UNDER THE LASH OF UNEMPLOYMENT Concrete Program for Organizing Wrong and Right Tactics in the the Unemployed Unemployment Movement On August 14th, the Dally Worker car ing regularly in the block, carrying out a The unemployment situation in this ried an article by Jack Johnstone. The uniform policy and preparing for action. period of depression following the period article begins: What are workers to do of overproduction and crisia of American How the Party is Working when they are hungry, are being evicted capitalism brings forth a problem of greatfrom their homes, are out of a job, and Let us stop here briefiy to contrast our er magnitude than the unemployment accan find anything to do? This question position with what has been done by the companying the classical crisis of capital19 one that is being asked by tens of Party officials.
ism its growth stage. permanent thousands. The first difference is that instead army of unemployed due to the machine And what is Johnstone answer? In of showy haphazard work there is wys development and rationalization, aggravated effect It 18: Come to the mass meeting in tematic responsible work. For years, for by the crisis, swelling the numbers of the Union Square, September 1st, 12 o clock example, Amter dabbled with unemploy unemployed to over seven millions. Unsharp.
ment work in Cleveland. With what re employment is the most pressing immedBut suppose the workers say, We sults? When the Party reviewed its work iate problem of the American workers and have demonstrated already for almost a after March 6th, it declared the situation every class conscious organization, reform year, before March 6th, on March 6th, on in Cleveland disgraceful, that there was group and the capitalist vanguard is vitMay 1st, on July 6th, on August 1st, etc. not even a council organized. Another ally concerned wth its solution; the workIs this all you have to offer us? Is there example, was there any serious estimation ing class with one aim and the capitalist no practical program? What are we to of the organization problems forth class with the opposite aim.
do when we are hungry? When we are the organizer Johnstone at the July 4th The aim of the workers vanguard is being evleted from our homes? When we conference in Chicago?
to utilize this issue to strengthen the posiare ont of a Job? The second difference is that we go tion of the working class and consolidate This is surely what the workers will to the masses, not await their coming to the ideological change taking place in the say. They are saying it now: March 6th us. How were the so called unemployment ranks of the workers. The aim of the cap75, 000, May 1st 30, 000, August 18 10, 000 councils built up throughout the country italist class is to stem the tide, throw out etc. They have been saying it with their by the Party? Let us take a typical case enough crumbs to prevent this ideological feet!
Newark, New Jersey. There the Party is crystallization and maintain their tottering It is up to every honest and serious relatively small and weak. It has little equilibrum a little longer.
Communist to understand that the Party money and poor guşdance. In a few Not only can the two main contending leaders are politically bankrupt. We must months it had different paid section or classes use this issue to strengthen their unite all forces to the end that a real ganizers between spells of having none at position but the reformist and revolutionunemployment program is worked out and all. few dollars are raised and spent ary wings of the working class movement carried out. The question asked by the on leaflets, meeting is announced in are now in battle for a position the workers must be answered. their own hall First a hundred or so American working class which will be an Unemployment to Become More Serious workers come, then two hundred, then four hundred and the hall is packed to the important victory in the immediate future The unemployment question will beand a big factor in determining the strength.
doors.
come more acute than ever this coming fall and duration of reformism in America.
and winter. The world economic situation But already the workers begin to feel Therefore, tactics not only against the will grow worse. The home situation will disappointed. At every meeting the same capitalist but especially against the reformgrow worge. The industrial crisis will wordy phrases are passed out. The work ist wing are vital problems in the unemsharpen and will add to it a deepened agerg begin to ask What are we to do when ployment activity of the revolutionary moverarian crisis. The unomployment question we are hungry, are being evicted from our ment.
must become the principal question of the homes, are out of a job? Come to the The Program of the Official Party next meeting! 1s the answer. No practical day. It can become the lever for the organization of the unorganized for the building plans are set at the meeting. Party mem All the class conscious organizations of a Labor Party, for mobilizing the greatest bere alone control. No one 18 elected on are reaping some benefit from the favoran executive. No discussion of local probable objective situation in spite of the mass of workers around the Commy It is indeed that link in the chain of events lems. No non Party leaders developed.
fact that none of them has a concrete progThe original enthusiasm begins to cool ram for unemployment. The Communist which the Communists must seize to move the whole chain forward.
a bit. Then comes a police raid. The few Party, as the main organized force of these leading Party members are arrested. The organizations, has done the most in this The Communist object in the unemattendance rápidly falls off. Detectives field and has a concrete program. But ployment movement must be The mobistand in the hall, forming a cordon through what kind of a concrete program, is anlization of the widest layers of the populawhich workers. one by one, must pass. Po other question.
tion, above all, of course, and mainly, of lice agents in the hall openly cast their Parties that only present an abstract the working class The revolutionization shadow of terror over the meeting.
program for the unemployed cannot be and activization of these sectons and the Is it any wonder that after March 6th criticized in the same light the Communist development of leadership from their ranks.
everything melted away? Could anything Party must be. The Party at least attempts To win the widest strata. we must connect be more amateurish? The workers say to solve the problem. It is its Third the unemployed with the employed, and throw the family as a whole into the the Communists mean well but they are Period antics and non Marxian analysis struggle.
a bunch empty headed impractical perthat causes all the trouble.
sons who like to talk.
When the crisis began the Party isThe line of the Party has been Jugt sued the slogan of Work or Wages. After the opposite in effect to isolate the work Let us take the Party figures on unemthe 7th Convention, when the crisis has ing class from the rest of the population, to ployment that one person is out of work isolate the advanced workers from their for every 15 people. Newark is a city, deepened and is going deeper it shifted the emphasis to the Social Insurance Bill. The reserves, to isolate the unemployed from roughly of 450, 000 population. This would political analysis of the Party Informs us.
the employed, to isolate the vanguard from The mean at least 30, 000 out of work, the unemployed, to place the workers in an Party then asked these 30, 000 to come to a through the 7th Convention thesis, that we are in a period of revolutionary upsurge impossible fighting position.
hall holding normally 300 people. There is in America and yet this seventh convention It the difficulties of work are extra no ball in Newark that could hold 30, 000 ordinary due to the mobility of unemploy people nor can the Party afford to hire any gave birth to the Social Insurance PILL ed labor, to the systems of intermittent and larger one than what they had.
But to as the main activity in a period of revolupart time work, etc. these difficulties are the workers the situation was very clear.
tonary upshurge.
The struggle for social insurance and more than counterbalanced by far by the In reality what the Party was doing was wonderful opportunities for work.
the unemployment councils are elementary exposing its vanguard troops to the withHow shall we begin the work of actu ering fire of the enemy in the most foolactivities to mobilize all workers possible ally organizing the unemployed? The first in order to use this mase against capitalish manner. The workers knew that and problem is the problem of reaching the 1sm today and to win the most advanced either never came around or withdrew. Only section of this mass to our Party. The unemployed masses of which the primary the foolish Communist Party leaders did basic principle is that we must go to the revolutionary unions of the not know this. In reality the Party was the most masses and not expect them to come to us.
on the other hand, represent keeping out thousands of workers eager advanced section. To tie the unemployed But how is this to be done? The prolet to join the movement, and was condemning arian quarters of the city must be carefully councils organizationally to the tail of the those who came, to isolation. In reality the The is to cut off our advance.
mapped out. In a larger city there will Party was stifling the movement!
be several such quarters, very often built Party must be the driving force and the The Basis for Unemployment Work around some large factory or several of must be the most active factor them. Each quarter contains a number of The third difference that with for organizing these unemployed but to blocks. The block organization must be us, the basis for unemployment work 18 apply the separate front in place of the the basle unit Leaflets should be given the proletarian quarter of the city, not the united front, and mechanical control in out from flat to flat, from tenement to factory gate, not the meeting downtown. place of control through Marxian policy, tenement, first with general propaganda on or speeches at bread lines.
is fundamentally wrong. ALBERT WEISBORD the unemployment question and then anThe Social Insurance BJII nouncing a series of meetings. Thoge meet(To He Continued) struggle for social insurance is corings should be held where possible, outrect, but to direct our main energy in this doors, block by block of the whole district If the number on your wrapper 18 field in the manner of the Party, means being systematically covered. Through creating parlamentary 1llusions. Comthese meetings and through the systematic munist participation in elections does not distribution of leafiets. all the unemployed guarantee revolutionary poltical action inin a given block can be registered and the then your subscription to the Militant has stead of parliamentary action. struggle main bulk organized in a block council expired. Renew immediately in order to for social insurance does not mean the with its own leaders and executives, meet avoid missing any issues.
main weight should be placed on a BILL, on the contrary the main emphasis should be placed on the industrial end with proper political coordination. This would easily enable us to draw a clear line of demarcation between our struggle for social insurance and that of the reformist and capitalist but at present the only distinction, the Party speakers can find to prove that our bill is revolutionary is that we advocate 25. 00 and they advocate 00. To compare our bill with Roosevelt Bill in order to denote the revolutionary content of our social insurance struggle is another step in the swamp. struggle against unemployment must have the main emphasis on the field of struggle rather than in Congress and this activity (trade union, unemployment councils, shop committees mass literature distribution of elementary educational value)
should be coordinated with the parliamentary (elections, etc. in order to strengthen our entire activity instead of arming the Industrial actionist on the one hand and the reformist on the other by stressing a Congressional BILL The United Front This struggle against unemployment of millions of workers who are just becoming class conscious, with only a small section of this ideology crystallized, cannot be even started unless the Leninist UNITED FRONT is applied. The Party started at the beginning of the crisis with pure separate fronts and after the convention only gave lip service to the united front in a couple of half hearted articles in the Dally Worker and Labor Unity. united front with all the organizations of the workers.
will enable us to gain and to expose the reformist. The reformist and trade union fakers have made this a big issue and our tactics are strengthening them. We need tactics that will strip these fakers before the eyes of the workers proving that their fight for unemployment is in name The struggle for shorter hours is more important in content than a struggle for a social insurance bill. The main emphage is must fall shorter hours Such a struggle. like the 1830 struggle for the ten hour day and the 1886 struggle for the eight hour day are political struggles of basic working class contient which is the distinction between revolutionary political action and pure parliamentary action.
Not the slogan for the seven hour day but the slogan for the hour day and five day week is what is needed.
Abstract propaganda for the Soviet Union means nothing to the average American worker who is gepaarting himselffrom the capitalist and reformist. The sympathizer of the movement will be patient with any amount you give him, but we cannot base our propaganda on the circle we have already won. The slogan demanding credits to the Soviet Union is a concrete method of gaining the support of the workera. In the basic industries, those which produce the means of production which the Soviet Union needs and is buying, is where we can come to the American worker with Soviet issue that means more than abstract support through convictions of a few based on scientific understanding. The approach should be through the bread and butter angle. It will tear down the walls of prejudice to enable us to present a scientific understanding to unbiased minds. And one may mention that credits to the Soviet Union is a burning issue with the plan of socialist construction.
The depression is growing deeper and this winter the conditions of the workers will be worse. Defensive struggle will reach a higher plane. There is still time for the Party and the revolutionary forces really to work out a concrete program of action for the unemployment situation and for the Party to shifu from its reformist tendencies of main emphasis on a BILL to revolationary political action. HUGO OEHLER Subscribe to the Militant and be sure of getting it regularly through the malls.
56 THE MILITANT, Vol. III No. 31, October 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. Editorial Board: Martin Abern, Jan Cannon Max Shachtman, Maur ice Spector, Arne Swabeck. Entered as se cond class mall matter. November 28 1928 at the Post Office at New York, under the act of March 3, 1879 (Total No. 56)