The daily worker., 1924-05-14
The Fight Has Just Begun

Extreme reaction has been kicked out in both
Paris and Toxic. These developments in France
and Japan are supplementary to recent events in
Germany, that gave 100000 votes and 81 rechs
tag members to the Communists, and the lifting
of labor government to power in Great Britain
The Communists are credited with 26 members
elected to the chamber of deputies Of France This
was the first parliamentary struggle in which the
French Communists engaged. The party had not
yet been organized in 1919, when Poincare won
power The members it has had in the chamber of
deputies were the few that came over after the
break with the Socialist Party over the question
of afiliation with the Communist International
1t is conceded that with their 26 votes the Com
munists will hold the balance of power between
Poincare's "national bloc" and the so-called $50
cialist bloc" made up of motley array of parties
calling themselves radicals radical socialists, re-
publican socialists and socialists Only the So
cialists, with 81 members elected have any afflia
ton with the Second (Socialist) International
All the others are professedly bourgeois parties
The whole tendency in the socialist movement
now as always, is to overemphasze if not actually
misinterpret, the significance of parliamentary
election results The victory of the British labor
party was hailed as the millennium, while "The
Leader" official expression of American socialism,
is satisfied with the recent results in Germany,
where the reichstag strength of the socialdemo
cracy was cut in half.
The trend of political development in Europe,
as elsewhere since the war has been from reaction,
thru mock democracy in some form, and then into
fascism, the forerunner of the social revolution.
Italy and Hungary are the classic examples of this
development Horthy and Mussolini rule on the
ashes of bourgeois democracy. The Ludendorff
demonstration at Halle, last Sunday, with the con-
sent of the Berlin government, would indicate that
Germany is rapidly drifting in the same direction
Communism is the only power that can save
France and England from a Mussolini or a Horthy
Under Communist standards the fight against capi-
talism in these two countries has only just begun.
The socialist bloc' in the Versailles at Paris, can
lift France out of the capitalist chaos into
which the plunged it, than the Macdonald
labor government can usher in a social order
thruout the British Empire.
What the French socialist bloc" and labor rule
in London can and may do, is to so disgust the
workers and farmers with the democracy" they
had been lured into supporting, that they will un-
Willingly turn about and give their allegiance to
a fascist dictatorship. Socialist leadership has
not and will not learn the lessons of the rise of
fascism to power in half dozen European coun-
tries. Only Communist leadership, teaching the
masses the real functions and limits of parliamen
tary action, inspiring the workers and farmers
with their own historic mission-to achieve their
own emancipation-only such Communist leader
ship can save the oppressed under capitalism from
the terrors of fascist dictatorship in France and
Great Britain, the dictatorship Of the exploiters
that has claimed the blood of tens of thousands in
Hungary and Italy
Wiz this realization comes the conviction that
the fight for liberation has only just beguns
Against the parayzing bosses reaction march on
ward the forces of the social revolution. The
French elections in France mark step forward
only if the workers and farmers of France rally
in sufficient numbers to the Communist Party and
principles and the holds true for every other
country.