SOCIALIST APPEAL FEBRUARY 3, 1940 For Free Poland In the World of Labor Seven Years Ago They Let Hitler Take Over Power By GEORGE STERN On the night of Jan. 30, 1933 in a great semicolonial metropolis a former member of the Central Committee of the German Communist Party paced an apartment floor pale and strained, his hands fisting and unfisting convulsively. It is impossible! he cried again and again. Impossible! Without even a fight! It is impossible!
But it was not impossible. It was already a fact.
The great Communist Party with millions of follow.
ers had melted away before Hitler.
It was the most critical hour in the post war history of the working class of Europe. And in that hour the workers of Germany were left leaderless. The chief of the vast Social Democratic party and trade unions were grovelling before the new chancellor of the Reich, offering him support which he contemptuously spurned. The great Communist apparatus crumbled, its leaders panic strickenly seeking refuges in the homes of their liberal friends. There was no serious resistance. The criminal misleadership of more than a decade had led the workers of Germany into the black pit of Hitlerism. few days later our friend, the ex Central Committee member, had regained his composure. Like all of Stalin puppets, he had all but lost any capacity he had ever had as an independent revolutionist. Never mind, he assured me. give Hitler two years and then our turn will come. Two years, not more.
This week Hitler celebrates his seventh year in pow But nearly four times two years have gone by.
er. Each one of those years has been like another turn in the pitiless vise that holds the German workers helpless. And the workers of the entire world are paying with lifeblood drained out in economic misery and war for the fatal errors of the working class leaders who made Hitler uncontested victory 12.
possible.
Defend Joe Ryan SPARKS IN THE NEWS SOCIALIST APPEAL Vol. IV, No. Saturday, February 8, 1910 Like all the other creatures of the Versailles Published Weekly by the system, the regime established in Poland after By Paul Stevens SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASS at 116 University Place, New York, the last war was a monstrous abortion which Jewish Bund Leaders carries an article written by Paul Spaak, 80Telephone: Algonquin 8547 placed millions of Ukrainians, Germans, Byelo cialist Foreign Minister of when he was still hot selgium, in 1933 The article is Russians, and Jews at the mercy of a ruling Arrested by Stalin in Poland entitled Against National Defense and winds Editors: clique of Polish colonels and landlords who gov From a New York anarchist paper in the Yid up with the following ringing words: FELIX MORROW MAX SHACHTMAN erned with rifle and knout for nearly 20 years. dish language the Freie Arbeiter Stimme In any case, always, everywhere, without General Manager: we learn of the arrest in Grodno, Soviet Poland, Assistant Manager: The mass of Polish workers and peasants sur of two leaders of the Jewish Bund. The Bund weakening, we must refuse to abdicate before the SHERMAN STANLEY GEORGE CLARKE fered along with their brothers of other nation is the Jewish Socialist Federation which operatso called general interest and continue with our propaganda along the lines of this clear and coralities under the lash of Pilsudski and his suc ed for some four decades in what once was the rect slogan: No national defense under a capRepublic of Poland.
Subscriptions: 00 per year: 00 for six months, cessors, Smigly Rydz and Jozei Beck.
italist regime.
Foreign: 00 per year. 50 for six months. Bundle Involved in this case are not old line leaders This explained the easy pricking of the Polislı Incidentally, Action Socialiste was also the orders: cents per copy in the United States: cents per copy in all foreign countries. Single coples: centa.
name of Spaak paper in his radical days.
bubble by Hitler war machine. This was why of the Bund. who made their peace with the the much vaunted Polish state fell to pieces an itants. Hurvitch and Shifris, the two arrested Soldiers Attack Meetings Reentered na second class matter December 1939. at the post office at New York, under the der the first impact of a military blow. Today the Bundists, are in their early thirthes Rotho Were Of Militants in Australia Act of March 3, 1879 Poles have passed under the Nazi yoke. The active propagandists engaged in the day to day Ukrainians and Byelo Russians have fallen to struggles of the workers. Hurvitch had been the From the Sydney, Australia Herald of Januleader of the joint fraction of Jewish, Polish and ary we learn of some exciting activity on the FIGHT WITH THE SOCIALIST the tender mercies of the Stalinist bureaucracy Byelo Russian socialists in the City Council of part of our Australian comrades.
On New Year Day, the Communist League WORKERS PARTY FOR: and the Jews have simply exchanged the Polish Grodno. In the course of his activities, he was arrested time and again by the government of of Australia (Trotskyists) as well as the Stalin yoke for that of the Nazis and of Stalin.
the colonels and spent a good part of the last ist party held mass meetings on the famous Job and a decent living for every worker.
Meanwhile on French soil the Polish colonels few years under the republic in Colonel Beck Sydney Domain, the center of radical activity in Open the idle factories operate them under have set up a government in exile to retain the shifris to six years imprisonment by Stalin diers and sailors appeared, with a following of jails. Now he has been sentenced to fifteen and workers control. Twenty Billion dollar Federal publlo works possibility of re establishing their power after iberators.
about two hundred. The leaders declared their and housing program.
the Allied victory they hope will result from the Stalin cannot cover up this crime and the hun intention openly: they were out to break up the Thirty thirty 80 weekly minimum wage 30 present war. They have brought the aged and dreds of others like it by pointing to the nation two meetings.
hour weekly maximum for all workers on all jobs.
quavering Paderewski out of retirement to bealization of the land in the occupied territories Soon some 15, 000 workers gathered on the Thirty dollar weekly old ago and disability Domain and a battle ensued. Only the immedicome president and through him offer the Were Hurvitch and Shifris enemies of the expropriation of the landowners and of workers pension Polish people once more their lush promises. control in the factories? Their years in jail are ate appearance of special details of police preExpropriate the Sixty Familles vented the soldiers and sailors from a gruesome fate at the hands of the enraged workers, As it Respect for democratic ideas will be the guid testimony to the contrary to stalin their crime All war funds to the unemployed. people referendum on any and all wars. ing principle of future Polish regimes. dem lay in their opposition to his bureaucracy. We is, several were sent to the hospital.
solidarize ourselves with these victims of the No secret diplomacy.
ocratic equality. individual liberty. Contrary to their usual practice, says the and with the many others who languish Herald, the Communists flew no flags, but from 10. An Independent Labor Party.
But who are the people for whom Paderewski in Stalin jails for their working class convicspeaks? Permit us to take as authority the organ of the Soviet Union demands a relentless struganother platform close by banners were displayed 11. Workers Defense Guards against vigilante and by the Communist League of Australia. One sign Fascist attacks.
of the ultra conservative and ultra ultra subserv gle for the overthrow of the despots in the Krem read: Defend Free Speech and another Build Full social, political and economie equality for Workers Defense Guards.
the Negro people.
ient Jews of this country, the American Jewish lin.
Committee Contemporary Jewish Record, New Paper Issued Many rank and file Stalinists made common which finds in the regime of exiles at Angiers, cause with our comrades around their banners.
Discussions around the slogan Build Workers France, the same gang that subjected Jews to By Our Belgian Comrades Defense Guards took place for hours after the vile oppression long, long beiore Hitler rose to Once again the neutral Belgian government demonstration had ended. The slogan had appower. It discovers confirmed anti Semites in has come down on the heads of our valiant com parently gained considerable popularity.
rades of the Revolutionary Socialist Party. Jitthe cabinet sporadic and very minor. in tery over the rumors of an impending German fact that the workers of the Australian metropThe demonstration itself is testimony to the Thurman Arnold, head of the anti trust stances of anti Semitism in the Polish legion. invasion the government has struck. on the olis are continuing to retain their anti war milhome front. La Lutte Ouvriere, official organ of union busting division of the Department of No, these are not the people who will build a itancy, which is in itself a highly encouraging Justice, whose inventive brain has cooked up free Poland. They and their mentors in the Al the is no longer permitted to appear.
sign. That our comrades, mostly young workers Not at all nonplussed by the action, our com in their twenties, knew how to mobilize this milenough pretexts to apply the Sherman Anti lied chancelleries seek only the opportunity to reTrust Law to over 400 trade union leaders now establish their power over the mangled and thrice made issue the Brussels Federation of the party itancy is evidenced by the newspaper account and augurs well for the further development of under indictment, with any number more indict oppressed minorities of that country. No, a free rub it in, the first issue of Action Soclaliste that section of the Fourth International.
ments to come, has found a new justification for and independent Poland will be created by the this policy Polish workers and peasants in common struggle And finally, he said in a speech last Saturwith the masses of Byelo Russia and the UKday (quoted in the New York Times, Jan. 28. raine and the workers of Germany and the the Sherman act can protect the labor movement It will be created when the 25, 000, 000 Poles from enemies within its ranks. Without the establish their own state in which no other race by Dwight Macdonald intervention of the Sherman act, it is possible for or national minority is oppressed, a state which Economically, this is ultimately fatal for a numselfish men within a labor union to work them will take its place with the other free nations and Good News for Stockholders ber of reasons, one of them being that the masses selves into positions of autocratic power and ter people of the continent in a United Socialist The Department of Commerce has just released spend almost all of their income on consumers figures on last year national income which we States of Europe.
goods (thus keeping the market humming) while rorize the members of that union into helpless may expect Roosevelt to turn to political advan the wealthy spend comparatively little and pile submission to activities the purpose of which is tage in his next fireside chat. According to the up bigger savings (which can only be used to only personal power.
Department calculations, in 1939 total individbuild more factories, whose products must then ual incomes came to 69, 700, 000, 000, which is still further crowd the market. This was a clever thrust at Joe Ryan, head of 3, 400, 000, 000 higher than the 1938 total. On the International Longshoremen Association, ward and upward with the New Deal!
On this my correspondent comments: After the latest to be indicted by Arnold. Clever, for it the initial splurge of plant expansion following But there is one detail the President won the war, the percentage of savings which went dwell on the fact that dividend payments last into new plant dwindled and that portion which he terrorizes militants in his union, and that his year were 15 per cent higher than in 1988, while went into non productive speculation (and capital personal power is a prime consideration with export) increased. This trend, of course, has been The Sailors Union of the Pacific is unques the amount paid out for wages and salaries inexaggerated in the past ten years and especially him. Clever but false tionably in the vanguard, not only of maritime This means that the capitalist system is more since 1937. The second war may offer the possiRyan role is, like that of all trade union bu unionism, but of the labor movement as a whole. unbalanced than ever, since wage earners spend bility of profitable plant expansion, but this is reaucrats (including Stalin. a dual one. On the It survived and flourishes mainly because it practically all their income, while investors save doubtful. Certainly it will not be in proportion one hand, he operates for his own personal pow learned how to struggle correctly against two up to as much as half their income. There is too to that of 25 years ago, and it will be confined to semi heavy and heavy industries er, beating down opposition within the union; to evils: Stalinism and the government va ings) already piled up seeking a profitable out growing, lusty capitalism goes through the keep his power he will make concessions to the rious union busting moves.
let for investment. What is necessary for the bosses which are inimical to the interests of the process you describe, but not a declining one.
Not everybody in the union, however, learned system health is more markets, that is, more think it would be more correct to say that the union membership. On the other hand, however, the lessons of those struggles. Some vocal people spending. The dynamics of capitalism, however, enormous capital accumulation, rather than havthe union must exist and flourish, and that means ing the domestic effect of increasing technologwrote and presented a resolution supporting American Economy pointed out (p. 91. As in ical unemployment primarily, instead is a mainits members must benefit from it, if Ryan is to poor little Finland and condemning all at come expands, both expenditure on consumption spring in the war machine seeking new outlets have any power at all. Hence the purpose of tempts to keep us unprepared. and got it and current savings can be expected to increase, in international spheres.
Ryan activities is NOT only personal power. adopted at Seattle and Frisco membership meetbut the increase in the latter will be likely to be very much more rapid. The prediction has accept the emendation: American capital now His personal fate is tied up with the destiny of ings.
been borne out by the figures on 1939 income. presses for investment outside rather than inside the union. And a blow by the bosses or their gov We know that the mere passage of such a resthe boundaries of the But would add an emendation of my own: that there is a third ernment against Ryan is a blow against the olution at a membership meeting may not mean Behind the War Drive field into which capital has poured with great union.
much: many militants may not be present, nobody This matter of over saving is the theme of volume in the last few years: investment in govRyan crimes against the trade union move expects such a resolution, etc. and the resolua letter sent me recently from Akron: ernment debt. have repeatedly noted in this ment, arising from his autocratic rule, are not tion gets by. Nevertheless, it is an alarming tional Resources Committee were quite favorably Your two columns on the report of the Na column the huge percentage of banking resources now invested in government notes and at all the reasons why the government is prose sign that this can happen in such an outstand received here. question one statement you make bonds. This has implications both as to the war cuting him. On the contrary, he is indicted for ingly progressive movement as the in the January issue. You write of the polariz drive and as to the advance of fascism in this activities on the OTHER side of his dual rolecountry.
Any sailor who wants to know concretely ing tendencies of poverty and wealth, and say: activities which are building his union. He is in what is being defended in Finland should go dicted, not for lack of democracy in the union, aboard some the Finn ships that are now DOWNTOWN LABOR FORUM but because for the sake of the union he is mak docked in American ports. You will not find Friday Feb. 1910 at p.
ing trouble for some lumber companies. That in worse conditions anywhere. members got FELIX MORROW this particular case the lumber companies are try so many raw deals from the Stalinists that they Editor Socialist Appeal Will speak on ing to hide behind a CIO local, which has in hate anything connected with Stalinism BUT JOBS NOT BATTLESHIPS vaded the jurisdiction of the longshoremen and we like to remind them that they never joined announces two significant lectures series beginning teamsters, does not obscure the fundamental up with the cops, Dies or any other boss govMONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1940: Downtown Labor Center fact: the government is after Ryan because the ernmental crowd in fighting the Stalinists. But 51 7th St. New York City government is the agent of the bosses whom that just what anybody does who thinks he Joint Auspiices Downtown THE TRADE UNIONS FACE THE WAR Ryan is fighting fighting Stalinism by lining up with Hoover, Lower East Side Branches. SWP.
Mondays, 7:15 8:40 The United States government is not the um Roosevelt, Chamberlain Co. in Finland.
Three lectures on current tasks of progressive trade pire that Arnold pretends it is pretends, because As for keeping us prepared that what the RUSSIAN BULLETIN OUT unionists in America, to be given by Frank, he knows better. One oi the persons who heard Maritime Commission job is in the merThe Bulletin of the Russian OpTrade Union Director of the New York Local of Arnold speech asked him why he didn go af chant marine. And if you really believe in preposition is out. The current issue the contains several articles by Leon ter the California banker farniers to rectify paredness under a capitalist government, then Protsky, including Hitler and II. DIALECTICAL THINKING the conditions depicted by The Grapes of the Maritime Commission is absolutely right: the Stalin Twin Stars and Again Wrath. Arnold answered, those matters are Mondays, 8:45 10:15 and Once Again on the Nature of merchant marine must serve as an auxiliary to the Soviet State.
Three lectures on the philosophical basis of Marxlargely a matter of personnel in the office oi the the navy, and that means that the needs and deThe Bulletin is available in ism, by Wright, American translator of sires of the sailors must give way before the New York at the following book Department of Justice. That a bald faced lie.
Trotsky political works.
They have just the personnel intended for the needs and desires of the shipowners and their stores and newsstands: Modern ADMISSION FIFTY CENTS PER SERIES, department a personnel to fight against unions government. But anybody who defends the Mar Book Store, 27 University Pl.
OR TWENTY FIVE CENTS PER LECTURE and protect bosses.
itime Commission is correctly called a fink. Take Foreign News Depot, Times Sq Bldg. Biederman Book Store, We ve got our grievances against Ryan. But your choice, brother sailors: if you re for pre 2nd Ave. at 12th St. Meisel AU Lectures Take Place At: they are grievances WITHIN the labor move125 WEST 33RD STREET, Room 201, paredness, you re for the Maritime Commission Book Store, Grand St; Rand ment. Against the bosses, and against their and all its crimes against the sailors.
School Book Store, 15th St. and Register now in person or by mail at the school office, 5th Ave. 3rd Ave. and 14th St.
116 UNIVERSITY PLACE, 3rd floor, agents like Arnold, we ll defend Ryan uncondi We don thinks that resolution speaks the NW. 6th Ave. And 42nd St.
tionally mind of the sailors. SE. is unquestionable that Ryan is an autoerat. that Sailor Beware Remember the Lessons!
We have to understand clearly why and how Hitler and his Fascist legions were permitted to seize power in Germany. Memories are short and it is safe to say that to the working class youth of this country the years that preceded Hitler rise to power in Germany are a total blank. Yet those years are rich in revolutionary lessons.
Hitler was the direct consequence of the failure of the workers revolution in Germany and that failure was the failure not of the German workers but of the parties which led them, the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party, The workers rose in revolution at the close of the war. But the great Social Democratic Party which fell heir to the power abandoned by the Kaiser had no thought of establishing a workers power. Its chief concern was to preserve the power of the cap.
italists. And when the workers rose in the streets, the Social Democrats, led by Scheidemann and Noske, called in the Kaiser generals to shoot them down.
Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the great leaders of the workers, were shamefully assassinated.
The Social Democratic republic, however preserving capitalist property, could solve none of the problems of the permanent German economic crisis. The imperialist victors in the war, Britain and France, exacted their pound of flesh and helped complete the process of draining the country white.
The German Communist Party began to win the support of millions of workers because it represented the October revolution in Russia, the revolution in which the workers had really seized power for themselves and driven the capitalists out. But that party was in the hands of the apparatus built by Joseph Stalin for the sole and exclusive purpose of consolidating the power of the bureaucratic clique which had usurped the workers power in Russia. With this dead hand upon it, it could not lead a revolution, for Stalin wanted nothing less. He wanted peace and quiet in which to try hopelessly to build socialism in one country.
Ripe for the Storm Troops So millions of the dispossessed, especially of the large impoverished middle class, of the youth who had never been in industry, never given a chance to become workers, began to listen to the voice of Hitler, who promised revolution to the workers and counter revolution to the bosses, and national regen. eration to all Germany. He took the dregs of the dispossessed and with funds provided by the big financiers and industrialists fashioned them into the Storm Troops, designed to smash the working class organizations, the unions and the parties.
In those years of his steady growth the working class organizations remained divided. Stalin in Moscow preached that Communists would have to dispose of the Social Democrats first before dealing with Hitler. Fascism and the Social Demacy in his famous or infamous phrase were The result was that the Stalinists and Fascists frequently joined against the Social Democratic authorities, as in the case of the notorious red referendum in Prussia in 1931.
The Communist and Social Democratie workers were kept poles apart instead of being united on a common policy of struggle against the Fascist menace. The Communists were told that the Social Democrats were their worst enemies. The latter were told that they would be safe if they abided by the regular, orderly processes of parliamentary government.
The Social Democratic governments gave way to the authoritarian governments of Bruening, Von Schleicher, and Von Papen, which tried to balance themselves on the police apparatus of the state and act like umpires between the great opposing camps.
Actually they proved to be nothing but Hitler stepping stones to power. Each time they suppressed the Fascists like Daladier did later in France the Hitlerite hordes were permitted to emerge with new strength. But the workers leaders stubbornly refused to take action by themselves, leaving the workers instead in the hands of the government.
Hitler took one provincial state after another and finally prepared to assault the citadel of central power at the end of 1932. By that time it was no longer even necessary for him to stage a coup etat.
Otto Braun, the Social Democrat, true to the legal ities to the end, permitted himself to be kicked out of his office as head of Prussia. Hitler drove a sharp bargain with his Nationalist and Junker allies and on January 30 Hindenburg, elected president by the votes of the Social Democracy, handed the keys of the chancellery over to the Fascist leader.
The blood of the martyred workers of Germany cries out to us: Do not follow our path! Neither Social Democracy nor Stalinism. Only the socialist revolution can save humanity!
THE MARXIST SCHOOL