Written: 19 October 1929.
First Published: The Militant, Vol. 2 No. 20, December 14, 1929.
Source: Microfilm collection and original bound volumes for The Militant provided by the Holt Labor Library, San Francisco, California.
Transcription/HTML Markup: D. Walters.
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Dear Comrades,
You cannot, in my opinion, better observe the twelfth anniversary of the October Revolution than by transforming The Militant into a weekly. It is a great step forward. A semi-monthly made it possible to assemble the initial cadres of the faction. The weekly creates the possibility of direct and continuing intervention in the life of the whole working class.
The weekly, in turn, will have to prepare the way to a daily. But isn’t it utopian to speak of this now? I don’t think so. For it is in this direction that the road of development is leading. In the USSR, in Germany, in France, the Communist Left Opposition represents a faction that is fighting for influence upon the proletarian nucleus of the official party. In Belgium the situation is quite different. The official party is entirely insignificant there. The Belgian Opposition can and must aim to become an independent party. Its task is to win over the proletarian nucleus, not of the Communist Party, but of the Social Democracy.
In America the situation is closer to that in Belgium than to that in Germany. The essential task of the American Communist Left consists of direct action upon the revolutionary elements of the class; the contest for the workers who belong to the official party or who are misled into joining the right wing has no great importance. That means that the Communist League of America has all the necessary prerequisites for developing into an independent party. Under these circumstances, the weekly can and must be a step on the road toward a daily.
I am sending you my article on the twelfth anniversary of the October Revolution for the first issue of the weekly, and along with it a promise of my most active collaboration and an assurance of my devoted support.
Last updated on: 30 May 2021