The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 17, 1931, Page 8

REVOLUTIONARY Werke 1 T. INTO “THE (Co [3 Hans GIVE THE LAND INTO THE Of THOSE- WHOLABOR ON BFACTORIES AAR BANK R ReVoLuTIONARY WoRKs6r_ “LENIN’S LETTER TO THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS (Continued from Page 1) civil war in Russia, theuch it facing a far greater task, the work of abolishing capitalist } and overthrowing the rule bourgeoisie. The American workir not follow the lead o geoisie. It will ge with the bourgeoisi of the A a this confidence, We are accused of devastation upon R it that makes es accusations? The train-bea of the bour- geoisie, of that same _ bourgeoi that almost completely destroyed | the culture of Europe, that has | dragged the whole continent back to barbarism, that has brought | hunger and destruction to the world. The bourgeoisie now de- mands that we find a differen: basis for our revolution than that of de- struction, that we shall not build it up upon the ruins of war, with human beings degraded and brutal- ized by years of warfare. O, how human, geoisie! Its servants charge us with the use of terroristic methods.... Have the English forgotten their 1649, Wage-s of the The history ives me j state, it became our duty Net APROP AFAIK Io Tae } RICH UANTIR THe CHIL OCF ALL ate Pe Seats tAVE RECEIVED FAMILIES four REevoLunion. VEBABLE IF IY 5 NOPAFRA iD OF IVSELG IF IT Eetteusrs & a spe. ULL to quell resistance of the We are proud that we have We the done. it, and we are doing it. ;only regret that we did not do it at the beginning, with sufficient | firmness and decision. We realize that the mad resist- |ance of the bourgeoisie against the | socialist revolution in all countries is unavoidable. We know too, that with the development of this rev- olution, this resistance will grow. | But the proletariat will break down | | this resistance and ,of its struggle against the bour- in the course geoisie the proletariat will finally become ripe for victory and power. Let the corrupt bourgecis press trumpet every mistake that is made exploiting | of the laboring masses. For only through these mistakes can the ; workers and peasants learn to or- ganize their new existence, to get xlong without the capitalist class. | Only thus will they be able to blaze | their way through thousands of hin- drances tc victorious socialism. Mistakes are being made by’ our peasants who, at one stroke, in the | night from October 25 to October (Russian calendar), 1917, did jaway with all private ownership of land, and are now struggling, from |month to month, under the great- lest difficulties, to correct their own | mistakes, trying to solve in practice ;the most difficult problems of or- | ganizing a. new social state, fighting , against profiteers to secure the pos- | 9¢ L by our revolution out into the world. | session of the land for the worker We are not afraid of our mistakes. | instead of for the speculator, to The beginning of the revolution has | carry on agricultural production un- how just is this bour- | the French their 1793? Terror was just and justified: when it was em- ployed by the bourgeoisie for its own purposes against feudal do- mination. But terror becomes crim- inal when workingmen and poverty stricken peasants dare to use it against the bourgeoisie. Terror was just and justified when it was used to put one exploiting minority in the place of another. But ter- ror becomes horrible and criminal when it is used to abolish all ex- ploiting minorities, when it is em- ployed im the cause of the actual majority, in the cause of the pro- letariat and the semi-proletariat, of the working class and the poor peasantry. The bourgeoisie of international imperialism has succeeded in slaughtering 10 millions, in crip- pling 20 millions in its war. Should our war, the war of the oppressed and the exploited, against oppres- sors and exploiters cost a half or & whole million victims in all coun- tries, the would still maintain that the victims of the world war died a righteous death, that those of the civil war were sacrificed for a criminal cause. But the proletariat, even now, in the midst of the horrors of war, is: lee-ning the great truth that all re blutions teach, the truth that. has been handed down to us by our best teachers, the founders fo mod- Prom them we have learned that a successful revolution (is inconceivable unless it breaks the resistance of the exploiting class. When the workers and the laboring peasaxts took hold of the powers of not sanctified humanity. It is not | to be expected that the working class which has been exploited and | forcibly held down by the clutches | of want, of ignorance and degrada- tion for centuries should conduct its revolution without mistakes. The | dead body of bourgeois society can- not simply be put into.a coffin and buried. It rots in our midst, poisons the air we breath, pollutes our lives, clings to the new, the fresh, the living with a thousand threads and tendrils of old customs, of death and decay. But for every hundred of our mistakes that are heralded into the world by the bourgeoisie and its sycophants, there are ten thousand great. deeds of heroism, greater and more heroic beeause they seem so simple and unpretentious, because they take place in the every-day life der a system of communist farming on a large scale. Mistakes are being made by our workmen in their revolutionary ac- tivity, who, in a few short months, have placed practically all of the larger factories and works under state ownership, and are now learn- ing, from day to day, under the ereatest difficulties, to conduct the management of entire industries, to reorganize industries already organ- ized, to overcome the deadly resist- ance of laziness and middle-class reaction and egotism. Stone upon stone they are building the founda- tion for a new social community, the self-discipline of labor, the new rule of the labor organizations of the working, class over their mem- Mistakes are being made in their revolutionary activity by the Sov- |} deeds of people who are not in the | masses. of the factory districts or in seclud- | iets which were first created in 1905 ed villages, because they are the|by the gigantic upheaval of the The Workmen’s and Peas- habit of proclaiming their every} ants‘ Soviets are a new type of suecess to the world, who have no | state, a new highest form of dem- opportunity to dorso. ocracy, a particular form of the But even if the contrary were| dictatorship of the proletariat, a true—I know, of course, that this | mode of conducting the business of is not so—but even if we had com-/the state without ‘the bourgeoisie mitted 10,000 mistakes to every 100 | and against the bourgeoisie. For wise and righteous deeds, yes, even | the first time democracy is placed then our revolution would be great /at the service of the masses, of the and invincible. And it will go down | workers, and ceases to be democracy in the history of the world as/for the rich, as it is, in the last triumphant. For the first time im | analysis, in all capitalist, yes, in all history of the not the | democratic republics. For the first. ority, not rich and | time the masses of the people, in a edueated, the real masses, | nation of many hundred millions, e majority of the working | are fulfilling the task of realiz- up @ new |ing the dictatorship of the proletar- most dif-|iat and the semi-proletariat, with- question of organiza- | out which socialism is not to be ef their own experience. thought of. Bvery mistake that is made in this} Let incurable pedants, crammed work, in this honestly conscientious | full of bourgeois democratic and cooperation of ten million plain} parliamentary prejudices, workingmen and peasants in the| their heads gravely over our Sov- re-creation af thetr entire lives— |fiets, let them deplore the fact that every such mistake i¢ worth thou- | we have no direct elections. sands and millions of “faultless” | people have forgotten nothing, have of the exploiting mimority | learned nothing in the great up- witting and taking advantage | heaval of 1914-1918. The combina- PRRLE i H i 5 a tion of the dictatorship of the pro- letariat with the new democracy of | the proletariat, of civil war with the widest application of the masses ; to political problems, such a com- bination canot be achieved in a day, cannot be forced into the battered | modes of a formal parliamentary democratism. In the Soviet Rep- ublic there arises before us a new world, the world of Socialism. Such a world cannot be materialized as if by magic, complete in every de- tail, as Minerva sprang from Ju- | piter’s head. While the old bourgeois demo- cratic constitutions for instance, proclaim formal equality and the right of free assemblage, the con- stitution of the Soviet Republic re, udiates the hypocrisy of a for- mal equality of all human beings. When the bourgeois republicanism overturned feudal thrones, they did not recognize the rules of formal equality of monarchists. Since we here are concerned with the task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie, only fools or traitors will insist on the formal equality of the bour- geoisie. The right of free assemlage is not worth an iota to the work- man and to the peasant when all better. meeting places are in. the hands of the bourgeoisie. Our Sov- iets have taken over all usable buildings in the cities and towns out of the hands of the rich and have placed them at the disposal of the workmen and peasants for meeting and organization purposes. That is how our right of assemblage looks—for the workers. That is the meaning and content of our Sov- iet, of our socialist constitution. And for this reason we are all firmly convinced that the Soviet Republic, whatever misfortune may still lie in store for it, is uncon- querable. It is unconquerable because every blow that comes from, the powers of madly raging imperialism, every new attack by the international bourgeoisie will bring mew, and hitherto unaffected strata of work- ingmen and peasants into the fight, will educate them at the cost of the greatest sacrifice, making them hard as steel, awakening a new heroism in the masses. We kriow that it may take a long time before help can come from you, comrades, American working- men, for the development of the revolution in the different countries proceeds along various paths, with varying rapidity (how should it be otherwise!). We know full well that the outbreak of the European proletarian revolution may take many weeks to come, quickly as it is ripening in these days. We are ‘Phese | counting on the inevitability of the international. revolution. But that does not mean that we count upon its coming at some definite, nearby — }date. We have experienced two great revolutions in our own coun- try, that of 1905 and that of 1917, and we know that revloutions can come neither at & word of command nov according to prearranged plans, We know that circumstances alone have pushed us, the proletariat of Russia, forward, that we have reached this new stage in the so- cial life of the world not- because of our superiority but because of the peculiarly reactionary character of Russia. But until the cutbreak of the international revolution, revo- lutions in individual countries may still meet with a number of serie ous setbacks and overthrows. And yet we are certain that we are invincible, for humanity will not emerge from this imperialistic maS$acre broken in spirit, it will triumph. Ours was the first coun- try to break the chains of imper- ialistic warfare. We broke them with the greatest sacrifice, but they are broken. We stand outside of im-< perialistic duties and considerations, we have raised the banner of the fight for the conrplete overthrow of imperialism over the world. We are in a beleaguered fortress, so long as no other international secialist revolution comes to our assistance with its armies. But these armies exist, they are stronge er than ours, they grow, they strive, they become more invincible the longer imperialism with its brutali- ties continues. Workingmen the world over are breaking with their betrayers, with their Gompers and their Scheidemanns. Inevitably la- bor is approaching communistie Bolshevistic tactics, is preparing for the proletarian revolution that alone is capable of preserving cule ture and humanity from destruce tion. We are invincible. The pro letarian revolution is invincible, GO OVER AnD | D ESTROY THAT. “ FeLLow. | o eae ee P - ers iS