The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-03-31
Bill HaywQod's Book

of them lasting for years, for the enforcement
of the eight-hour day and higher wages, the
terrible atrocities of the military and citizens
alliance which had been called in by the
ployers, the explosions in the mines, the de-
portations, murders of miners during these
strikes are wildly described in the book.
With the growth of industrial unionism the
revolutionary workers of America felt the need
for the formation of one general organization
which would comprise all the unions and fight
on a common basis of class struggle against
the exploiters. The Western Federation of
Miners took the initiative, and in conjunction
with the American Labor Union and the United
Railway Workers Union, the Industrial Work
ers of the World G.W.W.) was founded in
1905. This organization, which was founded by
Eug~-' V. Debs, has also to its credit the mill
tant leadership of number of strikes, such
as the Lawrence textile workers and Paterson
silk strikes each of which involved $4,000
workers, the strike of the rubber workers at
Akron, etc. But the LW.W. was soon rent
by inner differences split into two wings on
personal grounds, weakened by the withdrawal
of the WEN, which after Bill Haywoods
resignation became an opportunist body and
finally landed in the camp of the ALL. As
result, the I.W.W., which was savagely per-
secuted by the whole bourgeoisie on account of
its class and anti-war activities got involved
in trial, which ended in the class court in an
atmosphere dominated by war fever and anti
red hysteria, sentencing all the leaders of the
organization to long terms of Imprisonment up
to 20 years. When Bill Haywood, after year
Imprisonment, left America for good in 1920,
to find brotherly hospitality among the Rus
sian workers, the I.W.W. in America collapsed
completely.
Bill Haywood who died on May Is in Moscow
and lies buried under the Kremlin wall in
the Red Square, was the typical representative
of the American working class Unbribable,
filled with unquenchable hatred against the ex-
ploiters and their State, fearless of dangers,
self sacrificing in theory he lacked a clear
outlook of the future of the working class of
the function of the State and the role of a
revolutionary party. He was not a Marxist,
but syndicalist, who believed in the unions
taking over the control of industry according
to the principles of the WIN "by means of
lease bond, location or purchase" In this re-
spect his speech at the III. World Confress
OF the Communist International is very char
acteristic; he openly declared that the Russian
Revolution was won not by the Communists
but by the workers. In making this dstnc-
ton, Haywood showed his complete lack of un-
derstanding of the relationship of the Party
to the working class, and it's indispensable role
as leader. Further he claimed that the paraly-
sis of Russian industry at the time (Summer
1920 was due to the fact that the Russian
working class was not organized economically,
and that it would have been much easier for
Russian industry to recover, if the Russian
workers had enjoyed the same revolutionary
scientific training the members of the l.
WV.
Although the record of Bill Haywood's lif;
is SO rich in heroic struggles against the all.
powerful Dollar capitalism and must ever re-
main source of inspiration to all class-con-
scious workers, it confirms in the most striking
manner Lenin's famous dictum, that without
revolutionary theory there can be no revolution
airy practice.
1t remains the historical task of the Com
munist Party of America, under the leadership
and guidance of the Comintern, to take over
and preserve the best traditions of the mill
tant and class conscious movement of which
Bill Haywood was such an outstanding repre-
sentative combining them with the correct,
Marxst-Leninist theory by which alone it will
be possible to build up real revolutionary
mass Party capable of overthrowing that COL
ossus-American Imperialism.