The election-eve appeal of the Communist Party in the 1928 vote which saw William Z. Foster and Ben Gitlow run as the standard bearer. Five ‘basic issues’ are identified; imperialist war, wage slavery, Black liberation, assaults on democracy, and defense of the Soviet Union. Other then the last, unfortunately, these are all still basic issues of the U.S. class struggle.
‘Vote Communist!’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 5 No. 263. November 6, 1928.
Class Against Class
Election Day Call of the Workers (Communist) Party of America
To all Working Men and Working Women:
The press of the master class is boasting; the present election campaign is the most intensive election struggle in the last, generation. No less than 43 million people have registered.
A flood of oratory by speakers of the capitalist parties has been inundating the capitalist press with its muddy waves.
All the churches have been mobilized. Protestant preachers, Catholic priests, Jewish rabbis, vie with each other in vomiting out huge amounts of medieval prejudices.
Thousands of paid organizers work for the capitalist parties. The two parties of the boss class have collected a campaign fund of not less than $9,000,000.
The air is, in the most literal sense of the word, full of election promises.
Bourgeois demagogy never reached such a high climax as in the present elections.
The republican Hoover promises the extermination of poverty within the next few years.
The democrat Smith babbles about the breaking of the power of monopolies, and promises honesty in government.
PROMISES.
Both Hoover and Al Smith are making promises to bring down the stars from the sky and the heaven to the earth. They promise increased wages to the workers and increased profits to the bosses. They promise to serve the masters of the big trusts and the workers of the factories.
The socialist party of America, with its preacher candidate, repeats parrot-like the most obsolete phrases of both capitalist parties, promising ever-lasting peace–under imperialism, complete democracy, under the rule of the trusts, gradual transformation of the constitution, and “public ownership” of water power, railroads, and factories–by the capitalist state.
The corrupt leadership of the American Federation of Labor is divided. Part of them support the republicans; part the democratic party. But they are one in their defense of capitalism, in their advocacy of labor imperialism, in their treacherous and disastrous policy of class collaboration with the bosses.
All the forces and factors d capitalist society are united against the Workers (Communist) Party of America. Republicans, democrats, social democrats, officials of the A. F. of L., the Ku Klux Klan, the American Legion, the 35 million daily copies of the capitalist press, the scores of thousands of pulpits of the churches, all radio companies monopolized by capitalism–mount as one solid steel wall against the Communists for the defense of the present capitalist society.
WHY THEY FIGHT COMMUNISTS.
Why are all the forces of power and wealth against the Communists? The sole reason responsible for the united republican-democratic-socialist front against the Communist Party is the fact that the Communist Party is the party of the working class, the only representative of the wage slaves of this country. All other political parties are the parties of big and small business. Only the Communist Party is the party of the working class. The platforms of the republican, democratic, and socialist parties are platforms to uphold the present capitalist society with its class divisions, wage slavery, exploitation, and oppression of the huge masses by the small group of owners of the means of production.
The struggle of the Communist Party against the republican, democratic and socialist forces is nothing else but the class struggle of the toilers against the bosses.
The real issue in the present election struggle is the issue of class against class, the working class against the master class.
The issues raised by the capitalist parties and by their small brother, the socialist party, are either of secondary importance or fake issues.
FIVE BASIC ISSUES.
Five basic issues loom up before the toilers of America in the present situation, and nothing better characterizes the nature of the present election campaign than the fact that the political parties of big and small business are maintaining a deadly silence about these real fundamental issues.
The first issue is imperialist war. But not one of the candidates or parties of big and small business tells the truth about it to the working masses. With empty phrases and brazen lies they try to cover up the danger of the next imperialist world war.
Wage slavery, capitalist exploitation and oppression is the second basic issue. But not one of the capitalist parties–neither the socialist, or republican, or democratic–challenges the existence of wage slavery.
The oppression of the Negro masses is the third basic issue. But not one of the political parties of big and small business raises the issue of virtual Negro slavery, which is one of the props of present-day American democracy.
Fake capitalist democracy is the fourth basic issue. But democrats, republicans, and socialists alike accept the present constitution of the United States as the basis of their platforms, and refuse to expose its class nature, its “checks and balances” for keeping the rich in power and keeping down the toilers.
The fifth basic issue is the existence of the Socialist Soviet Republic in Russia. Eleven years of workers’ rule over one-sixth of the earth is the most shining, most promising fact on the horizon for the future of the toilers of the whole world.
ONLY ONE PARTY FIGHTS CAPITALISM.
Only the Communist Party is raising the issue of the next imperialist world war. It denounces all imperialist preparations. It demands the immediate independence of all American colonies, the withdrawal of United States troops from China and Nicaragua. The Communist Party is fighting imperialist war, and will do everything to help defeat the United States government in its next war, will do its utmost to transform the imperialist war into a civil war against the United States capitalists.
Only the Communist Party challenges wage slavery. The Communist Party fights for the abolition of wage slavery. It has as its aim the overthrow of capitalism, the establishment of a Workers’ and Farmers’ Government, the establishment of a Communist society in which the means of production will not be the private property of the few, a society which will not be based on profit but on labor, which will not be founded on class divisions, which will eradicate both imperialist wars and class wars, which will be able to eliminate poverty.
The Communist Party raises the issue of Negro oppress in all its length and breadth. We fight for the abolition of the whole infamous system of race discrimination–for the full racial and social equality of the Negro masses, and for the right of the Negroes in the South to self-determination. The Negro race must understand that capitalism means racial oppression, and Communism means social and racial equality.
The Communist Party exposes bourgeois democracy, which is in truth the dictatorship of the trusts. Government by injunction, raids and deportations, penitentiaries for political prisoners, troops crushing strikes, frame-ups and lynchings, disfranchisement of millions of Negroes and foreign-born workers–these are the realities of American “democracy.”
The Communist Party pledges itself to defend Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union, the fatherland of the working-class of the world. Soviet Russia is building socialism now, has the most complete system of labor protection and social insurance, is the only power which has reduced its military forces and is working for peace.
THE CURE FOR WAR.
Workers! Comrades!
Don’t believe the lies of the parties of big and small business. The Kellogg pact cannot prevent war. The League of Nations is an instrument of imperialism preparing for war. All pacifist phrases of the socialists are good only to distract your attention from the looming war danger. War, under imperialism, is inevitable. Only the revolutionary class struggle of the working class can prevent it.
Don’t believe the brazen lies about exterminating poverty under the rule of capitalism. Poverty cannot be exterminated in a class society in which the means of production are the private property of the few, in which the huge masses of people are forced to sell their only property, their labor power. Only Communism will be able to eliminate poverty as well as class domination.
Don’t believe in fake promises about gradually improving capitalist democracy. Capitalist democracy means 102 years in prison for New Bedford strikers, means the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, means ruling the Communist Party off the ballot in a whole series of states, means government by injunction, means company towns, means boss terrorism to force workers to vote for the capitalist parties. Real democracy for the toiling masses can be established only by the revolutionary overthrow of the present government. The working class cannot reform or “take over” the present apparatus of government. The proletarian revolution will destroy this huge machine, and will build its own government based on the factories as units of production. The state form of the rule of the working class will be councils of workers. The Soviet form of government constitutes the only real democracy for the overwhelming majority of the people, for the toiling masses.
WHAT A COMMUNIST VOTE MEANS.
Workers! Comrades! Mobilize all your forces on Election Day!
A big Communist vote will be the most effective protest against imperialist war.
A big Communist vote will be a vote against capitalist society, against wage slavery, for the overthrow of capitalism.
A big Communist vote will be a vote against lynching, against racial discrimination, for full social and political equality of the Negroes.
A big Communist vote will be an expression of solidarity with the only working class government, with the Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union.
A big Communist vote will be the expression of the fighting will of the masses against wage-cuts, against speed-up, against unemployment, for the organization of the unorganized millions, for the formation of new militant trade unions.
A big Communist vote will be a protest against fake capitalist “farm relief” and for giving the land to its users.
A big Communist vote will be the index of proletarian protest against capitalist terror, against the sinister forces of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Legion.
A big Communist vote will be a powerful mass demonstration against class collaboration with the bosses, for revolutionary class struggle.
A huge Communist vote will be the expression of the fighting will of the working class of America to overthrow capitalism and to erect its own rule, a Workers’ and Farmers’ Government. Workers! Vote Communist!
Join the Communist Party, the only party of the proletarian class struggle. Build your own party. Help to forge the instrument to emancipate the working class.
CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE WORKERS (COMMUNIST) PARTY OF AMERICA.
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-n263-NY-nov-06-1928-DW-LOC.pdf
