The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 1, 1929, Page 9

| Let International May Day Be Day of Class Struggle! si URGES WORLD MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL ere ote - ——————————————— — — - ei = zy aaa o: ve r NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MAY "1, sin MAY DAY EDITION *, TNO SECTIONS SECTION TWO Worke ¥ yer” Entered as second-clans matigy at the Post Office at Ne w York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Long Live May Day! Down With War'! Long Live the USSR! MAY DAY 1929 MANIFESTO OF THI THE EXECUTIVE COM- MITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES AND OPPRESSED COLONIAL PEOPLES! apis is the fortieth time that the international proletariat will celebrate May Day, but this time it will celebrate it as a day of militant internation! demontsrations of the workers under extraordinary conditions. These conditions lend the May Day demonstrations a profound revolutionary significance. 1% Just as on the eve of the war of 1914, there is again the smell of gun powder in the air. Fascist reaction is raging, and capitalism is seeking to deprive the working class of its gains. The exploitation of the working class in this period of capitalist rationalization assumes a monstrous character. Millions of unemployed are filling the towns. The pauperiza- tion of the colonial peasantry assumes unprecedented dimen- sions, At the same time the wave of resistance on the part of the toilers is constantly rising. One class is arrayed against another. The movement of the proletariat and the oppressed colonial peoples is approaching a turning point in history. Never has the treacherous character of the policy of the Second International been so obvious when the new revolu- tionary wave is rising. Never in history has a class been so cynically and systematically betrayed as the proletariat by the Second International during and after the war. The workers’ idea of international brotherhood is replaced by the call for fratricidal struggle among the workers, the class struggle by cooperation with the bourgeoisie, the call for revolution by an active counter-revolutionary struggle against it ,the task of overthrowing the capitalist order by efforts to rescue and strengthen it. The workers cannot take a single victorious revolutionary stride wtihqut stepping over the body of the Second International, without breaking its opposi- tion to the labor movement, without realizing the full signi-+ fieance of the betrayal of the Second International. Workers and oppressed colonial peoples, the nefarious work of the international social democracy after the war must be brought before your merciless judgment. ee: « OU were told that the war of 1914-18 would be the last war and that it would be followed by the golden age of peace among peoples. All your hatred of war, all your noblest feelings of international solidarity, all your indignation at the barbarous system of capitalism has been used by the Second International in order to enable the bourgeoisie to hold mil- lions of workers:under arms for more than four years. If the war of 1914-18 did not end in a workers’ revolu- tion, if capitalism succeeded in emerging, although seriously wounded, from the post-war crisis, this is entirely due to the authority of the Second International, the confidence of the masses in it, being placed at the service of the military staffs, being made the instrument of the policy of the international stock exchange which plunged the nations under its rule into a mad sanguinary carnage. No language is strong enough to express the crime which was committed by the staff of the Second International against the millions of workers who followed it during the war. They did not save the future generations from new wars. By their very treachery they even prepared the ground for a war for world hegemony be- tween the United States and Great Britain which will be morc disastrous in its consequences. Armaments are growing, armies are being mechanized, the air, the seas and the land are becoming theatres of war, just as was the case on the eve of 1914. The Pacific Ocean is about to become a bloody ocean. A catastrophe is com- pared with which the war of 1914-18 with its wholesale carn- age will pale into insignificance. Under the blows of modern instruments of extermination, under the death dealing fumes of poison gas, entire cities will be turned into cemeteries, the difference between the civil populations in the rear and the military front will be obliterated. If there is a force which will delay the outbreak of this world war, it is the fear of the ruling class that the workers will revolt in addition to fear of the existence of the Soviet Union. To the oppressed of the world, the first labor republic is like a shining star surrounded by clouds of hatred on the part of the executioners of the toilers. The international bourgeoisie wants to wipe the Union of Socialist Soviet Re- public off the face of the earth so as to have a free hand in the redivision of the worid. Th bayonets of its vassals— Poland, Roumania and the Baltic states are directed against the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. In order to smite the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics in Central Asia, Great Britain organizes a coup d’etat in Afghanistan. The capitalist world prepares and organizes a war against the Soviet Union before any other war, because only by break- ing the resistance of the toilers will it be able to start a new world war, for the existence of the Soviet Union constitutes a mortal danger to the capitalist world. * * * ‘OU were told that at the end of the war the nations will disarm. What a mockery these promises are in the face of the fact before us! Under thecloak of pacifism and dis- armament, the ruling classes, by depriving the toilers of arms (Continued on Page Five) \ stitt