SOCIALIST APPEAL MARCH 30, 1940 Page SOCIALIST APPEAL Vol. IV, No. 13 Saturday, March 30, 1940 Published Weekly by the SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASSN.
at 116 University Place, New York, Telephone: Algonquin 8547 In the World of Labor Bridge the Gap: From this Point To Socialism Editora: WELIX MORROW MAX SHACHTMAN General Manager GEORGE CLARKE Subscriptions: 00 per year: 00 for six months.
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Act of March 3, 1879 We under the 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 Bulion dollar Federal publle works and housing program Thirty thirty 80 weekly minimum wage 80 hour weekly maximum for all workers on all jobs. Thirty dollar weekly old age and disability pension. 8.
Expropriate the Sixty Families. All war funds to the unemployed. people referendum on any and all wars. No secret diplomacy.
An independent Labor Party Workers Defense Guards against vigilante and Fascist attacks.
12. Full social, political and economie equality for the Negro people.
10.
Judge Made Law preme lary if this were the case they could demand that the salaries of those constables in the habit of joining in the murder of members of the community be raised by a Congressional appropriation or at the direct expense of the Negroes to By Paul Stevens make up the difference.
Especially gratifying in this respect, is the Nor does it seem that the Senators are par New Recruits for Australian fact that comrade Leon Trotsky great work ticularly concerned about the fact that the Negro Section of Fourth International The in War is enjoying widespread section of the voting population in this election Our comrades of the Communist League of attention. The pamphlet has now been issued in England, in Belgium, in Switzerland, in Denmark By JOSEPH HANSEN will surely support anti lynch legislation and the Australia (Section of the Fourth International)
and in South America. The French edition, pubFar from being an unprincipled and demagogic party which fights for it. This lack of concern are steadily evincing signs of rapid growth. Their bold revolutionary work, carried on under war lished by our comrades of the Belgian Revolu appeal to the backwardness and illusions of the massis understandable since the Negroes of the South time pressure, is attracting widespread support tionary Socialist Party, contains a preface apply. es as the Lovestoneites assert, the demands which are generally not permitted to vote anyway. from a working class which has a tradition of ing its political conclusions to the recent Soviet the Socialist Workers Party suggests labor make of Finnish War. In Denmark, it has appeared as a Congress constitute most revolutionary program The arguments of Senator Connally and the anti war struggle. The anti war resolution which, special issue of Klasse Kamp, the official publica which will lead, once launched on a mass scale, in rest concerning this bill are a repetition of the week by the New South Wales Federation of the tion of our section there. The German edition is evitably to the sharpest posing of the question of ones used in previous filibusters against similar Australian Labor Party, despite the rabid opposi published along with Trotsky later work, Again establishing socialism in the United States.
legislation.
tion of the party leadership, may be regarded and Again on the Character of the in Der Einzige Weg, theoretical organ of our comThe links in this process can be outlined briefly as follows: They argue, for instance, that such legislation as another indication of the trend.
The League official organ, the Militant, in its rades in Switzerland. In South America, the would interfere with States and Counties rights. February issue, reports that the Boot Trades Un pamphlet was published by Clave, monthly the. 1) The demands are the absolute minimum that This is true if it also true that a State or County ion has endorsed our comrades call for steps to oretical review of our Latin American comrades can provide the unemployed the youth, the underpaid be taken to develop organization to provide workAmong other publications received are the fol workers, the disabled, and the aged with a decent has the right to lynch an individual.
ing class resistance to any future attacks on the lowing: La Nueva Internacional, official organ of living. The necessity of granting these demands 18 They argue that such legislation would be an workers already limited rights. The Trades and the Revolutionary Workers Group of Argentina self evident. Not only does every member society affront to the South. This is true if it can be Labor Council of Sydney is to act on the union (Fourth International. which contains among have the right to a decent living, but the means for others a translation of the resolution on the Soviheld that the South consists of no one but Bour. Two organizers of the League have been sent et Finnish conflict adopted by the American party.
providing such a living are right before our eyes.
bons like the twenty five Senators.
to Melbourne which, the Militant reminds us.
Contra la Corriente, organ of the International (2) But the capitalist system cannot grant these They argue, as a final clincher, that the lynch was the center of the anti war movement in Workers Group of Uruguay (Fourth Internation demands without making some drastic changes. These al. a new publication in that country, changes are: ing evil does not exist. If it does not exist 1914 1918 Recruitment to our ranks from the disillusioned Workers Fight, organ of the Revolutionary then how could a law against it interfere with ranks of the Stalinist party is continuing apace Workers League of England. The latter writes in (a) Opening the idle factories and operating States and Counties rights to carry on lynch in Australia. Aside from numerous worker miliits mid February issue: them at full capacity.
ings?
tants, prominent intellectuals and leaders Whilst vicious attacks are being made on the (b) Expropriating the Sixty Families who at prerights of trade unionists, whilst wage cuts are are rallying to the banner of the Fourth InternaAll these arguments are patently specious. tional. Among the latter, aside from Rawlsent operate and control the nation industries and proposed by the City of London, our most rewealth for their private benefit.
What the twenty five Southern Senators are ings and Guido Barachi, whose break with Stalinsponsible trade union official, Sir Walter Citrine, goes to Finland to solidarize himself with the (3) The vast toiling masses will sooner or later really arguing for is not States rights nor Coun ism was reported here some time ago. Jack bloody butcher Mannerheim. This mission is ob come to realize that these few simple steps would ty rights, nor Southern honor, but the need of Kavanagh and Betty Roland have now publicly viously one inspired by the National Government.
declared their stand. Kavanagh is a former leader provide the means to grant their demands. When they the Southern Bourbon to smell human flesh of the Communist Party of Australia and Betty The visit resembles that of Thomas and understand this, a powerful movement can develop, to scorching under the blow torch. They force the realization of these demands, which will Henderson in 1917, when these labor fakers were battling Roland is that country leading playwright. In a sent by Churchill to Russia in order to induce sweep everything before it and bring the nation inagainst this legislation because they fear it might statement issued by her and published by the the Russian toilers to continue the struggle on dustries under the control of the workers.
encourage a movement which, uniting the Negro Naturally, my disillusion has not been confined the side of the allies. We have chosen our (4) If the capitalists are forced to grant these deplace in this struggle. It is on the side of the and white toilers, would do away with such to the leadership of the of Australia, as Soviet Union and against Chamberlain, Daladier mands, a death blow will have been dealt to the abominations forever. Lynching, to the South realize that events here, as in all sections of the and Roosevelt. We realize that the treachercapitalist system, and the beginning stages of 80ern Bourbon, expresses more directly, and at the Moscow. And, while recognize that the ous policy of the Comintern is now bearing fruit.
cialism will be established from coast to coast.
same time more symbolically than anything else, is still a workers state and still retains the prinThe Soviet Union is now in danger, and she has (5) If the capitalists persist in refusing to grant very few friends left in the working class movehis brutal exploitation of the oppressed Negro ciple achievement of the October revolution e, these demands in the face of an organized mass the socialized means of production, nevertheless ment of the world. But it is the duty of revolumovement insisting upon them, this movement can race.
the present leadership under Joseph Stalin is the tionists to explain patiently that Stalin has not easily direct its energies to press these demands with If the twenty five Senators are successful in enemy of that workers state, and, unless speedyet succeeded in destroying all the economic and such forcefulness that the parasitic stockholders their filibuster against this legislation, they ily deposed, will certainly bring about the de political conquests of the October revolution. Move in your trade union branches resolutions standing in the way would be swept aside. In this cuse, too, the question of establishing socialism will should arrange a proper celebration a victim struction of the gains of October and betray the against Citrine visit to Finland. No Interbe on the order of the day for the toiling masses.
strung up on a chandelier on the Senate floor or Soviet Union into the hands of the capitalist vention Against Russia! For the Defense of the on the flagpole atop the dome, or perhaps, if such cause in so many other parts of the world since Our Bridge To The Masses That this sentiment is gaining ground in Engacts would bring the South unfavorable publicity they came to power.
land is indicated by the report, carried in the The February Militant also publishes a stateat this time, just filing each other teeth down to ment of the Communist League The demands we propose are really our answer to Stalin Asthis week, of the strong anti war resolution the most acute problem now facing the American a needle point.
sault on Finland identical with the resolution adopted by the national convention of the Nation revolutionary movement: By what means can the by the Politie al Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and toiling masses be brought to understand that the on the Soviet Finnish war derkers Party.
al Committee of the Socialist Clerks. The action of the Scottish Division of the establishment of socialism offers the only road out Independent Labor Party, on which we comment of the suffering imposed on them by the capitalist New Publications of the ed last week, is another indication system?
The revolutionary anti war stand of the Fourth International in Other Countries Economically the United States was ready for sointernational is making itself felt despite the cialism years ago. Industry has reached a pitch of In spite of the censorship, publications of our war mongering of the social patriots and the For War Referendum socialist organization in form that far exceeds that sections in other parts of the world manage oc confusion spread by the centrists of the of any other nation. Whole industries have become casionally to reach the office of the Appeal. and its similars.
so intricate, so highly organized that the government (The following editorial appeared in the March itself must intervene to keep them functioning pub22nd issue of the Oregon Labor Press, organ of the utilities, railways, etc. Industry has reached the comes obvious that the only pur Certain individuals in the the Central Labor Council of Portland, Oregon. pose of this law was to stifle all ILGWU are playing around with stage where it can no longer advance under the fetters of private ownership. As a result the toilers suf honest and open criticism. The the idea of re affiliation with fer from mass unemployment, starvation wages, hunAn issue which seems to have been forgotten law pretends to abolish all the AFL This action would just ger, all the desperate and hideous ills of an economic by Congress, but not by the people, is the war groups. But this is only a mis make us a pawn in the hands system in its death agony.
erable subterfuge. Actually there of the reactionary AFL Execureferendum. Regardless of which party is sucare more groups and cliques to tive Council against the CIO and But politically the masses are not yet ready for cessful in the coming elections, the people need day than before the law was would serve neither the interests socialism. They do not yet understand that the capito protect themselves from involvement in any passed. Ple card artists and job of the labor movements or the talist is in its death agony. They do not yet holders, always currying for fa cause system labor unity understand that it is no longer capable of feeding, foreign war by demanding that Congress begin vors from the existing adminis The coming convention must clothing, or sheltering them. Because of this political legislating this protection by adopting the war (Continued from Page 1) tration, merely changed their instruct the GEB to join with backwardness they are capable of seeing only their referendum resolution before it adjourns.
in another locality.
a titles and affiliated themselves all other progressive forces in immediate ills, and hence are capable of making only standard expiration date the un with outside political. frater the labor movement to achieve immediate and emergency demands.
No opportunity affords itself like the present ion will be able to force, if it so nal and other innocent organ the unification of labor and the to do this. This is an election year. Who will be desires, a complete stoppage un izations.
establishment of a united labor Because of the political backwardness of the Amerthe candidates of the major political parties and to the just demands of the union Meanwhile, ican toilers, the revolutionary vanguard leading the militant movement, on a democratic basis honest are met.
struggle for socialism is small and isolated. The burnwho will sit in the White House, no one can We propose that our ungroups are forbidden, and are with the rights of the industrial unions preserved. In the interim, ing problem of the day, therefore, that means life or unable to bring abuses within predict. No one can be sure whether the next ion take the initiative in calling the ILGWU must caintain the the union to the attention of the death not only for the revolutionary party, but for status quo, as an independent or millions of the toiling masses themselves is to con four years will bring peace or war for the United a great labor conference of all launch members.
States. Therefore, whatever the outcome of the a great campaign for the esganization, thus maintaining the struct the bridge between the present political back6. We propose that the good will of both CIO and wardness of the masses and the socialist revolution in elections the people of the United States, deter tablishment of the UNIVER ILGWU maintain the status the AFL while working constant America mined as they are to keep out of foreign wars, SAL THIRTY HOUR WEEK quo as an independent labor ly for the re establishment of a should insist that this session of Congress con PAY.
WITH NO REDUCTION IN organization and continue united labor movement. Taking The Masses As They Are working for the establishment For Labor Party sider the proposed constitutional amendment to This point is particularly imof a unified labor organization The concluding point of the We must therefore start from what the masses are tion.
give the people the right to vote on foreign wars portant to the ILGWU, for the program is the demand For an capable of seeing today. They can see the surrounding and the same time press inclusic of the greatest single problem of the plenty. They can see the fertile fields heavy with Explaining this point, the Bul Independent Labor Party based on the trade unions.
union is unemployment. Thirty letin says: war referendum as an important plank in both hour week resolutions have been food. They can see the packed warehouses, the idle machines. And they can see just as clearly the empty parties platforms adopted at past International plates at their dinner table. They can hear their The war referendum is democratic. Today, Executive Board merely depositthe General children crying for food. They can feel the rain beating on them through the holes in the roof of their while other nations are putting their trust in diced them in the archives of forshack if they are lucky enough to have a shack.
tatorships, the United States can, by example, gotten resolutions.
They can feel all the horrible misery of the rotten show her trust in democracy by her willingness the Independent Cutters conditions, the shame and degradation in which they to give it the final and supreme test allowing convention instruct the to are compelled to live.
the people the right to decide for themselves take the initiative in convening There is no time to give them a long series of lectures which through their perfectly logical presentawhether our young men are to be sent to die in a labor conference of CIO, AFL (Continued from Page 1)
tion of the problem would lead to socialism. If the foreign battlefields.
and independent unions, in order to launch a campaign to achieve, We know that the French Stalinist party was being abandoned revolutionary movement doesn show them how they Public opinion polls have indicated, not once, by both legislative action and by a large part of its membership and sympathizers after the can get the security they want and get it now, show Hitler Stalin pact, and this process undoubtedly continued in how it is feasible to get it immediately, then the but many times, that a substantial majority of union pressure, the establishment France, as elsewhere, after the invasions of Poland and Finland. fasciats will succeed in heading their revolutionary of the 30 hour week with no rethe American people want this right. Too, a duction in pay Yet even the discredited Stalinists, tarred with Hitler brush, energy into a different path, the path of suicide for very recent poll by the American Institute of We propose the organizathe French rulers dare not permit to speak out in a courtroom! the toiling masses in America.
Public Opinion gives conclusive evidence of the tion of the patternmakers and asThe bestial persecutions against the Trotskyists and other anti war elements confute the French government lie that it The program advocated by the Socialist Workers determination of the American people to stay sorters to improve their working Party is precisely the program which will stamp out is only persecuting agents of the Hitler Stalin bloc. It fears right here at home. Despite the sentiment in this unnecessary competition with the capitalist war and the fascist menace and launch the every voice which speaks out against the war!
working class on the road to socialism in the United country for England and France, 77 per cent of work of the cutters. Present Persecution has not stopped these voices, however. Hence the States.
The Socialist Workers Party is the only party new stage of the war the inclusion of labor representatives those polled recently say they would not go to the union contracts make no proin the labor movement which has worked out and in the British and French governments. labor Minister aid of the Allies should it even appear that they are only partially organized and minister might which advocates such a program. That is the most of Justice can impose verdicts which a certain token that the Socialist Workers Party will were being defeated.
constitute a sore spot in the in not get away with that has been demonstrated in the first be at the head of the movement for socialism as it The bloodshed and suffering now going on dustry.
World War, in the Popular Front governments, etc. With labor gains momentum in the United States with millions We propose that the com own people in the government, the slogans of war for demothroughout Europe and Asia have opened Amerof followers. The program outlined by the Socialist ing convention return to the cracy, against fascism, etc. might be re gilded to look like new.
Workers Party will make these millions invincible.
ica eyes to the futility and senselessness of membership its democratic This may work for a time, as it has before. But all previous (This is the third and last article in this series. war.
rights by legalizing once again experience demonstrates that the labor fig leaf soon wears the existence of trade union away. In the very process of learning what such a bourgeoisIn view of these facts, is it unreasonable for groups in our union. socialist coalition is like the workers learn what traitors such the people to ask their legislators, Congressmen The last convention forbade the socialists are, and turn toward revolutionary labor leadership.
and Senators alike, to show their sincerity and issuance of any printed matter That, we believe, is what the coming period will be the period WE LL TAKE THE CIGAR!
when the great masses learn that their official leaders are give credence to their cries that America will not and made it illegal for the memmerely labor lieutenants of their rulers. Then will come the stage bership to organize into union The great need of America is not a nickel cigar become involved in war, to indicate that they groups advancing programs. of seeking out and testing new leaders. but a complete edition of all the writings of that have faith in our democratic form of govern Only on the eve of a convention Then will come the turn toward the real solution the moment great genius of mankind; the teacher and leader of for which the program of the Fourth International has been ment, and to let the people protect themselves by is this provision lifted.
Militants Demand Voice hammered and moulded and our ranks steeled the moment when the world revolutionary movement, Comrade Stalin.
giving them the privilege of voting against par Today, the Independent Cut the great masses will follow to the end the only road out from. Daily Worker, March 26, 1940, article entitled ticipation in foreign battles. ters League points out, be war and capitalism and chaos the road of the socialist revolution Additional Weapons Make Use of them.
CUTTERS DRAFT PROGRAM FOR NEEDLEWORKERS The annals of the American courts are full of Aagrant examples of judge made law. Judge Peyton Gordon of the District of Columbia Federal District Court made a particularly flagrant addition to that dishonorable record on Tuesday.
He ruled that trade unions are not exempt from prosecution under the anti trust laws. But Section of the Clayton Act, passed under labor pressure, says very specifically that trade unions are exempt. That didn stop the judge. Section of the Clayton Act protects the defendants, he decided, only when the means which they employ to carry out or attain their object are lawful.
This hocus pocus enabled the judge to concede that a jurisdictional strike of the Washing.
ton, teamsters might of itself be a lawful object, but that the means oi conducting the strike pressure on companies involved, coereing the drivers involved to join the teamsters, etc. in other words the usual means of conducting any strike rendered the strike a criminal conspiracy under the anti trust laws.
That all this law is mumbo jumbo is underlined by the fact that the teamsters had previously won the point at issue, a settlement between the teamsters and the engineers having conceded the men involved to the teamsters union. Despite this amicable settlement, the Department of Justice insists on prosecuting the case.
Would the judge dare to go in for this kind of hair splitting, and the Department of Justice dare to continue with this and scores of similar cases against AFL unions if the labor movement were reunited in a militant campaign against this union busting drive? We think not.
Judge Gordon ruling constitutes not only a blow at the AFL but also at the CIO. If his ruling is followed by the Supreme Court, its decision in the Apex hosiery case, now before it, will go against the CIO.
CIO members should keep that in mind when they read those disgraceful articles in the CIO News which take the prosecution side against the AFL unions.
Under Anti War Forces Gather In Europe Southern Filibuster Twenty five Southern Senators headed by Senator Connally of Texas have banded together in filibuster against the passage of a bill by Congress which in the case of a lynching would penalize members of the constabulary for failure protect their prisoner and which would provide for damages against them and the counties they serve.
The Senators do not argue in the usual Senatorial style that such legislation would work a hardship upon the paychecks of their constabu