What the Bolsheviks are doing is to educate the workers and peasants, and then take them into the governing party. The purpose of that party is to hold power until all the workers have come into it, and the “Union of Socialist Soviet Republics” includes the whole population of the former empire of the Tsar. In fact, they expect to include a lot more, because they think the workers of some other countries are going to join them; and the rulers and capitalists of those countries fear the same thing—which is the reason they hate the Bolsheviks, and carry on such deadly lying about them.
The British Tories, backed by American bankers, are now conducting a world-wide intrigue against Russia; and soon they may be calling the American people to join in a new war “to make the world safe for democracy.” And what then? The chances are that the American people will join in, for they dearly love everything that is upper-class British, and enjoy nothing so much as crushing labor anywhere in the world. They elected Coolidge in a fervor of patriotism because they thought—mistakenly—that he had had something to do with smashing the Boston police strike. As I write, our government is donating a billion dollars—in the form of a pretended “debt settlement”—to the Italian government, because Judge Gary and our other masters so love these black-shirt Fascisti, and look forward to the time when they can administer the castor-oil treatment to American labor.
Yes, Judd; and we simply ladled out our money to the Tsarist adventurers, to every nation and tribe of reactionary that was fighting Soviet Russia on twenty-six fronts; we dressed up Polish troops in American uniforms to make war on Russia, and even burned American Red Cross supplies to keep them from being captured and used for the sick and starving people of the Soviet republic. We allowed Woodrow Wilson to send our boys to their death in his private war on a friendly people—under the command of British officers in Archangel, and helping the Japanese to take Siberia.
All that was done, Judd, and done with your money, and under the flag of your country; and it will be done again when the British Tories are ready—for the bull-dog never sleeps, and he never lets go his hold. He has set out to strangle the Soviets, as once he strangled Napoleon—and for the same reason, to keep his grip on the 300,000,000 serfs of India. If, when the next attack begins, America does not hasten to pour out its blood and treasure, it will be for one reason and one only; because in the meantime it has been possible to reach the plain people like yourself, and make them understand, and hold back the world bankers from their next World Crime.
LETTER XVIII
My dear Judd:
Our country today is traveling headlong the road which has led every great empire in history to its doom. And this is no piece of rhetoric, but a summary of statistics to be found in our census reports. What ruined Rome was the spread of capitalist imperialism with its consequences—the undermining of the independent farmers, the growth of tenantry and absentee landlordism, and the turning of the country population into city slum-dwellers, uncertain of their employment and dependent upon public doles.
And every one of these things is happening right before our eyes. The price of farm-land is going up, steadily and inexorably; the profits of agriculture are going to middlemen, speculators, and moneylenders. Farm mortgages are increasing, farm tenantry is increasing, decade after decade, with the certainty of a doom. The young men are leaving the farms and going to the city, to increase unemployment and bring down wages. The man who wants a city home pays a constantly increasing tribute to land speculators; while in the business districts land values double or treble in a decade, and no work can go on until the landlord’s greed has been appeased.
Millions of little fellows like yourself, Judd, support that system, because you own a lot or two, and are making a little profit; just as millions support the big trusts, because they own a share or two of stock. They do not see that under a just system they, as producers, would get many times what they get as petty speculators. Our first task is to show them, and bring them to our side. We wish to take the government out of the hands of the capitalist and landlord class; and then to apply the remedy for land speculation, a tax on land values, falling heavily on rented land, and still more heavily on land not used at all. This will set free the soil, and wipe out the gamblers; there will be plenty of farm-land open for use, and lots near the cities will be cheap. At the same time both cities and states will have money for public improvements, bringing high wages, and benefit to all. The farmer will have abundant markets, because the city population will no longer be on half rations. The land values tax is the only just one, because it taxes the wealth created by nature, and not by human labor; also, it is the only tax which can be fully collected—all others are taxes on honesty, and we need that commodity badly, and should not tax it out of existence.