31. The Revolutionary Aftermath of the War (1945-1951)
The post-war upsurge also affected the United States, the stronghold of world capitalism. This was expressed by developing anti-fascist, anti-monopoly moods among the people, by many big strike movements, by the forward surge of the Negro people, by the powerful demonstrations of soldiers for demobilization, and by other mass manifestations of growing resistance in the United States to the rule of monopoly capital.
THE ADVANCE OF THE SOVIET UNION
Outstanding in the world revolutionary development following the recent war was the tremendous growth in strength and political prestige of the U.S.S.R. This was all the more marked because of the profound weakening of many capitalist countries during the war. Not only absa lutely, but also relatively, the position of the Soviet Union was strengthened. Prior to the war the capitalists considered the U.S.S.R. as a secondary influence among the states; after the war it is universally recognized as one of the two great and decisive powers of the world. The war showed the Soviet system to be the most powerful in the world.
The tremendous advance of the Soviet Union, with its 200 million people, was all the more striking in view of the enormous losses suffered by that nation during the war—over 23 million human casualties, property losses of $128 billion, not to mention the huge cost of waging the war and the vast areas and industries of the country overrun and wantonly devastated. No capitalist state could possibly have suffered such terrific destruction without being defeated in the war. The capitalists, in fact, particularly the big monopolists of Wall Street, thought they had really accomplished their objective of "letting Germany and Russia shoot each other to pieces," and that the U.S.S.R. would not be able to rise again for a long period, if ever. To make the recovery of the U.S.S.R. all the more difficult, they, through their obedient Truman government, not only refused to grant post-war loans to this ally who had suffered so much in the war, but they have actually persisted in trying to compel the U.S.S.R. to pay the United States for the lend-lease supplies it was furnished during the war. This pinch-penny attitude of the government was a shameful disgrace to the generous-minded American people.
But, with the huge, powerful strength innate in its Socialist system, the U.S.S.R., led by its great Communist Party, headed by Stalin, confounded its capitalist enemies by making a very swift recovery from its stupendous wartime property losses. It has far outpaced economically all other countries in Europe, despite the latter's immense subsidies from the United States and their far lesser war destruction. So speedy was its recovery that, by November 1951, industrial production had doubled that of 19401 and was still rapidly rising. In its great industrial vigor, moreover, the Soviet government was already outlining a whole series of monster new developments—including great new power plants, a further big expansion of industry, vast irrigation projects, and the huge enterprise of changing the climate of arid areas in the country through forestation belts.
Along with its vast post-war increase of industrial strength, the Soviet Union has also acquired huge new political prestige. With its sane industrial system and its resolute stand for world peace, it has won the confidence of the many new people's governments born since the end of World War II, and also of great toiling masses in all capitalist countries. The U.S.S.R. is the leader of the world camp of peace, democracy, and socialism.
The Communist Party of the U.S.A. has never slackened in its tireless efforts to demonstrate to the American people the peace role of the U.S.S.R. and also the indispensability, for the welfare of the world, of the peaceful collaboration of the American and Soviet peoples. This is in line with the C.P.'s role as the Party most loyally defending the true interests of the American people.
THE RISE OF THE EUROPEAN PEOPLE'S DEMOCRACIES
Another basic revolutionary development following World War II was the foundation of the new People's Democracies in Eastern and Central Europe, comprising about 100 million people. These include Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Albania. The progressive Democratic Republic of Eastern Germany grew from the same great movement. Yugoslavia was also in this group of advanced democracies until the renegade Tito treacherously sold it out to Wall Street for a share of the Marshall Plan slush funds, made it a war vassal of American imperialism, and headed it into reaction. Tito's name, along with that of Trotsky and Quisling, has become a very symbol of treason to the international working class.
The People's Democracies of Europe took shape at the end of the war. The Red Army of the Soviet Union smashed the armies and puppet governments of Hitler in their respective countries, and all the antifascist parties, particularly those that had fought in the underground, were thereby assisted in taking over and forming coalition governments. This policy was a continuation and development into the post-war period of the program of all-out anti-fascist unity initiated by the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935. These coalition governments were all democratically elected, usually in the face of violence, potential or real. All of this reactionary resistance was encouraged, if not financed and organized, by United States reactionaries. The Soviet Union's proximity shielded the young governments of the People's Democracies from actual armed attacks by the capitalist imperialists of the West.
The People's Democracies constitute a new form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They are led by the Communist parties, the strongest parties as well as the most valiant fighters during the period of the Nazi occupation. The military defeat of Hitler by the Red Army was the precondition for the establishment of these democracies. The progress of the new democratic states has been marked internally by a growing consolidation of working class power, by the amalgamation of the Communist parties and the best elements of the Socialist parties, and by the strengthening of the leading political role of the Communist parties.
Led by the working class with the Communists at its head, the tremendous anti-fascist upsurge and the elemental swing of the European masses toward socialism at the end of the war resulted also in the creation of coalition governments in France, Italy, and other West European countries. Here, too, the Communist parties were the strongest and most clear-sighted parties in the new governments. But unlike Eastern and Central Europe, these countries did not produce People's Democracies. This was primarily due to the fact that they were occupied by the armies of the United States and Britain, which balked the democratic will of these peoples. Vital, too, in this respect was the continued reactionary, capitalist pressure of Social-Democracy, the Catholic hierarchy, and the financial intimidation of the United States government.
The general post-war upheaval in Europe also produced the Labor Government in Great Britain. It was elected on the slogan of socialism, but its Social-Democratic leadership held the government tightly to a capitalist basis. The capitalists made bigger profits than ever before. The Labor Government served as the ruling agent for British imperialism until it was defeated by the big-business Tory, Churchill, in the election of October 1951. So careful was it of capitalist interests that the Churchill Government now finds that business tax rates, inherited from the Labor Government, are too low, and it proposes, in the country's desperate financial straits, to increase them.2 Fittingly enough, after the election, the king gave the ousted Attlee the Order of Merit for his distinguished services to British capitalism and the monarchy.3
THE PEOPLE'S REVOLUTION IN CHINA
One of the most basic indications of the deepening general crisis of capitalism, in the aftermath of World War II, is the growing collapse of imperialist controls in colonial and semi-colonial countries all over the world. Formerly the main struggle there was among the various imperialist powers for the profit and pleasure of exploiting the peoples in these areas; but now this has been superseded by a great revolutionary struggle of these peoples, comprising half the population of the earth, to drive out all the imperialist robbers. Thus one of the pillars of world capitalism, its colonial system, is being rapidly destroyed. Asia, Africa, Latin America are all affected to various extents by this vast movement for human freedom and prosperity.
The outstanding leader in the colonial liberation revolution is the People's Republic of China, embracing 475 million people. It is the trail blazer and standard bearer of the whole gigantic movement. The Chinese Revolution is the classic type of colonial revolution of this period of the general crisis of capitalism. It points the way in which the revolution, at varying tempos, is going in all the colonial and semi-colonial lands—India, Burma, Malaya, Indo-China, Pakistan, Indonesia, Africa,
The heart and brain of the Chinese people's revolution is the Communist Party, which is inspired by the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, and directly headed by the brilliant Marxist writer and fighter, Mao Tse-tung. The Chinese Communist Party, organized in 1921, has led the democratic masses through 25 years of warfare against the invading imperialists and their big landlord allies. This struggle includes the First Revolutionary Civil War (1925-27), the Second Revolutionary Civil War (1927-36), the War of Resistance to Japanese Aggression (1937-45) and the Third Revolutionary Civil War, beginning in 1946. 4 In July of the latter year the reactionary Chiang Kai-shek, "running dog" of American imperialism and of the Chinese landlords and usurers, launched an all-out armed attack to destroy the People's Liberation Army and the Communist Party. But at the end of December 1949, after a series of spectacular defeats, Chiang's American-equipped army was smashed and the remnants of his forces were driven from the mainland of China. During this fierce struggle the People's Liberation Army destroyed or captured 8,700,000 of Chiang's troops, won over 1,700,000 more, and seized from Chiang 50,000 pieces of artillery, 300,000 machine guns, 1,000 tanks, 20,000 motor vehicles, and many other kinds of miltary equipment, nearly all American-made. 5
The Chinese People's Government is a new form of people's democracy—a government of the proletariat and peasantry, but without Soviets. Mao Tse-tung describes it as "a dictatorship of the people's democracy based on an alliance of the workers and peasants led by the working class (through the Communist Party). This dictatorship must be in agreement with the international revolutionary forces." 6 The writings of Mao Tse-tung are classical analyses of the colonial revolution and how to win it, in the period of the general crisis of world capitalism.
Lenin and Stalin long ago demonstrated the basic kinship of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions. And Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Chinese Revolution of 1911, on his deathbed in 1925, wrote the following message to the government of the Soviet Union: "You head a union of free republics—that tangible heritage which the immortal Lenin has bequeathed to the oppressed peoples of the world. By virtue of this heritage the victims of imperialism will inevitably achieve freedom and emancipation from that entrenched system which, from time immemorial, has been based upon slavery, wars, and injustice."7 And Chu Teh, great Chinese military leader, says, "Under the influence of the October Socialist Revolution [in Russia] the Chinese working class and the Chinese people learned the invincible revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism, and created a revolutionary political party of the proletariat along the lines indicated by Lenin and Stalin, namely, the Communist Party of China."8
American imperialism, eager to seize the great natural riches of China and to exploit its myriads of toilers, has traditionally been the enemy of the Chinese people and its national liberation revolution. This it has demonstrated time and again—by its participation in the all-power invasion of China in the Boxer uprising in 1900; by its attempt to strangle the Revolution of 1911 led by Sun Yat-scn; by its hypocritical Open Door policy, which was but a cloak for American imperialist penetration; by its furnishing of scrap iron and other war materials to the Japanese aggressors right up to World War II; by its subsidizing of the ultra-reactionary Chiang Kai-shek with $5 billion to put down the people's colonial revolution; and by its present attempt to defeat China and to steal Taiwan (Formosa) from that country. 9
The Communist Party of the United States has always fought against American imperialist aggression in China, for many years under the slogan of "Hands Off China." But its Chinese policy weakened (as we have seen on page 419) during the period of the Teheran revisionism. In ridding itself of Browderism in general, the Party also did away with this opportunist policy. Thus, in keeping with the Party's re-established Marxist-Leninist line, Eugene Dennis, at the National Committee meeting of November 1945, called for 500 public meetings (which were held) to protest against American imperialist intervention in China against the people's revolutionary forces led by the Communists. And Foster declared that "The war in China is the key to all problems on the international front and it is here, above all else, where we have to deal the hardest blows against reaction."
THE ADVANCE OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO PEOPLE
A strong echo of the big national liberation revolutions in the colonial lands is found in the intensified struggle of'the oppressed Negro people in the United States. This has become especially marked since the end of World War II. The Negro people in this country are greatly stimulated in their struggle by the big victories now being won by the dark-skinned peoples in the colonial areas against the imperialist oppressors. By the same token, the awakening colonial peoples, joining with the peoples of the Soviet Union and the People's Democracies, are acutely aware of the anti-democratic significance of Negro oppression in the United States and are alert to protest against it upon all occasions. They have become powerful allies of the American Negro people. During the past ten years, the Negro question in this country has become a world issue in a real sense. The Wall Street imperialists are finding that on the international scene their cherished Jim Crow system is a real obstacle in their path of world conquest.
According to the 1950 federal census, Negro migration from the South to the North has continued during 1940-50. In this period the Negro population increased by only 55,637 persons in the thirteen southern states, whereas it went up from 2,808,549 to 4,364,000, a gain of 1,555,451, in the industrial states of California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.10 This means more working class leadership in the fight of the Negro people.
In recent years, especially since the end of the war, the American Negro people have dealt many heavy blows against Jim Crow—by their own militant efforts, with the tireless help of the Communists and of their other domestic allies, and with the powerful assistance of their friends abroad. They have built up a splendid army of a million Negro trade unionists; they have slowed down the murderous lynch gangs; they have become recognized as a force in science—there are 20 Negro names in the latest edition of American Men of Science; they have forced their way into the first ranks of literature and the theater; they have cracked the color bar and distinguished themselves in many sports—baseball, boxing, bowling, tennis, track and field, etc.; they are generally battering their way into Jim Crow southern universities; and they are increasingly winning the right to vote in the reactionary South. 11 But this progress barely touches the fringes of the monstrous Jim Crow system, and it is all threatened by the sinister growth of reaction in this country. The Negro people are still the target of every reactionary force in the United States and they remain outrageously discriminated against in industry, politics, and social life. "Phrases about the progressive integration of the Negroes in the total life of the United States are meaningless," says Gus Hall, "when the Negro people comprise 9.8 percent of the population but receive less than three percent of the national income." 12 And as Pettis Perry states, "Not since the Reconstruction period has there been a single Negro elected to the Senate of the United States, nor has there been a Negro elected to Congress from any Southern state since George H. White, of North Carolina, left Congress fifty years ago. Yet, the South is the area where over 10,000,000 Negroes live."13
American imperialism is gravely worried over the relentless criticism of Jim Crow that it is now encountering in this country from the Communist Pariy, and abroad from the Soviet Union and the other democratic countries of the world. Jim Crow is a dead giveaway of all of Wall Street's pretenses of being the world champion of democracy. One of the many means the imperialists are now adopting to try to stifle this just criticism is to inveigle outstanding Negro leaders in, various spheres into glossing over and minimizing Negro discriminaton in the United States. Among those who have allowed themselves to be thus used against their own people are Ralph J. Bundle, Mrs. Edith Sampson, Jackie Robinson, Sugar Ray Robinson, Roy Wilkins, and Dr. Channing Tobias. The conservative Negro press is also contaminated with such apologist attitudes for white chauvinism, it is a deplorable spectacle to all friends of the Negro people when Negro spokesmen level their attacks against the great Paul Robeson and, addressing themselves 10 the world, tell the darker-skinned peoples that it is all a tissue of lies-the report that the Negro people are shamefully abused and discriminated against in the United States.
THE WORLD FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS
One of the most basic aspects of the great democratic-revolutionary mass upheaval during and following World War II was the enormous growth of the trade unions all over the world (except in the U.S.S.R., which was already completely unionized). This expansion of labor unionism affected not only the industrial countries, but also, to a huge extent, the colonial and semi-colonial lands. The United States was not exempt from this world-wide wave of organization, the total number of trade unionists in this country-A.F. of L., C.I.O. and independent-going up from about 10 million in 1940 to well on to 16 million at the end of 1948. In this country about one-third of the broad working class is now unionized. On the basis of government calculations, of the present 62 million "gainfully employed" in the United States some 46,500,000 are wage earners. Of these 10,500,000 are "clerks and kindred workers"; seven million are "skilled workers and foremen"; 13 million are "semi-skilled workers"; and 16 million are "unskilled workers." The remaining 15,500,000 of "gainfully employed" are professionals, managers, officials, farmers, tradesmen, etc.14
Along with the tremendous world-wide growth of the trade unions went a powerful urge for their unification, on both a national and an international scale. This culminated in the formation of the World Federation of Trade Unions in Paris, on October 3, 1945, after several preliminary conferences in London, Paris, Washington, and San Francisco. The W.F.T.U. at its foundation had a membership of 64 million workers in 52 countries. It has since, by 1951, despite a world split-off by the reactionaries, grown to 78 million workers in 65 countries. 15
Already at its foundation the W.F.T.U. was far and away larger than any previous trade union international, and it extended into many more countries, particularly the colonial and semi-colonial lands. In its elemental sweep of organization it drew into its fold hitherto irreconcilable Communist, Social-Democratic, syndicalist, Catholic, and non-party trade unionists. In the face of the W.F.T.U. the old International Federation of Trade Unions, dominated by the Social-Democrats, folded up and formally dissolved. Every important labor organization in the world, except the A.F. of L., joined the new world federation of labor.
The powerful unifying tendency of the W.F.T.U. was also felt in the United States, the C.I.O. taking an active part, especially under the leadership of Sidney Hillman, in the formation of the new international. The progressive position of the C.I.O. during those years on the question of world labor unity, like its advanced stand on various other issues, was primarily due to the influence of its powerful minority of Communists and progressives. The Communists were long the outstanding champions of national and international trade union unity. The A.F. of L., however, true to the Wall Street spirit of its top leadership, refused to join the W.F.T.U. and from the very outset laid a course designed to split that organization.
WORLD ORGANIZATIONS OF WOMEN AND YOUTH
The toiling women of the world also responded to the great democratic upheaval following World War II. They had learned a bitter lesson from the barbarities of fascism, the legitimate offspring of capitalism. Enormous post-war organizations of women developed in many countries. These came together in Paris on November 26, 1945, and founded a great organization to fight for a democratic and lasting peace —the Women's International Democratic Federation. Some 900 delegates were present from 42 countries. A couple of years later the organization had 81 million women members, or co-operators, of many religious and democratic political groupings.
American women sent 13 delegates to the initial congress, including prominent women leaders. In the spring of 1946 the returning delegation launched the Congress of American Women. This body developed many activities in the fields of peace, prices, civil liberties, health, child care, etc. It sharply opposed the Truman war policy and attracted the affiliation of a number of women's organizations. But its greatest weakness was a failure to establish a firm base among working class and Negro women. Because of its affiliation with the W.I.D.F., the C.A.W. was condemned as a subversive body by Attorney General Clark and ordered to register as a foreign agent—which it refused to do. Late in 1950 the organization, lacking a solid mass foundation, dissolved.
The youth of the world were no less responsive to the great democratic urge brought about by fascism and the war. Progressive young men and women were determined that these monstrous outrages should never happen again. The World Federation of Democratic Youth was organized in London in October 1945, with its headquarters in Paris. It was an outgrowth of the World Youth Council, set up in London during the war. Two years after its formation, the W.F.D.Y. reported a membership of 46 million young people in G4 countries. The^ included youth organizations of workers, peasants, Catholics, Social-Bemo-crats, Communists, etc. The W.F.D.Y. in 1951 numbered 70 million members. It is a militant fighter for world peace.
An American delegation attended the founding congress of the W.F.D.Y. It included representatives from the Y.W.C.A., Jewish Welfare Board, N.A.A.C.P. Youth Councils, and other organizations. Mollie Lieber West, a Communist youth leader, was on the delegation. The returning delegates set up the American Youth for a Free World, but with the outbreak of the Korean war the bourgeois organizations retreated, and the A.Y.F.W. disbanded in 1951.
THE POST-WAR UPSURGE AMONG CULTURAL WORKERS
One of the most striking aspects of the world upheaval among the masses during and after World War II was its profound effects among intellectuals of all crafts and callings. This was marked throughout Europe, particularly in the countries of the new People's Democracies. It was even more pronounced in the Far East—in China, India, Pakistan, Burma, Malaya, and Indo-China. Trained intellectuals, scientists, writers, engineers, artists, and the like turned en masse against capitalism and toward socialism. This was one of the most significant aspects of the rapidly growing anti-capitalist sentiment among the masses of the peoples all over the world.
The United States, too, felt this world cultural movement, but not to the extent it was felt in those countries that were more overwhelmed by the general crisis of capitalism, where the war damage was greatest, and where the revolutionary movements were stronger. Following the war, a number of significant books, plays, and motion pictures appeared in this country, written by progressive democratic authors. The Communist Party, keenly appreciating the struggle on the cultural front, strongly encouraged such writings. These works, following the antifascist impetus given by the war, dealt primarily with anti-Semitism, white chauvinism, and similar themes. But the crop was meager. In 1947, V. J. Jerome said, "Apart from the fight against racism, it is difficult to point to actual trends of democratic content in creative work of the postwar period."16 Most of the erstwhile progressive bourgeois writers were even then hearkening to the call of American imperialism and were busy confusing the masses ideologically, in Wall Street's drive for world conquest.
The only real cultural vigor shown in this period was on the left, among the Communists and others influenced by Marxism-Leninism. Philip Foner's History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Howard Fast's The American, Herbert Aptheker's The Negro People in America and his Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, W. E. B. DuBois' The World and Africa, John Howard Lawson's The Hidden Heritage, Meridel Le Sueur's North Star Country, Albert Maltz's The Journey of Simon McKeever, Barbara Giles's The Gentle Bush, and Richard Boyer's The Dark Ship were only a few of the more notable works turned out by this group. In the field of the theater, the cultural-political leader Paul Robeson loomed as a towering giant. The Party, although a considerable force in the cultural field, has by no means developed its democratic possibilities.
THE GROWTH OF THE COMMUNIST PARTIES
A dynamic feature of the post-war period was the rapid expansion of the Communist parties in the countries that had felt the weight of the war. This was a result, on the one hand, of the brave leadership of the Communists during the fascist occupation and the war and, on the other, of the fact that only the Communists came out of the war with an intelligent program with mass appeal. They were the leaders in organizing all die great mass movements and struggles mentioned above in this chapter. As a result, the small pre-war and wartime Communist parties expanded prodigiously, producing by 1947 such big European mass parties as that in France with 1,000,000 members; in Italy with 2,100,000; in Czechoslovakia with 1,700,000; in Poland with 700,000; in Bulgaria with 450,000; in Hungary with 600,000; in Rumania with 500,000; in Eastern Germany (U.S.P.) with 1,700,000, etc. Since 1947 nearly all of them have grown very rapidly. The same tendency was manifested in the Far East, in many colonial lands, with the enormous Chinese Communist Party, then with 3,000,000 members (and now with twice as many) taking the lead. In Latin America, the same trend developed, the Communist parties as a whole increasing their membership from 100,000 in 1940 to 500,000 in 1949. The C.P. of Brazil, the outstanding example, grew from 4,000 in 1945 to 150,000 in 1948. In the United States, primarily (but not exclusively) because of objective national conditions, no such gigantic expansion of the Communist Party took place.
The great growth of mass democratic organizations immediately after the war was accompanied by strong tendencies toward solidarity, all actively cultivated by the Communists. There were new get-together movements between the workers and peasants, between Catholic and Marxist workers, between the workers and all other democratic strata. One of the most significant of these trends was the movement, initiated by the Communists, to bring about co-operation and eventual party unity between the Communist and Social-Democratic parties. In the People's Democracies of Eastern and Central Europe actual unity between these parties was achieved (save for small right-wing split-offs); but in Western Europe-France, England, etc.-the right-wing Social-Democrats were still strong enough to prevent united front action and two-party unity from being achieved. In Italy the S.P., led by Pietro Nenni, supported the united front.
Basically, the extensive growth of the Communist forces during and after World War Il-in governments, parliaments, trade unions, and democratic movements of all sorts—signifies that the predominant leadership of the world proletariat has passed from the hands of the right-wing Social-Democrats into those of the Communists and their allies. For the previous two generations the right-wing Social-Democrats dominated the leadership of the political and economic movement of die working class on a world scale. But now all this is changing swiftly, with the leadership going into the hands of the Communists. This development is not uniform, of course. It has not yet taken place in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and a number of other countries, but it is already
a fact in France, Italy, and most of Eastern and Central Europe, and in the Far East and Latin America. It signifies a reorientation of the main battalions of the international labor movement away from capitalism and war to peace, national liberation, and socialism.
THE CAPITALIST AND SOCIALIST WORLDS
Capitalism's murderous folly of World War I precipitated the loss of a nation of 200 million people and one-sixth of the earth—the Soviet Union—from the orbit of its control. The even more dreadful World War II, also a lethal product of the insane workings of the capitalist system, cost that system another 600 million people. So that now no less than 800 million people, one-third of all humanity, are either living under Socialist governments or under regimes that are definitely heading toward socialism. And many scores of millions more, at present living under the capitalist system in various parts of the earth, are also turning their hearts and minds toward socialism. All these vast forces comprise the backbone of the still broader world camp of democracy and peace.
These enormous masses are determined to fight their way out of the welter of exploitation, hunger, poverty, ignorance, sickness, tyranny, and war that is the capitalist system. They are on the way to a new system of society in which diey will enjoy freedom, peace, and general well-being. The supreme idiocy of our times is that the ruling classes of the world, viewing this great emancipation movement—the most immense in the history of the world, are trying to condemn it as a subversive plot of a minority of Communists and are seeking to crush it by violence.
Humanity, especially since World War II, literally comprises two worlds. The one is the old, outworn, historically obsolete capitalist world—the world of exploitation, hunger, imperialism, fascism and war, full of confusion, hopelessness, and despair. The other is the great new world of socialism—alive, vibrant, healthy, bearing the mandate of history, and with it a message of hope and security to the oppressed of die earth. The very existence of the Soviet Union is an inspiration and a powerful protection to the awakening peoples of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. Every Marxist-Leninist agrees that these two worlds, the obsolete and the oncoming, can and should live and develop within a framework of world peace; but the ruling classes of capitalism, particularly in the United States, think and act otherwise. Theirs is a program of atomic war for world conquest. But this violent imperialist orientation can only turn out eventually to be their death warrant. The basic development of our times is that the world is advancing from capitalism to socialism, a forward movement which is both irresistible and inevitable. As Molotov has said, "All roads lead to Communism."
1 L. P. Beria, The Soviet Union Builds for Peace, N. Y„ 1952.
2 U.S. News and World Report, Nov. g, 1951. s New York Post, Nov. 6, 1951.
3 Latin America, and the many countries of the Moslem world all the way from Pakistan to Morocco.
4 Frederick V. Field in Political Affairs, Jan. 1949; Hsiao Hua in People's China, Aug. '. 1951-
5 Chu Teh in For a Lasting Peace . . . , June 29, 1951.
6 Mao Tse-tung in For a Lasting Peace . . . , June 29, 1951 (from "The Dictatorship of the People's Democracy").
7 Cited in People's China, Nov. 1, 1950.
8 People's China, Nov. 16, 1950.
9 Henry Newman in Political Affairs, Aug. 1949.
10 New York Times, Oct. 31, 1951.
11 For details on the recent advances of the Negro people see Progress in Negro Status
and Race Relations, 1911-1946, Phelps-Stokes Fund, N. Y„ 1946.
12 Gus Hall, Marxism and Negro Liberation, N. Y., 1951.
13 Pettis Perry in Political Affairs, Dec. 1951.
14 Based on U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract, 1947, p- 100.
15 Labor Research Association, Labor Fact Book 10, p. 145, N. Y., 1951.
16 V.J. Jerome, Culture in a Changing World, p. 55, N. Y., 1947.
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