On November 11, 1937, it is just fifty years since Albert R. Parsons,August Spies, Adolph Fischer, George Engel and Louis Lingg, leaders of thegreat eight-hour day national strike of 1886, were executed in Chicago onthe framed-up charge of having organized the Haymarket bomb explosion thatcaused the death of a number of policemen. These early martyrs to labor'scause were legally lynched because of their loyal and intelligent strugglefor and with the working class. Their murder was encompassed by the samecapitalist forces which, in our day, we have seen sacrifice Tom Mooney,Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro boys, McNamara, and a host of otherchampions of the oppressed. Parsons and his comrades were revolutionary trade unionists, they wereAnarcho-Syndicalists rather than Anarchists. In the early 'eighties, whenthey developed their great mass following, the mass of the workers werejust learning to organize to resist the fierce exploitation of a ruthlesscapitalism. The great eight-hour strike movement led by the "ChicagoAnarchists" gave an enormous impulse to trade union organizationeverywhere and it was for this that the employing interests had themhanged. When, for example, the older Chicago unions nowadays go out onparade on Labor Day, banner after banner bears the historic dale of 1886.Indeed, the A. F. of L. was practically established nationally at thattime. Although the A. F. of L. had been founded in 1881, it never got areal hold among the masses until the big strike movement of 1886, whichestablished the unions in man pew trades and industries and brought aboutthe reorganization and renaming of the A. F. of L.In many respects 1937 bears a kinship to 1886. Once again labor is makinga vast surge forward, but on a much higher political level. In 1886, andthe years following, the best that the working class could do in the wayof organization was to produce the craft union movement, which,notwithstanding all its failings, was an advance in liveability at least,over the amorphous and confused Knights of Labor. But now, the workingclass, grown stronger, more experienced and more ideologically developed,has given birth to the C.I.O. movement, with its industrial unionism,trade union democracy, organized political action and generally advancedconception of the workers' struggle. The militant trade union movement oftoday, heading towards a broad People's Front, is the direct linealdescendant of the great strike movement of the 1886 Chicago martyrs.Not only has labor matured very much in the fifty years that have passedsince 1886, but so also has the capitalist system that gives it birth. In1886 American capitalism was young, strong and growing. It had before it along period of unparalleled expansion, during which the workers becameafflicted with many illusions about the possibilities of prosperity undercapitalism. Now, however, American capitalism, like the world capitalistsystem of which it is a part, has exhausted its constructive role ofbuilding the industries. It is now obsolete and gradually sinking intodecay. Industrial crises follow each other with increasing severity andthe masses are becoming more and more pauperized. The growth of fascismand war is the attempt of this outworn capitalist system to keep inexistence although history has imperatively summoned it to leave the stageand to make way for the next order, socialism.