December 1, 1928.
THE MILITANT Page Page THE MILITANT December 1, 1928.
The Results of the Election The Party «Discussion Opens!
the into new a our In desperation get, everything they have done and said and written for more than a year. All the opportunist blunders (and worse than blunders) which they CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE ticles, speeches, etc. One need only refer to the and which they defended or denied, are now adhave committed or condoned, which we criticized tions which, in the interest of historical truth support of the socialist faker, Panken, in the elecmitted and attributed to us as Trotskyism, as must be mentioned. It is true that the core of the tion last Fall; the motion to send comrades into party membership, the expelled Communists among the Socialist Party to bore from within. the reoutright opportunism.
them, held their ground in those days of trial. We, fusal to support a National Left Wing Conference Let the party member who claims the right to with them, stood at our posts and faced the in the Miners Union until the strike was a year read and think for himself turn to our document the arrests and indictments, as the record show on The Right Danger in the American This is true also of a section of the present Party policy och orsanne its force; the opposition to organizing the the present lead unions to submitted to the Sixth Congress of the Commuship. But others of mention few and not the least prominent ones played the systematic opportunism of the paramples of the Teadershipe leaders were still denying the existence of such a part of for whom the record of that cited in document to show that the struggle problem. He will find there a catalogue of all of trial by fire is a record not of glory but of within the party, which now takes on a sharper the features of opportunism in our party which are shame. Those for whidm history holds no honor should not write it.
Our factionalism has consisted of a stubborn which it still tries to conceal) with documentary The statement of Lovestone and Pepper entire daily fight against the opportunist course of the proof in each case of the responsibility of the auJy evades discussion of the principle issues raised majority in the above mentioned and in all other thors of the statement for these systematic by our stand for the Russian Opposition. It sets cases. In the Political Committee, at the February opportunist crimes and mistakes.
Plenum, at the May Plenum and at the Sixth The Lovestone Pepper group of leaders, like cratic machine. It makes unfortunate reference to Worid Congress the Opposition fought on this line their counter parts in other parties of the Comin.
party history where silence would have been wicar and proved its indictment of the Right wing lead tern, like all opportunists and bureaucrats, rely on But it is the section of the statement dealing with ers to the hilt.
suppression of discussion and expulsion to mainthe question of the Right Danger most The present declaration of the majority tain themselves in power. They want a party withthe whole document the question of the Right Danger taken with its previous attitude. Before want a party with a sterile inner life. They want a imagine that facts may be turned upside down, the Sixth Congress and at the Sixth Congress they party where the voice of the proletarian commuthat isack may be nist will be silenced. They want a party of passive it ed a encant boit if pornly one a close unity with all the extreme right ele hand raisers at the bottom and a petty bourgeois has a monopolistic control of party press ress and ments in the party and defended all their own clique of insolent bureaucrats at the top.
if nobody memory reaches mistakes. They claimed that America a opportunist from the International situation This is the real meaning of our expulsion, of an ironical grin opportu the mass expulsion of rank and file Communists, nists deelare the bureaucrats of the vile calumny heaped upon all those who on The Right Dastureaucratism.
of Under pressure of our hammering, our analysis, dare to stand and challenge them.
Our document on our elucidation of the problems, the fact of the The fight against such a regime in the party Party struggle against Right danger long struggle was indisputably established and was and in the Communist International is an urgent th the The proletarian of party, deals quite fully and adequately with be supposed such an outcome would party must awaken and take up this fight.
this question, as will be seen by a study of it. It create an impossible situation for leaders whose They must break through the bureaucratic crust explains the economic and political basis of the calculations had all been directly opposite, who had which has formed on top of the party and restore Right danger in the present period and proves been following a Right Wing line and firing only a normal party life in accord with Lenin teachthe opportunist line of the Lovestone group in its against the left. But our adepts in the art of po ing. To help bring about this awakening we adgeneral conceptions and concretely in every field litical legerdemain were not even embarrassed. dressed our statement to the Political Committee of party work They sctved the whole problem for themselves by with a full realization of the consequences. With Our document does not rest on general asser turning around and immediately starting to pull the help of the Communist workers in the ranks tions. Facts and documents from the party records their own right wing rabbits out of our hat. of the party we will continue to fight along this are cited in each case minutes, resolutions, ar They forgot, and they expect the party to for line until our aims are achieved.
clearly and obviously tenanlatans of on be back further than a month or two.
With an the opnana was in this respect.
demanded the reste copportunism up in Ameri C21 which sums up a masses campaign single cricampaign; and so on and so forth ad nauseam.
Party and its candidate, Hoover, signifies the By Max Shachtman still growing power accompanied though it is by Further: Such a corrupting atmosphere has been sharpening contradictions of American capitalism, Firstly, the vote for Smith was a vague, hesi created by the factional regime in the Party that and the grip of the main Party of the bourgeoisie tant, partial, confused result and an inaccurate re during the election campaign, the entire leaching on the masses. This power was sufficient for the flection of the growing radicalization.
staff of the Party. a delegation of twenty. in Republicans to break through the Solid South cluding the presidential candidate, was sent to for the first time since the Civil War, aided by Secondly, hundreds of thousands and millions of Moscow for the Sixth Congress of the Comintern those irresistible economic forces which have been proletarians, whom the process of radicalization in the face of needs of the campaign and the undermining the social political basis of the traaffects most deeply, and the most exploited sec protests of Cannon and other members of the Op ditional Democratic Party for the past decades.
tions of the Negroes, were either disqualified from position. In most of the districts, the Lovestone The election of Hoover is undoubtedly a victory voting by the class chicanery of capitalist election machinery, for the bourgeoisie. But to become fascinated by else or neglected to vote (foreign manufacture leaders of the masses by decree or be the atmosphere of this victory, to motion in faction controlled committees, nominated born workers, unemployed and migratory workers, as Party candidates not the outstanding, most capa.
by the dominance of its reality, and to see nothing workers terrorized in company towns, etc. ble and Thirdly, bourgeois elections are never a com known trade union and mass lead else, is to fall victim to the hopelessness, fear and petty bourgeois defeatism which characterizes the pletely accurate indication of the sentiment of the ers, but the leaders of the faction. From one ÎNation, or the New York World. Unfortunately, masses. The possibilities for gaining the adherence error flow many.
to play up Gitsuch a tendency exists in the Party and is even of the mass for day to day struggles on concrete is.
low as against Foster (see stories and advertise the given expression in the official Party In ments in the Daily Worker of that period)
sues are practically always far greater than the posthe John Pepper, Class Analysis of the sibilities of gaining support in elections. For ex Elections; Daily Worker, November 16, 1928 he ample: not all the workers when tres per des portes kidnapping in the Arizona desert. from which, shameful, stupid sensationalism of the Gitlow New in strike in England are supporters the victory of Hoover was a conservative land of the Labor slide, that it was the result of a deep seated averhe triumphantly emerged without even a trace of Liberal or Tory parties; thousands followed our sunburn.
sion to change.
It was a vote for the present re leadership in the miners, the Passaic and the New publican prosperity Bedford strikes, but only hundreds, or even only The most serious shortcoming of the campaign This is the attitude which tips its hat politely dozens, voted for our ticket; thousands support was the poor success in linking up with the elec tions the struggles of the workers in the coal nist ticket, stands in breathless awe before the yellow socialists there, and turn about on election fields, textile and similar fields, to mobilize colossal strength of the bourgeoisie, and assumes day and vote for the latter because they have a these workers, the Negroes, and the unem that it has thereby given a class analysis of good chance to get in among other reasons. ployed, to the extent that we could reach them, for active struggle, for demonstrations, to Fourthly, the sharpened temper of the masses we have encountered many times before. which and their growing class consciousness and readi. to break through the democratic veneer and ness to struggle is revealed with far greater clarity parliamentary cretinism of the elections with which enemy on the one hand and the miserable weakin such movements as the Sacco Vanzetti fight, the ness, powerlessness and backwardness of the workstrike movement which is developing at present the bourgeoisie plus the socialists stifle the real de ers on the other.
in isolated forms throughout the country, and velopment of revolutionary parliamentary work.
Fortunately, an analysis of the elections gives dozens of other phenomena which have often Unless these questions, problems and shortcomus no cause to adopt such a viewpoint. Let us been indicated by us.
ings of the Party campaign are seriously underconsider the fortunes of the arch demagogue stood, discussed and steps taken to remedy the Smith.
What were the results for the Party? The gain weaknesses, the Party will not avoid but repeat To speak unconditionally of the defeat of in the Party vote and the increased participation these errors in the future. To do as is done in the Smith is to overlook completely the nature of of the Party members in the election fight are un his article by Pepper, that is, to review the popular vote, which was larger (for the defeated deniable. Only a sober estimate of it will enable and the Party role in it without a tical word, is to mislead the Party membership Coolidge 1924 vote for any previous presiden: other fields as well. This cannot be done, how and lull it into a state of conceit, self satisfaction tial candidate (victorious or defeated) in Ameri ever, by the smug and temporarily convenient and history: more than 16, 000, 000 votes for a Party One is the method of clarity, the other the method priggishness. word is necessary on the role and future of does not bespeak its destruction. From the new the Labor Party movement which Pepper fails of self delusion.
who chose the president this year, Smith even to mention. For him it is an easy matter either received at least as much support as did Hoover.
The campaign of the Party partook too much of to discoverer or disperse a movement with a While Smith received a relative set back in the a sectarian opportunist nature to be labelled a Bol wave of the hand. In this election, the NorthBourbon reactionary South, he made big gains in shevik campaign. For months prior to the forma! western remnants of the big movement that dethe industrial North, particularly in the cities opening of the campaign, the Pepper Lovestone veloped in 1922 24 trailed miserably behind the where the industrial proletariat is concentrated, big bourgeois parties. Despite a previous decision total of 6, 795, 000 votes that were cast in the fol. the insistence of the Opposition Prict a farmer labor party, the Party high politics with Smith had a a majority of 55, 000 votes out of a of placing a Communist ticket in the field. Despite of the Comintern to advocate a labor has still continued.
lowing fourteen key of the slate as far back as centers: New York, Newark, of the its flirtations, maneuvers Boston, Cleveland, see stenogram of Cannon there, the Shipstead Mahoney Farmer Labor Party gang Angeles, Baltimore, Buffalo, Philadelphia. Pitts. and his article in the Daily Worker demanding the in Minnesota. The opportunist errors of a number burgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and Detroit Smith imm of the best Communist workers in that district Inherited, to a far greater extent of the Norththan Hoover, the the Lovestone majority played around with the flowed inevitably out of the essentially false theory sentiment of the agrarian idea of setting a fake farmer labor party ticket of a two class party, a morass out of which only west which rallied so futilely around La Follette in weeds can the look election Neither can a serious politician venendorsing thesia repetition of Lovestone ad.
The future of the labor party cannot be guaroverlook the fact that in the very heart of the tex that our campaign be conducted under the banner anteed by mathematical calculations. For our part, tile crisis, Massachusetts, Smith defeated Hoover, of the great class Farmer Labor Party of St. however, without wasting any sympathy on the carrying, in particular, New Bedford and Fall Paul (with MacDonald and Bouck) and opposed absurd theory of its inevitability. we see no rear River; that Smith made powerful advances par the entry of our own Party candidates. So much son to put aside the perspective of a labor party development in the working class movement. the class struggle and the industrial depression has socialist party was enabled to hold its convention, possible basis for a mass labor party exists and will been most severe Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois draw up its platform and nominate its candidates grow in the development and strengthening of the and Indiana weeks before we did.
unions which are now being formed in the Smith big urban vote, his vote in the seething coal, textile and needle trades industries, and which Other opportunist errors made by the leadership agrarian sections, his vote in the smaller industrial could be mentioned by the dozens. The election must be formed in others.
centers, are undoubtedly expressions of the growThe e election, finally, demonstrated that it is only ing discontent of the workers and farmers (as well platform was shot through with ten cent reformism (the abolition of the Senate, curbing the power the Communist Party that represents the interests ance capital, the eight year orgy of corruption, tion instructions sent out by the Party office, of the Supreme Court, etc. the notorious elecits colonies. The miserable attempts of the sobrass browed reaction and imperialist foraging of which would have made an honest social democrat cialist party parsons and peanut stand owners to the Republican wing of capitalism. Votes which flush with shame, and for which Lovestone and compete for the petty bourgeoisie and the labor would otherwise have been cast for the socialist Stachel. characteristically enough, tried to make aristocracy with an expert demagogue like Smith and even the Communist Parties went this time to were only an indication of how far this little yelSmith on the basis of the belief cooking the scapegoat; the articles in The Com.
that he has a.
low sect has travelled from the days when it had good chance to in.
Gitlow which cavalierly dismissed the Communist at least a revolutionary core.
his Its departure from everything healthy and reactionary consequences and implications, largely tion them by so much as one word; the unchecked radical in the labor and revolutionary movement through the Democratic Party, is an index to the tremendous backwardness of the political conseries of articles and stories in the Daily Worker leaves the Communist Party an open field. Its task is sciousness of the masses.
which the contribution by Amter, the Lovestone and corrupt factionalists who have usurped its Does this mean that our thesis regarding the proconsul in the Cleveland district, reached the growing radicalization of the working class is false? peak of opportunism (Daily Worker, August party, its proletarian composition, its basic proDoes it imply that the masses are becoming more 29, 1928. the organization of the famous Bel.
gram are a guarantee that despite the difficulties, radical by going over to the Democratic Party. mont County (Ohio) Labor Party fake another the errors, and the shortcomings it will win the Nothing of the kind.
Amter product in the midst of the Communist masses and fulfill its revolutionary mission.
voters party and not grow.
MINNEAPOLIS Copy of a Telegram received from Minneapolis, dated Nov. 18, 1928: Thirteen Party comrades and three League anembers were expelled today at the membership meeting for voting for our rsolution. Letter follows. signed)
VINCENT DUNNE.
This is in addition to the suspensioa on November 14 of five members of the District Executive Committee of the Minneapolis district, Vincent Danne, Carl SkogJund, Votaw, Oscar Coover and William Watkins for demanding the reinstatement of Cannon, Abern and Shachtman into the Party. As is well known these are the leading comrades of the Minnesota district whose work in the trade unions has been primarily responsible for the achievements of the Party there during the recent years.
Tho group of expelled proletarian Communists in Minnesota includes railroad workers, factory workers, laborers, an electrician, a carpenter, a machinist, and a printer.
KANSAS CITY Two members of the at Kansas City BuehJer and Sam Kassen, were expelled on November for declaring themselves opposed to the expulsion of Cannon, Abern, and Shachtwan. Both are pioneer American Communists, having been original members of the left wing group formed in Kansas City during the war, which captured the local of the published a left wing weekly paper, and became the local of the Coinmunist Labor Party on its formation in 1919.
PHILADELPHIA Three members of the Young Workers League, Morgenstern, Lankin and Goodman were expelled from the League in Philadelphia on November on the same grounds. On November 10, a few days after their expulsion, comrades Morgenstern and Larkin took part in a demonstration against imperialist war and for the release of John Porter before the War Dept. building in Washington. They were arrested and have been confined in jail ever since.
Comrade Morgenstern writes from jail as follows: gram of the Comintern states, without the aid of the proletarian victory in one or more European District Workhouse, Occoquan, Va.
counries. Dear Comrade CannonWhat does the Russian Opposition say on this As you already know we are in jail for parading point?
around the War Dept. for John Porter. We are still do The domestic problem is, by strengthening our ing this revolutionary work. They call us counter revolu selves with a proper class policy, a proper inter retionaries, but that doesn make it 90. heard that you lation of the working class with the peasant, to move comrades are keeping up the fight and doing good work. forward as fast as possible on the road of socialist It makes me feel great. With comradely greetings, construction. The interior resources of the Soviet BERNARD MORGAN. Union are enormous and make this entirely possiP. Note name for correspondence.
ble (Our emphasis. In using the world Capitalist market for this purpose, we bind up our fundamental CANADA historical calculations with further development of Comrade Maurice Spector, member of the ECCI from the world proletarian revolution. Its victory in cerCanada, whose suspension and removal from all posts was tain leading countries will break the ring of the capi.
already reported, has since been expelled.
talist encirclement, and deliver us from our heavy NEW YORK CITY burden. It will enormously strengthen us in the Comrade Malkin, a rank and file Communist sphere of technique accelerate our entire development fighter in the furriers Union, one of the defendants in the famous Mineola case under sentence of 276 to years will give us the possibility of really creating socialin prison, was expelled by the DEC on Nov. 19, ism. The Platform of the Russian Opposition pp.
1923. Charges are pending and trials beginning against 86 87, The Real Situation in Russia. Harcourt, other comrades in all parts of the country, Brace and Co. We quote the above now only to call attention to the absurd manner in which Trotsky The Ideological Campaign ism is being discussed without for one moment The Ideological Campaign is on in full swing examining the actual economic, tactical and poliResolutions supporting the in its expulsion fortunately they have been largely suppressed.
of Communists from the Party are being adopted But through the columns of The Militant the in various places.
American Communists will have the opportunity One street nucleus in Pittsburgh, without defin ing or explaining a word of a single fundamental the resolutions will change their tone and charto judge for themselves. Then we are confident issue raised by the Opposition Communists, manacter Martin Abern.
ages to use such expressions as counter revolutionary. social democratic. menshevik. rene gade. nine times in two sentences totaling 19 lines.
The resolution of the Kansas District Committee does not mention the expulsion of two pioneer Published twice a month by the Opposition Group in the Communist fighters, Buehler and Kassen, from the Workers (Communist Party of America and the Party for fighting the expulsions, Address all mail to: Box 120, Madison Square but does manage to betray its complete lack of Station, New York, knowledge the position of the Russian Opposi Publishers address at 340 East 19th Street, New York, tion. For instance, it accuses the Opposition of Telephone: Gramercy 3411, stating that Socialist construction in the Soviet Subscription rate: 00 per year. Foreign, 50 Union is a myth, when all facts available prove 5c per copy Bundle rates, 3c per copy.
the steady development of the socialist produc Editor Associate Editors tion Well, who says otherwise? The issue is: Martin Abern Can the development proceed faster? To what exJames Cannon Max Shachtihan tent? By what means and on what basis is the so VOL.
DECEMBER 1, 1928 No. cialist economy to be developed further? What are the limitations? Can there be the development of Application for entry as second class matter pending at the Post Office at New York, NY.
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