Garrett Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
From Labor Action, Vol. IX No. 47, 19 November 1945, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
We know that you are already a reader of Labor Action. You may even have guaranteed regular receipt of the paper by subscribing to it. If you haven’t yet subscribed, you should. But it isn’t the purpose of this article to sell you Labor Action. We want to talk about another publication, one you ought to read as regularly as you do Labor Action. This other publication is the New International.
Actually the two publications, one a weekly paper, the other a monthly magazine, go hand in hand. The informed worker is the worker that reads both of them, as well as such other printed matter as is issued under the imprint of the two periodicals and the Workers Party.
We have to understand our problems so that we can solve them. It’s no small job working to replace the powerful, complicated, entrenched capitalist system by OUR system of society, SOCIALISM. To do it, and we MUST do it, we must know how capitalism operates in all its complexities, what makes it tick and grow deathly sick – and deathly sick it is. We must know how to destroy it, how to build socialism. We must, in short, understand and discuss every phase of our contemporary social, political and economic life – including those matters of international politics and socialist program that may seem far-fetched and distant at first glance.
The capitalists don’t neglect education. They have at their disposal schools, newspapers, radio stations and countless other vehicles through which they justify, propagandize and educate for THEIR social system. More than that, the university mills, political machines and numberless institutions of learning or colleges yearly turn out thousands trained in the justification and operation of capitalist society.
We haven’t the money they have, and we haven’t the facilities. But we have something far more powerful. They don’t have it, and they know it. We have the unassailable doctrines and principles of socialism with which to confute them, and to DEFEAT them. But we have to know these principles thoroughly, and we have to apply them to the problems of the world.
And, applying them, we must organize, band together, join a revolutionary socialist party, the Workers Party, so that we can actively intervene in the struggle of workers everywhere against the capitalist system everywhere.
Very well, isn’t Labor Action sufficient? No, we of Labor Action say it isn’t. Labor Action is our fighting paper. Through it we intervene in the daily issues of working class life – jobs, union militancy, against fascism, against imperialism; and while we advance our program for the immediate solution of these pressing problems, we agitate for the fundamental solution of ALL these problems, and many more – namely. Socialism.
But space, and the things we must concern ourselves with in Labor Action make it impossible to cover all the problems that need to be covered, or for that matter all the aspects of any given problem, in the columns of Labor Action. Nor will we able to do this in the eight-page Labor Action that is an absolute necessity. That is why we say that New International is an indispensable reading supplement to Labor Action. We, that is we of Labor Action and the Workers Party, and you who merely read Labor Action and are thinking of joining the Workers Party, we both of us need the New International for our education and better understanding. An educated worker is a socialist worker, and a socialist worker is the most effective worker.
You have heard that the New International is “deep stuff.” We call it a theoretical organ of revolutionary Marxism, that is revolutionary socialism. But theory, this “deep stuff,” is, as we understand it, fundamentally related to the practical issues of our daily factory or union life. It’s a theory of working class action, investigation and politics, and therefore it is not too “deep” for a worker to understand. Certainly, we must try to understand it.
Let’s take one case. You will read in the New International articles of policy, analysis or discussion on the question of National Liberation in Europe. That seems far off, doesn’t it? But how well we understand the problem of the European working class, its economic and political situation is of the deepest concern to us. The European workers will be our brothers in creating a universal society of brotherhood and freedom. The better we understand their problem, the better we can help them, the better they can help us.
Or we could take any one of several “domestic” cases – the articles on Jim-Crow, wages, housing, and so forth. Suppose we merely cite several of the articles that appeared in the last two issues: Balance Sheet of the War, Atomic Energy and Socialism, For a New Trade Union Program, Agrarian Struggles in the United States, The International Significance of the British Elections. And these do not exhaust the contents of the last two issues alone.
The idea then of this article is to persuade you that the New International is a reading NECESSITY. The question then arises as to how you can best be sure of getting the New International to read. As with Labor Action, there is no better way than to subscribe. The New International is now carrying on a subscription campaign, and its offer is attractive. But we leave that to the Business Manager of the magazine. You’ll find his offer elsewhere in this issue of Labor Action. Turn to it now; clip the sub blank; become a regular reader of the New International!
Main LA Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 14 February 2020