SOCIALIST APPEAL Page APRIL 13, 1940 SOCIALIST APPEAL Vol. IV, No. 15 Saturday, April 18, 1940 Published Weekly by the SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASSN.
at 116 University Place. New York, Telephone: Algonquin 8547 Return to Two Week Appeal German Socialists Voted by Convention Take Position In Anglo French Camp Editorial Road FELIX MORROW MAX SHACHTMAN ALBERT GOLDMAN Gesceral Manager: GEORGE CLARKE 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 a second class matter December Act of March 016 at New York, under the FIGHT WITH THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY FOR: By DAVID It has become exceedingly difficult for revolutionary socialists to receive information 1940. Thus we have received only now a resolution drawn up in the name of the German Socialist Labor Party)
by Jakob Walcher and dated November 1939. This resolution deals with role of the Soviet Union in the war. We read there the following. Thus the Soviet Union has not only left the international Anti Fascist Front, but as long as this government remains in power it ceases to be an international, revolutionary socialist factor. And further. We cannot today adopt a principled position toward Soviet Russia different from that toward the other great powers.
This last sentence obviously can only have meaning for us if we know exactly what principled position the actually takes with regard to the other great powers.
In the pamphlet. The Coming World War (Der Kommende Weltkrieg. which was published jointly by the Revolutionary Socialists of Austria, the group Neue Beginnen (New Beginning) and the To be sure the war is an imperialist war on both sides; nevertheless the interests of the working class, of democracy of socialism, coincide with the interests of the imperialists on the opposing side up until a decisive military victory. And so that no room will be left for doubt the authors declare expressly: We stand for the defeat of Fascism, we stand for the victory of the opposing front. The international anti Fascist front in Walcher meaning of the words, are obviously the imperialist powers, England and France and their eventual allies of tomorrow. The Soviet Union has left this front, he says, and we cannot take a different principled position with regard to it than towards other great powers (that is, those who don belong to this front. In plain and simple English this means: We are for the victory of British French imperialism in this world war and for the defeat of the Soviet Union. Walcher and his many spiritual kin in the camp of the erman emigration have reached a pretty pass indeed. 1. job and a decent living for every worker. Open the Idle factories operate them under workers control. Twenty Bullion dollar Federal public works and housing program.
Thirty thirty 80 weekly minimum wage 80hour 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. A people referendum on any and all wars. No secret diplomacy.
10. An Independent Labor Party 21. Workers Defense Guards against vigilante and Fascist attacks.
12 Full social, political and economic equality for the Negro people. SWP Reaffirms Policy Of Defense of USSR Their Treachery Foreshadowed In our thesis on the civil war in Spain, published in Unser Wort (organ of the German section of the Fourth International) we defined the role of the Soviet bureaucracy as unequivocally counter revolutionary. Walcher and his followers went into an uproar.
over the dangerous nonsense and methodical madness of our thesis, and formulated eight far reaching and illuminating verities of which the Afth is worth quoting today. In spite of everything that has happened in the Soviet Union in the past few years, the fate of the Soviet Union remains bound up with that of the international working class movement and the latter must stand at its side with all the forces at its command. Neue Front, March, Lewis Auto Speeches 1938. Tribune wants. By this extraordinary declaration, the leading Republican organ gives Roosevelt a free hand. Partisan politics is subordinated to the interests which they hold in common the interests of the American ruling class.
That class, the capitalist class, driven by the permanent economic crisis at home, is impelled to seek a way out by gobbling up more and (Continued from Page 1)
workers found the answer in the Rising enthusiasm of the workmore of the markets of the world. Finland, Nor not yet directly connected with spontaneous demand for doubling er delegates was only fired the the issuance of the APPEAL. more as the trade union discus.
way, tomorrow Belgium or Holland these are mass organizations. The convenOther demonstrations of the stons drew an ever clearer line tion granted no exceptions to the the pretexts; the reality is the desperate, allrule that party members must same spirit came in other fields of distinction between the proconsuming need for expansion.
link themselves to the workers. The most moving moment of the letarian majority of the party If not in unions, they can serve corded Comrade Munis, veteran convention was the ovation ac and the petty bourgeois minority.
Thus, it becomes clear, the needs of the Ameras helpers to trade unionists.
Already the majority has seen of the Spanish civil war, and reican ruling class are in direct conflict with the How the youth, women, unem presenting the Mexican section this petty bourgeois minority des of the American working class. There is needs ployed and non professional mem of the fourth International and feated on the theoretical plane, the soil of the class struggle, of class war, and bers may thus expand party work the Spanish refugees now in Mex in a day and a half of debate on not in the mind of any agitator.
The intelligent American worker doesn care inspiring reports from various camps. The entire convention questions. This debate is decenters. One group of non worker jumped to its feet in spontaneous scribed in detail in another story and shouldn care, whether England or Germany members specializes in selling the tribute to a fighter who symbol in this issue. first invaded Norway. The intelligent Ameri Appeal to workers at a labor izes international solidarity of the Convention decisions were thus temple and a power house. An proletariat.
the answer not only to world imcan worker doesn care, and shouldn care, other group were colonized in Again, the proletarian cadres of perialism but to revisionist ele which gang of imperialist bandits wins. Amer an industry and ouilt a powerful the party thundered applause at ments within the party. The 28ica needs mean one thing to the boss and an union. Several opportunities for the reading of a greeting sent page trade union resolution clearentirely different thing to the workers. The boss for non proletarians were cited Leon Trotsky more such avenues into industry from the convention to Comrade ly aimed the SWP toward an aroused proletariat, fighting on a needs foreign markets, control of foreign raw by the trade union reporters.
Again and again, the conven class struggle basis, as the only material and new spheres of influence abroad, Plans for workers defense tion reached a high pitch of revo movement capable of smashing but the worker needs nothing more than this guards, for recruiting women lutionary fervor when fraternal the campaign to plunge American gigantic production machine and granary which workers, for expanding the Negro delegates from the Revolutionary workers into another blood bath department of the party, for ac. Socialist Party of Chile and the of imperialist war.
America is.
tive workers conferences to co Socialist Workers League of Ca Every party member, states ordinate work by districts, and nada told how repressions had the resolution, must find his We, the workers, the producers in factory many other concrete details were served only to spur those parties place in the mass movement to and field, we don need to send abroad that elaborated. That the expansion to greater struggles against cap prepare against day, to assure which is not ours We want for ourselves every of all these details necessitated italist imperialism, in staunch ad. against degeneration of the party, thing which this, the most productive country in expansion of the party popular herence to the Marxian principles and to build for the eventual press was felt instinctively. The of the Fourth International.
the world can produce. Let the workers take over seizure of power by the workers.
control of the factories, expropriate the Sixty Families, cut the hours of work to a 30 hour enemy they must fight first is week, give every man and woman a job and a the one already on their backs.
The position of the proletarian decent living and there be no economic crisis, majority upon the important there be no drive to solve the crisis by exproblem of the party organizational structure and activities pansion and war abroad.
was presented by James CanRoosevelt, backed by the entire capitalist class non. that is the meaning of the Tribune editorial (Continued from Page 1) its defense by the working class The organization question, he will drive toward war now at an entirely new The majority and minority res was presented at the convention maintained, is for Leninista subprincipled political rate of speed. He cannot be stopped merely by olutions on the Russian question by James Burnham. He maintain ordinate anti war propaganda. He can be stopped only gether with discussion articles, in USSR is irrelevant, and that it look for the differences in princiif the American working class breaks the politic the last two issues of the New does not affect the political posi ple in taking a position in a strugal and economic power of the capitalist class. The International, and will be reprint tion of defense or defeatism one gle. Anything else, such as placed in next week Socialist Ap way or the other.
ing organization problems above struggle against war is the struggle against capipeal. All the resolutions of both The position of defense as hela principled political differences, he talism, nothing more or less.
majority and minority on the or by the majority of the party, branded as anti Marxist and comganization question are printed Burnham argued, was nothing pletely unprincipled. He contrastin this issue.
less than a left cover for Stalin ed this with the minority method Seven Months Discussion ism and Hitler ideological north of forming its ranks through ern front.
agreement upon organization The convention concluded a questions while suppressing prin seven months discussion on these Goldman Majority Speaker cipled differences among themJohn Lewis has a reputation for being a questions. The dispute flared up For the majority position, Al selves.
after the signing of the Stalin bert Goldman was the main the principled differences nevbold man afraid of nothing. But John Lewis Hitler pact, when the minority speaker. He attacked Burnham ertheless broke through, he deplayed possum in Flint and Detroit last week initiated an attempt to revise our position as anti Marxist, in view clared, as they always do, and end.
program.
of the fact that Marxists deter cut through all these organizaToward the pact and its conse mine their attitude toward a tional issues like an icebreaker He talked a lot about the war and unemploy quences, the majority held, the glven state by analyzing its class through an ice choked bay.
ment and bad economic conditions. Yet he never same principles were valid as had nature and its relationship to the But in the organizational field, said a single word about how the auto workers been elaborated by the Fourth In. world proletariat in the struggle too, Marxists have a basic conception. Burnham views, he will find a way out of the blind alley of low Soviet pact and the preceding re The Soviet Union he charac maintained, fare in fundamental annual wages, unemployment and insecurity. actionary steps in foreign policy terized as a degenerated work conflict with the Marxist views taken by the Stalinist bureaucers state, based on nationalized from the field of theory and poliWhat was John Lewis afraid of? The auto racy.
workers or the auto bosses or both? Or didn property, the basic conquest of tics right down to the held of or Petty Bourgeois Opposition the October revolution, which weganizational methods.
he know what to say. Every man that works on The proposal to revise the pro defend against imperialism while This convention, Cannon de the most determined clared, marked a turning point in the line in the General Motors plants in Detroit gram following the Stalin Hitler carrying and Flint knows what the answer is to unempact could only be characterized, struggle to overthrow the Stalin our 11 year struggle to build a the majority pointed out, as a ca ist bureaucracy.
party. The convention majority is ployment: THE THIRTY HOUR WEEK AT pitulation to the pressure of Workers Arguments the proletarian wing of the party FORTY HOURS PAY.
democratic public opinion, seeking to drive deeper into the which approved the Franco Sovi In the discussion, Manny Mills, worlung class. The minority repThe last convention of the UAW adopted that et pact but denounced the Hitler a Mid West steel worker dele resents the petty bourgeois remdemand unanimously. The auto workers cam Stalin pact. The petty bourgeois gate, opposed Burnham concep nants of the past who are strugpaing paper for the NLRB elections, cailed GM composition of the minority, it tions by lening the Soviet Ungling against this drive and who Facts, says the 30 hour week at 40 hours pay is lary susceptible to such pressure. lutionary worker always and at bourgeois pressure by attacking the only answer to the auto workers problems.
Why didn Lewis talk about how to get it in his the party was conducted with the class collaborationist leaders of a shevik form of organization He ended his speech by outlin.
speeches?
submitted by any member of the are the best fighters in defense of ing the guarantees offered by the Was he afraid that the auto workers are too party and the official representa the union against any boss at majority to preserve the rights weak to get into a scrap for the 30 hour week?
tives of the contending factions tack.
of the minority in the coming either were printed in the 13 isOne of the most significant period, these guarantees includWell, the tens of thousands of auto workers in sues of the Internal Bulletin dis speeches in the discussion was ing the right to continued existFlint and in Detroit who turned out to hear him tributed throughout the party or delivered by a Negro worker del ence as a faction, expression of were the same fighting men that licked General were issued in mimeograph form ogate from Oakland, California. its viewpoint in a monthly Inter are nal Bulletin under joint control, Motors in 1937 and have kept them licked all by each of the factions in all hundreds of thousands of words.
tell the Negro workers that and a discussion of the theoreticthese years and will wipe out Mr. Martin and his Stalin or Hitler are our main When the issues had become al differences in the New InterAFL in the forthcoming election. Didn Lewis fundamentally clear to the mem enemies, he declared. The national.
know that? Is John losing his eyesight?
bership, the pages of the New In oppressed colonial peoples of The position of the minority on ternational were opened to the Africa and Asia, who have had Was Lewis scared big front stuffed discussion in order to acquaint the experience of 200 years of organization was represented by Max Shachtman. He declared English and French exploita that the present regime in the shirts that claim to own the General Motors? If the sympathizers of our party he was frightened at the thought of going to the with the issues involved in the tion, are not so easily swung inparty has succumbed to bureau.
internal struggle.
mat with General Motors for the 30 hour week In addition, weekly discussions Stalin. So far as the colonial cratism, that while this bureau cracy has no economic base, inhe must have been a pretty lonely man at those were organized at branch meet masses are concerned, they candeed even being self sacrificing ings, with speakers from the not see any real difference bemeetings We can prove by legal evidence what and at times half starving, nevercontending factions and with the tween the imperialist policies was in the hearts of the sit down veterans, who floor open to discussion by every at Hitler or Chamberlain. The theless it is bureaucracy. It reflects, he declared, two features fought the National Guard to a standstill, who member of the party.
Negro workers in America Burnham Minority Spokesman of the American environment made the famous battle of Bull Run, as they (1) The bureaucracy of the trade The position of the minority know who oppress them the listened to Lewis dodge all around the basic isunion fakers at the head of the upon the question of the class American bosses. And the colAmerican labor movement. 2)
sue. But we bet our bottom dollar they were nature of the Soviet Union and onial workers know that the The boss system of politics in pretty disappointed at his speech. We bet they America.
wanted to hear him say: Now we fight.
After developing these points he called for still more democracy The time is coming when Lewis will have to in the party than that which has quit playing possum. The auto workers are obtained in the past, and then demanded that the minority have going to sweep the elections in GM. But the auto (Continued from Page 1)
the right to set up a separate sures itself important supplies of workers want something more than paper bal. tem whether they liked it or not. ore, timber, fats, and other food public organ.
lots they can feed their kids on that kind of Why Scandinavia First stuffs. Strategically, it acquires ever, preoccupy itself with such The convention did not, howsoup.
Scandinavia was chosen as the coast and bases for direct attack threats. The proletarian majority The auto workers want jobs. That means the lanes.
30 hour week at 40 hours pay. And they know they had chance of enthreats of split. It had found time General Motors is the place to start. Lewis will forcing their policy with military the other win control of the lems Neither side can afford to let enough to dig deep into the probwork and to hear have to make up his mind whether he going means if Germany should seek northern peninsula. The Allies reports of progress in the various to resist it. And that is just what failed to seize the opportunity proletarian centers. And it had along.
has happened.
afforded by the Soviet Finnish declared: we are ready for anThe handwriting is on the wall. It spells: Only Germany has certainly war. They dallied uncertainly un other great step forward: conTHIRTY HOURS WORK AT FORTY moved faster than the Allies could til that war came to an end and cretely, for the twice a week HOUR PAY possibly have expected, because the opportunity passed. This time APPEAL and a program of exThe leaders of the CIO and the UAW better doubtedly great. Economically. If a new opportunity and Germany field. And that was the real confor Germany the stakes are un they have deliberately created pansion of our work in every learn how to read.
it can control Scandinavia, it is has taken them up on it tent of our convention!
We replied: To be sure, that is also our opinion.
However, it is necessary not to confuse the Soviet bureaucracy, the grave digger of the revolution, with the Soviet Union itself. The power of the Soviet bureaucracy is an interregnum between the revolution and the counter revolution. In advancing by means of its counter revolutionary policy the progress of the counter revolution, the Soviet bureaucracy is preparing its own downfall, its own replacement by the counter revolution. Only when the international labor movement will have liberated itself from the embrace of reformism and Stalinism and carried out the victorious social revolution in the capitalist world, will the Soviet Union really be saved and brought back on to the road toward socialism. Therefore, whoever defends the Spanish policy of Stalinism, is in spite of all lip service to the Soviet Union the open enemy of the Soviet Union and helps in the strangling of the Soviet state by the advancing counter revolution. Unser Wort, May, 1938. At that time we were not yet in a position to know that we would get such a striking confirmation of this sentence as the present Walcher resolution on the role of the Soviet Union in the war.
This Is Not Our War The decision of the Anglo French Supreme War Council, last week, to cut off supplies from Germany at all costs, meant the arrival of a new stage in the war.
That this was the consequence of the AngloFrench decision was well understood Even the pro Ally American press made no bones about it.
Monday New York Times said it plainly enough in its editorial. Like a roll of distant thunder, the new Allied blockade policy portends a stormy time for the neutrals. There is no telling when or where lightning will strike in the form of a serious dispute with the Allies.
The most the Times could say in smoothing the matter over was that the Allies have not yet exhausted the possibilities of diplomacy in dealing with the iron ore shipments from Scandinavia. That not yet, from an ardent Anglophile paper, has a world of meaning! And in conclusion the Times was constrained to say quite frankly. It is an Allied variant of the game of peaceful intimidation which Germany has been playing in Rumania; the next few weeks should show which of the two will score the first success.
Quite clear on Monday. Instead of weeks, however, the explosion took hours. British violation of Norwegian neutrality, culminating in the taking over of Norwegian waters for British mining operations, was countered by Nazi occupation of Denmark and the march into Norway. Whereupon what was clear on Monday became very much muddied on Wednesday.
For then the American press proceeded to scream to high heaven about Germany crime against civilization and to whitewash the plain and simple facts about the role which Britain had played in transforming Norway into a battlefield We single out for particular comment the leading editorial in the New York Herald Tribune of Wednesday, April 10. It is especially significant because the Tribune is the leading Republican daily and the Republicans have not been averse to posing as being opposed to Roosevelt headlong drive to carry America into the Allied war camp. Entitled Crime Against Civilization, it wrings such tears as it can out of a contrast between Scandinavia now and yesterday; in the process, the yesterday becomes a fantastic picture. Nowhere else in the whole world had learning and well being been so widely shared. There man lived a complete life. etc. etc.
But all this is merely preparation for this ominous declaration. If these acts of Germany) can go unpunished, what security remains for any people?
What hope is there for the survival of liberty or civilization, as we knew it, anywhere. With their eyes single to their national interest, Americans must once more take sights, fix their position and determine their course. Calmly and steadily the country Why They Changed Their Position As long as the counter revolutionary policy of the Soviet bureaucracy coincided with the policy of Ang lo French imperialism, Walcher defended Stalin polltics by pointing to the socialist foundation of the Soviet Union.
Today, when Stalin policy has come into contradiction with that of Anglo French imperialism, the same Walcher makes Stalin policy a pretext for surrendering the Soviet Union to imperialism.
We are hard put to find a proper expression to give ist.
adequate vent to our contempt for this type of socialWe see no reason for changing our principled posltion towards the Soviet Union because of the StalinHitler pact. As before, we remain the most irreconcilable opponents of the Stalinist bureaucracy whose counter revolutionary role we and in the first place Comrade Trotsky recognized long before the whole crummy crew of Walcher, Muenzenberg, Lovestone, et tutti quanti became so piously and haughtily outraged by the Stalin Hitler pact. As before, we refuse and will continue to refuse to identify the Soviet Union with the Stalinist bureaucracy.
Just as we excoriated Stalin role as agent of Anglo French imperialism yesterday, and remained prepared at the same time to defend the Soviet Union against attack by German imperialism; so we regard it today a duty of the Russian workers to combat the Stalinist bureaucracy wherever it appears, as an agency of Hitler imperialism, but at the same time continue to defend the Soviet Union against any attack on the part of the democratic imperialist powers. Hands of Soviet Russia remains as before our slogan in all capitalist countries. The overthrow of the criminal Stalin regime is the task of the Russian and the international proletariat, and not. of AngloFrench bayonets.
Our companions in the struggle against the robber gang of Hitler are not the brigands of Paris and London, them keep hall a billion people in the same conditions of oppression and slavery as Hitler keeps his hundred million, but the revolutionary proletarians and the oppressed colonial slaves of all countries. To be sure, the friends of Hitler are our foes. But the friends of the imperialist rivals and colleagues of Hitler are no less so. Between us and the Muenzenbergs and the Walchers stand the barricades of the coming German revolution March 8, 1940 (Reprinted from Unser Wort, April May 1940)
NORWAY CRUSHED BY POWERS goo must decide.
Decide for war, of course that is what the