Published: The Militant, Vol. 13 No. 7, 14 February 1949, pp. 1 :& 2.
Source: PDF supplied by the Riazanov Library Project.
Transcription/Mark-up: Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
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(The following is the text of a speech delivered by the National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party at a protest mass meeting held in New York Feb. 6. Farrell Dobbs, National Chairman, also spoke, presenting an eyewitness account of the Stalinist trial to date.) |
There is a widespread popular impression that the Communist Party leaders in the dock in the federal courtroom on Foley Square are criminals and ought to be brought to trial. I personally agree with that popular sentiment. The Stalinist leaders are indeed criminals, and they should be tried for their crimes. But we don’t agree with this trial. This is a case of the right criminals charged with the wrong crime. And they are being tried in the wrong court.
Like Comrade Dobbs, I could testify as an expert witness on these questions. I hereby publicly offer the lawyers for the Stalinists on trial my services in their defense against false accusations. I have qualifications as such an expert, as follows:
I was an active member of the Communist Party since its foundation in 1919 until 1928, that is, nine years. I am a. student of Marxist and Leninist theory, which the Stalinists are falsely accused of teaching. I have been a working opponent of Stalinism for 20 years.
And, finally, I am familiar with the free speech section of the United States Constitution which provides that “Congress shall pass no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” I learned that in school, and then had an opportunity to read it over again and ponder over it for 13 months in a federal university at Sandstone penitentiary.
So, armed with these qualifications, I would challenge the indictment of the leaders of the Stalinist Party on three grounds:
The Stalinists are guilty of these crimes. The Stalinists are the greatest criminals in history. But the present trial in the federal court of the Southern District of New York in Foley Square is a frameup against them. They are not guilty of the charge brought against them, that they advocated the overthrow of the capitalist government of the United States.
The whole course of Stalinism, since its inception, has served to support world capitalism and hot to overthrow it. Stalinism began twenty-five years ago with the promulgation of its basic theory of “socialism in one country,” meaning Russia. That signified, “no socialism in any other country.” It signified the renunciation of all perspectives of international revolution; all offer of the Soviet bureaucracy to compromise with world capitalism at the expense of the international workers’ movement. That is the theory from which Stalinism originated.
The practice followed from the theory: the expulsion, the frame-ups and mass murders of tens of thousands of Bolsheviks who made the revolution and stood, in reality, for international revolution against all capitalist institutions; the conduct of the Stalinists in Spain, where they propped up and supported the bourgeois government at the cost of mass murders of Spanish revolutionists; the “peoples’ front” policy of collaboration With capitalist parties and participation in capitalist governments; the Soviet-Nazi Pact, whereby the Stalinists joined hands with Hitler in launching the Second World War; the Anglo-Soviet-American Pact, under which the American Stalinists sold out the working class of the United States and lined up to support the war.
Yes, the record clearly shows that the Stalinists are criminals. But the capitalist court is disqualified, by this record of known facts, and by tile clear provision of the United States Constitution, and even by considerations of gratitude for services received from the Stalinists, especially during the war, to try them.
On the other hand, despite the fact that we indict the Stalinists as criminals on the record, we and all other workers’ organizations, who have reason for neither love nor gratitude toward the Stalinists, have a vital interest in protesting against their prosecution in this particular case. This if the purpose of our meeting tonight.
This is not a criminal trial of alleged actions in violation of definite Constitutional laws. This is a political trial. The freedom to “advocate” any doctrine, including revolution, is basic to free speech and democracy. This trial strikes at the very roots of these democratic rights of all workers’ organizations.
It should be borne in mind that the indictment against the Stalinists does not charge them with a single action against the United ’States government. The sole basis of the trial is that they conspired to “advocate” the overthrow of the United States government. That is to say, they conspired to speak and to write.
The very provision of the Constitution, which I have referred to, was designed specifically to .prevent Congress from passing laws which would proscribe the “advocacy” of any doctrine. But .this indictment under the Smith Act – the same law under which we were prosecuted and convicted in Minneapolis – is an indictment against speaking and writing. Now, once you establish the precedent that it is possible to proscribe one kind of talk or “advocacy,” you lay the ground for the suppression of any other. You legitimatize the suppression of free speech and the free press.
Unfortunately, our trial and conviction under the Smith Act in Minneapolis, and our subsequent imprisonment, and the refusal of the Supreme Court to review the case, has already set one precedent. This was a heavy blow at free speech and democracy in this country, and the Stalinists on trial are suffering from this precedent.
It is true, as Comrade Dobbs pointed out, and as I think all of you know, that the Stalinists did all they could, in every dirty way they knew, to help the prosecution put us in prison. They did everything they could to keep us in prison for our full term. It is true that these scoundrels even tried to sabotage and break up our Defense Committee, to prevent it from raising funds from sympathetic organizations to pay the lawyers. If the Stalinists had had their way, we would not have been able to employ a legal defense to make a legal record. Their shameful conduct paved the way for their own prosecution under the same law.
That is all true, as has been related so graphically here tonight by Comrade Dobbs. But that cannot determine the policy of a revolutionary organization, or of any workers’ organization for that matter. Sheer self-interest, for us and for every honest workers’ organization, weighs more than sentiments of revenge in this case.
If the precedent established in fear case is reenforced by another conviction in this case of the Stalinists, and sanctioned by public opinion until it becomes accepted as a custom, the traditional freedoms which the workers’ movement needs for enlightened advancement will yield to new encroachments all along the line. The ominous trend toward thought-control under a police state will be. greatly accelerated.
That is the larger issue, transcending all other considerations, in the trial of the Stalinists now going on. That is why we are so deeply concerned about it and appeal to all workers’ organizations, especially to those who supported us in our trial, to protest against the political trial of the Stalinists. I think we have made it sufficiently clear that our point of view in this case is not motivated by Christian forgiveness or soft-headedness, and even less by political conciliation with perfidious Stalinism. Our stand is based solely on our concept of the most vital interest of the working class and its future struggles.
It used to be taken for granted in the labor movement, that despite all differences and disputes between different parties, factions and groups, all would unite and cooperate when any section of the labor movement was under attack in the courts of the class enemy. We have come a long way from the did tradition of solidarity against persecution and frame-up. It was a good tradition and we should try in some measure to restore it.
Some of the brightest pages of American labor history were written in united struggles for justice and free speech. The labor movement of today, which did not fall from the skies, is the product and fruit of many struggles in the past, and owes a great deal to these united front struggles for free speech and justice and freedom of organization.
My first interest in the socialist and labor movement was aroused by the great protest movement in behalf of Moyer and Haywood in 1906; They were arrested and brought to trial on trumped-up charges of murder, but their real offense was their labor activities, their militancy and incorruptibility. They were not left alone to defend themselves as best they could. They were leaders of the Western Federation of Miners, which was then affiliated to the IWW. Nevertheless, all sections of the labor movement recognized the threat to themselves and their whole future in the attempt to legitimatize the framing-up of the labor leaders.
A tremendous machinery of protest and defense was built up, from one end of the country to the other, in the form of “Moyer-Haywood Conferences.” All kinds of organizations, representing every section of the labor movement and all points of view, sent delegates to these united front conferences. AFL and independent unions, the IWW, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Labor Party, the anarchist groups and groups of liberals, and people of good will – all marched together under the “Moyer-Haywood Conferences” to make a mighty movement in defense of the accused. The ground shook with their tread.
The conspirators who had sought to take the lives of Moyer and Haywood were pushed back. The frameup was defeated by the threat of the united workers’ movement. The great Bill Haywood, of beloved memory, was right when he spoke to the first great mass meeting of 200,000 in Chicago, who greeted him on his release from jail, and said: “We owe our lives to your solidarity.”
The same solidarity was shown in defense of Ettor and Giovanitti, leaders of the Lawrence strike of 1912; and in the defense of Mooney and Billings. It was true to a considerable extent in the case of the IWW leaders during the first World War, and in the cases of Debs and of Sacco and Vanzetti. All class conscious workers felt it to be an elementary duty, as a matter of course to join together against the attacks of the class enemy.
The Communist Party itself was once the exponent of this proud tradition of solidarity. The International Labor Defense, which was formed in 1925 under the direct inspiration of the Communist Party, was specifically dedicated to the principle of non-partisan labor defense, to the defense of any member of the working class movement, regardless of his views, who suffered persecution by the capitalist courts because of his activities or his opinions.
I can speak with authority about that because I participated in the planning of the ILD, and was the National Secretary from its inception until we were thrown out of the Communist Party in 1928. The International Labor Defense was really “born in Moscow”; that I must admit, although it was strictly an American institution in its methods and practices. The ILD was born in Moscow in discussion with Bill Haywood. The old fighter, who was exiled from America with a 20-year sentence hanging over him, was deeply concerned about the persecution of workers in America. He wanted to have something done for the almost forgotten men laying in jail all over the country.
There were over 100 men – labor organizers, strike leaders and radicals in prisons at that time in the United States – IWW’s, anarchists, Mooney and Billings, Sacco and Vanzetti, McNamara and Schmidt, the Centralia prisoners, etc. In discussions there in Moscow in 1925 we worked out the plan and conception of the International Labor Defense, as a non-partisan body which would defend any member of the working class movement, regardless of his opinion or affiliation, if he came under persecution by capitalist law.
I never will forget those meetings with Bill Haywood. When we completed the plans which were later to become reality in the formation of the ILD; and when I promised him that I would come back to America and see to it that the plans did not remain on paper; that we would really go to work in easiest and. come to the aid of the men forgotten in prison – the old lion’s eyes – his one eye, rather – flashed with the old fire. He said, “I wish I could go back to give a hand in that job.” He couldn’t come back because he was an cutlaw in the United States, not for any crime he had committed but for all the good things he had done for the American working class. Up to the end of his life he continued to be an active participant in the work of the ILD by correspondence.
The plans for the International Labor Defense as a non-partisan defense organization, made there in Bill Haywood’s room in Moscow, were carried out in practice during its first years. There were 106 class war prisoners in the United States – scores of IWW’s, members railroaded in California, Kansas, Utah and other states under the criminal syndicalist laws. We located a couple of obscure anarchists in Rhode Island; a group of AFL coal miners in West Virginia; two labor organizers in Thomaston, Maine – besides the more prominent and better known prisoners mentioned before. They added up to 106 people in prison in this land of the free at that time for activities in the labor movement. They were not criminals at all, but strike leaders, organizer’s, agitators, dissenters – our own kind of people. Not one of these 106 prisoners was a member of the Communist Party! But the ILD defended and helped them all.
The ILD adopted as its policy to remember them all and raise money for them. We created a fund so that $5 was sent every month to each of the 106 class war prisoners. Every Christmas time we raised a special fund for their families. The Centralia IWW group, almost forgotten for years, were remembered, publicity was given their case and efforts made to help them. The same with all the old half-forgotten cases. The ILD was the organizing eenter of the great worldwide movement of protest for the two anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti. All this work of solidarity had the backing and support of the Communist Party, but that was before it became completely stabilized and expelled the honest revolutionists.
The principle of the International Labor Defense, which made it so popular and so dear to the militants, was non-partisan defense without political discrimination. The principle was solidarity. When you consider all this and compare it with the later practices of the Stalinists; when you recall what has happened in the last 20-odd years, you must say that the Stalinists have done more than any others to dishonor this tradition of solidarity. They have done more than any others to disrupt unity for defense against the class enemy.
That terrible corruption of disunity in the face of the class enemy has penetrated other sections of the labor movement too. The Social Democrats do a great deal of pious moralizing about the Stalinists, but their conduct isn’t much better, if any. For the greater part, they make no protest against the persecution of the Stalinists. The labor officials, both, of the CIO and AFL, stand aside, and many even support the prosecution.
They think there is no need to worry about the Smith Act; that it is only for Stalinists. That is what the Stalinists thought when we were on trial seven years ago – that this evil and unconstitutional law is only for Trotskyists. I heard in San Francisco that a Stalinist Party speaker, harassed by an interrogator as to the relation between their trial and ours, said, “This whole trial is a mistake and a misunderstanding. The Smith Act was meant for the Trotskyists.” But the Smith Act chickens came home to roost for the Stalinists, and the same thing can happen to others too.
If the Stalinists are convicted, establishing another precedent to buttress the precedent of our case, the same law can be invoked against other political organizations, against college professors, and even preachers who happen to have opinions contrary to those of the ruling powers, and have the courage to express them. It is a great error, a terrible error, to neglect this trial and refuse to protest; an error for which we will all have to pay – they and we, and all of us, all who aspire by whatever means, or by whatever program or doctrine, toward a better and freer world through the unity and solidarity of the workers. We will all have to pay of the federal prosecutor wins this case and makes it stick with the support of public opinion. That is why we would like to see every errors made, even now while th’e trial is going on, to reverse the present trend, to overcome the passivity and indifference.
It is, of course, utopian to hope or expect that a great united movement, cooperating loyally as in the old days, can be formed with the Stalinists. The Stalinists cannot cooperate loyally with anyone. We offered them a united front. They refused it. Even now, when the witch-hunt and loyalty purges are directed against them, they refuse to say one word in defense of James Kutcher, the legless veteran who was removed from his Veterans Administration job in New Jersey because of his political opinions as a member of the Socialist Workers Party.
Because of that attitude of the Stalinists, as well as for other considerations, it would be utopian to hope for an all-inclusive united front. But the trade unions and anti-Stalinist political organizations should join together, for their own reasons, and in their own interest, to protest this prosecution. We would join and give our support to such an effort. But in any case, whether it can be done cooperatively or separately, all should raise their voices in protest against the political trial going on in Foley Square. Not for the sake of the Stalinist gang, but for the sake of free speech, for those democratic rights which the labor movement has dearly won and badly needs for its informed and conscious struggle to reach higher ground.
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