The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 26, 1924, Page 8

By EARL R. BROWDER. Workers are against war, all work- ers, conservative arid revolutionary. But the working class finds itself, whenever the capitalists wish to fight out a quarrel with those of another country about markets, swept into the great war fever that grips the land on such occasions. How is this contradiction brought about? The explanation is to a great extent to be found in the skilled use of the workers’ own organizations to break down their resistance to war, and then deliver them to the war appara- tus. The trade unions are among the principal war machines of the capi- talist class. My first experience that brought this home vividly to me, and which will serve as an illustration, was in the early days of 1917, when the Unit- ed States was being shoved, against the will of the masses of the workers, surely—into the world war. At that time I was president of a small local union in a mid-western city, and a delegate to the Central Labor Coun- cil. The overwhelming sentiment of the union men was hotly against par- ticipation in imperialistic war. This was expressed in the fall of 1916, for example, by the adoption of a reso- lution denouncing the invasion of Mexico by American troops, and call- ing upon union men to take action to stop it. But the trade union bureaucracy got to work. Swiftly and with preci- sion, and evidently working with un- limited funds, it began to mobilize the militaristically inclined, crush those who led the opposition, and set up its active nuclei in every union and council to prepare the war fever. One of the first agents of the war- mongers to come into this particular city from the seat of war, Washing- ton, was George L. Berry, since “Major,” breathing peace from one nostril and fire from the other. He organized the local Heutenants of the drive, and taught them the technique ef the thing — “talk peace all the time, but class peace, and scare ’em to death of the Germans.” Within another month the Berrys of America had prepared the ground in the unions. Then Gompers called the conference of the heads of the various International Unions that is- sued the infamous declaration pledg- ing the unions to war. The machinery to put this declara- tion into effect had been carefully established. All organizers and offi- cials of the unions had been called into Washington and coached. They swarmed out over the country with commissions to recruit skilled work- ers for war industry at unheard of wages. They told of the immense earnings to be made by “going along,” and how anyone who bucked the game would be broken. They argued that the unions would be destroyed if they did not co-operate, while if they went along, they would prevent conscription, alleviate abuses, ensure a “just peace” and an early one. And above all, they had lots of cash with them. Money was cheap and plenti- ful for key men in the unions. We all know the result. The Amer- ican Federation of Labor became one of the most important war machines in the country. The only promise that was kept was for the high wag- es—the others were quickly forgot- ten as unnecessary. The unions were corrupted, delivered to the govern- ment, swamped with a flood of inex- perienced members, and organically attached to the official war machine— the Department of War and the De- partment of Justice. International union offices sent out letters to all local union secretaries and présidents, appointing them as agents of ‘the goyernment, f or the special purpose of reporting all “disloyal” activities such as_ strike agitation, opposition to conscription, etc. Union machinery became a great Liberty Bond selling agency. All who gave opposition to turning the unions into war machinery found themselves in prison on short notice and were soon forgotten, Trade Unions as War Machines AGAIN THE BUGLE BLOWS! - Experience of this kind in America was more crude but along the same lines as in Europe. We but repeated in a rougher manner what had oc- curred in Germany, England, France, Belgium, in 1914. In every country it had been the same—the trade un- ions had been turned into govern- ment-controlled machines for the making of war. Yet the members of these unions were all against war! This helplessness of the trade un- ion movement in the face of an unde- sired war, is but the reflection of the intellectual helplessness of the work- ers before the bourgeois system of ideas, imposed upon them by the schools, the press, the very teachings of the union leaders, journals, and socialist parties. The unions could not prevent war, because they were under the ideological control of the war-makers, the capitalist class. They were infested with agents of capital- ism, whom they could not recognize and drive out because the workers themselves were not class-conscious, and did not have a working-class me- thod of thinking, a working class out- look upon the world. That is why it was possible for the international trade union movement to fly apart at the call of war, and each labor movement rally to its re- spective government, ready at the word of command to slaughter the fellow workers who, but a day before, had been joined supposedly in work- ing-class solidarity. > That is why Karl Legien, chairman of the trade union international or- ganization, could proclaim from his office that the cause of Germany was “just and sacred.” That is why Hu- ber, of Austria, could throw the trade unions of that country into the war. That is why Jouhaux of France, could betray the revolutionary French workers to the war machinery of that country. Because the masses of workers were hypnotized by the preachings of class collaboration, by bourgeois ideas of “fatherland” and patriotism, by false and middle-class pacifism, they were victims of the most horrible slaughter the world has seen, . There is no royal road to peace. The workers of the world do not de- sire to kill one another, but they shrink back, under the hypocritical and cowardly influence of their mis- ‘By Robert Minor. “Se leaders, from making war upon the source of war—the capitalist system and the domination of the _ bour- geoisie. Another war will surely come, and again the trade unions will be made into war machines, unless and until the masses break thru the doctrine of collaboration with the war-making capitalist class and, in its place, launch a struggle to the death against the entire capitalist system. There is but one way to fight against war, and that is to fight against the cause of war—the capi- talists. This struggle will, due to the treachery of the bureaucrats and so- cialists, fail in most if not all coun- tries, to prevent the imperialist war now threatening breaks upon the world. And then the task will be to continue the same fight, using the op- portunity of the arming of ‘ masses of workers, in conjunction with the trade union struggle in industry, to turn the imperialist war into the civil war against the capitalist system. History tells us that this is the only road to the workers’ society, to the abolition of war, to the freeing of the workers from exploitation. EXPERIMENTING WITH THE DEATH RAY.