The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-08-01
From the First World War to the Second

these back again by means of a systematic, reac-
tionary offensive. Mass unemployment became
permanent phenomenon. Some fifty million work
we're thrown on the streets for years, cheated
of work and bread, and put off at best with
dole" which was insufficient either for life or
death. The working youth on leaving school found
the factory gates closed They could not learn any
productive occupation and entered manhood with
out any prospects before them. Millions were con-
demned to short time millions were robbed OF
wages and relief. The bourgeoisie did not even
halt at the scandalously meagre relief given to war
pensioners, war widows and orphans but system
atically robbed them of their support If the ex
soldiers and war invaids dared to demonstrate they
were met by the bourgeoise with police bullets
In the postwar period in every country the
toilers we're subjected to mass suffering. Stones
instead of bread that is what the bourgeoisie pre-
scented to the toiling masses. The thanks Of the
fatherland" proved nothing but bloody mockery
The more fierceIy the economic crisis ragged
and the more it caused the revolutionary to
mount, the more desperately the bourgeoisie chung
to their tottering domination. The moment ar
rived when the bourgeoise could no longer con-
ceal its rule behind democratic screens, but was
compelled to pass over to open fascist dictatorship
The methods of bourgeois democracy became
hindrance for finance capital, both in the struggle
against the proletarat and in the question of prep
aration for war and new partition of the world.
Fascism, which Social Democracy had cultivated
by it's policy of the lesser evil' grew out of the
body of bourgeois democracy. During fourteen years,
simultaneously had characterized the path of
bourgeois democracy as the path of the working
class toward freedom and power. With the fiasco
of this path with the bankruptcy of bourgeois DEM
eeraey, the mass influence of the Socal-Democratc
leaders began to wane Thus the ruling class found
itself compelled to support itself not primarily
Social democracy, but on fascism as well,
If fascism has become, in the words of Stain,
"the most fashionable commodity among bourgeois
politicians, the is not least of all because
Of it's great role in the preparation of the coming
war. Chauvinism and the preparation of war as
the mainsprings of foreign policy, and terrorist
suppression of the workers in the sphere of home
policy as an indispensable means for strengthening
the rear in the coming war, take central place in
present-day imperialist politics. Just as the tran
siton to terror internally is sign of weakness of
the bourgeoise, so is also the transition to the
open policy Of war The development of fascism
has immensely intensified the general danger of
war.
The establishment of open fascist dictatorship,
the uneashing of an unheard of terror for the
purpose of complete economic and political en-
slavement of the toiling population, was the crown
ing achievement of the thanks of the fatherand."
The heroes of yesterday became for the beurgeeise
the "submen" of today.
Fascist dictatorship prevails in Germany and
Italy Poland and Austria, in the Baltic countries
and Hungary 1t has robbed the toiling masses of
their last rights and established medieval regime
of terror Under the sign of the executioner's axe
and the gallows, fascist dictatorship is attempting
to bourgeois class rule which has been shat
tered, to solve the capitalist economic crisis at the
cost of the masses and to find way out through
war adventures 1t is not from strength but from
weakness that the bourgeesie has been forced to
have recourse to its last fascist reserves at the
moment of the revolutionary upsurge. The bloody
terror against its own toling people is for the
ruling class the contamination of the past war and
the prelude to the coming war. Such are the
thanks of the fatherland'