Labor Action special May 1951: war and peace

War or Peace? The socialist answer

Neither Washington nor Moscow - For the Third Camp Against War! The Fate of Civil Liberty in Imperialist War Why This Profit System and Its Government Bar a Democratic Foreign Policy Rival of Capitalism, Oppressor of Labor, Enemy of Peace Fair Deal Parrot or 'Architect of the Future'? Youth Conscription and the Drive Against Academic Freedom From 1950 to 1957, each May Labor Action , the paper of the "Third Camp" Trotskyists, the Independent Socialist League, gave over a week's publication to a special "pamphlet issue" on a big political question. This is the May 1951 special.

Neither Washington nor Moscow - For the Third Camp Against War!

Shall It Be War or Peace? (Article from Labor Action's annual May special issue, 1951) The war in Korea has brought the world face to face with the great question of our time: Shall it be war or peace? In Congress, in the press, and throughout the nation a "great debate" over foreign policy rages. This war has shattered the bipartisan unity on foreign policy which has kept the most vital questions out of the political arena in the United States for over a decade. And the peoples of the world look anxiously across the oceans toward the United States. For too many of them it seems that it is...

The Fate of Civil Liberty in Imperialist War

Democratic Rights Are the First Casualty (Article from Labor Action's annual May special issue, 1951) This year May Day again sees a "Loyalty Day" parade, sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars and headed in New York by General Douglas MacArthur. Again the Stalinists mimic old-fashioned May Days with a parade of the Fur Workers and the Faithful. It also sees the narrowing of the standards of loyalty for federal employment from "reasonable grounds" to "reasonable doubt." And the right to a judicial hearing before an organization can be determined as "subversive" just squeezes through the...

Rival of Capitalism, Oppressor of Labor, Enemy of Peace

The Roots of Stalinist Imperialism (Article from Labor Action's annual May special issue, 1951) What is Stalinism? When the defenders and journalists of capitalism speak of Stalinist Russia as a "socialist 
state" they have, from their standpoint, two good reasons for saying so. One reason, the product of ignorance if not malice, is to discredit the cause of socialism 
in the mind of workers by identifying it with the oppressive police rule of the Stalinist state. The other reason results from their sound class instinct. They have never concerned them
selves with the positive aspect of...

Why This Profit System and Its Government Bar a Democratic Foreign Policy

Is the U.S. Defending Democracy - or Capitalism? (Article from Labor Action's annual May special issue, 1951) When an Indian tribe went on the warpath to grab a 
neighbor's choice hunting ground, it is not likely that the
 braves spent too much time convincing each other that the
 scalps were necessary to further an idealistic crusade. They 
knew what they were fighting for because the real object
 of the war was also in the interest of the entire tribe. There 
was no overweening need for sloganized deception. Bewilderment and demagogy over "war aims" has been
 an accompaniment of...

Fair Deal Parrot or 'Architect of the Future'?

Don't Echo Truman - Speak Up on War! (Article from Labor Action's annual May special issue, 1951) The failure of the American labor movement to develop a bold and independent foreign pol
icy of its own has been costly. Its cost is to be seen in the bulging mail sacks that heaped support 
for Taft, Hoover and their colleagues during the discussion on military policy for Europe. It is to
 be seen in the frenzied cheering crowds that stamp over each other for a chance to greet the great 
man from Japan, MacArthur, the would-be leader of the crusade into death in the depths of Asia. This hysteria...

Youth Conscription and the Drive Against Academic Freedom

Youth Can Show the Way to Fight War (Article from Labor Action's annual May special issue, 1951) Youth has always been the age for freedom and strength, 
for growth and creativity, for dreaming and doing. It is a 
time for flexing one's muscles and holding up one's head,
 for walking in the sunshine and for looking at the stars, 
for expansion and soaring. It has always been this way in 
literature and in art, in dream and in myth - and justly so. But it has not always been so in reality, and it is less so
 today than ever. Young people have never demanded too much - just what 
is really due...

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