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From The Militant, Vol. X No. 11, 16 March 1946, p. 7.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
When the news first broke on August 12 that Japan was surrendering, all the spokesmen and supporters of Wall Street staged wild celebrations over their victory. A general feeling of relief swept through the masses at the end of the nightmarish slaughter. When Truman officially confirmed the surrender on August 14, millions of people who had listened to Wall Street’s propaganda that the war was being fought for lasting peace and democracy undoubtedly hoped the promised new era would now dawn.
But The Militant did not participate in Wall Street’s orgy. Instead The Militant devoted its entire front page to one single article on a single theme: There Is No Peace!
When The Militant appeared on the newsstands, it created a sensation. What’s the matter with those people! thought many readers of the lying capitalist press. Don’t they know V-J Day will be proclaimed any time now?
The Militant, however, was simply continuing the policy it has followed from the beginning – to tell the truth no matter what the consequences. Not to support illusions or to indulge in wishful thinking, but to make a sober and scientific estimate of the world situation as a guide to the working class.
Long before the Second World War began, The Militant warned it would be an imperialist war that could not possibly bring lasting peace. Throughout the war, The Militant continued to repeat this warning. And because it told these and other truths, The Militant was persecuted. The Roosevelt regime took away its second mailing class rights for a year. Its editor together with 17 other leading members of the Socialist Workers Party was railroaded to prison. But The Militant stuck to its guns, knowing that in the long run, the truth will win out.
In the light of Marxist analysis, The Militant soberly assessed the world situation of capitalism on the surrender of Japan. The conclusion was inescapable. Great imperialist armies would remain after the war. Colonial uprisings would occur on an unheard of scale. Workers’ revolutions would break out. Wall Street would continue to prepare for an all-out assault on the Soviet Union. “There Is No Peace!”
The Militant went further. It pointed out the terrible danger of a Third World War: Only World Socialism Can Save Mankind Prom Atomic Destruction in Another Imperialist War.
And The Militant again drew the irrefutable conclusion:
“The workers must wrench the power from the hands of the blood- drenched capitalist criminals and take their destiny in their own hands. The fight for socialism is now more than a fight to end poverty and inequality, to abolish the exploitation of man by man. Today the fight for socialism is a fight to prevent the annihilation of the human race. Mankind must now exterminate the capitalist system – or be exterminated!”
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Last updated on 17 October 2018