Lovestone Prepares the Front with Musteism It is a bare two years ago that the By MAX SHACHTMAN New York. There the Lovestoneites made Lovestone faction, then in control of the a united front to elect the notorious Louis Party, combined with the present stratum them. The movement which Maste and one eye peeled for the Lovestoneite rank Levy as local manager, the same Levy who of incompetents of the Foster group, to similars seek to stultiiy is a genuine move and file, at the movement in general. in expelled the left wing workers from the expell the Left Oppostion from the Party ment from below. It has strength, it is which its policies are gently chided being union, and who now hypocritically poses for demanding a discussion of those vital growing and will continue to grow as the based on faith in the bureaucracy. Lest as a progressive because Sigman, whose issues that lie at the bottom of the pregrowing horror of capitalist rationalization anyone should misjudge this entirely loyal lcyal henchman he has always been is at sent struggle in the Communist movement.
drives discontent deeper into the ranks of and well intentioned rebuke. Gitlow hasodds with the ruling section of the bureauthe masses of the workers. Without asking The principal weapons of the Lovestone tens to add: It is the duty of the Com cracy. Against Levy. the Revolutionary Age anybody permission the Communists must munists in the trade unions to build up the faction then as they are of the Foster had not a single word of criticism to make, faction today were calumny and misreprebecome a part of it influence it from with Left wing forces in the unions so as to but on the contrary, practised a deliberate sentation of our point of view, combined in, push it to the Left and help to shape it make possible a closer union and possibly deception announcing in the first issue of with the use of such powerful arguments into an effective fighting force. Ruthless an amalgamation of the genuine progress its weekly MILITANTS. WIN IN LOCAL as the blackjack, the thug knife and the eriticism of the Muste leadership is an in ive forces of the Muste movement into the In other words the mass work and burglar jimmy. Their later change of dispensable part of this work for the future Left wing.
the united fronts of the Right wing conheart. while it eliminated the more powof the movement.
Since amalgamation is a rather serious sists of investing treacherous elements like erful arguments did not cause them to rellow the Estimates Have Been Tested a fiair, and assumes a closer political affin Levy with the approbation of a revolutionject the principled weapons in their arThe two years that have elapsed since ity than is required for a bloc we are en ary label. If so thoroughly discredited a senal, and they have continued to use them our expulsion has afforded more than am titled to know who are the genuine pro type as Levy can find aid and comfort, even to this day.
ple opportunity to test the validity of all gressive forces. Gitlow sheds illumina for a day, from Lovestone, why shouldn Lorstone First lccusation the contentions in this question: Love tion on this point with a heavy hand: Muste and Thomas expect at least as genOne of the main charges made against stone and ours. The latter has been ver definite break with the Socialist Party is erous a deal?
us by the Lovestone faction in the early itied by a dozen experiences; the contempt inevitable just as soon as the progressives Not the least characteristic phase of days of our expulsion was that, aside from ible record of the MMuste adherents in the make a clean break with the bureaucracy.
this whole situation is the manner in which pers being the agents of world imperialism and Illinois coal fields; genu Such elements as James Oneal and the Lovestone leaders have consummated counter revolution, we were also the allies, fiections before the of high priests Hardman (Salutzky. the errand boy of their plans. Their problem is indeed, no or tools (every thesis worded it differently in the textile field, particularly in the Sidney Hillman, have no place in a genuine small one: to lead their membership into in conformity with the author temperasouthern strikes; their respectable cam progressive movement. By the process of a merger with social reformists of the Levy inent) of the reformists of the Muste school, paign on unemployment; their anti Com eliminating these two elements, we arrive or Muste stripe, to confront the workers fighing against Communism and the Party.
munist virulence which is backed up by arithmetically at the genuine progressin the Right wing camp with a blunt deciBright the solid Socialist front of Oneal, Thomas ives. Muste, Lovestone, it will be remembered, was then Budenz, Norman sion would never do for the Lovestone leadadvancing the brilliant postulate that the and Co. and so on and so forth. As to Thomas, Stanley, Hoelscher et tutti quanti.
ers, first, because it would be the honest Lovestone the Troskyists are the crassest expression of contentions concerning Who Are The Mustes.
way and second, it would shock them out the Right danger. while he and his fac Trotsky Muste alliance. they were put These are the people who play the of faith in the leadership. It must theretion were the Old Guard Bolsheviks of the forward in cynical disregard of established same role in the American movement with fore be done gradually almost imperceptipurest water. Idiotic as this sounds today facts, and were thrown overboard just as all due regard to proportions as the Pur bly, by enlightenment while the arrange(and it was no less idiotic when first forcynically and with just as little explanation. cells and Cooks played in the British movements have already been signed and sealed mulated. it was seriously placed before But for that, in striking confirmation of ment. When the workers move to the Right, at the top.
the Party bureaucracy who just as solemnour evaluation of these Right wing adven they are indistinguishable from the open Little by little, therefore, the tone of ly voted nine to one that it was gospel turers the fantastic allegations of unity bureaucracy or else lie fallow and untruth.
criticism of the Muste group is moderated, made against us have given way to the needed. When the workers move to the Left, thinned down to a whisper. Yesterday We said and proved at that time that reality of unity between Lovestone and they act as sieves straining all the milisocial reformists and weak kneed pseudothe Lovestone faction was the American Muste and worse. It is not the first time tancy out of the workers moods for strugprogressives become today, militants and representative of the International Right that such displacements have occurred in gle, preventing the full force of the work Wing, that it was composed of corrupt op genuine progressives. tomorrow they the struggle against the Left Opposition! ers from striking at the body proper of the portunist leaders and apparatus men, the will be irreproachable comrades in arms.
Lovestone formal change of front, labor lieutenants of the capitalist class.
Yesterday, the Revolutionary Age, out of logic of whose position would compel them (formal, because it has been his view for That they serve at the same time as a habit and regard to the membership, still to go over further to the Right and end a long time. comes simultaneously with channel through which the workers exspoke of Lore Volkszeitung as counterin the swamps of social reformism. As to the transformation of his paper into a press their discontent is also true, and does revolutionary. today, it isn such a bad our estimation of the progressives. it was weekly, which is to be the point of depar not change the fundamental fact of the paper after all, especially when you recall not affected by Lovestone spurious cries ture for a deep participation in masa function they perform. Their wordy radithat Lore is on the executive about the Trotsky Muste alliance any more work. For the Right wing. this partici calism is not costly and obligates them to committee. Muste is brought down to the than it is affected today by the hoarse pation in mass work has always been ex nothing: it is cheap, considering how efLovestone open forum, not so much as an shouts of the Browder Foster Bedacht compressed in the most disgraceful opportunist fectively if temporarily, it deceives workideological opponent with whom to dispute, bination. We established our point of view maneuvering and unity with any faker in ers into faith in Left social reformism and but to show the ranks that he is not half as on the progressive movement and its leadthe labor movement who was compelled to retards their development to Communism black as he is painted and Muste, it should ers from the very beginning and have had daub his cheeks with a spot of rouge in and revolutionary struggle. In every sense be added in justice, delivered a speech no reason to change it to suit factional exorder to distract the attention of workers of the word, they are brakes on the Leftwhich fitted this plan like glove; he has pediency, which was done, however, as has moving to the Left.
ward movement of the workers.
his own troubles with Oneal and doesn now become as clear as day by the Love.
In recent years, this game has been Gitlow does not say a word about this.
The whole article fails to utter a word of mind so harmless an ally as Lovestone. stone group. In the Militant of March 1, played by the Right wing under the war The idea is to put the thing over in small 1929, we said: cry against the Left of Down with the criticism or even to mention Muste at all, doses. for it would be too hard for any The virtual abandonment of the old sectarians. It was in the fight against except for the incidental reference we have worker trained in the Communist movement unions by the Communists, who have stood sectarianism that the Chinese workers just quoted, because to all intents and to swallow at one gulp.
at the head of most of the opposition moveand peasants were finally put under Chiang purposes, the Lovestoneites have already Kai Shek iron heel; that the Communist amalgamated with the Muste section of ments in the past five years, facilitates the In turning his face to mass work. emergence of the reformist group and afParty was harnessed to the LaFollette Fan the amalgamated behind the that is, to the role of chamberlains of the fords the Socialists an opportunity to reNoli chariot so as to draw the petty bour scenes, by purely diplomatic negotiations Left social democracy, Lovestone at the gain some of their lost positions. The new geoisie to power over the proletarian bar at the top without incommoding explana.
same time inevitably turns his back upon tions to the rank and file workers of the the Communist Party and the Left wing.
movement (i. e. the is a chalriers; that the Communist lamb united with lenge to the Communists for the leaderthe Purcellian lion in the deadly comfort Right wing.
that is, upon the bulk of the revolutionary ship of the coming fights.
of the Anglo Russion Committee. Incapable The Right wing. e. the liquidationmovement in the country. The desire for These progressives are weather cocks of working like Bolsheviks among the ist point of view on trade union work, a second party. hanging between social who reflect certain winds blowing in the masses the Right wing fed the tendencies which does not and cannot have anything democracy and Communism has been at labor movement. Their emergence now towards real sectarianism on the one hand, the back of the Lovestone leaders minds in common with the revolutionary point of with demands which connote militancy is and of social reformism on the other. The view is to strengthen this brake. It unites from the beginning. Naturally, the resist an indicator of the radicalization of the same holds true of Lovestone present either integrally or in bloc with the Left ance of the Communist workers in the workers growing within the old unions as mass work and united fronts. which reformists by putting the Communists unranks is encountered here.
well as in the ranks of the unorganized The first feeler is out now, in the peron the one hand give the Centrist sectar der their command. If a bloc or united masses. Their role, objectively speaking, is ians demagogic arguments against a genufront with Left social democrats is necesson of Bert Miller, who accuses the leadto express this radicalization in words, to ine united front of workers, and on the sary and tactically advisable and very ership of sectarianism. that is, of not goharness it in action and to head it off from other hand, buttress the ramparts of refrequently it is, and should be made it ing fast enough away from Communism.
any real collision with the capitalists and formism, Muste style.
can only be done by rigidly maintaining This is no faction fight; it is a division of the a. of machine.
Gitlow on the Progressives the organizational and political indepenlabor. Miller demands an accelerated tempo In our Platform, published February The official announcement of the dence of the revolutionists, by making tem and does it as clumsily as he always does 15. 1929, we said further: change comes in an article by Ben Gitlow porary agreements even with the reformist everything else. Lovestone holds back so The recent manifesto of the pseudo entitled Progressives and Left Wing (Re leaders in order to set the workers in mo as to yield reluctantly and under pressvolutionary Age, 12 13 1930. To those who progressive group of the Labor Age is prition but to set them in motion can be ure later on. That Miller is condemned, marily a reflection of this discontent in the are at all acquainted with the Lovestone accomplished only by an incessant struggle means little, if anything. It should be reranks of the unions which the reformists method of elaborating policies, it is evi.
against these leaders. Lovestone follow membered that Lovestone took his followers seek to divert into harmless channels. The lent that the article is not a beginning but ing here the classic position of the Right out of the Party under a barrage of attack a culmination. That is to say it was writ wing under which the Stalin Bucharin re.
appearance of the new movement, even in on Bedacht because the latter. scoundrel a nebulous form with pseudo progressives ten by agreement, for the record, and only gime operated for years in their unity with that he was. favored affiliation to Brandat its head, is a sign of the abdication of after the preliminary negotiations had been the national bourgeoisie of China, the labor ler. While shouting at Bedacht. Lovestone the Communists and the Left wing who held around the table with blinds drawn. bureaucracy in England, and others, purled his followers into Brandler campin recent years have led these movements.
between Lovestone and Muste.
sues a directly opposite path. skilfully and by degrees. Miller today is The Party must penetrate every movement In this article, Gitlow discovers, almost The Right wing is the principal inBedacht yesterday. An incidental figure of opposition and revolt against the bureautwo years after the fact that the official strument whether it is conscious of it or himself he is nevertheless the dusk of cracy, forming united fronts with all honest program of the Muste group is acceptable not of the forces opposed to revolution Lovestone twilight.
progressive workers, exposing the particuBertram Wolfe, who has coined more to the Communists and the left wing in the for the liquidation of the Communist movelarly deceptive and dangerous role of the trade unions. And if the matter were al ment, and its degradation to the position luckless phrases than any other two men lowed to rest there, things might not be of the social democracy.
pseudo Left and pseudo progressive leadThe unprinciin the Right wing, once accused the Left so bad. But Gitlow continues to evaluate ers and struggling against them for the pled merger with Muste and his associates Opposition of travelling with express leadership of the opposition movements. the Muste group by what he writes and is only a replica of what has happened with speed away from Communism. We are Later in the same year, in the Militant even more by what he carefully omits to the Right wing groups in other countries.
not prepared to say at exactly what rate of of September 15, 1929, we continued to ex write. As the prospective ally of Muste One need not be the seventh son of a speed the Right wing has moved away from press the point of view we still hold to: within the executive committee of the seventh son to foretell the role the Love Communism, in the last two years especi Without the Communist leave the that is, as a prop from the Left stone group will play in the Muste move ally but it has become pretty plain that new progressive movement will have no for Muste ax grinding against the extreme ment. We have had a harbinger of the they are not impeded in their voyage by backbone. It will retreat on all basic ques Right wing of Oneal and Co. it is essennext future in the shady game the Right any heavy principled baggage. And the littial for Gitlow to utter a few well chosen tions before the onslaught of the entrenchwing has just played in the International tle they took along at the start ed reactionaries and become a shield for words of criticism. One is directed with Ladies Garment Workers Union Local 1, cannot last long at the rate they are going.