-'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.