The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-08-09

I pIOlCaClon; the Se1-eXpoSure OF So
cial democracy that openly under
takes steps together with the bour-
geoisie against the working class
and carries out social fascist pol
icy; the growth of the influence of
Communism among the working
masses to adopt the methods Of a
more active struggle against the
bourgeoisie. The offensive of capt.
tai already comes up against in
creased power of resistance of the
working class. The class battles,
from being offensive on the part of
the bourgeoisie, begin to be trans
formed into nte~-offensive fights
and partly into direct offensive bat
ties of the proletariat. Movements
such as the LODI general strike,
revealing high degree of class
consciousness and revolutionary
activity on the part of it's partici-
pants; battles like those in the Ruhr
where the offensive of triple al
lance in the form of the capitalist
state, the employers and the re-
formist bureaucracy, met with a
stalwart and decisive resistance on
the part of the working class; also
large scale successes like the sue
cess of the Communist Party at the
elections to the shop and factory
committees in Germany show the
oncoming of a new revolutionary
tide. The reparations burden leads
in Germany to rapid increase of
the class struggle, expressing it
self, on the one hand, in merciless
offensive of the employers; ON the
other, in the form of mass actions
of the proletariat. The double bur-
den resting upon the German prole-
tariat - PREPARATION payments and
the increased pressure of the home
bourgeoisie on the working class
hasten the maturing of the revolu-
tionary crisis in Germany. The
strike wave is rising everywhere;
in France a strike of miners, tex
tile workers, dock workers, postal
employees; in the U. S. A., a strike
of textile workers where the strug-
gle of the masses reached the point
of armed bloody clashes between the
workers and the police; tremendous
strike movement in Australia;
strikes in South America (Argen-
tine, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay,
Colombian; the strike of the long
shoremen, the strike and lock out
in the Ruhr, the four months long
strike of the textile workers in Ger
many; a general strike in LODI and
a strike of agricultural workers in
Poland; general strike in Greece;
a tremendous strike of agricultural
workers in Czecho- Slovakia; a gen.
eral strike of tobacco workers in
Bulgaria; a powerful revolutionary
strike wave in India; new revival
of the strike struggle in China.
There is almost no country in the
world where the first months of
1929 have not gone far ahead COM
pared with the previous years either
as regards the number of strikes
or as regards the number of strik-
ers. This strike movement has re-
vealed the active role played in
them by the unorganized masses
whose fighting mood often leaves
far behind the workers organized in
the reformist trade unions.
There take place a number of
solidarity strikes and strikes of pro-
test against the reactionary perse-
cutions of workers. simultaneously
there is going on Tin a number of
countries) a growth of revolution
airy spirit among the oppressed ma
tionalities and the peasant masses
- expressing themselves in some
countries in the form of mass &C.
tons and armed clashes (participa-
ton of the peasants in the May
Day demonstrations; strikes and
revolutionary actions of the village
poor and the agricultural laborers
in Western Ukraine and Poland; a
peasant movement against taxes in
Greece; agrarian movements in Ru-
mania; peasant unrest in some To-
calities of Jugoslavia and Italy;
strikes of agricultural workers in
Czecho-Slovakia, Holland, France,
etc.,.
In the face of a far developed pro-
cess of employers organizations
and reformist trade union apparatus
becoming one with the bourgeois
state; under conditions where the
class contradictions in the present
period have become extraordinarily
sharpened, the economic strikes in
many cases grow into mass politi-
cal strikes (Lodz, Bombay. All this
forces the working masses to link
up the economic struggle with the
political struggle, with the struggle
against the entire capitalist sys-
tenn. The bourgeoisie employs
against the strikers all the repres-
sive means of the capitalist state
ARRESTS, victimization, shooting).
This calls forth and will still more
call forth strikes of protest, strikes
of solidarity, which assume a very
pronounced political character. This
poses before the Communist Parties
the problem of political mass
strike as a decisive problem for the
next period. The application of the
instrument of mass political strike
will help the Communist Parties to