The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 16, 1927, Page 8

A Lesson for the Italian Workers 7 view of the impossibility of continuing union activities under fascism, the executive of the Italian General Confederation of Labor decided on the 4th of January to liquidate the confederation. On the 16th of January a meeting of the former leaders of the confederation, consisting @f d’Ar- ragona, Rigola, Azzimonti, Reina, Maglione and Colombino, signed a document, which was nothing less than the capitulation of the reformist leaders of the G. C. L. to fascism. This document corains in it recognition of the principle of class collabora- tion, as the fascists understand it, and an accept- ance of the fascist social legislation as a “daring experiment” deserving of support. Finally, the authors of this statement recognize the necessity. to revise their program, excluding from it all “extra program ballast” and express their readiness to put their long experience at the service of the fascists in their work of preparing the masses for the “spiritual and concrete adoption” of fascist syn- dicalism. This statement is far from being an act of treason on the part of few reformists. It is the logical conclusion to the G. C. L.’s behavior for the last years. Even before the fascists took power, the Italian reformists did not show sufficient willingness to struggle with them. They looked on fascism as a temporary phenomenon and retaliated to the terror of the fascist bands with agreements and recon- ciliations, which only helped to strengthen fascism. After Mussolini seized power, the G. C. L. leaders did not refuse to treat with him on the question of - their participation in the government. Thé history of the G. C. L. for the last years is full of examples of either direct going over of its most active workers to fascism or of resigning work in the G. C. L. for “nersonal reasoris.”* The only “practical” work of the leaders of the G. C. L. reduced itself to the struggle with the revolutionary elements in the unions to the liquidation of oppositional organiza- tions and to the changing of democratic forms of union work. In general the reformists refused to take any action which could be regarded as inimical to fascism. The result of such a policy was that the work- ing masses more and more turned away from the G. C. L. The G. C. L. leaders by no means set themselves the task of widening their trade union cadres. Their task was to retain, in conserved form, so to say, the G. C. L. apparatus, They prized the G. C. L. as an old firm, which could be used as a means of getting a firm hold upon the labor movement of Italy when a political enlivening took place in the country. But present-day events in Italy place before the working class the following dilemma: either strug- gle, or be reduced to serfdom and debasement. The better elements of the working class began to unite and set up the united front without the complicity of the reformist leaders. In the factories and shops, in the towns and villages, unity and agitation com- mittees were set up on the initiative of the Com- munist Party, which were to prepare the ground for the setting up of the labor organizations broken by the fascists (and to a certain degree, by the - veformist leaders themselves), and to prepare the working class for the struggle against fascism. A series of illegal conferences were carried through with great success by these committees. The workers’ delegations to the U. S. S. R. and the campaign of solidarity with the British miners éar- ried through the Communist Party, clearly showed that the working class has outgrown the reformist leaders: that the reformists are able to retain the leadership of the G. C. L. in spite of the small union membership only because they arbitrarily changed the rules and structure of the G. C. L. and carried through despotic fascist methods of managing the anions. The last wave of fascist reaction, which washed away the remains of legality, placed a dilemma be- fore the reformists: either to go with the masses into dangers and risks, not hesitating before illegal underground work, or to get off the scene. They preferred to go: some to work for fascism, others abroad, to serve Amsterdam or the. left bloc in ¥rance. The first bring their new masters their many years’ experience and readiness to work to ce-educate the masses in the spirit of fascist syn- diealism; the second bring Amsterdam and the left bloe—the G. C. L, firm. This firm is to help the Amsterdamites of all countries where there is any considerable numbers of. Italian immigrant workers, to enroll the latter in the reformist unions. But the traitors and deserters of the Italian G. Cc. L. are reckoning without their masters. The G. C. L. belongs to the Italian proletariat and not to the reformist leaders. At home and abroad the Italian militant work- ers will show up the efforts of the fascists and re- formists to use the name of the G. C. L. and the “many years of experience” of its dishonest leaders against the interests of the working class. They will not forget that’invaluable lesson taught by the yeformists. Having freed themselves from the war- denship of the reformists, having thrown overboard the ballast. of the reformist illusions, the Italian working class will march bravely, together with the revolutionary workers of ll countries. to tho strug. gle with the bourgeois-fascist Mee HARBOR ALLEN COMES BACK I’ve just read Charles Ashleigh’s “Correcting the American Mercury” in The DAILY WORKER Maga- zine Section of April 9th. ‘He did ‘a neat job in re- moving my hide for the Flynn article. I object only to this: Ashleigh says that for a revolutionist to write such an article is indecent and _ dishonest. He repeatedly calls me a liar. The article was written more than a year ago. At that time I was not a revolutionist or a radical and had never written for any radical publication. I was a dissat- isfied liberal with vague radical leanings. I had just come to New York after living an isolated life in the north and wandering aimlessly through Europe. About the labor movement I knew nothing. Then I met Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, heard about her life from friends, liked her immensely, and wrote the article, It was meant to be frankly romantic and as honest as I knew how. I read up in newspapers on Miss Flynn’s life and talked to her friends about her” There were factions in the I. W. W. machine, as everybody knows; and I blundered into one fac- tion. Sinee that time I’ve become friends with a number of Wobblies and heard several versions of the same incidents. I may have been a damned fool in marching brazenly into this quagmire, especially since, as Ash- leigh perceives, I knew nothing about the internal politics of the I. W. W. and little about strikes. But I wasn’t a deliberate liar and I wasn’t a deliberate charlatan. Above all, I wasn’tha renegade radical. 1 was a liberal, I thought I was “independent,” “above parties.” Like most liberals, I was interested in personalities, Elizabeth Gurley Flyun’s person- ality appealed to me. I intended to write solely about her and found myself pulled into a movement with a long, intricate history. I didn’t even know what I had stepped into. I was out to write a piece of romantic journalism about “Labor’s Joan of Arc,” the original title before the Mercury editors doctored up the article; and it was months before I‘knew the blunders I had made. This doesn’t excuse the stupidities and mistakes. It does clear me of the charge of treason brought by Ashleigh. There are a hundred reasons why I regret the cle, not the least of which is my re- spect for Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. The only good that came of it—purely personal—was my being drawn into the radical movement. In the intervening year I’ve gone through an enormous change. The Flynn article, bad step as it was, was the first step in this transition, : “HARBOR ALLEN. — By C. RAMINGO THE ABORIGINES OF AMERICA Wiex the first European explorers disembarked on the American continent, they found it already populated by a race which they thought inferior because the Scriptures did not mention this indigen- ous people. Froni then on, this curious conception justified in the eyes of the Europeans, the slavery and even the destruction of the American race. A papal bull was necessary to prove that the Red Skins were men. Before long a biblical origin was found for this newly discovered race. Certain people thought them to be the descendants of Magog or of the tribes driven from Canaan by Joshua. Only at the beginning of the 19th century were scientific theories formulated as to the origin of this indigenous .people of America. Le Francais Quatrefages were the first to maintain that the race of Red Skins came, at least in part, from the islands of.the Pacific. Today many scholars share this opin- ion, but they believe that the Melanesians and the Polynesians inhabited only a part of America—-while the northeast of Asia contributed, a much more . important part of the emigration which was to in- habit the New World. AH scholars are in &greement on tne idea that the Ked. Skins came to America comparatively re- cently, There have never been found sure proofs of his presence in this country at a relatively dis- tant period, not even traces similar to those which the rrchistoric men ‘have left in the alluvions of rivers and the caves of France. His culture, his industry, and even his physical characteristics huve changed slightly since his arrival in America. ° To which race does the Red Skin belong? The brown color of his skin, his black hair, his high cheek bones, are characteristics which show a lose proximity to the brownish yellow branch of human- ity which beam 7 the Mongolians, the Malays, the Eskimos, a majority of the Chinese, the Japanese, the Thibetans and the indffenous tribes of Siberia. Even today, spread across all of Orfental Asia there can be found types of. men identica! to the most characteristic types of Red Skins in Anierica. We can therefore conelude, that in all probability, the original Americans were not born on the Amer- ican continent, but they represent a branch of the Yellow race of Oriental Asia, who came to America probably in large numbers by way of Bering Strait, and into an epoch in whieh the physical evolution of the human being had already reached the stage of modern man.-—From “L’Humanite,” Murch 9, 1927. (Translated by: PARE Fees VOW ERS p,