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of the Republicans, standing for essentially the same policies. 

We regret to see that the Socialist Party, refusing all cooperation with other progressive forces, is moving into the backwater of doctrinaire sectarianism, out of the mass currents of American life. 

In this situation the Communist Party has decided to come forward with its own program and its own candidates.

We Communists would prefer to have associated ourselves with other progressives for a united ticket and platform. The need is great for the broadest possible united front. We have done everything we could to bring this about. We say that the rising danger of fascism and war calls for a united people's front - for the trade unions, farmers' organizations and all progressives to unite in a Farmer-Labor Party. The growth of the Farmer-Labor Party is the most promising thing in American political life. 
 
But the largest organizations of the Farmer-Labor Party movement are supporting Roosevelt. The big progressive trade unions have formed Labor's Non-Partisan League for the same purpose. 

We Communists cannot agree with this reliance upon Roosevelt to defeat the reactionaries. Too often we have seen that the more Roosevelt is supported from the Left the more he compromises with the Right. We declare that the progressive forces must create a strong political organization, an independent force, before they can even force Roosevelt to stop surrendering their rights and liberties.

But, despite this disagreement, the Communist Party fully agrees with the labor and progressive forces supporting Roosevelt that the victory of Landon and Knox, the creatures of Hearst, would be a major misfortune for the American people. We call for their defeat at all costs. But we warn the leaders of the big progressive unions, and the progressive group in Congress, that their present reliance upon Roosevelt does not guarantee the defeat of Landon. On the contrary, it is this policy which has brought the imminent danger of Landon's victory. It was the failure of these progressive leaders to join in the Farmer-Labor Party movement with all their 

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strength which left the field open for the reactionary conspiracy of Coughlin-Lemke-Hearst. It is their continued hesitation to even call a national conference of all progressive forces to unite the fight against reaction that increases the chances of a reactionary victory. 

We Communists have declared, we declare again now, that we will support with all our strength every serious effort to set up a united progressive front against reaction, fascism, and war. There is still time - but the time is growing short. 

The issue of the 1936 election is not a choice between socialism or capitalism. It is a choice between progress and reaction, between democracy and the path towards fascism.

Hearst, the Liberty League, and the Republican Party have issued the war cry against Roosevelt that the New Deal is Socialistic and Communistic. That is only their campaign demagogy. It is addressed to the middle classes and propertied people to frighten them into accepting fascism as the alternative to a nonexistent threat of socialist confiscation. It is addressed to the masses, in hope of discrediting socialism by identifying it with the failures of the New Deal. There is nothing of socialism in Roosevelt's policies or in the Democratic platform. The platform's progressive democratic note is grudging concession to the big trade unions and the rebelling masses of the suffering people. It is an unwilling testimony to the correctness of the Communist Party, which declares that the main issue is democracy or fascism in America. 

The Democratic platform takes a gratuitous fling at the "despotism of Communism". It would have been the part of wisdom, not to speak of good taste, at least to be silent on this point, when the same platform complains that our American institutions are defeating the expressed will of the people, through the Supreme Court, at a moment when Communism in the Soviet Union has just proclaimed a Constitution, the most democratic in all history, which guarantees to every citizen a job at union wages, with full social insurance, paid vacations, and opportunity for

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