AUGUST 17, 1940 SOCIALIST APPEAL British Give THE NATIONAL DEFENSE LIE An Anti Labor to Japan Clown Tries On Asia Front The Morgan DuPont Defense Council Is No Partner To The American Workers Red Baiting Way Now the droves of capitalists that it can purchase and onderanto represent labor. With re.
they can send idle men back to Only the prospect of large der to solteit war orders, Teethaments necessary in the build. occasion to speak later at greater escale Labor Answer to Conscription By SAM MARCY unemployment problem by urging Gone are the days when the is being paraded more and more. These are the men in whom is By GEORGE STERN Opportunity, we ve often heard, the unemployed to sell apples on capitalist press pictured the Roos by hirelings of the capitalist vested the full power to dispense The British retreat in Asia is taking on the knocks only once. For the bank the street corners. Then came evelt government a Commun. press, the radio and the movies the 14 to 25 billions of dollars semblance of a rout. On August the British ers and industrialists, for the the crack pot technicrats who ist front. Gone are the days as the all national task of one which will be appropriated by Viceroy of India announced a new and slightly steel kings and motor magnates, urged upon the capitalists a plan wben the New Deal President big family, of one large partner Congress. These men are the for the munitions makers and to salvage the profits system lashed at the capitalists with the ship, all striving unselfishly to very top of America Sixty Fammore precise promise of dominion status for Instock exchange speculators. for scientifically. Then followed epithet of economic royalists. accomplish one great common end. Ilies, the real rulers of the United dia. after the war. On Aug. 9, the War Office all imperialist vultures who feast the grandiose schemes of the NRA For now the top most layers of the defense of the nation against States. It will be noticed that these in London announced withdrawal of all British on the bloody business called War, and the AAA and the mushroom the economic royalists occupy the a dangerous outside enemy. are the men who have the full forces from Peking, Tientsin, and Shanghai. The opportunity to coin billions out growth of the Townsendites and mighty seats on the National De Nothing could be more false! power to purchase all materials entrenched positions of a century and more are of human carnage has struck Ham Eggers.
rense Commission, the body which the mask of hypocrisy and decep and equipment. The power to being given up. The power of imperial Britain, again!
For all these schemes and pan has charge of dispensing the bil. tion can easily be torn from the purchase is the greatest that can so long in decline, is visibly dissolving.
For this, the second time, they aceas, the capitalists had only lions of dollars for war orders. face of the capitalist apologists be conferred upon a body which have waited for years. They have fear and contempt. At most these Gone are the days when dis. even by the most cursory examin. is responsible not to an electorate The new promise to India is no less empty than all those that have gone before. But it is prepared for it in advance. In efforts were calculated raise gustingly, hypocritical cartoons ation of the elementary facts in but merely to the one who ap clearly tinged with the desperation of an imperial their hearts they secretly wished the purchasing powers of the mit depicted the sorrowiut figure of volved in the so called program pointed them.
for it, hoped for it. Only in pub Hons of starving masses whose in the humble tax rayer bearing the of National Defense.
The other members of the Naregime that knows its end is drawing near. Lord lie, before the broad masses of comes were liquidated by the de brunt of the government expen: tional Defense Commission are Linlithgow statement was clearly an appeal to the tolling people, who yearn for pression: but that could temporditures for feeding the millions of ARE WE PARTNERS merely advisors, whose powers are the native ruling classes of India, promising free peace, who have nothing to gain arily revive only light industry. unemployed. No longer do we see WITH MORGAN? extremely restricted if they have partnership in the British Commonwealth in by imperialist war, do they cloak The sigantic productive forces the caricatured figure of DR themselves in the guise of an whichi constitute heavy Industry Priming the pump in an extrava task of National Defense, shout he farmers, but in reality repre You are a partner in the great any at all. They are: Chester return for support against the threat of complete Davis, supposed representative of sumersion of British power implicit in the Ger sels of peace.
remained stagnant through a sant effort to make his New Deal the hirelings of the capitalist the man march of conquest. As a gage of this partOnly production of materials the years of Roosevelt New Deal agencies work. That figure has press to the workers, farmers and sentative of the his agricultura nership. the Viceroy graciously offers to accept and instruments for war can now Even powerful shots in the arm very heat of a presidential for then, let us see what this part the consumers, whose main task vanished, and that too, in the poor middle class. Very well capitalists: Harriet Elliott and representative Indians as members of his Adlure the bankers and industrial.
ists into investing in industry like slicing the value of the dol.
visory Council and to establish in addition a Wav ent prayer of the upper middle again. Only production of bombs, lar virtually in half, and the mil The Mounts to.
Advisory Commis will be to explain the constantly Advisory Council which is to comprise repre, and lions of class. that government and in sion was appointed by Roosevelt rising cost of living and to de sentatives of the Indian states and other inter bring back fat proits again. The construction projects. dustry should learn to cooperate. to take full charge in executing monstrate the utter impossiMility ests in Indian national life. Finally, he promised gearing of the whole economic could not do more than act as a to save the decaying capitalist the program of National Defense of stopping war profiteering. And that after the war the Indians would themselves system to the production of arma. mere temporary short lived stimur system, is finding realization Its chief power lies in the fact last but not least, Sidney trullman be permitted to draw up their own constitution.
ments is the one choice now left lant injected into the corroded That these pitifully meager offers should be open to the capitalists whereby and decaying body of capitalism and their lobbyists, who are swarming into Washington in or the machinery, materials and ar card to his job we shall have regarded in London as substantial concessions.
transforming the idle factories; idle billions rest armaments, of length.
ing of the war machine. Thus on Britain part is an indication of the wholly ing in the coffers of the banks, country into a titanie factory for the War Deal officials with smiles Edward Stettinius, resigned HOW THE DEFENSE dictatorial and autocratic nature of Britain pre back into the process of circula the production of the instruments and congratuitions.
head of Morgan U. Steet COMMISSION PURCHASES sent rule over the 350. 000. 000 people of India. tion.
of death could hold out the pos NATIONAL DEFENSE IS Corporation, is in charge of the As the pressure on the British Empire increases The bunkers and borses know sibility of high profits on the clasLIE TO FOOL US production and purchase of raw Now the purchasing of mate.
and draws closer to India itself, we may expect this. They have known this ever sleal scale.
materials. William Knudsen rials and the placing of war orThat is why the so called National still broader promises, wider concessions. Britain, since the economic collapse of Oc.
The National Defense Program furloughed head of General Mo ders works in somewhat the folafter all, has nothing to lose but the chains with tober, 1929. That is why they Defense program has been greeted is the program of the biggest tors Corporation, is in charge of lowing manner. The Defense which it has held India bound.
have contemptuously cast aside with such enthusiasm by all lay: bankers, industrialists and munt production and purchase of all Commission finds it necessary to every other method proposed to ers of the capitalist class. That tions kings. It is their great at the manufactured goods necessary order the purchase of 2, 000 rallrehabilitate the tottering capital is why the prospect for war orders venture in plundering the millions for the equipment of the armed road cars to transport troops and Meaning of Retreat in China ist system by other means than has been greeted with such ap. of masses under the false and forces. Ralph Budd, a Morgan equipment.
In China the retreat is necessarily more preproduction for war.
plause from the topnotch down deceptive slogan of National De man who operates many of the The Defense Commission has cipitate. There Japanese pressure has increased First Hoover attempted to palm to the small scale manufacturer lenge.
railroads controlled by Morgan, no power to walk into the offices off his cynical plan to solve the lof khaki suits.
The slogan of National Defense is in charge of transportation.
of the railroad magnates, seta in proportion to the scope and immediacy of the fixed price and command the del German threat to Britain. The British were first ivery of the cars within a stipu.
compelled to close the Burma Road and now, lated period. No, these would be aware of their total inability to resist further construed to be dictatorial and incursions, are pulling out of North and Central arbitrary powers and regarded as China altogether.
regimentation of Industry.
The actual forces involved are small a few What really happens when the battalions. But they represent the entrenched defense commission wants to pur. Continued from page 1)
officers drive young workers and farmers in uniforms to power of more than a century, measured in inchase 000 cars is as follows: The smash picket lines.
vestments totalling about one billion dollars. drew up regulations laying down the one method of exemprailroad magnates submit a price.
If simple democratic rights existed in the army the right since the railroads are to a very This power was asserted in the course of a series tions of this type which the army and navy and those they of bloody wars waged against the almost totally speak for the capitalist class as a whole will use for any of the rank and file to gather and discuss without the super large extent in the hands of a defenseless Chinese. The withdrawal from vision of officers, the right of the rank and file to publish a few millionaires such as the Morgans, Vanderbilta, etc. the price Shanghai ends the British reign in the Yangtze bill they vote for. Under these regulations, to enter a claim for exemption (deferment. a worker will bave to stibmit two newspaper of their own, their right to elect committees to is jacked up to a greater extent Delta established by the Opium War of 1842 and present their grievances to the officers, etc. it would become affidavits, one by his immediate superior, one by the executive than it would ordinarily be, since legalized by the Treaty of 1843, signed, sym.
impossible for the army to be used as an anti labor force.
it is easy to arrive at an agree.
bolically enough, aboard a British warship at head of the company by which he is employed ment among the big railroad mag Just for that reason the army remains an open shop, e. a Nanking. The withdrawal from Peking and These affidavits will be the sole method of determining place where the workers have no rights at all.
nates who can easily shut out whether that worker is or is not entitled to exemption beTientsin terminates the period ushered in by the any serious competition.
bloody Anglo French invasion of North China in cause of his indispensability in the work he is doing. Militant If Lewis and Green were really representing the interests The price is then submitted to of the labor movement, their criticism of the conscription bill 1858 and 1860, and again in 1900.
trade unionists will be gotten rid of by the simple device of the proper purchasing agent in their employers refusing to sign their affidavits, while finks would include a denunciation of the open shop regime in the this particular cale Ralph It is not the passing of British power in China will be rewarded with affidavits. It the chance of a lifetime army. And this denunciation would, of course, prevent them Budd.
that is to be mourned, but the manner of it.
for union busting bosses!
from advocating mass enlistments into the open shop army.
Thirteen years ago the Chinese peoples rose in It would pull a real laugh from their scores of millions in a movement that These regulations are known to every student, even a If Not Conscription, Then What?
anyone who knows the ins and outs of the relationship between threatened for a time to drive the British and casual one, of the conscription system. Yet not a word about If Lewis and Green were really leading the workers, in the capitalist government and the their imperialist rivals together into the Pacific them has been said by either the AFL or CIO officials. Is it stead of leaning on the most backward layers they can find capitalist class to believe that whence they came. It was then, in 1927, that the because they are afraid to scratch too deep in making their among the workers, they would not be letting capitalist de when Ralph Budd in the ca Powers rushed troops to Shanghai to defend the criticism of the conscription bill, since they know that these wealth of the International Settlement against magogues like Wheeler and Vandenberg speak for Labor pacity of an agent of the governregulations are designed to be used in connection with any in Congress on the conscription question. Instead they would gues at the negotiating table, that the threat of Chinese nationalism. That how conscription bill, no matter how liberal it sounds? Yet deep say: a real, bona fide sale takes place.
1, 200 marines happen to be there. The Communist International of Stalin allowed that they must scratch, if they are to be considered loyal to the The quarrel in Congress is a difference of opinion bet Take the case of a humble muinterests of the many millions of union men for whom they great movement of the Chinese workers and ween two sections of the bosses over which is the best method nitions manufacturer like DuPont peasants to be yoked to the landlords and capispeak.
of getting an open shop army which will be used for the bene de Nemours. This dynasty has talists, represented by Chiang Kai shek and the We have now seen what will happen in industry, where fit of the capitalists and against the interests of the workers. had a complete monopoly even Koumintang. For crumbs from the imperialist the conscription regulations will help employers to weed out We don take either the side of the pro conscriptionists or prior to the last war, in the manu.
facture of gunpowder. This dyn.
table, Chiang beheaded the movement and esmilitant unionists and hold that threat as a club over the the side of the volunteers. Those two alternatives are not asty controls the entire state of tablished an imperialist puppet regime over the organized workers. That will be the regime in the factories.
the only ways to train the workers in the military arts. Delaware and owns lock, stock dead bodies of thousands of slaughtered militants. And now let us ask a question. still from a Simon pure There is another way, one which is in the interests of and barrel the city of Wilming union standpoint) which Lewis and Green do not even bint ton and all the suburbs where its The New Slavemaster Labor. And that way is through our trade unions! Just as munitions plants are located.
at. What will happen to the workers who are drafted into our unions make possible our very existence, giving us the The Kuomintang regime naturally could do the army? What kind of regime will they live under? ability to lift our heads like men in the factories and to live among the broad masses of people Perhaps it has not many friends nothing to release China from the imperialist stranglehold. It served only to deepen the chaos The Army Open Shop Regime like human beings at home, so our unions can enable us to and particularly among its own in Chinese economic life and laid the country undergo military training in the atmosphere of the union hall workers but it certainly can find Lewis and Green are able to escape raising this question open to the depredations of the Japanese imand not in that of the barracks. Compulsory military traina warm hearted friend in the per because most workers, unfortunately, are not thinking about son of Morgan whose vast perialists which were renewed on a large scale ing? Yes! But only under the direct control of the trade this problem. These workers do not give thought to the nature holdings in the company are too in 1931.
of the regime in the army because they take the present naunions.
immense and intricate for us to Now the turns in the wheel of imperialist That, in short, would be a working class answer to the recount here.
politics have placed Japan in a position to atture of the army for granted. As if to say: That what question of how the workers of this country should receive Suffice it to say that Stettempt to displace the British Empire as prime armies have been, arc, and will be. But they are profoundly training in military arts.
tinius, who represents Morgan power in Asia. The British are going down, not wrong; and they must change their mind on this key question, Moreover, it provides a common ground on which all will not fall to recognize Morgan before the overwhelming onslaught of slaves in if the working class is not to become the slave of military dicsections of the labor movement should be able to agree. We, close relation in the person of the tatorship and fascism.
revolt but under the blows of rival slavemasters.
du Ponts. The duPonts do not the members of the Socialist Workers Party, have a fundaThere was a time when there were no trade unions. The Britain passing in this way from the scene is merely dictate their own price for mental disagreement with Lewis and Green on the war ques the products, they also ask that open shop was all that workers knew. The boss had virtually no augury for a freer China, It becomes rather. an episode in a new stage of Chinese enslave the power of life and death over the workers. And since they tion: they will support the capitalist government of the Unit the government present them ed States in any war it undertakes, while we say that the with a gift in the form of new ment.
had no experience of any other kind of regime in the factory, working class should answer such a war by taking over govmunitions factores, to be paid for Hongkong, French Indo China, Singapore, the many workers did not think of the possibility of any other ernmental power, and then defending a Workers United du Ponts after the orders are by the government and kept by the Dutch Indies all lie now at approaching stations kind. They were in the same state of mind as most union men States. But let all sections of the labor movement agree on filled.
on the Japanese march of conquest, Up until the today are about the possibility of a different kind of regime collapse of France it had been generally underone thing that for all eventualities it is well for all ablein the armed forces. It took a vanguard of class conscious THEY CALL IT stood that imperialism stood ready to chalbodied workers to undergo military training under the conworkers to arouse the mass of workers to realize that the open AMORTIZATION lenge these advances and to fight for its own trol of the trade unions. right to succeed to the mastery in Asia. Now shop was not an immutable law of nature. The same kind of To camouflage the real character Labor Military Program vanguard is needed today to arouse the mass of workers to instead the lords of Wall Street and Washington of this merciless plundering and have to look to their holdings in the Americas.
realize that the open shop in the armed forces is neither a law Along this line, Labor has a clear and unambiguous unprecedented pilfering of the people pockets, the bankers and The 1200 marines in Shanghai must soon of nature nor the only way to train millions in the mili answer to make to the government demand that the masses bosses have termed these shady follow the British in retreat. There may not be tary arts.
undergo military training: transactions amortization of much of a future in it, but the present belongs There is, of course, an explanation winy the open shop in Yes, we are for military training. We don want to see plant expansion, coverage of asto Japan in Asia.
industry has given way to the unionization of many millions worker soldiers go into battle without proper training and sumed risks and other highof workers, while the open shop has rema in the army. equipment. Nor do we war worker soldiers in the sounding but nevertheless, decep of tive phraseology.
Unionization of industry is not a direct and immediate threat capitalist officers who have no regard for the treatment, the Such is a rough but mild William Knudsen is seen talking to Hugh Johnto the power and property of the bosses. Not so long as they protection and the lives of the men under them.
sketch of the standing of the first son, vociferous Now Deal opponent, and is warned retain the open shop in the army. Whenever union demands Therefore we demand federal funds for the military Partner the capitalists in the by a reporter that President Roosevelt personal become too intolerable to the bosses, they use the open shop secretary, Marguerite Lehand, has observed him.
training of workers and worker officers under the control of so called program of national de army (which in this sense includes the police and the National Calm yourself, says Knudsen, this is the the trade unions. Does that mean we want military appro fense. Now let us turn to the United States, not Germany. They don fire or Guard) to drive back the unions.
priations? Yes but only for the establishment and equip of toiling people without whose shoot people here for talking to opponents of the But the army could not be used for these anti labor pur ment of workers training camps!
labor not a wheel can be turned.
head of the government. Minneapolis WPA poses if the officers did not have the power of life and deatif Does this mean compulsory military training of workstrikers know otherwise (A second article in this over the ranks of the soldiers. Only under that power can the ers? Yes but only under the control of the trade unions!
series appears next week)
By MARK KNIGHT LOS ANGELES Claiming the discovery of a Communist murder plot and widespread 5th cclumn activity. Buron Fitta, District Attorney of Los Angeles County, candidate for reelection in the approaching elections, hit the headlines with the arrest of longshoreman Britt Webster of San Pedro, on charges of having been implicated in the five year old killing of John Riley, member of the Sailors Union of the Pacific.
Fitts charged that the murder of Riley was committed by members of the Communist Party who were attempting to take control of the Leading off with these charges Fitts began a Grand Jury investigation of all communist activities, promising to prove the existence of a plot to kill Henry Ford and other prominent industrialists.
Britt, arrested on Friday, was kept incommunicado for three days and was finally produced in court after his attorneys secured a writ of habeas corpus.
Using the charges against the longshoreman as a curtain opener, Fitts began to parade before the Grand Jury witnesses who played prominent part in previous anti Red investigations. The first was John Leech, renegade member from the witness in the Bridges hearing and before the Dies committee, who be gan with his now familiar story about commun.
ist activity.
Also called as a witness was Rena Vale, another renegade from the who had previously testified before the state assembly in vestigating committee and before the Dies committee, where she also made claims to knowledge of Trotskyite activity.
Making certain that his investigation would continue to be publicity material, Fitts claimed to have subpoenaed movie comedian Lionel Stander, actress Gale Sondergaard, movie director Herbert Biberman, playwrights Clifford Odets and Samuel Ornitz.
This, according to Fitts, is but the beginning of a long and detailed expose. More than 50 witnesses have already been called before the Grand Jury.
So fár Fitts has made two plays; one, the San Pedro killing. The second play was the tes timony of Leech about communist infiltration into the State Relief administration. This same story was produced by another politician, Assenas blyman Yorty, about a year ago, using many of the same witnesses. At that time the entire expose served only one purpose. It proved that Yorty, who had been playing about with the Stalinists was no longer one of Stalin boys but was trying to make good with big business, tri ing his best to prove that he was now violently anti red.
Filts Notoriously Anti Labor Fitts problem is not to prove he is anti labor: His record is proof enough of this. Los Angeles county has witnessed some of the crudest labor frame ups in the country. Fitts office has issued complaints of thefts, kidnapping, pickpocketing, assault and battery, conspiracy, extortion, and almost every other felony defined in the penal code against trade unionists. Many of these were dismissed at the preliminary hearings.
It was this official who directed the Douglas sit down strike case in 1937, causing the arrest of over two hundred aircraft strikers of whom 23 were finally convicted after two lengthy trials.
As a District Attorney Fitts has proved to be a typical politician. Round about election time he has always kept a weather eye on the political winds and on watch for opportunities for publicity. During the recent 5th column scare he attempted to leap on the band wagon of the witch hunters by raving about his secret infor mation on the Red Danger.
He started a grandiose plan of organization against the 5th column and was finally squelched by the which saw the danger of this mountebank by his anties exposing their plans to whip up enough hysteria to smoke screen their careful moves to hogtie labor.
Why He Needs It Buron Fitts has not only exposed himself completely before labor for what he is, an agent of business, but he has fallen into disfavor with an important section of industry in Southern California. Several prominent politicians are op.
posing him in the coming elections.
There is Dockweiller, member of a powerful political family in California; Bonnelli, a power.
ful official in the influential State Board of Equalization, who was recently subjected by Fitts to a lengthy trial on grounds of official misconduct and was finally acquitted; and Judge Taplin, with strong support, is running for this office.
With this opposition Fitts has desperately sought an issue on which he can again propel himself into office.
We Don Want Fitts Help Labor itself is aware of the real crimes of the Communist Party; it is becoming more con scious that the danger of Stalinism is not to capitalism but to the working class. We shall deal with these people without assistance from the agents of capitalism.
The tricks of Fitts must be exposed. But the only real lesson we can draw from this political burlesque is that labor must step into polities independently of all capitalist parties and care didates and step in with a labor program. Only a labor party with labor candidates can begia the task of defending labor interests and puitbing an end to such miserable tomfoolery that clowns like Fitts continue to parade before di in an effort to continue the domination of capital over labor.