Vol. 79/No. 3      February 2, 2015

Below is an excerpt from the second volume of Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite! Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress, 1920. The two volumes are part of the series The Communist International in Lenin’s Time, and contain the reports and discussions of the congress held in Moscow in July-August 1920. This selection is from “Appeal to the IWW,” which appears in one of the appendices. Drafted by Gregory Zinoviev, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, the letter presents the achievements of the Russian Revolution and calls for the Industrial Workers of the World, a revolutionary union movement in the U.S., to rally to the banner of communism. It was published in the IWW paper Solidarity in August 1920. Copyright © 1991 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

Comrades and fellow workers:

The Executive Committee of the Communist International, in session at Moscow, the heart of the Russian revolution, greets the revolutionary American proletariat in the person of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Capitalism, ruined by the World War, unable any longer to contain within itself the tremendous forces it has created, is breaking down.

The hour of the working class has struck. The social revolution has begun, and here, on the Russian plain, the first vanguard battle is being fought.

History does not ask whether we want revolution or not, whether the workers are ready or not. Here is the opportunity. Take it and the world will belong to the workers; leave it — there may not be another for generations.

Now is no time to talk of “building the new society within the shell of the old.” The old society is cracking its shell. The workers must establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, which alone can build the new society.

An article in One Big Union Monthly, your official organ, asks, “Why should we follow the Bolsheviks?” According to the writer, all that the Bolshevik revolution in Russia has done is “to give the Russian people the vote.”

This is, of course, untrue. The Bolshevik revolution has taken the factories, mills, mines, land, and financial institutions out of the hands of the capitalists, and transferred them to the whole working class.

We understand, and share with you, your disgust for the principles and tactics of the Yellow Socialist politicians, who all over the world have discredited the very name of socialism. Our aim is the same as yours — a commonwealth without state, without government, without classes, in which the workers shall administer the means of production and distribution for the common benefit of all.

We address this letter to you, fellow workers of the IWW, in recognition of your long and heroic services in the class war, of which you have always borne the brunt in your own country, so that you may clearly understand our communist principles and program.

We appeal to you, as revolutionists, to rally to the Communist International, born in the dawn of the world social revolution.

We call you to take the place to which your courage and revolutionary experience entitles you, in the front ranks of the proletarian Red army fighting under the banner of communism.

Communism and the IWW
The American capitalist class is revealing its true colors. The constantly rising cost of living, the growing unemployment, the savage repression of all efforts of the workers to better their condition, the deportation and imprisonment of “Bolsheviks,” the series of antistrike laws, “criminal syndicalist” laws, laws “against red flags,” and laws against propaganda advocating the “forcible overthrow of government and the unlawful destruction of property”—all these measures can have but one meaning for every intelligent worker.

Industrial slavery is as old as capitalism, and other forms of slavery existed before it. But now the capitalists of the world — the American capitalists as well as those of France, Italy, England, Germany, and so on — are planning to reduce the workers once and for all to absolute and hopeless serfdom.

Either this, or the dictatorship of the working class — there is no other alternative. And the workers must choose now.

Capitalism is making desperate efforts to reconstruct its shattered world. The workers must forcibly take state power and reconstruct society in their own interests.

The coming slave state …
Before the American Civil War, the Negro slaves of the South were bound to the land. The industrial capitalists of the North, who needed a floating population to operate their factories, declared slavery to be an outrage and abolished it by force. Now the industrial capitalists are attempting to bind the workers to the factories.

In every country during the World War, it was practically forbidden for the workers to strike, or, in general, to quit their jobs. You will remember the “work or fight” laws in your own country.

And now that the war is over, what has happened? The cost of living has gone up and up, while the capitalists have actually tried to reduce wages. And when the workers, faced by starvation, are forced to strike, the whole power of the state is mobilized to drive them back to the machines. When the railway shopmen walked out, the U.S. marshal of California threatened to bring in federal troops to force them to work. When the railroad brotherhoods demanded higher wages or the nationalization of the railways, the president of the United States menaced them with the full armed power of the government. When the United Mine Workers laid down their tools, thousands of soldiers occupied the mines, and the federal court issued the most sweeping injunction in history, forbidding the union leaders from sending out the strike order or in any way assisting in conducting the strike and forcibly preventing the payment of strike benefits.  
 
 
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