4 SOCIALIST APPE, AL MARCH 9, 1940 SOCIALIST APPEAL VOL. IV, NO. 10 SAT. MARCH 9, 1940 Published Weekly by the SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASS at 116 Teleraity Place, New York, NY.
Algonquin 8547 The Fight In the World of Labor. Stalinists Won Hollow Victory Editora: ELIX MORROW MAX SHACHTMAN General Manager: GEORGE CLARKE Assistant Manager SHERMAN STANLEY Subscriptions: 00 per year: 00 for six months.
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Reentered second class matter. Decunder the 1888, at the post office at New York, Act of March to removed 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 public 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 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 vigliante and Fascist attacks.
12. Full social, political and economie equality for the Negro people.
world cannot solve their pressing problems by rhetoric alone. Spell binder Martin dazzled many audiences but results were obtained by different methods.
Results were obtained by action in the great By Paul Stevens sit down in Flint, in the famous Battle of Bull Run which frightened the wits out of Knudsen, Militants Break with Australian Then it was Nazi Germany, which Pravda led us to infer was invariably based on striving to Sloane and Co. General Motors understands no Hail Fourth International defend and preserve peace. other language. Why try speaking to them as if Our Australian comrades vigorous anti war acToday, Finland is being invaded, just as AusBy FELIX MORROW tria, Czechoslovakia and Poland were invaded.
The bitterest things sald about Alex Rose were not they were human beings?
tivity, reported in these columns on previous ocBut this time the invasion is made in the name said by the Stalinists, last Thursday night at the The workers of General Motors will vote for casions, is bearing fruit. considerable number of Leninism! To such a level has the Communist New York County convention of the American Labor of rank and fle members of the Communist Parthe UAW CIO. That is the only union for the ty of Australia are drawing closer to the ComParty of Australia, together with the rest of Party. The Stalinists were, Indeed, feeling rather automobile workers of this country. Martin munist League, the Australian section of the them, descended, that it can idealize that invaamiable. Looking over the auditorium they saw presion and present it as the extension of Comdominate the familiar faces of their comrades.
phoney AFL group is a disgrace to the name of Fourth International, and some have already munism The bitter souls in the place were the small band of unionism: it has participated in strikebreaking joned officially. The latest number of the Mil With the Comintern attitude, switching now members of the Social Democratic Federation. They actions, it has made united fronts with Fascist Rawlings, editor of World Peace, has brok left, now right, towards the war, and with pol had warned Alex Rose and the other big shots of the demagogues like Coughlin and Gerald en with Stalinism and endorsed the Fourth In icies, spread over years, that led to that atti ALP, two years ago or more. He would not listen. He tude, no true Marxian can have anything to do. would not even consult with them. Because the StalinSmith. Any worker who does not vote for the ternational.
Rawlings was a member of the Australian Events have shown that the Third Interna ists provided the necessary Jimmy Higgins crows for CIO, is voting in reality for a return to the open for Afteen years. From reserved criticism tional has followed the path of the Second. But all the dreary detail work, he had welcomed them and of the People Front line he developed to the the path of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky is shop.
let them take over club after club. He had told Louis the only path that the workers can follow to Waldman it was all right, the Stalinists could be But the auto workers will vote for the CIO point where, at the outbreak of the war, he their emancipation, and a new, Fourth, Internacleaned out any time it was necessary. Now his with enthusiasm, lay down their lives on the openly took issue with the local satrap of the o far as to tional must be built to lead them along it.
chickens were coming home to roost.
The final indignity that drove the Social Democrats picket lines, only on one condition: that the un urge St and available members of his party to join up with the army and to participate in Labour Party Students Join into highly articulate fury my seat at the press ion goes to bat for the men in the plants.
table was not too close to them but, stalking back The auto workers want the 30 hour week at the struggle to defeat the aggressor armies.
Against Social Patriotism and forth, they threw discretion to the windows 40 hour pay put on the first order of business in the party leadership, Rawlings was summarily From time to time we have reported here the Alex Rose choice of a standard bearer for the evengrowing anti war movement in the lower ranks ing. The test vote that for chairman. Lake negotiations with The auto workers want expelled, on December 17.
of the British Trades Unions as well as in the principled politicians the Social Democrats wanted to take the 30 hour week at 40 hour pay out of Rawlings had been editor of World Peace, the weekly paper of the League for Peace and Dethe far away realm of basic demands and pre mocracy, from its inception. He was immediately pointed out, this movement showed such strength baiting and pro Ally program of the anti Communist Labour Party. Only recently, as this column someone put up who would symbolize the rabid red.
in the local Trades Councils that the top bureau bloc. But Alex Rose hadn even troubled from that post upon his expulsion from sented as an immediate demand.
consult cracy became obliged to enforce its rule by the squad of Stalinist worthies raided his the Social Democrats. Instead he chose a man who, The auto workers want their union. But they editorial office, ordered him to leave with a means of extraordinary measures intended to from the rigorous standards of the Social Democrats, want their union to fight for them. Let Lewis, threat of force and even refused to allow him to squeeze the local bodies into line by financial was himselt tainted with Stalinism Sylvio Bottini, a pressure.
minor building trades union official, the taint consist.
Hillman and Murray tell the auto workers what take his personal belongings with him. Guido Now we get word that the bureaucracy is also ing of his friendship with Marcantonio, the friend of they intend to do today not in the distant fu Baracchi, another old time leader, has solidarized himself with Rawlings in his conflict in conflict on this score with the University La the Stalinists.
ture about the 30 hour week at 40 hour pay. With the party leadership.
bour Federation, the students organization an confess that got a good deal of pleasure, that Aside from his journalistic work, which made ated with the Labour Party. Arthur Greenwood, evening, observing That what the auto workers want to hear.
infuriated but impotent dishis name familiar to radical circles throughout deputy leader of the party in parliament, found comfiture of the anti Communist bloe.
That what the auto workers want to do the British Empire, Rawlings is the author of the conflict so sharp that he had to resign as fight for the 30 hour week at 40 hour pay. the authoritative History of the Australian president of the Federation. On January the The Staliniste, in capturing the New York County Labour students held their national conference People and of numerous pamphlets on economic ALP, took over an empty shell. Their victory consistand historical questions.
at Liverpool. The first step taken by the con ed in this: when they were still in a bloc with Alex ference was the adoption of a resolution con Rose last August before the Hitler Stalin pact the Excerpts from the Statement demning the war as an imperialist war for profit candidates for committeemen, who constitute the legally recognized county organization of a party, Issued by Rawlings the same anti war policy has been expressed were designated by the ALP district clubs, where the Defend AFL Unions Here are some interesting excerpts from a by sections of the Labour Party and by trades Stalinists had a majority, and ALP enrollees voted statement issued to the press by comrade Rawlunions in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Sheffield. for these candidates at the September city primary.
As several hundred delegates from building ings after his expulsion: The resolution carried by vote of 49 against In other words, the Stalinists last Thursday captured and abstentions. Mentioning this fact, a nothing but the country machinery which the law trades unions throughout the country were meet What of the thousands of workers who, re statement of the Federation chides Greenwood requires every party on the ballot to establish through ing in Washington to organize the defense of membering the last war, were ready to oppose for attributing their attitude to Communist the primaries.
instigation. It continues: The Conference of the unions against the Department of Justice port it, were either bewildered or led to believe the regards the struggle against war on The Real ALP Beyond Their Reach union busting campaign, the CIO committed a that they should fight for the independence of the part of the labor movement as a foremost shocking act against labor solidarity.
nations now enslaved by Nazism?
task and as a step necessary for the realization The real American Labor Party the trade unions But the decision to support the war was no of socialism. Only by such means can the The CIO News, official weekly organ of the mistake. It was a perfectly logical step.
which constitute it did not and of course could not and the fulfil their role as light house pass into the hands of the Stalinists by counting noses CIO, published an article in its March 4th issue, Capitalists and capitalist politicians of socialism. The conference regards your of county committeemen. In the April state primarentitled AFL moguls in panic jump from fry vided into two classes, good and bad, according (Greenwood s) action and that of the other leadies, at which state committeemen of the ALP are as they were non appeasers and appeasers. ers of the Labour Party who support the war elected, if the Stalinists win, they again win an empty part: ing pan into hotter fires. It said Capitalism was no longer the breeder of and the political truce as treachery to socialism shell. The trade unions, other than the minority con Other signs of panic in AFL craft ranks wars now resulted from Fascist aggression. and to the Interests of the working class. The trolled by the Stalinists, will scarcely remain in the First it was democratie France and Britain conference has decided to continue the struggle were the calling of an emergency session of ALP if the Stalinists capture the legal machinery.
craft moguls in Washington to resist exposure. and Communists in these countries voted war against war and for socialismo biura reement wite The backbone of the ALP would be removed forthwith the Amalagamated Clothing Workers, the and prosecution of racketeers who have ex seilleise and God Save the King, and hobnobbed movement who are opposed today and who will Ladies Garment Workers, the millinery union, eto ploited the workers and been a detriment to the with duchesses, doans and scions of noble houses. continue to oppose this war. Labor Party without unions is an absurdity. Why, then, have not Alex Rose and his cohorts not emindustry.
phasized in their public statements, the absurdity of On the spot in the court of public opinion the Stalinist campaign to capture the legal machinery of the ALP? The trade union bureaucrats have a distracted by prosecution of racketeers in their crushing argument against the Stalinists: why don midst, plagued by jurisdictional disputes they the Staliniste demonstrate what their strength is not in the primaries dictated by the bourgeois parliamentary system in which a dentist vote weighs as United Construction Workers Organizing Comby Dwight Macdonald much as a trade unionist s, but in the trade unions mittee (CIO. the craft moguls are facing the which constitute the ALP?
worst crisis of their history. Our emphasis) The Break Even Point one out of every five families in the nation is The fact is that the ALP bureaucrats have never starving and stagnating in the ranks of the un referred to this fundamental difference between a Every class conscious worker will brand these Much has been written about technological employed. And, as noted here a few weeks ago Labor Party and the capitalist parties. They have statements as an act of disloyalty to the labor unemployment, but have seen little discussion only is out of every hundred of those dropped been too desirous of winning to the ALP the profesfrom WPA last summer have been able to findisional and middle class flotsam and Jetsam, taking movement. It is an elementary duty of every creasing ability of American industry to make jobs in private industry.
the workers votes for granted. Instead of sharply unionist to defend all bona fide labor unions, profits at ever lower levels of production. key Yet last year earnings of most big companies emphasizing that the unions have the right and duty whether in the CIO, AFL or independent, statistic in any Industry is the break even were spectacular. Goodyear Tire Rubber re of running their own party, the Alex Roses have against the class enemy. The Department of capacity which must be used in order to oper ported 63 per cent higher profits in 1939 than wooed the elements outside the unions. The result: in 1938. Steel lost 7, 700, 000 in 1938, clubs full of lawyers, doctors and dentists, small busiJustice is the enemy of the working class. Its ate at a profit. In the steel industry, for exammade 41, 200, 000 in 1939. DuPont made 50, nessmen and Stalinists working in them by party anti trust campaign is a scarcely veiled cam ple, this is now between 40 per cent and 45 per 200, 000 in 1938, 93, 200, 000 in 1939. Inland assignment. In other words, easy picking for the paign to smash unionism in the building trades. cent. that is to say, once the average steel plant Stalinists.
Steel net rose from 4, 900, 000 to 10, 900, 000.
begins to run at rate which produces 45 per The National City Bank predicts that 370 lead The workers in the unions affiliated to the ALP For every boss that has been indicted in the cur cent as much steel as it can produce at full ing manufacturers will report 1989 earnings to: have never been made to feel that they are active rent campaign, a hundred trade union leaders capacity, it begins to make money.
talling 329, 000, 000, which is double the 1938 members of th ALP through their unions. Around have been indicted. The real moguls of the build. This means that an industry with a break even figure.
election time a few speeches in the unions, and paying trades industry, the banks which control point is even lower can make profits even If figures mean anything, these statistics mean ment of ALP dues this is all that the ALP has been building sites, construction financing, construc though it is producing less than half the amount that American capitalism can function with the to the union members.
utmost efficiency as a profit system, simultane If a union member wanted to be active in the ALP, tion supplies and most of the construction com of goods its plants can produce. Thus the nation al consumption of these goods can be reduced ously with the utmost inefficiency as as he could not do so through his union, but only by panies, are whitewashed and not touched by to half that of boom times, employment can be system. And since the bourgeoisie judge the de joining a club in his neighborhood dominated by Thurman Arnold. These facts alone brand the far below the boom level, and the industry in sirability of capitalism by its ability to make lawyers and dentists. The result: the unionists didn profits, while the workers judge it by its ability trouble to go to the primaries and left the field to anti trust campaign for what it is: a union question can still make money.
There is another interesting thing about this to produce and distribute material goods this the Stalinists smashing conspiracy break even point: once production reaches that being the case, there is inevitably a basic clash That the unions have not constituted the basic acof class interests.
tive units of the ALP is not an oversight. If the trade Practically every union procedure of the AFL level, profits begin to increase much faster than union bureaucrats paid by a Stalinist victory in the building trades which is now under the fire of production. If a steel company makes, say a Mass Production and Mass Misery primaries for their fallure to activize the trade union the Department of Justice is practiced by CIO at 60 per cent of capacity may well be not a members, they prefer that to the alternative: steeping This class conflict the bourgeoisie, both lbthe unions in the basic political problems facing the unions. Refusal of union men to work on non ton but or Thus it is often possible to eral and conservative, try to explain away with working class.
union materials; refusal of unions to supply men double and triple profits with only a slight rise the well worn thesis that American capitalism The trade union as the workers organization dealis different from that of Europe in that it is ing with private employers in a specific industry is a to contractors not certified by the employers in production.
The reason for this is that a highly based on mass production and hence on the idea difficult enough organism to keep under the control of bargaining agency with which the unions have tain minimum to run at all: it takes about as of a mass market. The assumption is that our bureaucrats committed down to their bones to the contracts; control by the unions of the introduc many employees, as much coal and water and capitalism must progress to ever higher levels capitalist order. In the union as an economic organof production and consumption because only thus tion of new manufacturing operations and de electricity, as much wear and tear on the macan our great corporations find a market big ism, consideration of the basic problems of unemvices which involve cutting down the number of pacity as at 40 per cent. But once production is ployment and insecurity are limited to what can be enough to absorb their huge productive capacity.
workers; union insistence that certain work be high enough to absorb these minimum fixed Hence the common interest of the employer and done to alleviate hunger and want and poverty within the specific industry and this at a time when every of the employee lies in increasing production and done on the premises and not brought in semi charges, then costs for additional production are thoughtful worker understands that these problems consumption (or sales. The conservatives recannot be solved on a trade union level. limit the finished form to be completed by union work reduced to fittle more than extra wages and raw peat, with the Chamber of Commerce, union to this trade union level serves the capitalist ers these and a dozen other working rules of What is Good for Business is Good for You!
The liberals talk of an economy of plenty (as order and the labor bureaucrats faithful to it.
the AFL building trades now being attemptedly Sales Up 58 Protits 910 Remove that narrow limitation from the workers outlawed by Thurman Arnold, are practiced dustry gave a dramatic illustration of the above against the typical European economy of scarcity. The New Deal spending philosophy is discussions of their life and death problems, turn the one or more of them by the International La point. In that period, the net profits of the six based on this conception of the mass market beunion floor over to the political level to the question of the relation of the working class as a whole to dies Garment Workers, the Amalgamated Cloth leading automobile manufacturers were 65. ing the logical corollary of mass production.
the capitalist class as a whole and, my God, think ing Workers, the Auto Workers Union and, 500, 000, as against only 6, 500, 000 for the same It is true that when industrial production falls the bureaucrats, there is no limit to what the workers below a certain minimum level (the national may try to do indeed, in in one form or another, by most of the ever, was very much less: sales of trucks and break even point. so to speak. the bourgeoisie Alex Rose can make a militant in his mulinery un CIO unions.
cars for that quarter of 1939 totalled 1, 056, 000, lose money and, of course, society as a whole lion took like an impractical fool for proposing to as against 669, 000 in 1938. Thus an increase of For the CIO to delude itself that blows on 58 per cent in sales caused an increase of 910 in a bad way. But, as we have seen, once the wipe out unemployment in the industry. But Rose break even point is reached, profits become rap would be in a fundamentally different situation if he this score can be directed against the AFL with per cent in pronts.
idly less and less dependent on increased produc tried to make fun of a militant on the union floor who out leading to blows against the CIO would be tion. It seems probable that the future developdemanded that the union delegates to a national a fatal error. If the CIO top leaders are so nearEarnings and Employment ment of American capitalism will be in the direcLabor Party insist on a program guaranteeing deThe mysterious workings of the break even tion of extracting bigger and bigger profits out cent living to every worker. That why Rose prefers sighted as not to see this, they should be forcibly points are one reason for the phenomenon we of ever smaller production. The great aim of to keep the unions out of direct participation in the reminded of their responsibilities by the rank see today of enormous increases in profits unac modern technology is to lower the break even ALP even that means that the Stalinists capture and file of the CIO.
companied by any significant rise in the nation point. There is only one political formula for the legal machinery. The Stalinist victory is an empty al standard of living or any significant decrease imposing on the masses the lower living standone, Rose thinks, and that is true. Whereas a militant Defend the AFL building trades unions in the number of the unemployed.
ards this economic development would make in program that would sweep the unions would sweep against the union busting drive!
As the readers of the Appeal are well aware, evitable. Its name is fascism.
Rose right out of the unions.
Czarist Stocks Rise The war correspondent undoubtedly told the story to be funny. It appeared in Tuesday New York Times. When a Finnish patrol came upon a Russian soldier, he cried out: Don shoot am a Russian capitalist.
Funny? The incident may not have happened, but if he invented it, the correspondent didn help his friend Mannerheim. What would it mean for a Red Army soldier to say that? That he looked upon the Finnish army as part of the imperialist world, which would spare only those Russians who would adhere to capitalism, In his own naive way the Soviet soldier understands infinitely more than the fat headed liberals and labor skates who are raising money for Hoover Finnish Commission, and the Norman Thomases and Lovestones who are rooting for a Finnish victory.
We should like to ask all those people who call themselves part of the working class and who, nevertheless, call for the defeat of the Red Army in this war, to give us their explanation of the rise in price of Czarist securities on the Paris Bourse. February 29 dispatch to the New York Times reports a phenomenal rise in Czarist oil shares. For instance, Baku industrials rose from 16 francs in August to 80 in December and are quoted at over 200 francs now, though in fact it is impossible to buy them at any price.
Grozny, North Caucasian and other oils have risen too.
From 16 francs to 200 a 1250 increase.
That stock market language for indicating the vulnerability of the Soviet Union and the extent of the concentration of Anglo French troops on the Soviet Near East border.
Defeat for the Soviet Union at the hands of its capitalist enemies means that the capitalists will proceed to restore capitalism in the territories formerly ruled by the Czar. That means that anybody that for the defeat of the Soviet Union is, willy nilly, for capitalism. That simpie Russian soldier understood that. In his own way he was saying that anybody who calls himself part of the labor movement and isn for the defense of the Soviet Union is a traitor to his class.
The Paris Bourse makes that clear, if nothing else does.
monta para entender mense in SPARKS IN THE NEWS social Vote CIO In Auto. The National Labor Relations Board has ordered elections in the 59 plants of General Motors. More than 225, 000 workers in twelve states will choose between the UAW CIO, the AFL or no union in an election to take place sometime in April.
The Union News Service, official clip sheet of the CIO, announces extensive plans for a CIO campaign prior to the election. John Lewis, Phil Murray, and Sydney Hillman are scheduled for big meetings in Michigan and other auto centers.
The plans are pretty good as far as they go.
But they don go far enough. The auto workers want more than speeches. The best orator in the