Trotzkyisms

To an unofficial delegation of the American Federation of Labor, visiting Moscow last week, Leon Trotzky, onetime Soviet War Lord, shock-headed and wild of eye, declaimed upon the ideals of Bolshevism and the countervailing tendencies of U. S. bourgeois democracy.

Said he: "I deny the existence of an American democracy. Under the externals of a political democracy the United States is ruled by a most concentrated capitalistic dictatorship."

Admitting that there was neither free speech nor a free press in Russia, he (who has recently opposed the autocracy of Dictator Josef Stalin, "man of steel," as chief) added that in the U. S. liberty of the press was only the freedom to buy for two cents a newspaper produced by bourgeois journalists in the pay of the hated capitalists.

"The United States is the most perfected expression of capitalism," he cried, "while the Soviet is the first rough sketch of the Socialist state. . . ."

Then a note of warning shot into his speech, like a drop of hot red ink into a bucket of cold clear water. Rasped he: "We are the same old revolutionaries, and if our enemies think we have grown sleepy and lazy through administration, they will get a rude shock.

"This very day we should undertake to allow full freedom of speech if our world enemies would give a promise not to intervene to overthrow the Soviet regime. But all humanity is divided into two camps, the proletariat and the imperialistic bourgeoisie, and those who attempt to turn us back to capitalism will be received with hard knocks. For the success of their schemes, our enemies need that so-called democratic freedom here.

"We shall not concede it; we shall continue to struggle for proletarian dictatorship, which is humanity's sole true way to freedom."

Reminding the assembled U. S. Laborites that "the fathers of American liberty allowed precious little democratic freedom during the War of Secession," he referred to the ogre-like pictures drawn of Bolshevism in foreign countries. He concluded: "Go back and tell your fellow citizens, if you will, that the Soviet is not so bad as all that, and although the Communists are the chief enemies of private property, when they make agreements with capitalists they will fulfill them honestly."

Thus said Trotzky, enemy of capitalism.