SOCIALIST APPEAL OCTOBER 26, 1940 SOCIALIST APPEAL VOL. IV No. 43 Saturday, October 26, 1910 PubMehed Weekly by the SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASSN.
at 116 University Place, New York, Telephone: Algonquin 8547 entirely new plane. Without a programa repressing Remember These Daily Worker Stories? Hillman Plays Judas In Arms and World Peace Aided by Contract Fight Soviet Blow to Axis Browder Editorial Board: FELIX MORROW ALBERT GOLDMAN General Manager: RUTH JEFFREY his own interests in the army, the laboring man will find himself unable to make his way through the unceasing barrage of patriotic propaganda which covers up the interests of his bitterest enemy, America Sixty Families.
To provide precisely this program, the Socialist Workers Party, American section of the Fourth International, has formulated in short precise slogans the interests for which the laboring man must struggle in the military field. This program, as can be seen at a glance, has nothing in common with the futile objections to military training whined by the pacifists. The Fourth International is the only force in the world intransigeantly opposed to capitalist wars of profit and plunder. But we understand that without ending the rule of the Sixty Families it is impossible to avoid being plunged into the wars that are an inevitable part of their rule. Military training in our eyes is a necessary step in ending that rule. But it must be military training under the control of the workers and farmers themselves. Just as in industry, the class conscious worker fights for the organization of militant trade unions, so in the armed forces he struggles against the interests of the bosses and for those of the workers.
The slogans of the Socialist Workers Party outline the aims for which the laboring man must struggle in the coming period both on the war front and at home, Subscriptions: 00 per year: 00 for six months Foreign. 00 per year. 50 for six months. Bundle orders: cents per copy in the United States; cents per copy in all foreign countries. Single coples: centa.
The Soviet German aggression This has been created with my not only for the Soviet Union.
world. Eul Browder. One nist Party of the United By browleast address wery Il smashed the er whose joint whole world. It PEOPLES CHAMPION OF UPANG PEACE NEW YORK SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1939 Daily Wor PACT SPLITS AXISY Reentered as second class matter December 1933, at the post office at New York, NY, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
709 FIGHT WITH THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY The new military paet signed by Japan, Germany and Italy, strengthening and going beyond their previous alliance, recalls to mind the alibi which the Stalinists concocted to justify the Hitler Stalin pact. It smashed the fascist Axis, the combination of powers whose joint action had upset the equilibrium of the whole world, declared Earl Browder. Daily Worker. August 30, 1939. Foster went him one better: The major achievement for peace in this pact is the weakening of the axis. Among other factors, the Japanese government already underscores this fact by the panic into which it has been thrown. Daily Worker. August 29, 1939. That panie was climaxed by the new Mikado Hitler Musso lini pact!
LONDON NOT SO BAD The scene is the grill of a famous London hotel.
Unpleasant off stage noises are provided by Goering bombers. The tables are crowded with diplomats, government officials, Colonel Blimps, fluffy, frilly girls and fussy matrons, eating rich dishes of lobster and chicken and drinking whisky, French wines and Danish lager. Some guests who already are wearing pajamas and dressing gowns march off to bed in a communal underground dormitory. There a maid and an assistant manager in attendance assign them to beds from a list like a headwaiter seating chart.
These dormitories are air conditioned. One of the denizens of these gilded caverns remarked the other night it wasn the bombs he feared so much as angry East Enders once they discovered how the upper crust was living and sleeping through these nights of terror. Raymond Daniell, in the New York Times Magazine, October 13. Soviet Youth in Forefront Of Increasing Mass Unrest ON THE WAR FRONT: For: Military training of workers, financed by the government, under control of the trade unions. The establishment of special officers training camps, financed by the government and controlled by the trade unions, to train workers to become officers. Confiscation of all war profits all company books to be open for trade union inspection. Expropriation of all war industries and their operation under workers control. Trade union wages for all workers drafted into the army. Full equality for Negroes in the armed forces Down with Jim Crowism. An end to secret diplomacy. people referendum on any and all wars.
AT HOME: For: job and decent living for every worker. Thirty thirty 30 weekly minimum wage 30 hour weekly maximum for for all workers on all jobs. 30 weekly old age and disability pension. Full social, political and economic equality for the Negro people. Workers Defense Guards against vigi.
tante and fascist attacks. twenty billion dollar Federal public works and housing program to provide jobs for the unemployed. Expropriate the Sixty Families. An Independent Labor Party based on the Trade Unions. Worker and Farmer Government.
By ART PREIS On September 6, a formal statement of the National Defense Advisory Commission was issued de.
claring, All work carried on as part of the defense program should comply with Federal statutory provisions affecting labor wherever such provisions are applicable. This applies to the Walsh Healy Act, Fair Labor Standards Act, National Labor Relations Act, ete.
The Commission statement was seconded on September 9, by a formal endorsement from President Roosevelt.
On September 11, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, most notorious open shop corporation in the country and branded as a violator of the labor laws by the NLRB, was granted the largest single war order yet released, for 625, 000, 000.
Phillip Murray, head of the CIO Steel workers Organizing Committee, expressed utter astonishment at this award to Bethlehem Steel just five days after the Defense Commission had presumably called on all war contractors to obey the labor laws.
The workers in Bethlehem Steel were puzzled by this contradiction between implied policy and applied fact.
Whereupon Sidney Hillman, as head of the Labor Division of the Defense Commission, sought to reassure the workers by a press statement on September 13, proudly quoting the Commission original statement and adding, You will further observe that in this statement of conditions underlying the awarding of contracts, the Commission has not limited itself merely to the requirements that contractors observe existing laws. It has gone substantially beyond that.
But war contracts continued to go to Bethlehem Steel to the sum of over 1, 000, 000, 000. The Bethlehem workers became uneasy, and the CIO organized Sparrows Point shipyard of Bethlehem Steel went out on strike. The CIO wrote Hillman for a little further clarification.
On October 3, Hillman hastened to send a letter citing an informal opinion of Attorney General Jackson to a gathering in Pittsburg of several hundred SWOC representatives who were considering the crisis in Bethlehem. This opinion declared; It seems too clear to admit of controversy. that the findings of the National Labor Relations Board that an employer is in violation of the National Labor Relations Act are binding and conclusive upon the other agencies in the executive branch of the government unless and until these findings are reversed by a court of competent jurisdiction.
This deviously means, and was so interpreted by every capitalist newspaper, that no government agency may ignore a ruling of the NLRB and award contracts to outlawed corporations. Among several score corporations publicly listed as hit by this ruling were Standard Oil, the du Ponts, General Motors, Ford Motor and Bethlehem Steel.
The Bethlchem conference of the SWOC looked on the Hillman assurance and the Jackson ruling as good coin. No action was taken to spread the Sparrows Point strike. Instead, they hastened to discourage direct action. The Sparrows Point shipyard striko was called off on the urging of Philip Van Gelder, national secretary of the CIO Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, who declared that Jackson opinion could be used as a weapon for enforcing collective bargaining in the Sparrows Point and other Bethlehem plants without the necessity of strike action.
This is the fifth of a series of articles on the present crisis in the Soviet Union. The June laws to which it refers were described in detail in previous articles. These laws abolished the 35 hour week (7 hour day, 5day week, with the 6th day off. decreed in its stead the 48 hour week (8 hour day, day week with the 7th day off. made it criminal offense to quit one job, punishable by forced labor terms to be served at the same place of employment at 25 less pay, etc.
Pacifist Clap Trap The fantastic nature of the ideas of the pacifists and conscientious objectors was never more clearly revealed than in the statement of Howard Schoenfeld, a member of Norman Thomas Young Peoples Socialist League, on trial for refusing to register for the draft.
Schoenfeld declared, believe that where people refuse to obey a despot, but don take up arms against him, they cannot be crushed.
13, 000, 000 German workers voted against Hitler coming to power. But they failed to take arms against him. The result was that, despite all their hatred of fascism, all their desire to oppose Hitler, they were crushed.
And God help the union which follows Schoenfeld advice! We wonder just how far organized workers would get without a militant picket line to persuade the scabs from entering a struck plant. Of course, Schoenfeld might say a picket line and armed force are two different things. But that is a difference of degree, not of kind. We are sure Schoenfeld would learn this if he should ever try to cross a well organized picket line.
We do not in the least support the actions of the boss courts against conscientious objectors like Schoenfeld. At the same time, however, we must say as plainly as possible: the struggle of these conscientious objectors in no way helps the working class in its struggle against war and oppression. On the contrary, the conscientious objectors ideas, if followed by the workers, would leave the workers helpless and unarmed against their enemies.
By JOHN WRIGHT The Moscow press is engaged in a major campaign to enforce the June laws. All Soviet papers are under instruction to carry a special section devoted solely to the progress of the drive. In Pravda this section is headed: We are Checking the Application of the Juno Laws.
Pravda, and Izvestia, prefer, for obvious reasons, to devote most space to individual violations. But in the Pravda alone we find from July 20 to August a total of 5, 093 violations divided as follows. Only reports of 30 or more violations are listed by us)
Alma Ata. 102 Violations Several Leningrad plants (unnamed. 272 Ordjonikidze plant, Leningrad. 237 Elektrostal plant 146 Another Leningrad plant 170 Gorki district (up to July 20). 3, 540 Single plant, Rostov on the Don 30 Kirov Metallurgical plant, Stalino 303 Serp Molot (Hammer Sickle)
plant 220 Single plant, Moscow Single plant, Vladivostok.
PP Our Military Policy In the space just above this editorial, the soCIALIST APPEAL has carried from week to week a set of demands that if taken up on a mass scale would weld the American workers into a militant, class conscious political force and launch them on the road to establishing a socialist society.
Beginning with this issue we are including some new slogans to meet the problems confronting the workers as a result of the militarization of the United States.
On October 16, some sixteen million Americans were registered for military training. All of the workers, farmers, unemployed, students, who constitute the overwhelming bulk of this sixteen million, are thus cach one faced with the prospect of marching into the hideous muck and death of the second world imperialist slaughter.
The front has been divided. At home all the old problems still face the oppressed masses, their acuteness sharpened and intensified by the war.
Hounded by unemployment, hunger, rising cost of living. Jim Crowism all the manifold ills of capitalism in death agony the worker is now being strapped in addition into the strait jacket of military dictatorship. The registration card he must carry with him at all times amounts to an internal passport. His daily activity comes under the direct supervision of reactionary boards appointed in arbitrary fashion from above. military glove is throttling his civil liberties, trying to regiment him into docile cannon fodder. In this military glove is the hand of the Sixty Families who own and control the nation industries and resources for their private benefit.
As never before the problem of expropriating these parasites and ending their rule stantis as the great task facing the American farmers and workers.
The slogans formulating this task retain all their validity.
But the conflict between capital and labor has now been projected onto the military field. The militarization of the United States, the drawing of millions upon millions of workers and farmers into the armed forces poses this conflict upon an Our Election Policy Praesidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR is not taking place without resistance. Who is resisting the carrying out of measures which were unanimously approved by the Soviet people and which strengthen the economic and defensive power of our country? First and foremost, the resistance naturally comes from the laggards and floaters, e. those against whom the barb of the law is aimed.
RESISTANCE CAUGHT KREMLIN UNAWARES Apparently the Kremlin had not expected such resistance.
On July 25 the Pravda had pilloried those directors of industry who failed to exercise their sole authority in enforcing the June laws, and who tried instead to shift the responsibility to the trade unions and the party organizations. Worthless indeed is the industrial leader, said the editorial. who tries to evade responsibility for the conditions in and the functioning of his enterprise, and who seeks to hide behind the party and trade union organizations. It is a fact that some directors are trying to transfer the enforcement of the ukase) upon the party and trade union organizations. week later, the Pravda had to eat its own words, and had to announce editorially in bold type that a special plenum of Central Committee had changed the line This ukase is not being carried out satisfactorily. admitted the Pravda. Today the main task of all party organizations with regard to industry is to assure the direction and control of the enforcement of the regulations affecting the change to the hour day and day week and the prohibition of self willed departure of workers and employees from enterprises and departments (Pravda, August Emphasis in the original. What about the trade unions? rectification on this point was not long delayed, either. On August 28. Izvestia addressed those trade union functionaries who survived the July purge. The trade union organizations must center their work among the masses around the question of strengthening labor discipline and struggling against the disorganization of production.
It is impossible to reconcile oneself to the fact that many trade union organizations stand on the sidelines, shying away from control over the unswerving enforcement of the ukase of the Praesidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR in the enterprises and institutions.
The next day, Izvestia stated. The realization of the June 26th ukase is still being carried out unsatisfactorily in many enterprises. The circumstance that violations and labor turnover are still declining slowly while labor productivity is not registering any noticeable growth constitute evidence that in these factories the directors, the party and trade union organizations have still done far from everything in order to fulfill honestly and precisely the ukase of the Praesidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR. Izvestia, Aug. 29. The courts and the prosecutors are likewise under fire. Many judges and prosecutors have been removed. By special ukase of August 10.
all cases of violation of the labor laws will henceforth be heard by People Judges alone.
No people jury.
In a special editorial entitled: Laggards and Floaters Must Be Ruthlessly Punished Izvestia warned: LONG TERM CAMPAIGN Profoundly mistaken are those who think that the struggle against laggards and floaters is a short term campaign. The Ukase of the Praesidium of the Supreme Council must be and will be carried into life constantly and unswerv.
ingly, precisely and rigorously (Izvestia, August In the space of a few weeks, Stalin thus has had to mobilize and purge his entire publie apparatus, the factory administration, the trade unions and the party, not to mention the Komsomols and the courts, in an effort to stem the rising tide of mass resistance.
Total: 5, 093 At the beginning of August, general membership meetings of the party organizations were held all over the Soviet Union to place particular stress on the June laws. Not a single account thus far published either in Pravda or Izvestia even hints at successful fulfillment. Just the contrary.
For instance, Sedyuk, secretary of the Kiev party organization, reported that in the enterprises of (his) province the ukase is being fulfilled poorly. Another reporter from Krasnoyarsk cited facts of violation of labor discipline in the enterprises of the (Krasnoyarsk) province. Patolischev, secretary of the Yaroslavl Regional Committee stated: In our city industry functioned no better in July than it did in June. Pravda, August 17. YOUTH LEAD RESISTANCE Kuznetsov, secretary of the Leningrad party organization reported cautiously, Violations and self willed departures have by and large decreased. But the number is still considerable. In certain enterprises the number of violations has increased instead of decreasing.
Secretary Vlassov reporting for the Saratov party organization, after painting the same dismal picture, added that 25 communists and 60 Komsomols (members of the Young Communist organization) were among the violators. Pravda, August 18)
If in June Stalin was forced to disclose that the youth was in the forefront of the wave of resistance, in July he is compelled to reveal that members of the Komsomol stand at the head of the youth. Out of 237 violators in the important Ordjonikidze plant in Leningrad 52 were members of the Komsomol and a similar situation exists in many other enterprises (Pravda, July 27. Nesterov, the director of the typographical plant Pechatny Dvor stressed the fact that among the violators of labor discipline there are many youth and concluded that the great share of the blame for this falls on the do nothing of Komsomol organization. Pravda, August 18. Only lack of space prevents us from adducing scores of similar quotations. Here is how Pravda summed up the situation on August 11. The execution of the June 16 ukase of the Apart from candidates of our own party, there are two kinds of candidates that we are prepared to support in the coming election. The first would be candidates of workers parties, no matter how small, whose platforms are similar enough to our own to justify such support. The second are those candidates who represent a substantial body of organized workers and whose success in the elections would constitute a gain for the principle of independent working class political action; these we support despite our disagreement with the platform on which they are running.
Thus we support those candidates of the American Labor Party in New York and the FarmerLabor Party in Minnesota who are running solely as the candidates of their own parties and are not also the candidates of bourgeois parties. We seek their election, while we sharply criticise the false, opportunist programs on which they are running.
Their election, it is clear, would be universally recognized as victories of the labor movement and would spur the movement for labor own independent party.
It is equally clear that no progressive purpose would be served by supporting the candidates of the various petty bourgeois pacifist sects the Norman Thomas Socialist Party, the Workers Party, the Socialist Labor Party, etc. Their platforms can only delude the workers in this time of militarism. Nor do they represent any force in the ranks of the working class. By neither criterion, therefore, do they merit the support of the working class.
YOU SAID IT. It would be foolhardy to attempt to predict the exact course of Soviet policy, which is always determined by the interests of the Soviet people. New Masses, Sept. 12, 1939)
AND AFTER STIFLING THE STRIKE The capitalist press showed no gratitude to Hillman for spiking the Bethlehem strike. It did not like the method he employed, and demanded an unambiguous rejection of the principle implied in the Jackson ruling. The New York Times cynically likened a violation of the National Labor Relations Act to the violation of a municipal ordinance forbidding smoking in the subway. What! Hold up national de fense for such trivialities?
The pay off came the day of the return to work of the Sparrows Point strikers on Oct.
That afternoon a procession filed before the Smith Committee, Congressional body investigating the NLRB. First came Under secretary of War, Patterson. Said he. It is not my understanding that a labor dispute is any bar to a contract. It is merely one thing to be considered. Next, Secretary of the Navy Knox declared. His (Patterson s) words accurately reflect the navy attitude. Hillman sat quietly lis.
tening to Knox and Patterson brazenly repudiate their own previous statements in letters to him.
Jackson then testified. There had been a great storm of misunderstanding about his previous opinion. The effect, said he, was not intended to direct or imply that the Defense Commission should withhold contracts from persons or corporations declared by the NLRB to be in violation of the Wagner Act.
JUDAS HILLMAN APES HIS MASTERS Finally, Hillman was called to the stand. He coldbloodly put the period to the end of Jackson sentence.
As the New York Post described it, of all the apparent back tracking. Hillman was the most startling, causing gasps among the committee members and spectators. ve got to agree with the gentlemen who had preceded him on the stand, said Hillman. The army and navy have the power to determine the conditions for the letting of contracts. In every case the first consideration is whether it will help or harm national defense.
After the hearing. Hillman further clarified his stand. If the cause of national defense is to be served it is entirely obvious that there may be times when a person should not insist upon the final technical letter of the law.
The next day the Federal Circuit Court of Ap.
peals upheld an NLRB ruling against an appeal of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. The court declared Bethlehem Steel was guilty of a plain violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
Two days later, Bethlehem Steel was awarded another fat war contract, for 54. 000. 000. This was an example of Hillman non insistence upon the final technical letter of the law.
Lesentante a se ka mukana kalidad