Page THB MILITANT October 1, 1929.
The Conference prop.
tion.
how little; if any, work will be done in the of with the present line of policy and state of mind of the Communists and Left wing.
Perhaps no better proof of this profounds retrogresThe achievements of the Cleveland Conference of the The stifling mechanical control of the conference by sion from Leninist teachings on working in the reactionary unions can be afforded than the following parallel Trade Union Educational (now Unity) League lie the Party was manifest on all hands. The Party fracchiefly in the emphasis put upon the millions of unor tion was in the majority and off handedly railroaded of quotations: ganized worker in this country and the need to union through any and all propositions. naive non Party We cannot ask the work. would cut off my right ize them, and the fact that rank and file workers were metal worker from Chicago, who thought it would be ers to join the corrupt arm rather than join the gathered together from various parts of the country proper to have chairmen elected from the floor, was of Unions. of Negro and white, young and old under one roof to guffawed out of court by Foster himself. Gitlow rediscuss their problems and outline the necessary plans solutions on Gastonia and the Labor Party were never The of is a prop The 28, 000 local unions to cope with them. These achievements have already discussed, nor was his nomination to the National Com for this system (capitalism. of the of are 28, 000 been related in the Left wing press, and ever exag mittee. The steering committee yanked it off the floor we must knock out that agencies of the capitalist gerated all of proportion to their real and soberly and later brought in a number of motions disposing of class.
considered significance. However, since the Party press the whole matter with a bang. Most of the time was The of has suc has failed signally to indicate the enormous shortcom taken up with reports, and very little for discussion It has been said that this ings and outright blanders made at the conference, it from the floor. Members were nominated for the ceeded only in debauching convention was to form an becomes a duty to point them out so that Communist National Committee by the heads of the industrial the working class in the in organization, rival to the and Left wing movement does not proceed blindly into groups without taking the trouble to get the consent terests of the capitalist class. of This is a mistake.
The new will suc We are here for the purpose deeper quagmires.
of their respective delegations, as in the Marine workers delegation. So raw were some of the methodsceed because it is the work.
THE DELEGATION AT CLEVELAND of forming a labor organizaall so reminiscent of a good, factional Party conveners federation of labor.
It is first necessary to estimate the real strength of tion. that at the end of the first day, one seamen The three quotations on the left side are, in order, the movement represented in Cleveland. For this, one delegate, Stuart MacDonald, jammed his hat on his Foster (Daily Worker, 2 29. Foster (same issue. must first strip all the reports of their exaggeration, head and threatened to go home.
editorial (Daily Worker, 3 29. The three on the right bombast, circus tooting and playing for the record. We The problem of organizing the unorganized was side are all from speeches of Bill Haywood! Is more then find that the promised mass support for this new treated in a purely schematic, arbitrary and adminisof the same needed? It is available by the yard. The revolutionary federation of labor that is to challenge trative manner. No realistic conception illuminated the One Big Union Budletin of Canada (8 29 29. prints the of all along the line failed to materialize. reports or discussion. Instead, many stupidities were parts of an article by Leslie Morris who wrote on the The most tautly stretched reports of the credentials uttered and committed.
10th Plenum of the that all talk of capturcommittee give a maximum representation of 70, 556 New unions are being formed in committee rooms ing the apparatus of the reformists unions is hopelessworkers, of whom no less than 57, 000 are credited to without the masses every knowing a thing about it. Out ly vrong; that the reformist bureaucracies are an the new industrial unions. Divide the last figure by of a clear sky, for example, we have the announcetwo and you will obtain still very generous estimate ment of the Metal Workers Industrial League, an integral part of the bourgeois machinery of state. and comments: Gee whiz! it too bad it took the of the new unions. Shop committee delegates (picked organization afiliated with the Daily WorkPlenum nine years to find this out. The told out of thin air in many cases) represented less than 2, er, 17 29. Or else, the utter insanity of this: these masquerading revolutionists the same thing just 000 workers, and local of unions about as construction section of the embracing a much nine years ago.
many. Of the 690 delegates reported, a round half larger field than the building trades was proposed by There we have precisely the type of Leftism that represented the new industrial unions, e. more hopes the conference, Rosen said, which included highways, our Stalinists have imposed on the movement today.
than substance, with one or two exceptions. 107 del workers on bridges, subways, etc. The situation is ripe Ascribing the most extravagant virtues to their utoegates represented the largely paper shop committees for the organization of a new industrial union, he decpian dual organizations. they looked upon the (ranging from workers upwards. In one part of the lared. Daily Worker, 5 29. new industrial union trade unions (A. of as a sort of conspiracy carreport, groups get 126 delegates, and in an in the building trades is just that: utter insanity. ried out by the employers against the working class as other, they are given 33 more. Fraternal delegates, serious review of the past activities of the new capitalistic organizations which, yielding no benefits e. Party and Left wing auxiliaries, ran to 44, and the unions was entirely missing. There was no penetrating to the workers and utterly incapable of evolving into National Committee had another 40, representing them discussion of work, successes, and failures of the new genuine labor unions, had to be ruthlessly destroyed.
selves. Not a very solid mass to tackle the exceedunions now in existence. No attempt was made to Who wrote this once upon a time? Foster! Against ingly revolutionary tasks set the conference. Even probe the reasons for the present collapse of the Left whom? Against romantic Left revolutionaries and the first convention of the had more than twice wing Needle Trades Workers Union and the striking syndicalists! To whom does it apply today? To that amount represented advance of the Right wing, and draw the imperatively Foster!
The conference was organized by the Party, and necessary lessons. The rich lessons in strike strategy The conference adopted a wrong attitude towards controlled, in the narrowest, most mechanical, factional contained the numerous recent defeats of the Left the progressives. By some queer twist of the mind, spirit. Little else could expected, particularly with wing (particularly in the East) and the fallacious pol its directors concluded that in new unions, under Party such a steering committee as Weinstone, Stachel and icy of the National Textile Workers Union which precontrol, there would be no need to worry about the Foster, who, together with another comrade, were vented it from getting a foothold in Marion and Elizappointed for the task of working under the direction progressives. But this is no truer than it is in the old abethton did not exist for the conference. It did not unions. If the new unions are to become mass organof the Comintern Commission. Opponents of the pre condemn either the vulgar collaborationist policies of izations, they will include reactionary workers and sent line of the Party chiefs were sedulously excluded the opportunist Needle Trades Union leaders on the Communists, Catholics, Jews, Protestants and atheists, from all participation, to the great detriment of the one hand, or their sectarian standing aloof from the Republicans, Democrats and Socialists. Will it be negathering and all of Stachel crowing about the abstruggle of the workers led by the Right wing, in which cessary to have the proper approach to the progressive sence of the Communist Opposition from the conference they contented themselves with inanely shouting: elements of these variegated strata of workers in will not conceal the harm done by factionally exluding Fake Stoppage and Fake Strike, until the workers from work such comrades as Swabeck, Skogorder to safeguard the militant character of the in one craft after another had registered with the unions? Of course. It will be necessary to work tolund, Hedlund, Coover, Votaw, Angelo, MacMillan and Right.
gether with them, to draw them into leadership of the a dozen other recognized Left wing leaders in their locIs the reconstruction of the Right wing and the unions, to make united fronts with them against conalities.
virtual crushing of the Left in the Needle trades not servative and reactionary elements.
This ruinous factional course has now been establisha commonplace by now? Is not the passivity and lack If the new unions are to be mass organizations, they ed as a sacred principle. Our organization, said of vitality of the National Miners Union (on a nawill have enormous numbers of reactionaries and conFoster at the conference, must be ready to wage a tional scale) another commonplace? These trifles servatives in their ranks for the simple reason that merciless struggle not only against the employers but found no word of comment at the conference. They the overwhelming majority of the American workers against social reformism and right tendencies in the were orphans lost in a storm of wind and fury. are today still dominated by bourgeois ideology. Is By this Foster means the exclusive legalit not true that many members of the National Textile ization of the line followed by the Communist Party at NEW FEDERATION OF LABOR Workers Union and the in the South are also a given moment. it changes every month. and perThe main work of the conference was the establish members of the Ku Klux Klan and see secution of all who differ with it. This conflict guaranteed ment of a new federation of labor, but the reasons given to transform the new movement into a battlefield of for doing it now are not valid. The Daily Worker page Will not such examples be multiplied a hundbetween these organizations. Daily Worker, 2 29, Party factions, with the same tactics applied to polit. 4 29) motivates it by the fact of the signs of the red times as the movement really begins to grow? The ical opponents as are used by Sigman and Lewis. We oncoming rising wave of revolutionary movement and conference, however, obviously thought that its stereohave already seen the removal of Swabeck, of Coover, points to Lodz, the Buhr, the Czech land workers, the the attempted removal of Voyzey from his union post, typed denunciation of Muste ended the problem of a Rumanian coal miners, India, Peru, Colombia, etc. the removal of Weisbord, the coming removal of Zimcorrect Left wing approach to the backward and the etc. Therefore. a new national federating body. weakly developed progressive elements in the American merman. The new movement will hit a reef in no time But what about 1926? There was the strike movement working class.
if it charts such a course.
in Syria, the Italo French crisis, the Rakosi trial, and FORUM AGAINST THE OPPOSITION three little affairs like the Chinese revolution, the THE LEFTISTS AS OPPORTUNISTS British miners and General Strikes and the revolution Lack of space prevents us from more than menThe conference was made a forum from which the in Indonesia. Wasn 1926 just as good an occasion tioning the opportunist resolution adopted on the Labor Opposition was maliciously attacked. In the Party fraction meeting, Weinstone reported that Muste opfor a and a new line. That wave, really Party, which calls for revolutionary Labor Party revolutionary, was missed because the Comintern was organized so that no reformist elements can sneak poses the new unions, and Cannon and Lovestone are only little grouplets of Muste. The letter too sound asleep in bed, wedged in between its friends into its ranks a viewpoint distinctly reminiscent of Chiang Kai Shek and Purcell!
repeated the same guff. It was unloaded in barrels Pepper and his Federated Farmer Labor Party. Or There is a motivation for the building of a new na of the resolution on imperialist war which asserts the from the platform. Even little Johnnie Williamson tional trade union federation at this time, but it lies right of labor organizations to train their members earned his day wage by parrotting what he was told in his article in Labor Unity, and strove for a raise by in the attempt to cover up the opportunist, Menshevik in the use of arms, to organize special companies and adding the original contribution that we are strikesins of the past few years which cannot be covered up. to select their own instructors, which means if such breakers to boot.
It is the result of non revolutionary disappointment at fantastic infantilism can mean anything at all in this the tiresomeness and lack of immediate success of work country at the present time the right of the reacwithin the old unions dominated by black reaction, and tionaries to organize black gangs of armed trade union THE MILITANT a consequent hopelessness and lack of faith in the hoodlums against the militant workers.
masses still following the Honorable Mr. Green.
Scandalous as such a suggestion may sound nowPublished twice a month by the Communist League But, says Foster, this does not mean that the adays would nevertheless propose that the Amerof America (Opposition)
work in the old trade unions will be abandoned. ican Communists begin to read again and study the Address all mail to: Box 120, Madison Square There are approximately 3, 500, 000 organized workers, classic work of Lenin on the Infantile Disease of Left Station, New York, the will never surrender these to the Green Radicalism. It will be a healthy antidote to the virPublisher address at 332 18th Street, New York, Wool bureaucracy. Daily Worker, 14 29. Like ulent policy that had its day at Cleveland. The present Subscription rate: 00 per year. Foreign 50 a sinner who goes to occasional confession, Foster is ultra Leftist spree of the Party will cost the ComBundle rates, 3c per copy.
careful to bow religiously, at least once in a while, to munist and Left wing movement very dear and lose it 5c per copy Associate Editors: this formula which has been made absolutely meaning the influence among the workers painfully gathered for less by the line of the and its conference. years. There is no virtue whatsoever in this Leftism Editor Martin Abern Johnstone expresses it most bluntly when he says that and the ease with which this cloak is draped around James Cannon Max Shachtman we will work in the of only for the purpose the shoulders of such confirmed opportunists in the Maurice Spector of tearing off as much support from it to the new Party as Stachel, Weinstone, Bedacht, Foster et al, is center as possible. Such an approach means guaran sufficient indication of how little it has in common with VOL. II OCTOBER 1, 1929. No. 15. teed, automatic elimination of any Left wing from the genuine Bolshevik teachings of Lenin. Too much the of How long, for example, could a Rosen damage has already been done the movement to permit Entered as second class mail matter November 28, be a Left winger in the of with his senseless the continuation for another day of the disastrous 1920, at the Post Office at New York, under the pogram? Or the few that are still in the of policy that dominated Cleveland and prevented it from act of March 8, 1879.
No, Foster knows better than anyone else just exactly accomplishing its great tasks.