Harrison George with a welcome and a critique of the 1929 founding of Haiti’s National Workers Party of Haiti and its figurehead, Antoine Pierre Paul. The country was then under direct U.S. military occupation.

‘The Haitian Masses in Motion’ by Harrison George from The Daily Worker. Vol 6 Nos. 247 & 248. December 21 & 23, 1929.

THE Haitian newspaper, the “La Presse” of Port-au-Prince, in its issue of November 25, publishes a letter (which space forbids be here reprinted in full) from the officials of the newly formed National Workers Party of Haiti, addressed to Antoine Pierre Paul, revealing the formation of this party and appointing him too act as its spokesman before the American imperialist government. Paul was one of those first arrested in the strike and martial law which took place after the publication of the letter, which reveals, in the formation of this new party, one of the most significant turning points in the history of the Haitian people.

Every worker conscious of his class and its historic mission to destroy capitalist imperialism, every worker who is an internationalist, will give deep and responsive welcome to the first steps, however faltering and errant, of the oppressed workers and peasants of Haiti on the path of class struggle. Every worker who sees mirrored in the miseries of the Haitian workers, his own class sufferings and his own complaints, will feel a tug at his heart-strings as he reads such simple tragedy as the following paragraph on the sufferings of the Negro toilers of Haiti:

“Since 1915, each year is worse than the preceding one. Today, we are reduced to such a state of suffering and privation that laughter and joy have deserted our workshops where, even during our most sanguinary revolutions, a worker’s song stimulated our ardor and rendered agreeable the labor begun. Today our places are occupied by foreigners. Tricked, despised, without work and bread, the working class, which constitutes the life force of the nation, languishes in the darkest misery, having before it no perspective of amelioration.”

Every American worker must, moreover, feel a sense of responsibility for tearing away the hand of American imperialism which is choking the life out of the Haitian, worker. American imperialism, which under the hypocritical pretense of bringing “progress, culture and peace” to the Haitian people, is robbing, cheating and murdering them.

The revolutionary workers of America fully acknowledge this responsibility and, led by the Communist Party, only a few days ago turned out by thousands in the streets of New York to protest the crimes of the American government, proving, when they met the same sort of brutal attacks as are visited upon the Haitian workers, that they stand ready to sacrifice their blood and freedom for the oppressed toilers of Haiti, for the fighting solidarity of the international proletariat of which they are a part.

Every revolutionary worker of the United States, therefore, will be glad to know that the toilers of Haiti, isolated from international contact by the watchdogs of imperialism and its vile native lackeys led by Borno, have been touched by the tremendous tide of history and have awakened to their interests as a class of political importance in society, as a class distinct from other classes.

True, the realization of distinct class interests, in the case of the signers of the letter (the officials of the National Workers Party), is grievously inadequate to carry through the ideas which it sets forth. Because a class distinct from other classes must also have a program distinct from other classes, and from this basic division must foreswear organic dependence upon other classes, must forge from its own blood and sinew the only leadership upon which it can and must depend to direct its struggles.

Hence it is a serious error for the Haitian Workers Party to have limited its program perspective to the same demand as that the bourgeois opposition, a mere “restoration” of imperialist capitalist government by native capitalist government. Thus the letter speaks for “the restoration of our institutions,” the mere turning over “little by little as the American, element leaves the place, in the different branches of public administration, to the Haitian elements which will have been trained to assume the functions now occupied by American officials.”

The function of American officials is to rob and oppress the Haitian workers and peasants, whose interests cannot be advanced by “restoration of” present governmental institutions, but by their destruction and replacement by a government of workers and peasants only. The formation of a Workers’ Party is the symbol of an historic advance, hence by a program of historic retrogression it does not answer the demands placed upon it.

Again, the letter speaks in a way which shows this party of workers distrustful of their own abilities and power. Though they are “the life force of the nation” they turn to “good Haitians,” people evidently outside their own ranks, from which “to choose a leader,” and confusing the ability to lead a struggle with the ability to write petitions and orate in scholarly language, they invite intellectuals not only to share leadership with them, which is natural and correct so long as such intellectuals subordinate themselves to the common cause, but to “be our leaders,” apparently without even the slightest direction or control by workers, since they address Pierre Paul as one “in whom to confide the elaboration of our program,” to “make such declarations as you will find necessary.”

One might well wonder why workers form an organization at all, if they turn over, cart blanche, the entire function of their organization, which should consider and decide collectively, to one man, however loyal to their interests he might be.

But there are other and deeper weaknesses in the policies of the National Workers Party of Haiti, which we will mention in a following article.

***

IN a previous article we spoke of the great significance, both to the Haitian masses and to the international proletariat, of the formation in Haiti of the National Workers Party. The organization of this Par was revealed by a letter printed in “La Presse” of Port-au-Prince on November 25, just before the martial law decree of imperialist America. The letter was addressed, publicly, to a Haitian leader, Antoine Pierre Paul, authorizing him to speak for the Party to American authorities. In the previous article we referred to the weakness of the Party in lacking a class program.

But the weakness revealed in the letter goes deeper than a lack of clarity on the imperative need of independent class program and action. For the letter indicates a reliance and hope of imperialism transforming itself from an oppressor to a liberator; Upon imperialism versus imperialism! What futility!

We see, for example, these officials of a Workers Party of oppressed Haiti, appointing Antoine Pierre Paul, to the vain task of “appealing to the loyalty and high morality of the President of the United States” for “a gesture of superior justice and magnanimity on the part of the American rulers in Washington” (for the “restoration” above mentioned and for “the election of the successor of Mr. Borno”).

Why Imperialist Occupation.

But if we understand that American imperialist interests, its necessity for markets and raw materials, for coffee and a place to invest capital at big profit, America’s imperialist demand to expand exploitation from the proletariat of the United States to all Latin America, to swallow in its iron maw the profits wrung from the Haitian peasant, the Cuban sugar worker, the Mexican miner, the oil worker of Colombia and Venezuela, and to drive British imperialism from control, to fortify Haiti against British Jamaica’s naval base–if we understand these things, we at once know that it was not the lack of “high morality” which caused American imperialism to invade and subjugate Haiti, nor can any appeal addressed to the conjectured “high morality” of American imperialism’s present spokesman have the faintest chance of releasing Haiti from the talons of Yankee rule. Moreover, Hoover’s “loyalty” is not to the interests of the Haitian toilers, but to the National City Bank which exploits the Haitian people.

Indeed, the facts of life, since the Haitian Workers Party wrote the letter referred to here, have given overwhelming answer to such absurd expectations. And that answer has been written in the blood of the heroic peasants of Aux Cayes!

To appeal to Hoover, to petition the “rulers at Washington” to be “just and magnanimous” is to appeal to the tiger to release its fangs from the throat of its prey, to appeal to the leopard to change its spots!

And what follows from this? In reliance upon the enemy to cease being an enemy, is to forego the only effective means of attaining the end desired. For the movement of the masses must rely upon the masses themselves, not something or someone outside of them, and certainly not the very imperialist machine which is robbing and oppressing them.

What Is the Bar to Freedom?

Do not the Haitian masses passionately demand freedom from Haiti as a prerequisite to their solution to the problem of bread and land? Then who dares stand between them. and that aim? The Marines, the Garde d’Haiti and the insect Borno! The letter says:

“You will not forget to inform the agents responsible for the public peace that the worker, being by his nature a pacifist, the National Workers Party intends to maneuver only upon legal grounds…and that anyhow, the Haitian proletariat and even our citizens of other classes are disarmed.”

There are difficulties, therefore we succumb to them! Such is the timid logic of the National Workers Party. Rubbish! No people can escape slavery except by their own struggle against difficulties, and the masses of Haiti, calling upon those of Santo Domingo, of Cuba and all Latin America, appealing to the workers of America and the world to stand behind them in struggle, could with whatever weapons possible to secure in their hands and courage in their hearts (they have both and would use both were it not for the timid and confused leadership!) drive all the vermin of Yankee imperialism into the sea!

But not only does the Haitian Workers Party castrate itself by the false claim that “the worker is by nature pacifist” and its intention “to maneuver only upon legal grounds” (within the boundaries of martial law as set by the commander of the U.S. marines, we presume!) but it enters upon a path of dabbling in denunciation of those who may overstep or urge the masses to overstep these niceties. Thus the Party’s letter rather vaguely complains of “machinations,” and remarks:

“The American officials who have assumed the direction and control of the interior police of the country, should have enough loyalty and disinterestedness to render illusory and vain the malevolent work of spies.”

True, this is mentioned, this strange trustfulness in American police commanders, this placing of the Workers Party on the side of the police chiefs as against spies (who would be sent in by anybody by these same police chiefs!) as a measure of caution. But caution is not the primary factor in the winning of battles, but rather are courage and daring. Cowardice has lost more battles than those lost by brave troops with audacious leaders–however much they were spied upon. And surely the National Workers Party of Haiti does not wish to enter a path which leads to competition in vile police informing with the reptile “intelligence men” sent out by Brigadier General Russell!

Listen To Aux Cayes!

An ocean of heroism throbs in the veins of the Haitian masses. That it needs only the release of a united and clear-headed leadership as heroic as itself, was proven that morning at Aux Cayes, when the peasants, as stated by the capitalist press of New York, heard “with curses and jeers” that the leaders of the strike had called it off under pressure of martial law.

The National Workers Party of Haiti, if it is to live up to the requirements history places on those who speak in the name of Haitian toilers, if it is to be what the whole international proletariat hopes it will be, must discard these errors of thought and action which have naturally arisen in the beginning of the movement, must resolutely turn from all legalistic begging at the door-step of imperialism, turn from reverential listening for further empty promises from Washington, and listen rather to the echo of Aux Cayes!

Remember Nicaragua! No trust in marine controlled elections! No illusion that America will voluntarily replace Borno except by another like Borno! No hope that imperialism will cease being imperialistic! No pacifism and no intriguing behind the backs of the masses! Against these–an appeal to the world proletariat, particularly to the workers of all Americas, North, Central and South, and a resolute fight on the soil of Haiti to drive from it every agent of Yankee imperialism!

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 issue 1: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n247-NY-dec-21-1929-DW-LOC.pdf

PDF of issue 2: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n248-NY-dec-23-1929-DW-LOC.pdf