‘American workers: Stop your rulers throttling our revolution’
https://themilitant.com/2020/08/15/american-workers-stop-your-rulers-throttling-our-revolution/
August 24, 2020
Painting of 1775 Battle of Lexington by William Barns Wollen shows “the
shot heard around the world” that began the American War of
Independence. Lenin said this revolutionary war set an example worldwide.
NATIONAL ARMY MUSEUM
Painting of 1775 Battle of Lexington by William Barns Wollen shows “the
shot heard around the world” that began the American War of
Independence. Lenin said this revolutionary war set an example worldwide.
Revolutionary Continuity: Birth of the Communist Movement, 1918-1922 by
Farrell Dobbs is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for August. This
is the second of two volumes tracing the early history of the communist
movement in the U.S. Dobbs emerged as a young leader of the Minneapolis
Teamster strikes in 1934, then led the Teamster campaign to organize a
quarter of a million over-the-road drivers in the Midwest. He was
Socialist Workers Party national secretary from 1953 to 1972, and the
party’s presidential candidate from 1948 to 1960. The excerpt is from
“Letter to American Workers” by Russian revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin,
written in August 1918. Copyright © 1983 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted
by permission.
BY V.I. LENIN
[A]t the present time the American revolutionary workers have to play an
exceptionally important role as uncompromising enemies of American
imperialism — the freshest, strongest and latest in joining in the
world-wide slaughter of nations for the division of capitalist profits.
At this very moment, the American multimillionaires, these modern
slaveowners, have turned an exceptionally tragic page in the bloody
history of bloody imperialism by giving their approval — whether direct
or indirect, open or hypocritically concealed, makes no difference — to
the armed expedition launched by the brutal Anglo-Japanese imperialists
for the purpose of throttling the first socialist republic.
The history of modern, civilised America opened with one of those great,
really liberating, really revolutionary wars of which there have been so
few compared to the vast number of wars of conquest which, like the
present imperialist war, were caused by squabbles among kings,
landowners or capitalists over the division of usurped lands or
ill-gotten gains. That was the war the American people waged against the
British robbers who oppressed America and held her in colonial slavery,
in the same way as these “civilised” bloodsuckers are still oppressing
and holding in colonial slavery hundreds of millions of people in India,
Egypt, and all parts of the world.
About 150 years have passed since then. Bourgeois civilisation has borne
all its luxurious fruits. America has taken first place among the free
and educated nations in level of development of the productive forces of
collective human endeavour, in the utilisation of machinery and of all
the wonders of modern engineering. At the same time, America has become
one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which
lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in
filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live
on the verge of pauperism. The American people, who set the world an
example in waging a revolutionary war against feudal slavery, now find
themselves in the latest, capitalist stage of wage-slavery to a handful
of multimillionaires, and find themselves playing the role of hired
thugs who, for the benefit of wealthy scoundrels, throttled the
Philippines in 1898 on the pretext of “liberating” them, and are
throttling the Russian Socialist Republic in 1918 on the pretext of
“protecting” it from the Germans.
The four years of the imperialist slaughter of nations, however, have
not passed in vain. The deception of the people by the scoundrels of
both robber groups, the British and the German, has been utterly exposed
by indisputable and obvious facts. The results of the four years of war
have revealed the general law of capitalism as applied to war between
robbers for the division of spoils: the richest and strongest profited
and grabbed most, while the weakest were utterly robbed, tormented,
crushed and strangled.
The British imperialist robbers were the strongest in number of
“colonial slaves.” The British capitalists have not lost an inch of
“their” territory (i.e., territory they have grabbed over the
centuries), but they have grabbed all the German colonies in Africa,
they have grabbed Mesopotamia and Palestine, they have throttled Greece,
and have begun to plunder Russia.
The German imperialist robbers were the strongest in organisation and
discipline of “their” armies, but weaker in regard to colonies. They
have lost all their colonies, but plundered half of Europe and throttled
the largest number of small countries and weak nations. …
The American multimillionaires were, perhaps, richest of all, and
geographically the most secure. They have profited more than all the
rest. They have converted all, even the richest, countries into their
tributaries. They have grabbed hundreds of billions of dollars. And
every dollar is sullied with filth: the filth of the secret treaties
between Britain and her “allies,” between Germany and her vassals,
treaties for the division of the spoils, treaties of mutual “aid” for
oppressing the workers and persecuting the internationalist socialists.
Every dollar is sullied with the filth of “profitable” war contracts,
which in every country made the rich richer and the poor poorer. And
every dollar is stained with blood — from that ocean of blood that has
been shed by the ten million killed and twenty million maimed in the
great, noble, liberating and holy war to decide whether the British or
the German robbers are to get most of the spoils, whether the British or
the German thugs are to be foremost in throttling the weak nations all
over the world.
While the German robbers broke all records in war atrocities, the
British have broken all records not only in the number of colonies they
have grabbed, but also in the subtlety of their disgusting hypocrisy.
This very day, the Anglo-French and American bourgeois newspapers are
spreading, in millions and millions of copies, lies and slander about
Russia, and are hypocritically justifying their predatory expedition
against her on the plea that they want to “protect” Russia from the
Germans! …
The workers of the whole world, no matter in what country they live,
greet us, sympathise with us, applaud us for breaking the iron ring of
imperialist ties, of sordid imperialist treaties, of imperialist chains
— for breaking through to freedom, and making the heaviest sacrifices in
doing so — for, as a socialist republic, although torn and plundered by
the imperialists, keeping out of the imperialist war and raising the
banner of peace, the banner of socialism for the whole world to see.
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‘American workers: Stop your rulers throttling our revolution’
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