7 SOCIALIST APPEAL NOVEMBER 2, 1940 Leon Trotsky and the An Army Major Anniversary of October Tells Some Truths By ALBERT GOLDMAN The Russian Revolution continues to live in two ways. It lives because nationalized property continues to exist within the Soviet Union. It lives also by virtue of the existence of an organized section of the working class devoted to the task of defending the Soviet Union through the overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the extension of the October Revolution throughout the world.
Leon Trotsky analysis of the nature of the Soviet Union as a degenerated wry kers state makes it possible for us to chlebrate the anniversary of the Russian Revolution knowing that not all of its achievenunts have been descrcyed. Trot.
sky defense of the principles underlying the Russian Revolution is responsille for the existence of a movement devoted to those principles and therefore able to celebrate the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
And therein lies the greatest of all of Trotsky great con ions to the cause of working class emancipation, By ART PREIS devastating indictment of the officer caste in the army has just been made by an authoritative spokesman, Major Malcolm Wheeler Nicholson, in his book, Battle Shields of the Republic (Macmillian Co. published last week.
His chief charge is directed against the promotion system in the army, which is based not on capacity to lead troops in battle but upon favoritism and seniority.
The young officer out of West Point is sent to an army post where he is buried in pure paper work, records and red tape routine reports. He has no urge.
the book states, to study the problems of modern warfare.
The chief concern of the young officer is not the readiness of his unit for battle, but securing a favorable efficiency report from his colonel; for his promotion is based on seniority and the good graces of his superior officers.
The basis of the colonel efficiency report is personal opinion. As a result, the young officer must play up to the colonel prejudices and wangle his way into the same social circles. Major WheelerNicholson cites the case of a lieutenant who received an unfavorable efficiency report after his dog chased the cat belonging to the Colonel wife.
As a result of this system, the Major points out, most of the officers reaching high rank by the process of stepping into dead mens shoes and pulling all the strings are amateur diplomats first of all, and rarely first class soldiers. In addition, their entire training has been in paper work administration, and they are wholly unfitted for leadership in real war.
The book makes thoroughly clear the corruption and connivance which characterizes the army regime.
In addition, Major Wheeler Nicholson asserts that the same system is in force in the Reserves and National Guard, where the officers are even more inadequate. He maintains that the average officer in the American Reserve or National Guard knows less about war than the average German private. most serious effect of the present army system, as the book points out, is that the officers are brought to high rank when they are already too old.
The general officers average about 60 years in age, almost exactly that of the French and British generals who failed against Hitler. The heads of the Nazi army average but forty five.
against the spite and venom of contemptuous and SOCIALIST APPEAL labor hating disciplinarians with unlimited power of court martial? How do the unions expect to VOL. IV No. 44 Saturday, November 2, 1940 maintain the principle of the union wage while millions of workers and their dependents must acPubMehed Weekly by the BOCLALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASSN. cept existence on the 21 and 30 monthly pay at 116 University Place, New York, now tossed like a dry bone to the army privates?
Telephone: ALgonquin 1547 Yet, even these immediately vexing evils fade into insignificance before a more ominous and farEditorial Board: reaching menace: the use to which the armed forces FELIX MORROW ALBERT GOLDMAN will be put if the present officer caste continues General Manager: to dominate the military machine.
RUTH JEFFREY The army and navy are as much the tools of the possessing class as the National Guard. Every Subscriptions: 00 per year: 00 for six months union man loathes the National Guard as a strikeForeign. 00 per year. 50 for six months. Bundle breaking agency employed by the boss government orders: cents per copy in the United States: cents against the workers. The army officers are schooled per copy in all foreign countries. Single coples: cents.
by official manuals which openly declare one of Reentered a second class atter. cunder the December the prime purposes of the federal armed forces to 1989, at the post once at New York, be the quelling of domestic unrest. In the lanAct of March 1879.
guage of the boss class, domestic unrest means any struggle of the workers for their rights.
That the present military staffs will be ready FIGHT WITH THE and eager to smash the workers struggles is cerSOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY tain. Drawn largely from the ranks of the middleclass and rich; trained in exclusive military colON THE WAR FRONT: leges which drill them in caste superiority; quick For: to kowtow and connive in order to win promotion, the present officers are in natural accord with the Military training of workers, financed aims of the financial and industrial magnates.
by the government, under control of The only aim of the ruling class is to safeguard the trade unions.
its property interests and exploit labor to the full2. The establishment of special officers est degree. That is why the present military heads, training camps, financed by the gov. in the exact manner of their French counterparts, ernment and controlled by the trade will not hesitate to surrender to and even support unions, to train workers to become the vilest reaction and fascism in order to protect officers.
the possessions of the rich at the expense of the Confiscation of all war profits all lives of the workers and soldiers.
We are most insistent that the workers, concompany books to be open for trade fronted with universal militarism, war and reacunion inspection.
tion, must have full training in the use of arms. Expropriation of all war industries But the workers must have union rights and conand their operation under workers ditions in the armed forces. And they must be able control.
to influence the course and direction of their armed struggles. To secure these ends, we propose: Trade union wages for all workers Military training of the workers, financed by drafted into the army.
the government, under the control of the trade Full equality for Negroes in the armed unions.
forcesDown with Jim Crowism.
The establishment of special officers training camps, financed by the government and controlled An end to secret diplomacy.
by the trade unions, to train workers to become people referendum on any and officers.
all wars.
The measures proposed so far by union leaders tend merely to answer the problems of the worker AT HOME: after he is demobilized. Our program answers the For: real problem, the problem of the worker WITHIN the boss ruled armed forces. job and decent living for every worker Thirty thirty 30 weekly minimum wage. 30 hour weekly maximum for Significant Words 30 weekly old age and disability What are we fighting for? asks British labor.
Inarticulate, unorganized, the opposition to impension.
perialist war is nevertheless spreading. In distorted Full social, political and economic form it manages to exert its pressure upon the equality for the Negro people. military dictatorship now ruling Great Britain. Workers Defense Guards against vigi. Britain and her allies are determined to prolante and fascist attacks.
duce a just order in Europe, Minister of Labor Ernest Bevin told the restless British workers in A twenty billion dollar Federal public a radio broadcast October 25; and to recreate it works and housing program to provide on the basis of freedom, free association and jobs for the unemployed.
equality. We will never tolerate again masses of Expropriate the Sixty Families.
unemployed or poverty. We will not recognize privilege or place. juster scheme of things is our An Independent Labor Party based on aim.
the Trade Unions.
Significant words! Labor wants an end to war Worker and Farmer Govern and capitalist dictatorship be it fascist, military, ment.
or democratic. The government finds itself obliged to appeal to this sentiment in order to keep the workers fighting a little longer. But the government thereby only succeeds in strengthening this sentiment.
The British workers, like the workers of the The Main Question other imperialist nations dragooned to fight the The trade unions are demonstrating increascapitalist war for domination of the world maring concern over the problems posed by the onset ket, will find their way in the coming period to of universal military conscription.
the program of the Fourth International.
In an effort to cope with some of these probAnd this program, pointing the way to solems, several measures have been instituted or procialism, the society of the future, will make it posposed by various unions. Many unions have essible for the workers to really bring about what tablished dues exemptions for drafted members they want, an end forever of unemployment, povin order to maintain their union status. Steps are erty, and privilege.
being taken to protect conscripted members against lapse of union insurance policies. Union contracts ing the immediate return of jobs to union con Hands Off the scripts upon completion of their military service.
Union leaders and ranks are opposing discrimina The action of the courts in banning the Comtion in draft exemptions and are sharply protest munist Party from the ballot in New York can ing the anti labor composition of the draft boards. be taken by the class conscious worker in no other All of these union policies are worthy so far way than as a blow directed at the labor moveas they go. Yet they fail to deal with the main ment as a whole. We say this without making problem: How does organized labor propose to any concession to Stalinism.
defend the interests of the unionists while they are Revolutionary opposition to Stalinism was iniin the military machine?
tiated by the Trotskyists and has been led by them It is all very well for a worker to feel that his for seventeen years. speak with full authority union membership will be safeguarded while he as the most intransigeant foes of Stalinism.
is in the armed forces, that his insurance will be Why, then, do we oppose the removal of the maintained, that he has the minimum assurance of Stalinists from the ballot?
a job when and if he returns. But bow about The answer is simple. The ban issued by the the fact that after years of bitter combat in driv New York courts may be the first step in general ing back the open shop regime in industry, the drafted union man must now submit to an even repression of workers organizations, as the United States plunges into the second world war. As such more vicious open shop rule in the army?
The drafted workers are being thrust into the the ban must be opposed by every trade unionist and friend of labor.
grip of reactionary officers who are accustomed to But more directly, the act of the courts can treat the ranks like dirt. The rights and needs of lend the Stalinists a halo of martyrdom and rethe common soldiers rarely concern the well paid furbish their false authority among the workers lickspittles scrambling for promotions in the of as a revolutionary party. This possible result is ficers corps. These bourgeois career men would not the most perfidious and dangerous threat to the hesitate, as in the last war, to toss away the lives labor movement since it would strengthen the posiof the worker soldiers like rubbish in adventur tion of Stalinism.
istic actions which add up only to another stripe The job of crushing Stalinism as a political on some major sleeve.
force cannot be farmed out to capitalist reaction.
What means of protest against bad food and Labor itself must cleanse its ranks of the Stalinist shelter do the unions offer the worker recruits? influence. That is why we say to the capitalist What means of defense do the unions propose courts, hands off the Communist Party!
Trotsky analysis of the nature of the Soviet Union and the causes for its degeneration is the most important single factor in preventing the advanced section of the working class from giving way to the deep disillusionment that demoralized such a large section of the group formerly connected with the revolutionary movement.
The idealistic Interpretation offered by the middle class intellectuals amounts to this: The Revolution failed because cunning and unscrupulous people pushed aside able idealists. Every revolution must meet the same fate. Hence there is no use to struggle for the socialist revolution.
In contradistinction to the idealistic interpretation of the middle class intellectuals, Trotsky fur.
nished us with a materialistic explanation of the nature of the Soviet Union and the causes for its degeneration. This is not the place to go into a detailed explanation of that analysis. bare outline will suffice to indicate the tremendous difference between a Marxist and an idealistic approach to this all important social problem.
What was the main social conquest of the Rus.
sian Revolution! The nationalization by the letarian state of the means of production. Have the new property relations created by the Revolution been destroyed and has private property in the means of production been re established? The answer is in the negative.
True, the political superstructure has been rad ically altered since the Revolution. The democratic rule of the masses in all Soviet institutions has been destroyed. The backwardness of the country, the death of the best proletarian elements during the Civil War, the weariness of the masses, the failure of the proletarian revolution to arise in the more advanced countries, enabled the bureaucracy to concentrate all power in its hands and destroy all forms of Soviet democracy. But nationalized property still remains and the bureaucracy depends for its existence on nationalized property.
The social rule of every class can and does assume different political forms. The capitalist class can and does rule under democratic, mon.
archical and fascist forms. Proletarian rule must have democracy in order to achieve its objectives but that does not mean that under certain historic conditions and for a certain length of time the rule of the working class cannot be represented through the dictatorship of a bureaucracy or even of an individual.
Then why, asks the superficial person with an air of profundity, do you blame Stalin it conditions made his victory possible? For the same reason that we place the blame upon the imperialists of the different nations for the imperialist war even though we recognize that, in the analysis, imperialism and not the imperialists are responsible.
DEFENSE OF THE SOVIET UNION Trotsky is not the only one responsible for the existence of nationalized property in the Soviet Union. To him, of course, history will allot a tremendous share of the credit for the Revolution which was the cause of nationalized property com.
ing into existence. Trotsky, however, is respon.
sible for the fact that we understand the nature of the Soviet Union at the present time.
And it is our knowledge of the nature of the Soviet Union that gives so much more meaning to our celebration of the anniversary of the Russlan Revolution.
Above all Trotsky drew logical conclusions from his basic premises. To consider the Soviet Union as a workers state meant to assume an obligation to defend it in any struggle against the forces of imperialism, even though the Stalinist bureaucracy was guiding the destinies of the work ers state, and even though the bureaucracy committed a political crime in Initiating the struggle.
Any other conclusion would make the concept of workers state completely meaningless from the point of view of a political attitude towards the Soviet Union.
The major part of his writings in the last nine months of his life dealt with the controversy then raging in the ranks of our party. In essence his polemics against the minority that split away from the ranks of the Fourth International was a continuation of his struggle against those who denied the character of the Soviet Union as a workers state.
Fortunate indeed was our party, and consequently the whole revolutionary movement, that the GPU did not succeed in murdering Trotsky before the controversy between the majority and the minority of the Socialist Workers Party took place. Trotsky articles against the minority.
splitters constitute some of his most powerful polemical writings.
Reduced to its simplest terms the question in volved in the struggle was: Should a Marxist party defend higher forms of property relations against lower forms? Stated in this manner (and that is the only correct way of stating it) it becomes difficult to see how it was possible for such a controversy to occur in a Marxist party. But the circumstances were such that a group composed mainly of middle class intellectuals lost its bear ings and, under the pressure of the democratic bourgeoisie, It adopted a purely idealistic position.
FOUGHT AGAINST THE STREAM Most of those who, because of their disillusion.
ment with the Soviet Union under Stalinist control, rejected the theory that the Soviet Union was still a workers state, did not end there. Their disillusionment brought them to the point of breaking with all the fundamental principles of Marxism.
Repelled by the ugly totalitarianism of the Stalinist bureaucracy the middle class intellectuals confused the bureaucracy with the workers state and with the socialist revolution and rejected all three.
this period of reaction the revolutionary movement would have been completely demoralized and destroyed (to be revived no one knows when) had not Trotsky been with us to fight fiercely and effectively against this reactionary disillusionment and on behalf of the principles that made the Russian Revolution possible.
Did any one of the disillusioned intellectuals attempt to show that there was an effective substitute for revolutionary Marxism? They had nothing to offer except bourgeois democracy.
Some talk about democratic socialism but essentially their theories reduce themselves to de fending bourgeois democracy.
Rejecting the principles of the Russian Revolution the disillusioned ones could find nothing better to embrace than capitalist democracy. In the very period when that democracy was proving its complete impotence in solving a single major problem confronting mankind! In the very period when history placed before us the sole alternatives of fascism or proletarian democracy, the disillusioned ones began to crawl back to the bosom of the bourgeois democracy that was being destroyed before their very eyes.
From this the disillusioned intellectuals jumped to the conclusion that any disciplined party must of necessity degenerate regardless of social conditions. Because Stalin chronologically followed Lenin therefore Stalinism is the logical and inevitable outcome of Leninism.
ONLY THE LENINIST PARTY CAN WIN!
It devolved mainly upon Trotsky to shatter every one of the arguments which the intellectuals attempted to present. Consciously he saw it as his duty, in the midst of disillusionment and reaction, to save the best elements for the proletarian revolution to come.
In this task personal friendship or previous services to the proletarian movement counted for naught with Trotsky. Every one who dared raise any douts and thus weaken the revolutionary movement felt the lash of his pen. To him the socialist revolution was everything and its achievement was impossible without a Bolshevik partydemocratie, centralized, disciplined. The very mistake that he made in his early years on the ques.
tion of such a party made him all the more de termined to prevent others from making similar mistakes.
Against the disillusionment of the intellectuals he pitted his Marxist analysis of the period in which we are living. his explanation of the reaction, his undying faith in the proletarian revolution, his firm conviction that only a disciplined party grounded on the principles of revolutionary Marxism could achieve that revolution.
To educate the vanguard in the midst of the deepest reaction the working class has ever passed through and to keep that vanguard loyal to the principles of the Russian Revolution were Trotsky tasks. The very existence of our party is eloquent testimony that he accomplished those tasks.
Celebrating the anniversary of the Russian Revolution without accepting and defending the principles underlying that Revolution is impos.
sible. That we are celebrating the anniversary of that Revolution at the present moment when all around us rage pessimism and disillusionment is due solely to the work of Leon Trotsky.
CIVIL WAR OFFICERS WERE DIFFERENT The North might have lost the Civil War if Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Emery Upton, James Wilson and Alexander Mackenzie had not finally been placed in command of the Union Armies. The average age of these six when they took command was thirtythree years, and not one was forty five at the end of the war. Wheeler Nicholson states that if the present system had been in force back in 1863 not a single one of these brilliant military men could have become a general, for the system does not permit promotion for ability, only demotion for demerit which most often means failing to smooth some officious general the right way.
This system can provide only the type of army leadership which abandoned the French workers and soldiers to the mercy of the Nazi.
But all is not lost, according to an article in the October 18 issue of United States News, an inside political dope magazine for Wall Street. The evils pointed out by Wheeler Nicholson, begrudgingly acknowledged by the News, will be changed. REFORMS THAT CHANGE NOTHING According to the News, promotion from the ranks has become a definite part of the future army program. Special schools are being planned to prepare enlisted men not draftees for commissions. But not all enlisted men. The plan provides that any enlisted recruit may enter one of these schools after a year of regular training if he has a college education. This contemplated reform may provide a lot more paper work officers from the ranks of the wellto do who can afford to send their boys to college, but gives little hope for competent leadership where the bullets fly thickest.
The News article also reveals plans to reduce the snobbishness and stuffed shirt attitude of the officers. The officers are being encouraged to become more close to the ranks, but, Of course this does not mean drinking and chumming with them.
Just an occassional pat on the head!
This new attitude is not motivated by genuine sympathy for the ordinary recruit Oh, no! The article makes this clear when it states, Operation of a tank or plane with three or four men cramped into a tiny cockpit leaves the officer in charge little inclination to be thought a stuffed shirt by the mechanics on whose skill his life may depend.
Harsh martinet discipline is to go also. According to recent instructions from the army high command, new recruits are not to be given disciplinary confinements where such punishment can be avoided.
Instead, a more inspiring influence will be employed to keep the recruits in line. Says the News, The Army is relying on the women influence.
Now cach army post is to have a post matron or mother. Come, son, tell mother all!
This balderdash proposed as reforms for the army ruling system merely adds further proof of the hope less weaknesses of the whole officer system. It cannot be otherwise. For the present army command is an extension of the ruling regime of the degenerate capitalist system. So long as the boss class runs the army it will move heaven and earth to close the doors of the officers corps to the talented workers and tested union fighters. Capitalist war is exactly like capitalist economics: we go to war to get the peace to get the strength to go to war to get the peace, etc. etc.
Celebrate the 23rd Anniversary of the RUSSIAN REVOLUTION FRIDAY, NOV. 8th IRVING PLAZA P.
Irving Pl. and 15th Street, New York City SPEAKERS: JOSEPH HANSEN Former Secretary to Leon Trotsky FARRELL DOBBS MURRY WEISS National Labor Secretary Organizer, Local New York