Viewing page 13 of 56
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
-8- -to oust racketerring and end business-unions -to complete the unification of the house of labor -to play its leading role in welding a broad people's anti-monopoly coalitions, and as a first step in that direction, playing a greater independent role in the '58 elections -to fight for peaceful co-existence In the course of the struggle for such goals, Communists will once more demonstrate in deeds the role they can play. As a result, labor will begin to shed the slanderous anti-Communist misconceptions foisted upon it by the propogandists of big business, and fully recognize its real enemy- monopoly,will no longer allow its unity and strength to be diverted against Communists and militants in witch hunts. Historically, the great advances in the American labor movement have come about through the particular stimulation of more class-consciousness or "Left" thinking forces. The economic crisis will, as in the past, encourage the growth of greater class-consciousness and Left-thinking. Once again, under new conditions, such left forces of whom the Communists are a part, can and will play an important role in meeting the problems of the crisis and preparing the way for new advances of labor. - - - Ours is a country rich in resources with an industrial capacity that is the envy of the world. Our workers are famed for their know-how, their unexcelled productivity. The present developing depression once again sharply brings home to all thinking Americans that "something is rotten not in the State of Denmark but in our own Country". What is it that has brought us recession and depression on the average of once every eight (8) years during the past forty (40) years as Stanley Ruthenberg CIO Research Director, correctly asks? Can we have only "prosperity" during war? The persistent pursuit for answers to these fundamental questions, will lead ever increasing numbers of thoughtful trade unionists to socialism. More and more workers will come to the conclusion that "what's rotten in our Country" is the capitalist system run by and for a handful of billionaire businessmen. They will realize that our vast industrial capacity, our greatest ingenuity: automation which under a system that produces only for profits becomes a periodic curse, under Socialism run by and for the working people, will be a permanent blessing. Where other less fortunate countries had to pay a costly price and make bitter sacrifices to construct their socialist industry, ours already possesses an industry capable of giving every American a happy life. Poverty, disease, juvenile delinquency, racial intolerance, not to speak of the periodic scourges of war and depression can be things of the dark past. Such a vision, the majority of American labor will learn in time is not a dreamer's "utopia" but a practical necessity that a sane and peaceful life demands. With typical American common sense, they will one day conclude that there must be something to Socialism that transforms a semi-literate nation like the Soviet Union into the scientific and educational leader of the world. We Communists in the course of struggling together with our union brothers and sisters for labor's adoption of Socialism as its goal. ---
