Workers Party/ ISL archive

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...

Introduction

The articles collected here tell the story of the workers’ revolt against Stalinist rule in East Germany sixty years ago, in June 1953, and the responses of the “Third Camp” Trotskyists of the Independent Socialist League. Three further articles, written between 1946 and 1954, set out the theoretical framework by which the writers understood the imposition of Stalinist rule in Eastern Europe after World War Two; and a final article, written just before the German events, sums up what socialists should learn from the experience of Stalinism. Some articles have been abridged. Usages typical of...

The first mass workers' revolts

Like a brilliant gleam of light in the gathering darkness of the post-war years, the rising of the German working class has already shattered myths and shamed despair. It has already answered a host of questions that had been posed by those who became panic-stricken before the seemingly invincible strength of Stalinist tyranny. These June days may well go down in history as the beginning of the workers’ revolution against Stalinism — the beginning, in the historical view, quite apart from any over-optimistic predictions about the immediate aftermath to be expected from this action itself. Is...

Fight in Germany is nationwide

While the sharpest struggles in East Berlin have been lulled, resistance action in the whole of the East German zone, which followed hard in the wake of the Berlin rising, is still continuing with at least sporadic strikes and riots. The Russian occupation authorities have formally executed 22 so far. The first was a West Berliner, Willi Goettling; the twenty-second was the CP mayor of Doebernitz, in Saxony-Anhalt, H W Hartmami, who was accused of knocking down a Volkspolizei cop who had fired or was about to fire into a crowd of demonstrators. Beginning Saturday, completely authenticated...

How workers launched the June Days

The unthinkable took place in East Berlin and East Germany: the working class of a totalitarian country, where 30 Russian divisions are stationed, where the Communist Party disposes of all the levers of control, revolted against an implacable dictatorship, left the plants and building-yards, invaded the streets and public places, to cry out their anger and demand — what? Higher wages? No: to demand freedom. This exploit was accomplished by a working class which suffered through 12 years of the Hitler regime, war, and eight years of the “People’s” regime and the Soviet occupation. The June...

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