In Defense of the Communists

Excerpts from Argument in Defense of the Communists by Clarence Darrow (ACLU), published by Charles Kerr & Co., [1] 1920. Darrow was defending twenty Chicago communists who were charged in August 1920 under the 1919 Illinois anti-communist statute. The Communist Party in the USA had just been formed at Chicago in September 1919. The Scopes Trial came later, in 1925. Too bad they didn't mention this in the film Inherit the Wind.

Clarence Darrow [2]

I shall attempt to say it honestly; and I fancy not one of this jury, after I am done, can say that I have dodged or sidestepped or appealed to any cheap sentiment or passion to get my clients free. I am not interested in them. I will submit this case squarely to this jury to see what you are going to do in the cause of freedom of speech, and the principles for which men have shed their blood in every age and every land... I am interested in the verdict of this jury as to whether this country shall be ruled by the conscienceless men who would stifle freedom of speech when it interferes with their gold; or whether this jury will stand by the principles of the fathers and, whether so far as you can, you will stop this mad wave that threatens to engulf the liberty of the American citizens.

One of the greatest philosophers who ever lived, Nietzsche, said this, that he was not sure that he would die for his opinions, but he was sure that he would die for the right to express his opinions.

What do you suppose would happen to the world except for these rebels? I wish there were more of them. What do you suppose would have happened to the working men except for the rebels all the way down through history? Think of the complaisant, cowardly people who never raise their voices against the powers that be? If there had been only these you gentlemen would be hewers of wood and drawers of water. Yon gentlemen would have been slaves. You gentlemen owe whatever you have and whatever you hope for to those brave rebels who dared to think and dared to speak and dared to act; and if this jury should make it harder for any man to be a rebel, yon would be doing the most you could for the damnation of the human race.

Much has been said about the red flag. I say gentlemen, that I have as much right to have a red flag as you have to own a green one, or a yellow one, or one of any other color. I have a right to one flag or a dozen flags, and the jury has never yet been found who could deny it. Let me tell you something about this red flag. I will tell you why every tyrant on earth has hated it; I will tell you why every man with stolen money in his pocket has hated it; I will tell you why the men back of this law hated it; although they have no wit and no imagination. Their wit and their imagination, if they ever had any, has been traded for dollars. What is this red flag? Gentlemen, the Communist Labor Party did not invent the red flag. The Socialists did not invent the red flag. The Democrats did not invent the red flag. It is older than that. It is older than any of those parties. Christopher Columbus did not. It is older than that. It was not invented at Bunker Hill, although it was present. It was invented long before that. No man can tell you when it was first used. We can come pretty near it, though. Since the working-man has grown enough to have the wit to think, and since he has found a voice for himself, although that voice is weak and feeble, the red flag has been the flag of the common man.

It was the flag of the workingman long before Greece, and in Greece it was the flag of the workingman; in the Roman Empire it was the flag of the workingman; in ancient France, in Germany, in Russia, in Switzerland, in England, in Spain and in the United States; and yet these fool legislators think they can stamp out the institutions and the customs and the habits of a people. Let us see where it came from. As near as we can find out, the rulers and kings and aristocrats who get their power from the Almighty -- nobody ever saw the Almighty hand it down or even read the credentials of the aristocrats or kings they had a white flag, or a blue flag; a blue flag, representing their blue blood which was pure and unsoiled, and the white flag, representing no color whatever and could not be soiled; only working people could be soiled, because you could only soil your hands with work. The common people had a red flag. It came from the god of the sun, the red rays of the sun, as far back as you can read in history; when it took a more definite meaning, it meant the common red blood which courses through the veins of all men alike; it represents the brotherhood of man. That is where it came from.

This flag was the flag of the first colonists in the United States. It flew proudly at the battle of Bunker Hill with other flags of all kinds. This flag flew where Washington had command. It flew at the Battle of Brandywine. The Nuns of Bethlehem embroidered one with the greatest care and sent it to the Commander that he might rally his men under that banner to fight for America against Great Britain; and this story has been commemorated by America's best known poet, Henry W. Longfellow...

The red flag has been the emblem of the workers as far back as history can go, gentlemen, and I want to say further that this emblem has stood after long tribulation through the ages. It has waved when the workingman was enslaved; when he was bought and sold; and later when he formed his unions and met in caves and waste places, under the ban of the law; when he was sent to prison because he dared to haggle over his wages. When he was enslaved in France and his life was in the hands of the king; when capitalists, even in America, would make him a slave. It has represented the sufferings of working men throughout all these years. It is his banner, and you cannot take it from him by a verdict in this case. It will be his banner so long as red is the color of the blood that runs through the veins of men; and so long as the breaking clouds of dawn are crimsoned by the glorious rays of the rising sun.

When I was young I found Henry George and I read his "Progress and Poverty" and it is probably the greatest book on political economy that the last century produced. It has been sold into the millions and millions of copies, and no man who claims to be intellectual could afford to say that he did not know the book; [3] and yet the prime teaching of Henry George is that the land should be common property; that no man should own it; it is the gift of nature; that no man has the right to own it or monopolize it... his doctrine was that no man had the right to own the earth; that it should be taken without compensation, for no man could get title to the earth, and yet he lay down on his bed and died a peaceful death; and monuments have been reared to him, and poems written to him, and his son has been sent to congress, and still you are told you must convict my clients because they believe that no one should own the earth, and that land should be taken without compensation.

Mr. Forrest read here yesterday from the New Testament to show that Christ was a Communist, and that his Disciples were Communists; and Mr. Comerford shouted, "Do you compare your people with him, are they lineal descendants of him?" Let me answer, yes. They are lineal descendants, and you would have sent Christ to jail just the same as you would these defendants, just the same as the prosecutor in his day did it; just the same as there have always been prosecutors to send to jail every man who had a dream beyond the narrow vision of his fellow man. The doctrines of these defendants are just the same; and they are lineal descendants of the Communists of the early Christian days; Communists have been in the world since man was born. It was not new when Christ came upon the earth. Men have not only professed it, but they have lived it... The prophets and the teachers and the seers all down through the ages have taught it. When it came to the early Christian times all the disciples and apostles were Communists who owned all their property together and who taught that private property was wrong. Their doctrine came from Christ, and Christ got it from somewhere else... It is the doctrine of Karl Marx, who has left a greater impress upon this world than any other political economist who ever lived... I will tell you where it comes from, gentlemen. It is in you... It is in every man who hates poverty, not because he is poor, but because other men are poor. It is born of sympathy; it is born of love; it is born of the feeling of common brotherhood in man; it will live so long as mothers love their children; so long as idealists love the human race; so long as men hope and strive and dream.

For long years to be a working man was to be mean, was to be bought and sold, was to be flogged and killed, was to be the property of the master, body and soul... My clients believe in a time when the owners of the industries should be workers, that is all. They believe in a time to be reached by a different organization of society, when these industries shall all be owned by the men who work in them, that is what they mean. Is there anything wrong about that, gentlemen of the jury?

There was nothing between the Russian people and the monarchy but Lenin, good or bad, and he has held that country for three years, and I am glad he has. As I say, gentlemen, I am glad of it, and when something better shall come I will be infinitely glad of that; but the man who wishes Lenin's power destroyed, that man is working for the whip and the lash, and the dungeon, which made slaves of Russians for a thousand years. Now don't make any mistake about that, gentlemen; there can be no mistake about it.

Gentlemen, we forget. If the people of Chicago can celebrate the fall of the Bastille, why should not my clients celebrate the fall of Nicholas, old Nick?

Long ago it was written that "greater love hath no man than this that he would give his life for his friend." Greater love has no organization than that it will lay down its tools in sympathy with its fellow man.

Russians struck for a constitutional form of government, and the strike involved a territory of more than three thousand miles in length, and as I recall it, about two thousand miles wide, covering about one-fifth or one-sixth of the territory of the world, and they laid down their tools and work stopped... and they refused to work, gentlemen, every one of these poor peasants who had felt the lash upon their bare backs, and whose fathers and grandfathers for twenty generations had felt the same, who had boon bought and sold, killed like dogs for the blue bloods and the rich; they all stayed out until finally the Czar surrendered and the people established the Duma... They sent Socialists and working people, and trades unionists and communists, and all kinds of men who represented the poor of Russia; until in a night, contrary to law and contrary to humanity, the Czar revoked this law and dissolved this parliament and sent these men back home, helpless, with their rights destroyed, to live the life their fathers and their grandfathers and their great great grandfathers had lived before. The Russian Czar revoked the power he had given to the people and once more put his heel upon their necks, and it rested there until near the end of this great war in the last throes of Russia's despair her people arose again and swept from power forever the last of the Romanoff family that ever lived to curse the earth.

...I can make a prophecy that even this country which I love more than any other, in spite of the faults which I believe she has, that even this country, through the greed of wealth, ever seeking and reaching and grabbing more and more, taking from you and from me; from the hungry children that toil in mills; taking from the consumers of the world until nothing is left; taking as they would be taking now except for the rebels who oppose them. I can prophesy that they will do here what they did in Russia; will crush the workingman in darkness and night, until some day America will see the greatest and bloodiest revolution that the world has ever known.

notes

[1]	Publisher of communist books, evolution books, and The International Socialist Review.

[2]	Defense attorney at the Scopes trial.

[3]

There is an ironic twist to this. Henry George was indeed a communist. Alfred Wallace read Progress and Poverty, which happens to contain a scathing criticism of Malthus's population principle. Since natural selection is based entirely on the Malthus population principle, and cannot possibly work without it, this caused Wallace to lose faith in natural selection.

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