Labors Martyrs

Labor's Martyrs, by Vito
Marcantonio

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Title: Labor's Martyrs
Author: Vito Marcantonio
Release Date: February 9, 2004 [EBook #11009]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LABOR'S
MARTYRS ***

LABOR'S MARTYRS
Haymarket 1887
Sacco and Vanzetti 1927
By Vito Marcantonio

Introduction by Wm. Z. Foster

Introduction
By William Z. Foster
On November 11, 1937, it is just fifty years since Albert R. Parsons,
August Spies, Adolph Fischer, George Engel and Louis Lingg, leaders
of the great eight-hour day national strike of 1886, were executed in
Chicago on the framed-up charge of having organized the Haymarket
bomb explosion that caused the death of a number of policemen. These
early martyrs to labor's cause were legally lynched because of their
loyal and intelligent struggle for and with the working class. Their
murder was encompassed by the same capitalist forces which, in our
day, we have seen sacrifice Tom Mooney, Sacco and Vanzetti, the
Scottsboro boys, McNamara, and a host of other champions of the
oppressed.
Parsons and his comrades were revolutionary trade unionists, they were
Anarcho-Syndicalists rather than Anarchists. In the early 'eighties,
when they developed their great mass following, the mass of the
workers were just learning to organize to resist the fierce exploitation
of a ruthless capitalism. The great eight-hour strike movement led by
the "Chicago Anarchists" gave an enormous impulse to trade union
organization everywhere and it was for this that the employing interests
had them hanged. When, for example, the older Chicago unions
nowadays go out on parade on Labor Day, banner after banner bears
the historic dale of 1886. Indeed, the A. F. of L. was practically
established nationally at that time. Although the A. F. of L. had been
founded in 1881, it never got a real hold among the masses until the big
strike movement of 1886, which established the unions in man pew
trades and industries and brought about the reorganization and
renaming of the A. F. of L.
In many respects 1937 bears a kinship to 1886. Once again labor is
making a vast surge forward, but on a much higher political level. In

1886, and the years following, the best that the working class could do
in the way of organization was to produce the craft union movement,
which, notwithstanding all its failings, was an advance in liveability at
least, over the amorphous and confused Knights of Labor. But now, the
working class, grown stronger, more experienced and more
ideologically developed, has given birth to the C.I.O. movement, with
its industrial unionism, trade union democracy, organized political
action and generally advanced conception of the workers' struggle. The
militant trade union movement of today, heading towards a broad
People's Front, is the direct lineal descendant of the great strike
movement of the 1886 Chicago martyrs.
Not only has labor matured very much in the fifty years that have
passed since 1886, but so also has the capitalist system that gives it
birth. In 1886 American capitalism was young, strong and growing. It
had before it a long period of unparalleled expansion, during which the
workers became afflicted with many illusions about the possibilities of
prosperity under capitalism. Now, however, American capitalism, like
the world capitalist system of which it is a part, has exhausted its
constructive role of building the industries. It is now obsolete and
gradually sinking into decay. Industrial crises follow each other with
increasing severity and the masses are becoming more and more
pauperized. The growth of fascism and war is the attempt of this
outworn capitalist system to keep in existence although history has
imperatively summoned it to leave the stage and to make way for the
next order, socialism.
The modern working class, although it has not learned all the needed
lessons of the situation in which it finds itself, is nevertheless rapidly
becoming free from capitalist illusions and is reorganizing itself
accordingly, industrially and politically. Of this renaissance, the C.I.O.
is the greatest mass expression.
The Haymarket martyrs were bold pioneer fighters for socialism and
they paid with their lives for their devotion and clear-sightedness.
Although they sleep all these years in Waldheim Cemetery, their work
was not in vain and they are not forgotten. In keeping green the

memories of these proletarian heroes, the International Labor Defense,
the Communist Party and other progressive and revolutionary
organizations are preserving one of the most glorious of all American
revolutionary traditions. The lives of Parsons, Fischer, Engel, Spies and
Lingg,