Mobilize Labor’s Power to Free All Class-War Prisoners!

(Quote of the Week)

Founded by the early Communist Party, the International Labor Defense and its paper Labor Defender were based on the Marxist understanding that the capitalist state is a machinery of organized violence to protect the rule and profits of the bourgeoisie. This understanding is vital today in the fight to mobilize labor’s social power for the cause of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s freedom. The Labor Defender article excerpted below, published shortly before the 1928 presidential elections, underscores the link between the struggle to free all class-war prisoners and the fight for the political independence of the working class from the capitalist order, its state and all its parties.

The election campaign is in full swing. The candidates of the two capitalist parties are competing with each other in seeking the favor of Wall Street. Reactionary labor leaders at the head of the American Federation of Labor refuse as yet to take a stand for or against either of the two chief capitalist standard bearers—Al Smith and Herbert Hoover. They prefer to bargain for themselves individually. Each labor leader may now hunt for himself and if he brings home a kill it will be his own.

The two big parties of capitalism are interested in labor—to exploit it. In their platforms there is no plank, no promise that could satisfy even the most conservative worker. A sop on the injunction, a meaningless jumble of words....

Unlike the two other parties claiming to represent labor, the Socialist and Socialist Labor Parties, which carry on no concrete or militant struggle for the release of class war prisoners, the Workers (Communist) Party has raised the slogan of “Release the Class War Prisoners” and endorsed a vigorous campaign in behalf of the men behind the bars; against the bourbon savagery of lynchings; against injunctions and the use of troops in strikes; and a well rounded-out program of class struggle.

Every militant worker who is conscious of his interests is prepared to organize around the banner of the class struggle, in and out of elections, and mobilize his forces to smash the oppressors of labor and to build on the ruins of the present robber system a social order that will give the worker his due social share of the product of his toil and will force the parasite to work or starve.

When that day comes there will be no class war prisoners.

—“The Class War Prisoners and the Elections,”
Labor Defender, September 1928