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Workers Vanguard No. 970
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3 December 2010
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TROTSKY
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LENIN
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John Reed on Imperialist “Aid”
From the Archives of Marxism
Radical American journalist John Reed was won to Bolshevism while
reporting on the 1917 Russian Revolution in Petrograd. His classic Ten Days
That Shook the World is a vivid eyewitness account of the insurrectionary
days of the October Revolution. After his return from Russia, Reed was
instrumental in the founding of the American Communist movement. As a delegate
from the U.S. and as a member of the Executive Committee of the Third
(Communist) International, he attended the First Congress of the Peoples of the
East, held in September 1920 in Baku, capital of Soviet Azerbaijan. The Congress
was convened to advance the revolutionary struggles of the exploited and the
oppressed in the colonial and semicolonial world under the banner of Marxism and
with the aid of the Soviet workers and those in the imperialist countries.
We print below a speech (undelivered due to time constraints) that
Reed prepared for the Baku Congress warning against illusions in the American
rulers’ promises of aid. At the time, the Bolshevik government was fighting a
bloody civil war against counterrevolutionary forces backed by an imperialist
blockade and an invasion by the armies of 14 capitalist states, including the
U.S. Reed, stricken with typhus, died in Moscow soon after he returned from
Baku.
Reed’s speech was originally published as an appendix to the
Russian edition of the Baku Congress proceedings. The translation below was by
Brian Pearce and was printed in Baku: Congress of the Peoples of the East
(New Park, 1977).
* * *
I represent here the revolutionary workers of one of the great
imperialist powers, the United States of America, which exploits and oppresses
the peoples of the colonies.
You, the peoples of the East, the peoples of Asia, have not yet
experienced for yourselves the rule of America. You know and hate the British,
French and Italian imperialists, and probably you think that “free America” will
govern better, will liberate the peoples of the colonies, will feed and defend
them.
No. The workers and peasants of the Philippines, the peoples of
Central America and the islands of the Caribbean, they know what it means to
live under the rule of “free America.”
Take, for example, the peoples of the Philippines. In 1898 the
Filipinos rebelled against the cruel colonial government of Spain, and the
Americans helped them. But after the Spaniards had been driven out the Americans
did not want to go away.
Then the Filipinos rose against the Americans, and this time the
“liberators” started to kill them, their wives and children: they tortured them
and eventually conquered them. They seized their land and forced them to work
and make profits for American capitalists.
The Americans have promised the Filipinos independence. Soon an
independent Filipino republic will be proclaimed. But this does not mean that
the American capitalists will leave or that the Filipinos will not continue to
work to make profits for them. The American capitalists have given the Filipino
leaders a share of their profits—they have given them government jobs, land and
money—they have created a Filipino capitalist class which also lives on the
profits created by the workers—and in whose interest it is to keep the Filipinos
in slavery.
This has also happened in Cuba, which was freed from Spanish rule
with the help of the Americans. It is now an independent Republic. But American
millionaire trusts own all the sugar plantations, apart from some small tracts
which they have let the Cuban capitalists have: the latter also administer the
country. And the moment that the workers of Cuba try to elect a government which
is not in the interests of the American capitalists, the United States of
America sends soldiers into Cuba to compel the people to vote for their
oppressors.
Or let us take the example of the republics of Haiti and San
Domingo, where the peoples won freedom a century ago. Since this island was
fertile and the people living on it could be put to use by the American
capitalists, the government of the U.S. sent soldiers and sailors there on the
pretext of maintaining order and smashed these two republics, setting up in
their place a military dictatorship worse than the British tyrants.
Mexico is another rich country which is close to the USA. In Mexico
live a backward people who were enslaved for centuries, first by the Spaniards
and then by foreign capitalists. There, after many years of civil war, the
people formed their own government, not a proletarian government but a
democratic one, which wanted to keep the wealth of Mexico for the Mexicans and
tax the foreign capitalists. The American capitalists did not concern themselves
with sending bread to the hungry Mexicans. No, they initiated a
counter-revolution in Mexico, in which Madero, the first revolutionary
President, was killed. Then, after a three-year struggle, the revolutionary
regime was restored, with Carranza as President. The American capitalists made
another counter-revolution and killed Carranza, establishing once more a
government friendly to themselves.
In North America itself there are ten million Negroes who possess
neither political or civil rights, despite the fact that by law they are equal
citizens. With the purpose of distracting the attention of the American workers
from the capitalists, their exploiters, the latter stir up hatred against the
Negroes, provoking war between the white and black races. The Negroes, whom they
lawlessly burn alive, are beginning to see that their only hope lies in armed
resistance to the white bandits.
At the present time the American capitalists are addressing
friendly words to the peoples of the East, with a promise of aid and food. This
applies especially to Armenia. Millions of dollars have been collected by the
American millionaires in order to send bread to the starving Armenians. And many
Armenians are now looking for help to Uncle Sam.
These same American capitalists incite the American workers and
farmers against each other: they starve and exploit the peoples of Cuba and the
Philippines, they savagely kill and burn alive American Negroes, and in America
itself American workers are obliged to work under frightful conditions,
receiving low wages for a long work-day. When they are exhausted they are thrown
out on to the street, where they die of hunger.
The same gentleman who is now in charge of bringing aid to the
starving Armenians, Mr. Cleveland Dodge, who writes emotional articles about how
the Turks have driven the Armenians into the desert, is the owner of big copper
mines where thousands of American workers are exploited, and when these workers
dared to go on strike the guards protecting Mr. Dodge’s mines drove them at the
point of the bayonet out into the desert—just as was done to the Armenians.
Many Armenians are grateful to America for its attitude to the
Armenians who suffered from the brutality of the Turks during the war. But what
has America done for the Armenians apart from issuing wordy declarations?
Nothing. I was in Constantinople at that time, in 1915, and I know that the
missionaries refused to make any serious protest against the atrocities, saying
that they had a lot of property in Turkey and so did not want to bring pressure
to bear on the Turks. The American ambassador, Mr. Strauss, himself a
millionaire who exploited thousands of workers in his enterprises in America,
proposed that the entire Armenian people be shipped to America, and himself
donated quite a large sum for this project to be carried out; but his plan was
to make the Armenians work in American factories and provide cheap labour so as
to increase the profits of Mr. Strauss and his friends.
But why do the American capitalists promise aid and food to
Armenia? Is it out of pure philanthropy? If so, let them feed the peoples of
Central America and help the Negroes of America itself.
No. The main reason is that there is mineral wealth in Armenia, and
that it is a big reservoir of cheap labour which can be exploited by American
capitalists.
The American capitalists want to win the confidence of the
Armenians with a view to getting their claws into Armenia and enslaving the
Armenian nation. It is with this aim that American missionaries have established
schools in the Near East.
But there is also another very important reason: the American
capitalists, together with the other capitalist nations, united in the League of
Nations, are afraid that the workers and peasants of Armenia will follow the
example of Soviet Russia and Soviet Azerbaidzhan, will take power and their
country’s resources into their own hands, and will work for themselves, making a
united front with the workers and peasants of the whole world against world
imperialism. The American capitalists are afraid of a revolution in the
East.
Promising food to starving peoples and at the same time organizing
a blockade of the Soviet Republics—that is the policy of the United States. The
blockade of Soviet Russia has starved to death thousands of Russian women and
children. This same method of blockade was applied in order to turn the
Hungarian people against their Soviet Government. The same tactic is now being
used in order to draw the people of White Hungary into war against Soviet
Russia. This method is also being used in the small countries bordering on
Russia—Finland, Estonia, Latvia. But now all these small countries have been
obliged to make peace with Soviet Russia: they are bankrupt and starving. Now
the American Government no longer offers them food; they are no longer of any
use to America, and so their peoples can starve.
The American capitalists promise bread to Armenia. This is an old
trick. They promise bread but they never give it. Did Hungary get bread after
the fall of the Soviet Government? No. The Hungarian people are still starving
today. Did the Baltic countries get bread? No. At a time when the starving
Estonians had nothing but potatoes, the American capitalists sent them ships
laden with rotten potatoes which could not be sold at a profit in America. No,
comrades, Uncle Sam is not one ever to give anybody something for nothing. He
comes along with a sack stuffed with straw in one hand and a whip in the other.
Whoever takes Uncle Sam’s promises at their face value will find himself obliged
to pay for them with blood and sweat. The American workers are demanding an ever
larger share of the product of their labour; with a view to preventing
revolution at home, the American capitalists are forced to seek out colonial
peoples to exploit, peoples who will furnish sufficient profit to keep the
American workers in obedience and so make them participants in the exploitation
of the Armenians. I represent thousands of revolutionary American workers who
know this, and who understand that, acting together with the Armenian workers
and peasants, with the toiling masses of the whole world, they will overthrow
capitalism. World capitalism will be destroyed, and all the peoples will be
free. We appreciate the need for solidarity between all the oppressed and
toiling peoples, for unity of the revolutionary workers of all the countries of
Europe and America under the leadership of the Russian Bolsheviks, in the
Communist International. And we say to you, peoples of the East: Do not believe
the promises of the American capitalists!
There is only one road to freedom. Unite with the Russian workers
and peasants who have overthrown their capitalists and whose Red Army has beaten
the foreign imperialists! Follow the red star of the Communist
International!
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