I

ELECTION DAY is rolling round once more. The circus is already unfolding its big tent preparatory for the annual show. This time, however, we are going to get something extra; the election of a president is involved, and the hard times promise to insert a novel touch into the usual routine. There are four parties of national scope out to "get" the voter: the republicans, democrats, socialists, and communists. All four are going to appeal to the people, though none of them can deny their allegiance to a particular class. Thus, it is needless to say that, despite their petty bickerings, the r. p. and the d. p. represent the same propertied classes; while the s. p. and the с. р. claim to represent the workers.

Although all the parties are appealing to the People each appeal is different.

Thus, the r. p. is entering the campaign with the idea of preserving all it has won, while the d. p., which is "out" and wants to get "in," had to find some point of disagreement with them. They had to find an issue that would not hurt their economic interests, which are similar to those of the r. p., yet would attract popular attention. Prohibition was such an issue. The r. p. had straddled it, which gave them the opportunity to espouse it. For the rest, although they speak more frankly and appear more concerned over the poor worker, their stand is the same as that of the r. p.

For instance, on the question of tariffs, the r. p. does not mention the Smoot-Hawley bill; the d. p. condemns it vigorously, ignoring its own part in the tragedy. As to tariff principles, both advocate the same thing though in different terms: the r. p. is silent on the present high tariff but favors a flexible tariff with the president having the power to play with it; the d. p. merely favors a "competitive tariff for revenue." It is apparent that the only beneficiaries are the manufacturers, all other elements of the country being injured by it.

The position of the bankers is assured by both parties. Both advocate a [?] currency. The d. p. however, favors a rehabilitation of silver-how they expect to reconcile the two I don't know. That a slight, controlled inflation might help a preponderant debtor class is of no concern to these parties who belong heart and soul to the bankers.

Both parties protect the wealthy by ignoring the question of income and inheritance taxes. However, realizing that the mounting costs of government might involve such taxation, they favor a reduction of expenses. This, naturally, is to take place at the expense of the government employees.

Again, both parties assure our foreign investors that "we" will take care of their investments. They promise that our army and navy will always maintain the same ratio with other armies and navies that it possesses today. In other words, all the talk about arms is just-talk.

However, the politicians realize that they have to throw, or pretend to throw, a sop or two to the poor people who happen to be suffering a little. So the r. p. deserted its traditional stand and went out of its way to endorse the principle of high wages. This is, of course, very pertinent in these days of "universal employment." They also showed their radical leanings when they came out, bravely and boldly, in approval of collective bargaining by responsible representatives of employees. (This, by the way, is a vital proof of the fact that all good things come to those who wait for the ballot to bring it.)

Radical as the r. p. has been, the d. p. has gone them one better: they actually seem to favor unemployment insurance. That they only seem to, is obvious from the way they frame their plank. They favor unemployment insurance under state laws. They do not favor it as a federal law because they expect to be elected and might be held to account. However, it is valuable in that they admit that some people are unemployed today.

To say that the r. p. is entirely devoid of humanitarian feelings would be to malign them horribly. They know that some people are starving today, so they urge the creation of an emergency relief fund for temporary loans to states. However, I suppose we'll be expected to belch up our food at the end of the "temporary" period.

Being good political campaigners, neither party neglected that part of the population that has always weighed so heavily on American politics, the farmers. Both parties went out of their way to get his vote; both favored the extension of their cooperative marketing associations. The r. p. even went so far as to "pledge assistance" to them. However they left themselves an excuse for doing nothing by telling the farmer that the prices received here for agricultural products is higher than in any competing country. But they failed to mention the prices received for other types of commodities, such as machinery, here and abroad.

So we see that the r. p. and the d. p., from the goodness of their hearts, extend their aid to everybody, from the dispossessed to the dispossessors, from the farmers of the west to the financiers of the east, from the starving unemployed to the millionaires. All, all will be helped by them if given a chance. Praise be to Allah!

The next party to attract the eye, from the point of view of size, is that of the socialists. They claim to really represent the workers.

At one time possessed of a semblance of revolutionary philosophy, today they do not even possess the semblance. They have become reconciled to capitalism and desire nothing better than to patch it up and make it look more presentable. Their claim is that they are being practical and want to gain immediate benefits for the workers. One can judge how practical they are when they propose charging the bankers for $10,000,000,000 for relief. They have even less chance than Don Quixote had against the windmill.

Not concerned with going to the root of our evils, they are merely trying to apply patches wherever the sores look worst. So, realizing that people are suffering today from unemployment, they do not try to solve unemployment, to get rid of it; they merely want to soften it a little, but to let it exist. Granting that they are sincere in their concern about the unemployed by advocating a scheme of unemployment insurance, are we to believe that they are ignorant of the failure of similar experiments in other countries?

For the rest, they have come out like good little reformists, in favor of adherence to the World Court and entry into the League of Nations, they favor increased government control of power resources and banking, though how it will help the workers I cannot discover. In line with the Marxist tendency toward centralization, they propose to do away with the farmer's cooperative marketing associations and substitute for it a federal agency for the marketing of agricultural products. I suppose they base this plank on the wonderful success that the Farm Board has met in all its ventures.

In conclusion, let me sum up the advantages and disadvantages to be gained by supporting the above parties with the ballot. Both the r. p. and the d. p., though pretending to embrace all classes, speak quite plainly in the defense of money and money only. A worker's vote for either of them only tells them to go on robbing, beating, exploiting and murdering fellow workers.

On the other hand, the socialists do advocate some measures for the workers, but all of them are only reforms, inadequate and temporary. None solve the inconsistencies and contradictions of capitalism; none of them lead to the goal for which all radicals claim to be striving, the goal of maximum freedom and economic security.

II

IN THE previous issue, by analyzing the programs of three of the major parties who are appealing to the workers, or rather the People, for their vote, I developed the idea that the ballot can bring the worker no benefit. I pointed out that there is no difference between the programs of the Democrats and the Republicans in spite of their mutual animosity insofar as the workers are concerned. Both mean to preserve the privileges of the rich even to the point of shooting those workers who try to win with too much fervor some slight gain. I showed that the Socialists were impractical in their demands for immediate relief (urging a mere ten billion dollars for relief and public works, which the bankers are, of course, very desirous of giving away), and that they advocated no basic changes in the present system, but only some reforms that can succeed, perhaps, in setting back the date of the inevitable crash, but cannot altar the inevitability of the crash.

And now we must consider the Communists. Theirs is the one party that still claims to be revolutionary, so it is very important that we examine their program carefully. And when we pass judgment upon them, it must be from the standpoint of the revolutionist, of the dispossessed, of te workers who are working and the workers who are not.

Their biggest bid for support in the present campaign, and the one that is most important, is their plank advocating unemployment insurance at the expense of the state and the employer.

Bismark, apparently, was wiser than the Communists. Without any pre cedent to guide him, he knew that he could check the growing revolutionary spirit of the German workers by introducing a series of social insurance reforms. Today, the Communists, with a more scientific (?) outlook on history, intend to foster the revolutionary spirit of the American workers by winning for them social insurance of one sort or another. We cannot believe that the Communists do not know what the results of unemployment insurance are; therefore we can only believe that the Communists are deliberately forsaking the revolutionary course for the opportunistic business of getting more votes.

Are they not aware of the fact that a system of unemployment insurance gives the government an almost unlimited control of the worker? That strikes can be broken at will by sending in the unemployed or threatening them with suspension of insurance if they refuse? That the state will become the symbol of all hope and help, and thus stifle any desire for independent action and solidarity that the workers may still possess?

But far worse than this, the Communists are continuing and fostering a fallacy that all capitalist apologists have been nursing along for years and protecting from revolutionary onslaughts. The advocation of unemployment insurance at the expense of the state and the employer implies that the worker is not paying for it. This permits the worker to think that he is wresting wealth from someone; wealth that does not belong to-him but to someone else. How can he, under such circumstances, ever learn that he is the true creator of all wealth, insofar as his labor fashions everything, and his needs as a consumer create the demands that give commodities value? How will the worker ever learn that everything belongs to him by right and that his historic role is not that of cringing and begging for a part of what is his, but rather that of rising to his full strength and possessing himself of all that rightly belongs to hìm?

In other words, this plank, which implicitly admits the right of the employer to own, control, and exploit property (and therefore those without property, the workers), will befuddle the workers and hide from them the fact that they are being robbed and exploited. And in return, the Communists only ask for a scanty meal of bread and soup. Such is the sickly significance of unemployment insurance.

But the Communists claim that they advocate it, not because they believe in it so much, but because they want to draw more people into their ranks, more votes for their candidates. If this is true, I can say only that as politicians they are pikers. Even as an Anarchist I know better. I may not be an expert political judge, but I feel quite sure that if they would cone out in favor of the Methodists, or the Christian Scientists, or even Mr. Hoover, they would poll a much greater vote than by merely advocating unemployment insurance. And if they would only angle for Mr. Hearst's support by advocating a larger army and navy, I might almost venture an overwhelming victory for the new Grand Old Party (G. O. P.).

I grant that it is important for a movement to grow, to draw in more members. But on what basis? The Communists knew, or ought to know, that the people who support them when advocating unemployment insurance, will not support them when advocating revolution, which may he violent, bloody, and ugly. They will not be supported because the two ideals are incompatible: one aims at maintaining and preserving by reforms, the present system; the other at overthrowing it.

This policy of gaining votes at the expense of ideals may succeed in getting votes, but will bring the Communists no nearer their goal since the motion of marking the ballot can only help to maintain the myth of democracy and hide the real nature of the mailed fist of capitalism, ie, the fact that the capitalists control the press and therefore the opinions of the people, that they do not hesitate to use force whenever they are opposed in industry, etc...

As for the rest of their program, the Communists show themselves to be impractical, irrelevant, and contradictory in regard to their original aim in framing it.

They are impractical when they favor emergency relief for the farmer without restrictions by governments or banks. They propose to do thìs by exempting the impoverished farmers from taxes and prohibiting the forced collection of rent and debt.

By trying, or claiming to try, to solve the problems raised by the contradictions of capitalism, of which they are well aware, they are undertaking even more than the old miracle makers would care to do. They will find themselves forced to work according to the impossible, mutually conflicting rules imposed by the bankers and industrialists to whom they will have to turn for that support that any government needs in order to exist. For, were they to win, let us say, an election in some state, or states, they would find that, before they could relieve the impoverished farmers of their taxes, or prevent the forced collection of rent debts, they would first have to consult with the hankers for the extension of credits with which to carry on. And if we find those very same bankers imposing such strict conditions on ordinary capitalistic governments, what sort of cooperation, what kind of conditions would the bankers offer to a government pledged to prevent the collection of their own capital and interest? The result would be complete submission to the bankers just as we find elsewhere. Therefore we find it inevitable that anyone, including the Communists, who tries to play ball under the rules of capitalism will have to stick to the rules laid down by the capitalists.

My second point is that the Communists are irrelevant. At a time like this, with official figures stating that over 11,000,000 are unemployed, with farmers in revolt and crops not harvested, with the growth of industrial unrest, and about 45,000,000 people without any income, starving, to come out in defense of the Chinese people and the Soviet Union is ridiculous. To expect people who are starving and whose only prospects are a cold winter without shelter, with old clothes, and only a breadline as a source of food, to get excited about people on the other side of the world, shows a lack of that much vaunted materialistic realism that the Marxists are always yelling about.... If their purpose is to give the American worker an international outlook, why pick out only China and Russia? What about Nicaragua and Haiti, Cuba and the Philippines,, India and Egypt, and all the other oppressed nations of Asia, Africa, and the Americas?

Finally, I want to point out that the Communists were contradictory in regard to their own aim in framing their program. They claim that they advocated unemployment insurance to gain votes. If this was their real aim, why did they proceed to alienate the vote of all the southern whites by defending the equal rights of the Negro? They should first try to attract the vote of the southern white on some other, milder issue. Then, once they have gained their confidence and won their vote on election day, they ought to try to teach them how wrong it is to deny the Negro his equal rights. That might not be the approach of the revolutionist who really wants to fight for the oppressed, but it would be consistent with their other "tactics." They claim that they are going to make fire-eating, irreconcilable opponents to capitalism of all the reformers who will vote for their unemployment insurance plank.

Finally, let me point out that the. Communists don't really want to win. They claim to laugh at the-whole procedure of so-called democracy. If so, it means that they are insincere in what they advocate. Therefore, I should advise all those who are still convinced of the blessings of the Communist program, to vote, not for the Communists, but for the Socialists, who advocate everything that the Communists do (except the defense of the Chinese people), and more of the same sort calculated to soften the sharp edges of capitalism and make the workers turn from the revolutionary movement. The Socialists at least believe sincerely in the value of the ballot and political action. They may be blind to the evils of their course, they may be afraid of advocating more direct action, they may be only poor little reformers who are trying to reconcile the evils of capitalism regardless of the harm such vacillation causes to real revolutionary movement, but, after all, so are all who believe în the ballot blind, cowardly, and vacillating.

As for the Communists, I can only say that this was the logical step for them to take. Any party that persists in using, or trying to use, parliamentary action, must, sooner or later, begin to show a greater interest in getting votes than in maintaining ideals. Compromise is essential for, and in the very nature of such action. The lust for votes is bound to supersede the mere "educational" factor in political campaigns.

There was a time when the Communists were revolutionary. That was the time when they emphasized industrial action and subordinated political action. But the latter is, after all, the more spectacular field; it is less strenuous and dangerous; it is "legal." So the Communists have abated their activities on the industrial front; they seem to be abandoning it gradually.,. And if they continue along their present course a little longer, we will have to draw in some hair-splitting metaphysicians to differentiate between the Communists and the Socialists.

And now a few words about the Anarchist approach to the problem of immediate demands. The impression might have been gained, by our analysis of political parties and by our position on parliamentary action, that the Anarchists are revolutionists who live only for the future revolution. Such an impression, however, is erroneous. The Anarchists recognize the fact that we are living today and therefore must modify our conditions as much as possible, to make living as endurable as it can be made for the workers under capitalism. This they hold in common with the Communists, Socialists, and even those reformers who want to preserve capitalism. But there is a difference between the Anarchist methods of making such changes and that of the others. Only the Anarchists seem to appreciate the irreconcilable opposition of the interests of the workers and the capitalists. They recognize that any gains made by the workers can be made only by forcing concessions from the employers. And they claim that the most effective way to win such concessions is, not by voting for the "friends of labor," but by striking. Even if the laws are passed, they are of little value, since they may be evaded in so many ways, and their enforcement is generally so weak. But when the workers win some concession in the shop, factory, or mine, there is little chance for the employer to cheat them of their victory.

Therefore we advocate the organization of the workers into industrial unions, through which they will fight for immediate demands by means of the strike. Such a course will give the workers that feeling of solidarity that indispensable for a successful revolutionary movement; it will expose the oppressive, exploiting nature of capitalism and train the workers for the ultimate struggle. It will discard the shams and hypocrisies of democracy that today shield the capitalists by hiding the real issues that face society. There will then be two armed camps. Nor will any issues that belong to no man's land, such as prohibítion or foreign invasion scares be capable of distracting the workers. The scene will finally be clear for action-and may the exploited deal more kindly with the exploiters than they were dealt with in all these long centuries!

Transcribed with minor spelling corrections by Juan Conatz