Harrison George anticipates the launch of the Daily Worker with a look at the centrality of the radical press in past revolutions.

‘The Working Class Press In Revolutionary History’ by Harrison George from The Worker. Vol. 6 No. 300. November 3, 1923.

Someday a history will be written of the part played in all the revolutionary upheavals of history by the newspapers of the rebellious movement. It is certain that newspapers and the weapon of the press in general, by leaflets, placards and proclamations have been and will be the means whereby great masses are won to revolutionary ideas and actions, the means whereby, in years that precede action, the ground-work of class feeling is laid down and fixed; and in the days of crisis, a great trumpet calling the masses to arms, a signal tower directing an economic class striving for power by revolution.

The bourgeoisie itself needed the newspapers as a means of overthrowing the feudal powers and freeing itself from the limitations of monarchial governments. Protests was made in the colonial Declaration of Independence against repression of the press, and the Constitution had to be amended to include the “right of free press,” because of the fear of monarchy by the colonial bourgeoisie as a whole, although the men who wrote the Constitution itself did not want a free press, because they, more wisely than their fellows, knew that history would bring a working class which would want revolutionary newspapers. Thus we have a formal and legal right of free press in America, but without the workers cherish and but without the workers to cherish and have neither newspapers nor right to have them, because, in fact, the ruling class has largely nullified that right by all sorts of arbitrary postal regulations and direct illegal sup pression as by the Espionage Act during the war.

Even more typical is the French Revolution of 1789, where the bourgeoisie forced the king to sign the famous “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens,” wherein it was guaranteed, “every citizens may write and publish freely.” To show how necessary it is for a revolutionary class to assume the right and the obligation of establishing and supporting newspapers regardless of legal rights, it may be cited that the “Declaration” was signed in October, 1789, while three months earlier, in July, bourgeois newspapers were already in the field. Loustallot, an orator of the middle class, started a paper called “Revolutions of Paris,” which quickly reached a circulation of. 200,000, an amazing figure for that illiterate age. Even more influential was “The Friend of the People,” edited by Marat, in which he called people to arms against the conspiracy of foreign monarchies and the plotting royalists. On July 26th, 1790, he wrote, “Five or six, hundred executions would have assured your repose, liberty and happiness; a false humanity has restrained your hands and stopped your blows; this will cost the lives of your brothers: if your enemies triumph, a minute blood will flow in season…” Then, among other famous newspapers were “Pere Duchesne” and “The Old Cordelier,” the last edited by Camille Desmoulins, who had called the people together at the fall of the Bastille.

The Chartist Movement in England.

Of more definite though confused proletarian voice were the newspapers of the Chartist movement which grew out of the English working class in the period from 1832 to 1854. The following is a call for a strike for the eight-hour day published in “The Herald or the Rights of Industry,” on April 5th, 1834: “We say solemnly and emphatically, STRIKE! not against some handful of greedy and wretched employers, as we have heretofore done, but STRIKE at once against the whole tribe of idlers of every grade; class or condition. It is your labor which enriches them and enables then first to despise and then to oppress you!” Other papers of that day were “The Pioneer,” “The Crisis.” “The National Reformer,” and the “London Democrat.”

Thousands of Workers Slaughtered.

The continental revolutions of 1848 were strangely inarticulate, even in France and Germany where the confused mixture of middle class and proletarian rebels did have newspapers, however feeble. In Paris, Bonaparte claimed to be a socialist and issued a revolutionary paper, “The Organization of Labor”; Proudhon issued his “Représentative of the People,” and the Fourierists their “The Peaceful Democrat.” Shall we not conclude that the lack of any scientific directing newspaper of the workers made them weaker and opened the way for the slaughter by General Cavaignae of thousands upon thousands of workers.

With the Paris Commune of 1871 the naked sword of proletarian revolt swung clean and clear above the heads of all sections of the bourgeoisie. In the seventy days between March 18th and May 28th, which marked the duration of that noble effort destined by unripe social conditions to sublime failure, revolutionary newspapers sprang up on all sides. Most famous is the “Official Journal” of the Commune itself. Le Cri du People, La Commune, La Revolution Politique et Sociale and others played their part in that heroic struggle. With it they were blotted out after printing on May 22nd the last proclamation of Delescluse, Civil Delegate for War, calling upon the people itself to rise to the aid of the defeated National Guard–“Enough of militarism! No more staff officers with gold lace all over their uniforms! Room for the people, the fighters, that bear arms! The hour of revolutionary war has sounded! The people knows nothing of clever maneuvering but with a rifle in its hands and the pavement beneath its feet it fears none of the strategy of the Royalist schools! To arms!!”

The Fall of the Commune.

In vain! And with the fall of the last outpost and the last issue of the revolutionary newspapers fell the Commune–the first definite attempt at proletarian rule–and its valiant supporters by tens of thousands, before the machine guns of Gallifet. For days a streak of red ran down the middle of the Seine.

The Russo-Japanese war brought in its wake the Russian Revolution of 1905, in which fought many of the present rulers of Soviet Russia. More clearly than ever before arose the cry of proletarian revolution. On October 27th the St. Petersburg (Petrograd) Soviet was formed, whose second and last president was Leon Trotsky. The Bolsheviki had their newspaper Iskra, “The Spark” to rally the workers around the Soviet, which started as a strike committee. Another paper, Zarja—”The Dawn” was started by the Bolsheviks. The Social Democrat Party had two papers in Petrograd, Novaya Zhian and Nachalo; the Social Revolutionary Party the Syn Otechestve. On January 23, the day after the Bloody Sunday, the printing pressed filled the workers’ districts with manifestos calling for revolution: “Yesterday you saw the savagery of monarchy. You saw blood running in the streets. You saw hundred slain…Who directed the soldier rifles against the breasts of the workers? it was the Czar…the Generals, the scum of the Court!. May they meet death. To arms, comrades! Seize the arsenals! destroy the prisons! Down with monarchist government!”

On December 13th the first column manifesto of all socialist parties published, calling upon the people refuse to pay taxes, to insist on gold payment in all transactions and breathing defiance to Czarism. But the revolution was crumbling, and every paper which published manifesto was suppressed and fort printing presses in Petrograd seized…

The Press in Russia.

A volume could and should be written on the part of the newspapers the triumphal revolution of the Bolsheviks in November, 1917. More than a mere sketch cannot be given here, Pravda had existed since 1912, though at tremendous sacrifices. Issues were confiscated, its editors arrested and exiled, its lists destroyed, yet the workers supported it enthusiastically. It was a Bolshevik paper–It was a fearless, workers’ daily. It lived on persecution.

Came the October days and, says John Reed, “The Bolshevik press suddenly expanded.”

Rabotcal carried Lenin’s “Letter to Party Comrades,” saying, either the slogan, “All power to Soviets must be abandoned, or we must make an insurrection.” Says Reed. “On one side the Monarchist press, inciting to bloody repression, on the other Lenin’s great voice roaring, Insurrection!…We cannot wait any longer’!”

Insurrection came. On the 25th the Soldiers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet declared a boycott on all bourgeois newspapers. In a few days more the Military Revolutionary Committee was the striking arm of the Soviet and events which are history followed.

Six years! And today in commemoration of the birth of the Soviet, American workers are gathered in meetings all over the continent. And the Workers Party aspires to the same goal as Communist Party of Russia, is to issue a daily newspaper–a newspaper which will be the first and only revolutionary daily newspaper be published in this country. Today let every worker resolve we, who are the rich inheritors of revolutionary experience of the past, will not fail in our duty to the workers’ newspaper–THE DAILY WORKER.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/theworker/v4n300-nov-03-[8pgs]-1923-Worker.pdf