From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 2 No. 113, 16 December 1922, p. 947.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2021). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Workers!
In the most important centre of Germany’s chemical industry, Ludwigshafen, 30,000 workers of the German aniline trust have been on strike for more than two weeks. The external cause of this conflict was the dismissal of three shop stewards, who took advantage of their holidays to exercise their mandates as delegates to the Shop Stewards Congress of Germany, held in Berlin from 23rd to 25th November.
The real cause of the conflict is a long prepared general attack, designed to deprive the workers of the eight hour day, and to force them to accept starvation wages in addition to the ten-hour day. The aniline kings, the French occupation authorities, the German authorities, and the Amsterdam trade union leaders, have closed their ranks to defeat the striking workers. The authorities take the most brutal measures against the strikers, and the Amsterdam trade union leaders refuse to help the strikers, or to aid this fight in defense of the eight hour day.
This conflict is of the greatest importance, not alone for the German, but for the whole international proletariat. If the employers succeed in depriving the workers of their first hard-won rights, if they defeat the workers, the path is cleared for them towards the introduction of the nine and then the ten hour day. If they succeed in starving the strikers into capitulation, then the way is clear for carrying out Stinnes’ program, a program which not only completely enslaves the German worker, but condemns the international proletariat to unemployment and hunger, for the cut-throat German competition must inevitably spell unemployment for the workers of the other countries.
The strikers, betrayed and deserted by the Amsterdam trade union leaders, are standing as firm as a rock. Despite starvation and misery they are holding out. The German Shop Stewards Congress issued an appeal for collections in aid of the strikers. The German workers are giving generously, as witnessed by the first returns. But at least 40 million marks a week are required to finance the strike. The German proletariat alone cannot afford this sum for any length of time. The fighting workers hope for the fraternal support of the proletariat of all countries. The international aid action of the proletariat must lend a helping hand here. Workers! Unite in the class war, form a united front of all workers for the support of the Ludwigshafen workers!
Exercise proletarian solidarity!
Prompt aid is required!
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