Mary Bell Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
From Labor Action, Vol. 10 No. 17, 29 April 1946, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
May Day dawns in 1946 in the first year of peace since the Second World War for democracy began. But no one seriously contemplates a world without war, for the threat of new wars hangs over the meeting of the peace-planners of the New League of Nations, the UNO. The United States proceeds apace with its production of atomic weapons. The pall of a neo-barbarism hangs over hungry Europe and the starving colonial populations. Their wartime sacrifices having netted them nothing, workers in the United States have gone to the mat again with the monopoly corporations and the CIO is starting an “invasion” of the South.
Working men and women, all the little people in whose interests wars are supposedly fought, and who work, sweat, sacrifice and send their husbands, sons and brothers to the slaughter, need a new perspective today as never before. They need the knowledge of their own strength to enable them to construct a better world – a world free from hunger, unemployment, war and destruction.
It is solely by the independent action of working people, those who produce the wealth of society, that monopoly power and privilege can be eliminated and a world of peace and plenty for all be built.
Labor Action is the voice and the conscience of the working class. It has a new perspective – that of revolutionary socialism. Since its inception six years ago this May Day, it has never veered or tacked from this goal. It has relentlessly championed the cause of labor even throughout all the war years of reaction.
Because the whole world now faces either socialism or atomization, it becomes a political necessity to have an expanded Labor Action. We must have at least eight pages weekly to give us space to analyze all of the complex national and international events which have a direct bearing on labor’s future.
This May Day issue is our second sample eight-pager, containing Labor Action Magazine. The Magazine Section contains on its first page the story of the second “Operation Dixie,” by David Coolidge, labor secretary of the Workers Party. The thrilling, almost unbelievable account of the heroic conduct of the Greek Trotskyists also appears there. Two analytical articles on the revolutionary UAW slogan thrown up in the General Motors strike appear in the magazine. We have space for such articles in eight pages. They would ordinarily be eliminated in the old four-pager.
We are going to have an eight-pager, but we want your assistance, so that its steady publication can be assured.
For that purpose we have set $15,000 as the necessary amount to assure continued publication of the eight-pager.
Fifteen thousand dollars isn’t a lot of money by some standards. Charles E. Wilson, president of General Motors Corporation, makes that amount every month. It’s only 1-133,333rd part of the production costs of the first atomic bomb, or 1-63,000,000th part of the cost of the late war for democracy. An income of that much per year doesn’t qualify a person to be an economic royalist. A Vanderbilt or du Pont debutante could scarcely have a decent “coming out” party on that sum, what with post-war inflation prices.
You, our readers and sympathizers, together with members of the Workers Party, have already subscribed over half the needed amount up to date.
Let’s oversubscribe the quota!
Mary Bell Archive | Trotskyist Writers’ Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 20 January 2019