THE Published Twice a Month by the Communist League of America (Opposition)
VOL. III. No. 34 NEW YORK, DECEMBER 1, 1930 PRICE CENTS MILITANT For the Thirty Hour Week!
No Wage Reduction For Social Insurance Against the Petition Delusion For Credits to Russia The optimistic pledges of recovery and stability the principal stock in trade of the capitalist politicians have proved to be empty words calculated to soothe the discontentment of the workers. The crisis, instead of showing signs of let down, is becoming deeper. It is drawing into its trein ever new thousands of workers, and marches hand in hand with the winter months to spread misery, hunger and cold to every part of the land.
The Program of the Bosses The capitalist class, and its agent Hoover, while doling out their measly charity to a few in order to allay working class resentment, retain their fundamental idea on how to solve the crisis. Their program is: Deflate labor! Wage slashing, the lengthening of hours, the speeding up of labor, the stagger plan which means reducing the standard of living of the American workers at least hall. these are the methods by which the ruling class is issuing out of its crisis at the expense solely of the workers.
It is well aware of what we have pointed out time and again. It knows that there will be no immediate recovery. Recovery is possible only by a new assault on the world market, with its attendant conflicts with other imperialist nations. successful drive on the world market is possible, according to its program, only by cutting deeply into the standard of living attained by the working class in recent years. The Whaley Eaton Service, a confidential bureau of American industrialists, reports in November, for instance, that Some of the shrewdest men in Washington, therefore, while declining to say so publicly, believe. the law of supply and demand will work in the case of labor, and wages will come down. It will be the spring of 1982 before conditions begin to be really satisfactory. Our emphasis. No satisfactory conditions for eighteen months! In the meantime wages will come down. and the unemployment army is presumably to remain unfed, unhoused and unclothed. The capitalist class, whose system produced the crisis, seeks to put the burden of it upon the working class exclusively. The job of the workers is to make the capitalist class, bloated by the billions extorted from labor, take the burden.
The frightful position of the unemployed workers must be relieved. But it is not by supplicating pleas to the bosses that relief will be attained. The latter will limit themselves to dribbling hand outs until they are forced by the pressure of the masses to take some serious steps. The workers everywhere working and workless must adopt a program of action. The Communist and Left wing workers, the Unemployment Councils, must take the initiative to set a genuine mass movement into motion.
The central point in such a program must be the six HOUR DAY AND THE FIVE DAY WEEK WITH NO REDUCTION IN PAY! Tf the eight hour day was a slogan of the militants fifty years ago, the thirty hour week is an even more timely one today, in consideration of the technical advance of industry alone. American industry, given a well ordered and just economic system, can produce more than enough to satisfy the needs of the masses if the workers toiled less than twenty hours a week. The bureaucracy in the labor movement sometimes talks about the thirtyhour week. It is up to the militants to put the ranks of the working class into action for this demand.
Credits to the Soviet Union The need for social insurance not by joint contributions of workers and employers but by employers alone is a burning one for labor. Social insurance will not come as a result of promises by capitalist politicians. It will be produced as a result of unremitting struggle by the work.
ers, by their pressure on the capitalist class, by demonstrating their strength in a solid united front. The of agente of capitalism are opposed to social insurance. They must be run out of the labor movement. Their progressive face savers, the Muste group is for social insurance by the peaceful route. They have conceived the audacious plan of a national petition, begging Mr. Hoover and his associated labor haters to do something more than talk about the question. To turn the movement for unemployment relief, which has already taken the form mass demonstrations throughout the country, away from militant struggle and into the quiet, respectable and futile channel of petitioning is to strangle the movement.
That is why we also vigorously oppose the petition campaign of the official Communist Party. The Party is creating the most destructive reformist illusions in the working class by its liberalistic campaign.
It announces that parliamentary bill will be backed 117) not by the mass power and struggles of the workers, but that the a mass movement by petition campaigns expose their futility and il Yusoriness at every opportunity.
The third point in the program of action must be the demand for workers delegations to the Soviet Union to study the Five Year Plan, and for the immediate extension of large, long term credits to the Soviet Union which will not only aid it in its work to industrialize the country, but will be of immediate value to many of the unemployed workers who will obtain Jobs by the re opening of industries from which the Soviets purchase its machinery with the credits obtained. This demand must be raised in every trade union, in every workers organization, and pushed through over the resistance of the bureaucrats, on the one hand, and the sectarian prefudices of the Stalinists, who oppose this demand, on the other.
General Unemployment marches now by the side of General Winter. They are ravaging the standards of the working class.
Only the united front of the workers, irrespective of political or economic opinions, can put up a militant resistance to their advance. Only the unity of labor, expressed in stubborn struggle and mass action, can bring immediate relief to the suffering millions out of a job. Only their revolutionary action, leading to the overthrow of the bosses power and the establishment of the workers power, will bring permanent relief from unemployment, from war, from exploitation, in a word, from capitalism teelt.
Mother Jones Dies The death of Mother Jones at an age past a hundred removes one of the most picturesque figures in the labor movement of the United States for more than half a century, one whose name was associated with some the most militant traditions of the American working class. Associated primarily with the miners union, she led one militant movement after another until her name became anathema to the coal barons. It saddened those who had admired and loved her for her spirited and unrelenting loyalty the militant movement to find her, towards the end, forsaking what she had stood for in the past. At the end, she became reconciled to her once inortal toe, Rockefeller, and contributed some of her last money to the professional labor of the Illinois reorganized miners union.
It is fortunate that her last actions cannot eliminate the splendid record of devotion she wrote for herself in the annals of American labor history.
TO MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF AMERICA (Opposftion AND SYMPATHIZERS All members and sympathizers outside of New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and Kan.
sas City, are urgently requested to send in their names and addresses to the national office immediately. We have a specia)
message for you. Just put your name and address on a piece of paper and state whe.
ther yon are a member or sympathizer, ad.
dress your envelope to The Milltant, 25 Third Ave.
Will Release Comrade Malkin December 20 signatures of unemployed and employed period. was hottest. In addition, a New Year entertainment is being arranged in his honor where the New York militants as a whole will have the opportunity of hearing him speak and renewing their acquaintance with a loyal fighter.
workers. Dally Worker, November 19, 1930. What has happened to the Stalinist fulminations of the third the struggle for possession of the streets. revolutionary mass upurge. They have all been submerged under the stagnant waters of a petition campaign.
The demand for social insurance will he realized only by working class struggle, relentless and militant, and not by Musteite or Stalinist petitioning. The Left wing workers must reject the curbing of the We are happy to welcome comrade Malkin back into the ranks of the active fighters for the working class and the Communist Opposition!
Christmas Time CAN BE TURNED TO We have just received the Welcome news that on December 20, the gates of Comstock, Prison will be opened to release comrade Maurice Malkin, Comrade Malkin, together with his fellow prisoner Franklin who was released a number of weeks ago, was one of the victims of the Mineola frame up a few years ago in connection with the New York fur workers strike. One of the most active militants in the Left wing and its union, and a foundation member of the Communist Party, he was railroaded to the penitentiary by the prosecution, and began to serve his term almost two years ago.
Comrade Malkin was the first rank and file member of the Party to rally to the banner of the Opposition when the members of the Central Committee that came forward to support it were expelled from the Party. While his imprisonment was still pending, the Party bureaucrats expelled him the moment he demanded the reinstatement of the Opposition. This did not prevent Malkin from becoming one of the most active militants in our movement and remaining an Oppositionist while incarcerated at Comstock. At one time, the Partiy bureaucrats attempted to extort a capitulatory statement from him through the shameful process of pressure upon his family, but in the long run their efforts proved unsuccessful, and comrade Malkin again issued a declaration affirming his convictions in favor of the views of the International Left Opposition.
The news of his release has been received with enthusiasm by the New York comrades, and preparations are being made to meet him as befits a revolutionary fighter. As he comes to Grand Central Station on December 20, he will be met by, a large group of his comrades and fellow fighters in the needle trades workers Left wing.
who remember him on dozens of picket Unes and everywhere else that the struggle Working Class Advantage The bourgeoisie have psychologized the workers throughout the world into giving at Christmas time so as to further pile up their own profits.
We cannot change this condition for yaers to come, but we can take advantage of the give spirit for working class interests. At this time of the year, when everybody loosens up, we can best collect for our cause.
The Militant is the only English paper that prints Trotsky Marxian analyses of world events and the truth about the present situation in the Soviet Union. It also carries timelypolitical and economic articles of special interest to the American workers. OPEN FORUM SUSTAIN THE MILITANT Buy a Christmas Coupon. 10c. Sell a Christmas Coupon EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT at the Labor Temple 14th Street and Second Avenue All Invited. Admission 250 Auspices: New York branch of the Communist League of America (Opposition.