A.B. Magil Quotes (1905-2003)

“What the liberals who advocate that the United States pursue the isolationist course desired by Hitler, Mussolini, the Mikalo, Chamberlain, and our own Hearsts and Coughlins fail to understand is that domestic and foreign policies are essentially a unit. The aggressions and banditry of the fascist dictatorships in their relations with other countries are the external expression of the policy of enslavement and terror at home.”

“The future will not be fashioned by a few individuals, no matter how gifted, sitting down and cutting ingenious patterns, nor even by the efforts of governments alone. It is being fashioned by the action of the peoples of all countries, by their blood and sweat-yes, and by their vision too. The middle-class men and women of America have every reason not to permit themselves to be diverted away from this historic mainstream by illusory schemes and plans that have no roots in life; on the contrary, every consideration of the present and future should impel them to join fully with their brothers and sisters of other classes, particularly of the working class, in the great liberating war that alone can bring a great liberating peace.”

“the pipers of reaction, despite themselves, also perform a positive function. Their diagnosis is wrong, their remedies are dangerous, they are quacks and shameless hypocrites, but they call attention to the fundamental maladies of our day. Certainly the New Dealers have no cause to be holier-than-thou. Without the New Deal and its trail of broken promises, there might never have been the Share-Our-Wealth Clubs and the Union for Social Justice. This is election year, but the question of which is the bigger and better circus cannot forever blot out the question of bread. There is an awakening in the land, and pipers of a new day are arising in the thousands of men and women who are moving toward farmer-labor action against threatening disaster. Therein lies the hope of America.”

“the political situation in the past year and a half cannot be viewed in simple terms of growing strength of reaction. On the contrary, it is the strength of the democratic mass movement, the overwhelming Roosevelt victory in the 1936 election, and the tremendous growth and strike achievements of the C.I.O. that have caused the economic overlords to organise a widening offensive in an effort to halt and disrupt the legions of democracy. To defeat this offensive, to guarantee for our country "democracy-and more democracy," security, and peace, unity is needed, unity behind the recovery program, unity in the creation in every locality and on a national scale of a democratic front in the elections such as emerged with notable results in the last New York City campaign. The time is short in which to achieve this unity, but it is not yet too late.”

“Lack of labor unity in Germany-for which the leaders of the Social-Democratic Party were primarily responsible, just as the leaders of the A. F. of L. are chiefly to blame for the division in our own labor movement-made possible the triumph of fascism through the duping of the middle classes and farmers In France and Spain, on the other hand, labor unity was the foundation on which was built the People's Front alliance of workers, farmers, and small business and professional people, through which the road was blocked to fascism. In our own country, the A. F. of L's executive council, by extending the split into the political field, is greatly increasing the danger of a reactionary victory. A united labor movement would overnight become a powerful attracting force for the farmers and middle classes and would help stiffen the spines of the faint-hearted New Dealers and progressives in Congress.”

“in advanced capitalist countries the party of the proletariat, as well as the cultural movement of the proletariat, goes forward not through alliance with the liberals, but in irreconcilable struggle against them. Our allies are those who, breaking with treacherous bourgeois liberalism, seek their way, however falteringly, toward the world of all power to the workers. These, still filled with many of their bourgeois prejudices, require not sermons and decrees, not "Communist snobbery", as Lenin called it,but a personal approach and comradely guidance. And let us remember that these new allies are coming not merely to the proletarian literary movement, which in this country is at present very weak, but to the knowledge, the experience, the revolutionary clearsightedness and intransigence of a movement that is international in scope, that sets itself heroic goals embracing every field of human activity.”