Working Class Unity...Our Cardinal Task, Robert Laxer, LPP 1951

Peace Poster USSR c. 1985

Vintage Leftist Leaflet Project

Leaflet: Working Class Unity...Our Cardinal Task, Robert Laxer, LPP 1951

"The connection between the economic and the peace issues is...deep going. In making this connection in our popular agitation to workers such as "You can't have butter and guns" we are preparing them for the events which will ever more clarify the link between the peace fight and the battle for bread and butter."

This article from the January, 1951 issue of National Affairs Monthly -- a publication of the Labor Progressive Party as the Canadian Communist Party was known at the time -- is interesting in the historical context of trying to build a peace movement with the rise of McCarthyism, the Cold War and government and media fostered anti-Communist hysteria.

This anti-Communism, as the article touches on, had also taken hold within the leadership of much of the Canadian labour movement as well as in the CCF (the predecessor to the NDP) making the task of building a peace movement that much harder. The article outlines some ideas for how to deal with this that would be discussed and dealt with at the party's upcoming convention.

The article is also of interest to me as it was written by my grandfather, Robert Laxer, who was a lifelong political activist -- first as a Communist then as a socialist and nationalist -- and writer. He left the party in 1956.

I have touched on this family history of Communist activism in the time of McCarthy before in the posts Till the World is Bright (In Memory of the Rosenbergs) - A Poem by Edna May Quentin Laxer and Win With J.B. Salsberg...and Robert Laxer!

(Click on scans to enlarge)

When The Left Chapter began part of what I wanted to do on the blog was to show and highlight vintage public leftist election/political leaflets and booklets. While many of these have been offered with commentary to date, a very large collection of hundreds of them from several different sources remains and to preserve these often quite rare documents we will be posting them on a regular (almost daily) basis now often without or with minimal commentary so that people may have access to them as quickly as possible as an historical resource. 

While these will all be leaflets from a variety of different leftist viewpoints and countries, they are being posted as an historical/study resource and the views or opinions expressed in them do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog or blogger.

All of these posts (as well as posts made to date) will be listed on the page: Vintage Communist/Socialist Leaflets  (which is still being updated with past posts).

If you have any public, vintage leaflets or booklets you would like to contribute to this project please contact us via theleftchapter@outlook.com