Red Star

by Loren R. Graham

  “The first conclusion to be drawn from all this seems obvious: include in your demands a stop to the thievery, the trial of the criminals, and the confiscation of everything they have stolen. At the same time that you issue your manifesto I will publish my book of disclosures, which will be buttressed by exact data and documents. On this point we can expect the support of broad segments of the bourgeoisie who have suffered at the hands of the syndicates and hate them and their billionaire swindlers. True, the struggle is going to be even more bitter than it is now, and our enemies are going to attack us with all the legal and illegal weapons at their disposal, but they will not make us back down. Do you agree with my first conclusion?”

  “Yes! Yes! Of course!” resounded from all sides.

  “Now let us review our demands and see what we have. We want the same wages, the same working day, and the same order and routines at the construction sites as we had before the first strike, that is, during Menni’s time. We want to put an end to the stealing, the embezzlements, the incompetent technical supervision that risks the lives and health of the workers—in other words, all the things that have arisen since Menni. Need I tell you the second conclusion that follows from these facts? We must demand that Menni be reinstated.”

  A murmur of disapproval rose from the audience, mixed with exclamations: “Never!” “What’s he saying!” “Impossible!” “He’s laughing at us!” “So that’s what he was getting at!” The excitement increased, and several of the delegates even jumped up from their seats. “Let him finish!” shouted Arri. Netti stood motionless and waited while the chairman called for silence. Gradually order was restored, though the atmosphere remained one of bewilderment and suspicion. Netti continued:

  “Brothers, it is no news to me that you hate Menni. But our feelings are not important. What is important is the struggle and the victory. So let us judge objectively. What do you have against Menni’s return?”

  There was a new outburst of stormy exclamations: “He is the enemy of the unions!” “He murdered our brothers!” “You mean you don’t know that he was to blame for the strike and the bloodshed?” Netti made a sign that he wished to go on. There was another uneasy silence.

  “All right, you have said what you think, now hear me out and don’t interrupt me until I have finished. After all, the final decision is yours, not mine. Let us look at the charges. Number one: Menni is the enemy of the unions. Absolutely correct. But what of the present Project Administration? I suppose that it is not the enemy of the unions? Or that whoever replaces today’s leaders will be the friend of the unions? We are not children who can be fooled into hoping for anything like that. We cannot change this as long as the present order exists, as long as there is exploitation, as long as one class fears and rules over another. But there are enemies and there are enemies. Menni did not recognize the unions and refused to negotiate with them, but did he persecute them? Were workers dismissed for belonging to a union? Was our Federation forced to operate underground? His outlook differed from ours, but he acted honestly and overtly, his enmity was ideological and based on principle. The present directors sometimes tell you: ‘Let the union send its delegates, and we will discuss your demands with them.’ And then what happens to these delegates? Do you prefer the unions to be treated like this? No, brothers, we seldom have the opportunity to choose our enemies, but when it is possible we must learn to distinguish between them.”

  “That’s not the point,” a young worker interrupted. “What about the blood of our brothers?”

  “Indeed, that is the main point. And now I must tell you something that you do not know. You have been deceived from the very beginning, and your enemies have been concealing the truth from you all along. You could not find it out on your own, and you had much more serious things on your minds during those difficult years. The truth is this: Menni is innocent, both of the deaths of those who succumbed to fever on the canal and of the deaths of the men who were killed during the strike.”

  “Well then, who was it who sent the workers to the Rotten Bogs?”

  “Brothers, it was not Menni who did that, but necessity. You were taken in by the deceitful, traitorous brochure whose anonymous author—Maro—knew he was lying to you and why he was lying to you. It was impossible to chart any other course for the Ambrosia Canal, and I can tell you why.

  “You are probably all aware of the fact that our planet is a sphere consisting of a fiery, molten mass covered with a crust that has cooled and hardened. This crust is not as stationary or as solid as it appears to the eye. It is made up of huge, tightly interlocking blocks or sheets rather in the form of a giant mosaic. We do not yet know the laws governing the movement within the molten ocean at the core of the planet, but such movement takes place continuously—probably due to the gradual cooling and contraction of this liquid mass—and, with imperceptible slowness over the course of millennia, it raises the crust in certain spots and lowers it in others. These movements, however, are not always quiet or even. Sometimes they cause terrible, destructive shocks to the crust that can either give birth to or eradicate whole canyons, mountains, lakes, or islands, and this poses a serious and inescapable threat to all life in the area.

  “The cooling of the interior of our planet has proceeded quite far, so that these phenomena occur only rarely, but they are all the more violent when they do happen. It is obvious that the centers of such catastrophes, the places where they are bound to be most destructive, lie along the seams of the giant planetary mosaic. And it just so happens that the valley through which the Ambrosia Canal supposedly could have been built lies on one of these lines. The valley was in fact at one time formed as the result of an earthquake of which no memory has been retained, but as recently as some three hundred years ago its appearance was radically altered by new subterranean disturbances. Several hundred people—not more, since the area was sparsely populated—were killed. There are other examples of earthquakes which have destroyed entire cities and killed tens and hundreds of thousands of people.

  “Now imagine that the canal with its irrigation system were to be built through this valley. Huge cities would grow up along it, and millions of people would cultivate the fields and meadows made fertile by its waters. Fifty, a hundred, two hundred years would pass—science is as yet unable to predict these events—and everything would be smashed and perhaps destroyed completely in the space of a few minutes. Can you honestly say that a few thousand lives today are worth more than millions tomorrow? No, you would never think that way, for you are champions of your cause and consider it just and sensible to sacrifice thousands of lives today in order that millions may be freer in the future. Menni, a man of science, reasoned the same way as you men of labor.

  “You were deceived, provoked to fight, and lured into the firing line. By whom? A gang of scoundrels led by Feli Rao and Maro. Why? To bring down an incorruptible man who was blocking their way to billions. And they succeeded.

  “I am not speaking of fairness, although it is best to be fair even to one’s enemies. I am speaking about success, about victory. What better way to shatter the ranks of our enemies than to confront them with this unexpected and menacing demand? Public opinion will be on our side; it began to swing back toward Menni a long time ago, and people are indignant over the fact that prison seems to be the best place that can be found for so great a man. This cowardly and hypocritical opinion now declares that Menni has already paid for his crime. We do not feel that way, for we can understand that he acted as a man of conviction and that it was not he who was the criminal, but the capitalist lackeys who condemned him.

  “Remember one other point: if Menni returns he will restore all previous conditions. Without him, on the other hand, our opponents will haggle with us, agreeing to one thing and rejecting another, and it is possible that the rank and file will be mollified by partial concessions.

  “Finally, doesn’t the mission we have set out to accomplish, the Great Project itself, mean a great deal to
us? After all, it is for the good of all mankind. This means that the mission should be entrusted to the man whose genius conceived it and who is more competent than anyone else to lead it.

  “As for the points about which we disagree, we will be able to give Menni a fight when we are standing face to face with him. And then, brothers, we shall try to show ourselves worthy of such an opponent!”

  No one took the floor for several minutes after Netti had finished. Surprised and stunned, the audience sank into gloomy thought. Taking stock of the situation, Arri rose to speak.

  “I can vouch for what Netti has just told you. I hated Menni more than any of you, and at first I was eager to fight him. Soon, however, certain facts raised doubts within me. I began to suspect that something was amiss when Maro came to me in secret. Evidently counting on my naïveté, he pretended he wanted to dampen the conflict and tried to arouse me to agitate against Menni personally. Then the anonymous brochure urging a strike appeared out of nowhere and was spread by the thousands among the workers. I tried to convince our comrades to stop and investigate the matter, I tried to tell them that someone was using us, and our chairman here backed me up. Unfortunately, the strike broke out spontaneously before we had managed to convince anyone. We and the entire Council of the Federation were arrested in order to enrage our brothers even more. To prevent me from testifying at Menni’s trial, they treacherously arranged for me to be killed ‘attempting to escape’ from prison. It was sheer luck that my wound did not prove fatal. After this I decided to do everything in my power to find out the truth. Friends brought books to me in prison, I studied the relevant subjects, and I finally understood clearly the deceit and treachery that had been committed, who had needed it, and why. But I only had conjectures; it was Netti who found the proof, and it took him a long time. When I was released from prison two years ago I threw all my energy into resurrecting our Federation. I kept what I knew to myself in order not to forewarn our enemies or hamper Netti in his research. But now everything is ready and the time has come to act.”

  After Arri the young delegate who had most often interrupted Netti took the floor.

  “All right,” he said in a nervous voice quivering with emotion. “Netti and Arri have convinced me, and I will vote for their plan. But just look, brothers, what a terrible situation we are in. Today we have heard a lot of things we never even suspected, and yet our fate, our lives, our freedom depends on them! The traitors told our brothers that there was no reason for Menni to send them to the bogs, and they believed them. Arri spent ten years in prison, studied geology, and tells us now that this was a lie. Of course, we believe him. They made us work an extra two years in those same bogs on account of some rocks or other, and we knew nothing. Netti explains that this was unnecessary, that the engineers were lying, and we believe Netti. They make us work with defective explosives that can blow us to bits at any moment, and not until now, after the death of thousands of people, do we find this out. Netti is an engineer, he has made analyses, we have every reason to believe him. But what is this anyway—believing, believing, believing! If Netti hadn’t left the ranks of the workers to become an engineer, or if Arri hadn’t suffered for ten years in prison, we might never have learned any of this. We would have made other decisions and foolishly wasted our resources. Isn’t this slavery, the worst form of slavery? Netti, Arri, brothers: how do we escape from this? What must we do so that we ourselves can know and see, and not just constantly believe? Or is that impossible? Is it always going to be like it is now? And if it is impossible, then what is the use of living and struggling if we are to remain slaves?”

  Netti answered him:

  “Brother, you have touched a sore spot. Thus far science is the weapon of our enemies. We will triumph when we have made it our weapon. Here before us is a great and difficult task. We will, of course, fight for and win the leisure time to study. We will gain knowledge wherever possible. But this is not enough. Scraps and crumbs of knowledge are not what is needed to arrive at an intelligent solution to the most important and complicated problems of life.

  “Some of us will succeed as I have succeeded in approaching this alien science and properly learning some branch of it. Even this is very little. Nothing has been conquered for the proletariat until it has been won for everyone. And modern science is such that even the chosen few who have gained access to it master only a small part of it, a single specialty. There simply isn’t time and energy for more. But no specialty can provide a grasp of man’s labor as a whole.

  “I have studied several disciplines; I have been able to do so because I happen to be more gifted than many other people. As I studied I came to the following conclusion. Modern science is just like the society that has created it: powerful but splintered, and extravagant with its resources. Because of this fragmentation the individual branches of science have developed separately and lost all vital connection with each other. This has given rise to all manner of deformities, sterile artificialities, and confusion. The same phenomena and notions have dozens of different names in the various disciplines and are studied in each branch as though they were something novel. Each branch has its special language which is the privilege of the initiated and serves to exclude everyone else. Many difficulties derive from the fact that science has become divorced from life and labor, forgotten its origin and lost sight of its purpose. For this reason it busies itself with pseudoproblems and often beats about the bush trying to answer simple questions.

  “I have noticed all this, and my opinion of contemporary science is as follows. Such as it is today it is worthless to the working class, both because it is too difficult and because it is inadequate. The proletariat must master it by changing it. In the hands of the workers it must become much simpler, more harmonious and vital. Its fragmentation must be overcome, it must be brought closer to the labor that is its primary source. This is an enormous task. I have begun it, others will find the methods and means to continue it. As always, the first steps will be taken in isolation, but eventually men will join forces. The mission cannot be accomplished in a single generation, but each step on the way will contribute to liberation.

  “The necessary task has been set. It is going to demand countless trials and strenuous exertion. The road to its fulfillment will be lined with setbacks and failures. But such is our struggle. Ours is a difficult battle and cannot be otherwise, because our ideals are lofty. But if it were easy, brothers, would it even be worth talking about?”

  2. The Return

  In prison Menni was afforded the possibility not only of pursuing scientific studies, which was permitted all prisoners, but also of following the course of current events. His enemies probably had a certain ulterior motive in this generosity; by letting him witness the destruction of the organization he had created, the dismissal of his best assistants and the treachery of others, they hoped to intensify his moral anguish so as to enable them to break his will once and for all. For the first few years Feli Rao still hoped to subdue him and win him over as an ally. On several occasions he communicated to him secretly through the warden that he could be granted a full pardon if he accepted the conditions mentioned by Maro in their last conversation. Menni did not respond to these proposals. He continued the whole while to work on his plan of the Project, keeping abreast of all the latest research. At the same time he managed to make a number of important inventions that were subsequently applied in the construction of the canals.

  Feli Rao was uneasy. For various reasons public opinion kept turning its attention to the fate of Menni, and each time it did so, sympathy with him grew more persistent. Harsh speeches were delivered in Parliament, and the government and its loyal deputies found it increasingly difficult to maintain its previous position. Rao decided that he had to rid himself of his dangerous opponent at any price. As long as Menni was in prison, however, this was impossible. The Central House of Detention was so perfectly guarded that a murder attempt would require the participation of a great many b
ribed accomplices and was bound to be discovered. In the tenth year of his sentence Menni was officially offered a pardon by the President of the Republic. Menni declined, as he had the legal right to do, little knowing that this saved his life. Public opinion, however, was unpleasantly surprised at Menni’s implacability, so that his refusal was at least a partial victory for Feli Rao.

  But suddenly the storm broke. The manifesto of the Project Federation, declarations of solidarity by a number of other unions, and Netti’s book, The Great Project and the Great Crime, were all published simultaneously. The workers gave the government and Parliament a month in which to answer, threatening to call a general strike. Netti’s book was read at once by millions. His disclosures were amply confirmed, and new muckrakers appeared immediately. Demonstrations were held in the capital and other large cities. The ministry fell, and even the President of the Republic was forced to resign. Since the new government could not hope for a majority, it immediately dissolved Parliament and set new elections. It declared to the workers that it agreed in all essential respects with their demands, and organized an investigation of the crimes that had been disclosed. A great many dishonest financial and parliamentary leaders were brought to trial. The Minister of Justice even ordered the arrest of Feli Rao, but Feli would not surrender: realizing that all was lost, he put a bullet in his brain.

  Menni was again offered a pardon, but once again he declined. The government did not know what to do with him, and was obliged to wait until Parliament had convened. By that time, the investigation had already uncovered huge quantities of materials, including many of the facts relating to what had gone on behind the scenes at Menni’s trial. Finally the elections were over and the deputies assembled. The former minister who had supported Menni was elected President of the Republic. The government conferred with the leaders of his party and drew up new proposals to be presented to Menni.