SOCIALIST APPEAL OCTOBER 5, 1940 SOCIALIST APPE AL VOL. IV No. 40 Saturday, October 5, 1940 PubMehed Weekly by the SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASSN.
at 116 University Place, New York, Telephone: ALgonquin 1647 The New Purge In The Pivert Swaps Soviet Union Courtesies With Gen. De Gaulle Editorial Board: FELIX MORROW ALBERT GOLDMAN General Manager: RUTH JEFFREY Subscriptions: 00 per year: 00 for six months.
Foreign. 00 per year. 50 for alx months. Bundlo orders: cents per copy in the United States: cents per copy in all foreign countries. Single copies: cents. Reentered as second class matter December 1939. at the post once at New York, under the Act of March 3, 1679.
Fight with the Socialist Workers Party for: JOB AND DECENT LIVING FOR EVERY WORKER. OPEN THE IDLE FACTORIES. OPERATE THEM UNDER WORKERS CONTROL TWENTY. BILLION DOLLAR FEDERAL PUBLIC WORKS AND HOUSING PROGRAM THIRTY THIRTY 30. WEEKLY MINIMUM WAGE 30 HOUR WEEKLY MAXIMUM FOR ALL WORKERS ON ALL JOBS. 30 WEEKLY OLD. AGE AND DISABILITY PENSION EXPROPRIATE THE SIXTY 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 national relations the Stalinist press abroad dares not do anything except reprint editorials from Pravda and Izvestia. Browder and his associates are as independent of the Kremlin as a muzzled dog firmly held on an unbreakable leash is independent of his master.
But that is only part of the story. One must first read the Pravda editorial to understand the bottomless degeneration of the Kremlin and its lackeys abroad.
In the face of universal recognition that the new pact represents a revival of the anti Comintern pact to which the same powers were signatories and, moreover, a revival on a much more dangerous basis, including provisions for military collaboration of these powers; in the face of the fact, which everybody understands that this pact means that Stalin pact with Hitler of August, 1939 has proved to be a trap for the Soviet Union. in the face of all this, Stalin lackeys must continue to repeat that Stalin is infallible. The Pravda editorial concludes. Further it should be understood as a confirmation of the strength and significance of the nonaggression pact between the USSR and Germany and the non aggression pact between the USSR and Italy.
The ordinary mortal, reading such brazen tripe.
will undoubtedly rub his to make sure he is reading what is actually there. How can these people make such gestures which no one can possibly believe? the ordinary mortal will wonder.
But this is the Stalin school of falsification. In it what is not palatable to Stalin is always turned into its opposite. Thereby are victories invented to chaik up to Stalin credit.
Every defeat which Stalin organized and imposed upon the workers parties and the masses in China, in Germany, in Britain, in France, in a word, throughout the world, including the latest crisis in the Soviet Union which we describe else where in this issue all these defeats are transformed by Stalin pen prostitutes into victories.
Let us hope and let us work to see to it that before it is too late, before he carries the Soviet Union over the abyss into total destruction, before he destroys the remaining sections of the organized working class, the Communist workers come to realize that Stalin and the Kremlin clique and its lackeys are the most dangerous obstacle in the way of the working class. The road that Stalin points is always the road of defeats. He will go down in history with the name which Trotsky branded him with: organizer of defeats. Military Policy We ask every reader of the SOCIALIST APPEAL to take the necessary time to read carefully the Resolution on Proletarian Military Policy which we publish on page of this issue.
Our paper, we are happy to say, is read weekly by thousands of workers, trade union militants, and not a few trade union officers, who are neither members of our party nor do they consider themselves in agreement with our basic butlook. They SWOC Leadership read our paper for information about the labor movement, here and abroad, and as an expression of one of the tendencies in the labor movement.
We should like to ask this group of readers, after they have read our statement of proletarian military policy, to write to us and to tell us where in they disagree with us, and what alternative they have to our policy. We shall be glad to publish all such letters from our readers, no matter how sharply they disagree with us.
In their letters, however, we should like to see them grapple with this key question: What shall the unions do to protect the interests of their mentbers, and of the workers generally, who are inducted into the armed forces?
Let us all unitedly see to it that every union contracts shall provide that conscripts be reinstated in their jobs without loss of seniority at the end of their term of service. Let us see that the conscript family has a roof overhead and does not go hungry. But that is not enough; that does not answer the key question we have posed.
What about the conscript himself? What about the conditions under which he trains and lives?
What about the powers which the officers have over him powers of life and death? What about the danger that, under those powers, the officers will order him to fire on or to terrorize strikers, as the National Guard has so often done?
These are some of the questions we should like readers to answer. We have an answer: Workers control of military training. We want the entire labor movement to fight for that: if a united working class fought for it, it would become a reality.
But you don agree? What alternative do you propose, then? We welcome your letters. We will publish them, together with our answers to them.
On Friday, September 13, a spontaneous walkout took place in the Bethlehem Steel plant at Lackawanna, near Buffalo, New York. Most of the men in the ore dock, blast furnace and coke ovens downed tools: by Saturday morning 4, 000 men were out. The immediate occasion for the walkout was company discrimination against two union men. one a Negro and one a white foreman, reduced to a laborer job because of union activity.
But of course this was the last of a long series of grievances, the sheer accumulation of which led to such an explosion as a completely spontaneous walkout.
We wish to underline that the walkout was unauthorized, and never became an official action of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee. As a consequence, the less militant CIO members remained on the job in the blast furnace; and the union men in the rest of the plant were still awaiting the strike call from the With the exception of a few knots of men, there was no picket line. After work those who had stayed at work were loud, in the neighboring saloons, in their self justification that there had been no official sanction of the action by the union. And there hadn been.
Nathan Cowan, sub regional director, addressed a mass meeting of the strikers that Friday night in Croatian Hall in Buffalo. He was reported by the press as saying and he didn deny it, that there had been no strike called by the CIO the CIO calls a strike only as a last resort to obtain the legal rights of the men.
Well, in spite of all this, the sheer scope of the spontanteous walkout made the company think twice about getting tough at this moment, and the company beat a retreat on the specific grievance which caused the walkout; and since then the company has been careful not to rouse the men too much.
So, having laid back in the bushes and waited to see what would happen, the CIO leadership is now prepared to take the credit for whatever improvements have come about in Lackawanna. Under the heading, CIO strike Changes Bethlehem. the CIO News of October (which is the first issue which recognizes that anything has been happening up there) proudly reports: The Bethlehem Steel Corp. has been settling grievances regularly with a delegation of the SWOC since the recent one day strike of 4, 000 workers. And so on including a boastful statement by the same Nathan Cowan that wouldn O. the strike.
Every labor skate is perfectly ready to take credit for a strike il it is successful, after it over.
That what happened in this minor incident in Bethlehem Lackawanna plant.
But organize the strike? Really prepare the strike? Really carry it out? That, Mr. Cowan and his superiors, Messrs. Phillip Murray and John Lewis, aren doing much of, and especially these days when the patriotic ballyhoo them running for cover.
The end result is that the workers at the Lackawanna plant had to expend the same amount of courage and energy to win a picayune grievance that, had that courage and energy been combined with official action by the union and a little courage on the part of the SWOC heads, would have won from Bethlehem a contract covering the entire field of wages and working conditions.
Extends Once More Into Industry As a New By GERLAND Caste of Generals Is Created By Stalin On June 25, Marceau Pivert, emigre leader of the French Socialist Party of Workers and Peasants By JOHN WRIGHT record. This nonentity is now provided with a (PSOP) wrote a letter to General De Gaulle, chief of free France in London. After hearing the voice (This is the fourth of a series of articles synthetic record: one of those who helped forge on the present crisis in the Soviet Union) the First Cavalry Corps. His subsequent achieve of the General on the radio, Pivert could not resist The 1940 purge penetrated by the end of July ments are on the same level as these forged Civil the call, and offered to enroll in the troops of De and the first week in August later issues of War credentials: He participated in the eman Gaulle, his only stipulation being to be assigned to Soviet papers haven arrived into four Com cipatory advance into Western Ukraine in 1939. a special mission: revolutionary propaganda ad.
dressed to the German proletariat.
missariats: The Ship Building Industry, Electri One of his colleagues, Zhukov, reportedcal Industry, Non Ferrous Metallurgy, and the ly played an important role in the clashes with In order to justify his enlistment, Pivert cites the Oil Industry.
the Japanese on the Manchurian and Outer Moncase of a French monarchist who offered his technical knowledge to Lenin to carry on the struggle against In the first two, only the deputies of the golian borders. The other, Meretskov, the the Germans. That a bourgeois forgets for a minute People Commissar and the members of the Col Commander of the Leningrad Military District, legium have been purged to date. In the Com fell into disrepute last winter during the dismai the class borders in view of what he considers his missariat of Non Ferrous Metallurgy, the failure of the first offensive against Finland and national interest, is indeed an exception rare enough People Commissar. Samokhvalov was removed to be worth while mentioning. Fortified by this epiis now acclaimed as the hero of the break together with his deputies. In the case of the through the Mannerheim line (Pravda, June sodic, exceptional example, Pivert offers General De Commissariat of the Oil Industry, the personage Meretskov is the new head of the General Staff.
Gaulle the particles of revolutionary dynamite that lopped off was none other than Kaganovich.
he thinks he possesses. To make himself more con Stalin own Iron Commissar. Chief Trouble PREPARING Vincing, he declares while presenting his merchandise: Shooter, ete.
MILITARY DICTATORSHIP. Perhaps it won leave you indifferent. Pivert only In the People Commissariat of War, matters forgets that revolutionary dynamite, the genuine Pravda explained the appointment of this kind, and not its centrist counterfeit, cannot be ped.
have progressed several stages beyond the iniveritable army of Generals as intending to eledled retail, from door to door, yesterday to Leon tial and preparatory move made several weeks vate the authority of our commanding staff, and Blum, today to De Gaulle.
ago: the replacement of Voroshilov by Timo still further to reinforce the complete authority Pivert tells us that his aim is to make an at.
shenko. Marshal Shaposhnikov has been retired of army commanders. Idem. 911 health. from his post and General tempt of a political character against the totalitarian The aim pursued by Stalin is, by giving a new Meretskov appointed in his place as head of the powers. And as Churchill and De Gaulle have not social weight to the summits of a hierarchical the slightest authority to take charge of this propaGeneral Staff.
military caste, to bind the Generals to himself. ganda, he comes to their help, he Pivert, who knows Marshal Budenny, the third of the three Marshals who survived the 1938 purge has been reWhen the news of Voroshilov removal as how these things are done, and brings them his relieved of his post as Commander of the Moscow Commissar of War was first reported, we con volutionary dynamite. Here, clearly, is the cynical Military District.
cluded that Stalin is staking everything on the blueprint of the social patriots, always ready to conZhdanov has been removed from his position new officers caste which now acquires an enor sider the revolutionary energy of the workers as a as chief of the Department of Party Propaganmous specific weight, and a degree of power and subsidiary force which has to be chained to the char.
da and now occupies the decorative position of independence never before attained by the Soviet iot of either of the imperialist bandits.
officers corps, and this under war time con supervisor. ditions (Socialist Appeal, May 18, 1940. This THE STALINISTS TRIED THIS TOO MOLOTOV IS SURROUNDED has been corroborated by Stalin latest moves. Perhaps Pivert, with his so acute sense of realWith Kaganovich, Zhdanov, Budenny and VoIn the light of these developments, the question ity, hopes to use De Gaulle as a temporary in.
roshilov skidding to oblivion, the question nanow poses itself: Is Stalin preparing the ground strument of revolutionary propaganda. We know the turally arises: Is Molotov immune?
for a military dictatorship?
outcome of the mode, so dear to the Stalinist rascals Within the recent weeks Stalin has surroundin the last years, to use some broken reeds of imTHE PURGE IN INDUSTRY perialism. As for De Gaulle, Pivert asks him to spread ed his Chairman of the Council of People ComThe administrative personnel of the Soviet the manifesto of the centrist agency, the Internationmissars with three brand new deputies: Voroindustry is confronted with a fate similar to that shilov, Vyshinsky and Mekhlis. Voroshilov, as is al. Workers. Front, by all the means at the suffered by the personnel of the trade union bu disposal of the General.
well known, was kicked upstairs for the time being which explains his presence on the premisreaucracy. They are being purged much in the What can these means be? Leaflets thrown from same manner as were the trade unions. Industry, British bombing planes, appeals in German over the es. But the promotion of Vyshinsky and Mekhlis. too, it is now declared, has been operating in an English radio. It is assured beforehand that the GerThe whole world is familiar with the character office bureaucratic manner. with vast padded man workers will remain deaf to this propaganda.
and role of Vyshinsky, the Prosecutor of the instaffs, embezzlements, graft, etc. etc.
famous Moscow Trials: Mekhlis is not so well Revolutionary dynamite, that is to say proletarian known outside of the Soviet Union. He first took complete picture as depleted Stalin propaganda, is a formidably powerful explosive matt ter, but a fragile one. If one drop of chauvinist poison his orders direct from Stalin in the capacity of own press and on Stalin own orders is not yet available to us the papers haven arrived dampens it, this dynamite inimediately loses all of its personal secretary. Stalin then promoted him to explosive force. One nationalism cannot be disintegthe editorship of the Pravda. When Stalin underyet but we are in position to sketch the background.
rated by opposing to it an adulterated international.
took the purge of the Red Army, the man he ism which bears the mark of another nationalism. Il selected, as head of the Army Political DepartPashin, the People Commissar of the MachPivert should obtain some practical possibilities ment in place of the executed Gamarnik, was ine Building Industry, in his exposure of the from De Gaulle, he would bring to the German work.
office bureaucratic way in which his particular this same Mekhlis who upon direct orders from Stalin massacred the flower of the Red Army Commissariat has been functioning, revealed that ers nothing but an ersatz (substitute) of internaaccording to official computations the central tionalism, that is to say, the most malignant form of (the estimate of victims ranges from 20 40, 000. chauvinist poison. Pivert appeals, spread with the In August of this year, Stalin decided that office of (his) People Commissariat has issued help of De Gaulle Churchill, would be an excellent job in the Red Army had been completed. In June 40, 000 different orders, regulations and directives came the appointment of more than a thousand in the space of a single year. This represents, weapon in Hitler hands to denounce the collusion of the revolutionary forces and foreign imperialism.
new generals; in August the undivided auso to speak, the volume of export. The inflow Pivert would place the greatest obstacle in the way thority of the officer corps was restored and the from the main departments under this central of the genuine German proletarian propaganda.
Political Department abolished altogether.
office amounted to more than 180, 000 various instructions which arrived by mail (Pravda, Finally, Pivert patiently explains to De Gaulle, But Mekhlis was not abolished. Stalin proJune 15. probably in order that he repeat it to his friend moted him to two posts: Molotov deputy in the Churchill, what the real policy of British imperialism Council of People Commissars, and head of the Why this deluge? Who writes these letters?
should be in order to win the war. It should grant a Pravda replies: People who are afraid of res.
newly created State Control Commission. Nobody few democratic reforms to its colonial slaves, and knows as yet just what are the powers and funcponsibility; people who seek to insure themselves these would support it heartily in its struggle against tions of this new Commission. But the mere fact against any contingency with all kinds of docu Hitler and Mussolini. And he who preaches such twadthat Mekhlis heads it cannot fail to arouse unmentary alibis.
dle calls himself a revolutionary militant. Better published thoughts in Molotov head. No! With On July 10th the Kremlin issued a ukase pro that he take the title of King counsellor in colonial such three deputies Molotov can hardly be classi hibiting the production of defective goods by affairs. However, he is so embarrassed playing this fied among those whom the insurance companies the Soviet industry. It is a crime equivalent to role that he declares that his communication runs the designate as good risk.
wrecking, reads the ukase. The directors, the risk of being misunderstood. It really a great chief engineers and the heads of technical con pity that Churchill cannot attain an understanding RED ARMY RE ORGANIZED trol are held directly responsible for the quality of Pivert views.
The army is the quintessence of a regime. of manufactured goods, machines, output of coal The army is a copy of society and suffers from and metal mines, etc. The crime is punishable by DE GAULLE FREE COLONIES all its diseases, usually at a higher temperature prison terms of five to eight years.
The character of General De Gaulle organization (Trotsky. How is the internal crisis of the What a commentary on quality of Soviet appears most clearly in the question of the colonies.
Before the defeat, France had a colonial empire of Stalin regime mirrored in the army?
industrial production!
sixty million men, that is to say, that for every two The transfer of Voroshilov, the shift of Bu There is hardly a plant in the Soviet Union Frenchmen there were three colonial slaves submitted denny, the replacement of Shaposhnikov, the abo today whose directors, engineers, etc. would not to the most rapacious economic exploitation and to the lition of the Political Department in the immediately be liable under the law. Thus, it Army, the restoration of undivided authority of the of provides the most convenient formula for the most brutal political oppression. This was the basis of the imperialist democracy.
ficers corps, has been supplemented by the ap purge. With this decree as a whip over the techpointment of hundreds of Admirals and Generals. nical cadre Stalin hopes to supply the necessary Since the military collapse some colonies have rallied to De Gaulle, leader of free France. Exactly The new officers corps has been raised to Czarist quota of scapegoats.
what does this rebellion mean? Would it be the splendor. Titles abhorred by the Russian masses Several trials have already been held and a emancipution of the natives? Cables published in the as the very symbols of the Czarist autocracy have number of administrators and engineers are al bourgeois press soon give us the key to the mystery.
been legalized by ukase.
ready serving their prison terms. The reason The British fleet is blockading the coasts of French The appointments in the Navy include: given for the demotion of Samokhvalov, former colonies, commercial relations with the metropole beRANK No.
People Commissar of Non Ferrous Metallurgy. come impossible, thus the imperialist clique in cach Admirals was that he had allowed violations of fixed colony finds itself obliged to look for another motherVice Admirals standards and the worsening of the quality of land, and turns its eyes towards London, tomorrow Rear Admirals.
63 certain forms of production (Izvestia, July 10. towards New York. This emancipation is but a change Lieutenant Generals The immediate effects of this decree, as Pray. of address in the mail of the white slave holders.
Major Generals.
30 da itself was compelled to report, were that many still luminous star attracts to its orbit fragfactories actually shut down; machine plants dia ments of extinguished stars. So De Gaulle organizaTotal: 108 not produce a single machine; directors of coal tion, debris of French imperialism, has come to gravi.
mines instructed that their impure daily output tate around London and may gravitate tomorrow The appointments in the Army are as follows: be stored in warehouses. Pravda, July 13. around Washington. This is a very clear phenomenon RANK No.
of the mechanics of imperialism. But what can we Generals.
think of the revolutionary militant. wanting to do Colonel Generals what Lenin did in 1917, partisan of the revoluLieutenant Generals 116 DO YOU WANT TO HELP YOUR FELLOW tionary fraternization. etc. etc. which comes to Major Generals 827 WORKERS UNDERSTAND THE WORLD teach this debris of French imperialism how he can draw from the colonies his real reserves of political Total: 953 SITUATION TODAY! YES!
projectiles. What an infamous rele!
Of the thousand odd appointees in the Army The centrist is always ready to intoxicate himand Navy not a single one, to our knowledge, self with radical phrases: proletarian revolution, replayed a role of even tenth rate importance either volutionary defeatism, etc. That does cost him in the October revolution or the Civil War. Many Buy a bundle of very much. But at the first occasion he sinks up ta of them, as appears from the photographs carhis knees in the swamp of social patriotism. For many ried by Pravda in issue after issue in June, are years Pivert tried to teach Loon Blum how to make youngsters; most of them are in their thirties op THE IMPERIALIST WAR the proletarian revolution, until Blum finally bored early forties. Thay are men of the Stalinist conby this chattering, showed him the door. Today Pivscription; they owe everything to Stalin. The and the ert, in quest of another would be pupil, finds De same thing applies to the lower officer ranks.
Gaulle and prepares to give him few lessons in the Of the three full fledged Generals at the apex Proletarian World Revolution method of emancipating colonies and succeeding thus of this newly appointed military hierarchy only in heating Hitler.
one, Tulenev, is credited with a Civil War and distribute it among them.
September 13, 1940. The Nazi Mussolini Japan pact is of sufficient importance to every country and every class to require lengthy discussion and analysis. It unquesttionably constitutes the most important development since the fall of France, if not the most important since the beginning of the war.
One would think, therefore, that the big press of the Communist Party would be filled with discussion of the pact after it was signed last Friday.
But no. Until Tuesday the two New York dailies of the Stalinists the Daily Worker and the Freibeit had not had one word to say about it beyond printing the capitalist United Press reports (more accurately, only the most perfunctory news paragraphs from those reports. And on Tuesday they printed the text of the editorial from Stalin organ, Pravda, nothing else.
On Wednesday, the story is a paragraph reference to an editorial que official governmental organ of Stalin regime. And that all.
This phenomenon is worth commenting tipon.
It reveals once more the utterly slavish relationship between the Stalinist parties and the Kremlin.
The Communist parties, which are neither Communist nor parties, but mere instrumentalities of the Kremlin, dare not utter a word on any important question until the Kremlin tells them what to say. And on all very important questions of inter