August 16, 1919 THE COMMUNIST Pere Eight The High Cost of Living Capitaliste About to solve the Whole Problem has already come to a head in several European countries, At last we may begin to breathe easy. No need now to with serious results to the governments concerned. In Italy worry unduly about where the next meal is to come from. it seemed for a time as though Soviet rule might be established, The mighty arm of the government has been stretched forth, and the government fell all over itself in the effort to supply and is already busy jamming down the high cost of living. cheaper food and punish the profiteers. In Liverpool two An Associated Press dispatch says that President Wilson him days of rioting and looting, with strikes throughout the rest self, on August 4, had no engagements for the forenoon and of England, call emphatic attention to danger from this probwas understood to be devoting his attention to the high cost lem danger to Capitalism. Now this discontent might spread of living problem. Isn that lovely?
to America. Is that the reason Yankee Capitalism bestir it Governors, mayors, and grand juries, we are told, are self?
ordering searching probes. Attorney General Palmer ComA Comparison and a Prophocy mittee is going to hear the report of a sub committe, and The The government of England, too, has been investigating President will await the report of Palmer committee. His the of and campaigning aginst it, yet prices there recommendation, which will follow this report, will probably continue soaring skyward. Life is becoming almost too costly take the form of message to Congress. In fact, Uncle Sam to live, says a great London newspaper. Prices have officialis heading a regular drive for cheaper food, which will end ly increased 113. but in reality about 250. And all this once and for all the grim spectre that confronts everybody. in spite of the fact that the British government is paying subsidies of 900, 000, 000 yearly to bribe food dealers to Why This Sudden Concern About the Cost of Living? sell their goods to the cheaper markets at home. Millers and There are some questions that come to us, as we ponder bakers alone receive 250, 000, 000 from the public treasury on this campaig. Hitherto government investigation has in this way.
been directed toward Bolshevik agitators, advocates of free Will the American government have any better success?
speech, and similar undesirables. Now there is sudden regard We doubt it. Furthermore, we predict continued and increased among our capitalists for the poor wage slave, and an over profiteering, and a continued and increased cost of living.
powering desire on their part to lessen his cost of living. Our There is no solution to this problem within the confines of the familiarity with capitalist ethics leads us to suspect that some capitalist system.
ulterior motive is back of all this loving care that is so un To capitalists we have, therefore, no suggestion to make.
expectedly being bestowed upon us.
The dilemma is up to them. But to the workers we say, Why As a matter of fact, this subject of the high cost of living not try the plan used in Soviet Russia. Russia Lesson from ciples enunciated in the Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848. In that manifesto (Continued from page 1)
the founders of modern socialism declared: THE FIRST besides waging a defensive warfare against the armies of GerSTEP IN THE REVOLUTION BY THE WORKING CLASS man and Allied Imperialists, the industries left in chaos by IS TO RAISE THE PROLETARIAT TO THE POSITION OF the Czar government are being rapidly reorganized upon RULING CLASS. The working class will then use its poan efficient basis, despite the deliberate attempts at disorganlitical supremacy to wrest all control of industry from the ization on the part of the remnants of the capitalist class hands of the capitalist class.
within Russia.
In its struggle to prejudice the minds of the workers of Nicolai Lenine in an article appearing in the Russian paAmerica against revolutionary Russia the capitalist class knows per Pravda, in May, 1918, and later translated into English With the desperation which comes under the title Soviets at Work, emphasizes the necessity it is fighting a losing battle with that realization this ruling class sinks into idiocy and for efficient organization of industry.
instead of intelligently defending itself places more weapons Lenine, in a brief summary of the movement that culminated in victory for the Bolsheviki, declares the first prob in the hands of its mortal enemy.
lem consisted in convincing the majority of the population that If the cartoon were reversed it would be nearer the actual its program and policies were correct. The second problem facts, for the same ruling class that vilifies the Bolsheviki of the Bolsheviki was the conquest of political power and the clasps in brotherly embrace the gory hands of Mannerheim, suppression of the resistance of the exploiters. After com the butcher of Finland, and gives aid to the Czarist admiral, menting on the various elements endeavoring to destroy Kolchak, of Siberia. The newspapers that ask the American soviet power, he expresses confidence that the problem of the worker to believe their lies about Russian brutality eulogized resistance of the exploiters is solved.
the industrial tyrants of America when workers were slaughOn the problem of organization we will quote the words tered in West Virginia and Calumet, Mich. in 1913; and when of Lenine: the ḥirelings of John Rockefeller, Jr. burned alive women We are now confronted by the third problem, which is the most and children at Ludlow, Colo. April 20, 1914. Nowhere in urgent and which characterizes the present period: To organize the management of Russia. Of course, we had to deal with this problem and revolutionary Russia or any other part of the civilized world have been at it ever since November 7, 1917. But, heretofore, as long have thugs and gun men burned helpless women and chilas the resistance of the exploiters manifested itslf in open civil war.
fare, the problem. anagement could not become the principal, the dren; that is the distinct contribution of American capitalism central problem.
to industrial history. This ruling class is merely resorting to At present it has become the central problem. We, the Bolshevik party, have convinced Russia. We have won Russin from the rich for the the Jesuit tactic of accusing its enemies of the crimes it has poor, from the exploiters for the toilers. And now it is up to us to manage been guilty of.
Russia. The special difficulty of the present period consists in comprehending the peculiarities of the transition from the principal problem The intelligent worker will investigate the history of the of convincing the people and suppressing the exploiters by force to the new principal problem of management.
Russian revolution, the theory and tactics which made possible Instead of urging anarchy and bloodshed, as charged by its triumph, and with an understanding of the mission to which the American capitalist press, Lenin admonishes the Russian history has called him will join the regular march of the iron workers thusly: battalions of the proletariat for the purpose of destroying capitalism. Keep accurate and conscientious accounts, conduct business economically, do not loaf, do not steal, maintain strict discipline at workthese slogans, which were justly ridiculed by revolutionary proletarians when they were used by the bourgoisia to assure their domination as a Chicago preacher favors segregation of the blacks for class of exploiters have now, after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, betheir own good as well as for the good of the whites. What come urgent and fundamental slogann. And the practical realization of these slogans by the toiling masses, is, on the one hand, the solo conditext did you quote, Parson?
tion for the salvation of the country, which has been shattered by the imperialistic war and by the imperialists (hended by Koronsky. and, on the other, the practical realization of these slogans by the Soviet power. The Bolshevist demands the privilege of ranting seditious with its own methods, and on the basis of its own laws, is necessary and ly, traitorously, of urging pillage, murder, rape, abolition of suficient for the final victory of Socialism.
marriage ties, the commonization of women, anything every.
The reason the ruling class of the world is infurlated at thing that happens for the moment to excito his unreatrained the success of the Russian Bolshevikl is because in that country brain. This gem is from The Forelock, patriot wookly, the workers are organizing new society based upon the prin published in Detrott.