James P. Cannon

Who Will Prevail?

(January 1933)


Published: The Militant, Vol. VI No. 3, 21 January 1933, p. 1.
Source: PDF supplied by the Riazanov Library Project.
Transcription/Mark-up: Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Public Domain: This work is in the under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Marxists’ Internet Archive/Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors, translators, proofreaders etc. above.


They are watching the financial appeal column every week now as interested people watch the fever chart of a sick man. Our Militant is sick. Of this its enemies are, by now, quite convinced; and its creators, those who have made it and those for whom its word has been a light, have no reason to deny it. Indeed, they cannot, for the appeals that appear here every week now are all too patently the desperate cry of distress. And more than that, the two issues that were skipped and the two issues that came out in half size described too graphically the mad upward course of the temperature markings on the fever chart of the sick paper.

Yes, the Militant is in desperate trouble. The financial crisis burns like a high fever from week to week and from day to day. The sickness is a financial sickness – the prosaic bills, past due, accumulating, becoming more and more insistent in the demand for payments – this is the mortal illness that assails the paper.

Who will prevail? – that is the question. With your help, dear friends of the Militant, we shall answer that question our way. The paper will prevail. Its message will prevail. The courage, the sacrifice, the unconquerable spirit of the Bolshevik-Leninists will prevail.

The Left Opposition in America, and on an international scale, is on the eve of great advances. All its ideas are being vindicated, its predictions verified. Its organization grows and extends to every capitalist country in the world.

Its cadres grow firmer, harder, more confident of victory and more determined to achieve it. We have the right to victory and we have no right to turn back from the path of resolute struggle that leads toward it.

In this struggle the Militant is our voice and our banner. The voice shall not be silenced. The banner shall not come down. The means will be found, the sacrifices will be made, the paper will be saved. We say this because we have confidence that those who have made the paper and kept it alive in all adversity will do their duty when they know how matters stand. There is no doubt now how matters stand. The need is for money – not tomorrow, but today. That is your first obligation. Do not let anything take precedence over it. Send in your contribution now.


Last updated on 29 January 2022