Leaflet distributed by the Communist Labor Party denouncing Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s ‘Red Raids’, a moment of severe political reaction that never went away.

‘The Red Raids’ Leaflet of the Communist Labor Party. January, 1920.

The Capitalist Government of the United Sates in a mad hysterical rage is trying to stave off the inevitable collapse of Capitalism. Ignorant, vicious, and corrupt officials are persecuting thousands of men and women who have declared their allegiance to the revolutionary working class movement. The prostitute capitalist press in bold headlines praises every Tsarist act on the part of the stupid agents of the government. We are informed that “thousands of alien reds who have plotted against the free and democratic institutions of the republic” will be deported to Europe. “The Communist Movement in the United States is an alien movement” shout the intellectual ignoramuses of the Capitalist Class. “Out of the country with them!” Raids follow raids and arrests follow arrests. Capitalism seeing its impending ruin in Europe and afraid for its existence in America calls for the speedy extermination of the Communist Movement.

The Communist Labor Party has not been exterminated! Despite the hard blows inflicted upon it, the movement to bring about Communism in the United States through the rule of the workers will go on. To the comrades in jail and those on Ellis Island and elsewhere awaiting deportation the Party sends its warmest greeting. The democracy and liberty of the United States about which the Capitalist politicians boast is now nakedly exposed in all its hideousness. It is the liberty and democracy of the Plunderbund that wallows in luxury and wealth while the workers starve and are miserably exploited.

The Government through its stupid and brutal hirelings is today hounding the foreigners like the worst criminals, because they do not appreciate the “gratitude” of the American exploiter in giving them jobs and paying them wages. The boasted institutions of America and its fabulous wealth amounting to billions of dollars have been built on the sweat and blood of the foreign-born worker. In the basic industries where brawn and muscle are essential, it is the workers from Russia, Italy, Sweden, etc., who are employed. The industrial security of the entire country depends upon the willingness of the foreign-born workers here to remain on the job and produce. The foreign-born workers who give their lives in industry so that America can boast of its millionaires have a perfect right to participate in the revolutionary struggles of the workers in America. And when the time comes, and all indications point to the fact that it is coming soon, the foreign-born workers will play a very important part in the overthrow of American Capitalism.

Most of the workers now held for deportation will be more than pleased to be shipped out of the country where there is no semblance even of Capitalist law, where governmental anarchy reigns supreme, and where it is dangerous for one even to think. Send the workers back! Each and every one of them will be a propagandist abroad! There they will willingly inform the workers of the autocracy of the American Government, the brutality of its persecution and the lawlessness of its officials. Through them the American revolutionary movement expects to obtain the united support of the revolutionary movement abroad.

We urge the stupid politicians of the capitalist class to proceed. The steel workers’ strike was smashed when they sought redress in the form of a little more wages and the right to collective bargaining. Every so-called guarantee of the American Constitution was denied the steel workers. Their meetings were broken up. Their homes were entered by the State Constabulary. Soldiers were ordered to shoot them if they attempted to picket. The steel mills owners were permitted to hire armed murderers from the criminal classes of the country, and these armed murderers were permitted to brutally assault and kill steel workers. The mine workers, numbering 450,000, were treated in the same fashion. All the power of the organized government was used to force the miners back to work. While the capitalists through their government are determined to ruthlessly wipe out every attempt on the part of the workers to organize and better their conditions, they are unable to stop the ever-rising cost of living, a fact that stalks in every workers’ home and sows unrest and revolution where least expected.

The institutions of no government are secure where, on the one hand, there are a few who own millions and billions of dollars of wealth, while the vast majority of the people must work for wages that are inadequate to meet an enormously high cost of living.

Millions of dollars are spent and thousands of workers’ lives are lost in a futile attempt to overthrow the Workers’ Government of Russia. The workers of Russia have for two years demonstrated what a Workers’ Government can accomplish. They have successfully resisted the Capitalist forces of the world. The campaigns of Kolchak, Denikin, and Yudenich, characterized by their atrocities, have been crushed. The attempts of Capitalism in America to revive the corpse of the Tsar Nicholas in the United States will also mean the end of Capitalist rule here.

The Capitalist politicians and their intellectual supporters brand the Communist Movement and the Communist Labor Party in particular as an illegal movement because they claim it is opposed to law and order. What law and order is the Communist Labor Party opposed to? Is it that almost religious reverence of the ballot box as a means for expressing any political opinion and of changing the form of government? Almost all the staunch pretenders of the belief in the ballot box are today denying the principle. Men who have been elected to office by a majority vote have been denied the right to assume office because their political views differ with the views of those in power. The case of Berger, elected to Congress in Wisconsin, is one instance, and the ousting of the 5 Socialist Assemblymen from the New York State Legislature is another. Numerous cases of like nature all over the country can be mentioned. It is not to be assumed that the Communists entertain the foolish pretensions that the Socialists do about the ballot box and parliamentary action. It is foolish for a party that is organized to overthrow Capitalism and its institutions to expect a class entrenched in power to release that power because a majority of the electorate have voted against them. No ruling class ever willingly gave up its rulership in the past, nor will any ruling class do so in the future. The political activities of the Socialist Party, their loud pronunciamentos in support of the liberty and democratic institutions of the Capitalist Republic brands them as willing tools of the Capitalist Class, who will do everything in their power to keep intact the parliamentary structure of the Capitalist political state when it is threatened.

At the present time there is no semblance of a unified government harmoniously working through all its branches. Appointed bureaucrats, responsible to no popular will, assume autocratic powers and trample underfoot all the guarantees, so-called, of liberty and democracy. Private organizations supported by private capital are permitted to assume the functions of the State and proceed to commit violence. The newspapers openly preach murder, hatch plots, and lie about the movement of the workers. To have an opinion is a crime. To publish a paper in opposition to the opinion of the Capitalist Class is criminal anarchy. The entire structure of our Government is in a mix-up, various departments opposing one an- other. One has but to take a cross-section of the country—jails jammed full of political prisoners—thousands awaiting deportation — politicians calling for the blood of radicals and union men—and an enormously wealthy Capitalist Class, and you have a picture of the political situation in America. The Communist Labor Party realizes that the only way out of the Capitalist Anarchy now reigning supreme is through the overthrow of Capitalism and the establishment of the rule of the working class. Capitalism in Europe is fast crumbling to pieces, and American Capitalism, dependent upon Europe, will meet the same fate.

The Communist Labor Party will continue its fight. There will be no letup in the struggle until we are victorious. Millions of workers will in the next year get the message of Communism. As members of the Third International we will accomplish our task. The sham democracy—the dictatorship of the Capitalist Class—will be the ruin from which will rise the Dictatorship of the Proletariat—the rule of the working class.

The Communist Labor Party