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From New International, Vol.4 No.4, April 1938, p.98.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
WE DONT ordinarily like “continued articles”, but we find that we are unable to avoid them. In this issue we complete Trotsky’s 1927 article on the Chinese Revolution, the first half of which we carried in our Archives last month. Its extraordinary relevance to today’s developments in China demanded its publication. Two of our articles this month will be completed in the May issue: S. Stanley’s study of India, and Walter Held’s analysis of the Brandler-Thalheimer position. Both of these have unusual present importance: the first not merely for the light it throws on the entire colonial problem but also as a case study in imperialist “democracy” in action; the second for its revelation of the impossibility of a half-way position between abandonment of the old Internationals and clear-cut declaration for the Fourth.
The only defense, then, against continued articles is to make sure to read every issue. Which is another argument to back up the Manager’s call for more subscriptions.
We want to remind our readers again that our pages are open for discussion and debate, both on current problems and on more general and theoretical subjects. We will not, of course, guarantee to publish any crack-pot essay that comes from nowhere; but we are ready and anxious to give space to competent and serious polemical articles. Marxism has always grown and been strengthened in the living clash of ideas. We are not preachers of a sterile and changeless theology.
We have not yet been able to build our Book Review section up to the point where we would like to see it. Part of our difficulty is in establishing a large enough staff of more or less regular reviewers. We feel sure that among our readers there are many competent writers and critics whom we do not yet know about. We should like to hear from them. In any case, the task of The New International is, through effective collaboration, to develop new Marxist writers as well as to publish the best of those who are already known.
With all of the editorials and speeches now springing up from all sides on “the moral bankruptcy of Bolshevism” (the favorite subject these days for Philistines attempting to exploit the Moscow Trials to their own ends), we look forward to Leon Trotsky’s article, Their Morals and Ours, which has been promised for the near future.
David Cowles’ analysis of Strike of Capital becomes even more timely as we go to press. We note that this conception is made fundamental to the theses now being published in connection with the approaching convention of the Stalinists, and that it is a background of day-by-day New Deal propaganda.
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Last updated on 4.8.2006