Saturday, January 25, 1930 THE MILITANT Page The Struggle for the South Prospect Bad for Builders sight of the interests of the workers. Communist revolutionaries will scornfully reJect these criteria of support which are designed only to shield the Foster wreckGreen Pleas to the Bosses, the Progressives and the Communists ing crew from accountability to the workers.
Mistakes of the Party Leaders By James Cannon The Party leaders, by false policies The theses of the unlucky leaders of in the South? They are playing a charac and by factional Jugglery of the most By T, P, LEWIS the Communist Party nowadays seem to be teristic one which glves the honest pro criminal kind, have laid heavy handicaps CHCAGO (FP. Now that the data is written in order that events may speedily gressive worker a good opportunity to com on the National Textile Workers Union, available, building trades workers can size retute them. Such is the fate of the pare their words with their deeds and to and are sending it into the great contest Foster revelation of a year ago regarding up the prospects for work and organization judge them accordingly. In a New Year weakened and ill prepared. They threw the decline of the of The formal in the industry for the coming year. The manifesto, Muste, the head of the away the great opportunity to dramatize first, work, depends on both the volume of opening of the of campaign in the called for militancy, deter the Southern struggle around the Gastonia building to be done and the technical adSouth brushes this theory into the discard, mination and idealism in the labor movecase and to moblitze all the best forces of vances in construction. The outlook is bad.
while, incidentally, it confirms all that we ment and predicted. The year 1930 will the working class for the support of the said in the subject in our Platform (The With regard to organization and unlon debe a year of strikes and of renewed aggres By abandoning the historic mands, the ensuing year will in all probabMillant, 15 1929. siveness on the part of the American wor struggle of American labor against the The conference at Charlotte, kers. These are the words, and they are frame up system they lost the chance to flity see many struggles between associawas staged on a scale designed to attract tions of employers intent on doing away fair ones. What of the deeds? Several line up the Northern workers and they with what they term prosperity working the maximum of attention, and the re leaders are assigned as organ cleared the way for multiplied persecution sources placed at the disposal of the United, izers in the of campaign with its in the future one of the greatest obstacles conditions and building unions loath to give up the advantages won during the Textile Workers ought to remove all pledge of no strikes and its war to the to the organization of the Southern texdoubt that the reactionary McMahon orpast eight booming years.
knife on the Left wing exponents of tile workers.
Peak Renched in 1928 ganization henceforth will contest the feld militancy, determination and idealism in Their failure to employ united front with the Comunists far more aggres the labor movement.
tactics of approach to the Marion strikers The outstanding characteristic of the sively than was the case in the year just The people are playing the and to link this situation up in a national industry from the point of view of the paysed, which marked the entrance of the role of come ons for the labor fakers. They agitation with the Gastonia fight was like worker in overalls 18 and probably will National Textile Workers Union into the were prosent at Charlotte conference wise a costly blunder, The striking worcontinue to be througout the year, a dearth South. The Federated Press dispatch of but the reports contain no reference to kers of Marion who were shot down on the of Jobs. The present slackness in employJanuary 16, states that 15 organizers have any protest on their part against the re picket line belong to us; it is thanks only ment is much more than the usual winter been assigned to the work of organizing actionary program. One of the committee to the multiplied bungling of the party layott. The all time peak of building prothe Southern cotton mill workers into the of three appointed by Green to direct the bureaucrats that McMahon and Co, are enduction was reached in May, 1938. From and that 25 will be in the field campaign is Paul Smith, wbo is not unabled to wave the tradition of Marion as that peak to the following February, 1929, in the near future. Along with this goes known to the progressives of the West. a banner for their reactionary campaign.
the drop in building activity was 44. In the announcement of imposing financial His sole occupation as the of On the organization side the Foster Oct. 29, when the stock market crash ocDiscounting support to the campaign.
cured contracts awarded had already been organizer for several years has been to leadership has no lass to account for.
Touch of this as typical promotion talk break up Central Labor bodies tainted declining for 17 months.
Considering the great historical importhe entry of the of L, as a real conDecember 1929 was the lowest Decemwith signs of militancy, determination tance of the struggle in the South and the tender in the Southern labor situation reand ideallsm The Central Labor Counber recorded in the records of statistical immensity of the task the organizing mains a clearly established fact which cils of Detroit, Seattle, Minneapolis, Great force and the financial support assigned to organization operating in the 37 Eastern none but fools can deny.
Falls and other cities wbich supported states for all time. Almost the entir drop It were ridiculously inadequate; and the The A, of Program some of the planks in the is in the residential section. In fact, nonconstant juggling and shifting of forces, residential construction as a whole showed in all the preparations for their cam program know him for this work and for dictated, as a rule, by party factional exan increase of in 1929 over 1928. It palen in the South the reactionariee run to other The Federated Press release igencies, greatly hampered the campaign.
was mainly the booming condition of reg.
true tú form as the labor lieutenants of for January says Smith. is regraded These mistakes of the past might be passed idential building which includes apartinents tlo capitalist class. 29 DeLeon called as a policy man within the A, of wy if there were signs of change and imthem many years ago. Peaceful partnerYou bet he is. His policy is reaction, and provement; but this, unfortunately, is not that gave Jobs to so many workers.
The advancing technique of construcship with the bosses and war to the it will govern the campaign as everybody the case. The latest exploits of the Party knite on the workers tion has wiped out many jobs. High buildVanguard the knows. The progressives will work un bosses in the are blows against sword and shield of labor reaction is the ing costs in 1929 were an incentive to der him and according to hispolicy.
its futuro.
undisguised program, as frankly pro The Bosses Program and the of speed up, both directly as notcied and comThe Removal of Welsbord plained about by many union workers, and claimed at the Charlotte conference. No Program The principal achievement of the re in new methods. Here are a few examples strikes are to bo called, is the promise The of chiefs want to serve cent convention of the was the of expedited construction: In Mississippi to the exploiters of labor by Thomas the interests of the employers but they are elimination of the three former officials a 22 story reinforced concrete structure McMahon, president of the and not the same as the employers and their Welsbord, Keller and Dawson, who, it is was placed in seven weeks. The merchan give us a trial is the supplementary prograins at the moment are not identical. reported, are tainted more or less with disc mart in Chicago, the world largest plea of William Green, in the name of the If one is to understand the labor situation Lovestonism of carrying over building, was the scene of the most comA of Coupled with this supplication in the South it is necessary to see this one might say, the official Comintern line prehensive assemblage of building equipto the bosses to give them achance to be important differentiation, much as it con of 1928 into the year 1929. So far as the ment ever brought together. Cement was of service is the inevitable declaration of flicts with the dogma of social fascism. Lovestone clique of leaders is concerned, distributed pneumatically and concrete was war on the Communists, There will be The Southern bosses are not yet ready to we have recorded our opinions fully and placed by conveyors. New developments a levercoaeing contrict between the Amer accept the of as an alternative adequately many times, and not since yes in scaffold crection and high speed aoists ican Federation of Labor and these desto Left wing unionism. They are deter terday. We need not repeat these opin have materially cut down on time.
tructive people, is the pledge made in mined to fight it also as they did at Mar ions here except to remark that everyBurden Workers with Losses Creon speech at the conference, reported ion. They want to unlon at all. The mill thing to be found in the Party campaign Crumbling about high wages is already in the New York Times (1 1930. owners press greeted the Charlotte con against them which has political complex heard in boss circles. In spite of profes The whole strategy of the reactionaries ference with full page advertisements fon and substance is borrowed almost litsional optimists paid by trade journals or is elucidated here: To inake their appeal against all labor organizations, citing the orally from material written by us long hired by the bosses organizations to spread to the employers and offer them a safe case of ruined Massachusetts where ago when the present leaders of the Party altrenative to the Left wing unions, unionism is alleged to exist. From this good cheer, the employer knows 1930 will were united with them like a band of be a lean year in the building industry.
In all this there is nothing new, much conflict of programs great struggles may brothers in the war against Trotskyism. He saw his prost3 cut in 1929 and is preas it may surprise the ignoramuses who arise despite the wishes of the of e, against the fundamental teachings of explain this and all other phenomena paring to pass some of his losses on to the leaders and their program of no strikes Marx and Lenin. The task of educating by the newly baked theory of social fag.
workers, forgetting the fabulous profits Even if the reactionaries succeed in tem the Communist vanguard in the ideolog that in the inain have made seven fut years cism. In offering itself as a strike porarily defeating the Left wing union Ical struggle against the petty bourgeois breaker and bulwark against radicalism, the issue will be by no means settled. It theories and practises of Lovestone, Wolfe the United Textile Workers is repeating is quite possible that the struggle between and Co. is one we have not shirked in the NEW YORK. FP) Exploitation of its own inglorious role of the past. the Right and Left for the leadership of past and will not shirk in the future. child workers as young as 10 in scallop During the Lawrence strike of 1912 it the workers will take other forms than But this educational work will be hin sheds along the southern shore of Long inade a contract with the mill owners and those indicated at the moment The clearer dered and not advanced by the arbitrary Island is under attack. The children await attempted to stampede the strikers back to this is seen the better will be the saferemoval of their adherents from the Left the arrival of the scallop fisherman late in work on the bosses terms maneuver guards against pessimism and panic in the wing unions. Such a course will have the afternoon and work on the docks of exposed and defeated by the militant event of a temporary defeat of the Left far reaching consequences, leading to the in badly ventilated board shacks until late It did the same thing in the union.
disruption of the unions or their transin the evening shelling and packing the Paterson strike of 1914, coming in at the Under the present conditions, the cen formation into impotent sects, which scallops. Pald by the gallon, they rarely height of the striko and openly conspiring ter of gravity lles in the head on fight amounts to the same thing, and we declare earu as much as a day.
with the bosses and police to break it. between the rival unions the reactionary emphatically against it.
Such instances in the American labor and the Left wing for The victories of the Party caucus movement are innumerable. They can be the support of the workers. The support do not pass unnoticed either by the wor manipulators are discardins a valuable and found in every field where labor militants of the is the first duty of the kers or their enemies. The masses of the necessary force in the struggle to organhave come to the front as the organizers class conscious workers. This applies not textile workers who saw in Weisbord the ize the textile workers against the mill of the workers. Even today strike of only to the Southern textile workers but organizer of the great assaic strike, the owners and the of reactionaries.
the Amalgamated Food Workers in New to the proletarian vanguard throughout the symbol of their aspiration for militant or But the harmful effects of these latest against restaurants signed up country: the textile workers cannot be ganization will not be enthused by his re removals go deeper than the question of with the of union is an old story. organized against the bosses and the moval for purely party reasons.
the individuals involved. It is another adThe writer rocalls an identical situation of without the help of the entire Labor leaders, able to arouse and or vertisement to the world that the Foster in Minneapolis in 1914 when res American movement of militant labor. Of ganize the masses, are not manufactured bureaucrats demand a hand picked admintaurant workers on strike were confronted what should this support consist? Well, so easily in a Party caucus or a caucus istration of yes men in the unions under one morning with a card in the window first of all it should be to try to under bound convention. To his faults, many their control and that no dissenting opinproclaiming the establishment to be a stand the whole situation and then to tell and serious, we have never been blind; we ions will be tolerated. persistence in union house. The theory of social the truth about it. This is the way a Com had occasion to speak of them more than this course over a long enough period will fascism is not necessary to explain the munist approaches every problein of the once when he was being artificially, and seal the doom of the Left wing unions as of campaign of treachery in the class struggle. The robot like support of quite disgustingly, promoted and adver. mass organizations and give the game to South to anyone who knows the A, B, everything said and done in the name of tised like Barnuz white clephant. The the exploiters and their labor agents. This of American labor history and the role of the Left wing union regardless of its wis clements of the careerist intellectual in course is today a cancer eating the vitals the labor lieutenants of the bosses. This dom or its folly: the craven asquiescence hin, which dctermined his affinity for the of the The struggle for a correct hare brained theory serves no purpose ex in false policy which throw the new union Lovestonc faction, were as plain as a line of policy and a drastic reformation of cept to muddle and confuse the workers of the track; the treacherous silence of pike stati and these odious traits were adminstrative methods is a pressing duty and thus, in its objective consequences, to accomplices in factional disruption which stimulated by his factional exploitation of Communist workers, in the North as weaken them in their fight.
plays the game of the mill owners and during the Lovestone regime in the Party. well as in the South, who want to give What part the progressives of the labor fakers all this is the business But in throwing Weisbord aside without real support to the National Textile Wor.
ther playing in this conflict of soullegg functionaries who have lost any serious or valli rrafone, the Party kers Tinlon for him.
York