The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-08-22
Sacco and Vanzetti

One year ago in the death house of
CharlestoWn prison were fitted the steel
head-pieces of the electric chair upon the
heads of the two Italian laborers whose
names are now the best-known Italian names
and the bestowed in the entire world
The historical moment in the United
States called for savage blow against the
militant section of the working class land
thus of course against the working class as
a whole; it was Sound policy from the
capitalist point of view to murder Sacco and
Vanzetti Also the international situation
made it psychologically necessary and
''sound policy to throw the murdered bodies
of the two Italian laborers into the faces of
the score of Latin-American and European
nations whose masses had dared to "rneddle"
in the case By throwing the dead bodies
onto the world-stage American Imperialism
said; who is master in this world?'
Millions of workers, raised under the sod
den slave-philosophy given them through
every channel of capitalist culture believe
in the everlasting character of the capitalist
society, believe also in the one great, alb
stract justice, rising in godly grandeur above
human affairs uninfluenced by class con-
flicts and dealing even-handedly with all
men-a theological conception, one of the
most important in the theological structure
of the capitalist system.
From the very insistence of the capitalist
authorities that the killing of Sacco and Van
zetti represented Justice the working
class begins to get new understanding of
what 'justice" is. In the course of long and
painful months the working class of the
world has had it burned upon its minds that
the murder of two innocent workers as an
act symbolizing the mastery of the capitalist
class over the working class, is Justice"
Yes, justice, in a capitalist order, means
murder, Justice means perjury and bribery,
lying, swindling and murder or anything
else which will under the circumstances tend
to uphold the present order of society, the
capitalist society of exploitation.
Sacco and .Vanzetti received the only kind.
of justice there is in this country. It is the
only kind of justice that can exist in a capt.
talist country. Evidence has nothing to do
with political trials, except fictitious evil
dence employed to maintain the illusions Of
the masses. It is demonstrated that evidence
had nothing to do with the Sacco-Vanzetti
case. All concerned know beyond shadow of
doubt that both were innocent The only
fit the social order of capitalist property ?''
AS the spokesman of the whole United
States capitalism Thayer answered: ITO
hang these anarchist bastards"
If Sacco and Vanzetti are not to have died
in vain, then we are duty bound to bring
sharply to the minds of the working class
just what their deaths mean. We must make
the workers understand that in the murder
of these innocent men there was nothing in
consistent with the administration of capt.
talist laws, but that the murder was the
most typical, characteristic action of the le-
gal system of capitalism in general, and of
the United States in particular 1t was an
act of the class struggle.
The workers must learn the class ma
ture of capitalist institutions. They must
learn that there is no justice in the skies
above, but that capitalist "justice" resides
in the filthy little person of a Judge Thayer,
sitting in little court house administering
a man-made system which has the purpose
of preserving a certain form of property
relationships and social organization