=========== January 1941 our • 0- erna lona WORLD WAR 11-1940-41 1. Collapse of Bourgeois Democracy By George Stern 2. March of Military Events By Joseph Hansen 3. U.S. Imperialism Grasps Its Destiny By William F. Warde 4. The Crisis in the Soviet Union By John G. Wright A NEW GREAT WRITER • . By Leon Trotsky OUR LENIN . • . The Editors .================Twenty Centl weeks - of - the - APPEAL - and - a. - copy - of - F,. I. - for - 250. Manager·s Column FOURTH INTERNATIONAL campaign. That way we get the I vblished by the F01trth InternationaZ Publishing Association F. I. into APPEAL buyers' hands. We hope to build up a We hope the speed and reg­ Volume II January 1941 No.1 (Whole No.8) F. 1. sale that way." Montana writes: "Had good luck this time ularity with which recent suc­ 116 University Place, New York, N. Y. Telephone: .AilI'ODQUI.n "854.1. cessive issues of FOURTH IN. Subaorlption rates: $2.00 per year: bUDdIes, 14e for 5 coptee and up. selling the F. 1. It was very Canada and Foretan: '2.110 per year; bood1. 160 for IS copies and up. good. Sold three to Stalinists; TERNATIONAL have come off Entered as second-clasa matter Kay 20, 19,m, at the post oflfice at New the press haVEl not been lost upon York, N. Y., under the Act of Marcb 8. 1879. one of them said the APPE'AL our reading public. The deter­ Editorial Board: and F. 1. were the only revolu­ .TAMES P. CANNON .TOSEPH HANSEN mination of the staff to stabilize ALBERT GOLDMAN FELIX MORROW tionary papers that were left." the publication dates of the ma­ WILUAM F. WAlRDE Philadelphia tells us that it has Bu,"'e" Jlatt.ager : resolved to try the method of gazine has so far borne good and MICHAEL CORT sUbstantial fruit, at a time when house-to-house distribution and the most objective proof of our TABLE OF CONTENTS feels enthusiastic about the pos­ moving upward is to watch our Our Lenin ...................... By The Editors 3 sibilities of extending our circu­ lation there. fellow political publications The Collapse of Bourgeois Democracy steadUy sink. By George Stern ; We rely heavily upon bundle­ Our pride, however, need not order payments to cover our pub­ stop at the mere mechanical ac­ The March of Military Events ... By Joseph Hansen 9 lication costs, and a display or complishment of regular and un­ American Imperialism Grasps Its Manifest Destiny responsibility in this direction interrupted appearance upon the By William P. Warde 14 shown by any city is enough to stands (and this in itself is no The Crisis in the Soviet Union ... By John G. Wright 17 pull us right up out of the dust mean achievement, we assure and set us shining in the sun. you!). Our quality has been the Letter From Natalia Trotsky .................... 24 To the top of the list this time cause for enthusiastic comment Prom the Arsenal of Marxism: go Minneapolis, Toledo and from every part of the world. On the History of the Left Opposition ........ 24 Quakertown, who are paid up to Enthusiastic appreciations of the A New Great Writer ............ By Leon Trotsky 26 date on their bundle accounts content of the magazine as a The Marxist Review of Books: and are seriously attending to whole have been supplemented the business of extending F. 1. ,by "fan letters" to the editors New Light on the Dialectical Theory of Nature circulation in their cities. Four and writers on individual ar­ By John Travis 29 places came through with con­ ticles. The Good Will International ... By Carl O'Shea 30 scientious regularity on their Conditions being what they payments during November and MANAGER'S COLUMN Inside Fronl Cover ~ 267 are in other countries, our co­ December: Chicago, Minneapolis, thinkers in foreign lands have Philadelphia and Milwaukee. had to rely in many instances Chicago ran a way with all hon­ exclusively upon us for informa­ ing working class with the re­ Some parts of the country are ors by remitting a total of $34.50 tion and contact with the world volutionary material carried in alert to the needs and opportu­ in the two months, much of it revolutionary movement. They the columns of FOURTH IN­ nities of the times. Boston says: having been raised by means of await every issue with impati­ TERNATIONAL. If we were "We have been going house-to­ a social affair held specifically ence and it is our policy to sup­ not so violently averse to quota­ house with the magazine to spe­ to find the wherewithal to reduce ply them with ever-increasing tions we would recall right here cial contacts and have been sell­ -its old debt to us. copies of the magazine in recog­ and now that it was Lenin who ing them." Milwaukee reports: nition of our historical respon­ said that the press is the move­ "We are experimenting (and But the medal has another sibility to them and ourselves. ment's best organizer. getting good results) with a five- side, and on it are graven the Despite the dif'nculties and some­ following names: Fresno, Los times even hazards involved, we Angeles, San Diego, San Fran­ still hear from England, Canada, cisco, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Australia, Norway and SW'eden; WRITTEN BY TROTSKY Cleveland, Youngstown, Port­ we learn that the copies of land, Allentown, two Texas ci­ F 0 U R T H INTERNATIONAL Manifesto of the Fourth I nternafional ties, Seattle. These are the ones are passed from hand to hand who have paid just nothing for and occasionally from city to the last two months. These are city to be read with eagerness the ones over whom we sit up and interest. The Imperialisl War nights worrying. If they don't Here in America the recent hop around to the other side of phenomenal development of our and the the medal pretty qu!ckly we brother publication, the weekly shall have to start considering SOCIALIST APPEAL, into a. methods of liquidation. (We mass instrument of agitation Proletarian World Revolution wonder, by the way, as we per­ (an acc9mplishment unique in use the first four names, what the worlq today!) has thrown has happened to that notoriously A 48-page pamphlet on- touchy west-coast pride. And upon our shoulders an enhanced CAUSES OF THE PRESENT WAB responsibility. Where the SO­ with three of the names redo­ BOLE OF U.S. IMPEBIALISM lent of angels and saints!) CIALIST APPEAL, as an agita­ WHAT NAZI WAR SLOGANS REALLY MEAN tional organ, has awakened a BESPONSmILITY OF 2nd & Srd INTERNATIONALS Detroi t heads the list when it hunger in the minds of workers WHAT TO DO NOW! comes to rounding up expired for a knowledge of the technique subscriptions, although we can­ of class action, FOURTH IN­ not be too critical in this rea­ TERNATIONAL must follow A COMPLETE PROGRAM! pect since there has hardly been through with the theoretical time for most of the cities to meat. A CALL TO ACTION! show their stuff on this month's The days through which we So per copy to all branches of the S.W.P. expirations. We do know, how­ live now are the most precious 50 per lingle copy ever, that in the first five days of our entire history and if we of January more subscriptions faU to utilize them to the max­ Published by, the: have come in to the publication imum we will have lost a chance office than normally arrive in for which we shall pay later. SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY the course of half a month. Now as never before we must 116 UNIVEBSITY PLACE NEW YORK, N. Y. meet every need of an awaken- THE MANAGER FOURTH INTERNATIONAL VOLUME II JANUARY 1941 NUMBER 1 Our Lenin By THE EDITORS Our party is organizing Lenin Memorial meetings during And the Lenin that emerges from this Stalinist literature! this month (Lenin died January 21, 1924). These meetings To those who understand anything at all about Lenin's are not rituals; we devote them to presenting the completely place in the Russian Revolution, it is clear how Lenin guided contemporary program of Lenin, the only program which can the whole work of the Bolshevik party. He had a realistic put an end to this war and to all wars. understanding of his leading role. Details, administrative This great task of resuscitating Lenin's program is made tasks, he left to others; his luminous mind surveyed the total­ all the more necessary by the ritualistic pageants which the ity of the process and provided the broader vision which those Stalinists are conducting under the name of HLenin preoccupied with specific functions might lack. He made a Memorial" meetings. Perhaps the best way to describe these sharp distinction between political leadership and adminis­ Stalinist incantations is to recall Lenin's description of what tration. He underlined that distinction, in his Testament-his the Social Democracy did to Marx's program: last letter to the party-by chiding Trotsky for a Ildisposition "During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing to be far too much attracted by the purely administrative side classes have visited relentless persecution on them and received of affairs." This criticism was, at the same time, the greatest their teaching with the most savage hostility, the most furious tribute he could pay Trotsky: he was insisting that Trotsky hatred, the most ruthless campaign of lies and slanders. After must be the kind of political leader that Lenin was. This pro-, their death, attempts are made to tUrn them into harmless icons, found conception of Lenin's was one of his major contribu­ canonise them, and surround their names with a certain halo tions to the theory' of leadership.