Like the larger society, our streets are places constantly and violently contested by conflicting class interests. A fine essay from Olgin on how revolutionaries ought engage the confrontation: We Have Full Right to Unlimited Freedom; Our Exploiters Have No Rights.

“Conquer the City Streets!” by Moissaye J. Olgin from The Daily Worker.  Vol. 5 No. 189. August 10, 1928.

We Have Full Right to Unlimited Freedom; Our Exploiters Have No Rights.

July 3. Police attack on the anti-imperialist pickets in Wall Street. Placards torn. Robert Minor dragged down from an automobile. Eight arrests. Five days’ jail sentence.

July 9. Police attack on an open air Communist meeting in Detroit. Three young workers arrested. Beaten up at the police station. Kept incommunicado for two days.

July 14. Police attack on an anti-fascist demonstration in front of the Italian consul in New York. Placards torn. Demonstrators shoved about.

July 16. Samuel Herman, young Communist of Waukegan, Ill., informed that he will be tried by federal authorities for “inciting to riot,” his crime having been participation in the textile strike in Kenosha.

July 19. Police attack New Bedford pickets. Strikers sentenced to from one to five months for “disturbing the peace” and “obstructing the police.” Pinto, picket leader, sentenced to five months in jail.

July 19. Police attack a campaign meeting of Workers’ (Communist) Party in Philadelphia. Five of the speakers arrested. Charged with disorderly conduct.

July 20. Kenosha, Wis. Police attack and break up open air meeting of the workers’ (Communist) Party and the Young Workers’ (Communist) League. Two comrades arrested.

July 23. A large force of police makes a violent onslaught on a picket in New Bedford, smashing the lines, arresting six, and brutally beating up Emmanuel Mario for protecting a woman striker.

July 24. Four strikers of the Fruit and Dairy Clerks Union beaten up and arrested in New York.

July 25. Guerrilla and police attack on left wing fur workers in the streets of New York.

July 25. Four members of the Young Workers’ (Communist) League arrested at Camp Devens, Mass., for distributing copies of the “Young Worker” to the members of the Citizens’ Military Training Camp.

July 26, 27, 28 etc., Aug. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.–New outrages in New Bedford…fronted by the strongest imperialist state power in the world? Are we not fighting the strongest finance capital state trust on earth?

The theory is correct. But Marxism teaches us that historic events are no purely mechanical processes:

“Historic events do not take place outside human will; on the contrary, they occur through the will of human beings, through the class struggle, if we deal with a class society. The will of a class is always determined by concrete circumstances; in this respect it is by no means ‘free’. The will itself, however, is a factor determining historic processes. If we do away with human deeds, with the struggle of classes, etc., we do away with the historic process as a whole.” (N. Bucharin, “World Economy and Imperialism.” p. 127).

The number of cases is legion.

Every day workers’ gatherings are being illegally broken up by the police, workers illegally arrested, sentences imposed on trumped up charges like “disorderly conduct” or “inciting to riot.” Every day someone of our comrades is arrested somewhere. These attacks have become our daily bread.

It seems to me that we do not protest ‘vigorously enough against police and court crimes. It seems to me we are not even sufficiently aroused by all these brutal assaults.

We are too theoretical, too abstract. We almost consider it natural that the hand of imperialist Wall Street should interfere with everyone of our steps. We see so clearly the power of Wall Street behind those “law and order” indignities, that we, perhaps unconsciously, assume that it could not be otherwise.

Wall Street is the consolidated power of the most centralized and concentrated capital. Wall Street is a class organization that must fight its historic foe, the working class. This “must,” however, is different from the one manifested in nature. When classes “must,” it is a matter of will, and wills can be influenced by human actions.

Wall Street, of course, must attack the left wing of the labor movement, but Wall Street is not an inanimate apparatus. If we were more alive, more animated with protest sentiments, more aggressive, more agile in face of the enemy, there would be barriers to the will of Wall Street.

Wall Street is stronger than we are. We are not yet a large party. Strength in public life, however, is not measured by numbers alone. We are strong in our position as the vanguard of the working class. We are strong in our unity, discipline, cohesion. We have a definite program, and definite revolutionary tactics, which are in themselves a power. We must throw all the power that we can muster on the scales of the struggle, telling Wall Street outright: “We shall fight against the continuation of these crimes.”

To put it bluntly, we must become permeated with the live feeling that it is criminal to attack us. We must not think that it is “natural” when imperialist agents trample under foot our most elementary civic rights. We must also feel personally outraged, everyone of us, whenever such an assault occurs. We must imbue the masses that are under our influence with the same burning indignation. We must remember that it is altogether unnatural that imperialism rules our land. We must not be abstract. All these very concrete and very specific encroachments upon us must meet with an instant readiness to return blow for blow.

And we must move more quickly. It is not only a question of our own party. It is a question that touches the broadest masses of the working class. We deal here with elementary problems that can be understood by everyone. We can mobilize not only the Communists, but we can unite large numbers of workers who hate police “law,” and loath judicial “order.” We can arouse thousands upon thousands.

To take an example I see no reason why we should not come in throngs to the City Hall, demanding that police terror be stopped. I see no reason why we should not. march through the streets with placards reading, “Down with Police Brutalities!”, “Down with the Arrests of Strikers and Pickets!” I see no reason why we should not picket the residence of “our” smiling Smith and other dignitaries to demand punishment for police and judges committing crimes against the workers. Of course, we must not repeat socialist imbecilities: we must not beg; we must refer less to “the glorious American tradition” and more to our proletarian class interests. One thing, however, we must remember under all circumstances: this is our own land; everything in it must be ours; we have full right to the most unlimited freedom, whereas our exploiters have no right to anything because they are exploiters.

Let us become permeated by this conviction; let it become part of our mental makeup–and the enemy will feel it, and this alone will be an important social factor.

We are entering an election campaign. It is to be a militant campaign. It is to be a means of enlightening and organizing the masses. We will not spread parliamentary illusions. What we will do is to spread among the masses fundamental knowledge as the nature of the state as an instrument of class domination. What we will do is to organize the workers for struggle. It would be a lesson to the masses and the proper accentuation of our Communist campaign, if we were to start a broadside against police attacks and court knavery.

We must conquer the streets of the cities for our class struggle! We must become genuinely convinced that the streets are ours. We must make this a political mass fight.

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/dailyworker/1928/1928-ny/v05-n189-NY-aug-10-1928-DW-LOC.pdf