DECEMBER 28, 1940 SOCIALIST APPEAL LABOR WITH WHITE SKIN CANNOT EMANCIPATE ITSELF WHERS LABOR WITH BLACK SKIN 1S BRANDED. KARL MARX Party Conference Midwesterner Is Negro Struggle Will, Like All Previous Ones, Be Preceded By Mass Pnrge Flabbergasted By The New New York Martinique: Two Negro Newspapers Views They Differ Only In Their Choice Of Slavemasters For This Negro Colony says.
By ALBERT PARKER The Courier Conference By JOHN WRIGHT against Trotskwisu on an interna scale purgr. Stalin will not break my or in the reserve. In fact, The Pittsburgh Courier recognized, before the Stalin has summoned a Party Conference to convene on tioni scale. In February of the this precedent in the eight weeks practically every adult and able By ART PREIS Hampton Institute conference was over, that February 15, 1941 according to an Associated Press dispatch same year. Trotsky was officially assigned for the préparation of bodied man in the Soviet Union ve jasl sat through most of a two day connothing was going to come out of it that would dated Moscow, December 20. The curtly worded dispatch states deprived of Soviet citizenship. the 1911 Conference. major sur is subject to military conscription. vention of the New York District of the Socialist be worth two beans in the struggle against Jim that the agenda of this, the lighteenth Party Conference, will be logical consummation of the Sev. sical operation is now in progress. Furthermore, youngsters of 15 Workers Party ve come away with the im.
Crow in the army.
enteenth Party Conference (Trolto limited to two points: 1) Discussion of the Party work in pression that maybe ve had an attack of amnesia VITAL SECTION OF sky. draft. In general. running fac Evidently, then, at the last minute, the Cour.
transport and industry. 2) Organizational questions.
INDUSTRY MILITARIZED and accidentally wandered of to my old bailiwick Although in the interim two The Conference call was issued paper no great difficulties. Miier. trying to salvage something out of the mess tories with soldiers presents on The mere calling of a Party Conference would in and of it party congresses have been held on the same day that Marshall lions can be conscripted on short out in the mid west. where a party gathering has and to utilize the wide publicity the Hampton self constitute news of primary importance, and denoto a major Stalin las refrained from using Timoshenko, head of the Red Ar order, subjected to a short but in always meant a gathering of workers.
meeting got, decided to hold its own conference When first entered the convention hall. was on the same subject. and there presumably take nine years. ne preceding Conference are the seventeen chaletok enese schat es humed in my mand Foroshiloven successor tensive acquaintance with the struck by a flaring banner. Beat Minneapolis in new army discipline, and then The Fund Drive: Quota 1000 Each.
this second conference called and sponsored place in January 1932. Coming as it does on the heels of recent from his arsenal, coupled with the Red Army itsele waren the content of the agenda for the factories which will produce ar articles needed by soldiers un.
assigned to factories to produce Now, know the New York local from the old by the Courier, was called to order in Washing ficance of this call cannot be Thirteenth Fourteenth and he coming Conference, is ominously ticles needed by the soldiers and der military rules and regulattons.
days, when a sign like that would have wound me in this way case the burden on Even if the Army does not im up with taped ribs from laughing so hard. The The overwhelming majority at Hampton cxaggerated.
of the struggle against Trotske Since the passage of the June industry as a whole. The soldiers If under Lenin the Party ism. The fifteenth Party Confer 26 laws lengthening the work themselves will manufacture the mediately take over so much as seemed to be government job holders and teachidea of New York dilettantes challenging Min ers or professors what George Schuyler des Conferences were milestones in once directly paved the way for week and prohibiting the workers articles (Jerish Day. December is being the deeree neapolis teamsters to anything! But things have changed. Bolshevik movement, then tion. Trotskyists) in 192 and ployment, the party organizations income tax paying. pillars of society. This was From start to finish this was a workers conthe exile of Trotsky to Alma Ata. have been under constant fire for is no ground for impugning its step toward militarizing Soviet in If this report is true and there would still mean that Stalin has taken the first and all. Important a very fitting description but it fits the composi der Stalin every single one of vention. In its composition and in its serious conthe five Conferences already 100 years old beefore the Six their foflure to enforce this or veracity, although the news was dustry. The decisive point is that tion of the Courier conference just as well.
centration upon the problems of the working class The Who Who in the Courier lists 41 names, held was filled with a countered this time to organize the ries of ukases issued by the Krem ropolitan dailles. inplies far ization has already been estabjuridical basis for such militar this convention reflected the fact that the New and gives information about 31. Of these 31, 19 revolutionary content.
York section of the party has at last overcomo are either government job holders. or teachers or In Lenin lifetime twelve Party by Bukharin and Rykov (with silent purge of the party ranks compulsory labor legislation to the lished: There is no line of demar the poison of its petti bourgeois past and is professors. All soft handed, that is not a workConferences were convened the whom Stalin had been allied. has been going on for some time soldiers in the Red Army, spreading deep roots into fertile proletarian soil.
er in the crowd. In addition, most of them had Twelfth and last in August, 1922 and also to prepare for a shin in now, but las obviously proved in and peace industries, especially when he was travely ill. The Soviet economie policy. The Six. adequate. Hence a liscussion of the Kremlin Wilitarizes a vier Stalin will succeed or not Timoshenko decree. by order in the event of hostilities. Wheti: Almost the entire two days were devoted to also been at the Hampton conference.
most famous them is the April teenth Conference convened in is on the agenda of the Confer tal section of Soviet Industry that is another question.
reports and discussion on trade imion problems; Nor is the resolution of the second conference Conference at which Lenin pre April 1929, the year which really ence on the question of the party the defense industry which has op to the recital of experiences in the organized labor much better than that of the first. True, its lan sented his April Theses. Since marks the inception of the First role in the economic life of the erated for years tinder a special The Conference call, the movement; to planning the party program for guage is sharper, more vigorous, more direct. Lenin died, five Conferences were Five Year Plan.
advancing the principles of militant class struggle.
Its position is less ambiguous, although it too called and held prior to the one There was a three year interval agenda.
The Organization over all the articles needed by sol point incontrovertibly in one dlcountry. The second point on the Commissariat, and which produces Timoshenko. December decree.
Active union fighters in the food. maritime, does not name names or place the responsibility scheduled for February. 1941. before the Seventeenth Party Contion, implies that there are short diers from boots to bombers.
ship building, electrical and radio. garment and for, the present state of things where it belongs. Each of them marked a new stage Terence convened in January 1932, comings in the existing organiz. Whatever factories are taken over rection: The economic crisis in other industries spoke. Their reports painted a It also fails to take up the question of Roosevelt in the degeneration of the Russian in the very midst of a grave ecoational set up which obstruct the by the Army, these will then oper the Soviet Union instead of being graphic and living picture of the workers strig separate regiment policy by name, only hintthem served Stalin to consolidate an equally grave international sit. austry. and therefore the party which in its turn has been recast with it a direct threat of passing Communist Party: each one of nomic crisis in the country, and party work in transport and in ate under military discipline, mitigated has on the contrary gles in the New York area, a picture made real ing at it.
power more and more firmly in uation it was the critical year must be most certainly renovat under Timoshenko to conform into a social and political crisis because these delegates are a vital part of these It certainly is not a revolutionary solution.
his hands.
struggles.
And yet there is signed to it the name of George of Hitler rise to power. The ed organizationally.
with the discipline in bourgeois of Stalin regime, and of the So In the first four years after Tetask of this Conference was to Schuyler who, in criticizing the Hampton ConNever has a Conference been armies, Fascist or democratic.
Gone are the phrase mongers, bohemians, and nin death 1924 1927 three Par organize the crushing of opposlheld under Stalin not preceded by fake intellectuals. Gone with the wind bags. ference, said that only a revolutionary approach ty Conferences took place. the tion at home, and launch a drive sayage repressions and a large and unskilled workers in the Ar December 20, 1940 There are millions of skilled viet Union.
the petty bourgeois splitters of last April. In can solve the Negro problems. Instead of being their place are loyal and serious minded workers revolutionary, as a matter of fact, it contains a striving to plunge themselves deeper and deeper section just as harmful to the Negro as anything into the task of organizing and leading the work.
pulled off at Hampton.
ing class to the conquest of power.
Not a Pro Labor Resolution That is the section dealing with labor, which Who Who Nove In New York calls on the government to investigate labor Over 30 percent of the Nero York party memunions which by constitutional or ritualistic probers are active trade wnionists. 35 percent of the visions bar Negroes from getting jobs. The Cour.
New York party members are concentrated in the ier makes still clearer what is meant when it three huge and vital industries. food, electrical By ALBERT PARKER. we call upon the Attorney General of the onies out of good nature or con and endorsed Willkie. And thus fight for equal rights for the Ne.
manufacturing and marine transport.
But, the practical editors of United States to prosecute these racketeering The ruling class of this country cern for their people welfare they limit the struggle to being gro people in all spheres of lite the Courier and the Afro AmeriAn additional sizeable sector of the party are is preparing to seize Martinique, they take them to be able to ex Jim Crowed under one boss party have some explaining to do to can may say with a patronizing unions under the provisions of that (Sherman the French owned colony with ploit them, and Martinique is a or Jim Crowed under another.
workers in trades and industries as yet unorgantheir readers.
Anti Trust) law.
a population of a quarter million rich prize which they will no more smile, how can the people of this ized. These, taken together with those in organThe capitalists and their press That is, the conference called on the govern colored people.
As for us of the Socialist Work. small island possible keep from give up after the war than they say that the colored people in ers Party, we take a view entirely being taken over by one or other decisively proletarian in character. complete ized trades. make a party membership that is ment to end Jim Crowism in the unions, the very The fate of Martinique should save up the Philippines 40 years the colonies are not fit to rule different from those of the Courter of the imperialist countries?
same government that shows its approval of Jim be of vital interest to every Negre ago.
themselves; that is why the im reversal of the condition that existed just eight and the Afro Americon on this and white worker, for the ques.
Crowism as a principle by its bundling of the perialists must run things for question.
To these practical people, we months ago under the domination of the petty.
Negro in the armed forces!
tion of Negro freedom in the THE COURIER TAKES them. This is the same vicious answer: The people of Martinique United States is very much con DIFFERENT STAND bourgeois play boys!
We are against the white su may not be able to free themsel Let us see what the Courier proposal would lie that they use in this country premacy theory everywhere, in ves at this moment. But that The Pittsburg Courier editorial to perpetuate segregation and this country and in the colonies. day and a hall of listening to reports disnected with what happens to the accomplish: Negro people everywhere In Af takes a different position. After atscrimination against the Negro tilled from the daily experiences of the class It will give the government (which disrica, the West Indies, etc.
making clear that it has no sym. people.
We are against the lesser evil the Negro to endorse one or an. struggle has convinced me that the old days of likes both the unions and the Negroes) a handle That was why the Negroes here pathy for Petain or the Nazis, the phoney kab fests that passed for an SWP conven.
to enter and break up the unions. Will this be in and everywhere were and are so editorial says: We certainly view What have the Courier and the theory, we are against all kinds other slavemaster for Martinique!
of slavery and discrimination, in The first step on the road to tion in New York are ended. but definitely!
the interests of the Negro people or in the in concerned about the independence with alarm the projected grabbing Afro to say about this? Why do terests of the ruling capitalist class. the very One incident which occurred during the con.
of Ethiopia. We knew that the of Martinique by the United they refect this theory for the Ne this country and in the colonies freedom for Martinique and for We don want France to get the colored people everywhereIs first of all not to praise any vention deserves special mention. Two former people who keep race prejudice alive. as Schuy successful defeat of the Fascist States presumably to forestall croes in the United States and invasion of Ethiopia would have Hitler. It then explains that accept it for the Negroes in the back its island, as the Afro slavemaster but American calls it, because they self against all slavemasters. Do declare oneler put it. SWP members from Gloversville, workers It will give reactionary, lily white trade been a blow at the bosses, the Martinique happens to be one of colonies? How can they accept who had been misled temporarily into the ranks oppressors of the Negroes of all these few colonies where the na white supremacy for the col. would keep the people in slavery that and you will find powerful of the petty bourgeois opposition at the time of union leaders a handle to incite white workers countries; that why we of the tives do have some rights: onies and logically answer the and oppression.
alties: the revolutionary white against the Negroes, for they will be able to say, the split, paid a visit to the convention. They Socialist Workers Party support There are 246, 712 inhabiadvocates of white supremacy We don want the Nazis to get workers. Tomorrow, in this country? Why did they de it, because they would keep its hand with these allies, you will land in Do you see now why we want to keep Negroes ed Ethiopia fight for independ tants of Martinique and all but had just come from a call on the so called Work out of our unions? Because they are our enemies ers Party.
mánd the independence of Ethio people in slavery and oppression. find your way to the leadership a handful are Negroes or mul.
ence.
and are calling on the government to prosecute We don want the United States of all the oppressed everywhere.
From this point of view, let us attoes. They vote, they have pia and why don they demand But we couldn find any workers there, they the Independence of Martinique? to take It, because they would We are many, they are few. On explained, So we ve quit them.
us and break is up. Will this be in the interexamine the editorials on Martin direct representation in the How can they logically demand keep its people in slavery and op this road and only on this road ests of the Negro people or in the interests of nique which have been recently French parliament, they serve it for one, and not for the other pression. few hours in attendance at our convention the reactionaries who want to keep Negroes out carried by two of the leading Nel without discrimination or rerevealed enough real live workers. They asked of the trade unions. gro newspapers of this country.
It seems to us that these pa Martinique should belong to the shall we all, black and white, striction in the French Army pers which claim leadership in the people of Martinique.
find freedom.
for re admittance into the SWP and were imme.
and Navy where many have The one point that distinguished the Courier The Baltimore Afro American diately welcomed by vote of the convention.
resolution at Hampton was the following: editorial is entitled, Let Take risen to high rank. They have That Negroes in each community imMartinique. When the writer says freely attended France best let us, he means let the United universities and have good loWatch Their Smoke, Minneapolis!
mediately proceed to the organization of a DeStates government take it. The cal schools.
Every phase of party activity came in for fense Committee, composed of representatives of arguments of the editorial are al Not a single British colony thorough discussion. vigorous drive was ma local organizations. to cooperate with the conmost the same ones made by the or American dependeney is as on the question of building the mass circulation tral committee in Washington, and with the free as black Martinique, and American capitalists, who have of the party press. Real plans were outlined; bad experience taking other collocal authorities. Said the Courier: Once these we shudder when we contempand they won be pigeon holed either, like in the organizations have united it is proposed that onial countries in the past: late what Negrophobic old days.
they, hold huge defense mass meetings. Rep. As long as France is tied to naval rule will mean to this resentatives from these united organizations Hitler apron strings, it seems little Eden. might not have believed it, if hadn seen The chiet feature in the Dec. so far undermined discipline. that they signify, that General would be selected to attend another conference to us that the United States Under American rule, Mar. issue of the Saturday Evening This is a lie made of whole Weygand insisted that the French it with my own eyes. But m here to tell the ought to step in and take over tinique would have no repreplanned for Washington in January shortly after Post is the diary of a British staff cloth. Blum did not regularize government surrender. The gov.
Minneapolis comrades not to take lightly the New the island for the duration of sentation in Congress, its sons officer during the Battle of France. soldiers committees in 1936, or ernment still had great resources the next Congress opens.
York challenge about beating them in the Trotsky the war.
and daughters would be barred The details he gives constitute an any other time. Not only Blum, at its disposal for military purs Memorial Fund Drive. Stop reading last year This means that the Courier recognizes that France couldn object. It from a large number of main annihilating indictment of the but every party in the Popular poses, Paris could have been de newspapers, Minneapolis. You re not confronting action is necessary against the Jim Crow system lies prostrate under Hitler land universities, and its sons French bourgeoisie and its general Front including the Stalinists rended, as well as the south or Bronx hill bilties. You re up against proletarian in the army, and that action by the local orheel. After the war is over, it would be viciously discrimin. stafl. Blind, fatuous, complacent. denounced the Trotskyists, who France. And even if that fell, ganizations, that is, by the masses, is necessary.
fighters. And they re not kidding!
ated against in the armed forestupid, lacking intelligence and were the only party that demand the armies could have retreated to can have its island back.
Insofar as the resolution draws attention to these There is another reason es and defense industries. imagination, cowardly the boured the formation of soldiers com North Africa and continued the things, it serves the interests of the Negro why we should take Martin So, concludes the Pittsburgh geois democracy France mittees. Still less were there sol. war.
people.
ique. Its 250, 000 people are Courier. for the sake of Marti emerges from this officer diary diers conimittees in May, 1940, But Weygand and the rest of But just because real action is necessary, the poor and hungry. The British nique dark sons and daughters, shorn of every claim to any sta when even the modest gains of the general staff understood what section of the resolution on the trade unions must blockade has ruined the trade. We hope it will remain under ture.
the workers in the factories had continuation of the war under be condemned, because it weakened if it didn Uncle Sam can do them a French rule.
But the pleture is too damning been completely wiped out by the those conditions meant. After the Let pass over, without the re The bourgeois democracy of French government.
favor and get rid of a likely terrible defeats in the North of Winston Churchill broadcast to Italy on destroy, the possibility of including the trado headache if he adopts these futation it deserves, the Courier France was exactly the same kind Soldiers committees would France, the masses could see just Monday shows exactly to what extent this is a unions in the united front.
few French speaking colored picture of little Eden. It true of ruling class which stiti rules mean the beginning of real democ. what stuf their ruling class was war against fascism. The fascist regime of The main objection to be made against both folks until peace comes. that France commits less format in Britain and the United States. racy, France was not a democratic made of. But at that point the Italy is in difficulties as a result of the defenta the Courier and Hampton conferences, is that, In other words, says the Afro discrimination against Negroes as Therefore the author perhaps at regime but a military dictatorship ruling class would have to appeal in Greece and Egypt; the masses do not want while both ask for the correction of certain Jim American Washington should Negroes, France mistreats all her the suggestion of his publisher. in 1940. Precisely because there to these masses. To continue the the war; they are beginning to resist the regime.
Crow evils, they propose to leave the control of casts about to find a striking de was no take the island because it would colonials regardless of color!
democracy, the struggle required mobilizing these military training in the hands of the lily white Whereupon Churchill seizes the opportunity to be the best thing for its natives.
Let get to the main point. The tail which will enable him to morale of the French armies was masses to build barricades and officer caste. whitewash the Italian royal house, the Pope, They are poor and hungry, says Afro American wants Martinique make the situation of the French soon shattered.
trenches on the outskirts of Paris, It is already a law that there shall be no disthe army officialdom, e. Mussolini collaborat the Afro American. But so are the ruled by America: the Courier rulers different from that in BriGentlemen of the Saturday Ev. turn every house into a fortress, ors and accomplices during these last eighteen crimination in the armed forces. but since con people of the other countries wants it ruled by France. The tain and the United States, Heening Post: We brand you as pub. defend every street.
two opinions may seem different: cannot find it because it does not lishers (and perhaps direct instiWashington has taken. Just years. It must not come to that, said trol of military training is in the hands of a miligators) of a crude fabrication. General Weygand as was author Churchill blames Italian participation in the tary and governmental caste that wants to per look at Porto Rico! Its people at bottom, however, they are very exist.
were starved by Spain. Now much alike. They share in com Whereupon he invents it. It ap. You did it deliberately, in order latively reported at the time, and petuate Jim Crowism, discrimination goes on.
war on one man. Mussolini. That has as much they ve been taken by the Unit, mon the theory of the lesser pears out of clear sky at the to obscure the real lesson of has never been denied. Weygand truth as saying that Churchill alone is responsThe National Defense Commission has al ed States for more than 40 years evil: since you ve got to be a end of his article: France. You did it in order to likened the situation to that of ready laid down the ruling that there must be and the Afro American would slave, you might as well pick General Georges was asked ible for British participation. If only Mussolini blame the French working class Russia in 1917, and feared the wanted the war, why didn the royal house and no discrimination because of race or color in the scarcely deny it the people of yourself the best and kindest point blank why the promised for the fall of France, when every coming of a workers revolution factories getting war contracts, but because the the army general staff prevent it? If they can, Porto Rico have been poor and master. Both take it for granted counterattack had not been de thing else in that very diary it the war continued. It must bosses, who profit from racial division, control hungry throughout these years, that Martinique must belong to livered. His liaison officer which you publish shows conclu not come to that. Rather than stop the war now, they could have prevented its both the factories and the Defense Commission, and remain so.
someone, e. someone other than spoke for him and answered sively that France fell because its that, he and the French democbeginning. Churchill appears to be talking non that the general could not give discrimination goes on.
And so far as adopting the the people of Martinique.
sense rotten, degenerate bourgeois de racy preferred to turn France This attitude is not new to orders so far in advance of the mocracy was too impotent to de over to Hitler, But he isn He is saying: Boys, if you ll What is needed therefore is a system of trade islayd until peace comes is concerned, that is a childish joke. either paper. They both employed inclinations of the division. tend France.
Such are the indisputable facts. leave Mussolini in the lurch and come over to my union control of military training, to put control If that happened, it would be the it quite consistently in the elec This was an eye opener, and it Had soldiers committees existed The crude bit of forgery in the of it in the hands of the workers who have nothside, ll help you maintain your rule of which first time in its history that Wash tion campaign just concluded. is only now that it is brought in the French army, they would Saturday Evening Post is deliberMussolini was only the front man and as in addition is expropriation of the war industries over a small country and then 1936, and repudiated the Repubing to gain from discrimination. What is needed ington or London or Paris took Both had endorsed Roosevelt in home to me that the forma never have permitted the capitu. ately designed to blur over these tion of soldiers committees, lation to Hittler. It was precisely facts, which damn bourgeois de token of my help in keeping you in power. an and their operation under workers control to put willingly let it go. The bosses of lican Party. Both became dis regularized in the French army in order to prevent the appearance mocracy not only in France but making this speech whitewashing you. And thi an end to discrimination in industry.
this country don take over col gusted with Roosevelt this year, in 1936 by Blum regime, have lof soldiers committees and all wherever it exists.
is the war against fascism! Crude Lie About France In The Saturday Evening Post War Against Fascism