SOCIALIST APPEAL JANUARY 6, 1940 NI By Dwight Macdonald Briey Basin he finger nie en en SPARKS SPARKS IN THE NEWS SOCIALIST APPEAL Vol. IV, No. Saturday, January 6, 1940 Published Weekly by the SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASS at 116 University Place, New York, Telephone: Algonquin 8547 heir by James Burnham Their Government To the nerve shattered, mutilated veterans of France, Belgium and Germany, to the broken Editora: FELIX MORROW MAX SHACHTMAN General Manager: Assistant Manager: GEORGE CLARKE SHERMAN STANLEY Subscriptions: 00 per year: 00 for six months.
Foreign. 00 per year. 50 for six months. Bundle orders: cents per copy in the United States; cents per copy in all foreign countries. Single coples: cents. Reentered as second class matter December 1988 at the post omice st New York, under the FIGHT WITH THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY FOR: job and a decent lying for every worker. Open the idle factories operate them under workers control. Twenty Bluón dollar Federal public works and housing program.
Thirty thirty 80 weekly minimum wago 80hour weekly maximum for all workers on all jobs. Thirty dollar weekly old age and disability pension.
Expropriate the Sixty Families.
All war funds to the unemployed. people referendum on any and all wars, No secret diplomacy.
10. An Independent Labor Party.
11. Workers Defense Guards against vigilante and Fascist attacks.
Full social, political and economie equality for the Negro people.
12 IS 11 in ket. Defend the Summing up the meaning of the various steps already taken by the imperialist powers in providing Finland with arms and international brigades. Hanson Baldwin, the military expert of the New York Times says. In ever growing measure, as the little war goes on, it becomes apparent that the Finnish front is, extension of the Western Front, a flank operation in the big war. and that events of such tremendous importance are being forged there that the big war may be decided or materially influenced by the outcome of the little war. New York Times, Dec. 81)
No more fitting commentary than this is needed on all the ballyhoo about poor little Finland.
The Finnish incidents are inextricably part of the Second World War, in which bourgeois Finland functions as an outpost of Anglo French American imperialism on the Russian border.
We have said this from the first. And from the first we stood on our fundamental position that, regardless of Stalin crimes, we defend the Soviet Union which is not the Stalinist bureaucracy but the economic conquests of the October Revolution against the capitalist world. The overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy is the task of the workers, first of all of the Russian workers, and can in no way be aided by a military defeat of the Soviet Union. Such a defeat would lead to capitalist restoration and not to the resurgence of the October revolution.
The Stalinist press, while more than anxious to demonstrate the extent of imperialist intervention on behalf of Finland, has had almost nothing to say about one move which, a competent technical authority informs us, is probably the most serious blow so far sustained: the Roosevelt government embargo cutting Russia off from aviation gasoline equipment and technical information. Russia had been purchasing most of its aviation gasoline here, but had lately been making efforts to acquire the technical plans and information necessary for producing this type of gasoline at home. It had not advanced far along that road when the embargo came.
The silence of the Stalinists about the importance of this blow necessary flows from their boastful theory of socialism in one country whereby the Stalinists maintain that Soviet Russia can in fact had already done so by 1934. build socialism in entire independence of world economy. This theory, on which the Stalinist bureaucracy arose and on which it will fall, is now once more demonstrated to be utterly false, inextricably tied to world economy and subordinate to it. War measures demonstrate this fundamental fact with especial sharpness. No amount of Russian made armament will save the Soviet Union from destruction by the imperialists, if that armament alone stands between it and the imperialists. Just as much as in 1917, the salvation of the Soviet Union depends on the world working class.
Either the workers of the belligerent powers will overthrow their ruling classes, or the Soviet Union will perish. Stalin has always sought a third road, but it does not exist. In his search for it he has isolated the Soviet Union from the world working class. History will testify that this was the worst of all his crimes.
1914 1918, two words can evoke an especially bitter, galling memory. Briey Basin.
Briey Basin was the symbol of the hideous what this huge difference in incomes means.
Roosevelt War Moves sham of capitalist war lies. The censorship hid Norman Thomas Converts Here we find that a consumer with an income of between 5, 000 and 10, 000 a year eats five times the truth about Briey Basin, but it was whis the Heathen Since the Last Congress There is no question about it. Norman Thomas as much food (in dollar value) as a consumer pered all over Europe for four bloody years has a remarkable talent for charming middle with an income between 500 and 750 (who is from army to army and across No Man Land. class audiences and for getting himself into the by no means at the bottom of the ladder, since Because the bombs and shells of War never headlines. These are gifts which any leader of at least 15 of all families have less than 500 a There was no recess in the war moves of the year. that he spends eleven times as much on came to the Briey Basin. Neither the French the left might well envy and try to emulate.
Roosevelt administration after the close of the Spebooks, 30 times as much on recreation, and 45 nor the German capitalist class cared to destroy painless socialism must be admired.
times as much on his children education. This cial Session. Repeal of the arms embargo was a mafor step in freeing the hands of the war makers for the iron and steel plants from which flowed the But have long suspected that one reason Mr. last item is especially significant, since such difintervention, but they did not rest on their oars. Nor materials of war. Human beings they flung away Thomas so readily fascinates and persuades the ferences in education intensify and perpetuate middle classes is because, in his eagerness to win class differences.
will they rest until this country takes its place as by the tens of thousands for one mile of torn them over, he leans so far over in their direction a full fledged belligerent. want here to review a People can get along without shoes, without up mud, but the factories and mines of the Briey as to make his own position to the political lay any clothes to speak of, without books and chairs toward war: few of the landmarks of recent weeks in the trail Basin, the smelters and steel plants of Lorraine, man, at least practically indistinguishable from are food and shelter. In these charts, the lower of the Saar and the Ruhr, these they kept un that of his audience. He is so very idealistic and respectable and so excessively anxious to be the income level sinks, the bigger is the percent it was revealed that the United States had played Two days after the scuttling of the Graf Spee damaged by mutual agreement. fair and to avoid stepping on any of the preju. age spent on food and housing, until when you the decisive role in forcing the German ship to leave After the War story came out. Puffy lib dices of his listeners, that what usually seems to get down to the lowest tenth of the families the the docks at Montivideo. The legal rights under instruggle for existence is so grim that three quart ternational law, in this case as in all others, are oberals exhausted their wind in execrations against happen is that the missionary leaves the meeting ers of the income must go for these two necessi scure. The de facto result is obvious: unilateral the hypocrisy of the Merchants of Death. least, that the way it looks to the cannibals. ties of life. Contrast this with the very wealthiest blow was struck at Germany, one of the belligerent Never again. the capitalists promised.
Remarkable confirmation of this theory comes families, those with incomes of 10, 000 and over, powers.
Now it 1940 and the Second World War. from a personal letter which last week happened who spend only 40 of their incomes on food and housing British cruiser chased a German freighter And capitalist economics hasn changed. For a rather conservative young married woman living The extent of starvation and semi starvation into Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The evidence of eyeUnited Press dispatch of December 28 reports in Chicago to an extremely conservative older among the masses in this land of plenty is strikwitnesses indicates that the cruiser violated not merely the safety zone established by the Panama While nightly blackouts prevail in other parts woman in New York. excerpt the section dealingly shown by a single statistic in this chapter: Conference but the territorial waters the United of Germany and France, in their industrial dis ing with a recent debate between Norman Thom.
the authors estimate that if the national income as and Hamilton Fish in Chicago one of a series States. This violation was supposed to be invesutricts no effort is made to cover up the blaze of being held throughout the nation: were increased by two thirds, expenditures on food would be 41 greater than they are today.
gated. The investigation has quietly dropped out of the news. Anyone who still thinks that Roosevelt is smelter fires shooting up in the sky. Nestling The thing was posted as a debate between This is particularly significant, they add mildside by side, the Saar Basin and the Briey Basin by being a symposium on Can We Keep Out of ly, since it is so often stated that the demand neutral might well ask himself what would have hapfor food is limited.
pened if a similar circumstance had taken place with turn out the implements of war, each under the war? They both forgot their politics (for the battleship German and the freighter British enemy guns but undisturbed. paradox. once) and were two good Americans agreeing Mass Markets and Mass Poverty the United Press dispatch calls it. No, not a par on the same subject. They both were of the The Law Is What You Make It All of this has ominous economic, as well as adox. Just a continuation of the 1914 18 agree would stop policing the Pacific, mind our own social, implications. Our mass production indus In connection with the war in Finland, Roosement between French and German capitalists not business, and stop trying to play God about tries depend on a mass market to make money. velt has been discovering the beauties of the device to hurt each other factories. Human bodies are affairs that did not concern us.
But the tendency of monopoly capitalism is to which he calls a moral embargo. There is no saneexpended like so many checkers. But factories left Thorne Hall with a feeling of Joyousness It was truly a wonderful evening, and concentrate income in the wealthy classes and to tion whatever in law or tradition for these moral reduce the masses to ever lower depths of pover embargoes. They are, in fact, directly counter to the are precious. The human bodies don cost the at being an American and an enemy of Revolu ty. Economically, this is ultimately fatal for a avowed intentions of the various laws on neutrality capitalists anything.
tion and uprising. Why? Oh why can people number of reasons, one of them being that the which have passed Congress; and, Indeed, are counaccept things Is they are when they know from masses spend almost all their income on con ter to the whole professed theory of American govpast experience how terrible can be the re sumer goods (thus keeping the market hum ernment, since they are actions taken solely by the sults.
ming) while the wealthy spend comparatively executive without any control or check whatever It is clear that this missionary to the heathen little and pile up ever bigger savings (which can from Congress or the Courts. who forgets his politics so conveniently will only be used to build more factories, whose Relief Floater never end up in the cannibals stew pot. Rather is products must then still further crowd the marAccording even to the Roosevelt Neutrality Act, he preparing bigger and better stew pots for fu ket. The handful of families at the top, those which passed the Special Session, no credits can be with incomes of over 10, 000 a year (more than granted to warring governments; transfer of title You can live anywhere in the United States ture missionaries who are foolish enough to in.
sist on remembering their politics.
half the total number of families in the country) on all goods for such governments must be completif you re not on relief. But if you re accused of actually spend more each year than their in ed before shipment from this country: and ships of being a reli registry cannot sail to ports of such governfloater God help you!
American Standard of Living comes, going deeper into debt the farther down The great argument of those who defend the What a relief floater. It an American capitalist system in this country is that the ments.
the scale their income 18, until finally the bottom ten per cent spend more than half again as citizen, out of work, who needs relief, and wasn American standard of living is the highest in the When Roosevelt argued in public for his law, he much as they take in each year. This piling up made the people believe that it would keep the world.
born in the place where he needs it.
of debt also works to undermine the mass mar free from involvement in the war. When war began Such orators should be referred to the second That what Rosario Chirillo found out. He chapter of The Structure of the American Econin Finland, presumably the Neutrality Act should Already the process of concentration of wealth have been invoked at once. But has a wife and four kids, and like more than omy, the survey by the National Resources Comwas not: Roosevelt has gone so far that half the national income goes has not found that a state of war exists in Finten million other Americans, he can find work, mittee on which commented last week. In this to the richest Afth of the nation families. And land apparently having the same view on this point But the wealthy taxpayers of Westchester Coun chapter, called The Structure of Wants, the these save from 10 to 50 of their incomes, as the Kremlin. Consequently none of the provisions ty where he applied for relief denounced him as of ours are charted in unmistakeable form. Here depending on the degree of their wealth. It is of the Act apply: credit can be extended to the belthese families, furthermore, and not the masses, ligerents, ships can sail to their ports, and so an Ohio citizen. It not legal for him and his we learn that the richest 20 of the nation fawhich will get the lion share of any future per on. The ground is laid for a whole series of those kids and their mother to eat in Westchester milles receive every year half the total income of iods of boom prosperity. An increase in con incidents from which the country, getting as much as the remaining people were told that the (unless they can pay, of course. sumer income of 33. write the authors, could Neutrality Act would guarantee avoldance.
80 of the families put together. Here we learn So they ordered him out. But Chirillo knows that half the familles in the country somehow be expected to result in an increase of only 25 But not merely has the law of the land been susin expenditures on consumption and an increase that the unemployed and their families starve in keep going on an income of less than 1, 000 of nearly 100 in savings. The only solution of pended. Roosevelt häs, through the invention of the year, and one tenth on less than 340 a year.
Ohio Ohio hunger has even made headlines in this particular contradiction of our monopoly moral embargo. a grandiose new law of his own.
These are family incomes, it should be rememcapitalism would be to increase the incomes of The moral embargo, proclaimed by Secretary of the capitalist press. So he won go he thinks bered. The average American family consists of the great mass of consuming families at the State Hull, prohibits shipment of airplanes, airplane he an American, not an Ohioan, and Ameri father, mother and two children. According to expense of the incomes of the handful of saving parte, bombs, airplane gasoline and gasoline refining cans don starve. these figures, half the people of the United States families. This is more or less what the left wing equipment and several other types of munitions tohave less than sixty nine cents apiece per day Westchester has filed an eviction suit to throw with which to buy their food, clothing, shelter, not both belligerents, which would have been in line of the New Deal wis hall heartedly trying to do up to the economic collapse that began in the with the older neutrality law but to one, to the out the Chirillos and their hungry kids and etc. Even alowing for the single individuals who fall of 1937. But since the wealthy families con Soviet Union.
they re going to use the same handy formula on are counted here as family units, you still would trolled the system, and since the New Dealers get something under a dollar a day per person, It might be thought that a moral embargo is mereother unfortunates who weren born in wealthy Bread or Books?
had no wish to basically alter this system, the ly a Platonic gesture or at most a propaganda meas fight did not get very far. It has now been comWestchester.
ure (which latter of course it also is. But the truth table on page eleven shows concretely just pletely lost in the martial music of the War Deal.
is that the moral embargo is a hard and fast kind Relief floater make a note of it, unemof sanction. It is enforced by confidentially telling ployed worker. It a neat run around for the armament manufacturers that if they break it they poor, invented by the bosses. Unless you learn will no longer get government orders.
to fight it, you re going to get a lot more of it.
Meanwhile the Chirillos are worrying about their four kids. But wealthy Westchester was By Paul Stevens Last week Roosevelt appointed Charles Edison Secretary of the Navy. Edison is a plain speaking thoughtful they didn file the eviction suit unhave been arrested.
man, who has broadcast his opinions everything He favors a til after Christmas. Good breeding, you know.
West African Negro Leader At the end of October the government turned two ocean navy. big enough to Interned by British over to the Franco regime in Spain 400 members else afloat, and he belleves, as he puts it, in protectWallace Johnson, the Orgauizing Secretary of of the International Brigade on the ground that ing this country by carrying the war as far as posthe West African Youth League and President of they were Spanish citizens because they had been sible away from its shores: that is, by sending the Sierra Leone Trade Union Congress has been given travelling passports by the Spanish repub soldiers to fight in Asia and Europe.
interned by the authorities of British West Afrilican authorities.
Even mild pacifists are rigorously prosecuted.
For some months Louis Johnson, though still rated ca. Johnson was arrested under a Defence Reguas Assistant Secretary, has been running the War Among them are some thirty one writers of inlation which provides that persons shall be deIn numerous articles during the last six monthstained when the Governor is satisfied that it is ternational reputation, who have been placed un Office. Johnson is of exactly the same war mongerder arrest.
ing breed as Edison, and has among his other accomwe have pointed the mortal danger to the necessary to prevent the individual concerned Arrests of revolutionary workers are legion. plishments the distinction of perfecting the Day labor movement hidden and not hidden any acting in a way prejudicial to public safety or At the same time, of couse, the bourgeois de plans for the war time dictatorship.
more either in Assistant Attorney General The detention took place several days after war featists around Flandin, Bonnet and DeMonzie Putting these two men in charge of the war maare left entirely unhampered in their agitation Thurman Arnold anti trust investigation of was declared. It is interesting to note that the chine is a complete answer to those scoundrels who for peace. with Hitler and. war against try to excuse Roosevelt errors as being due to the building industry. As we predicted, all his judge who ordered Johnson arrest is the man Soviet Russia. It is known that these circles still the influence of bad advisers who have managed to moves are directed against the unions and not the whom Johnson, as the candidate of the trade un ions of Sierra Leone, was to oppose in the coming manage to keep in touch with their Hitlerite bosses. The most elementary considerations of clections for the Legislative Council.
friends through interested neutrals, mainly Edison take their rightful place alongside of Colonel worm their way into the administration. Johnson and through Brussels.
Harrington, in charge of WPA, and Colonel Flemunion solidarity demand that every trade unionist Wallace Johnson is also one of the leaders of According to the social democrats, the war is ing, now running the Wages and Hours administraworthy of the name stand in solidarity with the the International African Service Bureau, whose being conducted over the issue of Hitlerism. That tion. Roosevelt, for all his smiles, deliberately picks building trades unions against the Department of several weeks after the outbreak of the war. That is, according to the New Leader in New York, for key positions those men who can and will carry the Herald in London and Populaire in Paris.
Justice and its men.
manifesto concluded with the following para out his own ruthless policies.
One would expect therefore, that social demoIt is a fact, however, that the CIO leadership graphs crats all over the world would take such war Taking advantage of a loophole in a law. The issue is more fundamental than Hithas said not a word against Arnold union bust lerism. It is a question of imperialism. Em just as seriously in one country as in another and competitive bidding on armament orders has, during campaign. It is a fact that the CIO News has pire and Peace are incompatible.
be ready everywhere to die in the struggle again ing the past few months, been dumped. Competitive It is for this reason we say that, if lasting st Hitlerism.
yet to carry an article on this vital question. In bidding was, it is true, often enough a farce, but now But Camille Huysmans, erstwhile General Sec. and then when there was genuine rivalry among the light of these facts, the appointment by John peace is to be achieved in Europe and throughout the world, then Capitalist Imper retary of the Second International and banner the companies concerned it did serve to cut someL. Lewis of one of Arnold G men the staff ialism must give way to a world Socialist bearer for years of the Belgian Labor Party what the armament profits. Now the companies can (P. has been contributing under his own write up their costs virtually to where they please, of the CIO dual building trades organization is Federation of Equal Nations and Peoples signature for weeks to the Nazi Koelnische Zeit10 per cent profit added for good measure, a shameful violation of union solidarity.
regardless of race, color and creed.
ung!
with no chance for a rival concern to put in a lower No wonder the imperialist masters of West The progressive role of the CIO consisted in Africa are afraid of Johnson. His program kinHow do you account for that? Very simple. It bid.
seems, that Belgian capitalism requires, for the its organizing of millions hitherto unorganized, dles the light of world revolution in darkest maintenance of its interests, a continuation at The bold and unprecedented act of sending Myand especially in the mass production industries. Africa.
present of a policy of neutrality. Therefore, in ron Taylor (ex Chairman of the Steel CorporaThere is nothing whatever progressive about its How the French Government tion, by the way) us diplomatic representative to Belgium, social democrats, far from being deadly enemies of Hitlerism, must help retain the friend the Vatican can only be understood as a means of attempts to raid the AFL jurisdiction in the Fights for Democracy.
ship of Hitler. Huysmans is simply taking the as mobilizing Catholic opinion for national unity in building trades. The craft setup in the building Some news about the struggle for democracy signment to get on the good side of the German preparation for war. The Catholic hierarchy, because trades results in numerous weaknesses in union as it works out in France: imperialists. Another of his social democratic partly of its leaning toward fascism and the tie up No less than 30, 000 German and Austrian refu.
friends courts the British imperialists, and so on. between the Vatican and Rome, is rather shy about organization, but the solution for that lies gees from Hitlerism are interned in concentra At any rate, for the social democracy the men Roosevelt coming war and the Catholics are the through the existing unions in the industry and tion camps. To safeguard the rights of the refuace of Hitlerism obviously stops at the borders of most powerful and best organized of the religious not in having those unions broken up by Thur gees an advisory body of well known exiles under Belgium.
man Arnold with the CIO afterward presumably Breitscheid was appointed. The committee has We leave to the New Leader to elaborate in groups. Roosevelt e gesture. which cost a few degreater detall the logic of this odd fact. We sug murrers from Protestants seems to have taken picking up the pieces and building a united union. never been consulted, but half of its members gest Mr.
Charles Yale Harrison for the job. them 100 per cent into camp.
Union Solidarity!
Soviet economy and get a