Page:Strategy of the Communists - A letter from the Communist International to the Mexican Communist Party.pdf/14

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

ions and parties who barter away to the bourgeoise the interests of the workers and peasants whose confidence they still possess. The tactics of the united front is the revolutionary fight of the Communist Party to win the wide organized and unorganized working and peasant masses for a common struggle for common demands. The Communist Party there openly turns towards the leaders of the reformist, syndicalist, and so-called independent trade union their participation in a joint Committee of Action. The same thing applies to the laborites and the Agrarian Party. The object of the Committee of Action is organized centralization of the fight for definite demands. The Committee of Action does not bind any of the participating parties or trade unions to its political agitation and propaganda or to its activity in general. Above all, the right of criticism of every Party will be fully preserved. In our manifesto, which we, jointly with the Red Trade Union International, sent to your Party, we pointed out the significance of the Committee of Action. We are, of course, not overlooking any of the difficulties in your present situation. The leading group of Morones, C. R. O. M. and the Laborites, is on the same level with Gompers—future ministers and heads of departments of bourgeois governments; people who made no protest when the mounted police and Obregon's soldiers shot down the striking tenants in Vera Cruz, Mexico, Guadalajar, Gordoba and Orizaba, and imprisoned them for months; people who persecute the communists and oppress the revolutionary railwaymen in Yucatan; trade union bureaucrats who putt off the demands of the workers with liberal phrases; party cliques in whose midst the spies and provocateurs of the American Government and of the Pan-American Federation of Labor hold confidential posts; representatives of peasant communes who call themselves socialists, but who support the policy of a petty-bourgeois government for disarming the peasants. It is apparent that such "representatives" will never voluntarily sit at the same table with the communists; but it is equally apparent that behind these leaders are great organized masses, important worker and peasant trade unions, exercising political and economic power. But the time when these masses allowed themselves to be steadily deceived by their leaders is passing. The workers and peasants of Mexico are awakening. The last ten years of revolution were rich experience for the Mexican proletariat. Under the stress of circumstances, the workers will either force the leaders to the left, or they will, over the heads of the leaders, find the way to a united front. The same applies to the C. G. T. Created by the will and

12