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The establishment of the United States as an
independent
nation was a vanguard event in the development
of the
bourgeois-democratic revolution in the whole
world; it was
the opening of a new stage in a world
revolution. In this
respect there is a valuable analogy between
the position of
the United States in world affairs at the
close of the eighteenth
and opening of the nineteenth centuries, and
the
position of the Soviet Union today. And both
countries, in
the period of revolution, suffered from
treason and wrecking
from within, in low and high places. We can
safely say,
making allowance for enormous differences in
historical
epoch and social relations, that America
suffered much
more than has the Soviet Union from treason,
relatively
speaking. Let us recall some of the details.
Aaron Burr furnished the classical American
analogy to
Trotsky in the Soviet Union. While he was
Vice-President of
the United States, under Jefferson, he
opened his treasonable
relations with foreign powers. Although the
Supreme Court
of the U. S., under Chief Justice Marshall,
later acquitted
him when he was brought to trial, his guilt
was apparent not
only to Americans but to the whole world.
They say the fundamental error, the original
sin, of the
socialist state was that it originated in a
revolutionary overthrow
of the old order. We throw back into their
faces the
well-known fact that all democracies,
including the United
States of America, also originated in a revolutionary
overthrow
of the old order. If the Soviet Union is to be
condemned
on this count, then the U.S.A. is also
condemned.
We support the origin of the U.S.A. and the
U.S.S.R.
They say the socialist state violated
democracy when it
drove out and disfranchised those who took up
arms to
restore the old order. We throw back in their
faces the well known
fact that all democracies, including the
U.S.A., did
the same thing, and that the U.S.A. drove out
a much larger
part of its population than did the Soviet
Union, with at
least equal violence, and that this was
essential to the very
establishment of democracy. We support the
energetic crushing
of the enemies within of the republic of the
United
States, just as we support that of the Soviet
Union, and
proclaim that both were services to democracy
without which
democracy would have been crushed.
They say the land of socialism violates the
principles of
democracy by its political set-up of a single
party. We
throw back in their faces that the original
conception of the
democracy of the United States was that of the
single party,
the party of all convinced adherents of the
new system, that
the United States operated on that system for
more than
twenty years, and that the system of dual
parties arose only
because a small exploiting class, controlling
that Federalist
Party, forced Jefferson and the masses of the
people to
organize a new party to prevent the complete
crushing of
democracy. Our Constitution was amended to
allow for the
operation of two parties only after more than
a quarter century
of independence. The Soviet Union operated
with
many parties for years, and they were
dispersed only when
they took up arms against the republic. We
support the
idea of uniting all convinced adherents of
democracy into
one party at the origin of the U.S.A., even
though it failed;
we support the idea of a single democratic
front in the
U.S.A. today; and we support the successful
inclusion of
the overwhelming mass of the population behind
the single
party of socialism in the Soviet Union. In all
these instances,
these are examples of the struggle to realize
democracy,
under different conditions, which all go in
the same
direction.
They say the Soviet Union violated democracy by
carrying
through collectivization of agriculture over
the opposition
of a few hundred thousand kulaks, at the cost
of a
severe struggle and great hardships. We throw
back in their
faces that the democracy of the U.S.A. was
forced, 86 years
after its foundation, to carry through an
agrarian reform
much less far-reaching but against greater
resistance, but
only at the cost of four years of Civil War,
millions of casualties,
and twenty years of military rule in almost
half of
the country afterward. We declare that, for
all its costs, the
Civil War in the United States was a service
to democracy
all over the world, that the collectivization
in the Soviet
Union was a greater and more fundamental
service, more
successfully carried out with much less cost,
and that those
who attack the Soviet Union today are by that
token repudiating
our own American history and revolutionary
heritage.
Precisely because we are Americans, and value
and
love our American revolutionary heritage, we
are the enthusiastic
supporters of the Soviet Union in
its tremendous
democratic achievements, including
collectivization.
(...)
As we witness this disgusting spectacle, we
remember
our American history. We recall how the same
forces carried
on exactly the same kind of campaign against
Thomas Jefferson
in our own land, even to the point of
organizing mob
violence against him. We recall the long
campaign of slander
and abuse against Tom Paine, which lasted a
hundred years
after his death. We remember the murderous
incitations
against Lincoln, which stopped at no slander,
however low,
and which led up to the assassination of the
most loved
figure in American history. We cannot ignore
that today we
have a campaign against our own American President,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, which behind the
curtains is equal
in virulence to that against Comrade Stalin,
and which is
more and more breaking into the open also in
open incitations
to assassination, and which is organized and
cultivated
by Wall Street circles.
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