The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 27, 1926, Page 7

Buylimet o> THE DAILY WORKER. This Magazine Section Appears Every Saturday In The DAILY WORKER. Second Section! SATURDAY, MARCH 27, 1926 Editor <ep290 The Rights of Workers and Capitalists | ‘our PRE CLOVS RIGHTS IN MEKICAN WORKER'S PRECIOUS RIGHTS IN U.S.A. The A. F. of L. As Our Neighbors See It» (Translated from La Internacional of Buenos ‘Aires, Argentinia.) HE American Federation of Labor of the United States represents In the labor movement the imperialist alms of the governing class. it Ie an organization ideologically bourgeois and conservative thruout and which has distinguished Itself in the world's labor movement as the most \ peactionary. Vf the Yankee bosses had created tho A..F. of L. them . selves they could not have made it more advantageous for their purposes. It-ls so conservative that It even refuses to have anything to do with ~ the conservative trades unlon International of Amsterdam, considering this latter to be too “revolutionary.” This alone should be sufficient to show it up as an instrument of the privileged classes. The bourgeois-like policy of Sam Gompers which Mr, Green is now following, but reflects the thought and life of this reactionary labor federation, In October there was a convention of the A, F, of L. in Atlantic City where various resolutions bearing on the working class movement and genera! situation in Latin-America were taken up, It le well for us to look them over because the A. F, of L. wishes to create for all of Latin. America an organization that will be an exact replica of the North American federation, The”convention, in its usual bureaucratical way of course, dealt with certain intolerable excesses recently committed by Yankee impérialism in the Central and South American countries. Nat- urally the A. F. of L. does not consider these as “excesses nor, were any real anti-imperialist resolutions introduced. The convention satisfiea itself with hybrid agreements and resolutions which have no practical importance and which are intended only to demonstrate to the people of Latin-America that the A. F, of L, is concerned with questions affect. Ing their welfare. It is plain fakery, downright hypocrisy. The U. 8, state department at, Washington would not have proceeded differently, For example, there took place recently in Panama a tenants’ strike which the U. S, troops stationed in that region suppressed in a -bloody fashion. What did the convention of the American Federation of Labor decide to do? First, investigate carefully and thoroly if the Yankee troope had really intervened and why. Second, in case the Yankee military in- tervention was unjustified, to authorize the president of the A. F. of L. to deliver an energetic note of protest to Mr. Coolidge. This is all; right here begins and ends the solidarity of the federation with the Panamanean “ workers. Naturally, the Investigation will drag out over a long period * ef time; the months will (pass and doubtless the functionaries of the A, F. of L. will receive of their colleagues the functionaries of the im- perlatist state, clear and convincing explanations showing that the Ameri- ’an troops intervened against the striking tenants and in the interests _ of the workers and that the Intervention took place at the request of those directly Interested. it will then result that the intervention was not unjustified and that within a year, which time will undoubtedly have _elapsed before the Investigation is completed, there will. no longer be any good reason for sending the aforementioned “energetic” note of protest. If the A. F. of L, were really proletarian—an independent proletarian organization, it would at least have sent an immediate protest from the convention itself against the attacks of Yankee imperialism on the people of Latin-America. But the A, F. of L. could not do this because by so doing it would be betraying its own traditional principles, which are those of favoring the work of the Imperialists, squeiching or distort- Ing all of the protests of labor, This Panama affair Is not the only one that serves to show the methods of the federation In practice. No one denies that in Venezuela (Continued on page two)