A call to the colors from Clara Zetkin. Here writing as Chair of the International Red Aid, she sets the tone for 1932’s world congress held in Moscow with a history of, and appeal to support, the organization dedicated to defense of class-war prisoners and their families. Also known as the MOPR internationally, it became a genuinely mass organization in a number of countries, including in the U.S. where it was known as the International Labor Defense.

‘To All Toilers, to All who Want Bread, Freedom, and Culture!’ by Clara Zetkin from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 12 No. 48. October 29, 1932.

In November a Congress of the International Red Aid will meet in Moscow. This is a great and important event for all of you in whose hearts and minds fettered humanity cries for liberation, and who have yourselves so often suffered the pangs of hunger. This Congress, true to the essential character of the International Red Aid, will be a congress for your cause, and it must be your work. You must accord it not only your fullest interest and your closest attention, but more than this: Your most energetic support and cooperation.

The International Red Aid is the vital embodiment of the indestructible common destiny of the productive toilers of the whole world, which links up the fate of every one of you with the welfare or unhappiness of your brothers and sisters in the remotest regions of the earth. The International Red Aid reaches over the whole world, it works all over the world, and it is helping to create an entirely new world. But this new world cannot be a gift which falls into your lap like a ripe fruit. You must build it up for yourselves by struggle and action. If you intend to be masters of your fate, to satisfy your longing for bread, freedom, and culture, to secure for your humanity perfect development, maturity, fulfilment of life, then you must all become builders of this new world.

The International Red Aid calls upon you all, and gathers you together, for this great work. And it does more: it educates and trains you for it. The I.R.A. as a world-building, world-comprehending, super-party, and revolutionary organisation, does not ask about profession or sex, or about religion, or last of all about nationality and race. You toilers, whether brain or manual workers, look carefully, and realise what the inexorable facts of your daily work and lives teach you, whether you eat the bread earned by the sweat of your brow, or whether you are perishing of starvation. You are living in a world in which dead money, dead property, determines the fate of living and creative human beings, and not their work, their knowledge and ability, their will and wishes. You own little or nothing, and hence you are disinherited, downtrodden, enslaved, and exploited by the rich and the super-rich. Your unitedness in distress and in longing for emancipation must become a unitedness for resolute action. The international Red Aid calls upon you, unites you, and prepares you for the battle for freedom. It is striving forward towards its goal: fraternal aid by all for all who suffer, who struggle, are defeated or victorious.

Toilers, seekers for bread, liberty, ad culture, the World Congress convened in November in Moscow by the International Red Aid will draw the balance of the first ten years of the existence of our world-uniting and world-building organisation. The balance of its existence means the results of its many-sided and effectual work for the fulfilment of its great historical task. For existence means for the I.R.A. untiring effort for the maintenance, awakening, and enhancement of the life building up the world, of your life, you toilers of the world, longing and striving for emancipation.

The World Congress to be held in November will prove to you that the International Red Aid is one with the spirit and the fire of the victorious proletarian world revolution commenced in Russia in October 1917. The spirit of this mightiest of all events of our time as Rosa Luxemburg named it–inspires our world organisation, and the fire of this great happening burns in it, striving forward. Remember this, toilers of the world–the greatest event of our time is the deed of your Russian brothers and sisters, who have heroically ventured, sacrificed, fought, and won, all in the fullest consciousness of indissoluble solidarity with you all.

The ever-memorable victory of the toilers in Russia over tsarism and capitalism opened up a new era in the advance of humanity. Toilers of the world, you must not tolerate it any longer, with resignation, sighs, and lamentations, as if it were a divine ordinance or law of reason, that the small and ever-shrinking minority of your lords and exploiters “make history”. This is the decisive factor: that this small minority arranges the economic and social conditions which determine your fate. This is no mere theory, this is something forming part of the bitter daily experiences of you toilers, when you sit down to bare tables, when you wander homeless from bench to bench in the public parks, when you spend the night under the bridges; when murderous rationalised exploitation robs you of your muscles and nerves and drives you to an early grave; when you are unable to protect your children from the sharp fangs of utter want and deprivation; when your starved mind calls in vain for knowledge, your senses and emotions for higher things, for joy and beauty, and all the rich possibilities of culture are locked away from you behind seven-sealed doors. Wherever and whatever you may create, you toilers, the few owners of the great means of production, of the means of maintaining and enhancing life, will force you to place all your labour at the service of the increase of their wealth and power.

Your brothers and sisters in the Soviet Union have put an end to the possibility that the owning classes enrich themselves at the expense of a frightful burden of toil and poverty imposed upon the toilers, or make the “history” forming the state of society in which this is possible. They have shattered the bourgeois state apparatus, the instrument maintaining and consolidating the enslavement and exploitation of the toilers, and have swept away the basis of these vampire forces by abolishing the private ownership of the great means of production. In establishing the Soviet order, the toilers have taken into their own resolute hands the prerequisites for “making history”, of reorganising economic and social conditions on the new basis–without any private ownership of the great means of production–and of rebuilding society by a transformation from the serfdom and usury of capitalism to socialism.

Toilers, seekers for freedom, whether living in the East or the West, the North or the South of the globe, everywhere where your labours and your blood are poured forth in the service of the greed of profits and power of the big owners, look to the immortal example set by your brothers and sisters in the Soviet Union, take courage, and follow this example. As your vanguard and champions, they have proved that you the disinherited and downtrodden of the earth, possess the power to defeat the enemy, in spite of the mighty forces at his disposal. And they have shown that whilst this enemy would like to exploit you merely as the manure for his own culture, you possess yourselves the maturity and ability to build up a new and higher economy and order of society, an order in which no human being casts fetters upon the humanity of his fellow human beings, or can oppress and annihilate his fellows by squeezing out their labour and life forces. The days of the Russian October shook the world, renewed the world. In the 15 years which have passed since then, two–antagonistic and irreconcilable–worlds have been locked in a life and death struggle: the world of decaying and dying capitalism on the one hand, with its apparatus of force and despotic rule, and on the other the world of advancing socialism, urged forward by the young creative powers of its new social life and by the enthusiasm of its liberated, constructively working humanity.

The difference between these two worlds is obvious and tangible. Where capitalism rules, the international economic crisis is devastating every department of social life, and no effort can even alleviate this devastation, which is dragging millions of toilers in town and country into the profoundest depths of want and misery. The private ownership of the great means of production scorns all attempts to introduce some slight degree of planned economics, or to bridle even slightly the wildly anarchist methods of capitalist production. The international leaders and rulers of trustified monopolist capitalism, headed by the bank magnates, are abandoning their hopes of laying the spectre of approaching proletarian revolution by means of reformist democratic illusions. Now they set their hopes for the maintanance of capitalism solely upon bloodshed, upon an ocean of your blood, you toilers. Neither democracy nor Christianity prevents these rulers from calling upon blood-stained fascism to help them, that it may crush every stir and movement of your class-conscious life, and may aid in your physical annihilation. They kindle the flames of imperialist bandit wars, and lay their plans for a fresh massacre of the peoples, that uncounted millions of toilers, dressed in different national uniforms, may go out to slaughter one another. In the Soviet state of the proletarian dictatorship and socialist construction, the voices of millions of toilers, your brothers and sisters, may be heard in triumphant shouts of: Forward, forward! Here devastating economic crisis lays idle the most valuable material and human productive forces, and no unemployment condemns innumerable multitudes of toilers to bitterest deprivation and starvation. Here we see intensest effort and endeavour to place all natural wealth and natural forces, the skill and power of all hands, the forces and talents of the mind, at the service of production. Everywhere there is earnest endeavour for planned economy. The completion of the first Five-Year Plan in four years bears witness to these efforts. Soviet industry is advancing with gigantic strides in the direction of socialism. Agriculture is advancing boldly to socialism by means of agrarian co-operatives and Soviet large scale farms, and especially by means of the collectivisation of the small and middle peasant farms. Socialist construction in the Soviet state conjures up miracles of up-to-date productive technics and great workers’ cities out of the earth overnight. It accomplishes a creative work which not even the greatest capitalist power can hope to emulate. In the Soviet Union, in the ridiculously brief term of 15 years, socialist construction and its reciprocal effects have raised millions of toiling men and women out of the depths of their pre-revolutionary existence as illiterates, deprived of all culture. Now they have fought their way in revolutionary struggle to a new social life, in which they may develop the rich talents of their minds and characters, and create and enjoy the culture of advancing humanity. Tens of thousands of these men and women fulfil in an exemplary manner the responsible tasks of the Soviets and their organs, and of the multifarious public institutions. Compared with these creative deeds of socialism, how poor and miserable do those few ministers and dignitaries of democracy appear in the bourgeois states, occupying high positions, wearing this or that star and order, but in reality merely the political and mental scullions of the ruling capitalist cliques. In the Soviet Union youth storms forward to take part in the work of socialist construction. Not merely hope and unconquerable confidence in victory, not merely joy in the work, but passion and fanaticism for work, is the order of the day.

Toilers! The International Congress of the International Red Aid in November will be dominated by the mighty unprecedented new life of the Soviet Union. Our worldwide organisation, like the Workers International Relief and many other international associations of hand and brain workers, is the robust offspring of the proletarian revolution in Russia. Here its victory was rapid, thanks to Lenin’s firmness and purposefulness of aim, and to his political revolutionary genius, which enabled him to recognise and to appraise the given circumstances, free from all illusions. Its victory was not only rapid, but brilliant, thanks to the Bolshevist Party led by Lenin, which succeeded in extending and strengthening the mass movement by the application of its clearness of vision and its bold and self-sacrificing militancy.

In the midst of the glowing atmosphere of revolutionary struggle and wrestling of ten years ago, the International Red Aid was founded by one of the most faithful, devoted, and far-sighted of your leadere, Julian Marchlevsky-Karsky, who was in closest contact with that company of the old Bolsheviki which included the first and best men and women fighters for the revolution. Up to the time of his death, the founder of the International Red Aid was its chairman, utterly devoted to its advancement, Face to face with the world-convulsing effects of the revolutionary events, effects which both tear the world apart and bind it closely together, Julian Marchlevski recognised the inevitable necessity and far-reaching importance of an international organisation of the toilers of all countries, and its historical role, its tasks of maintaining the forces of revolutionary militancy, of reinforcing them, multiplying them, and raising them to a higher level of efficiency.

The granite foundations of your world organisation, toilers of all countries, are the visible expression of your immutably joint destiny as the impoverished, the enslaved, and the exploited of the great owners. The task has been to gather you together in a no less immutable fighting community on this same basis. The means of doing this lies in far-reaching fraternal mutual aid, free from the slightest suggestion of philanthropy, of charity, or benevolence. The fraternal help of the International Red Aid is the militant alliance of equals, in which the receiver is at the same time the giver, the giver the receiver, and both move forward in one recognition and one will towards the same goal, to a higher stage of revolutionary activity. Toilers, seekers for freedom in all countries, your eyes light up, your pulses quicken, when you remember the difficulties and the honour of your rise from humble sufferers to courageous and self-sacrificing fighters.

The World Congress of our organisation on November 10, closes the first decade of its work. Its leaders need not fear to give an account of this work at the conference. Every word of appreciation which can be spoken of the International Red Aid work during the past ten years is empty and inadequate. Its performance has been, and continues to be, mighty both in extent and value. The dry figures and sober facts of the reports will give some faint idea of the work accomplished. The cases in which the torments of suffering, revolutionists have been alleviated, the struggles of the fighters aided number millions. The I.R.A. has stood at the side of prisoners subjected to inhuman tortures, and has heard the last proud revolutionary words of the victims of the courts martial and the gallows. It has found its way into the frightful bastilles of to-day, and into the unhappy homes of the families of murdered and incarcerated revolutionists. It has saved thousands and thousands from being murdered or buried alive behind prison walls. A faithful protector, it has accompanied fugitives upon the “thorny path of Exile”, and has provided them with a safe sanctuary. In great campaigns it has appealed to the hearts and consciences of all humanely thinking mankind, calling upon them to raise their voices for the full amnesty of political prisoners, to rise in indignation against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti on the electric chair, and against the same fate threatening eight young Negroes–almost children–merely because vilest race hatred and shameless class greed, demand their execution. Toilers in all countries have contributed from their meager purses, have saved from their last morsel of bread, and have gathered together, penny by penny, the many millions which the world wide work of the I.R.A. has demanded.

The ten years of the work of our organisation form an heroic epic, created by millions of unknown and unnamed, in the honour of other millions of unknown and unnamed. The future historians of the period of the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism will learn more from the accounts, and from the straight-forward informative and propaganda booklets of the International Red Aid than from any of the heavy tomes produced by the learned. A very conspicuous fact which will thereby come to light is the sub-human, even sub-brutish, savagery of the defenders of the rule and exploitive powers of the great owning classes, confirming Marx’s words that the thing which they represent has no heart in its breast. In contrast to this, the no less actual reality of the superhuman heroism of the revolutionary fighters, men and women. The existence and work of the International Red Aid form not only a highly significant and essential constituent of contemporary world history, but are a force in which millions of unknown and unnamed toilers are making history. “Making history”, reorganising society, annihilating the old world, raising up the new world, going forward to victory, they are forging their own fate. The individual deeds of the International Red Aid are manyfold, great, far reaching, but they are far surpassed by the main achievement of the organisation: the awakening, assembling, and training of innumerable millions of enslaved human beings to world-renewing, world-advancing, active forces.

It need not be said that during the ten years of the work of the I.R.A., the Mopr of the Soviet Union has set a brilliant example. Toilers, whose struggles and longing for freedom cause you to follow world events and their connections with the sharpest attention, for you this fact will increase the interest felt for the World Congress taking place in Moscow, the Red heart of the state of revolution. The Red Aid of the Soviet Union is the mother organisation, and incontestably the organisation to be emulated. One of the most conspicuous features of proletarian revolution in the Soviet Union is the actually religious feeling with regard to the international solidarity of the toilers of all countries. The Mopr sends continuous energetic international aid to every part of the world where the struggling toilers are wrestling with dangers and difficulties, undaunted by the most cruel fate. The fraternal solidarity of the Soviet Section is the unshakeable material and political basis of our world organisation. It has made the territory of the Soviet Republics the refuge and the workplace, the hospitable home of the refugees from the terror of counter-revolution, the Source of energy, from which they emerge strengthened, ready to plunge once more into the struggle of the worlds.

Here, in the state of proletarian dictatorship and socialist construction, the victorious proletarian revolution has built up an undisturbable basis for the activities of international fraternal aid. Here there are no spies, no provocateurs, no certain death awaiting those who render this aid, as they await those heroic men and women who come forward everywhere, full of enthusiasm and devotion, in the Balkan states, in South Slavia, Hungary, and in the realms of Pilsudsky and Mussolini. Here the helpers of the International Red Aid are sure of joyful support. Hence they feel themselves pledged to greater effort. Closely bound up with the enthusiastic readiness for self-sacrifice on an international scale for their brothers and sisters on the other side of the frontier, the creative social action of the Mopr members forms a mighty force. Where groups of the I.R.A. have been founded in the Soviet Union, we see their work in the form of infants’ creches, children’s playgrounds, consultation centres and aid centres for mothers, for the sick and old, community kitchens and dining rooms, in a word, institutions of every kind giving the women full freedom and equal rights, giving the children their rights of care and training for their bodies, minds, and characters, and giving all who are in need of fraternal solidarity the help which they requires. Reading rooms and libraries are organised, courses of elementary and scientific instruction, cultural institutions of every kind. Copeck by copeck contributions are collected in aid of the Five-Year Plan of socialist construction, and millions have been raised. Into the front of socialist construction, and from this front, there stream fresh battalions of young and fresh volunteers, shock brigades of the I.R.A., devoting themselves indefatigably and entirely to the gigantic work of the Soviet State. We see an incomparable, determined, tireless awakening of minds and movement of busy hands, and this not only to create fresh forms of social life, but beyond this to create a new social consciousness and being in humanity, filled and borne forward by the realisation of the indissoluble connection of all with all. Upward, upward, to higher and purer heights of humanity–this is the spirit and the activity shown in all the facts reported of the creative social work of our Soviet Union Section from all parts of the Union, not only from the highly developed industrial centres, but from lonely villages out in the forests, from the steppes of the autonomous territories and the Republics of the North, South, and East. “Bolshevist annihilation of culture”–thus howl the wolves raging around the Soviet Union, greedy to throw themselves upon it and tear it to pieces in defence of capitalist profiteering economy.

The World Congress of the I.R.A. meeting in November in Moscow will be a conscientious and careful review of a decade of work, and at the same time, it will furnish a keen survey of the tasks set us by the historical hour, and of the ways and means at our disposal for fulfilling them. And it will furnish a discerning glance into future events. Retrospection, inspection and prospection, all unite in the one inflexible determination: Forward, forward, to the goal of the new world and the emancipation of mankind. No illusions will be brought forward at the congress, only facts. No imaginative excursions, no speculations, no confusion of ideas weakening the closest alliance between the essential character and work of the International Red Aid and the great whole of the world revolution.

Toilers, seekers of culture! The congress deals with your very own cause. It is the duty of every one of you to exert your utmost efforts to aid this conference to carry out its tasks effectively. This duty must be your honour and happiness. Utilise the short time till November for promoting the work of the congress in every possible way. Draw the attention of the masses to the congress, deepen and extend comprehension for its aims. Collect funds, organise groups in which the agenda, the tasks of the congress, the work of the I.R.A., are brought forward and discussed. Let these groups elect delegates to the congress, and impress on these delegates their duty of energetic participation in the work of the congress and the reports on it, and of a study of the work of the Soviet Union section of the I.R.A. and of the gigantic work of socialist construction. The masses must learn not only of the mighty successes of construction, but of the great difficulties which have to be overcome by the radiant heroism and voluntary self-sacrifice and endeavours of your brothers and sisters, who do this work as conscious champions of socialism, of communism, of the proletarian world revolution. Open your hand, your hearts, your minds, for the work of this congress! It need not be said that you will act in close collaboration with the Red Aid organisation of your locality, district or country. As in all struggles for the bread, liberty, and culture of the toilers, against your tyrannous rulers and tormentors, the International Red Aid will help you, lead you, guide your earnest efforts towards making the work of the International Red Aid a conscious and devoted action joined in by countless millions of toilers all over the world. The work and influence of our world-embracing organisation must form a vital part in the lives of all toilers. To work! To the fight!

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly. Inprecorr is an invaluable English-language source on the history of the Communist International and its sections.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1932/v12n48-oct-29-1932-Inprecor-op.pdf