MAY 4, 1940 SOCIALIST APPEAL The British Arrest Indian Strike Leaders In Opening Trotsky Presents Negro Question Drive to Crush Anti War Movement of Workers Revolution MARX The Case for socialism.
The Struggle for a Proletarian Party Over 100 workers in one of the By ROBERT BIRCHMAN The Congress considers the that nothing short of complete generating stations of the Calcut declaration by the British Gov independence is acceptable. InThe Natchez Fire British imperialism is clamping down on the forces of the ta Electric Supply Corporation ernment of India as a belliger dian freedom cannot exist withScreaming and clawing for escape from suffo All India Congress and the leaders of the militant strikes of struck on March 13 against the ent country, without reference in the orbit of Imperialism, and THE LIVING THOUGHTS OF KARL MARX, Dominion or other status, is cating smoke and crackling fames that swept the Indian workers and peasayts. Wholesale arrests are taking dismissal of two of their fellow to the Indian people, and the presented by Leon Trotsky. Longmans, Green workers.
exploitation of India resources wholly Inapplicable to India and Co. 1939. 90c.
the night of April 23 at Natchez, Mississippi, 198 place under the Defense of India Act.
The managing comittee of the for war, an affront which no and is not in keeping with the Negroes fell in heaps that mounted shoulder high Jaiprakash Narain, general secretary of the Congress So Bombay Transport Coolies Union self respecting and freedom dignity of a great nation. It and died in horrible agony.
There will be no volume in the Living Thoughts cialist Party was arrested at Patna on March He is charged has, on behalf of the workers emwould bind India in many ways The recent pronouncement to British policies and economie Library more full of life than this condensed The dance hall had been converted from a. under the Defense of India Act. The Executive Committee of ployed on harbor construction version of Marx economic teachings as he structure. The people of India blacksmith shop into an amusement center that projects, demanded a war allow made on behalf of the British the Congress Socialist Party, alone can properly shape a conexpounded them in the first part of Capital featured well known Negro orchestras. It was stitution through a Constituent and as they are applied to contemporary society frequented by colored people barred from dance meeting at Lucknow, March arrest of strikers and strike ance of 20 percent. Pradhar, Government regarding India, Assembly on the basis of adult halls open to Southern whites. The windows were 11 13, passed the following demand on behalf of workers the contractors that if the allow fighting for fundamentally imby Trotsky suffrage, or determine relations In Capital Marx first explained the laws boarded; it had but one door which served for tion and the strengthening of resolution on the arrest of for a war bonus of 33 percent ance is not granted the workers perialist ends and the preservaboth entrance and exit: long festoons of tinder Narain: with other countries of the which govern the development of capitalist econwas made at the fourth confer will go out on strike.
the Empire, which is based up world.
omy. These principles provide the scientific basis dry Spanish moss hung from the rafters as decoence of the Bengal Labor Party These great strike struggles of on the exploitation of the Indi These strong words have, unof the proletarian revolutionary movement for The Executive Committee of rations the All India Congress Socialist Dubey, general secretary of the force pushing the left wing of the African peoples.
at Calcutta on February 25. the Indian masses are the driving an people and other Asiatic and fortunately, not been implementThe fire began near the entrance, swept through Party offers its felicitations to party said that jute workers had All India Congress into direct coled as yet by the proposed civil Marx method of historical materialism demthe moss with terrifying swiftness and drove the Hence it is clear that the disobedience Jaiprakash Narain, its general already received a ten percent in lision with the British overlords. Congress cannot in any way, di and the right wing were able to ories by its power of prediction. Have Marx doccampaign. Gandhi onstrates its practical superiority over rival thepacked dancers against the bandstand. The vicsecretary, on his arrest under crease in wages and seamen 25 They are the explanation for the rectly or indirectly, participate stave of action at the Ramgarh trines stood the test of time? In his introduction tims milled, screaming, crushing against the the Defense of India Act.
walls, beating futitely at the boarded windows as percent. He urged workers to strong language of the resolution in such a war, which means the Congress Trotsky essays to answer this question with parThe Committee considers unite and make a joint demand adopted by the Congress Work perpetuation of exploitation.
the flames curled down from the rafters and In the following weeks, howticular reference to the development of American this arrest as symbolic of the Seared their bodies. They dropped in piles that determination of British Imfor an increase.
ing Committee, and which was Congressmen and those under ever, the great strike wave has economy.
resembled heaped up logs of smoking wood.
On March 12 the sugar workers presented to the plenary session Congress influence cannot help continued to grow, and provides prime regulator of capitalist economy. Marx preOn the basis of the law of labor value, the perialism to suppress the strugWithin fifteen minutes the fire had burned itgle for independence in this at Garakpur went out on general of the Congress at Ramgarh, in the prosecution of the war an ever more imperative pressure strike, stopping work at most of March 19. The resolution read in with men, money or material for a general collision with the dicted that free, progressive competitive capitalcountry. This arrest constitutes self out. Firemen chopped their way in. Moans the sugar mills. challenge to the forces of part. Congress declares again British rulers.
ism would necessarily give way to reactionary came from the mounds of scorched bodies, and monopolist forces in the latter stages of capitalist the few who were still writhing were dragged out. freedom represented by the development. Today in every matured capitalist Twenty more of these crushed and burned vic Congress.
country we see monopoly capital ruling industry, tims died on the way to the hospital; eleven more The Committee feels that finance, politics. In the United States where comsuccumbed during the day. Dozens more were the present political stalemate cannot continue for very long near death.
petition was freest and most extensive monopoly capitalism has ascended to skyscraping heights.
and calls upon the members of All the facts indicate criminal negligence on few hundred interlinked wealthy familles, ownthe Congress Socialist Party By JAMES CANNON ing over three fifths of the national wealth, conthe part of the Natchez authorities. Those whose and other fellow fighters to be National Secretary, duty it was to make sure that the ordinary fire ready for the utmost sacrifice trol the economic and political lives of 140, 000, precautions were carried out didn care and 000 people.
for the freedom of India. This is the third of a series of articles by Comrade Can name having suffered all these indignities the leaders of the didn act. After all, the burning of Negroes is Narain has been sentenced to non, to acquaint our readers with the party estimate of the opposition are now attempting to revenge themselves upon the not something out of the ordinary in the South.
Predictions Ridiculed, But nine months imprisonment dispute which arose in the party, was debated in a seven party majority by threats of split. That will not help them. It will Zaheer, a member of the not prevent us from characterizing their revisionist improvisa, by a Come True Executive Committee of the Con the Third National Convention, April 9. In previous issues of tions, and showing that their attitude on the organization queston Southern Justice gress Socialist Party was arrestAlongside this unprecedented concentration of the APPEAL we published all the Majority and Minority reso is not disconnected from their petty bourgeois conceptions in genwealth a second prediction of Marx has been The wave of horror which swept the country ed at Lucknow on March 11, also lutions. Comrade Cannon first two articles dealt with the eral, but simply a secondary expression of them.
realized: the theory of increasing misery. The over this mass burning of Negroes, however, under the Defense of India Ordin way in which, under the impact of the war, the petty bourgrowing impoverishment of the wage earners, the moved the authorities of Natchez to take action ance. Numerous arrests have ocOrganization questions and organization methods are not ingeols minority had abandoned our programmatic stand for An investigation was in order. It was necessary curred of local and provincial the defense of the Soviet Union and how the ensuing dispute dependent of political lines, but subordinate to them. As a rule, expropriation of the agricultural workers, the to fix the blame for the monstrous neglect of the leaders of the Congress, especialarmy of permanent unemployed swollen each year the organizational methods flow from the political line. Indeed. unfolded as a fundamental conflict with the Fourth Internacity officials who were responsible.
by fresh legions of young recruits, the reduction ly in Bengal tional over all the questions of our program, our method and the whole significance of organization is to realize a political program. In the final analysis there are no exceptions to this rule.
of living standards demanded by war or the preour tradition. Comrade Cannon articles are taken from his Mayor William Byrne started a thorough WORKERS AND PEASANTS parations for war all these phenomena are living LEADERS ARRESTED pamphlet, published in the Internal Bulletin before the convenIt is not the organization the party or group which creates the inquiry.
WHOLESALE proofs of Marx thesis that capitalism breeds tion Editors. program; rather it is the program that creates the organization, misery for the masses in proportion as it enriches Although Sheriff Hyde Jenkins upon first comRahul Sankratyan, presidentor conquers and utilizes an existing one. Even those unprincipled ing upon the scene declared that the fire was their plutocratie masters.
groups and cliques which have no program or banner of their elect of the All India Kisan Sabha The Organization Question own, cannot fail to have a political program imposed upon them How many times have bourgeois economists clearly of accidental origin, Police Chief Joe Serio on the following day intimated that the fire had at Allahabad on March 15. peasants union was arrested As long as the real scope of the political and theoretical dis in the course of a struggle. We are now witnessing an illustration and their echoers in the labor movement ridiculed been set deliberately.
putes remained undetermined the talk about the organization of the operation of this law in the case of those people in our Marx statements concerning the decline of the On March 11, three leaders of question contributed, and could contribute, nothing but confusion. party who entered into a combination to fight against the remiddle classes! Here Trotsky points out how the Police Chief Joe Serio arrested five suspects the Bombay Textile Workers Un But, now that the fundamental political issues are fully clarified, gime without having any clearly defined political program of concentration of capital has involved a steady and threw them in jail.
lon Dange, Ranadive now that the two camps have taken their position along funda differences with it.
diminution in the economic importance of the All five of the suspects, of course, are Negroes and Mirykar were arrested propertied middle strata and in their relative mental lines, it is possible and perhaps feasible to take up the carrying on In this they are only reproducing the invariable experience of share of the national income. The new middle in the language of the Southern Bourbons, under the charge of organization question for discussion in its proper setting and in anti war propaganda. drunken Negroes. Dehpande, joint secretary its proper place as an important but subordinate issue; as an ex their predecessors who put the cart before the horse, and formed class, which has arisen beside the old out of the growth of the technical professions, has even less Police Chief Joe Serio said that these arrests of the Textile Workers Union and pression in organizational terms of the political differences, but factions to struggle for power, before they had any clear idea of what they would do with the power after they got it.
claim to an independent economic and political were based on statements made to him by un a member of the Bombay Provin not as a substitute for them.
named people that several drunken Negroes cial Trade Union Congress, which position in present day society. Where capitalism The fundamental conflict between the proletarian and the In the terminology of the Marxist movement, unprincipled has been unable to eliminate middle class elewere overheard threatening to set the building declared the general strike of petty bourgeois tendencies expresses itself at every turn in ques. cliques or groups which begin a struggle without a definite proments, it has degraded them without limit. The textile workers in Bombay was tions of the party organization.
But involved in this secondary gram have been characterized as political bandits. classic exmiddle class is not proletarianized only because it arrested on March 16. He was conflict are not little incidents, grievances, personal friction and ample of such a group, from its beginning to its miserable end in All that is lacking to complete this picture of is pauperized.
Southern justice in action is a report from Police arrested after having delivered similar small change which are a common feature in the life of the backwaters of American radicalism, is the group known as Crises, said Marx, were essential and inescapChief Joe Serio that he was unable to save the two speeches alleged to be preju every organization. The dispute goes deeper. We are at war with Lovestoneites. This group, which took its name from the characable phases of the cyclical movement of capitalist five suspects from the anger of a lynch mob of dicial to public order.
Burnham and the Burnhamites over the fundamental question of terless adventurer who has been its leader, poisoned and corrupted economy and could not be avoided under capital the character of the party. Burnham, who is completely allen to the American Communist movement for many years by its unprinwhites.
Latest reports are that ist conditions. They would grow progressively Nimbkar, general secretary of the the program and traditions of Bolshevism, is no less hostile to cipled and unscrupulous factional struggles, which were carried worse, working greater havoc to the system. Not The Bourbons of the South may pass over this Textile Workers Union, has been its organizational methods. He is much bearer in spirit to Souvon to serve personal aims and personal ambitions, or to satisfy at all, retorted the apologists for capitalism, incident as light mindedly as they have passed arrested. He is charged with a arine and all the decadents, skepties and renegades of Bolshevism personal grievances. The Lovestoneites were able and talented peoover all the other gruesome and ghastly cruelties breach of the order prohibiting than to the spirit of Lenin and his terrible regime.
crises are simply symptoms of growth which ple, but they had no definite principles. They knew only that they would cease when capitalism reached maturity.
they have inflicted upon the Negroes. But this meetings. Nimbkar visited Engincident like all the others brings the revolutionland last August where he spoke against degeneration of the party after the revolution. We are program of the moment was always adapted to their primary aim The crises that have shaken capitalism since Burnham is concerned first of all with democratic guarantees wanted to control the party regime. As with Abern, this ques the first world war, and especially since 1929, to the Lancashire textile workers concerned first of all with building a party that will be capable of solving the organization question satisfactorily. that is, in have decided that argument also in Marx favor.
culmination. When that wrath bursts it will sweep and appealed for closer coopera of leading the revolution. Burnham conception of party democ their favor.
The capitalist system lurches from one economic, the land with the fierce cleansing flames of the tion between the Indian Trade racy is that a perpetual talking shop in which discussions go political, social crisis, to the next and its most socialist revolution. It will wipe out the savage Union Congress and the British on forever and nothing is ever firmly decided. See the resolution was at the head of the Comintern. With the downfall of Zinoviev They were wild eyed radicals and ultra leftists when Zinoviev devoted defenders no longer dare predict an end rule of the Southern Bourbons along with that of Trade Union Congress their Wall Street brothers with a thoroughness to these crises. We shall have to struggle in of the Cleveland Conference. Consider his new inventionthat will leave not the slightest trace behind.
a party with two different public organs defending two different and the violent right swing of the Comintern under Bukharin, the near future to stop the em and antagonistic programs! Like all the rest of Burnham inde changes his shirt. Due to an error in calculation, or a delay in they became ardent Bukharinites as quickly and calmly as one War and Revolution May the flames in which the 198 died on the pendent ideas that is simply a plagiarism from allen sources. It information, they were behindhand in making the switch from ployers offensive against us, altar of Southern justice serve as a spark to light he said, and we hope the LanMarx not only foretold the catastrophie collapse is not difficult to recognize in this brilliant scheme of party or Bukharin to Stalin and the frenzied leftism of the Third Period.
the cleansing fire!
cashire workers will give us of capitalism, now being enacted before our eyes.
ganization a rehabilitation of Norman Thomas ill fated all inclu To be sure they tried to make up for their oversight by proposing He also foresaw its end. The expropriators, we their support for any rise in sive party.
the standards of Indian workread on the last page of this book, would be exthe expulsion of Bukharin at the party convention they controlled ers is bound to benefit the LanOur conception of the party is radically different. For us the in 1929. But this last demonstration of political flexibility in the propriated by the popular masses who had everyparty must be a combat organization which leads a determined service of rigid organizational aims came too late. Their tardiness thing to gain and nothing to lose. This prediction, Letter from a Negro Reader cashire workers in the long struggle for power. The Bolshevik party which leads the struggle cost them their heads.
positively realized by the Bolshevik revolution of run.
Editor: for power needs not only internal an 1917, has been negatively confirmed by the inimperious centralism and an iron discipline. It also registres in action. It Their politics were always determined for them by external am a college trained Negro, favored with nu POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE ability of the capitalist class to find any enduring merous labor, educational and political experiCALLED IN BOMBAY a proletarian composition conforming to its proletarian program pressure. At the time of their membership in the Communist solution for its own problems.
ences that have given me a keen appreciation of The Council of Action of the The Bolshevik party cannot be led by dilletantes whose real inter Party it was the pressure of Moscow. With their formal expulsion Fascism and the New Deal, says Trotsky, are still weightier pressure began to bear down the many economic problems facing the Negro Bombay Provincial Trade Union csts and real lives are in another and alien world. It requires an from the Comintern but two methods employed by capitalist reaction people.
Congress, at its meeting on March active professional leadership, composed of individuals democrat upon them, and they gradually adapted themselves to it. Today to stave off the inevitable socialist revolution. The 12, decided to call a one day gen ically selected and democratically controlled, who devote their en this miserable and isolated clique, petty bourgeois to the core, is murderous method of Fascism is first adopted by solution to the Negro problem will never be eral strike in Bombay on March tire lives to the party, and who ind in the party, and in its multi tossed about by bourgeois democratic public opinion like a feather the poorer capitalist powers. New Dealism is the effected until there is a concerted effort together 18 as a protest against the at form activities in a proletarian environment, complete personal sat in the breeze. The Lovestoneltes never had any independent prowith the white masses of Labor. Economic maladprivileged policy of the rich aristocratic imperialgram of their own. They were never able to develop one in the isfaction.
tack on democratic liberties and 1sms, above all, that of the United States.
justment affects the Negro more adversely than to demand the release of their any other racial group.
These alternative policies for the preservation For the proletarian revolutionist the party is the concentrated years since their separation from the official Communist Party, leaders.
expression of his life purpose, and he is bound to it for life and from a journal of left liberalism. horrible example of the end Today their paper, the Workers Age, is hardly distinguishable of decaying capitalism reveal their common bankThe American Negro has less to be patriotic Latest papers from India give ruptcy and insane barbarism in the second comfor than any group in the world. Since the Social us a few highlights on the strike knows that his socialist ideal cannot be realized without the party result of unprincipled organizational politics.
bat between the imperialist states for possession ist Appeal expresses the intention to right some of the 160, 000 Bombay textile in his eyes the crime of crimes is disloyalty or irresponsibility The most horrible case of all, with the most immeasurably tragof the world.
of the many wrongs besetting the Negro people, workers, which is still going on towards the party. The proletarian revolutionist is proud of his ic final consequences, is that of the Anti Trotskyist faction in To stop this senseless slaughter, to substitute take great interest in this regard The strike was called for Mon party. He defends it before the world on all occasions. The prole. the Russian Communist Party. It is unquestionable that the Stalin planned economy for the existing economic chaos, day but the workers spontaneous tarian revolutionist is a disciplined man, since the party cannot Zinoviev Kamenev combination began its factional struggle against and to give mankind a fresh start, the working The following opinions on this question have ly struck on Sunday. Picketing exist as a combat organization without disciplne. When he finds Trotsky without any clearly defined programmatic aim. And premasses must, and will learn to abolish private been formed in my mind: prevented the night shift from himself in the minority. loyally submits to the decision of the cisely because it had no program, it became the expression of allen ownership of the means of production, first on a American capitalism has used the Negro to entering the plants. At least 25 party and carries out its decisions, while he awaits new events to class influences. The ultimate degeneration of the Stalinist faction, national and Anally on a world scale.
processions paraded the streets verify the disputes or new opportunities to discuss them again.
retain its dominant status.
into a helpless tool of imperialism and a murderous opponent of Get workers interested in our movement to and joined a mass meeting in the read this book. Here is the case for the socialist Divide and Rule has been more advantageously evening at which a resolution was The petty bourgeois attitude toward the party, which Burnham the true representatives of the Russian revolution, is not, as our revolution brilliantly and briefly presented by the applied on the Negro people than on any other adopted protesting the police ban represents, is the opposite of all this. The petty bourgeois character enemies say, the logical development of Bolshevism. It is rather greatest living interpreter of Marxism.
racial group.
on meetings and processions in of the opposition is shown in their attitude towards the party, their the ultimate outcome of a departure from the Bolshevik Marxist the labor areas effective on Mon conception of the party, even in their method of complaining and method of principled politics. Perpetuation of race prejudice preserves those day.
whining about their grievances, as unfallingly as in their lightAll proportions guarded, the degeneration of the Abern clique, in the upper economic stratum and divides the Nearly 90 percent of all mill minded attitude towards our program, our doctrine and our tradi from formal adherents to the program and doctrine of Marxism masses of the two races in the lower economic workers were out on the first day tion.
into factional supporters of revisionism, has followed the same stratum.
of the strike. Workers in six silk The petty bourgeois intellectual, who wants to teach and guide pattern as the other examples cited. The present ideological and The unequal distribution of wealth is the cause mills, about 10, 000 workers, the labor movement without participating in it, feels only loose political hegemony of Burnham in the opposition bloc is the most of our economic chaos.
struck in sympathy with the tex. ties to the party and is always full of grievances against it. The striking proof of the political law that groups and cliques which OF MARX tile workers. new feature of moment his toes are stepped on, or he is rebuffed, he forgets all have no program of their own become the instruments of the Negro reactionaries have greatly retarded the this strike has been mass picket about the interests of the movement and remembers only that program of others. Burnham has a program of a sort. It is the progress of the Negro people.
lines. Women have been especial his feelings have been hurt; the revolution may be important, but program of struggle against the doctrine, the methods and the By LEON TROTSKY ly active on the picket lines and the wounded vanity of a petty bourgeois intellectual is more im tradition of hovem was only natural, indeed it was in6. The hypocrisy of the American white man has by p. of the first day of the portant. He is all for discipline when he is laying down the law to evitable, that those who combined with Burnham to fight against caused Negro youth largely to distrust him strike 36 women pickets been others, but as soon as he finds himself in a minority, he begins the regime should fall under the sway of his program. The can be obtained from even in the labor movement.
arrested on charges of disorderly to deliver ultimatums and threats of split to the party majority. speed with which Abern accomplished this transformation can Yours very truly, behavior or for breach of the po The leaders of the opposition are running true to type. Having be explained in part by the fact that he has had previous expe PIONEER PUBLISHERS Chicago, Mlinois POPE THOMPSON lice order prohibiting assemblies. recited the whole dolorous catalogue of their petty and inconse rience in ideological betrayal in the service of pickayune organlaaFive hundred textile workers quential and mostly imaginary grievances; having been repulsed by tlonal ends, and in part by the fact that the social pressure upon 116 University Place subscribe to the Socialist Appeal and organized a one day hunger the proletarian majority in their attempt to revise the program; our party is much heavier today than ever before. This pressure dearly appreciate its facts and frankness.
strike in Bombay against the having been called in sociological and political terms by their right accelerates all developments.
New York, on fire.
LIVING THOUGHTS