SOCIALIST APPEAL JANUARY 13, 1940 SOCIALIST APPEAL Vol. IV, No. Saturday, January 18, 1940 SPARKS IN THE NEWS Published Weekly by the SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBL. 15 sork, NY ASSN.
at 116 University Place, New Telephone: Algonquin 8547 Editors: FELIX MORROW MAX SHACHTMAN General Nanager: 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 copies: cents. Reentered as second class matter December 1989, at the post office at New York, under the Act of March 1879.
FIGHT WITH THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY FOR: job and a decent living for every worker. Open the Idle factories operate them under workers control. Twenty Billion dollar Federal publle works and housing program.
Thirty thirty 80 weekly minimum wage 30hour weekly maximum for all workers on all jobs. Thirty dollar weekly old age and disability pension. Expropriate the Sixty Familles. 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, 12. Full social, political and economic equality for the Negro people.
armaments, it is designed to submest people of the Stalin Friends By Dwight Macdonald The Friends of the Soviet Union have silheir by James Burnham ently folded their tents and melted away into the shadows of the past.
Government They claimed to number millions, only a few months ago. Loudly down the years they paraded, one after another, the swiftly changing slogof matches from marks to 11 marks. Nor did Roosevelt War Budget ans of their master in the Kremlin. They pro What Happened to the the Working People Front stop there in its claimed themselves the stoutest de iender of Workers Alliance?
headlong rush towards socialism. It marked salt For Whose Defense?
down from to 16 marks, and slashed the Stalin brutal purge and the witchcraft trials. As the Roosevelt Woodrum Bricker LaGuardia price of coffee from 20 to 16 marks a pound Now of a sudden they are gone. How and federal, state and local relics standards are This revolutionary action coming dangerously when they departed no one knows. Where and forced down to ever more subhuman ieveis, many close to outright expropriation was in line with by what vote and for what reasons they dissolved of the unemployed are no doubt wondering what the equally daring program of Comrade KuusiPoliticians ordinarily use key words not so much nen Finnish People Government. It is true to describe clearly what they mean as for the sake themselves, no one knows. Their liquidation came hit the Workers Alliance. How can it be that a the Kuusinen regime felt it prudent to proclaim of the feelings the words arouse. Imagine, for examto light just like the many liquidations they once militant union like the Alliance has coltheir respect for private property. After all, hailed in Moscow. It was casually announced in for an excellent brief description of what has they re respectable bureaucrats, not adventurists ple, what a difference it would make in the public attitude if armament expenditures in the budget were and putschists. But they didn hesitate to raise a statement about something else to the press by happened to the Workers Alliance we have only listed under the title Imperialist Aggression, instead of National Defense.
such revolutionary demands as the eight hour their chairman, Corliss Lamont, gift of the Six years the Stalinist power behind the throne of day and even vacations with pay. Nor can Comty Families to the Kremlin.
Now the funds for armaments which Roosevelt Alliance president David Lasser. Writes Com rade Kuusinen be blamed if these particular de The Unem mands happen to have been won, years ago, by has proposent 1, 800, 000, 000 are included for the for the fiscal year 1940 41 are worth In the course of a statement apropos of the rade Benjamin, in an article on the Finnish labor unions. He hasn been in Finthinking Dies Committee, Lamont said: The American ployed Movement in the The great masses are still subject to the land for a long time. regular expenses of the army and navy. 272, 000. Friends of the Soviet Union, practically dormant illusion that some easy and painless way But it must be admitted that Comrade Kuusi 000 is asked as an emergency deficiency appropriation can be found of solving their urgent prob nen made a bad mistake when he omitted from for this year, and 302, 000, 000 for emergency items as a national organization since 1936. actually lemos. Opportunist elements cater to these his revolutionary program any reference to col durin the coming fiscal year. These, totalling the colwent out of existence some time ago.
illusions. They encourage the workers to ossal sum of 2, 374, 000, 000, only begin to indicate the lective farming. He had excellent reasons for That was all. Just like the little paragrahs in true burden of war on the community believe that mass action is unnecessary, that this omission: he thought the Finnish landlords wouldn like it. But nonetheless it turns out to Stalin newspapers announcing that such and the leaders can induce relief authorities Interest on the public debt will come to 1, 100, have been a bad tactical error. For now, accordsuch a commissar or vice commissar was not Improve relief standards and eliminate ing to the Times of Jan. 5, the Manner000, 000. War and armament expenditures during the abuses. In place of mass action they employ past twenty five years have amounted to far more coming to his office anymore.
more or less friendly negotiations between heim Tanner regime is expected to introduce than the entire federal debt; and, since these expend the Russian collective farm system itself in What has happened to these friends at a unemployed leaders and relief officials, who itures serve no concelvably useful social function, order to prosecute the war more successfully.
are quite willing to encourage this kind of time when Stalin needs friends as never before?
is entirely legitimate to charge the whole interest relationship because they realize that it will Discouraging days for Comrade Kuusinen, payment against war. Pensions will come to 1, 200, What has happened to all the hoarse professors, whose revolutionary program turns out to be undermine the power of the unemployed 000, 000: at least three fourths resulting from war.
the Park Avenue pinks, the Fifth Avenue Fellow organization. The membership is deprived lagging behind not only the Finnish labor fakers but even behind the Finnish bourgeois governOut of the 1, 100, 000, 000 Isted for public works, a Travelers who filled the vociferous cheering sec of its initiative, its militancy is vitiated, illuasions are promoted, and its leadership bement itself. But anyway, matches now cost 15 minimum of several hundred millions will go to war projects. Similarly with the 1, 300, 000, 000 allotted for tion when the Kremlin Cæsar turned his wolves comes corrupted.
mark less in Karku.
work relief. The 1, 000, 000, 000 for regular operating loose on the last remnants of the old Bolshevik Comrade Benjamin is not confessing. He Correction expenditures includes at least a couple of hundred Party? Where today are all these writers of reso wrote these words in The Communist for June, Towards the end of last week column this millions for activities of State, War, Navy. Justice lutions, signers of telegrams, these sitters in soft history he himself is largely responsible for 1935. The history of the Workers Alliance a amazing statement occurred: The handful of departments that would have no place except for war.
families at the top, those with incomes of over seats who were to be the bulwark of the Soviet bears out word for word the accuracy of his anFigured very conservatively, this will give us 10, 000 a year (more than half the total number around 5, 800, 000, 000 which last week Roosevelt proland against those who traduced and attacked it. alysis. No. Comrade Benjamin is not confessing of families in the country) actually spend more They are gone, all gone in a great passing of but can he put off the day much longer?
each year than their incomes. This should the federal government. We can say without exaggerposed for war nearly two thirds of the budget of read: The handful of families at the top, those wind, gone with the friends of the Vincent Socialism Comes to Finland For weeks now the Daily Worker has been with incomes of over 10, 000 year, save halt ation that governments in the modern Imperialist world have become, first and foremost, war making Sheehan stripe. Anybody who troubles to look their income, while all families with 1, 060 or reporting Red Army victories in Finland, vicmachines.
into the crowded compound of liberals, pacifists, tories which have been suppressed by the rest less income (more than half the total number fakers, liars, cowards who have rushed with the of the press. So, too, with the advance of socialof families in the country) actually spend more What is to be Defended?
each year than their income. etc. etc.
war back into the folds of their capitalists mas ism into Finland behind the tanks of the Red ters will find all Stalin friends there. There, cialism reported by the Daily Worker day after Little Anthology of War When the phrase national defense is used about after all, is where they always belonged. Having day, not a word in the Times. But now at Poetry, No. to the minds of the ordinary cheered when Stalin dealt blows at the October last a stride has been made that is so gigantic The British Broadcasting Company recently country. We imagine bombers swarming over the broadcast to the Empire a new war song, which cities, troops landing in California and Florida, tanks revolution, they are ready to cheer now as the that even the lying bourgeois press doesn dare goes as follows: storming down from Canada or up from Mexico.
capitalist world gets ready to strike both at Stalin It seems that on December 11, 1939 historic Run Adolf, run Adolf; run, run, run; And it seems most natural to think should we not and what remains of the October revolution. date. the inhabitants of the Finnish village of Look what you ve been gone and done, done, have the means to defend ourselves our homes and done: Karku assembled and elected a committee of And these were the people who had the ef the Working People Front in Karku. The children from the invaders.
We will knock the stuffing out of you, frontery to call us enemies of the Soviet Union! Times does not specify just where Karku is, but Field Marshal Goering and Goebbels too.
Even if we approached the problem from a purely We answered them: we would defend the real we may assume, considering the progress of You ll lose your place in the sun, sun, sunt military point of view, and thought carefully about Soon you poor dog, you ll get none, none what the money is being spent for, these pictures Soviet Union the economic conquests of Octo: Red Army that it is fairly close to the border. none.
would rapidly disappear.
ber against Stalin and against the capitalist Working People Front swung into action You will flop with Herr von Ribbentrop, On the new program, for instance, are ten huge world, including Stalin friends. When the Boldly, it took over the goods of a local trading So run Adolf, run Adolf: run, run, run.
battleships either already begun or soon to be starttest came, we said, we would be found at our company and, after making a careful inventory The title of this song, according to the British ed. Two of them are at present designed to be of Broadcasting Company, is Run, Adolf, Run.
45, 000 tons displacement the largest in the world, posts while the friends would have fled to the of them, it proclaimed reduction in the price costing 90, 000, 000 each. Suin larger sizes are being enemy. It has happened.
debated.
But battleships are not suited to defend the shores of a country in a literal sense. They operate at long distance from their bases. Shore defenses feature submarines, mines, coastal artillery, mosquito boats, CRUDE, BUT CLEAR ENOUGH By Paul Stevens ete. No imaginable attack against the shores of the Under the title Hint to the Rich. an editorial in There is no doubt in my mind, Mr. Fazlul United States would require these battleships the New York World Telegram, Dec. 20, appealed for News Briefs from France explained to the Australian press, that power (though, for that matter, no attack of any kind funds for Finland: By a decree issued November 15, working We want in this connection to point out a very ful influences have been at work somewhere to against the shores of the United States is imaginhours are increased to 72 per week, with a maxable. practical proposition: prevent the Lascars from going about their imum of 14 hours set per day. For women and Those who have been loudest in their hate of children, the limit is set at 60 hours per week duties in the ordinary way. We must not for The truth is that the military expert idea of get that it was they, largely, who kept the sea communism have been the ones who have the most and 10 hours per day. defensive and offensive is completely different to lose. Now is the time for them to show their sen It must be remembered, in addition, that the routes open by serving loyally in the Great War. from that of the layman. For the expert, the job is timenta.
Can it be that the experience resulting from simply that of winning the given war; and he adopts lengthening of the work week and day doesn For the rich this is something in the nature of a serving loyally the continued enslavement of at all make for a larger pay envelope. Through a defensive or offensive strategy. shifts them, in bargain. They can get more than a dollar for every India has something to do with the powerful line with this single objective. He cannot permit hima complicated system of overtime pay taxes and influences at work?
dollar subscribed.
wage taxes, the essential features of which we self the sentimental luxury of preferring defense word to the wise and a hint to the rich are described in a previous column, the French workmerely because it gives him a better conscience, sometimes suficient. And as an Insurance proposi Under pressure from the labor ranks, who tion for the rest of the world Finnish Relief, Inc. that he received for 40 hours before the outer now gets the same pay for 60 hours of work have en masse defeated the government vol And, in the case of a war against another nation untary recruiting drive, the Australian Labor or nations, the fighting machine of this country is looks the best in our lifetime.
break of the war.
Party has officially gone on record against con designed to carry on war thousands of miles away Strikes are, of course, outlawed. But, more scription and against the despatch of forces from the shores. It is defensive only with respect to than that, revisions in wage rates can be made overseas. The leaders of the party are having an internal war: that is, to suppress a workers revonly by government decree.
difficulties, steering a course of social patriotism olution The shop steward system has been abolished.
in which they cannot go the whole hog.
The men can no longer elect their representaThose who honestly support Roosevelt national tives. They may be represented only by officials Wheatgrowers in Victoria and Western Ausdefense program because they believe its object is of the loyal trade unions that is, unions that tralia say they are determined not to deliver to safeguard home and children are, whether they their wheat unless the Commonwealth govern like it or not, upholding a policy of aggressive exter.
The English haven had to send new Black how been purged, with police aid, of all nonment agrees to increase the guaranteed price.
nal war. This can be clearly seen from military The difference in working conditions under the and Tan contingents to Ireland so far, because French democracy and the Nazi dictatorship item in the Sydney Herald.
analysis alone.
this time they ve got de Valera working for them. is practically at the vanishing point.
The farmers are falling in line with what apo And Whose Nation?
pears to be a pretty definite movement to give Having taken his pieces of silver from his the British rulers a pack of headaches.
As always, the military objective is subordinate to English masters, the present day head of the we mentioned here last week that the agitation of the bourgeois pacifists Yike Flandin, dethe social and political objectives. The government is Irish government is turning on his former com Monzie and Bonnet is tolerated by the governbuilding an aggressive military machine, designed for external combat far from the shores of this ing less than Black and Tan savagery.
also for the Paul Faure wing of the French Socountry, because the government has an aggressive cialist Party (S. It must be remembered social and political policy.
With the aid of a hysterical campaign seeking that Paul Faure hailed the Munich peace. On From this more fundamental point of view, it is to tar the fighters with the Nazi brush the other hand, the Leon Blum wing of the party, correct to speak of national defense, just as the (de Valera himself was called an agent of the although completely patriotic, is being harassed By Arthur Hopkins armies and navies of France and Germany and EnKaiser the last time. de Valera has put members are being sent to the front, Blum was, William Knudsen of General Motors says: gland are all part of their national defenses. The The place of America today, the American purpose of the armed forces is to defend the interests through the Dail a law authorizing imprisonment of course, militantly anti Munich. All of which Standard of Living, depends more on the skill of the nation; and nation here means the imperialist without trial for any persons whose liberty is would seem to indicate that the Daladier regime of our mechanics than any other class. That government, representative of the big bankers and deemed injurious to the safety of the State. leaving the door open towards the conclusion of why, no doubt, the mechanics Knudsen auto industrialists, of the Sixty Families.
workers, for instance don get the American What else did the Black and Tans try to enforce? a truce with Germany, in order to direct its guns Standard of Living.
But defense of these interests requires offense against the interests of the peoples of South AmeriValera police, cheered on by the Cosgrave elsewhere.
Said the late Edward Filene, multi millionca, China, and against rival powers and, above all. opposition, are hunting down members of the Troubles of the British Empire offense against the interests of the people of the IRA. and all known friends and sympathizers Jacket are the lowly Lascars, those native East aire Boston merchant: Why shouldn the American people take half my income away from United States. The new budget shows this last point of the struggle for Irish freedom. De Valera Indian seamen who are the backbone of British me? took it all away from them!
in the most brazen fashion: in order to achieve funds.
for national defense, the budget takes funds away challenge has been taken up by his former com shipping in the Far East The Lascars are simply walking off the ships bedbug doesn reach maturity until it has unemployed. Roosevelt first line of national de from the people, from the starving and homeless rades, and days of struggle in the midst of when they reach ports which seem to them taken five bites out of a human being. And European war are ahead once more in Ireland: be approaching the war zone. They are intent boss doesn start getting rich until he has at rights of the people of the United States.
fense is his attack on the livinng standards and De Valera is teaching the bold revolutionists not to shed one drop of blood for the Empire. least five persons working for him.
of Ireland had they need to learn it? that had quit refused 100 per cent increases in pay It is in every way legitimate for the people to wish King George VI is delaying his visit to Durbar, to defend themselves and their homes and their freecompromise with England will never make their and preferred to remain on the beach. The gov India, to be crowned emperor because the way dom from any and all enemies. But the chief enemy country free. It is our fervent hope that they will ernment had to import by airplane from Cal the Indians are acting up, he doesn quite know how they ll do it. Some of his Indian subjects not the Mikado, but Roosevelt himself and his governattacking the people neither Hitler nor Stalin nor also learn in this struggle that they will never win cutta, a certain Khan Bahadur Fazlul Karimonly have nivited him to come, but have dared ment: it is his men who are smashing labor and that freedom in isolated skirmishes, however darance. However, he has met only with partial suc him. They want to crown him, all right. democratie rights, his whip that is slashing relief ing or audacious, or by bomb, grenade, rifle, and cess. Despite his presence, a Lascar crew held a funds, his party that refuses to establish humanly dePEACE LOVER cent wages and hours standards, his general staff machine gun alone. When they rally the workers public demonstration in Sydney at the end of November, declaring its firm intention to stay The United States government has landed its that is completing its plans to hurl the youth of of all Ireland behind them in open, united, mass out of the war and demanding relief pending re troops on foreign soil on more than 100 occa the country into death far away, for the sake of his struggle, they will find the path to victory. patriation to India.
sions during the past 115 years.
program of imperialiat expansion Two of a kind The Stalinists are among those most directly responsible for the million job cut in the Roosevelt budget. It is a question whether Roosevelt could have dared do it, without their pro Roosevelt propaganda in the labor movement during the last four years, their conversion of the Workers Alliance into a company union serving Roosevelt, their deliberate lying to cover up his anti labor acts. To what lengths they went in the service of Roosevelt can be seen to mention but one instance by reading the reports in the Daily Worker during last summer nation wide WPA strike. All of Roosevelt own acts, they laid at the door of the Tories. Now they are shedding crocodile tears that Roosevelt has gone over to reaction. It is obvious to the naked eye, however, that if tomorrow Roosevelt beckons a finger to Stalin, the Stalinists will go back to singing his praises and covering up his war against the unemployed.
The Stalinist system of lying is a revolting spectacle. It is not, however, limited to Stalinists.
Witness, for example, the behavior of the SocialDemocrats, who hold themselves to be at the opposite pole from the Stalinists. They are distinguished from the Stalinists in their devotion to truth they say. Here is the kind of truth they peddle, in an article dealing with Roosevelt address last week to Congress. It no secret that the editors of the New Leader think Roosevelt one of the greatest leaders this nation has produced, despite his party affiliation. But one man doesn make a movement; one man idealism, one man striving for the one third of a nation doesn feed, clothe, and house the millions of jobless. Roosevelt has done a good job. He has revolutionized, to a degree, the American philosophy of government.
has set progressive standards of public relief, labor relations, public health and housing, from which even the ebullient hopefuls can retreat. But it isn enough. He has been sabotaged by his own party, and the men of other parties who were elected to care for the people during the thirties. New Leader, January Such is the comment, of a paper which calls itself socialist, on a speech in which Roosevelt served notice that he was taking the lead in cutting down relief, a speech supplemented by specific figures the next day wiping out a million jobs on WPA and PWA! Can one put it down to a lack of understanding, to a process of honest mistakes? No! No more than one could find a drop of honesty in the Stalinist whitewash of Roosevelt or their present line.
The war mongering editors of the New Leader and the labor skates they serve, like their brothers in the Second International in Britain, France and Belgium, are part of the war machine. For the sake of a few crumbs from the table of the democratic capitalists crumbs which go to these labor leaders and a thin strata of the aristocracy of labor, but of which the vast majority of the slaves in the British, French and American empires are deprived these scoundrels are doing what they can to put the workers in uniform and keep them quiet and obedient in the trenches. To do that requires systematic lying about the realities of democracy.
From this well of conscious corruption comes this latest lie in the New Leader.
We beg to be excused from the impossible task of deciding which is worse, a Stalinist or a Social Democrat, Earl Browder or Louis Waldman. The fact is, they are two of a kind.
In the World of Labor De Valera Turncoat rades of the Irish Republican Army with noth mentore veritate tom hoge do te et Labor Looks Through The Press