The National Miners Union Passes The Real Results of August First The bighearted boss.
KR The National Miners Union has passed like a ghost in the night. After many long months of concentrated bluff in the official Party press about the thousands and tens of thousands of miners who were following the leadership of the about the strikes and demonstrations it was leading, the bubble of bluff has collapsed of internal vacuum. At the convention in Pittsburgh of a few dozen miners, representing very little more than themselves, the was quietly interred.
Characteristic of the whole policy of the swindlers now dominating the Party was the manner in which the affair was carried out. To this day, the Daily Worker, which mentioned the convention only casually, has not said a single word about the fact that the no longer exists. Its first and last report on the meeting (a few lines in one issue) says nothing about it.
The whole procedure was typically bureaucratic, conducted behind the scenes, without the workers knowing what was going to be done, or, in this case, even being informed about what was done.
How the Retreat is Covered Up Equally characteristic of the Party bureaucracy is the manner in which this mortifying retreat has been covered up so that it may be proclaimed as another step forward for the In place of the quietly cremated a brand new (but no less weak) organization bas been formed, in the same dark hour of the night at which the funeral took place: The Mine, Oil and Smelter Workers Industrial Union!
We won speak of the mine workers in this new union. But where are the oil workers in it, or the smelter workers?
The answer is that they are not in it, and assuming that the Browders and Bedachts continue to ruin the Partys trade union work, there are good grounds to add that they will not be in it. The was formed bureaucratically. No agitation for it among the workers was carried on; there was no preliminary preparation for it among them; there was no official announcement that the was dissolved, or the reasons for it given.
None of this however interests the collective Browders in the slightest. They organize and disorganize unions with the magician wand of the third period.
What they bring to a tenuous life one day, they kill off the very next. That they discredit the Communist movement, and the movement for organizing the unorganized into new unions, in the process, is of even less concern to them.
There was no good reason for the debacle of the It started off with excellent prospects of growth and authority among the American coal miners. It was strangled by Stalinist arbitrariness and blufr. Capable Left wing and Communist workers who dared to disagree with the crudely false policies of the Stalinist clique running the Party and the were immediately removed from office and pelled from the union. The narrowest, most sectarian policy of isolation was foisted upon the union without ever asking the membership.
No serious attempt was made to organize the unorganized miners: talk and headlines in the Daily Worker were substituted for genuine activity. No serious attempt was made to approach and win over the workers in the Lewis or in the Fish wick Howat unions: the former were simply labelled fascist and the latter social fascist. which was taken to mean that the was absolved from the need of working to win them over.
Bluff and Adventurism In place of competent workers, incompetent and factional hacks were appointed from above never selected by the miners. The official organ of the union was allowed to die, although the Daily Worker continued to speak without cease about the steady advances being made. Unprecedented bluff was made the order of the day, interspersed with light hearted adventures like the ill fated Illinois mass strike creeping paralysis seized the organ.
ization. movement like the one that broke out in Pittston, with thousands of miners involved, passed by without the influencing it in the slightest (which The August First demonstrations this year were not only marked by a soberingup of the official Party policy, but by a sharp decline in participation that indicated AR more than anything else that the class struggle cannot be arranged to fit the bureaucratic calendar markings of the official This year ve made only 100, 000. Stalinist clique.
No General Strike There was nothing said this year, ax it was last year, about appropriating the political and military technical experience of the struggle of the Berlin workers.
Unlike last year, there was this time no irresponsible call issued for general political mass strike on August First Under pressure of hard facts and the relentless criticism of the Opposition, the bureaucracy in the Party was compelled to modify it adventurous course and drop some of its mystic Third Period jargon.
But changes made in a bureaucratic man hat in God name can do? ner, without explanation, and over night, are not so lightly and quickly followed by oh boys, m ruined.
the workers. The constant swinging between extremes in Party policy do not bring the workers along with it. And when in addition to this, there prevails a sectarian, isolationist course which steadily marrows the Party base among the masses.
results such as August First must be expected as natural.
All the shouting and beating of tomtoms cannot conceal the chagrin felt even by the Party leaders at the meagernese of the response to this year demonstration. The reports from the principal cities in the country were significantly vague. You see for youselves ve got to cut The hundreds of thousands who, we were Business is something fierce.
down your wages!
assured by the Dally Worker, took possession of the streets on March 6th, seemed did not prevent the Daily Worker from posed a serious, and not a fake, campaign to have dwindled amazingly to a few thoupublishing the inost monstrous falsehoods of organizing the unorganized miners, and sands five months later. This in spite of about the leading the miners in at the same time building a Left wing in the fact that the objective conditions for a strike against unemployment. The side the fishwick Howat union in Illinois the strengthening of the movement have policies of the Party entirely demoralized and the Lewis union in the anthracite, the improved rather than otherwise; in spite the already weakened trade union center Party leadership shouted themselves blue of the fact that the Party has again been at Pittsburgh, so that the whole last period in the face with their dreary vilification internally and externally consolidated.
passed by without a single union official of our group and its program. We warned The cold truth of the matter is that the working in the national office While the Communist and Left wing workers demonstrations were an almost universa!
the bluff campaign about advances was against the Stalinist policy in the miners failure. The Daily Worker which on Aug.
going on in the official press, a young movement. The Stalinists confidently ust 4th, promised an analysis of the stenographer was the sole and single di boasted of the correctness of their line. demonstrations by the of the inrector of the fate of the in Pitts The latter has had its test. The test sufficiencies and shortcomings (of the burgh!
has cost the Left wing miners movement membership, of ourse, never of the leaderThe convention assembled with the many harsh blows. It has already killed sbip. has not presented the analysis yet.
hand of death already heavy on it. There the nothing less. The wreck can And for cause. Any serious analysis would was not a single Left wing miners leader not be made whole again by the cheap. have to reveal not only the incompetency of present even to make the report to the mechanical artifices of forming chemically the Party leadership, capable only of prodelegates: a new precedent was set by pure new unions on paper for the edific ducing defeats, but the falsity of Its polhaving Dunne, of the make ation of Moscow archivists. The evil must icies.
the official report on the situation and the be cut down at the root. And at the root This holds not only for the United tasks of the union! The was more pro lies the malicious religion of social fas States, but for Europe 23 well, for the minently in the fore in every phase of the cism and the third period. The future demonstrations there were small and rework there than the as such. will be replete with debacles similar to the sembeld more a series of ordinary mass Our Polley and Browder Tested one that just culminated in Pittsburgh until meetings than demonstrations in a period When the Communist League (Oppo the Communist workers throw overboard of incessant and stormy upsurge.
sition. in its statement on the problems of these concepts and those who conceived The Demonstration the Left wing in the mining industry, pro them. MARSH New York was one of the cities where a clash between the demonstrators and the police occurred. The demonstration itselt, with its 10, 000 attendants, was a scandalous affair about which the Party comrades The Daily Worker has been publishin Stalinist clique that recently so busy are still talking. It had the air of being a number of urgent calls to unemployed on paper eradicating petty bourgeois denothing so much as a picnic on the streets.
workers to resist evictions from their homes viations in the cooperative movement! Most No attention was paid to the speakers.
by landlords for non payment of rent. if not all of the tenants to whom this brutal Everywhere here were little knots of comWhat it says in this connection is entirely communication is addressed are unemploy.
rades, conversing blithely and munching correct, and the calls should be heeded. ed workers who have already contributed ice cream sandwiches. Only a shooting The Daily Worker will probably be inter enormous sums towards the maintenance gallery and side show were lacking to ested in a case of threatened eviction which of a thoroughly corrupted group of burcomplete the picture.
is particularly flagrant. It can do a lot to eaucratic Business Communists.
When the meeting had been adjourned, remedy the situation for the workers in We never had very much enthusiasm the police inaneuvered a section of the volved. The landlord of one of the big for these high pressure, high finance ad crowd down a side street, and without apartment houses in the Bronx has sent ventures sailing under the flag of coop warning, streamed down from a hall where a number of his tenants the following com erative Bolshevism. we have much less a squad had been concealed and let loose munication which we reproduce in full: today. We despise the bloated landlords their bestial fury upon the workers. The You are hereby notified that un of the East side who evict their unemploy good police cominissioner, Mulrooney.
less you pay your rent on time, e. ed tennants who cannot pay their rent on correctly says that the police had no clubs.
on the first of every month in advance the first of every month in advance and we But for that, every one of them carried a and at least a part of your arrears heartily endorse the Daily Worker for urg prominently concealed blackjack, which every month, we shall be obliged to ing these workers to resist evictions with they were soon swinging brutally at the take legal action against you, e. to every means at their command. We havn workers. The courageous cops even beat dispossess you.
much more use for the smug landlords who up a 16 year old girl. This is the lagt warning, Come conceal their appeals to the bosses courts An official investigation. which tickles to the office and make necessary pay behind a red Party card. Their unemployed every good liberal, is now being conducted.
ments.
Phil. Amron. Manager tenants who cannot pay rent at the present Of course, it will change nothing in the The worthy landlord who signs this moment, we also urge to resist evictions. attitude of the police. Their savage attacks communication and is so ready to resort Do not the Daily Worker and the on the worekers will continue until the lat to legal action in capitalist courts is man Freilelt, which have so much influence ter win the fight for freedom of speech an ager of the famous Bronx Cooperative with the manager of the Cooperative Apart assemblage, and learn give these blueApartment Houses, controlled by the same ments, think likewise. coated thugs the proper reply.
Wherein Lies the Difference between Them?
THE MILITANT, Vol. III No. 28 August 15 1930. Published twice monthly by the Communist League of America (Opposition) at25 Third Avenue, New York, Sub scription rate: 00 per year; foreign 50. Five cent per copy. Bundle rates cents per copy. Editor:al Board: Martin Abern, James Cannon Max Shachtman, Maur ice Spector, Arne Swadeck. Entered as se cond class mail matter, November 28 1928 at the Post Office at New York, under the act of March 3, 1879 (Total N0, 53)