea of party members participating in bourgeois (capitalist) governments, thereby making the socialist movement at least indirectly responsible for the acts of their respective capitalist governments. Even the acceptance by a party member of a minor, non-elective government job, was frowned upon as not kosher from a social-democratic standpoint.

When, in 1900, Alexander Millerand, who with Jean Jaures, was heading one of the four or five socialist parties existing then in France, entered into the Waldeck-Rousseau cabinet, a storm of protests was raised in the socialist world. National and World Congresses debated and argued the propriety of the action and in all instances the act was condemned as treason to the international socialist movement. "Millerandism" and "Ministerialism" was synonymous with treason. The arguments lasted for fourteen years, until the outbreak of the World War, when the entire socialist world suddenly became "ministerialists" and governmentalists. And so it has remained to this day.
The foregoing is all old history, but it does no harm to recall it once in a while, the more so as in our days we are suddenly confronted with a new "ministerialism" from an unexpected source. This time the anarchist world is stirred with that same old question in the anti-fascist war now going on in Spain.

It would appear that with the post-war experiences, with the experiences of Bolshevism, Fascism, Nazism, we have learned enough to avoid the old and settled disputes. But we must have been mistaken, for it seems that we have to overcome the same difficulties and misunderstandings at every instance of serious fight that we, the working class, are confronted with.

The old forgotten "Millerandism" or "Ministerialism" is and has been a burning issue in Spain ever since the present war was precipitated by the uniformed bandits of Spain. The only real revolutionary force in the present Spanish war was the CNT and its ideological reflex, the F.A.I. It would have appeared an absurdity for anyone a year ago to state that the old issue of "ministerialism" could bob up—of all things—in this anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist movement, in the time of the acutest crisis that ever confronted not only these two Spanish movements (that are really one), but the anarchist fraternity the world over.

Perseus, of mythological fame, wore a magic cap so that the monsters he hunted down might not see him. I would like to have pulled such a magic cap over my own ears so that I may not see the internal fight in the revolutionary forces of the present Spanish fight. Unfortunately, I can read many languages and am in touch with revolutionary literature of many lands, and no magic cap can prevent me from seeing things I would not like to see. I am giving below a translation of an open letter of A. Shapiro to the CNT I read similar open letters months ago, whose authors have fallen since, either fighting on the bloody battlefields, or through cowardly assassination by the Spanish Branch of the Russian Cheka. Shapiro is not dead yet, he is one of the outstanding figures of the anarchist movement of the world. He was for a number of years one of the Secretariat of the International Workingmens Association. Therefore, whatever the readers of the "One Big Union" may think of his statements, I assure them that Shapiro is sincere and means what he says.

Open letter to the CNT
We read with more surprise than interest the minimal program of the CNT "for the realization of a real war policy." The reading of the program raised an entire series of questions and problems, some of which should be called to your attention.

Certainly none of us was simple enough to believe that a war can be carried on with resolutions and by anti-militarist theories. Many of us believed, long before July 19 (1936) that the anti-militarist propaganda, so dear to our Dutch comrades of the International Anti-militarist Bureau and which found, in the past, a sympathetic enough echo in the columns of your press in Spain, was in contradiction with the organization of the revolution.

Many of us knew that the putsches, that were so dear to our Spanish comrades, such as those of December 8 and January 8, 1934, were far from helping this organization of the revolution, it helped rather to disorganize it.

July 19 opened your eyes. It made you realize the mistake you had committed in the past, when, in a revolutionary period, you neglected Seriously organizing the necessary frame-work for the struggle that you knew would be inevitable on the day of the settlement of accounts. Yet, today you are shutting your eyes on another important fact. You seem to think that a civil war brought about by the circumstance of a fascist putsch does not necessarily obligate you to examine the possibilities of modifying and altering the character of that civil war.

A "minimal" program is not something to startle us ; but a particular minimal program (such as yours) cannot have any value unless it creates the opportunity for the preparation of a maximal program.

But, your "real war policy," after all, is nothing but a program for entering the Council of Ministry (government) ; with it you act merely as a political party desirous of participation in an existing government ; setting forth your conditions of participation, and these conditions are so bureaucratic in character that they are far from weakening in the least the bourgeois capitalist regime, on the contrary they are tending to strengthen capitalism and stabilize it.

The surprising part of your program is that you do not consider it as a means for the attainment of some well defined goal, but consider your "real war policy" program as an aim in itself. That is the main danger in your program. It presupposes a permanent participation in the government—not merely circumstantial—which is to extend over a number of years, even if the war itself, with its brutal, daily manifestations would cease in the meanwhile. A monopoly of the Foreign Commerce (have the communists whispered this to you ?), customs policy, new legislations, a new penal code—all of this takes a long time. In order to realize these tasks, your program proposes a very close collaboration on all fields with the bourgeoisie (republican block) and with the communists (marxist block), while almost at the same time you state in your appeal of June 14 that you are sure of triumphing not only against Franco, but also against a stupidly backward bourgeoisie ("the republican block") and against the tricky and dishonest politicians ("marxist block").

You see, therefore, that even your minimal program is beset with flagrant contradictions ; its realization is dependent on the aid of the very sectors against which that program is aimed. Even the freedom with which you state these two mutually excluding programs : collaboration with the bourgeoisie and "marxism" on the one hand and fight to finish against this same bourgeoisie and "marxism" on the other, situates your minimal program as the aim, and your declaration of June 14 becomes a mere verbiage. We would have, naturally, liked to see things the other way.
The problem of Spain’s economic reconstruction does not form a part of your program. And yet, you cannot help but know that a civil war, like the one you are going through, cannot bring the people to its aid unless the victories on the fronts will assure at the same time their own victories in the rear.

It is true—and many of us outside of Spain have known it long before July 19—the Social Revolution cannot be attained in 24 hours, and that a libertarian regime cannot be erected by the turn of the hand. Nevertheless, neither the CNT nor the F.A.I. cared anything about pre-revolutionary organization and about preparing in advance the framework for the social and economic reconstruction. We claim that there is a bridge leading from the downfall of the old regime to the erection of the new regime erected on the ashes and the ruins of the old regime. This bridge is all the more full of dangerous traps and pitfalls as the new regime differs from the old. And it was precisely this period of transition that you have misunderstood in the past and that you continue to misunderstand today. For if you had recognized that the social and economic reconstruction on a libertarian basis is the indispensable condition to victory over fascism, you would have elaborated (having in view the aim to be attained) a minimal revolutionary program that would have given the city and country proletariat of Spain the necessary will and enthusiasm to continue the war to its logical conclusion.

But such a program you failed to proclaim. The few timid allusions contained in your "war program" are far from having a revolutionary character : the elaboration of a plan for the economic reconstruction that would be accepted by the three blocks could only be a naive illusion, if it would not be so dangerous ; the municipalization of land is an anti-revolutionary project since it legalizes something that a coming revolution will have to abolish, since the municipalities are, after all, but cogs in the wheel of the State as long as the State will exist.

Naturally, the elaboration of an economic program for the transition period presupposes a final aim. Does the CNT consider that libertarian communism is an unattainable "Utopia" that should be relegated to the museum ?

If you still think (as you did before July 19) that libertarian communism forms part of the program of the CNT it is your duty—it was really your duty since July 1936—to elaborate your economic program of transition, without regard to the bourgeois and marxist blocks, who can but sabotage any program of libertarian tendency and inspiration.

To be sure, such a program will place you in conflict with these blocks, but on the other hand, it will unite with you the large majority of the workers, who want but one thing, the victory of the Revolution. It is necessary, therefore to choose between these two eventualities.

Such a program will, naturally, nullify your "war program" which is nothing but the expression of a "true" desire for a permanent cabinet collaboration. But this proposition, this "war program" of yours is diametrically contrary to the traditionally revolutionary attitude of the CNT, which this organization has not denied yet. It is therefore necessary to choose.

The CNT should not allow—as it has unfortunately done since July 19—the acceptance of the tactics of the "line of least resistance," which cannot but lead to a slow but sure liquidation of the libertarian revolution.

The ministerial collaboration policy has certainly pushed back to the rear the program of revolutionary economy. You are on the wrong track and you can see that yourselves.

Do you not think that you should stop following this road, that leads you to certain downfall ?

Text taken from http://raforum.info

The following letter was published in the paper of the American IWW's paper, One Big Union Monthly in 1937.

Original introduction
The One Big Union Monthly and the Industrial Workers of the World are heart and soul for the success of the anti-fascist fight going on in Spain but we see no reason why we should stick our heads in the sand and pretend not to be aware of the capitalist class element within the Spanish United Front government that is trying to rob the Spanish revolutionary unionists of victory.

No matter what our opinion may be as to the wisdom of the syndicalists' policy of co-operation with political government, the information and arguments contained in this letter from a rank and file fighter in the cause of working class freedom, and in other articles appearing in this magazine, cannot but be valuable reminders that there are still working class enemies among those who favour "democracy" as opposed to fascism - Editor.

A soldier returns
Marseilles, France
Fellow Worker:-

Received your letter the other day in Barcelona. I typed three pages in reply but could not smuggle it out of the country, so I tore it up.

I am out of Spain. The reasons are numerous. I was not wanted by the government as I was in the Durruti International Shock Battalion. The government sabotaged us since we were formed in May and made it impossible for us to stay at the front. No tobacco unless you had money. All of the time I was in the militia I received no money. I had to beg money for postage stamps, etc. I was sent back from the front slightly shell-shocked and put in a hospital in Barcelona. when we registered at the hospital I told them I was from the Durruti International Battalion and they wouldn't register me. In fact they told me to go and ask my friends for money for a place to sleep. I explained to them that I was from Canada and had no friends in Barcelona, then they tried to make me a prisoner in the hospital. I called them all the lousy -- I could think of. Anyway, I ran away from the hospital one day to the English section of the CNT-FAI and the people there insisted that I see the British consul for a permit to leave Spain, which I did, though I hated to leave.

Spain is a wonderful country. At present it reminds me of the stories I have read of the O.G.P.U. [secret police] in Russia. The jails of loyalist Spain are full of volunteers who have more than a single-track mind. I know one of them from Toronto, a member of the L.R.W.P. I wonder if they will bump him off. The Stalinists do not hesitate to kill any of those who do not blindly accept Stalin as a second Christ. One of the refugees who came over with me from Spain was a member of the O.G.P.U. in Spain, which, by the way, is controlled by Russia. Every volunteer in the Communist International Brigade is considered a potential enemy of Stalin. He is checked and double-checked, every damn one. If he utters a word other than commy phrases he is taken "for a ride." This chap (ex- O.G.P.U.) is like all the other commies coming out of Spain, absolutely anti-Stalin and anti-communist. He skipped the country by flashing his O.G.P.U. badge on the trains etc.

I believe that the I.W.W. has lost some members here, as I doubt if they would keep quiet at the front in view of what is taking place.

It was only through sabotage that the government succeeded in disbanding the International Battalion of Anarchists. Four of our bunch died of starvation in one day. Our arms were rotten, even though the Valencia government has plenty of arms and planes. They know enough not to give arms to the thousands of anarchists on the Aragon front. We could have driven the fascists out of Huesca and Saragossa had we had the aid of the aviation. But the Anarchists form collectives where ever they advance, and these comrades would rather let Franco have those cities that the CNT-FAI.

Fenner Brockway, prominent labour leader in England, exposed the way the communists were treating those boys (volunteers) in the International Brigade. They will not let any of them come back unless they are racketeers of the Sam Scarlett type who will say anything they are told as long as the pork chops are coming in.

The CNT-FAI seems to have lost all the power they had in the army. There is a good fort on the top of a hill overlooking Barcelona which the anarchists captured from the fascists. When I left for the front it was still in the hands of the FAI but when I came back the communists had it. The workers of Spain are against the communists, but the latter don't care. They are making a play for the support of the bourgeoisie and other racketeers. As far as the industries are concerned the CNT has a lot of power, far more than any other organization.

Well, Fellow Worker, one day has elapsed since I wrote the above. Last night I had a head ache and I had to postpone finishing the letter. I am eating good since coming to France.

I believe the British consul is going to send me to England or to Canada. If I wasn't such a wreck I would ship on a British ship for Spain. Wages are double on the Spanish run, and ships are tied up because of a shortage of men. I have been on English ships and none of the crew would speak English.
I met two more men from the International Brigade this morning. They say many Canadians are in prison in Spain.

With best wished for the I.W.W.,

I remain Bill Wood

from One Big Union Monthly, September 1937.

This text taken and slightly edited for spelling by libcom from the Revolt collection.
Originally from the bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library.

To those readers who are already acquainted with Trotsky’s ideas and the publications of his movement, his present book will be a disappointment as it contains little new material. In this review we shall therefore limit ourselves to those portions of the volume which indicate that even in the mind of the party-intellectual changes do take place. But, it must be said, even such changes as Trotsky sees are only matters of emphasis – an effort to adapt his “theoretical line” to the new situation which has obviously contradicted previous postulates of his theory.

Any serious student of Soviet Russia must admit that Trotsky’s factual material gives an accurate picture of the real situation in Russia. It may also be said that, on the whole, he had paid due regard to the high-lights in the history and present policy of the Third International even though he still tends to account for the counter-revolutionary role of that institution and its sponsor, the Soviet state, by referring to the stupidity and viciousness of Stalin and his associates. The subjective “errors” and “crimes” of these leaders seem to play, according to Trotsky, a more significant part in the general development than the objective factor of economic-social necessity.

Hazy History

The farther Trotsky searches back into the past of Bolshevism and Russia, the more meagre are the fruits of his investigation. It is regrettable that the period during which Lenin and Trotsky held sway is dealt with in such a cursory manner as not to admit of a critical evaluation. It should be evident that to explain Stalin’s triumph it is necessary to refer back to pre-Stalinist conditions in Russia and it is precisely these important years that preceded Stalin’s rise which meet with no criticism at the pen of Trotsky. Stalinism can be explained only by way of Bolshevism. If Leninism was the revolutionary stage of Bolshevism, Stalinism is its phase of consolidation. The two are inseparable and a criticism of one is of small value without an analysis of the other.

Trotsky writes:

“Socialism had demonstrated its right to victory, not on the pages of Das Kapital, but in an industrial arena comprising a sixth part of the earth’s surface – not in the language of dialectics, but in the language of steel, cement and electricity.” (p. 8.

This sentence, accepted at its face value, vitiates all criticism of Stalinism for certainly, this “right” of “Socialism” has been demonstrated in the period of Stalin than before. Only with Stalin has this “right” been demonstrated at all “in the industrial arena.” Lenin himself did not think it possible to do more than vindicate the “right” of state capitalism after the Bolshevik seizure of power. Can it be that when Trotsky innocently states that the “term ‘state capitalism’ has the advantage that nobody knows exactly what it means,” he is expressing a hope that his readers are unacquainted with Lenin’s position on this question which dominated the ideas of the Bolsheviks prior to Stalin’s ascendancy?

Lenin, at the eleventh party congress, stated clearly his line: “State capitalism is that form of capitalism which we shall be in a position to restrict to establish its limits; this capitalism is bound up with the state – that is, the workers, the most advanced part of the workers, the vanguard is ourselves. And it is we on whom the nature of this state capitalism will depend.” But us was necessary to camouflage the state capitalist character of Russian economy before the Russian masses. As Bukharin expressed it at a government conference toward the end of 1925:

“If we confess that the enterprises taken over by the State are state capitalist enterprises, if we say this openly, how can we conduct a campaign for a greater output? In factories which are not purely socialistic, the workers will not increase the productivity of their labor.”

This plainly reveals that the Bolsheviks did not think it convenient to tell the workers that Russia is a state capitalist system. Of course the international bourgeoisie understood that they could deal quite as well – if not better – with the One Big Corporation which has Soviet capitalism as they had done formerly with the multitude of individual capitalists.

Frequently Lenin identified state capitalism and socialism…In Towards the Seizure of Power he writes:

“Socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people; by this token it ceases to be a capitalist monopoly.”

In spite of the unmistakable meaning of Lenin’s words Trotsky nevertheless writes that his analysis of the concept of state capitalism “is sufficient to show how absurd the attempts are to identify capitalist state-ism with the soviet system.” (p. 248)

Russian State Capitalism

Trotsky denies the state capitalist character of Russian economy by reducing the term state capitalism to a meaningless phrase. That is, he sees in the concept no more than was seen in it prior to the Russian revolution, or than is seen in it today with reference to the state capitalist tendencies of the fascist countries.

Since it is clear that Russia today is dominated by an economy different from what is implied by the term state capitalism in fascist or general bourgeois society, Trotksy is enabled to win his argument by posing the question to suit his convenience. But a full-fledged state capitalist system is surely something other than state capitalist tendencies, or state enterprises, or even state control in an otherwise bourgeois society. State capitalism as a social system presupposes the expropriation of the individual capitalists, that is, a revolution in property relations.

While the capitalist mode of production grew up historically on the basis of individual ownership of the means of production, the Russian revolution has shown that under certain conditions the capitalist mode of production can continue to exist even though the individual proprietors are eliminated and replaced by a collective exploiting apparatus where factories are not owed by capitalist “X” or “Y” but are “controlled” (i.e. owned) by the State (i.e. the controlling classes).

The Russian revolution changed property relations, replacing individual proprietors by the Bolsheviks and their allies, substituting new “revolutionary” phrases for the old pep slogans, erecting the hammer and sickle over the Kremlin where the Czarist Eagle once stood, but the Bolshevik seizure of power did not change the capitalist mode of production. That is to say, under the Bolsheviks, there remains, as formerly, the system of wage labor and the appropriation by the exploiting class of surplus value which is profit. And, what is done with such profit is exactly what was done with it under the system of individual capitalists, allowing, of course, for the special character of state capitalism.

Such surplus value is distributed according to the needs of the total capital in the interests of further capital accumulation and to safeguard the state capitalist apparatus by increasing its power and prestige.

Only a change in the mode of production can bring about socialism; otherwise, as far as the workers are concerned, they will have only exchanged one set of exploiters for another. Under the conditions of state capitalism the process of accumulation, the development of the productive forces by wage labor is bound up, as in the case of “regular” capitalism, with an increases appropriation of surplus value, with further exploitation, and hence with the development of new classes, of new vested interests in order to continue this process since the working class cannot exploit itself.

This capitalist necessity serves to explain Russian development; no other “line”, no other “policy” could have essentially changed this development. By failing to recognize the state capitalist character of Russia, by regarding its present economy as a transitional step to socialism, Trotsky merely indicates his readiness to precipitate a new state capitalist revolution which must lead to a new Stalinism – another betrayal of the Revolution.

Advocates A New Machine

Trotsky describes the contradictions of the Russian economic situation as follows:

“To the extent that, in contrast to a decaying capitalism, it develops the productive forces, it is preparing the economic basis of socialism. To the extent that, for the benefit of an upper stratum, it carries to more and more extreme expression bourgeois norms of distribution, it is preparing a capitalist restoration. This contrast between forms of property and norms of distribution cannot grow indefinitely. Either the bourgeois norms in one form or another spread to the means of production, or the norms of distribution must be brought into correspondence with the socialist property system” (p. 244)

The solution, according to Trotsky, lies in the replacement of the present parasitical bureaucracy by a non-parasitical apparatus. Nothing else in his opinion needs to be changed as the Soviet economic system is fully qualified to proceed toward socialism in combination with the world-revolutionary trend. This new bureaucracy, essential in Trotsky’s transitional stage, will, according to Trotsky, introduce a greater equality of income. But Trotsky must remember that the present bureaucracy started out with the same idea, originally limiting salaries to Communists, etc. It was the circumstances enveloping the economy which not only enabled but obliged the present bureaucracy to adopt a program of ever increasing economic inequality in its favor. This was in harmony with the need of a faster accumulation to secure the system as a whole. There is no guarantee that a hypothetical Trotskyist bureaucracy would be any different in this respect from Stalin’s machine.

Under the prevailing mode of production Russia cannot develop the productive forces higher than the old familiar brand of capitalism in the western world was able to do. Because it cannot do so its system of distribution can never exceed the norms of capitalist distribution. Such a contradiction between forms of property and norms of distribution as Trotsky envisions does not exist. The Russian method of distribution is in perfect harmony with its state capitalist method of production.

It is only necessary to reflect on the paramount role which Trotsky played in the first thundering years of Bolshevik Russia to understand why he cannot admit that the Bolshevik revolution was only able to change the form of capitalism but was not able to do away with the capitalist form of exploitation. It is the shadow of that period that lies in the way of his understanding.

Transcribed by Juan Conatz.
Minor formatting changes were made from the original.

Once again on November 11 a memorial meeting will be held to commemorate the death of the Chicago Haymarket martyrs-1937 is the fiftieth anniversary and this meeting bids fair to be more widely observed than any of the forty-nine previous ones.

It has taken fifty years to dig the facts of this case out from under the mountains of lies that was heaped upon our martyrs by the exploiters in their attempt to cover up their crime of sending five labor leaders to the gallows. You will hear people say today, as one said to me recently, "What! Calling those Haymarket bomb throwers martyrs? Do you think I believe that? You will have to show me."

Now I am writing this article to "show" all such doubting Thomases.

The Protest Meeting

The Haymarket meeting was held as a protest against the brutality of the police who, during the great strike for the eight-hour work day of 188.6, tried with all the vicious power at their command to defeat the hopes of the workers. At noon on May 3, 1886, the striking workers of the McCormick reaper works were discussing their problems in a, mass meeting near the plant when two patrol wagons loaded with policemen appeared. With drawn clubs the police rushed down upon the workers, clubbing them. Two workers were shot.

The next evening the famous Haymarket meet-ing was held to protest against this and other outrages of the police. This meeting was attended by about 3;000 people, men and women. I myself was there with our two children.

The meeting was perfectly peaceful but when it was about to adjourn a company of police charged upon it and ordered the crowd to disperse. At the onrush of these police, violators of the law they were sworn to uphold, someone—to this day he. is unknown—hurled a . bomb into the ranks of the police. Then hell broke loose!

The "Anarchist" Craze

The papers came out next morning with great flare headlines, "The anarchist dynamiters,, bomb-throwers had started a riot and had intended to blow up the city; and but for the courage of the police they would have thrown many more bombs," and so on. They demanded that the leaders be arrested and made examples of.

Six weeks later eight men (our Chicago martyrs) were arraigned in a prejudiced court before a prejudiced judge and a packed jury. They were charged with murder.

Mayor Harrison of Chicago testified for the defense. Here are a few lines from his testimony:

"I went to the meeting for the purpose of dis-persing it should it require my attention, when the meeting was about to adjourn I went to the station (about half a block away) and told Captain Bonfield to send his reserves home, that the meeting was about to adjourn, that the speeches were tame."

But State's Attorney Grinell, pointing to the defendents, said:

"These defendents are, not more guilty than the thousands who follow them; they were selected by the grand jury because they were leaders. Convict them and save our society."

Bailiff Rylance was heard to remark:

"I am managing this case. Those fellows will hang as sure as death. I am selecting men that will compel the defense to waste their challenges, then they will have to take such men as the prosecution wants."

Triumph of Reaction

The trial, so-called, lasted sixty-three days. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty in three hours.

The judge in dismissing the jury-men thanked them for the verdict and told them that carriages were outside to take them home. The capitalists were overjoyed. A sum of $100,000 was paid the jury. The Chicago Tribune on August 20 opened its columns thus:

"The twelve good men and true have rendered a just verdict, let them be generously remembered. Raise a sum of '$100,000 to be paid with the thanks of a grateful public."

When the march to the gallows was begun all the men showed remarkable courage without the slightest tinge of bravado. Parsons was wonderfully composed. The moment his feet touched the gal-lows he seemed to lose his identity . . . "No tragedian ever made a more marvelous presentation of a self-chosen part," a capitalist paper reported.

On that gloomy morning of November 11, 1887, I took our two little children to the jail to bid my beloved husband farewell. I found the jail roped off with heavy cables. Policemen with pistols walked in the inclosure.

I asked them to allow us to go to our loved one before they murdered him. They said nothing.

Then I said, "Let these children bid their father goodby, let them receive his blessing. They can do no harm."

In a few minutes a patrol wagon drove up and we were locked up in a police station while the hellish deed was done.

Oh, Misery, I have drunk thy cup of sorrow to its dregs but I am still a rebel.

Originally appeared in The One Big Union Monthly (November 1937)