Delivered: 1948
Source: Fighting for Socialism in the “American Century”; © Resistance Books 2001
Published by Resistance Books 23 Abercrombie St, Chippendale NSW 2008, Permission for on-line publication provided by Resistance Books for use by the James P. Cannon Internet Archive in 2003.
Reprinted from The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 28, 12 July 1948.
Transcription\HTML Markup: David Walters
The following keynote address was delivered on July 1, 1948 to the 13th National Convention of the Socialist Workers Party. It was broadcast live by the American Broadcasting System over a nationwide network. It was published in the Militant, July 12, 1948.
Comrade chairman, delegates and friends:
We meet in national convention at a time of the gravest world crisis – a crisis which contains the direct threat of a third and more terrible world war. The basic causes of this world crisis are no mystery.
The first cause is the breakdown of capitalism throughout Europe – and Asia – and the colonial lands. The working people want peace and bread, which capitalism cannot give. The colonial slaves don’t want to be slaves any more – and capitalism cannot live without colonial slaves. The working people, the poor peasants and the colonial slaves are in revolt against the continued rule of bankers and landlords.
On the other hand, American capitalism – the last solvent stronghold of an outlived and doomed world system – is trying to prop up the hated regimes of capitalists and kings and landlords by economic pressure and military force.
These are the two main elements of the present world crisis.
The Wall Street money-sharks, and the brass hats of Prussian mentality, are riding high in Washington these days. The masters of America, drunk with power, are threatening and terrifying the people of the world – seeking to dominate and enslave them – striving to transform the other countries of the world into colonies of the American empire.
Their program is a program of madness, and it is doomed to failure. The great majority of the peoples of the world do not want to be slaves of America. That is to their credit and we applaud them for it. The attempt to enslave them would be profitable only for the small group of monopolists – and the military caste, who dream of careers as colonial administrators of conquered peoples.
But the criminal adventure would encounter such ferocious resistance that the American people at home would have to pay an enormous cost in living standards ruined by inflation, in the stamping out of democracy by military rule. And America’s young sons would have to pay in misery, blood and death. The American people would be among the first victims of the insane campaign of American imperialism to conquer and enslave the world.
To avoid this calamity it is necessary now to show the people of the world the other America. For there are two Americas – and millions of the people already distinguish between them.
One is the America of the imperialists – of the little clique of capitalists, landlords, and militarists who are threatening and terrifying the world. This is the America the people of the world hate and fear.
There is the other America – the America of the workers and farmers and the “little people”. They constitute the great majority of the people. They do the work of the country. They revere its old democratic traditions – its old record of friendship for the people of other lands, in their struggles against kings and despots – its generous asylum once freely granted to the oppressed.
This is the America which must and will solve the world crisis – by taking power out of the hands of the little clique of exploiters and parasites, and establishing a government of workers and farmers. The workers’ and farmers’ government will immediately proceed to change things fundamentally -
Throw out the profit and rent hogs, and increase the living standards of the people who do the useful work.
Assure freedom and democratic rights to all, not forgetting those who are denied any semblance of them now.
Call back the truculent admirals from the seven seas – and ground the airplanes with their dangling bombs.
Hold out the hand of friendship and comradely help to the oppressed and hungry people in the world.
These people don’t want to fight anybody. They only want to live. There are two billion people in the world – and more than half of them don’t get enough to eat. These people should be helped – not threatened, not driven back into slavery, under the social system that has kept half of them hungry all their lives.
It is well to recall now that America was born of revolution in 1776, and secured its unity as a nation through another revolution – the Civil War – which smashed the abomination of chattel slavery in the process. Our great, rich, wonderful country was once the light and the hope of the world. But our America has fallen into the hands of a small, selfish group, who are trying to dominate the world – and to set up a police state at home.
These Wall Street money-sharks are just as foreign to the real America as were the despots who ruled the land before the revolution of 1776. They are just as foreign as were the traffickers in human flesh and blood – the slave owners – whose power was broken by the Civil War – the blessed second American revolution. These imperialist rulers of America are the worst enemies of the American people.
American democracy, under their rule, is slipping away. The fear that oppressed Mark Twain, the fear that America would lose its democracy, is steadily becoming a reality. The Taft-Hartley Law is but the most recent instance of this ominous trend. The divine right of kings has reappeared in America – disguised as the divine right of judges to issue injunctions and levy fines against labour organisations.
Only three years have passed since the imperialists finished the last slaughter. And now they are drafting the youth for another. Militarism is becoming entrenched in America. Militarism – so long synonymous with goose-stepping Prussianism – is now to be made synonymous with Americanism, if big business has its way. A large section of the sturdy immigrants who helped to build this country came here to escape militarism. Now their grandsons face the same brutal regimentation here.
All this is part and parcel of the development of capitalism – the system which puts profits above all other considerations. The capitalist system has long outlived its usefulness. Capitalism offers no future to the people but depressions, imperialist wars, fascism, universal violence and a final plunge into barbarism.
To avoid such a fate, the workers of the United States must go into politics on their own account, independent of all capitalist politics. They must take power, establish a workers’ and farmers’ government and reorganise the economy of the country on a socialist basis. Socialist economy in the United States, eliminating capitalist wars, profits and waste, will be so productive as to ensure a rich living for all who are willing and able to work, and provide security and ample means for the aged and infirm.
We should also help the hungry people of the world to improve their standard of life. Socialist America will rapidly make that possible by helping them to secure their own freedom and develop their own economy. Eventually, the economy of the entire world will be united and planned on a socialist basis. This will bring universal peace – and undreamed of abundance for all people everywhere. The real upward march of humanity will begin.
The American working class can open up the way to this new world. They are the majority. They have the power in America. All that is necessary is for the working class to understand it – and to use it.
We firmly believe they will do so. We firmly believe the real America – the America of the workers, the people – will help save the world by saving herself.
We, the American Trotskyists – we, the national convention of the Socialist Workers Party, summon our America to her great destiny – not as conqueror but as liberator of the world.
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