SOCIALIST APPEAL JUNE 8, 1940 Stalinist Duplicity SOCIALIST APPEAL Vol. IV, No. 28 Saturday, June 8, 1940 PubMehed Weekly by the SOOLALIBT APPEAL PUBLISHING ABS at 116 University Place, New York, NY.
Telephone: Algonquin 8547 Cops and the Christian Front Black Colonials Call On British Masses to Revolt Editorial Board: FELIX MORROW ALBERT GOLDMAN General Manager: GEORGE CLARKE Subscriptions: 00 per year: 00 for six months.
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1920 Reentered as Dost Actor March 13798 New York, NY.
omced as unde the not Fight with the Socialist Workers Party for: JOB AND DECENT LIVING FOR EVERY WORKER. OPEN THE IDLE FACTORIES. OPERATE THEM UNDER WORKERS CONTROL A TWENTY. BILLION DOLLAR FEDERAL PUBLIC WORKS AND HOUSING PROGRAM. THIRTY THIRTY 80. WEEKLY MINIMUM WAGE 30 HOUR WEEKLY MAXIMUM FOR ALL WORKERS ON ALL JOBS. 30 WEEKLY OLD AGE AND DISABILITY PENSION EXPROPRIATE THE SLXTY 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 VIGILANTE AND FASCIST ATTACKS.
12 FULL SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC EQUALITY FOR THE NEGRO PEOPLE.
As long as Stalin alliance with Hitler continues, the pro Ally Roosevelt government will continue to persecute the Communist party. Protesting against By SAM MARCY hostility to the working class, its the blows aimed at them, the Stalinist leaders seek to muss organizations, its press, and secure support by asserting that they are the antiTaking the stand in defense of his fascist activities, John the spreading of the most viruwar party and And since genuine militants in the trade unions, and Cassidy, New York leader of the Christian Front, has ad lent anti labor propaganda, under the mask of defending the Uneven religious pacifists, are being persecuted by the mitted in Federal Court that he had more than 500 police in ited States against the Red is government, the claim of the Stalinsts has a surface the primary defense upon which plausibility until one examines their unprincipled his organization in the single borough of Brooklyn alone.
the fascist defendants rely ana role in the trade unions, This must have come as a severe shock to workers and is conceded to be a virtue by the Any workers organization which is genuinely antiwar, genuinely fighting for the workers against the anti fascists in New York. Many of them must have recalled prosecution as well as the defense!
There is not the slightest reabosses and their government, would as a minimum that Mayor La Guardia had ordered an investigation into the son to believe that the capitalist consequences and oppose the collaboration of labor police department with regard to membership in the Christian government cracked down on these 14 fascists because it wantleaders on the defense boards. Yet here is the text of Front and that the investigaed to fight fascism. The trial was a telegram sent on May 19 to Roosevelt by the StalinDuring the so called era of staged not as a part of a struggle ist leadership of the National Maritime Union: tion supposedly revealed that prosperity, graft and corruption against fascism, but as part of a The National Maritime Union wants to make clear only about 400 police in the flourished in the city. It fed a unified scheme carried out jointly as such are opposed to involvement in European wars. entire city had at one time constantly growing network of by the FBI and the anti trust all Division of the Justice Depart. We reaffirm our support of our government in belonged but now about 27 sorts of underworld elements. But ment, as a supplement to their people will be assured of adequate protection of our were still in its ranks. The had to be eliminated as a measure The trial was conceived to give American democracy and American institutions. mayor has done nothing about of economy. The La Guardia ad the appearance that the govern Our union, its leaders and members, support this these fascist cops.
ministration made it its task to ment was fighting both against program, but in order to insure its fulfillment labor The mayor reaction to of the inseparable connection be cleanse the city. Everyone knew the left and the right.
must, because of its importance, be represented on all boards and commissions dealing with completion Cassidy revelation was con tween the underworld and the seems to be too much for the cape of this defense program. All protective labor and so fined to a statement that: We police department; but to italist government. As the course cial legislation must be guarante bversive Jeans the latter publicly of the whole trial nears its conThis rotten, class collaborationist telegram was organizations or any other ac would discredit in the eyes of the clusion it becomes evident that printed in the Daily Worker, May 21, without a word tions seeking to divide our people. masses the forces of law and the whole case is being converted of comment. Naturally, since it was probably written, Those creating hatred among the order.
into a farce.
net by fat head Joe Curran who signed it, but by one races and religions are not loyal Hence a different method was The so called conspiracy to of his chiefs at Stalinist headquarters.
SWOC convention. Lewis lieutenant, Murray, ramAnother example: read the Stalinist press on the izing will not drive the fascists used the method of attrition, overthrow the government is back one inch! The thousands of quiet dismissals, resignation and being shifted entirely on the med down the delegates throats the most reactionary workers who voted for La Guar. retirement. The police force be shoulders of one man, Bishop, a pro war resolution yet presented to any CIO union. dia on the Labor Party ticket came very Jittery with every new relatively insignificant figure, who But there wasn a peep from the anti war Stalin expected something more than expose of the criminal under is being made the scape goat world.
mere sermons!
wave of suicides in the while the real leader of the Another example: John Lewis speech at the This attitude on the part of La sorce totalled more than 100. Christian Front, Cassidy, is Amalgamated Clothing Workers convention. That Guardia is in sharp contrast to the With such a mood prevailing made extremely inconspicuous.
All of the jurors who are to was the occasion when Lewis hastily dropped all his one he takes whenever organized among the police, some one was previous anti Roosevelt and anti war talk, and spoke labor goes on strike. He showed bound to take up their defense. try these defendants are residents as what he is a labor lieutenant of the capitalist it in his tight against the effort The Coughlin. Curran. Cassidy of Brooklyn, where the Christian class. Among the fouler things he said was: of the Transport Workers Union fascists had their connections Front has the greatest number It is publicly known that labor is fully in accord to preserve their rights when the with the cops. They knew their of members and is considerably with the necessity for national defense.
city assumed operation of the sentiments, and fears. They took uided by the Catholic hierarchy up the cudgels for them. But of the Brooklyn Diocese, whose If the country wants the cooperation of labor to subways.
they could not defend their case organ, the Tablet, has peen do the work of preparing for war, and in the event of WHY SO MANY COPS on the merits. Hence the insidious consistently taking the side of the war to do the necessary dying in the war, what is JOINED THE FASCISTS campaign of a Jewish plot, defendants. The defense consists wrong with a little cooperation on policies?
Asked by the prosecution whypersecuting Catholic policemen, of very able and experienced Even imperial England had to come to it, and Catholic attorneys, one of whom surely democratic America can give labor adequate such a huge number of police had etc.
has been decorated by the Pope.
Harold McKennedy, the prosecureplied that they joined because CHRISTIAN FRONT IS What imperial England came to, in sugar coating they were fearful of their jobs NOT ON TRIAL tor, is also a Catholic. The Cathits ruthless dictatorship with a few Labor stooges, and for economic security and great many workers are un olie Hierarchy of New York has the Stalinists knew very well. But this was John because communists were try der the impression that the trial to date failed to express itself on Lewis talking, the Stalinists are crawling on their of the 14 Frontists in Brooklyn the trials.
ing to smear them.
bellies before him, and so you will find not a word of criticism of Lewis speech in the Stalinist press. that the New York cops are the Christian Front as an organ: defendants will be acquitted, light It is, however, a notorious fact Federal Court is a prosecution of In all probability, some of the. among the highest paid in Amerization. No greater illusion could sentences imposed on the others, ers in Kearny, New Jersey. They were driven back to ice that they are provided with be had one that score. The Chris: While the scape goat Bishop bears name of the defense program. Among the skates of extra servi LA Guardia ment and is not on trial. The Christian Front will go right on.
who signed the statement to the press, sending them economy axe which has cut so crime with which the defendants back for patriotic reasons, was the Stalinist, Leonard deeply into the living standards are charged is not that of being The lesson of the Christian Front Trial is that only the Goldsmith, Jersey CIO secretary. And not a word of poor civil servants, has left fascists, or purveyors of antiof criticism in the Stalinist press.
entirely intact the police depart senits upon workers and their revolutionary party, can sue working class, led by a militant Another example: the futile appeal of the United ment.
cessfully fight fascism.
Auto Workers leadership to Roosevelt, to intervene to Why, then, did so many police organization. As a matter of fact, prevent a strike, in the name of patriotism. Thereby really join the fascist Christian the UAW leadership put the GM workers in the same Front? The answer has been trap as the shipyard workers were pushed into. But given in preceding articles in the Join the Socialist Subscribe to the not a word of criticism from the Stalinists, for they Socialist Appeal. It is worth reare hand in glove with the UAW officials in this peating in brief.
Workers Party Fourth International capitulatory move.
The Communist Party an anti war party? The Communist party defending the workers against the anti labor consequences of the defense program?
The record tells the opposite story The following manifesto was issued by the International African Service Bureau, the West African Youth League, the Colonial Seamen Assoclation and the Kikuyu Central Association (East Africa) to the British workers on May Day: Amid the tragedies of war when the Imperialist classes of the Great Powers are initiating the common peoples white, black, brown and yellow in hatred against one another, we send on behalf of the toiling masses of the Colonial Empire fraternal greetings of International Solidarity to the British Workers.
We Africans and peoples of African descent, the victims of Imperialist exploitation and oppression denounce the belligerents in both camps.
We have not forgotten the shameful betrayal of Abyssinia a conquest carried out with the connivance of so called democratic France and Britain.
Neither are we deceived by the hypocritical declarations of statesmen about defense of small nations and international law.
We publicly proclaim that this war, like the last, is not being fought for the emancipation of Labor from yoke Capital, but for Imperialist aims colonies, markets and sources of raw materials iron ore, oil, rubber, etc.
Our profoundest sympathies go out to the victims of Nazi aggression, but Hitler is doing today to civilized white peoples on the Continent of Europe is precisely what British and French and other Imperialists have been doing to the colonial races of Africa and Asia for centuries.
Europe is today paying the price for the injustices committed in the past to the so called backward races of the world. It is time therefore, that white workers realize that as long as they permit their rulers to enslave others, they themselves cannot be free The workers of Britain will continue to be dragged into wars until such time as they, in unity with colonial peoples, liquidate the evil system of Imperialism (democratic and fascist alike) and replace it by the Co operative Socialist Commonwealth, from which war will be banished, and the good things of life produced for the common benefit of all white, black, brown, yellow.
GEORGE PADMORE, General Secretary, International African Service Bureau.
JOMO KENYATTA, General Secretary, Klkuyu Central Association (East Africa. CHRIS JONES, Colonial Seamen Association.
WAL DANIELS, West African Youth League.
ists.
Enslaving Latin America. Burnham Quits: Joins Intellectuals in Retreat General George Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, has made very clear to us why Roosevelt wants authority from Congress to call the National Guard to active service at any time. Within the next month or two, the general said Tuesday, it is likely that American troops will be sent to other parts of this hemisphere to destroy fifth columnists.
Elliott Roosevelt, the president son, in a speech last Friday, May 31, at Athens, Texas, explained what fifth columnists are in Latin America. It boiled down to the fact that the leaders of the Mexican government have been scorning close cooperation with the United States. The time has come, he concluded, for the people of Texas to educate the citizens of other States that we take adequate measures to make sure that Mexico shall remain a friendly nation and that she does not pay mere lip service to that friendship.
In a word, any Latin American nation which doesn do what it is told by the United States is a fifth columnist. And it had better do what it is told within the month deadline laid down by General Marshall All previous moves by Yankee imperialism to subjugate its weaker neighbors pale into insignificance beside the present drive. All the resources of the hemisphere and its manpower are to be dragooned into the service of Washington.
Any resistance will be labelled fifth column.
All this, of course, in the name of the war for democracy. In the World of Labor The Apex Case Labor Action, organ of the petty bourgeois opposition which split in April from our party, regretfully notes this week that its leader James Burnham has severed all relations with his group and retired to private life. Having lost confidence in the struggle against capitalism and the war, he sees, not socialism, but a new system of exploitation, managerial society, as the next probable stage of society.
Thus ends Burnham panicky flight from Marxism.
In a document published by his group in April just few weeks ago. this leader of the petty bourgeois opposition characterized our views as the politics of desperation. His own political orbit in the past nine months has resembled the desperate leap of a suicide from the top of a skyscraper. From a contestant to the political leadership of the Fourth International, he has become the victim of utter prostration.
Should Burnham plan to devote himself to the study of philosophy in retirement, he will find an excellent example of dialectical development in his own evolution into his opposite.
Burnham counterposed himself to us as an apostle of ideal morality. judge a political struggle morally as well as politically, he wrote in Science and Style.
By either standard or both, Burnham now stands condemned as a betrayer and exposed as a poseur and falsifier.
At every stage of his struggle against the Fourth International, Burnham pretended to be what he was not and falsely accused his opponents of his own crimes. While he glibly accused Trotsky of hiding his true views and refusing to discuss the main issues in dispute, Burnham himself deliberately withheld his real views on the Russian and all other questions, preferring to take cover behind Shachtman less fully developed formulations. Such was his devotion to truth!
Burnham claimed just the other day to be one of the best soldiers in the army of the third camp. He pretended to lead his followers, especially, the misguided youth, forward to the fight against war and for Socialism, while he had lost faith in that fight and was actually preparing to quit it. Finally, he waited until he had tried to inflict the maximum damage upon our party, until he had consummated a split its ranks and launched his own organization, before apprising anyone of his intention to desert.
In our opinion, there are no more appropriate terms for such contemptible behavior than duplicity, betrayal, cowardly surrender. What scurvy tricks this arch moralist played upon all those who reposed confidence in him!
One of Burnham assertions at least still holds true. His brand of morality, his politics, his course, is not ours.
As is their custom in these matters, Burnham coleaders of the third camp treat his conduct as a purely individual aberration. Burnham ideas, they now admit, only rehash the old reactionary arguments of other intellectuals in retreat. But his coleaders shared and still hold to Burnham principal differences with the methods and program of the Fourth International. Burnham was their real head, the author of their theories and their documents. His newest theories and latest action only draw the final conclusions from their opposition to Marxist ideas and their break with Bolshevism.
Burnham desertion is a warning sign of the disintegration of the petty bourgeois opposition he headed. To those of his former followers who remain confident of the workers capacity to realize socialism under the leadership of Bolshevism, we say: Answer Burnham renegacy by returning to the ideas and banner of the Fourth International, Jehovah Witnesses By Paul Stevens Gestapo Seizes Our Comrades Canada Outlaws Communism. In the Occupied Countries Our Comrades Fight On Our German comrades have been hard hit by Canadian comrade has sent some clippings We are sorry, but we can share the optimism of the advance of the Nazi war machine. Norway, showing the lengths to which the war time die.
the CIO leadership about the meaning of the Belgium, Holland these were centers from tatorship in Canada has already gone. Dated from Supreme Court decision in the Apex case on May 27. which our comrades were able to operate. They Ottawa, May 15th, one article states: The court held that the actions of Local of the owed little thanks that to the governments of Communism came beyond the pale of the law American Federation of Hosiery Workers in this par for the German refugees and, above all, for the these democracies, which made life miserable throughout Canada today.
ticular instance a sit down strike against the Apex revolutionary refugees. Almost invariably our Under the broad powers of the Wartime Detense of Canada regulations, Mr. Justice Company were not in violation of the Sherman an comrades had to operate in these countries under Chevrier of the Ontario Supreme Court declared ti trust Act. The court decided that no substantial illegal conditions, concealing their identity. formally that the Communist Party of Canada is evidence had been presented that the union restricted When the Nazis came in, the Gestapo deman Illegal organization.
onstrate its commercial competition in carrying out the strike.
read efficiency. Its stool pigeons The regulation provides that once an organization has in such manner been declared illegal, BUT the court majority of six joined with the minappear to have had prepared lists of anti Nazi Germans. In addition, however, they seem to have not only are all persons continuing as members ority of three in sharp affirmation of the applicability seized every German they could find. Let us hope or officers deemed guilty of an offense against of the Sherman Act to labor unions and that is the that our comrades were seized primarily in the the regulations, but anybody advocating or dereal point at issue. This very Apex decision may be general dragnet and the Gestapo doesn know fending the acts, principles and policies of such just whom they have. Because of this hoped for an organization is also guilty.
the basis of far reaching judgments against unions in possibility it is necessary to conceal the names The ban on Communism followed conviction forthcoming cases.
and number of comrades who were in those coun and imprisonment of three Ottawa men on inEven in this particular instance the union involved tries. All comrades and friends please take note. dictments charging publication and circulation will in all probability be struck serious blows by the of anti war pamphlets tending to prejudice the courts. For the Supreme Court decision declared the French Trotskyists Sent to Prison safety of the state and efficient prosecution of the war.
union actions entitled the company to damages unby the Democratic Government The Socialist Workers League of Canada, secder the state laws and as much as urged the company tion of the Fourth International, was unable to to file suit for damages in the state courts. WhereThe French press reports that pine Trotskyists get a printer to publish its paper from the very who were arrested on the 13th of February, were upon the company attorney announced he would imfirst day of the war, and has been functioning brought before the 2nd military tribunal preon an illegal basis since then. But, despite all mediately file sult for damages in the Pennsylvania sided over by Colonel Jammes on May 7th. obstacles, they fight on.
courts.
The following sentences were passed, for actiIn the light of these facts, it is a little hard to vities of a nature to hinder national defense. understand why Lee Pressman, CIO general counsel, Charles MARGNE, post office employee, Uruguay Adherents of 4th Intercalled the decision a notable victory. Even more years prison, 5, 000 fr. fine; Pierre BOUSSEL, post difficult to understand is the fantastic assertion by national Support Stand of SWP office employee, years prison, 1, 000 fr. fine; Isadore Katz, the Hosiery Workers lawyer, that This Bruno NARDINO, student, years prison, 2, 000 letter sent to the Emergency Conference fr. fine; Marie COSTE, post office employee, of the Fourth International from Uruguay decision means that the threat of the Sherman Act years prison, 2, 000 fr. fine; Mineille FOIRIER, states: against labor unions in strike cases has been re teacher of physical culture, years prison, 1, 000. On the fundamental questions of the moved.
fr. fine; Suzanne SIMKHOVITCH, stenographer, present historic crisis and the character of the The decision does nothing of the kind. Louis Stark, Soviet Union we are in agreement with the years prison, with reprieve; Jerzy MILNYlabor editor of the New York Times, was quite right NARZ, tailor, years prison, 100 fr. fine, with theses of the Fourth International.
reprieve; Andre CORSET, student, years pris Since the foundation of our group this has when he summed it up as: In line with its policy of on, 200 fr. fine; Maurice GUIGNET, turner, been our adopted position.
32 years the court ruled that the words of the anti years prison with reprieve, 1, 000 fr. fine. Consequently we are for the unconditional trust act do embrace to some extent and in some cir Repressions, American apologists for the Al defense of the Our position is not the cumstances labor unions and their activities. That lies have said, are being directed only against result of a mechanical acceptance of the thesis what the judges said, and that what they intend to Russia agents. This latest report, coupled with but the product of our convictions after recent prosecutions of leaders of the PSOPstudy of the thesis and everything written do. Empty boasting doesn help labor; what is more, Socialist Party of Workers and Peasants show since on the subject by Comrade Trotsky, it may lull labor into illusory security, leaving the what a fraud these apologies are. French democand by others who oppose this view.
unions defenseless when the courts crack down. racy ferociously persecutes all militant workers.
The United States Supreme Court, in all its august majesty, has decided that the children of families belonging to a Christian religious sect, Jehovah Witnesses, cannot go to public school.
For this sect has as one of its tenets that no human should worship that what a salute is, a man made thing, such as a flag. And the security of the country demands that the flag be saluted by all school children.
In half a dozen cities of Texas and other places, adherents of this sect have been victims of Legionnaire mob violence in these days of war hysteria. For these Christians hold to the amazing doctrine that thou shalt not kill.
The action of court and mob against these pathetic believers is but a faint harbinger of the forces which government and bosses will attempt to let loose against the labor movement when, inevitably, the needs and rights of the workers come into conflict with the all devouring needs of the war machine.