The Negro and the Class Struggle EDITORIAL NOTES the rank PAGE TRE MILITANT SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1932 After that he would never be able to en, when they came to terms the terms go around shouting such absurdities as of the northern capitalists. From them the leadership of the rank and file. He on the capitalist supremacy took on a would not be able even to listen to such form of democracy for the white rulers an instruction from his own leaders of the south, and a new form of dictawithout laughing under the table.
The National Commitee of the ComTHE ROLE OF THE had escaped feudalism through the hands torship against the Negro masses who munist League of America (Opposl craft system or by free peasant farming. were driven into worse slavery than be UNDER RANK AND FILE masses take nothing on faith, but test CONSCIOUS WORKERS tion. by direction of the National and turning them into an army of profore, LEADERSHIP everything out in life and learn from The chatter about rank and file lead propertyless wage slaves, there was no Conference, appointed a commission One of the demands in the program of their experience, the slogans of the party ership is a disgrace for Communists.
The New Role of the Negro to asemble material on the Negro further escape. Either work as wago The freeing of the Negro from chattel the lefts, who were elected to the con which do not correspond to reality are such horseplay can very well be left to question in America and to open a slaves, starve to death, or be kHled or slavery opened the door to a tremendous vention of the International Ladies Gar unavailing. Thus it happens that such the confusionists of syndicalism who ob discussion in the League. The fol imprisoned as beggars and thieves supply of cheap labor for the American ment Workers Union, was for a real manifest absurditles as the leadership ject to the idea of a workers political lowing article by comrade Oehler, these were the alternatives. In America capitalist. In fact the supply was too strike under rank and ale leadership of the rank and file leave the masses party on the ground that the masses member of the commission, is a con the escape to the west was still open. great for dereloping capitalism to abThis slogan does not appear here for the untouched, and only succeed in deceiv need no leaders. This demoralizing nontribution to the discussion and pre But this escape laid the basis for the Horb. However, it remained in reserve, Arst time. It did not originate with the ing and disorientating the Communist sense only hampers the organization of sents his personal views. Ed further development and strengthening ever ready to be used as expansion workers who stood as the candidates of workers. In this case slmple questions, the working class and thus serves the In modern Europe, where capitalism of bourgeois domination in America.
would warrant. Although capitalist dethe left in the International elections, long ago settled in the camp of the Marx bourgeoisie. The mission of the Communists is to educate the workers, not bas long ago had its decisive battles with In the south conditions were different. velopment in America was fairly fast, and they should not be blamed for it. ists.
There is no doubt that this anti leader LENIN ON LEADERS to muddle and confuse them; to aspire, feudalism, there still linger romnants of the kinds of crops and the climatic con the influx of European wage slaves, alship slogan was imposed upon them by AND MASSES frankly, to lead them in their struggle the past, feudal carry overs complicating ditions called for a different form. The ready trained, kept in check the rapid their own leaders. the Stalinists, whoso Twelve years ago Lenin wrote a pam not to trall behind them and cater to the solution of the proletariat problems. crops demanded large scale Agriculture transformation of former chattel staves agriculture into wage slaves. The slaves freedom rank and file ballyhoo is intended for phlet for the purpose of clearing up some ignorance and prejudice with demagogie This complication does not contront the production, and, capitalist workers of America, but in its place we relations were yet in their infancy. Feud turned out to be a bourgeois joke. The the deception of others and by no means misconceptions in the newly formed Com slogans.
conflicting in alism could answer this request but, it former slave found himself, free from his for thelr own guidance in relation to munist parties. One of these miscon The working class under capitalism, is have a variety of more their own rank and Ale.
ceptions was the prejudice, derived from not and cannot be a homogeneous body. heritances. One of these was the curry could not furnish Serfs tied to the land former master obligation to feed, clothe In thelr steadily losing battle of resyndicalism, regarding leaders and mass. The enormous pressure of the ruling over of chattel slavery, a more backward and accustomed to the hot climate, and shelter him, and keep him well as cent times with the traitorous leaders es. Replying to the arguments of those class ideology presess heavily upon it. system which gained, supremacy over when livelihood could be obtained by property, but not free from the economic of the Right wing unlons, the demoral Leftists in the German party who con Bourgeols ideas, disseminated through atempted feudalist inroads in new Amer hunting and fishing, and trapping and exploitation and political domination of ized officials of Stalinism have been try trasted the one to the other he remarked the press the schools, the church. she ca by its economic advantages in the free land for farming. The only suitable the capitalists and plantation owners.
ing to outwit their opponents and to What old and well known rubbish movies, the political parties, and in other south for large scale agriculture produc alternative that rising bourgeois rela Loft free. without economic means for sneak into the leadership of the workers What left childishness! The simple ways, demoralize and corrupt the tion. The race form of chattel slaveryl tione could tolerate was chattel slavery: a livelihood (land and tools. the Negro starve to death, to submit without their knowledge. This is the explanations and ironical comments of thoughts of the workers. Besides that, in America gave impetus to this devel. bringing in large scale agriculture pro was free duction, labor power bound in slavery. to his former master in worse economic grand strategy which motivates the de: the great teacher, regarding the masses the working class under capitalism 18 opment.
magogle appeal for the leadership of and the leaders and the inter relations divided into various economie categories, The period when economic systems that the Indian could not serve this par wage slave, providing he could find an suitable for the climate. It was proven subjection than efore, or to become a and Ale. The sad results between them, apply so pertinently to the with different standards of living and were gaining a foothold new America pose. The white man from Europe hadj employer. The free Negro, without which these unworthy maneuvers have present aberration of the American Stalto a certain extent, different immediate cannot be separated from the class stru! too easy an escape, even if it were pos land or tools, had only one road brought, not the least of which has been inists on the subject of rank and slo Interests. The upper strum, the arist Igles in Hurope at that time. The dissible to brand him a chattel slave travel as a class and race to submit to t1 the disorientation workers in the simplest and most ele be in order.
servative, and at the same me the best kingdoms greater land rights only ac dentured slavery was the closest form ditions were not ripe for a successful One notices the superficial and in ening bourgeois influences over the class. tween the feudal land property relations man of Europe. It sufficed for the re white masters and obtain the land and mentary questions, justify a discussion organized, becomes a means of strength celerated the internal contradictions be to chattel slavery possible for the white revolution to free themselves from their of this ridiculous slogan from the coherent use of the now fashionable standpoint of the B of Marxism.
The labor bureaucrats, with their high and the developing bourgeois property cruitment of a supply of labor in the tools of production for themselves. As a terms, masses and leaders.
People salaries and petty bourgeois The first thing which must strike the have heard much and have conned by of life, act as standards relations. The commercial system of north, but was not suitable for cotton race they adjusted themselves to the agents of capital in Europe was on the upgrade and the race and tobacco production in the south. new condition. unassimulated obesrvant worker, and which in part rote all the frivolous attacks on leaders the labor movement.
for America reflected this. The discovery as wage a is The traffic in Negro slaves was just as slave: not held as chattel slaves; reflectslogan about rank and fle leadership, 18 but failed to grasp the application and under capitalism, only for a minority opment The Europe and logically expressed profitable as the traffic in indentured in the tide and looking at the new but of the working class to free itself from its growth in the colonies.
slaves. The chattel slave was more pro On the one side they stand at the head To a Russian Bolshevik. all talk bourgeois influences and ideas and to of the party by virtue of appointment of from above or from below, the dic understand the historical class position poly of land through the feudal estates America the bourgeois relation bad tarralers: part slave, part serf and part In Europe, feudalism ruled by the mon. But in the latter period of slavery in the land and as servants of the white fitable for the south under the conditions process by okeing out an existence on arbitrariness. It one is looking for an of the masses cannot but appearsclous workers, the vanguard of the class. ing the developing handicraft system, shown that the wage slave was by far and rule it with the most bureaucratic tatorship of leaders of the dictatorship of the proletariat. These are the con and the Catholic church and by hinder outstripped the other forces and had wage slave.
At the time of the transformation only ile he will never and the merest discussing whether the left leg of the own interest most effectively it is nec production. Free land in America played the conflict of these two antagonistic ficance of the freeing of the chattel trace of it in the stalinized party. The right arm is more useful to a man. jessary for these conscious workers to havoc with feudal relations, not just be systems reached its climar in the Civil staves. The history of American labor rank and file Communist who would ven. People bend every effort to elaborate organize themselves and to fight unitedly cause there was free land, but primarily War. The forceful expropriation of the cannot be written properly unless this ture to assert the modest right to say something extraordinary, and in their against the domination of the capitalis because with this free land developed chattel masters property in the form current is traced back and properly What he thinks in erltlelism of the lead zeal to be intellectual they become ride and their agents in the labor movement the bourgeois property relations. Bour of the slaves put an end to the most dan connected with the development of the oslons under party instruction would cases led by political parties, at least firse letter of the Marxist alphabet on of usable free land in a new country all the obstacles and give a free hand of the slogan which he propagates in the that the classes are usually and in most centralized workers party. It is the sole relations are made difficult by tree gerous internal enemy of the bourgeola white and negro proletariat and their wood be handed his passports. This is in modern civilized countries; that polithe question of working class organt smashes all feudal atempts at stability for capitalist penetration. The carry However, this did not remove allies in the coming revolution.
Westward expansion, internal northwhat has happened to many, and the tical parties, as a general rule, are led zation.
ern American development and colonial workers in the unions know it. Integr by more or less stable groups of the This principle of leadership, by When capitalism moves in at the same over was as heavy as a mountain, hin expansion could tolerate concessions to ity, common sense and a decent respect more influential, authoritative experl most conscious and resolute elements, apthe time dering all speedy solutions.
the white rulers of the south in return for ordinary human intelligence all argue enced members, elected to the most replies to strikes and other daily strugThe Problem of Labor Power for their political support as plantation The expropriation of the chattel mas owners. Rule the Negroes in your own against this sordid attempt to cool the sponsible positions, and called leaders. Eles as well as to the class struggle as Labor power and its control was the ters of thele property in the slaves, open state as you like so long as you support workers with an idea that is flatly con All this is elementary. It is simple and a whole. The agitation for the leader burning problem of the rules of the drew avenue for capitalist devel. your political hegemony, sala the northtradicted in the practices of the Amters platn. Why then all this rigamarote, ship of the rank and Ale negates the colonies, not only and securehty but a bere ets openent and new market for penetration ern capitalist; and besides you can make and all the other Posters this new Volapuk?
principle and sows confusion. By this control once obtained. Wage workers The dictatorship which the capitalists set more profits by your support than by But hypocrisy and dishonesty arel These citations are taken from The It only makes the leadership of the re would soon disappear as free farmers, up in the south after the Civil War soon resistance. And just as the freedom of prime ingredients of Stalinism; and, in Infantile Sickness of Left Communism. actionary agents of the capitalists more hunters and trappers. The white slaves reduced the chattel masters to submisaddition, contempt for the workers. Have the new members of the party ever secure. This harmful and anti Marxist and indentured slaves from Europe en sion to the new rulers of America. In many words and pieces of paper for the the American revolution amounted to so Abusing the faith of the conscious pro seen this pamphlet, and have the old slogan should be cast aside. Instead of abled the merchant and commercial fact, the dictatorship was becoming workers and farmers, so much did the lestariat molntethe Russiamo revolution and members for teen het The teachings to the Corowery sehere kera de ele un cheap labore power, suficiente couple on the green ander The former slave was take freedom ordbeacher war mehmet toe sanctify anything by mere command. This borated by the Comiptern under Lenin, struggle, should frankly contrast their be kept up by a constant influx from degree. The exploiters of the wage is what misleads them into such self con have been declared out of date; they are policy and their leadership to the policy Europe. The land to the west was an es slaves were not long in learning they had HUGO OEHLER.
tradictory policies in relation to the buried under the filth and confusion of and the leadership of the labor lieuten cape for this labor supply. At the same hundred times more in common with (To be continued)
general labor movement. Ruling within the Stalin regime. The Communist work ants of capital. This is the only way time, however, this resulted in devel the former chattel masters than with the the limited sphere of the party by deer who wants to find his way back to to teach the workers and help them inoping bourgeois agriculture relations in former slaves. The freedom taken by Got a sub for the militant cree, they forget that in order to influ the Lenin path might well begin with their struggle. There is no roundabout the northern part of the colonies. the slaves had to be checked; the dictaence the non Communist masses it is nec study, or a reexamination of the In. way.
In Europe, where capitalism was al torship against the chattel masters was Get Behind the Press Drive essary to convince them. And since the fantile Sickness. ready at work appropriating those who modified when their resistance was brok Send Us Your Contribution BUREAUCRATIC ULTIMATISM by LEON TROTSKY there enters the element of force. Lenin struggle And whatever is funny is fatal, particularly in matagainst party and Soviet bureaucracy was in its es ters concerning a revolutionary party.
sence a struggle not against the faulty organization Let us for a moment transfer the problem to Engof departments, nor against departmental red tape land, where the Communist party (as a consequence and inefficiency but against the apparatus laying down of the ruinous mistakes of Stalinist bureaucracy) still the law to the class, against the transformation of the comprises an insignificant portion of the proletariat.
party bureaucracy into a new ruling clique. Lenin If one accepts the theory that every type of the United (Continued from last issue)
the coals mercilessly. You can he lectured the counsel, from his death bed, that a proletarian Con Front, except the Communist, is counter revolutionInstead of aiding the social democratic workers to nor can any one else by means of ultimatums force trol Commission be created independent of the ary. then obviously the British proletariat must put find their way through experience, the of the the masses to skip the necessary phases of their own and that Stalin and his faction be removed from the off its revolutionary struggle until that time when But Communist party abets the leaders of the social dem political development.
party apparatus was aimed against the bureaucratic the Communist Party is able to come to the fore.
ocracy against the workers. The Welses and the Hil Bogdanov, however, did not discard his methododegeneration of the party. For various reasons, which the Communist party cannot come to the front of the ferdings are enabled to screen with flying colors their logy, and he subsequently founded an entire faction of cannot be dealt with here, the party ignored this coun class except on the basis of its own revolutionary exown unwillingness to fight, their dread of fighting, ultimatists or up and outers (Otzovists. they sel. Of recent years the bureaucratic degeneration of perience. However, its experience cannot take on a their inability to fight by citing the aversion of the received the latter nickname because of heir tendency the party reached the extreme limit. Stalin ap revolutionary character in any other way than by Communist party for participating in a common to call upon the Bolsheviks to get up and get out from paratus simply lays down the law. The language of drawing mass millions into the struggle. Yet nonstruggle. The stubborn, doltish and insensate rejecall those organizations that refused to accept the ulti command is the language of ultimatism. Every work Communist masses, the more so if organized, cannot tion by the Communist party of the policies of the matum laid down from above: you must first accepter must perforce and forthwith accept as infallible all be drawn into the struggle except through the policy United Front provides the social democracy, under our leadership. The ultimatists attempted to apply the past, present and future decisions of the of the United Front. We fall into a charmed circle, the present conditions, with its most important pol their policy not only to the Soviets but also in the The more erroneous the policies become, the greater out of which there is no way out by means of bureauitical weapon. This is just the reason why the social parliamentary sphere and to the trade unions, in are the pretensions to infallibility.
cratic ultimatism. But the revolutionary dialectic democracy with the parasatism inherent in its na short, to all legal and semi legal organizations of the After gathering into its hands the apparatus of strated it by countless examples in the most diverse has long since pointed the way out and has demonture snaps up our criticism of the ultimatistic pol working class.
the Comintern, the Stalinist faction naturally trans spheres; by correlating the struggle for power with icies of Stalin Thaelmann.
Lenin fight against ultimatism was a fight for the ferred also its methods over to the foreign sections, the struggle for reforms; by maintaining complete The official leaders of the Comintern are now ex correct interrelation between the party and the class. e, to the Communist parties in the capitalist na independence of the party while preserving the unity patiating with profound demeanor upon the need to The ultimatists, in the old Bolshevik party, neverj tions. The policy of the German leaders has for its of the trade unions. by fighting against the bourgeois elevate the theoretical level of the party and to study played a role of the slightest importance, otherwise counterpart the policy of the Moscow leadership. régime and at the same time utilizing its institutions; the history of Bolshevism. Actually the level is the victory of Bolshevism would not have been possie Thaclmann observes how Stalin bureaucracy rules by criticizing relentlessly parliamentarism from the gotten, distorted and trampled under foot. In the land sensitive relation to the class, Lenin continued those who do not recognize its infallibility. Wherein against reformism, and at the same time making pracmeantime, it is by no means difficult to find in the his fight against ultimatism even when he was in sup is Thaelmann worse than Stalin? If the working class tical agreements with the reformists in partial strughistory of the Russian party the precursor of the reme command, in particular and especially, as re does not willingly place itself under his leadership that gles.
other than the deceased Bogdanov the founder of ulti in Russia, he wrote, after two and a half years of tionary. Double dyed counter revolutionaries are in the eye because of the extreme weakness of the In England, the incompetence of ultimatism hits one matism or of the up and outers (Otzovists. As unheard of victories over the bourgeoisie of Russia and those who point out the balefulness of ultimatism. The party. in Germany the balefulness of ultimatism is sheviks to participate in the Petrograd Soviet, unless ions as a condition for their joining without the revolutionary publications. There is sufficient reason strength of the party and by its growth. But the the Soviet recognized beforehand the leadership of the cognize the dictatorship we would be guilty of stupid. why Stalin should as he does submit them Petrograd Bureau of the Bolsheviks)
passed would nid the mensheviks.
For the task of the come rigid censorship, particularly on their publication in of events and not Enamikul to the policies of the pressure a resolution in October 1905: to submit before the munists consists in being able to convince the backward foreign languages. Buleful as ultimatism is under all ship; not because of ultimatism, but despite ite Tradeeleadership of the party; and in event of refusal te ourselves from them by barrier of fictitious and capital of the party it breeds double disaster for the the decisive rôle; what does decide is the political in walk out of the Soviet. Krassikov, a young lawyer, puerile det sloganom (The INFANTILE Duszase of the listemor a reapp which weiterhin ere begin accumulating terrelation between the party and the class. Along in those days a member of the Bolsheviks. ist parties of the West, which represent only a min least, the victorious revolution has created material improving, because the German party has placed be read this ultimatum at plenary session of the So ority of the working class.
grounds for bureaucratic ultimatism, in the guise of tween itself and the class the thorny hedge of ultimaviet. The worker deputies, among them Bolsheviks During the last few years, however, the situation in an apparatus for repression. Whereas in capitalist tism.
also, exchanged surprised looks and then passed on the has changed radically. The arming countries, including Germany, ultimatism becomes con TROTSKY.
to the business in the order of the day. Not a man of the Communist party with sovereignity means the verted into an impotent caricature, and interferes with walked out of the Soviet. Shortly after that Lenin introduction of a new element into the interrelation the movement of the Communist party to power. Above (From WHAT Next? Vital Questions for the Gerarrived from abroad, and he raked the ultimatists over between the vanguard and the class: into this relation all, the ultimatism of Thaelmann Remmele is funny. man Proletariat. To be Continued)