Socialist Appeal The Spanish United front On Housing Vol. II. No. 22. Saturday, May 28, 1988 Published every week by the SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASS at 116 University Place, New York, Telephone: National Office: Algonquin 8547 Subscriptions: 00 per year; 00 for months. Foreign: 50 per year. Bundle order cents per copy. Single copies cents.
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Entered as second class matter September 1937 at the post office at New York, New York, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
MAX SHACHTMAN Editor.
HAROLD ROBERTS FRANK GRAVES Associate Editors. STANLEY Business Manager.
FRANCO GP.
TALINIST The Pennsylvania Primaries 709 Felix Morrow Writes a Marxist Study of the Events in Spain that!
The working class, as an organized force, is today entering politics on a scale unprecedented in the history of this country.
The days of that particular brand of class neutrality, of political indifferentism, which was summed up in the Gompers reward your friends and punish your enemies formula, are drawing to a close Labor hat is in the ring. The question is no longer whether labor is to enter politics, but how and to what end.
The mere entry of labor, as an organized force, into politics does not in the least guarantee independent class action, or a strategy which will in actuality be to labor interest. Caught in the meshes of a false policy, labor political awakening can be utilized to forge new chains rather than new class weapons.
We are now going through a testing period. The first great expression of labor political upsurge is the stimulated Labor Non Partisan League with the strategy outlined for it by its leading national spokesmen. The first major experiment in this strategy was the Pennsylvania Democratic primaries.
It is of decisive importance for the labor movement to assimilate the results and lessons of this crucial experiment.
It is not a matter for hasty, over night comprehension. Let us, however, summarize those first conclusions which stand out even on the surface of the Pennsylvania events: It is not nearly so easy to capture the Democratic party machinery (the main line of present strategy) as some optimists of the labor movement have fondly imagined. The machine, sustained by patronage, graft, propaganda facilities, and more than a century traditions, is solidly entrenched.
The mere fight for its control is not a sufficient political and social motivation to lead the masses to break away from its old leadership in overwhelming numbers. Much more important: From the point of view of labor, the Democratic Party is not worth capturing even if or where this might be possible. It is like trying to capture a jail, only to discover when you have succeeded that you have locked yourself inside the cell block.
In order to make his campaign in Pennsylvania, Thomas Kennedy was compelled to come to terms with the notorious Guffey machine, to fight for a slate on which he was the sole labor representative, to make promises and engage in practises which decreed, necessarily, that even if he had won the nomination he and the mighty labor movement behind him would have found themselves the captives of old line Democratic politicians, not the other way around.
This is the case not only in Pennsylvania, but generally. Labor needs its own instruments to serve its own ends.
The political gun of another class, when triggered by labor, always backfires.
The Pennsylvania gun has already begun sputtering. The tactic leaves the Pennsylvania workers holding a very empty bag: for it compels Lewis to order them, now, to support in next autumn elections the very slate (JonesEarle) which Kennedy branded as the enemy and betrayer of the and the entire labor movement. On a still more extended level, the Pennsylvania experience again indicates, as has been so often demonstrated elsewhere and at other times, that even from the point of view of specific practical results, the primary and central business of working class politics is not to gain immediate and extensive electoral posts. Li present strategy makes immediate electoral posts its dominating aim, on the ground that this brings the quickest practical result for labor. Experience teaches otherwise. There is a qualitative as well as a quantitative factor in politics. Quite apart from longerSOCIALIST APPEAL May 28, 1938 time aims, even in terms of concrete practical results, labor gains most from Once Moreits independent organization and action as a class.
Such independent organization and action is what makes governments sit up and take notice, far more than speedy An Editorial elections to office accomplished at the cost of firmer and more conscious class Senator Robert Wagner, who fathered the Housaction at the cost, thus, of decreasing ing Act of 1937, says there is an immediate shortage rather than increasing the class strength of over five and one half million homes, with an addiof the workers.
tional need for over ten and one half million homes for the period between today and 1950.
Kennedy half a million votes did not Mr. Miles Colean, deputy administrator in charge win the nomination for him; but they of large scale housing for the Federal Housing Adminiare not forgotten, and they play a larger stration, admits that the program permitted by the role than those same votes would have Act is not an extensive one. With its lending power had if they had gone down the line for the State Committee slate. But that for a three year period limited to a total of 500, 000, 000, the Authority will not likely be able to produce same half a million votes, or a half or a quarter of that half million, would have more than an average of 40, 000 to 50, 000 dwellings a year.
been ten times more effective in advancing labor cause if they had been dynaOne For Every 100 Needed mited altogether out of the capitalist Forty to fifty thousand a year to meet an existing party political framework, and had been shortage of five and a half million homes, means one assembled in terms of some form, even house built for every hundred needed. drop in the if only partly developed, of independent bucket!
working class action.
And even those homes and houses who can buy To elect a senator at the price of them or rent them. Certainly not the millions who are weakening the class strength of the most in need of decent housing. They cannot afford workers does not for a minute fool the The large down payments and monthly installments; astute leaders of capitalism and reaction.
the others cannot afford the steep rents.
To deepen and invigorate the indepenAll the Housing Act does for them is guarantee the dent class power of the workers, profits of the banks and builders. Nothing more! In whether or not anyone is elected today Mr. Colean own words: Probably the most signifias a result whether, for that matter, cant contribution of the Home Loan Bank Board.
the process occurs on the parliamentary has been in rescuing savings and loan institutions and field or on any other: this and this alone increasing in some degree the funds available for home serves the interests, immediate and refinance.
mote, of the workers. Through this Roosevelt pours countless millions into bankrupt means and this alone will the voice of railroads through the Reconstruction Finance Corporlabor ring louder in the land.
ation. He insures bank loans and builders profits.
But he doesn do the first thing necessary to answer The Relief Crisis the burning housing question: BUILD HOUSES!
There Is Money Enough!
The statements currently being made by Harry Hopkins and other AdminisA minimum of FIVE BILLION DOLLARS is needed tration spokesmen before the Congresto launch a genuine government subsidized building sional Committees conducting hearings program, on a three point basis: sound construction, on the new Spending Program sum up Revolution and Counter Revo bolster the argumentation.
union labor, low cost, low rent. The five billion dollars In search conducted by the author.
to a recognition of an impending gen lution in Spain, by Felix Morrow. fact, the wealth of the material in writing an analytical his are not as hard to get as may be thought. They are eral crisis in the relief situation. Published by Pioneer Publishers, presented should make the work tory, one is inevitably confront in the hands of the Economic Royalists. of the SixThis impending crisis in pointed to New York (203 pp. 50 cents. a valuable source book on the ed with the shortcomings of a ty Families, and their associated multi millionaires.
only the more dramatically by the crises By ERNEST ERBER important governmental deerees chronological treatment of the They are there for the taking.
and the political declarations of events, since it does not permit already present in the states of Ohio and The need for a Marxist analysis the various parties.
exhaustive treatment of the The New Dealers talk a lot about the Economic Illinois.
and interpretation of the world. Approaching the question as special problems that come to Royalists and their social abuse of their stupendous It is absolutely clear, from Hopkins shaking events in Spain has long Marxist historian, Comrade the fore. Comrade Morrow solves wealth. What about doing something? What about a testimony itself, that the Spending Probeen keenly felt by those fight Morrow makes no pretense at the problem very ably by comserious capital tax that would reduce private control ing for the ideas of Bolshevism. being objective in the sense of bining a chronological treatment of socially abused wealth and help launch a substangram, even if passed by Congress with. This indispensable and long the bourgeois historian object of the events with special chapout curtailment or restriction, is no awaited work has made its apivity. Historical phenomena are ters devoted to specific questions. tial building program?
more than a drop in the bucket. The pearance with the publication of treated from the standpoint of the chapters devoted to the The Economic Royalists can afford it, be sure of 177, 000, 000 a month for will the above volume.
the class struggle and the roles military questions raised by the The revolutionary movement of the participants judged by the war give a new insight into the Millionaire radio manufacturer, Grunow, owns, not provide half the jobs that are and of the English speaking world criterion of the struggle for fundamental link between the will be needed. The provisions for cash will find in this book an invalua working class power.
according to Ferdinand Lundberg excellent study, relief will not keep millions from slow ble weapon in the fight for the This approach reveals the lead of the Loyalist government. America Sixty Families, a bath tub made from a starvation.
program of the Fourth Inter ers of the Spanish workingThe Summary single slab of Mexican onyx marble, costing 12, 000 national. Utilizing the concrete class in a sordid light. One is at In this situation, the purely legalistic and equipped with fixtures of 24 carat gold plate. The experience of Spain it drives a loss to find an analogy in his The author sums up the last and parliamentary activities now being home the lessons of the dif tory for such a concentration of six months of the struggle with various establishments of the Du Pont family have at least 723 bathrooms alone.
pursued by the Workers Alliance under the guidance of the Stalinists are criboration and class struggle as ing stupidity in one epoch. The The jailing of workers and Millions of families in the United States live in no abstract thesis could succeed roles of the cynical mercenaries peasants and the opening of the shacks and flats without even an indoor toilet!
minal. Lasser and Benjamin get their in doing.
of the Stalinist movement, the front lines by republican officnames in the paper, but the unemployed The present work begins, with bewildered opportunists of the ers to the fascists: that is the How the Plutocrats Live get neither jobs nor cash.
only a slight where the author loft off in his practical politicians of the November, 1937, to May, 1938.
the story of Loyalist Spain from overlapping, anarchist bureaucracy, The Southampton estate of the late Henry Rogers For the sake of the most elementary previous work, The Civil War Prieto school, the naivete and The reader, under the immehas a swimming pool that set him back a cool quarter self defense, if for nothing more, the in Spain. The latter, now un political dishonesty of the Ca diate impressions of the ugly of a million 250, 000. Millions of families in the time has come for the unemployed to snap out of it if they are not to. be literas a valuable introduction to the and the whining centrists of the treacheries, cannot but feel that United States do not even have running water at home!
present volume, since it gives a vacillating are analys, this sentence could sum up the Pierre Du Pont spent 25, 000 to have a single bush ally mowed down next winter or even wealth of background material ed at every decisive stage of whole experience of the Spanish brought to his Longwood estate. The late Rodman sooner by malnutrition, cold and di on Spanish political develop the masses under the banner of the Wanamaker spent 1, 000, 000 to have his estate decorsease.
ments since 1931, unavailable The author does not, however, People Front. But the reader elsewhere in such comprehensive limit himself to criticism. The is not left with a feeling of desated with fine specimens of small leafed box.
The unemployed movement, which has form. It is not, however, neces policy of the opportunists is con prir, despite the sordidness of How many workers and farmers families enjoy even in its past glorious and mightily effec sary to an understanding of the stantly contrasted to the revo: the story, for transcending all electric light in what they call home?
tive traditions of struggle, has got to events dealt with in the present lutionary strategy advocated by else is the unforgettable heroism the Fourth Internationalists. of the workers and peasants of The Henry Du Pont residence at Winterthur, Del. volume.
recognize that what is needed now is In his effort to achieve con Their strategy on the struggle Spain, deceived again and again has 150 rooms, 40 of them bedrooms. The Pierre Du mass action and not names in the paper. ciseness, the author has not fal for power, the economy, the na since they took to the road of Pont residence at Longwood, Del. has near 200 rooms Militant demonstrations, a series of len into the error of making untional and colonial question, the revolution to conquer or perish has some 30 separate residences, most of them very in 1931, but grimly and over 100 servants. The Vanderbilt family alone uncompromising sit downs, will open up substantiated assertions.
The international situation, and the determined funds which all the legislative cambook abounds with quotations military struggle composes a pro in the attempt. For as Comrade from a variety of sources which gram for the Spanish revolution. Morrow points out: Pessimism ornate. The main Marshall Field estate in Lloyd paigns from now till Doomsday will and skepticism are luxuries for Neck, Long Island, is estimated at a value of 15, 000, New Facts Presented never unlock.
the few. The masses have no other 000. The Philadelphia estate of the Stotesburys has Comrade Morrow many facts which are new even lives and to fight for their 145 rooms, 45 baths and 14 elevators!
presents choice except the future of their Peace Banquet to those of us who made a special children.
But how many families sleep two and three and even point of keeping informed on But this fight will only be more in one room?
The Keep America Out of War Comthe Spanish events. These facts, successful when the workers of Rich Must Be Made to Pay mittee, among the original sponsors of dug out of little known provincial Spain and the world will have which are Norman Thomas and the papers, government documents, learned the lessons of Spain so The government must have a housing program or the abundance of eye witness graphically portrayed in this its own. It must undertake to build small homes and Lovestoneites, were holding a planningaccounts, attest to the wide re book.
for peace dinner in Washington on apartment buildings. It must subsidize the building of Friday of this week, preparatory to a (Continued from page 1)
these houses, so that the millions of cruelly underpaid week end anti war congress to which the that the war danger is past. The can afford to move into them.
usual leaders in religious, educational, antagonism between Italian and The money for such a program is available. It is in farm and labor organizations were beFrench imperialism, heightened by the movement of Italian the hands of the fabulously wealthy plutocracy of the ing invited.
troops in Libya near the border United States, which now spends it on rosebushes, milThis precious committee of befuddled fruitful source of armed conflict. Continued from page 1)
On whom can the workers rely for elementary protection? On lion dollar swimming pools, gold plated bathroom fixpacifists opposes, among other things, a the Roosevelt government? Even when it bestirs itself to an tures, fairyland yachts, hundred thousand dollar booze Likewise Hitler ambition, in big navy program. Is that why they had no wise dampened by the Anglo investigation, it cannot bring to life labor dead. It is not parties and private railroads on its estates.
President Roosevelt, greatest big navy French demarches of last week labor government, but the government to preserve that system Demand that the Roosevelt government crack down planner of all time, on the list of guests end, to carve up Czechoslovakia out of which South Chicago massacres grow inevitably. Rely on those who are wallowing in wealth! Demand a cainvited to the dinner?
for the greater power and glory on the courts? They are the legal bulkwarks of private property pital tax that will make possible a program for wiping of the Third Reich, remains a Perhaps they think they can persuade live spark the neighborhood owners the sworn enemies of labor. On the police and National out the slums and really housing the shack and fireRoosevelt of the error of his ways! But of the European powder barrel Guard? They are the hirelings of capital, their strikebreakers in uniform.
trap dwellers of the United States!
would any serious prohibitionist think Europe is a series of armed The only defense of the workers and their rights is self defense.
of inviting whisky manufacturers and camps poised on the precipice of The only one labor can rely upon is itself! The only shield that brewers to join in a crusade against inwar. The piling up of incidents and the continuous nervous ten.
labor can create against strikebreaking thugs, strikebreaking toxicating liquor?
sion of the rival states are testi police the assassins of the workers is a WORKERS DEFENSE Here we get the true measure of the mony to the unbearable contra. GUARD, organized by the masses themselves, controlled by the under the Auspices of the pacifists. Afraid to lead the workers into capitalism in decay. The only sodictions born of the system of masses themselves.
SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY Only with such a Guard conscious, resolute, militant can action against war, they are always to lution to the problem is the raz labor defend itself and give a good account of itself in conflicts Analysis of the Communist Party National be found on bended knees praying to the ing of the state boundaries and imperialist war makers to keep peace.
the creation of a Soviet United with the armed murderers of capital.
Convention and the Stalinist Constitution And when war does break out, these States of Europe. This the soThat is the lesson of the South Chicago massacre. That is the appeal that labor fallen dead have written in their own For the United States cialist revolution and not a linegentlemen usually climb on the imperial up of the democracies against blood. Prayer and supplication for mercy to the enemy is for BEETHOVEN HALL ist bandwagon. Will Norman Thomas the fascist states for a new imserfs. Militant action is for men.
210 East 10th Street and Jay Lovestone explain what they perialist slaughter is the road to On to a Workers Defense Guard! Its creation will be the best are doing in this crew?
peace for the tortured peoples memorial to the heroic steel workers who were murdered a year FRIDAY, JUNE 3, AT 8:30 of the Old Continent.
ago.
War Menace Looming In Czech Crisis For Workers Defense! Mass Meeting