Chapter Nineteen ‘A Victory of Imperialism’ (10 November 1904) Julian B. Marchlewski (Karski)

This article by Marchlewski-Karski is remarkable for its emphasis on the creation of a conservative labour-aristocracy as a result of imperialism – an idea he probably took, as Lenin did later, from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel De Leon, an Ameri- can socialist who famously called the American Federation of Labor leaders ‘labor lieutenants of the capitalist class’.

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‘A Victory of Imperialism’1

As expected, the presidential elections in the United States of America resulted in a splendid victory for [Theodore] Roosevelt. He obtained a larger major- ity than any of his predecessors. Voter turnout was also the highest in the history of the United States: the number of voters surpassed 14 million. And yet the excitement was not particularly great in America or anywhere else in the world. Only in , where the capitalist camorra established a gruesome reign of terror a year ago, and where dynamite and revolvers in the hands of ‘Pinkerton detectives’ are

1. Marchlewski 1904b, reprinted in Marchlewski 1978, pp. 56–8. 310 • Julian B. Marchlewski (Karski) constantly imposing new sacrifices on the workers – only there and in Ken- tucky did the elections lead to bloodshed and human sacrifices.2 Everywhere else, they took place quite peacefully, and, even in New York, the announce- ment of the electoral result did not produce special disturbances. We have already referred to that phenomenon and explained that this time nothing substantial was really at stake in the election. The decision between Roosevelt and [Alton] Parker was merely a question of choosing between whole- and half-hearted imperialism. Despite all the Democratic proclama- tions, imperialism itself was no longer in question. And, in the interest of historical progress, it is certainly preferable that whole-hearted imperialism should be raised along with Roosevelt to the presidential chair. Imperialism means historical progress insofar as it is the political expres- sion of a more developed form of capitalism, and, in this sense – indeed, only in this sense – it is also to be welcomed by the working class. In the political field, imperialism gives as sharp an expression to robbery of the people as the trusts do in the economic field, and it is no coincidence that the development of politics into imperialism was accompanied by the development of indus- try into the trust-system. The connection between the two developments is especially clear in America, and Roosevelt’s significance lies in the fact that both tendencies meet in his person. One should not be misled by his tirades against the trusts. They belong to his profession; if one does not take the field against trusts at American meetings, he does not stand a chance of making a

2. [The incidents usually referred to as the Colorado Labor Wars involved a struggle between the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) and the mine-operators, particu- larly the Cripple Creek Mine-Owners’ Association, during the years 1903–5. A WFM drive for the eight-hour day, supported by a majority vote of Colorado citizens, was thwarted first by the judiciary and then by the state government. In the summer of 1903, the WFM called for a sympathy-strike among miners to support a smelter work- ers’ strike for an eight-hour day. By the end of October, the call for action at the mining town of Cripple Creek succeeded, and operations in the gold-mines ground to a halt. Eager to resume mining and break the union, the mine-owners turned to Governor Peabody, who on 23 November 1903, sent the state militia into Cripple Creek to crush the union. Soldiers rounded up union-members and sympathisers, including the entire staff of a pro-union newspaper, and imprisoned them without charges. In June 1904, a WFM member, Harry Orchard, blew up a railroad-station, killing 13 strike-breakers. This turned public opinion against the union, and the mine-owners were able to arrest and deport the majority of WFM-leaders. By midsummer the strike was over, but the WFM did not die as a result of the Colorado Labor-Wars. A number of WFM-miners and leaders, such as William ‘Big Bill’ Haywood, travelled to Chicago in June 1905 to help launch the Industrial Workers of the World.]