IN THE LEAGUE Proletarian Party Meet Stalin For the period of the coming three Comrade Brinda was one of the leaders months one of our plans call for an intenof a splendidly fought eleven months upsive campaign for new subscribers to the holsterers strike in Minneapolis in 1927.
Militant. Our goal is the definite return to His revolutionary position is well known in the Weekly at the end of this period. With the ward and the campaign, we can conthe proper response from our branches, our elude in advance, will bring additional readers and sympathizers the goal will be strength to the Communist movement.
come a reality.
Our branches should make up competing The Chicago branch is conducting a teams and set to work with some induce class in Marxism with comrade Hugo Oehment for the winning team, that is, the ler as instructor every Wednesday p.
one securing the most subs on a yearly at 1214 Washtena Ave. The branch basis. We offer for this period a special is the main active force in building up the three months trial subscription of 25c, also Workers Forum held every first and third a special combination offer of either one Friday, p. at Fleiner Hall, 1638 of the three books with a yearly subscrip Halstead St. It invites all interested worktion. Criticism of the Draft Program of ers to join in both of these activities.
the Communist International. or The OPEN FORUM Strategy of the World Revolution (both by Trotsky. or Since Lenin Died For the past few months, the New York (paper cover) by Max Eastman, for the Branch of the League has been conducting price of 00. good only for this period.
very successful Forums at the 14th Street This campaign commences Feb. 1st, conLabor Temple. These Forums have become tinuing up until May 1st. What is your an institution in New York, a clarification ground for Communist workers. The most answer?
vital We will also have special prizes for and communthe bext individual sub. getters. sufficiisin have been taken up and discussed. Exent number of new suhs offers the opporperienced speakers and working class leaders of long standing like comrades James tunity for the active comrade of acquiring either My Life by Trotsky or The Cannon, Arne Swabeck and Max ShachtReal Situation in Russia!
man have presented the views of the Left Opposition on such important topics as Prospects of the American Revolution. Our permanent pledge fund for publica Alignments for the New War. The His tion of revolutionary literature and strentoric Role of the Opposition. The Unemgthening of our organization is just be ployment Question. The Present Crisisginning to get under way. Any comrade What Next etc. in a most interesting and interested in our work of publishing fundainformative manner.
mental Marxian literature in addition to The discussion, in which all are given the recent works of Comrade Trotsky also those of the revolutionary classics not yet the floor and in which party members and published in English should by all means sympathizers particularly have participated, has shown a remarkably high level of inenter this regular pledge fund, set the sum he feels able to advance regularly every terest and intelligence All sorts of ques.
month and meet the payments. Comrades tions related the struggle of the OpposiVincent Dunne of Minneapolis Boisnert ion and to the Communist movement in of Los Angeles, Calif. and Antoinette Konigeneral have been raised at these lectures.
kow of Boston, Mass. have been the first to They have received the utmost attention enter the fund with a regular pledge of from the speakers, who give clear and unequivocal answers. 00 monthly. The Kansas City branch pledges 20. 00 monthly and the New York Some of the problems to be discussed branch 75. 00.
Nhortly are: Can the Left Opposition Make a Bloc With the Right. Recent European Recent developments in the revolutionStrikes. Strike Strategy. Dialectic ary movement and in the general situation Materialism and the Communists and the of the country have bronght new life to Progressives etc. All workers are urged our organization. Thus in Philadelphia and to attend and participate in the discussion, Cleveland where our supporters had for Admission. 250. Free for Unemployed Counsome time showed a lack of activity in an cil members. Look for the exact date in the organizational sense, the comrades now re.
Militant.
port that they are getting together, endeavoring to build up regular organized ac tivity once more.
In the International Left Communist movement, there are many interesting levelopments. particularly in the form of new adherents to our movement, which are all The Textile Unity Committee of the recorded in our international Bulletin. so National Textile Workers Union. that is, far printed in French German only. the group of Lovestone adherents whode This material is now being translated and aim has been to liquidate the Left wing in each monthly issue of the bulletin repro the textile industry, has now taken a furduced in mimeographed form. Issue No. ther step in its evolution, implicit in Loveis ont and copies oan be ordered from the stone policy from the very beginning, Militant office at 10e ench.
which should now make clear the Right wing role in the Communist movement to Our Minneapolis branch reports that in every militant.
We learn of this recent a special ward election to be held in the step from a letter sent out by Albert Weiscity, upon the failure of the official party bord. who was in alliance with the Loveleadership to file a candidate, our comrade stoneites in this movement from its inJohn Brinda will carry the Communist ception.
banner as an officially filed candidate. When the Unity Committee was first organized by the Lovestone faction, with the aid of Weisbord, the latter made every endeavor draw the Left Opposition to its support as a good united front proposal. The Proletarian Party, we learn from At that time, several months ago, we re Chicago, is to hold the national convention jected the whole plan and warned Weisbord in Detroit in May this year. The signiand others that the Lovestone committee ficance of this gathering lies in the fact was a liquidationist movement which would that the more than four years that have reveal itself completely as soon as Love elapsed since the last national convention stone was able to delude a sufficient num of the party have constituted a period in ber of textile workers to go along with it. which the Communist movement has passed Weisbord, intent upon doing mass work through its severest crisis from which it is at all costs, and determined to realize his far from issuing today. It is precisely in plan of a bloc with the Right wing in these years that the revolutionary moveorder to save the Communist movement ment has witnessed the transformation of from. Menshevism, continued not only the Leninist International into the intera member of the committee, but came national apparatus of the Centrist faction of forward as its most active spokesman His It has not only been a period of role in the committee, willy nilly, was that one crashing defeat for Communism after of bell wether, leading the textile workers another (British general strike, uprisings in among whom hvis record and prestige still Poland and Vienna, the catastrophic conheld into the Lovestone camp. It goes clusion of the second Chinese revolution, without saying that Lovestone had this etc. etc. but also of a theoretical backrôle of come on well marked out for Weis sliding into the morass of revisionism in bord from the very beginning.
the most fundamental conceptions of MarxUtilizing Weisbord and not utilized by ism.
him Lovestone succeeded in holding a few The Proletarian Party, as is known, meetings of textile workers in the East and has considered itself a Communist organimaking ready for his next step, just as he zation, loyal to the principles of Marxismhas already done in the needle trades, among and the international proletarian revolution, the food workers, in the miners union and even though it remained outside the frameeverywhere else that the Right wing has work of the Communist International. In a foothold. At the last meeting of the com socalled specifically American questions, the mittee, the Lovestone faction adopted a has maintained a sectarian hostility stand which, according to Weisbord now, to the official Communist Party, refusing stood for the liquidation of the National the instructions of the Comintern to merge Textile Workers Union and for a united with its American section. in international front with United Textile Workers and questions, the official position of the the Associated Silk Workers officials. has been an unqualified endorsement of the This new program is not at all unex prevailing policies of the official Internapected. It is part and parcel of the Love tional leadership not only in Europe in stone course in the trade unions, which con general, but in the Soviet Union especially.
sists of a bloc with discredited reactionaries So far as its attitude towards the struggle posing as progressives directed against the within the Comintern is concerned, its Communist party and Communist influence principal declaration has been a disgraceful in the labor movement in general, all under article by one Nowak, which repeats all the guise of mass work. That course did the creary and platitudinous slanders rot begin yesterday, or at the last meet inst the Opposition borrowed from the ing of the Textile Unity Committee. We files of the Inprecorr.
warned against it in time and rejected any This nationally restricted outlook, largebloe with the Right wing faction to further ly akin to that of the Right wing Brandler this aim. We called the liquidators liquidgroup in Germany. has not met with the ators, while Weisbord was protesting, only unanimous approbation of the mema few weeks ago, that it was not a liquid bership. whose schooling in the elements of ationist movement. He writes now: The Marxism has made it difficult to swallow committee is no more a committee to put the feeble substitutes for Marxist science fight into and to build up the which are put forward by the theoreticbut a commitee to help the of and ians of the Stalin school. In some seethe Muste fakers to sell out and to betray tions of the membership, notably in Chicago, the workers. The fact is: It never was new interest has been aroused in the a committee to put fight into the fundamental questions of principle raised It was from its inception a committee by the Left Opposition, accompanied by a to liquidate the Left wing in the textile desire to study, to understand and to take industry, and Weisbord contributed his a definite position on them. The realization modest services in this direction.
is penetrating some of the members of the This is not the first instructive instance that the Communist movement today of where individuals have come forward is no longer a whole. but a body divided with the acknowledgment that the stand into three parts: the liquidationist Right point ot the Left Opposition against a bloc wing, the Centrist swamp. and the Marxist with the Right wing is correct for.
Opposition. The leanings in the direction Germany or France or Iceland but does not of the latter which have been manifested apply. the United States. The re by some of the comrades are the sults of the short lived and destructive ex healthiest sign of a ferment in the Prolperience with the Textile Unity Commit etarian Party that have been seen for years.
tee are rich with proof of just how much Not even the isolated existence of the wisdom is contained in such a point of can forever be a barrier to the entry view, defended by Weisbord and rejected of the fundamental disputed questions.
by nas. At a time when clarification on all Whether these questions will actually come the principle of all the strategical and up for discussion at the convention tactical questions in the Communist move. depended in large measure upon the ability ment is a burning necesity, muddlers and of the advanced members compelling such confusionists are the most dangerous oh a discussion despite the unwillingness of stacle. The Left Opposition has not yet had some of the party leaders. It can be said the occasion to depart from its principled that should the convention take place withposition. The latest experience of Weisbord out such a discussion, it will end without has, far from invalidating it, only served having accomplished anything and could to confirm its correctness, just as well never have been held a gathering of revolutionists which refuses to take WORD FROM BERLIN up these questions that have split the move.
ment is a gathering from which all life is comrade writes us from Berlin: removed because it is removed from life The situation in Germany has become We hope that this will not be the extremely accentuated. The moods of despair case. because an objective and honest exgrow among the masses, the whole country amination of the disputed questions would is in a state of deep social ferment which mark a big step forward by the must lead to an expulsive outbreak. The In future issties of the Militant, we exdisparity between the strong communist peet to return to the question of the Prolsentiment in the masses and the radius of etarian Party and its Detroit convention.
action of the party is frightful. Despite its four and a half million votes, the party sets in motion throughout Germany tens of thousands at most in any move, as a conIN ENGLISH sequence of its tactical blunders. The reIN GERMAN sults of this incapacity in party are THE TURN IN THE COMMUNIST ruinous. The cadres of the party do not INTERNATIONAL AND THE recognize that the blame for this catastro.
phic condition is not borne by the masses.
GERMAN SITUATION but that the policy of the party makes it By Leon Trotsky impossible to unleash the stored up energy of the masses. That is how pessimism toOrder from wards the masses rises in the party Itelf.
as well as a certain mood of despair.
THE MILITANT Wherever we have fractions, our influ84 East 10th Street, New York, ence has generally grown. In Berlin, that is, especially in Wedding, the most revolutionary and decisive working class quarter If the number on your wrapper 18 of Berlin, our comrades harass the party apparatus and we frequently learn from leading party functionaries that in many nuclei, with which we have no connections then your subscription to the Militant has at all as yet, our conceptions and very of expired. Renew immediately in order to ten our proposals are defended.
avoid missing any issues, Weisbord and the Liquidators THE STRATEGY OF THE WORLD REVOLUTION itself.
By LEON TROTSKY brilliant summary and analysis of the policies pursued since 1923 by the leading group in the Communist International on the most important problems confronting the revolutionary movement. An invaluable contribution to the issues of the day and an indispensable part of every worker library One Hundred Pages 25 cents a copy in bundles 18 cents 62 ORDER FROM THE MILITANT, 84 10th ST. NEW YORK,