page SEVEN Blumkin Shot!
THE Weekly Organ of the Communist League of America Opposition Vol. III, No. 8, Telephone: DRYdock 1656 NEW YOK, Saturday, February 22, 1930 PRICE CENTE Unite in Struggle for the Jobless!
Unite Forces on March 6th Demonstrations!
THE PARTY ANSWERS ON BLUMKIN But It Fails to Make a Straightforward Reply to the Questions We Have Raised Illinois Jobs Declined The army of American unemployed some of the suffering of the workers will act workers has risen until it runs into millions militantly and in unison.
of men marching the street in a vain search Councils of Unemployed for a job. The most acute suffering has very city must form its unemployment been ielt by the workers in every part of council, consisting of representatives of the the country. Hundreds of thousands who, jobless and of every possible labor organiduring the years of prosperity. had been zation, unions, etc. that is ready to fight lulled into a false feeling of security, are in the common battle. well laid organinow experiencing the bitterest dificulties. zational foundation for the movement will Even among the better paid workers, the insure its strength. The workers must The Daily Worker has finally been com should be openly defended and the reasons savings put away are being rapidly con demonstrato their power and make their pelled to answer our pointed questions on for it made clear to the class conscious sumed, the homes purchased with mortages demands in masses in every city. Isolated the assassination of comrade Blumkin workers.
are being put on the block. The prospect disconnected demonstrations, or those orBut how contemptibly, how like miserable But the handmaidens of the Stalinist for any immediate improvement in industry ganized on ten minutes notice without philistines who bask in the shadow of the bureaucracy dare not take either course: that would absorb any substantial amount preparations, or those crganized on a nar.
distant power that pays so well for literary They cannot make a dental because they of the unomployed is extremely dim. row basis which makes it impossible to flunkeys, how like the irresponsible bureau know Blumkin has been killed. They dare reach the masses, are worse than worthless crats who disdain to give an accounting of Capitalism Offers No Relief not defend it publicly and boldly, because because they dissipate energy and discredit themselves and their actions.
every honest worker will recaoil from them The millions of unemployed are monthe movement.
We asked Foster, Browder, Bedacht, in horror.
umental testimony to the anarchy of the The Communist International has ses Minor and Co. Has Blumkin been assass. We continue to demand of them to ex capitalist system. In the United States, the date of March 6th for an international inated and why was this hideous deed com. plain, not by gratuitous slander and cowwhere the greatest riches of the world are day for demonstrations against unemploymitted. They have not answered.
ardly suhterfuge, Lut in simple straightfor contained, where industry and agriculture ment. There is much to criticize in the We asked these loyal servitors of the ward language: have been developed to a high point, where manner in which these demonstrations are Stalin domain: Do you take upon yourselves In 1918, when the revolution was sur efficiency schemes have become the ruleJoint responsibility with your employer for being planned and organized by the Stalin rounded by the wolves of imperlalism and the most elementary requirements of human ists. The date has been set arbitrarily, at this unheard of crime? They have not had torn by bourgeois reaction at home, comrade existence cannot be satisfied by capitalism. briel notice, without preliminary prepar the courage to do this either.
Blumkin was one of the leaders of the In the United States, where the records ations that would insure its effectiveness On the contrary, in the official editorial armed anti Soviet insurrection organized by show the greatest number of multi millionIt has not taken into consideration the dir.
published in the Daily Worker on February the Left Social Revolutionaries, He was airce, where tho payments of dividends and fering pace of development in the various 15, 1930, the whole issue is cravenly avoided. arrested, tried, and released. He joined the other profits mount into fabulous sums countries. It has not taken into consideraIf Blumkin has not been murdered, a simple Bolshevik party, became one of the most there is not enough to keep five or more tion the varying character of the laboi official denial would suffice and our retrac devoted militants, was a hero in the civil million workers and their families at the movement in the different countries. The tion would follow. If Blumkin has been war, and carried on work of the most re lowest subsistence levels.
American unemployed worker is in a dif.
shot secretly by the on the per sponsible and rigorous nature for the party The workers have worked too hard. ferent economic position than the unem.
sonal orders of Stalin, then he must have and the government up until the time of They have strained their muscles and brain ployed worker in England or Germany. Ir been a dangerous enemy of the revolution. his death. He was a supporter of the to the last dogree. They have produced the United States, the development of the In that case, his death should not only be Opposition from the first and never con more than can be absorbed. Then they are Continued on page confirmed by the party press, but the action Continued on Page thrown out on the streets. The workers starve because there is too much food.
They freeze because too much clothing has been produced. They have no work bea cause they have worked too hard.
CHICAGO Though Pres. loover and The capitalist class fears the unemthe other loudspeakers have been shouting The fall of the Tardieu government in their pious assurances and claims. This re ployed mass. It knows that the worker prosperity and industrial recovery the past France, which will delay the progress of fers as much to Tardieu as to Mussolini, thrown out of a Job begins to think, and two months, Illinois statistics are just as the London naval conference for at least a and as much to Ramsay MacDonald as to that ideas become powerful when they pendead against these false federal claims as week will only result in the postponement Herbert Hoover. The conference perfor etrate millions. The bosses therefore are those of New York state. The official of what has now become as plain as day: mance of the alleged labor premier of to prevent the workers from thinking Labor Bulletin says: Despite all the protestations of the imper England, the prince of pacifism, the darling acting by dishing out a cup of coffee, and The decrease in industrial activity ialist statesmen, the London Farce has not of the liberal Nation and the less liberal crummy doughnut, and an occasional flop which has been apparent throughout all and will not accomplish anything at all in New Leader, is far more disgraceful than to the unemployed most severely hit. All sections of the state since last September the direction of Insuring peace by the that of any of his co conferees. The others the contemptible societies of charity work was rendered still more pronounced by a deceptive route of socalled naval reductions at least nake no particular pretence to overtime to give the unemployed five cents decline in employment December or agreements.
The only favorable point speak in the name of labor and a new so worth of grubby food to keep them from The manufacturing industries during the on the balance sheet of the conference is cial order. They know what they want, and five minutes of thought.
last three months have reduced their forces the further discrediting of all pacifist non they go after it without more than a fromal The workers want no charity, which thereby losing all the advances made sense and the naive belief that capitalism sprinkling of piety. But MacDonald, who degrades and shames them and puts them earlier in the year and bringing the Index can disarm or take any other step towards is a spokesman. for labor and a new day, at the mercy of upper class sob sisters and of employment down to 99. 3, or about the peace.
is working with no less zeal for the main sky pilots. The workers want work or same as the figure for December, 1928, Times Is Cynical tenance of the glorious old Empire, for the maintenance by the state and industry The payroll totals for factory work The hypocritical charcter of the whole retention of its present and future markets, which have used them as long as they were declined from November to December atrair has become so obvious that not even for its domination and violent suppression profitable and then thrown them on the and for the first time during the year the capitalist observers are doing much drum. of hundreds of millions of colonial slaves, heap. The workers have a right to the payroll Index went below that for the corbeating for it. The well informed corresthan his predecessors of the Tory and Lib Job, and to the machines and industries responding month of 1928.
pondent of the New York Times, Edwin eral stripe. This austere statesman of the and products for which they alone are re The state department of labor reports James, cables his paper from the confer new order is anxious to show king and sponsible. But what the unemployed need the verage wago for male factory workors ence (2 16 30. Its (the conference s) country that the labor party can protect Immediately to relieve their intensely diff as 30. 66 e week and for females 17. 30 highest hopes were three: First, reduction the blood sated empire as energetically as cult conditions, is work, work at union week. Not counting Chicago, the average second, abolition of submarines and third, Baldwin or Lloyd George.
wages, work without the speed up system, was 27. 10 a week for males and 13. 23 elimination of battleships. They all have Thomas Apologizes for MacDonald work without overtime. If the capitalist week for females.
been disposed of. As the conference ap His American colleague, Norman Thom system cannot provide work, then it must as, writes apologetictlly in the New Leader proaches its second month, it has been be made to provide maintenance for the settled that battleships are not going to be (2 15 30) that In the handling of this na unemployed and their families, BUILDING TRADES UIT IN done away with. It is settled that subra val conference Ramsay MacDonald can say To obtain this, the unemployed must WASHINGTON. Harry Wardma, big.
rines will still submerge when the meeting with truth that he is doing the best he can fight. The working class never won any geat building trades employer in the Dis.
is over, and reduction has got so far into as the head of a minority government and thing by begging, crawling on its knees, or trict of Columbia, announces that he is the limbo that the statesmen have now re in face of the traditional British love of waiting passively. That holds true today now paying only 3, 000 weat on con.
alized that the chief results of the Lon the navy. Il Mr. Thomas means that Mac more than ever. United action by the mil struction payroll, es compared with 50, 004 don conference will be some of the finest Donald is doing the best he can to safe lions of workless, combined with the sup a week one year ago. He says he will naval construction programs the world has guard the piratical interests of British im port ct the workers who have jobs, will bulld no more apartments for a year, and yet seen.
perialism, he is absolutely right; in fact, compel the capitalist class and its govern that other contractors are in like situation The cynical comment ota capitalist re he is understating the case. MacDonald ment to act. The latter cannot abolish Local building trades union officert porter is indicative of how much stock the and his party are the best props that the unemployment, which is a natural outcome agree that unemployment bes been seven imperialist spokesmen themselves put in all clining empire possesses.
of the system but it can be made to relieve for the past four months