First Published: The New Masses, Vol. 56, No. 1, July 3, 1945.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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TO NEW MASSES:
F.J. Meyers, in his letter published in the June 26 issue of NM, says “those who are so sharply attacking the theoretical position of Earl Browder seem to have no fundamental difference with him on a concrete program of action for America.” Here, Mr. Meyers, is the fundamental difference: The key to your mistake, and of all those who support Browder’s revisionism, is your remark “the bourgeoisie is still the decisive class in America.” Let us apply the touchstone of Marxism-Leninism to that statement.
We find, on page 11 of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union the following: “We must not base our orientation on that strata of society which is no longer developing, even though they at present constitute the predominant force.” Page 107 of the same book, “The dialectical method regards as important primarily not that which at the given moment seems to be durable and yet is already beginning to die away, but that which is arising and developing .... ” Marx taught us that it is the proletariat which is arising and developing within the heart of capitalism. Lenin taught us that imperialism is moribund capitalism.
Meyers goes on: “Everyone agrees that the complete destruction of German Nazism and Japanese fascist militarism has been and remains the essential primary guide of political policy.” Here again he slides into revision. Whose political policy? The political policy of the American working class, or the political policy of the American imperialists?
The American imperialists fought Nazi Germany, and are fighting Japan, not to destroy fascism, but only to save their power and markets from their rival German and Japanese imperialists.
The American working class fought Germany, and is fighting Japan, because it is anti-fascist, because fascism (as Dimitrov showed) is the open, brutal dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic section of monopoly capital, which has as its program annexationist war and complete annihilation of all democrats, trade unions, Negroes and Jews.
Hence, only the working class can be a consistent fighter for democracy.
Hence, the revisionist opposition to organized labor being represented in the President’s cabinet struck not only at the backbone of the war effort but also at the root of the battle to win the peace.
Hence, “progressive capitalists” like the Republican, Senator Ball, are already trying to sabotage the Teheran and Yalta perspectives by introducing bills to emasculate the Wagner Act. Should that kind of bill pass, the only class that is capable of leading an unyielding fight for Teheran and Yalta will be weakened.
True there is something new in the world. What is it: It is a definite possibility that Teheran, Yalta, San Francisco, Bretton Woods, 60,000,000 jobs, etc., can be achieved. The four main factors that created that possibility can also turn it into a certainty. What are they?
1. The defeat of Nazi Germany.
2. The entry of the American trade union movement, 14,000,000 strong, into the political arena. It is continuing to strengthen its ties with the other classes, even with those few individuals within the capitalist class who realize that the welfare of tile nation is bound up with the welfare of labor. We all agree that socialism in our country today is not the issue, and that under the fighting leadership of the American working class, uniting itself with all segments of patriotic Americans, some wavering elements in the bourgeoisie can be successfully pushed onto the Teheran and Yalta path.
3. The emergence of the Soviet Union from the war as one of the strongest countries in the world.
4. The democratic forces in England and China, under the leadership of their respective working classes.
Only by steering our course by the compass of living Marxism-Leninism can we eventually accomplish the task that history assigns us. The American working class, and its vanguard, the American Communists, have today, in a very real sense, “a rendezvous with destiny.”
New York City,
SARA S.