Page:Resolutions and Theses of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (1922).djvu/57

 Versailles Treaty would plunge the proletariat of both countries, and with them the proletariat of the whole of Europe into the deepest misery.

To the Workers of All Countries:

The Austrian proletariat is at present engaged in a severe conflict against the enslaving designs of world capital and reaction, which deserves the attention of the workers of all countries. On the pretext of preparing to prop up the collapsing Austrian economy, the League of Nations—particularly England, France, Czecho-Slovakia and Italy, and also certain small states in league with the Austrian ruling class, wish to rob the Austrian proletariat of the last shreds of its liberty, and even to destroy bourgeois democracy and erect in its place an open and brutal dictatorship of native and foreign capital.

Those countries which pose as the saviours of Austria, do not intend to give her any real help. They will not lend Austria a penny. They will only allow Austria to seek out individual capitalists willing to lend Austria certain sums, and who will undertake to get their respective parliaments next year to guarantee these credits. In return for this Austria—without any certainty as to whether they will really get these credits, or even these guarantees—engages to fetter her parliament for two years, in a worse manner than even in Hungary, to lay the burden of more than four billions in new taxes upon her working class, to lease her state monopolies to private capital, to discharge great numbers of workers, to lengthen the working hours, and to intensify the exploitation of the workers, to dissolve the proletarian militia and organise in its place the reactionary gendarmes and police who will maintain "tranquillity and order" by brutally suppressing the masses. Austria must permit itself to be reduced to the level of a colony of the lowest degree, without a protest. A Commissioner General of the League of Nations shall rule in Austria as absolute monarch, in whose hands the government, dictatorial in its power over the masses, will be nothing more than a passive tool.

Workers of all countries!

The fulfilment of these plans, born of the Geneva Agreement, brings the Austrian working class to utter despair. The Austrian workers could easily prevent their own bourgeoisie from carrying out these plans, but the Austrian bourgeoisie is being supported by the capitalists of other countries, especially the capitalist governments of England; France, Italy and Czecho-Slovakia. Hence, it is your obvious duty to come to the aid of the Austrian workers and bring all possible pressure to bear upon your governments to prevent them from working