Specific proposals as U.S. Communists see their responsibility in support of the Filipino struggle against colonial subjugation by a growing Empire.

‘Freedom For the Philippines’ by the Central Executive Committee of the Workers Party from The Daily Worker. Vol. 2 No. 65. June 3, 1924.

THE Central Executive Committee of the Workers Party adopted the following program for work in support of Philippine independence and for the struggle in the Philippines against both the American and native exploiters of the workers and farmers of that country.

Philippine Program:

1. That we foster an intense nationalist spirit and a hatred of American imperialism in the Philippine Islands. In this propaganda it is our task to point out continually that the American workers and farmers are the only friends the Filipino people have in the United States and that it is only the American capitalists who are the enemies of the Filipino people.

2. That we endorse the Philippine boycott against goods of American capitalists and that we recommend to the Filipinos to organize their boycott in such a fashion as to hit American business interests where it hurts them most and is most effective, instead of a general boycott which might tend to dissipate the usefulness of this weapon.

3. That we encourage the support of the popular freedom loan to aid the independence movement.

4. That we encourage the participation by the workers and tenant farmers in the movement for national freedom as members of the working classes. Here we must point out that the workers participating in this struggle are engaged in the conflict in order to enhance their own class interests and not for the sake of promoting the welfare of their native bourgeoisie as against the foreign American capitalists.

5. That we encourage the spread and the strengthening of all mass organizations of labor such as the three labor and farm federations, the Society of the Power of the Poor, etc.

6. That we call upon the workers and tenant farmers to organize special class divisions of the loan campaign and to secure special working and farming class representation on all missions and committees dealing with independence problems. This is essential because of the fact that the best fighters in the Philippines and in the United States for Filipino freedom are the workers and farmers of both nations.

7. That we draw the attention of the Filipino workers and farmers to the fact that they also have an enemy, the less dangerous temporarily, because of its present weakness, than the powerful American imperialist exploiters, in their own capitalist and landlord classes. Under no circumstances shall the waging of an intense campaign for national freedom serve as an excuse for not waging a relentless class war at home.

8. That towards this end the workers wage a determined fight for the improvement of their living and employment conditions for the extension of the suffrage, and for the right to organize.

9. That we ask the Filipino workers and farmers to strengthen the present organizations thru unifying their existing ones and extending them wherever possible.

10. That we recommend to the Filipino workers and tenant farmers that they consider the organization of a class Farmer-Labor Party in the Islands.

11. That we, as soon as practicable, organize the Filipino members of the Workers Party into a Filipino Communist League as a step towards the organization of a similar body in the Islands.

12. That we call upon the Filipino workers and farmers to take steps to prevent native or any other capitalists from getting hold of the coal, and sugar and other centrals now being operated by the government; that the same operation continue; and that in cases where the government is planning to give up ownership and control, the industry or factories in question be turned over to cooperatives of workers engaged in the same and to members of other labor and tenant farm organizations.

13. That we demand the immediate recall of General Wood and press for an investigation of his regime, especially of the charges made against this administration and Secretary of War Weeks in the articles on this problem appearing in the LIBERATOR and WORKER.

14. That we assure the Filipino workers and tenant farmers of our determination to fight side by side with them for genuine national freedom; that we denounce all measures aiming at misleading the Filipino people by granting fraudulent independence limited thru preference to American business interests, and the right of the U.S. Navy to establish bases in the Island waters; and that we call upon all labor and farm organizations to force the government to drop its present imperialist policy against the Philippines.

15. That in all our propaganda we emphatically point out that the only organization that is today fighting for the freedom of all oppressed nationalities is the Comintern.

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. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1924/v02a-n065-jun-03-1924-DW-LOC.pdf