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From Fourth International, Vol.11 No.1, January-February 1950, p.2.
Transcription & mark-up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
With this issue, Fourth International changes from a monthly to a bimonthly publication. Increasing financial difficulties have compelled us to make this retrenchment.
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Although the United States is the wealthiest country on the globe, genuine Marxist publications in America have never had an easy time from the monetary point of view. The political backwardness of the American working class as a whole has limited the circulation to a relatively small vanguard up to now.
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Lacking the support of high-paying advertisers and moneyed interests such as the prostitute capitalist press enjoys, Fourth International has always depended for its support on workers who thoroughly understand the need for a Marxist theoeretical magazine. These supporters are often influential in the labor movement but they are not exactly well-heeled in the way of funds.
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Over the years, these informed politically-minded workers who stand behind Fourth International have managed to keep the magazine afloat and to extend its influence until today it is widely recognized as the voice of genuine Marxism in America.
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However costs have risen faster than circulation. We had to make a retreat. We hope that the financial squeeze will be broken in the not distant future and that we will then be able to resume publication on a monthly basis.
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Leon Trotsky long ago foresaw a stormy political development ahead for the American working class. Sooner or later the decline of capitalism, he predicted, would force the dynamic American working class to turn to politics to find the only possible solution to their economic and social problems.
When that time comes, Trotsky was convinced, America will witness a tremendous growth in the popularity of Marxist thought. In his opinion the works of Karl Marx, for example, will yet become “best sellers” in the United States.
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This coming development also signifies a bright future for a publication like Fourth International which approaches the great events of our time and the seemingly insuperable difficulties facing the working people with the high-precision tools of Marxist thought.
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We confidently expect that we will not have long’to wait for verification of Trotsky’s prediction. On the campuses we already note a growing interest in Marxism. The working class, faced with a deepening, economic crisis, with the growing threat of another world war that can mean the annihilation of humanity, will surely outstrip all other sections of the population in rising to full consciousness of the historic tasks that must be carried out to open up the new socialist era of peace and boundless plenty.
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Meanwhile we appeal once again to our loyal supporters to do everything possible to spread the Fourth International and widen its circle of readers. What is done now will pay off ten and a hundredfold at a later stage. Let’s do everything we can to help speed the political development of the American working class.
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We pass on to our readers a letter we very much appreciated from C.S. of Detroit which accompanied his renewal to The Militant and Fourth International.
“Both my wife and I were careful to check when we would have to renew this subscription,” he writes, “for we both realize how valuable your paper and magazine are to anyone who wants to find out the truth about today’s happenings. Not only do we appreciate and applaud your coverage of the news but we also look forward to reading your analysis of these events.”
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The well-known lecturer and writer, Scott Nearing of Jamaica, Vermont, commented briefly upon renewing his subscription to Fourth International:
“You spend too much ink and paper opposing Stalinism. If he is such a bad egg, why advertise him? Is Stalin (or the Politburo) the real enemy?”
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To which we reply: The real enemy is the whole bureaucracy and its foreign agents who are devouring the conquests of the Bolshevik revolution. As for advertising Stalin, he appears to be doing a job with the blood-stained police regime he heads that would be little furbished by our comments. Our feeling is that it is as difficult to stamp out Stalinism as it is syphilis without naming the disease.
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Last updated on: 17 March 2009