The Unemployed Cutters Rebel thers by sharing their work with them.
The demand of the unemployed for a 36hour week with 40 hours pay is a reasonable one and can be carried out by the union with the assistance of the cutters in the shops.
All the above mentioned conditions are absolutely necessary for the success of the struggle of the unemployed cutters. What the struggle has accomplished so far 18 that it has brought out into the open the condition of the unemployed and opened the sores of corruption in the cutters union To effect a real change and remedy the situation this movement must be pushed ahead, expanded in all directions, until it achieves results. It must follow a definite course and follow it to the end. Any recession of this course is dangerous. The enemy is on the watch. The least slip in the wrong direction may cause irreparable damage. Solid unity and conscious action will insure victory not only to the unemplolyed cutters but also to the general rank and file movement in the Weisbord: Cult of Confusionism. ProhiOver 300 unemployed clothing cutters, By ALBERT ORLAND members of the most powerful local union of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of keepers in the district to bar the unemAmerica, Local of New York, have come ployed from the meeting halls. The offitogether and decided to launch struggle cials foolishly thought that the unemployed against their miserable conditions. For a would be scared and discouraged by this long time, these oppressed, starving workers trick. The unemployed proceeded with have been suffering patiently and hoping their plans and secured Manhattan isech.
for a change in their conditions. Day in The owners of that hall refused to be inand day out, they have been waiting for timidated and rented a room to the untheir officials to something for the re employed, where several meetings were dress of their miserable situation. Some held. committee from the unemployed of them have been unemployed for years came to the local executive board to preand their families have been starving. At sent their claims but the executive refused the same time they have been witnessing to deal with them.
acts of the rankest corruption and have At the local meetings, the officials have suffered abuse and discrimination at the resorted to the ignoble methods of attackhands of their officials. Their patience ing the unemployed for their actions in has finally broken down and they came out meeting outside of the pale of the organiin an open revolt against the rotten meth zation and accused them of forming a ods of their officials who are responsible rival union. They also did not neglect for their misery and destitution.
to raise the hue and cry of Communism, Condition of Unemployed and have threatened with expulsions and starration. No consideration of the just These unemployed today find themclaims of the unemployed, however, has selves in utter despair, hence their debeen given by them and no attempts have fiance ef and challenge those who only ben made to change conditions.
yesterday held them in their grip of terror and domination. Deprived of employThe unemployed. however, have not ment because of the corrupt practises of failed to secure the support of the membership at the local meetings, and they will the officials in handling the distribution of jobs, done out of the relief due to them undoubtedly have this support throughout from the fund collected from those emtheir struggle. At the local meetings, the ployed supposedly for their benefit, betrayed membership voted for their demands. But the decisions of the local meetings hy the general officials who have continualare trampled under foot by the officials. The ly violate! the decisions of the last three conventions for a 40 hour week and deceived struggle of the unemployed will have to be carried further to insure victory for with a frandulent unemployment insurance scheme. these unemployed are now detertheir demands.
mined to demand an account from their of The Accomplishments So Far ficialdom and redress of their grievances. The officials are in a state of consterFor 18 weeks, their local union officials nation. They fear the development of a have been collecting ten percent of the rank and file movement. But they are at wages of the employed members of the a loss the methods for its suppression.
local which has brought enormous sums The publicity this movement has secured into the fund for relief. But the unemploy in the press, including the Forward, and ed cutters recived only a miserable porthe sympathy of the employed cutters have tion of that money. The committee elected shocked the officials and they are terrorby the local to administer the fund has been stricken. They are, however, determined shoved aside and no account has been to crush it before it has had a chance given to the membership. At the local to develop. They see in this revolt of the meetings their protests have been ignored rank and file a serious challenge to their and their demands derided by the officials, rule which has been maintained by terror The unemployed now protest against the and leceit.
continuation of the assessment which does What must the unemployed to innot go for their benefit and is only a source sure victory? The cutters must expand of corruption for their officials. They de their activities to involve into the strug mand real relief. the shorter week and gle. the employed cutters. The interests division of work.
of the cutters, employed and unemployed, are inseparably bound together. The existThe nemployment Insurance Fund ence of an unemployed army is a menac.
established by Hillman is exposed by ing danger the conditions of those emthe unemployed as a complete failure. This fund only serves to insure the dues and ployed. The bosses do not hesitate to use the unemployed to break down the stanthe salaries of the officials and is of no dards of the workers in the shops. The benefit to the unemployed. The members conemployed should therefore come to the astribute to this fund directly or indirectly through constant reductions in the wages, sistance of the unemployed in their strug.
and the fund is used by their officials to yle to secure the 40 hour week and the abolition of the temporary jobs. They maintain themselves in office, The Unemshould join hands with the unemployed in ployment Insurance Fund is adroit their fight for the abolition of the corrupt scheme to solve the financial problem of practises of the officialdom who have turncollecting dues from the unemployed worked the union into a racket and deprired ers and is also used as a mask for Hillman hundreds of its best members of the means in his personal publicity campaigns. Hillof existence, members who have sacrificed man and Co. need it. They invented it for their benefit. It is also a boon many of their best years to build up the to the must organization. They jointly wrest clothing manufacturers. It relieves them of all responsibility to the workers. It also control of the union from the hands of the strengthens their bonds with the union of corrupt clique and maintain it for their own benefit. The demand for an honest ficialdom who, jointly with them, exploit election of oflicials will have to be raised the clothing workers.
by the entire membership even before the The employed protest against the present term of the officials expires. There fraudulent employment Insurance scheme. are sufficient grounds for their recall and They demand real unemployment relief.
impeachment, and they can be made to This is the list of their demands as pub resign.
lished in the press, after having been ad The cutters must unite with the work.
opted at mass meeting at Manhattan ers in the other branches of the clothing Lyceum on April 23. industry in a general struggle for the imThe Workers Demands provement of their conditions and a change (a) The immediate establishment of in the policies of the organizaton. The the 40 hour week with 41 hour pay. must abandon their policy of (b) After the 40 hour week has been cooperation with the bosses and adopt a established, the cutters should work 36 fighting policy. Only a united and militant organization can effectively carry out the hours so as to create work for the unemployed by distributing the four hours among demands of the membership. The officialthem.
dom has always striven to keep the membership divided so that they can maintain (c) The immediate abolition of temtheir rule unchallenged. It is vitally necporary cards.
essary for the workers to bring about unity (d) The equal division of work. in their ranks. The opportunity presented (e) Taking away manufacturers from ly the present movement of the cutters can the tables to be replaced by cutters, thus be utilized to bring the cutters and tailors making work for the unemployed.
together in a common struggle for the (1) The abolition of the ten percent shortening of hours and improvement of assessment since it does not go to the conditions.
benefit of the unemployed cutters at all.
Immediate Relief Needed (g) The establishment of a system of The conditions of the unemployed, strict rotation of jobs to be honestly diswhich have become unbearable, must be tributed under the supervision of a rank relieved immediately. Provisions should and file committee.
be made in the shops for them to divide How have the officials responded to the work with those employed.
action of the unemployed?
Instead of payments to the union At the very first news of the unem treasury where money is squanderell by ployed gathering to discuss their condi the officials, the employed cutters will rem tions. warnings were sent out to the hall der real relief to their unemployed broThe American movement has been pre Weisbord condemns us for having seen sented with a new group, the Communist in the Smith vote of 1928 an indication League of Struggle and the first issue of of the radicalization trend in the working its paper, the Class Struggle, behind which class an honest evaluation of our position are massed a baker dozen of supporters of that time would take into account that of the high priest of confusionism, Weis while we misused the term radicalization. the whole context of our documents then bord. On the masthead of his group Weisbord has hoisted the banner Adhering to indicated that we understood by it the disthe International Left Opposition in the content of the workers. However false hope of thereby accrediting himself with our appreciation may or may not have been the name of the Marxist wing of the move Weisbord, in 1931, discovers a radicalization ment today, and in actuality only to soil process in the crime rate rise and and discredit this banner. That he has nei bootleg drinking. 34. The life breaking ther the political right nor the authority pressure on the masses is further shown to utilize this banner does not concern by the tremendous growth of the crime Weisbord any more than he is concerned rate. On the one hand this is an illustrawith an honest treatment of facts in dis tion of rebellion by the masses bition has helped to intensify the class puting with his political opponents, primarily with the Left Opposition in the struggle.
United States.
Weisbord (under our pressure) finally As to the axis around which Weis proposes the extension of credits to the bord whole, creaking theoretical and pracSoviet Union, not in the proletarian revtical machinery revolves, we find nothing olutionary sense of linking this demand that is new in Weisbord paper. His ori with the class movement of the unemploy.
ed in capitalist countries, but in the Stalginal contribution to the policy of the Left Opposition (in reality, it is a vulgarized inist sense of a pure and simple business plagiarism from Urbahns, az and simi proposition between the Soviet state and the foreign bourgeoisie.
lars) is the proposal that in order to separate the Communist movement from. Men Weisbord, who specializes in self crishevism and to re establish mass work. ticizing the other factions, has not a sinthe Left Opposition should make a bloc with gle word to say about his own vicious in. the Lovestone Right wing. Hopeless ner party faction record as a henchman for Right wingers that we are, according to the Lovestone Right wing since the day Weisbord, we have nevertheless rejected he left the Socialist party and joined the this ingenious idea in the past, and still do. Communists in 1925.
We are fortunate enough not to be entirely Weisbord, his political line being an alone in our sectarianis especially when comrade Trotsky has expressed him viewpoints of the three other groups, finds impossible mixture of loans made from the self in our sense this same proposal of it impossible to assail the platform of the Weisbord. Only four months ago he vrote: Left on the basis of principle, resorts to The leading comrades in the United slander and lies, a method learned from States inform is that in the American Lovestone and Stalin, and in the process, League, certain comrades to be sure, only can find nothing better to do than to reindividual ones these individual ones ampeat the Daily Worker and the Revolutionounted to exactly two comrades: Pollack ary Age. Our comrades are condemned not and Ahrens. Ed. speak for a bloc with only for alleged positions today but for the Lovestoneites in the name of. alleged positions (nine tenths of them in mass work. It is hard to imagine a more ventions, pure and simple of years gone ridiculous, a more inept, a more sterile by. 1) the theory that the farmers must project than this. Do these people know lead the Labor party movement. e) Canat least a little of the history of the Bolo non was the first to make an alliance. shevik party? Have they read the works with Pepper 1923. was violently opof Lenin? Do they know the correspond posed to the organization of the unorganence of Marx and Engels? Or has all the ized (Passaic strike 1926)
participated history of the revolutionary movement in actual betrayal. of the New Bedford passed them by without leaving a trace? strike. unprincipled united front with Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of former Cannonites (B. Dunne and Co. the American League has nothing in com still in the party and so on to the point mon with such ideas.
of nausea. group with so hopelessly confused a The Opposition international platform as Weisbord is not one to cause scale has, in the past, had to contend with anybody great concern. Contusionism is similar confusionist groups, which not only not a political tendeney. It can cause poli hampered its growth but even discredited tical damage. but Weisbord capacity for it in the eyes of the Communist workers.
either good or bad is fortunately very None of these groups (like Urbahns, Paz, strictly limited.
Pollak, etc. however, ever gave so promThe whole art of Weisbord thesis inent a place their movement to such lies in platonically embracing a few phrases pillars of Stalinism slander and falsehood from the Left Opposition; pinning them as Weisbord (loes. The weaker one poston to an economic analysis which analy tion in principle the more such rotten ses nothing. indicates no trend and allows props are required. But nothing subfor every possible variation; justifying his stantial, nothing of consequence can ever bloc with Lovestone with the invention that be built upon them.
there is no such thing as Centrism; merging the three groups in the Communist Unfortunately for Weisbord, who has movement into one single Right tendency. been carrying this tale around as a backoutside of which stands the genuine Len door whisper for months, Dunne has just inist (i. e. Weisbord. and demanding issued violent statement denouncing the outright capitulation as individuals Weisbord as well as the Left Opposition.
of the expelled Oppositionists, of every Dunne venomous and disgraceful vilificabody, that is, except Weisbord who can tion of the Trotskyists is on a par with never abandon its grouping.
the outpourings of those second and fourth One could go on for pages with com rate Stalinist functionaries who have surment on the confusionism in Weisbord rendered their revolutionary birthright for platform, which is soaking wet with ignor the oportunity to mount the ladder of the ance, an arrant insolence at times, and apparatus by trampling on the rungs of worse yet, with revolting falsehoods and their own past, seeking to purchase conslanders against us lifted off the dung sideration for themselves from the infalliheaps of Browder Foster Lovestone and Co. ble center by routine denunciations of the few instances will have to suffice to give proletarian revolutionists.
the measure of the man who seeks to teach us Bolshevism, the man whom the history IN THE NEXT ISSUE of the revolutionary movement passed by Again we are compelled to call attenwithout leaving a trace.
tion to unavoidable omissions from this Weisbord justifies his criminal action issue. The reply of the editorial board of in joining with Foster while himself a the Militant to the objections raised by faction agent of Lovestone to expel the comrade Mihelie to our position on the 6Left Opposition from the party in 1928 hour day slogan had to be held over to the 1929: 46. The driving out of the Love. next issue, when it will positively appear.
stone and Cannon misleaders from the Included in it will be a reply also to the did not change its essential official party position as expressed recently character. in an article by Earl Browder.
an a