The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-09-01
AIDING FELICANI, member of

"A the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense
Committee of Boston, on two oc
casions at least since the execution
of the two workers, Nicola Sacco
and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, has used
the capitalist press to make an at
tack on the American Communist
movement.
Felicani is an anarchist. Sacco
and Vanzetti were also anarchists.
But this made no difference to the
Communists, neither in the United
States nor in any other country.
Sacco and Vanzetti were the work.
ers, imprisoned, placed on trial for
their lives and sentenced to death
by the capitalist state. Commu-
nists made every effort, stopped at
no sacrifice, to achieve their liberia
ton.
There should have been no diff
ference between workers and work.
ing class organizations to save
4Sacco and Vanzetti from the cleo
trio chair Unfortunately there
were differences.
There should be no differences to-
day among the workers to build for
the unity of American labor and
the development of its power, in
memory of the heroic fight waged
by Sacco and Vanzetti But UNI
fortunately there are differences.
Communists are first in the effort
to overcome these differences, to
cement the unity of labor.
In attacking the Communist
movement, Felicani does not do so
on principle. He resorts to the age
long subterfuge of raising the ques-
ton of finances.
The International Labor Defense
and the Sacco-Vanzetti Emergency
Committee of New York City have
both carefully, repeatedly and pa
tiently answered all of Felicani's
criticisms.
In addition, it may be said, how
ever, that Mary Donovan, secretary
of the Sacco- Vanzetti Defense Com
mittee of Boston, in a statement to
The DAILY WORKER last Satur-
day, specifically repudiated the
statement attributed to her in the
New York Tribune and
other capitalist papers of that day
to the effect that 100000 had been
raised by Communists and never
accounted for, which Felicani again
alluded to in his interview in the
capitalist press yesterday.
It is an immediate duty of the
Boston Committee to officially
repudiate the ISLANDERS that have
been circulated in its name, and
credited to Felicani, who is es-
pecially obligated to give his views
thru some other medium than the
press of the enemy class.
Felicani, as an anarchist, may
disagree in principle with the Com
munist program. That is his right,
altho it is difficult to understand
how any intelligent worker needs
better proof than the fate of Sacco
and Vanzetti themselves to refute
anarchist theories.
The revolutionary movement that
is actually threatening the CAPT
talist social order does not consist
of workers who believe in the an
archist "negation" of power; of
those who believe in individual
terror and a passive refusal to
deal with the state" but it is made
up Of workers who carry on an I'M
ceasing struggle Of the proletariat
for all power, for the destruction
of the capitalist state. Such work
ers cast their lot with the Com
munist movement.
Let not Felicani debase the strug-
gle, over the principle to a squabble
over finances. That is a mere
trick. 1t was the trick used by
Abraham Cahan, editor of the jew
ish Socialist Daily Forward, to
hamper the work of the Friends of
Soviet Russia, in the days of famine
in the Union of Soviet Republics.
1t is the subterfuge used by the
reactionary bureaucracy of the
American Federation of Labor in
avoiding a direct struggle over
principle with the progressives and
the left wing
Felicani, however, is also quoted
as stating that the Communists of
America are more concerned in
spreading their propaganda than in
aiding our comrades who died in
the electric chair.
If Felicani makes this charge,
and he has not denied it, then he
has yet to learn that Communists
had no interests separate and apart
from those demanding the liberia
ton of Sacco and Vanzetti, just as
the Communist movement wages
the struggle for the release of all
class war prisoners, just as it fights
for the emancipation for the whole
working class Even tho Roston