Socialist Appeal TRADE UNION WAGES ON TRADE UNION WAGES ON ALL DEFENSE WORK!
ALL DEFENSE WORK!
Official Weekly Organ of the Socialist Workers Party, Section of the Fourth International VOL. IV No. 31.
NEW YORK, N, SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1940 247 FIVE (5) ÇENTS LABOR HAS ANSWER TO CONSCRIPTION!
WORKERS CANNOT AGREE TO CONTROL BY DICTATORIAL ARMY OFFICER CASTE The bi partisan Burke Wadsworth conscription bill has the approval of the dominant sections of the capitalist class: that is expressed by the formal approval of the bill by the Roosevelt administration through its War and Navy Departments, by the capitalist press of all shades of opinion, by the bipartisan Senate Military Affairs Committee, etc.
Speedy passage of the bill is not, however, a burning necessity the capitalist class and its government. Much must ional resolution abrogating the trade treaty with Japan and be done in the way of technical preparations before even the thereby making relations with Japan a day to day crisis.
first contingent of 400, 000 conscripts can be inducted into the All the Congressional opponents of the conscription armed forces. The present Army and Navy must be trans bill, to a man, voted for the armament appropriations. Logiformed into an instrument for training the conscripts,. uni cally, therefore, they must go on to provide the manpower to forms, guns, camps and camp facilities must be made ready. handle those armaments. As a matter of fact, they accept In addition the White House thinks that much of the National that logical conclusion. All that they re saying is that the Guard will have to join the Army and Navy in training the manpower should be recruited by another method. Thus, Vanconscripts, and therefore first wants the National Guard called denburg proposes that the army enlistment period should be out for a year active duty.
reduced to the one year term provided in the conscription bill, There is a little time, available, therefore. And the pow and is certain that adequate numbers of men would be gotten ers that be have very cleverly decided to use that time as a by that method, making conscription unnecessary.
period of reducing the steam pressure of the anti war forces.
They re going to open the safety valve of discussion; that ENLISTMENT NO MORE DEMOCRATIC what democracy is: free discussion, but with the decision What, then, is the difference between mass enlistments remaining as firmly in the control of the ruling class as in a and conscription? The Vandenburgs claim that the first is fascist regime. When they don have time, we don even more democratic than the second. Is it? Just imagine a nahave the semblance of discussion: we saw that in the speedy tional campaign to secure the enlistment of the 1, 400, 000 men passage of the fourteen billion dollars armament bills.
whcm the administration wants in the next fifteen months.
Furthermore, the discussion on the conscription bilis Every propaganda agency of the government and the capitalgoing to be carefully regulated and limited. The voices of ist class, movies, schools, radios, press, minute men speeches, the opponents are hand picked. Just look at them! Muunte pounding away at the young men of the country. No conbanks like Senator Wheeler und hard eyed demagogues like trary voice could be raised, opposing enlistment, without beSenator Vandenburg! They will lead the opposition, pre ing immediately strangled by the penalties against opposing cisely in order to mislead it.
enlistment. If enlistments lagged, the pressure would get stiffWHEELER IN ANOTHER COME ON ACT er: stop work meetings with employers and recruiting sergeants needling the workers; quiet agreements whereby emAnybody who is taken in for one moment by Wheeler must have a very short memory indeed. For about a month ployers agree to get a given percentage of their men to join the army or lose their jobs: debutantes cruising the streets or so before the Democratic Convention, they let the leash and pinning white feathers on young men who won enlist hang loose, and Wheeler ran around denouncing the intercvery fiendish ingenuity would be resorted to for gathering ventionists, declaring he would stand for president in opposition to Roosevelt, even making coy threats about a third up the necessary victims.
party, appearing on one platform with fuming John Lewis, And if all that wouldn work? Why, then, of course, as etc. Then the Convention convened, the leash was pulled.
the Wheelers and Vandenburgs would agree right now, then tight and Wheeler announced the phony anti war plank they would vote for conscription. So where in blazes is the was just what he wanted; he wasn standing for nominatia democratic difference between the two proposals? Either was he was backing Roosevelt. Now they ve loosened the leash the necessary millions will be dragooned into the armed orces: again and Wheeler is out digging up some cheap publicity. None of these scoundrels, therefore, is offering a serious and will, of course, fold up obediently again as soon as the and progressive alternative to conscription. Nor are John leash is tightened again.
Lewis and other CIO and AFL leaders offering such an alThe spectacle of Republican Senators Vandenburg and ternative. Lewis proposals are completely identical with those Taft playing opponents to the conscription bill scarcely of Wheeler and Vandenburg, One might think that Lewis requires comment. Since time permits it, they are out to make would have a little more dignity than to be directly assoa little easy and safe capital against the administration. ciated with Wheeler again, so shortly after Wheeler left him Enough Republicans in both houses will vote for the bill any holding the bag on Lewis demand that Wheeler be nominated way, so Willkie party will be playing both ends against by the Democrats: but no, Sunday night Lewis conferred with the middle. Vandenburg main complaint against Roosevelt Wheeler and then announced himself in full agreement with war plans for a long time was that Vandenburg wanted first Senator Wheeler on this thing. And on Monday, in a separthe war against Japan: he was the author of the Congress ate but coinciding statement with that of Vandenburg, Lewis also urged mass one year army enlistments as the alternative to conscription.
We have already seen how fraudulent is the Vandenburg case for enlistments being more democratic; and that goes for Lewis too. In addition, two other basic aspects of the Vandenburg Lewis proposal, not worth mentioning apropos of Vandenburg, become extremely important when Lewis makes the proposal; for Lewis is the head of the CIO and hence speaks for the most important workers organization in the country: By proposing mass enlistments as an alternative, Lewis commits himself to unqualifed support of a campaign for mass enlistments. If his proposal were accepted, he would be obligated to make it a success. He would go up and down the land using his prestige and organizational power to pull them in, those millions of young workers whom the ruling class wants as soldiers. Lewis would be the chiel recruiting sergeant for the bosses government! Lewis is proposing, yes, actually proposing, that millions of young workers shall willingly deliver themselves into the hands of the officer caste of the Army and Navy, an officer caste to which, under the regulations governing the armed forces, these young workers must render unquestioning obedience. It is an open secret that by training, by class composition, by professional bent, the officer caste is the most reactionary group in the country. It has the mentality of a military dictator, if not of a fascist. If the officers did not already have this by virtue of coming from the most hidebound and reactionary sections of the capitalist class, and from their choice of a profession, they would develop it in the barracks regime of the army.
An army under capitalism has not a trace of democratic procedure within it; whatever democracy still exists outside stops at the barracks doors. We have to go back in history to the relation between master and serf to get an analogy to relations between officers and men in the army of democratic America. The amy has been that way throughout the history of capitalism will remain so as long as capitalism is permitted to last.
It is into the keeping of such a reactionary institution and into the control of such a reactionary caste of officers, that Lewis and other labor leaders propose to deliver several million young workers. Has Lewis forgotten how the National Guard smashed the Little Steel strike it 1937? How many workers in uniform, under pain of court martial if they disobeyed, drove back at bayonet point the Ohio steel workers picket lines? Doesn Lewis know that the armed forces of the state, under capitalism, are always used against the labor movement? And yet he proposes mass enlistments into these armed forces as a progressive alternative to conscription!
WE HAVE NO USE FOR PACIFISM genuinely progressive alternative to conscription and enlistment must and can be found. The opposition of the Fourth International to conscription has nothing in common with that of the whining pacifists. We are as irreconcilably opposed to the pacifists of whatever variety as we are opposed to the Wheelers, Vandenburgs and Lewises. As a matter of fact, you will find that the pacifists are simply hypocritical supporters of enlistment as against conscription; their argument, like Vandenburg being that conscription is unnecessary they accept unquestioningly all the other evils of this capitalist chaos that we live in, then balk at the last link in the chain: war. And always, bistory testifies, the pacifists knuckle under when war actually conies, and deliver their followers to the war makers.
Negative protests against conscription and war are of no avail whatever. The working class requires a positive program wbich takes the facts of war and militarism, which are the basic features of decaying capitalisme, as the starting point for practical actions. The workers require, to begin with, a positive, progressive alternative to capitalist conscription.
FOR MILITARY TRAINING BUT UNDER WORKERS CONTROL!
We don want the workers to receive their military training under the reactionary regime of the army. But the workers do believe that military training is necessary in this warring world, and we agree with them; for in this epoch of universal militarism all questions will be decided on the military plane. Therefore we propose universal, compulsory, military training of the working masses, but under the control of the trade unions. The government says it wants the masses to undergo military training? Then let it provide the funds, facilities and technical instruction, but let the workers own organizations be in charge of the training camps. Not the regime of the barracks but the internal life of the trade union movement is the appropriate atmosphere in which the workers shall learn the military arts.
Nor should the bourgeois officer caste, with its fascista minded contempt for the ranks, its callous disregard for the lives of those under them be in control of the worker soldiers.
Let their own leaders whom they have chosen lead the workers in military matters, just die they leadem in industrial matters. Their union officials, and especially their shop stewards and the men who speak the voice of the rank and file from the union floor, are infinitely more experienced in leading the workers than is the officer caste. Let these union leaders, then, be given the special training necessary for officers, likewise under control of the trade unions.
Universal, compulsory, military training under the direction the trade unions, and creation of a corps of workerofficers from the outstanding workers to whom the unionists look for leadership! That is our positive, progressive alternative to conscription and enlistment!
That alternative can and must become the program of the labor movement!
Auto Union Convention Opens; Court Upholds FBI Dull Beginning Is Symbolic Frameup of Teamsters Gets Latin America OK On Seizing British Colonies conviction.
Union Leadership Very Much Satisfied With Itself; Midwest Drivers Union Leaders Must Seizure Of Latin American Investments Of British Ally But Stagnation Of The Union Doesn Please Delegates Serve Years Terms For Union Activity Is Main Discussion Point Of Secret Sessions At Havana By SAM MARCY the United States and, back in ST. LOUIS, July 29 The fifth Convention of the United Auto policies of supporting the boss mobile Workers of America concluded its first day session today parties and for a clear cut pro ST. PAUL, Minn. July 27 Moines and Omaha. Scores of Yankee imperialism has succeeded in putting the Latin Ame the days before the First Imrican countries on record against a transfer of British and French perialist War, British imperialafter listening to an Invocation by an Archbishop, a long meander. Sram to have the unions build Seven teamsters union leaders FBI agents and untold sums of ing speech by a local Baptist pastor and a couple of speeches by their own political party repres from Sioux City, Des Moines and money were used for higher colonies in the Western Hemisphere to Nazi Germany if the latter ism was the dominant creditor and capital exporter into Latin some local politicians who promised two chickens in every pot and enting the workers and their in Omaha must enter a federal pen ups were determined to get those is victorious.
terests itentiary and serve prison terms unions.
What the status of these colonies should be in the event that America two cars in every garage. The convention also conferred an honorary Numerous resolutions have also of two years each, the Eighth Stultz, president of the Great Britain is defeated was vaguely formulated as a provisional British Investments Discussed life membership in the UAW to Allan Haywood, National OrganizaIt is the fate of these billions tion Director of the CIO, and sang the Star Spangled Banner and Week, the on the 30 Hour Circuit Court of Appeals here General Drivers Union of Omaha, administration. instead of a mandate or trusteeship of the posses. of dollars of British investments been submitted organization of Ford decided last week, when it denied Louis Miller. Omaha organizer. sions, as Hull originally wanted God Save the King. This evening many of the delegates are going and opposition to conscription the union leaders an appeal from and Carpenter, member of it. The difference in the termin. of American imperialism. the the conference to be held in se in Latin America which caused for a boat ride up the Mississippi river.
and the war drive of the govert a conviction in the lower federal the same local: Jack Maloney, or clogy, over which the delegates Annalist, cautious mouthpiece of ctet, behind closed doors. Secreey thus far are an accurate reflec. ed, everything is on the up and is expected to begin its report toThe convention proceedings ment. The Resolutions Committee courts.
The Federal Rureau of Investi and Ralph Johnson and Howard hours and hours, was not merely for reasons of defense, the United by the Hull Berle cartel plan, or tion of the present apathy of this up.
Delegates Dissatisfied morrow and thus open up the de gation G men engineered the Fouts of the same focal; and one of form, but of substance. States government may find it. the plan for taking over the Euunion and the lack of clear per The The convention delegates, most bate on the key questions facing growth of the drivers union Des Moines drivers, weer of the since a mere administration self faced with the unpleasant ropean colonies in the Western spective of what the union is to sensational Francis Quinn, organizer were the vic signifies a lesser degree of con task of sending troops to recal. Hemisphere, as these were widedo. The leadership Thomas, of them fresh from the shops. the auto workers movement during 1937 in the cms of the FBI frameup.
trol by the American imperial citrant Southern Hemisphere mid West. when the 10 state Walter Reuther, George Adde know full well what rot these re.
ly discussed in the American The seven will probably be con ists, than would a trusteeship. countries. are satisfied with present condi ports are. They are, however, tem North Central Area Committee tined to the Sandstone (Minne Hull new word for a protector capitalist press long before the of drivers unions was formed sota) federal prison, where MinBritain Kept Out tions. They are officers of a porarily confused bewildered and convening of the Havana Conate.
large, important union. Their sal disoriented.
AIRCRAFT PLANT with Farrell Dobbs of MinneaThat imperialism is pri ference. That also explains in At any rate, the delega marily concerned with arrogatar. es are coming in quite regular. They grumble and express their WORKERS VOTE polis as secretary, centered all neapolis WPA strike leaders ana ly, and moreover they are now dissatisfaction, but they do not tion expects this administra ing to itself the rich Latin Uruguay showed extreme relucteyes there including the FBI. Hinois union coal miners are becoming big shots in the govern yet know how to set the union tion of the colonies to serve American markets, and not mere. ance in attending the conference, aright. lo restore the marvellous FOR AUTO UNION The successful fight for the serving their terms.
mental apparatus.
as a bridge for full control by ly the formation of a so called and then only confined themunionization of the area found its Thomas is on the Advisory Com spirit of militancy which charact the United States when she is democratic front against Nazi selves to sending mere delegates focal points in Sioux City. Des in a better military position to penetration, was strikingly de with limited authority to enter mittee to Sidney Hillman, Labor erized the UAW two years ago Moines and Omaha, which the em ATTENTION MEMBERS O)
LOS ANGELES. The United ployers looked upon as weak links do so. As a writer in last Sun monstrated when the dele into binding agreements, and not Director of the National Defense and which succeeded in smashing NEW YORK LOCAL Council. Walter Reuther has just through all obstacles to build one Auto Workers (CIO) won the day New York Times puts it, cation made it a point to abeo their foreign ministers. These in the chain of driver unions, and been appointed a member of the most important industrial Labor Doard election at the the Latin American countries lutely exclude from the Havana three countries together with that where the FBI moved in. There will be a special member special committee which will unions in this country.
big Vultee airerat plant in were heartened in their stand conference any representative of Chile contain the bulk of British make plans for the training 01 Elections An Issue ship meeting Tuesday evening. Against the United States by the the British government. its investments. Year Investigation Downey near here, by vote young workers. Thus, according President Thomas In his short of 1439 to 512 truck was allegedly destroyed August 15 at Irving testimony of Army and Navy democratic ally now under the What action do these countries to the leadership, everything is address to the convention today Union officials estimate a during a Sioux City bakery driv. Plaza to diseuss plans for the committees to the effect that officers before Congressional shadow of Hitler Blitzkrieg!
contemplate taking with regard marvellously, asked the auto workers to sup This is extremely significant in to British property, in the cvent ers strike in 1938. It was a local progress reports are filled port his stand to back Roosevelt total of 50. 000 alreraft workers The in southern California, affair, but the FBI moved in any coming Campaign election, ther forces are inadequate. to view of the fact that Great Brio Britain is ultimately defeated. to the point of nauses with self for a third term. John Lewis, way. They found that the truck undertake far flung operations at tain has to this very day invest report will be made by the considerable distance from our To smoke them out with repraise. Thomas reports sensa who is due in town tomorrow or The election victory in Vulhad been damaged in Interstate ments in the Western Hemi. gard to these investments, to tee, the first in a lons time.
tional gains on all fronts. Ad Wednesday, 1s expected to state offers a new opportunity to re commerce, giving the men and City Organizer. Murry Weiss, on bases.
des, by some peculiar system of his position on the current presphere totalling well over seven get the lay of the land as the the federal courts jurisdiction. the situation in trade union work. Big Stick Threat and a half billion dollars. In point United States News puts it, was new a drive to win these 50. 000 mathematics, finds the membership sidential elections. Some of the Then they worked for a solid year But lest the Latin American of fact, British investments in one of the main reasons for call.
has increased by 93. Obviously delegates are preparing to make a workers to the UAW.
All other assignments for this countries take too much courage cooking up a case involving the some of the Latin American ing the Conference.
as far as the officers are concern sharp fight against the present drivers unions in Sioux City. Des evening are cancelled.
in their opposition to the designs countries far surpass those of (Continued on Page 4)