‘A Workers’ Defense Guard Is the Only Answer to the Fascists’ from Socialist Appeal. Vol. 3 No. 28. April 28, 1939.

It Alone Will Fight the Fascists Threat to Workers’ Rights—Workers Must Rely On Their Own Strength, Not Boss Politicians, to Preserve Their Most Elementary Rights.

In the present war situation every worker ought to keep two simple propositions in mind. First, the main enemies of democracy are not over the ocean but within these 48 states. Second, the fight against dictatorship and for democracy must begin at home.

Roosevelt and his fellow jingoists are striving to convince the American people that another war is necessary “to make the world safe for democracy.”

Listen to Herbert Hoover speaking at Chicago on February 2 of this year. “A great war today…means democracy must temporarily surrender to dictatorship…no matter what one may call it…It means that our country must be mobilized into practically a fascist state…I speak of this not from hearsay, but as one who participated in the economic organization of the great war.”

FASCIST GROUPS TAKING ROOT

The fight for democracy requires above all an exposure of the imperialist war-makers. But it also demands a struggle against other ultra reactionary forces which in some cases for their own demagogic and reactionary reasons are at the moment in opposition to Roosevelt and Wall Street’s war.

Fascist tendencies are taking root in many sections of the country. Some, like the German-American Bund, are direct branches of Nazism. But the majority, although they borrow ideas, inspiration, and even money from European sources, are home-bred and home-led products. Such Fascist groupings as Roy Zachary’s Silver Shirts, the Crusaders, and others fed by Father Coughlin’s propaganda, spring straight out of American soil, nourished by the misery of the unemployed, the discontent of the middle-classes of city and country, the plight of the farmers and a widespread disillusion with the New Deal and the old order of affairs. It is from these sources that the danger of a broad national fascist movement is to be feared.

RACE HATRED AND LABOR OPPOSITION

The main creed of these movements is anti-Semitism and opposition to organized labor, especially the C.I.O. Their aim is to smash the trade unions and curb their activities and thus keep the workers in servitude. They propose to take away the gains made by the workers in the past few years and to rob them of their rights of organization, free speech, and assembly. They are assisted in this work by the vigilante groups of the Associated Farmers and Manufacturer’s Associations, by the various Citizen’s Committees set up by Chambers of Commerce in the industrial areas of the Middle West, and by the hired scabs and gunmen of the great corporations How are the workers to protect themselves against the fascist gangsters? Experience has shown only one way. That is to form Union Defense Guards, whose task it shall be to defend labor unions meetings, and activities as well as the persons of trade-unionists from attack. Akron rubber workers, Minneapolis teamsters, and progressive trade-unionists elsewhere have already seen the necessity for such organizations, and acted accordingly. These guards ought not to be hastily improvised in the teeth of danger but prepared in advance to perform their duties when need arises.

GUARDS ARE PERMANENT PICKETS

Such Union Defense Guards will be in reality permanent pickets. Every trade-unionist knows that the bosses and their scabs would have an easy time breaking strikes if pickets were not at hand to prevent them. These fascist groups are nothing less than permanent organizations of scabs in the service of the most reactionary bosses. The workers ought to be ready to repulse them wherever they raise their heads.

HAGUE THRIVES ON PUBLICITY

The workers can rely only upon their strength and organized forces in this struggle. Is not the case of Hague convincing demonstration of this truth? Despite several years of struggle, the Hudson County Hitler still reigns in Jersey. Various methods were employed by the C.I.O. to undermine and overthrow him, to expose his despotism by national publicity. But Hague thrived on this propaganda, turned it to his own advantage, became a hero of Big Business. Liberal congressmen made verbal threats and then turned tail and ran. Ostentatious parades and meetings were not only broken up by Hague’s police and hired mobsters but Hague beat the C.I.O. at this game by staging far large and more impressive popular demonstrations. The injunctions granted by the courts for and against Hague have resulted only in blockading the struggle but not in binding the Boss.

Through Farley, President Roosevelt solicited Hague’s support in the 1938 elections. The promised investigation of his Department of Justice has come to nothing. Can one offend the Vice-Chairman of the Democratic National Committee with a presidential campaign in the offing? Such is the balance sheet of the campaigns against Hague which have now died down to a whisper.

ONLY ONE WAY TO OUST HAGUE

There was, and there remains. only one way to dislodge this local dictator and restore democratic rights to the people of New Jersey. A careful, patient organizing campaign by the C.I.O. unions backed up by an organized workers’ guard capable of protecting meetings and resisting Hague’s police and mobsters.

Anti-Semitism is the second item in the fascist stock-in-trade. Fortune Magazine’s recent survey indicates that anti-Semitism is growing. The fascists are waging their fight against the workers, against all democratic and progressive ideas, under the guise of a struggle against “Judeo-Bolshevism.” While the Jewish masses are becoming increasingly sensitive to this danger, they are still for the most part ignorant of the best means of combatting it. The anti-Nazi demonstrations held in Los Angeles, in New York at Madison Square Garden, in Philadelphia have shown them the way. The magnificent response of the workers of all faiths and political views to the call of the Socialist Workers Party demonstrates that more and more are beginning to understand that only direct action of this character can stop Fascism from spreading.

POLICE AND COURTS PROTECT FASCISTS

These events have also shown that “liberal” politicians, the police, and the courts will. in the name of “law and order,” concentrate upon defending the fascists while depriving the foes of fascism of their democratic rights. Did not LaGuardia’s cops break up the counter-demonstrations round Madison Square Garden, ride down hundreds of anti-fascists, injure and arrest a dozen? And the judges completed the job by fining or jailing the militants. Fascism thrives more than anything else upon the impotence and inertia of its opponents. The prerequisite for the rise and victory of Fascism is to make the workers believe that by relying, not upon their own organized forces but upon some external power upon the state, upon the police, upon benevolent officials, upon democratic traditions, etc. that fascism can be defeated. This service is being performed today by a Popular Front of Democrats. liberals, labor leaders, Social Democrats, and Stalinists. Italy Germany, Austria, Spain, and today France, teach that along this road lies not the defeat of Fascism but the defeat of the working masses.

THE ROAD TO VICTORY

The road to victory over fascism proceeds through direct and militant struggle against the forces of reaction. The fascist groups here are still weak. The labor movement, the progressive forces, are strong. The time to crush fascism and anti-Semitism is now. The place: here in our own country. The means: Union Defense Guards and anti-fascist legions which will shield labor from the inevitable onslaughts of the storm-troopers.

There have been a number of periodicals named Socialist Appeal in our history, this Socialist Appeal was edited in New York City by the “Left Wing Branches of the Socialist Party”. After the Workers Party (International Left Opposition) entered the Socialist Party in 1936, the Trotskyists did not have an independent publication. However, Albert Goldman began publishing a monthly Socialist Appeal in Chicago in February 1935 before the bulk of Trotskyist entered the SP. When there, they began publishing Socialist Appeal in August 1937 as the weekly paper of the “Left Wing Branches of the Socialist Party” but in reality edited by Cannon and other leaders. Goldman’s Chicago Socialist Appeal would fold into the New York paper and this Socialist Appeal would replace New Militant as the main voice of Fourth Internationalist in the US. After the expulsion of the Trotskyists from the the Socialist Party, Socialist Appeal became the weekly organ of the newly constituted Socialist Workers Party in early 1938. Edited by James Cannon and Max Shachtman, Felix Morrow, and Albert Goldman. In 1941 Socialist Appeal became The Militant again.

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