-'WORKING CLASS ~gainst 000264 CAPIT LI T CLASS
IS THE MAIN ELECTION ISSUE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY
fLORIDA TlANTlC UNIVERSITY SOCIALIST - LABOR LIBRARY'" COllECTION ELECTION PLATFORM COMMUNIST PARTY U.S.A.
FIVE CENTS .. :: ~ •II iIII ELECTION PLATFORM OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY, U. S. A.
Election day is approaching. A new House of Representatives is to be elected. Part of the United States Senate is to be renewed. Governors, State officials and legislators will be chosen. The Communist Party of the United States enters this election campaign as the only po litical Party of the working class. It presents working class problems with proposals of so lutions as a platform for a united working class political campaign in the elections. The Communist Party organizes the workers for struggle against capitalism. All other Parties support capitalism. Political Parties represent certain economic class interests. Party programs and platforms all embody the demands and aims of these class interests. The demands and aims of all other parties are based on the profit interests of capitalism. The Communist Party alone bases its program and struggle on the interests of the working class. The Communist Party, there fore, aims at the abolition of the profit system, [8] 4 ELECTION PLATFORM OF THE and the consequent abolition of all clasb divisions. "Our Government" is a Capitalist Government Under the capitalist government, the politI cal aims of the working class cannot be realized. The experiences of the workers in their eco· nomic battles prove this. When workers strike for higher wages, courts impose "yello"",, dog" contracts; when workers picket to enforct their demands, judges issue injunctions; when workers defy such arbitrary commands 01 judges, the police enforce them at the point of guns; when workers refuse to accept starvation wages in mass walkouts, troops are mobilized against them; when anti-trust laws are enforced, they are enforced against the workers and their unions; when the working farmers get a Federal Reserve Bank system to secure "cheap credits" they soon find that the Federal Reserve Bank system is only another rope around their necks with the ends of the rope in the hands of big banking capital. Con gress, the law, the courts, the police, the army, in short, the government from the constable to the president are always on the side of the bosses. It is clear therefrom that "our govern ment" is the bosses' government. It is a dic tatorship of the capitalists. To fool the masses, the bosses cover this COMMUNIST PARTY, U. S. A. 5 dictatorship with the veil of democracy. But this democracy is an empty illusion. It allows workers to think, to speak, to write as one pleases--only as long as it also pleases the capitalists. When the capitalists become dis pleased with what we think, speak or write, they simply outlaw our thoughts, our words and acts. Such democracy brought Yetta Stromberg, a 20 year old girl in Los Angeles a sentence of 10 years in the penitentiary f0r conducting a workers' children cau:.p; it con yicted dozens of workers in Pennsylvania for ~edition because they distributed leaflets cal ling for a strike; it sentenced Lil Andrews a 21 year old wvrking g'irl to an Ohitl peniten tiary for five years because sh~ attempted to make a speech; it charges workers in Georgia with treason and demands the penalty of death against them because they attempted to or ganize workers into a union and didn't care whether these workers were black or white; it sent the leaders of the New York Unem ployed demonstration to the Penitentiary with out a jury trial for marching on New Yark streets without police permission; it sent Harry Eisman, a 16 year old schoolboy for years to the Reformatory because he sees in the Boy Scout movement a bosses' propa ganda institution and had the audacity of saying so; it turns the exercise of "free 6 ELECTION PLATFORM OF THE speech" into treason and elevates the police dubs to the supreme law of the land. The workers have nothing to expect from this State and from this government except more oppression. This State and this govern ment are instruments of capitalist rule. Every political struggle in the interest of the workers must have the purpose to defeat and abolish the capitalist State and to replace it with a workers' State which will liquidate all classes and thereby all class rule. That is the aim of the Communist Party. Capitalist Parties and Capitalist Issues I>eceive VVorkers The Communist Party raises this aim against all the capitalist issues of the cam paign. It points out that the Smoot-Hawley tariff does not and cannot relieve or prevent unemployment; but by maintaining monopoly prices it increases the misery of. the unem ployed. It declares that prohibition is a ghastly farce; with service as murderous gang sters against striking workers, and with graft to the "officers of the law" the organized gangs of the underworld are paying the ruling class for their lucrative monopoly in bootlegging. At the same time, the "antis" are directed by brewery capital which craves to coin more profits out of the degredation and degenerative COMMUNIST PARTY, U. S. A. 7 effects of alchoholism which, itself, is caused by capitalism. "Farm Relief" is a siren song with which crafty politicians aim to cover up. the rapid impoverishment of the masses of working farmers; its practical effects are to fur-· ther enslave the farmer to banking capital. Re publicans, Democrats, the American Federa tion of Labor, and Socialists alike have capital as their god and oppression of the masses as their aim. The American Federation of Labor is a tool of the bosses. In the Civic Federation, Matthew Woll is scheming with the heads of the bosses' associations about how to cheat the American workers. The American Federation of Labor is the worst chauvinist war propagandist in America. The American Federation of Labor systematically prevents the organiza tion of the masses of unskilled workers and turns its own affiliated bodies into company unions. Like the bosses, the American Federa-· tion of Labor does nothing for the unemployed and betrays them when they move against its· will. The Socialist Party swears allegiance to. capitalist democracy. It prefers betraying the workers to fighting the capitalist dictatorship. The Socialist Mayor Roan of Milwaukee, Wise., demonstrated this by having a committee of unemployed jailed from three to six months~ ELECTION PLATFORM OF THE
... i COMMUNIST PARTY, U. S. A. 9 The Socialist Mayor Maurer of Reading, Pa., proved it by forbidding collections for striking workers in the streets of Reading, and by pro claiming that the Socialist city administration will protect the interests of every manufac turer in Reading. The Socialist leader Norman Thomas asserted this when he declared that the Socialist Party of America intended to do for America what the Socialist MacDonald had done for Britain. The Reverend Thomas had in mind MacDonald's betrayal of the British miners, his breaking of the recent textile work ers' strike and his mass murder of the starving and exploited Indian workers for the glory of British imperialism and for the profit of the British imperialists. The Socialist Party craves to perform a similar service for Ameri can imperialism and the American imperialists. Against all these Parties and their issues, the Communist Party raises the burning prob lems of the hour. It urges that the workers make their own needs the political issues of the election campaign. A New War Is In the Making The rapid expansion of production at the ex pense of the working class makes the need for new markets for commodities and for newly accumulated capital the major problem of capi talism. This need for new markets creates an 10 ELECTION PLATFORM OF THE increased hunger for colonies. The rulers of all capitalist countries seek a redistribution of the world markets and colonies with a view of increasing their share at the expense of their competitors. The imperialist rulers of the United States and those of Great Britain are in the forefront of this endeavor. The bosses' government in Washington are bent upon the extension of the colonial empire of the United States. This endeavor meets British rivalry and breeds inevitable war. An outspoken imperialist policy in Washington is driving toward this war. Feverish armament building are preparing for it. These war pre parations permeate the political life of the hour. They dominate the official political propaganda in the form of "disarmament" talk. But complete militarization of the na tion, the already decreed enslavement of every working man and woman in case of war, the declaring of strikes in case of war as a trea sonable offense, the feverish building of new battleships, the rapid development and exten sion of war aeronautics and of production of poison gases, the compulsory military training in public schools and colleges are the deeds that accompany and belie all the talks of disarmament. Capitalism knows no remedy against this COMMUNIST PARTY, U. S. A. 11
war danger; on the contrary, capitalism is war danger and even war itself in permanency. Struggle against the people of its colonial possessions as well as attempts at new colonial conquests through a redivision of the world are a necessity for its very existence. For capi talism, the masses as well as the world's re sources are only an object to make profits from. American workers, in the uniform of the American military and naval forces, are fight ing in Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, the Philippines. China, etc. They are fighting only for the in terests and for the possessions of the American bankers, steel, oil and other magnates. 'The American working masses have nothing to gain in these battles. They have their lives, their limbs and their blood to lose. For the masses of workers, the "glory" of the American flag on these battlefields only means death or crippling; it means more profits and power for the capitalists. Patriotism for the masses of . workers under capitalism means only readiness to be cannon fodder; it means more profits and power for the capitalists. Loyalty to, "their" capitalist country means, for the masses of workers, only subordination to the dictates of the capitalists; it means more profits and power for the capitalists. 12 ELECTION PLATFORM OF THE Not Pacifism, But Militancy is the Need of the Hour The Communist Party is not a pacifist or ganization. Its struggle against war is part of its struggle against capitalism itself. The Communists see the only means of aboLishing war in relentless war against and overthrow of capitalism. The Communist Party calls upon the workers to meet the present war danger with an intensive struggle against the rule of the capitalist class. As against the aim of the capitalists to conquer now worlds, we Communists raise the aim of defeating capitalist rule. As against the demand that the workers should defend the interests of the capitalists on the battlefields of a new world war, we Communists call upon the workers to defend their own interests and to defeat capital ism on the battlefields of the class struggle. As against the capitalist call for a victory of "our own" country, we aim at the defeat of our own ruling class. As against the endeavor of the capitalists to secure their victory through civil peace, we aim to secure their defeat in civil war. The Communist Party demands the imme diate unconditional and complete independence of the Philippines, Hawaiian Islands, Haiti, Porto Rico, and all other "insular possessions" COMMUNIST PARTY, U. S. A. 13 of the United States. It demands the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all naval and military forces from these colonies as well as from China, Nicaragua, and all other foreign countries and from all naval and military bases outside of the United States. We demand and fight for the immediate repeal of all laws and plans for militarization of industry in case of war. We fight against the militarization of the public schools and colleges. The Workers Must Support the Soviet Union The war preparations and war propaganda of our capitalists against the Soviet Union are especially intense. Our capitalist government in Washington embraces the fascist govern ment of Mussolini, the oppressor and murderer of the Italian workers; it hailed the absolutist regime of the mass executioner of the Russian workers, the rule of the Czar. But it refuses to recognize the workers' government of Soviet Russia. Every capitalist covers up the miser able wages he pays his workers with a cry about "Moscow agents" whenever his slaves attempt to organize; every political charlatan joins the International of forgers against the Soviet Union; every traitor in the ranks of the labor movement of America sheds public tears about the cruel fate of the poor capitalists in the Soviet Union; every capitalist politician 14 ELECTION PLATFORM OF THE who issues or enforces injunctions against the workers here wails about the absence of de mocracy in the Soviet Union. What about the American democracy? It means liberty only for the few bosses, and none at all for the great mass of workers. Why we prefer the proletarian form of democracy of the Soviet system is because it means liberties for the great majority, for the masses of workers and none for the bosses. Capitalist Dictatorship Oppresses, Proletarian Dictatorship Abolishes Classes The capitalists in America use their dicta torship, their laws, their courts, their police, etc., to keep the masses of workers in their industrial treadmills so that they may con tinue to coin profits out of the workers' sweat and blood. The workers in the Soviet Union use their dictatorship to build a new world, without classes, without exploitation and op pression. They are progressing rapidly on this path. In capitalist America development in the methods of production throws millions of workers on the streets and into misery. In the Soviet Union the development of the methods of production have brought the seven hour day, the five day week, and are establish ing increased economic security for the masses. In capitalist America the parasitic rich live COMMUNIST PA'RTY, U. S. A. 15 in palaces while the workers who have created their wealth and who have lost their health or their limbs or have grown too old in this toil are left to starve. In the Soviet Union, the idle rich were driven from the palaces and the workers who have created all wealth and who have lost their health or their limbs or have grown too old in this toil are living in these palaces. We Communists do not hesitate to declare that we fight for a workers' Soviet government as against the capitalist democracy in America. We know that our capitalist democracy is a capitalist dictatorship against the workers. Our aim is to establish a proletarian dictator ship in America. This dictatorship will na tionalize all industries and banks. It will confiscate all big estates. It will organize pro duction to satisfy the needs of the masses. It will make impossible exploitation and will thereby liquidate all class divisions, establish ing a Communist society. We call upon the workers of the United States to join us in the struggle for this aim. We call upon the workers of the ,United States to help UB defeat the attacks of our bosses' government upon the Soviet Union. We de mand the immediate and unconditil)nal recog nition of the Soviet Government. 16 ELECTION PLATFORM OF THE Capitalism Starves the Workers The masses of workers must fight for a chance to live. Not less than seven million workers are out of jobs in the United States at this moment. To be out of a job means hunger and misery for the worker and his family. The worker depends on wages for a living. He cannot get wages if be doesn't find work. That is the law of capitalism. The jobs which the workers need for a living are owned by the capitalists because they own the factories, mills and mines. The capitalists hire the workers for their factory, mill or mine because in the sale of the products of the work ers' toil they realize a profit. Their constant endeavor is to increase that profit; therefore, they constantly make the workers work faster and at the same time replace as many workers as possible by machinery. The result is that the output of labor is constantly increasing while the number of workers employed and the total wages paid to the workers is steadily decreasing. Consequently, the workers can buy less and less of their product, while they make more and more of them. Products ac cumulate and find no buyers. An economic crisis results. There is too much of every thing-the capitalists call it "over production." To meet this "over production," production is curtailed, factories are shut down, workers are COMMUNIST PARTY, U. S. A. 17 thrown out into the streets in great masses. This impairs still more their ability to consume the superfluity of goods. In other words, be cause there is too much of everything, there fore the workers have to be in need; they have to go hungry, in rags and shelterless because there is too much to eat, too much clothing and too much housing. What is the remedy? We Demand Immediate and Adequate Unem ployment Relief. Capitalism cannot provide a remedy. Cap italism creates the problem and constantly ag gravates it. For the capitalists the crisis be comes a reason for further speed up and ration alization; in other words, instead of providing new jobs for the jobless, they invent- new methods of throwing more workers out of a job. Just plain common sense would suggest that an abundance of commodities means plenty for everybody. But common sense does not guide capitalism. The quest for profit guidell it. Under capitalism today, too much of the necessities of life (Hover production"), causes misery and want. The working class must organize and strug gle for the relief of their misery caused by capitalism. It must demand immediate relief for the unemployed. It must tell the capitalists: 18 ELECTION PLATFORM OF THE "Our only means of livelihood are wages. If capitalism cannot provide us jobs with wages. it must provide us wages without jobs. The capitalists must either give us "Work or Wages:' American capitalism prides itself in having the richest country in the world. All of this wealth is the product of our labor. We say to the capitalists: "The beautiful palaces you live in. we have built; the delicate fabrics in which your ladies promenade the fashionable beaches. we have woven; the glittering jewels with which you bedeck your mistresses. we have mined; all of the necessities of life as well as all of those things which make life more pleasant and luxurious are the products of our toil. You spend billions of dollars to maintain armies, to build battleships. to keep a police force. courts and judges; all for the purpose of defending your possession of all of the riches we have produced. We demand that your State spend some money to guarantee our existence; we demand the immediate creation of an un employment insurance fund. This fund shall be established by means of an immediate capital ievy. It shall be maintained through the col lection of a tax on all profits. This insurance fund shall pay to all unemployed workers full COMMUNIST PARTY. U. S. A. 19 wages sufficient to maintain them and their families. A System of Social Insurance Is Needed. The efforts of the capitalists to produce more and more goods with less and less workers tre mendously increases the e
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Only ltIR81!1l\IR81!1 Picketing led by the new reTolutionarT uniou.uniou8 cancall brenk the back of tltlsthis repttle.reptile. COMMUNIST PARTY, U. S. A. 23 unions, we demand and fight for the right of unrestricted strike and picketing; we demand and fight for the abolition of the vicious medieval chain gang system in the South. W~ call upon the working masses to fight against all attempts at political and economic enslave.. ment of the masses of foreign-born workers through systems of police registration and finger printing of aliens. We demand and fight for the abolition of all capitalist laws in the Southern States that brand propaganda among the workers for organization as "treason" and punish it as a capital offense. We declare that these laws disclose the anti-slavery amend ments in the American constitution as the piece of capitalist hypocrisy it is. We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all claso:; war prisoners. In calling upon the workers to support its fight for these aims, the Communist Party cannot and does not promise to effect these aims through legislative representatives elected at the polls. It points out that only the or ganized mass efforts of the workers them selves can achieve these aims. Anti-Negro Laws Are Most Vicious Anti-Labor Laws Of all the anti-labor legislation throughout the country, the one directed against the Negro 24 ELECTION PLATFORM OF THE masses is the most vicious. The anti-Negro laws throughout are an attempt, on the one hand! to make possible an even more merciless ~xploitation of the Negro section of the work ing class than the exploitation of the working class as a whole; on the other hand, these laws aim to maintain in the minds of the workers themselves the anti-working class ideology of a color line. By this method the capitalists hope to keep the workers divided. As long as they are thus divided, the capitalists can continue to play one section of workers against another. By means of these laws, the land owners in the South maintain the Negro agricultural masses in the South under con ditions of unspeakable misery. By means of these laws the landlords, North and South. extract from the poor Negro masses exhor bitant rents for hovels unfit to live in. Because of these laws, the Negro masses of the South are kept under constant threat of death. This re-establishes their slavery of the pre-eman cipation days in new form. ,I To Stop Lynching, The Rule of the White Bourgeoisie Must Be Ended. The Communist Party declares that the beastly rule of lynching and the witholding of all legal rights from the Negro masses of the COMMUNIST PARTY, U. S. A. 25 South cannot be remedied under the political rule of the white bourgeoisie. The Communist Party therefore demands the right of self determination for the Negro masses in the Southern states. The recent lynching in Texas alone proves that any attempt to stop this out rageous institution of the "white gentlemen" in the South necessitates the overthrow of their political rule. The struggle against race discrimination of any kind, against lynching, against Jim-Crow ism of every description must be the concern of the entire working class of the United States. As long as the bosses succeed in pitting white workers against black, it will be impossible to pit the whole working class against the cap italist class. Support of any form of race pre judice, therefore, is anti-labor and is support of capitalism itself. The Communist Party demands and fights for immediate abolition of all race discrimina tory laws, North and South; it demands and fights for complete social and political equality of the Negro masses; it asks for the support of the whole working class for an active fight against lynching, and for the establishment of the full social and political equality of the Negroes. 26 ELECTION PLATFORM OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY, U. S. A. 27 Capitalist Exploitation of Poor Farmers. Our capitalist masters do not only exploit the masses of workers in industry and on the farm. They also exploit the poor working farmer. The price of the farmer's product is controlled by the world market. This price does not keep pace with the steadily rising monopoly prices of industrial products. Thus the farmer is caught in the capitalist vise, between a necessary cheap selling of what he produces and a dear buying of what he needs. Big capital is systematically tightening this vise. Through marketing and transportation monopoly as well as through usurious mortgage policies capitalism is turning the poor working farmer rapidly into a tenant farmer or a labor er. Capitalism cannot stop this process. Its profit interest accelerate it. Only a political alliance of the poor farmers with the workers of the town and the countryside will create the po litical power to meet this problem. As measures for immediate help to the poor working farmers, the Communist Party de mands and fights for an extended moratorium on all farm loans. It demands the immediate reduction of all shipping rates on farm pro ducts for the original producer. It proposes the immediate suspension of all interest pay ments on farm loans. All taxes of the poor ·28 ELECTION PLATFORM OF THE working farmers shall be remitted. If a short age results it shall be made up by special taxes on rich monster farms. All tenant farmers .and share croppers shall be protected against the interference of the landlords in the mar keting of their own crop. Capitalism Produces Its Own Undertakers The Communist Party challenges the dic tatorship of the bosses. That is why the American capitalists want to liquidate the Communist Party. The Czar of Russia, too, tried to liquidate the Bolshevik Party. That did not save him. The Russian workers, under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, finally liqui dated him and his regime. American capital ism faces the dilemma of its own contradiction, the contradiction between capitalist profit in terests and the interests of the masses. This contradiction will continue to produce enemies of the capitalist system. The capitalists want the workers to slave for long hours and short wages; the workers will continue to fight for long wages and short hours. The capitalists subordinate every consideration to the increase of their profits. The workers will continue to demand the subordination of every considera tion to their welfare. The capitalist govern ment with its criminal syndicalist and similar laws attempts to outlaw anti-capitalist ideas. COMMUNIST PARTY, U. S. A. 29 But the contradictions between the profit in terests of the capitalists and the living interests of the workers produce these outlawed anti capitalist ideas a thousandfold. Thus the economic laws of capitalism produce the rebels which the legal laws of capitalism try to suppress. Only the Organized Forces of the Working Class Can Defeat Capitalism The Communist Party appeals to the work ers to make the election campaign a battlefield for the struggle in their living interests against the profit interests of the bosses. It proposes its platform as the immediate aim of this struggle. It impresses the workers with the imperative necessity of organization. No "benevolent" capitalist will solve the problem of our class. No "friend of labor" will save us. No American Federation of Labor bureaucrat will lift as much as a finger in our interests. No Socialist reform will make the grinding of our bones into profits any more pleasant than it is. Only the organized ranks of our class will free us from the yoke of exploitation. Only strong, formidable, fighting industrial union . will prevent capitalist rationalization from turning into rationalized starvation of the masses. Only united working class political action against the bosses will turn war, the 30 ELECTION PLATFORM OF THE intended grave of millions of our class, into the grave of our oppressor and exploiter, into the grave of capitalism. Only the organized ranks of our own class, led by the revolutionary gen eral staff of the proletariat, led by the Commun ist International, can defeat the dictatorship of the bosses and replace it with a proletarian democracy.
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