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SOCIALIST APPEAL JANUARY 4, 1941 SOCIALIST APPEAL VOL. No. Saturday, January 4, 1941 PubMehed Tolly by the SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASSN.
at 116 University Place, New York, Telephone: Algonquin 3547 How Stalin Celebrated The 23rd Anniversary The New Revelation According To Saint Norman Thomas Editorial Board: FELIX MORROW ALBERT GOLDMAN General Manager: RUTH JEFFREY Not One Mention of the Fight Against Fascism Was Included Among the 43 Slogans Issued For the November 7th Ceremony Subscriptions: 00 per year: 00 for six months.
Foreign. 00 per year. 60 for six months. Bundle orders: conta per copy in the United States; per copy in all forelgn countries. Single copios: cents.
we are one brief step removed from the status of an out and out belligerent. Roosevelt warned in plain language that American labor is to be yoked, and yoked right now, to the war wheels of the bosses. He expects the war arms drive to proceed, he said, without interruption by strikes or lockouts. He also, it is true, chided industrialists who are extracting dollar for dollar against plant expansion. With them, as we know, the government deals in terms of concessions. But with labor, it will increasingly deal with an iron hand. Finally, Roosevelt warned that the arms drive will of necessity involve a lowering of our standard of living. This is the real meaning of his remark that industries producing consumer goods will yield, if need be, to conversion of their plants into war material producing units.
The United States is no longer merely on the road to war. The United States is at war. This is the premise from which all thought, all action must now proceed.
We are for an irreconcilable struggle by the labor movement in defense of its rights and its needs, in wartime as in peacetime. Precisely for that reason, we don want to hear any more mud dleheaded and cowardly speeches from labor statesmen about unfaimess of the government doing this or that to the labor movement in peacetime. No, it not peacetime. Let us face this fact openly, and go on from there.
1922 Reentered as mocond class matter December Act of March rch 184. 95 Now York, under the FIGHT WITH THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY ON THE WAR FRONT: For: Military training of workers, financed by the gov.
ernment, 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 forcesDown with Jim Crowism. An end to secret diplomacy, peoples referendum on any and all wars.
By JOHN WRIGHT In 1935 so many slogans againsters were told to give three cheers On the occasion of the Twenty. Fascism were launched that to for the June 26 labor laws which Third Anniversary of the October really do them justice we would enslaved them, and which they Revolution, Stalin prohibited the have to reprint entire issues of are bitterly opposing.
raising of a single anti fascist slo Pravda (not to mention the Daily The list of Long Live slogans gan in the Soviet Union. Likewise Worker. Let the following suf. is too long to exhaust. few will taboo were any and all anti war fee: Fascism is the Most Savage suffice: or anti imperialist slogans. As a offensive of Capitalism Against 1) Long Live the Soviet Trade matter of fact, the mere mention the Totling Masses. Fascism Unions. purged in July. of fascism, war, imperialism, vic th Means War of Aggress 2) Long Live the Komsomols!
tims of fascism, colonial peoples, ion! FascismThis Means (purged in July. class war prisoners, refugees, was Hunger, Poverty. Misery. 3) Long Live Our Working proscribed. In the 42 official slo Down With Fascism! Down Class. chained to the factories. gans issued by the Kremlin for With Capitalism. Fuse Into Long Live the Collective the November ith celebrations. Single United Front For the Peasantry. failed to fulfin quo capitalism itself, let alone the Struggle Against Fascism The tas of grain deliveries to the bourgeoisie, is not referred to dt. Bitterest Enemy of All Peoples! state. rectly and so forth, and so on. In 1940 5) Long Live the Soviet IntelThe sole mention of the worla silence.
lectuals. nolo being purged. situation was contained in the fol. What, then, was the content of Long Live the Communist lowing slogan: Long Live the the 42 slogans of the Kremlin in Party of the Soviet Union. now Foreign Policy of the Soviet Gov. 1940? It was mostly greetings. Deing purged, with the mass ernment! The policy of Peace Thus, the workers, engineers and purge scheduled to be consumBetween Peoples and Assuring technicians of Ferrous and Non mated dy February 13, 1991, then the Security of Our Fatherland! Ferrous Metallurgy received greet the Eighteenth Party Conference In other words: Long Live the ings with an injunction: Fight Convenes. Hitler Stalin pact!
tal: Pight for its Quality! The TO EXAMINE to Increase the Production of MeTWO SIGNIFICANT SLOGANS Even such a ritualistic slogan workers, engineers, etc. of the Ma repeated for years as Long Live were There are, however, two slothe Soviet Power in the whole chine Building Industry World was omitted in 1940.
greeted: More and Better Ma gans among the 42 that merit special notice. First, there is the chinery! Workers, etc. of the In 1935, at the beginning of the fuel and Electric Industries. rather unexpected and sudden re People Front policy remem More and Better Fuel! More and ference to Our Socialist Espionber. the slogans issued by Sta. Better Electric Energy! Workers, age Service. the CHEKA, in con lin for the Eighteenth Anniver etc. of the Chemical industry. nection with a slogan which calls sary included: Our Flaming More Chemicals! Workers, etc. or for the strengthening of the Red Greetings to the Proletarians and the Building Trades, Build More Army. The Cheka, as is well Toilers of France, the Vanguard and Better, and Cheaper! Work known, was originally organized Fighters Against Fascism, Against ers, etc. of the Light and Textile in the period of the Civil War.
Imperialist War! In 1940 sl. Industries More Calico, Silk, The Kremlin secret police were ence.
Cloth, Knitgoods, Footwear, and first labelled the GPU and then Also, in 1935. Bolshevik Greet Clothing for the Citizens of the renamed the NKVD because the ings to the Revolutionary Prole. Soviet Land! Workers, etc. of other name had become so abhor.
tariat of Germany! Long Live the state and cooperative Trade Net rent. Why this return in 1940 to many! Long Live Comrade THA. viet Consumer! Fisht For Culi is it a direct threat that police.
Heroic Communist Party of Ger work. Better Service to the So the Cheka? Is it to strike greater ELMANN! Let Us Tear Him tural Soviet Trade in City and From the Clutches of the Fascist Country! Etcetera. Pravda, No terror is to be intensified and Hangmen! In 1940, the Kremlin vember 4, 1940. supplemented by martial courts?
was too busy shaking the hands of Fascist diplomats to worry forgotten.
Nor were the collective farmers Undoubtedly, both the one and about Thaelmann, the German They got greetings, the other.
too, with orders for bigger and The second slogan follows ver Communist Party, the Spanish better crops, and, in particular, batim: people, or any other victims of more meat. Let Us Unfold the Criticism Stalin treacherous and fatal polof Our Inadequacies! Let Us icies. FEW STIFF DEMANDS Strengthen Still More the Might In 1935 the Kremlin, while sell. ARE INCORPORATED and Organized Power of Our ing oit to Mussolini; still remem Another set of slogans dispensed State!
bered to send greetings to the with greetings and simply raised Now, on the surface this may Popular Masses of Abyssinia, demands. 1) Create Mighty seem only an innocuous incanta Courageously Defending Their In State Labor Reserves for Indus tion of Stalin Bolshevik Sell.
dependence. China then received try and Transport! In other criticism. but it is nothing of two greetings: 1) Fraternal Greet words, Long Live the October 2nd the sort. This ominous slogan ings to the Heroic Working Class Laws Instituting Child Labor in quite clearly demands a greater and all the Toiling Masses of the Soviet Union! 2) The Strug centralization of power, and a fur.
China. Long Live the Communist Ble Against Laggards and Disorther strengthening of the totaParty of China. 2) The Im sanizers of Production is the litarian apparatus. All ertid perialists are Dividing and En Struggle for strengthening the ism has been unfolding preslaving China! Greetings to the Might of Fatherland and its cisely in this direction. The comChinese People Fighting for Their Red Army. Long Live Labor Dising weeks will reveal just how Emancipation and Independence! cipline and Exemplary Order in Stalin In 1990, the colonial peoples are the Enterprises of our father Swan ne proposes to reinforce in his beneath the Kremlin notice. land! In other words, the work. Organized Power of Our State.
Stalin New Life One of the first fruits of Stalinist pamphleteering for the new year is a little pamphlet entitled Soviet Jews. New Way of Life, issued by ICOR, the Stalinist mass organization which, since Biro Bidjan was created in 1928, has been singing its virtues. Incidentally, it is not accidental that the cover of this new pamphlet shows an idyllic picture of happy Jewish collective farmers in the. Crimea. For, after thirteen years of state sponsored Jewish colonization in Biro Bidjan.
even the Stalinist statistics of this pamphlet claim only a Jewish population there in the neighborhood of 50, 000. During that period, ICOR has raised in the capitalist world on behalf of the Jews of Biro Bidjan, enough money to buy a collective farm for each of those in the neighborhood of 50, 000.
Never mind how few Jews live in Biro Bidjan.
It is more important to appreciate the new way of life, which this pamphlet describes so warmly.
Such breadth, such universality of culture! Take, for example, the sub section of this pamphlet entitled, German Refugees and the Soviet Union.
The interlocutor is speaking to representative Soviet Jews, and asks them, But don you think you Soviet Jews should appeal to your government to allow the German Jews to come in. We don want them here, was the answer.
Then, just to make sure you get the point that this is not just an individual answer, nor merely a Jewish answer, the interlocutor goes on: Do you Soviet Jews oppose their admission? That provides the springboard for an authoritative declaration When say we. mean all of us, not just Jews. The German Jews are almost all bourgeois or bourgeois minded. They hate us. After they got here they only make trouble for us and for themselves. Let them go to Palestine or America.
And even that isn enough. The interlocutor again speaks: m sure after what they ve gone through they be grateful for a haven. Whereupon the voice of the Soviet new way of life answers. Only until they ve had a lot bath and bad their bellies full. We can do without them.
So this is how they talk in a new way of life.
And this horrible, swinish outlook is brazenly peddled by Stalin, satellite of Hitler, in the name of the Soviet Union, that is to say, in the name of the October Revolution. AT HOME: For: job and decent living for every worker. Thirty thirty 30 weekly minimum wage 30 hour weekly maximum 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 vigilante and fascist attacks. twenty bill 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. Workers and Farmers Government.
Roosevelt Speech Conscientious objectors to draft registration, members of the Young Peoples Socialist League (Second International. recently argued their case before Federal Judge William Bondy.
Study the statement of Howard Schoenfeld, member of the Socialist Party, as printed in the pamphlet. Why We Refused To Register. respectfully submit that am a Socialist, a firm believer in democracy, and, by training and belief, a pacifist, and that, as such, cannot conscientiously take part in war, training for war, or in the surrendering of liberty, or in registration for such purposes.
Further, It (Selective Service Act) forces the citizen to study the methods of war and murder, which is in direct contradiction to the law of God and the commandment: THOU SHALT NOT KILL.
And still further, Although am a pacifist, am not a member of any religious sect. believe in God, the Kingdom of God om earth, and that we are all sons of God, and that, therefore, there is a common Brotherhood of Man. The Socialist Party of the is a group of people working in a practical manner toward the establishment of what believe to be the Kingdom of God on earth.
The Philosophy of Slaves As a pacifist, a disbeliever in violence regardless of the class employing it or the cause which it upholds, Schoenfeld and his colleagues advocate a philosophy which would condemn the German and Italian workers, indeed all the oppressed masses of the world; to a perpetual slavery. It means submission to the armed force of the ruling classes and the complete disarming of the working classes.
When God and the Ten Commandments are invoked to give added weight to this conviction, these conscientious objector find themselves in the realm of the capitalists entirely. The bourgeoisie have a virtual monopoly on divine revelation; the ruling class also argues the justice of imperialist war, and its naturally attendant evils such as conscription, on the basis of supernatural mandate. And the churches of all varieties lend a thousand times more impressive authority than even the most vehement conscientious objector can command. In either case, the workers can only take their word for it. Neither side can show any direct testimonials from the Lord.
Nowhere in the statements of Schoenfeld and his colleagues is there an awareness of the class struggle, the class character of imperialist war, nor even the beginnings of a realistic program which the workers can utilize in an effective fashion against the boss war.
While a handful of conscientious objectors can afford to bask in self righteous martyrdom, the billionheaded masses of the world cannot simply sit down and say, We won fight. And for the same reason that they cannot say, We won work.
So long as the workers cannot overthrow the system of war and exploitation, they cannot be simple abstainers from the system. Their wives and child Ten must live. Mass suicide cannot change the hearts of the master class, which has waded through oceans of blood and mountains of slaughtered flesh in its rise to power and in the maintainance of its rule.
Pacifism, fortunately not a disease of the American working class, hasn a leg to stand on.
In the end, it is precisely such pacifism which lends itself to the support of capitalism and the war system when the workers, who are not so pacifist.
turn against the oppressors. This was amply proved by the conduct of the pacifists during the last war and, especially, during the Russian workers revolution.
Norman Thomas Speaks His Piece We see the implications of this in the statement of Norman Thomas in The Call, Socialist Party weekly, for December 14.
Thomas takes his stand on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In commending the constitutional case presented by the defense lawyers for Schoenfeld, and the other young Socialists, Thomas states. There is a difference between peace time conscription and the war time conscription upheld by the Supreme Court. It is amazing to what extent the peace time draft law delegates power to the President and breaches the defenses of individual rights contained in the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Granting that the temper of the times makes it likely that the courts will sustain the constitutionality of the draft, it is a service to all of us to know where we stand constitutionally. This is not and should not be just a Socialist Party cause. It should have wide spread support from all opponents of PEACE TIME military conscription. Our emphasis)
This Revelation according to Saint Thomas does not, in its logic, argue against conscription just against conscription until war is declared. or until the Supreme Court puts the final seal of approval on peace time conscription.
According to this, the worker youth dragooned into the armed forces by the draft can now console themselves that it is really all very unconstitutional; as they can draw comfort from the thought, when they are actually under shot and shell, and the court has acted, that their situation has the full backing of the Supreme Court and Norman Thomas.
What farcical figures the Norman Thomases cut, whether in the garb of parsons or constitutional lawyers! Not content with violating the jurisdiction of the capitalists in the main of theology, the Thomases want to instruct the ruling class on the meaning of its constitution, interpreted and enforced by its courts and laws.
Meanwhile, the workers will continue to undergo the military training, and wear the uniforms and carry the arms which the ruling class thrusts upon them; for pacifism is alien to them, fortunately. In their own way and in their own good time they will find means to put a stop to war, irrespective of the opinions of divines, Supreme Court justices, or that amalgam of the best qualities of both thene roup, Norman Thomas.
They Honor John Reed. And Suppress His Book President Roosevelt fireside chat last Sunday night was the equivalent of a military engagement of considerable magnitude. Roosevelt, proponent of measures short of war to aid Britain, in this speech went up almost to the final point short of an actual declaration of war in aligning this country on the world war front.
Roosevelt dropped all diplomatic pretenses as far as the fundamental issues were concerned.
He served notice on the Axis that imperialism regards itself as the prime object of the tripowered Axis alliance. He ruled out any question of a negotiated peace and in doing so accepted on behalf of American imperialism the sage thrown down by German imperialism, which has already indicated that it likewise regards this war as an all or nothing affair.
To the American people, the president offered only the thinnest of pious hopes that this country will be spared from war. He made it clear that when he talks about peace he actually means the peace that will ensue only when the German forces have been deſcated by force of arms. His speech was, in effect, a call for expediting industrial mobilization in preparation for the approaching, greater battles of the war.
He said he wanted to keep us, our children, and our grand children out of a last ditch war.
Firm alliances now to Britain, he implicd, would enable us to fight that war one ditch removed, rather than at the last ditch. The United States, he said, has no right or reason to encourage talk of peace until the day shall come when there is a clear intention on the part of the aggressor nations to abandon all thought of dominating or conquering the world.
It is clear that these aggressor nations will be brought to such abandonment only by the pressure of superior military force. It is equally clear that Roosevelt is declaring that either Germany dominates the world or the United States dominates the world. Ile quoted Hitler as declaring there could be no compromise in this struggle, and he definitely accepted the challege. It is now merely a question of the tempo at which the country can be prepared and finally plunged into the conflict.
Roosevelt, representing the real masters of this country, has thus told us several things as plainly as he dares at this stage: This country is before long to plunge into a war that has world domination as its stake. Even now this country is no more neutral than Italy was before it entered on Germany side. last June. The New York Times found a phrase to describe our present position: it is not merely non belligerence. It is now dynamio pon belligerence. In plain language this means SWP PROTESTS JAILING OF PIERRE FRANK Halifax Is Real There has been a quite understandable awkwardness in the press comment on the appointment of Lord Halifax as Britain ambassador to the United States; an awkwardness which, in the case of the labor and liberal press has turned into downright embarassment. For no editorial agility can successfully fit Lord Halifax into the current myth of a transformed, socialist, labor led England. When editorial agility attempts the task, you get some really weird results, as witness these unbelievable sentences from The Nation. Until his unfortunate appointment as Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax had enjoved a reputation as an enlightened Tory, and as Viceroy of India le had shown an unprecedented breadth of imagination. We hope the American atmosphere will assist the resurrection of the Halifax of the twenties. That is to say, of the Halifax who was ruthJess dictator over four hundred million unwilling inhabitants of India. If you want the details, just look up the Nation of the twenties.
The liberals might as well reconcile themselves to many an embarassed moment, when Lord Ilalifax gets here. The lovely haze created by reading Harold Laski and listening to Sir Walter Citrine is apt to be rudely rent in many spots, for llalifax, true representative of the British ruling class and not of its labor flunkies, is as real as hell. As real as those subway shelters in which the workers of London are packed in, while their betters dine, dance and sleep in luxurious underground palaces.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. William American Communist, who was The Communists asked no fee, Zigzag) Foster, chairman of a close personal friend of and made only one stipulation the Communist Party, spoke at a Lenin. When he died in 1921 he. that all reference to Trotsky Mentorial Anniversary meeting left the British copyright in should be eliminated from the for John Reed, Harvard alumnus his book to the Communist text.
and American revolutionist, an Party. Confronted with this modthor of the great eyewitness chro When the News Chronicle ern version of Hamlet without nicle of the Russian Revolution, approached the copyright own the Prince of Denmark, the Ten Days That Shook The ers for permission to serialize Liberal organ abandoned the World.
the book it was gladly given. project.
Following Foster eulogy of the great John Reed, several people took the floor for questions, he was in England as a political They inquired how the speaker refugee.
could praise John Reed, and bask Frank explanation appears to in his tradition, when John Reed us as an eminently reasonable book is banned in the Soviet Unone for his failure to comply with ion and suppressed by the Stalin a technical procedure required by ists everywhere else.
British law. An explanation Another question put to Poster which should certainly have been was: Isn it also true that you aceepted since he was being acwrote an extensive work in 1921, The imprisonment of Pierre cused of nothing more than a following a visit to the Soviet Frank. French revolutionist, by mere technical violation. Instead, Union, entitled The Russion Re the British authorities, was pro however, the explanation served that you went John Reed one bet. Washington this week by the formed that the judge, upon volution? And isn it also true tested to the British Embassy in only to harden the prejudiced ter by Miling to mention Stalin Socialist Workers Party.
name even once, while writing a hearing Frank The text of the com utilized it to denounce Frank as explanation, special commendatory biograph munication was as follows: cal sketch of Trotsky?
a subversive person. Prejudice Foster answered bricfly the al Charge Affairs alone can explain the vindictive mosphere was getting too warm British Embassy sentence of six months at hard to prolong the meeting. It was Washington, labor for a mere technicality.
true, he opined. Job Reed bad Dear Sir: We protest this sentence and overestimated Trotsky, as had call upon the British authorities others (1. himself. We have received word from to release Pierre Frank and to Foster forgot to add that London that Pierre Frank, a well accord him the democratie rights written by Lenin who also scem been sentenced by a London out of France by the democrats Reed book bore an introduction known French revolutionist, has of a political refugee. Hounded ed have Reed er police tribunal to six months at who preferred Hitler to a rerors.
hard labor.
surgence of the French people.
The charge was that Pierre Frank now finds himself hounded In 1937 the London News Chro Frank had failed to register, as by a government which claims nicle sought permission from the a foreigner, with the authorities. to stand at the opposite pole to Communist Party of Great Britain Frank, however, explained to the the Pelain government which to reprint serially John Reed tribunal that he had been constill seeks to imprison rank. Ten Days That Shook the World demned in absentia as a revolu Elementary justice demands that What happened was reported an tionist by the French govern this fighter for French liberty be follows in the London Evening ment and felt that, had he regis given his liberty by the British Standard, Nov. 12, 1937: tered with the British authorities government. This contemporary account in the usual way, he would have Very truly yours.
of the Bolshevist uprising was been turned over to the French JAMES CANNON written by John Reed, the government, despite the fact that National Secretary