SOCIALIST APPEAL Friday, February 17, 1939 himhe that there are superiority Intellectual Ex Radicals And THEIR by James Burnham World Reaction GOVERNMENT include not only Stalinists but cism may perhaps seize upon the ary Marxist of the revolution Rebel India Marches Again Is the Money There?
SOCIALIST APPEAL is a mumbo jumbo of dangerous nonsense.
Vol. III, No. February 17, 1939 We agree entirely with Mr. Wallace characterization of the Nazi race superiority doctrine as pure Published twice a week by the scientific faking and a mumbo jumbo of dangerous SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASS nonsense.
at 116 University Place, New York, NY, The Crisis of the Disillusioned Fellow Travelers of We wish merely to point out that exactly like the Telephone: Algonquin 8547 whole Democratic Party of which he is a distinguished Bolshevism Is Not the Same as a Crisis of Marxism Subscriptions: 00 per year; 00 for six months. representative, Mr. Wallace owes his present highBy Leon Trotsky Foreign: 00 per year. 50 for six months. Bundle salaried position of power precisely to such scientific orders: cents per copy in United States: cents per faking. such mumbo jumbo, such dangerous non During the last decade the older to announce the crisis of Marx accumulating hitherto, Reaction copy in all foreign countries. Single coples: cents.
sense.
generation of the radical intelli ism the final, the crucial, the signifies this, that the social conEntered as second class matter September 1, 1937 gentsia has been greatly influ mortal crisis.
tradictions are mechanically supat the post office at New York, New York, under The Democratic Party could never have taken power enced by Stalinism. Today the That the old Bolshevik party pressed. At a certain stage, an the act of March 1879.
in the United States in 1932 nor retained it in 1936 turn away from Stalinism in the has spent itself, has degenerated explosion is inevitablc. World without the support of its ultra reactionary wing in advanced countries, at any rate, and perished that much is be reaction will be overthrown by Editor: the South has been reaching ever wider pro yond controversy. But the ruin the greatest catastrophe in world portions. Some are sincerely dis of a given historical party, which history, or, more correctly, by a MAX SHACHTMAN The strangle hold of the Democratic Party in the appointed in their illusions while had for certain period based series of revolutionary catastroAssociate Editors: South rests entirely on a vicious net work of laws others are simply aware that the itself upon the Marxian doctrine, phes. The coming war, which is FELIX MORROW HAROLD ROBERTS ship is in dangerous straits and does not at all signify the ruinudesigned for no other purpose but to bar the Negroes now being awaited by everyone Staff Members: are in a hurry to leave it. It tion of that doctrine. The defeat within the nearest future will EMANUEL GARRETT JOSEPH HANSEN from exercising their suffrage rights and from funcwould be naive to expect that the of an army does not invalidate signify the crash of all fllusions.
Business Manager: tioning in the democratic process which Mr. Wal disillusioned should turn to the fundamental precepts of stra Not only the illusions of reforlace incidentally lauds in his speech commemorating STANLEY Marxism with which, in the na tegy. Should an artilleryman fire mism, pacifism and democratism Lincoln birthday. The entire rationalization for these ture of things, they were never wide of the mark, that would by but also the illusions of Fascism, acquainted. For most intellec no means invalidate ballisties, Only one beacon will rise above FIGHT WITH THE SOCIALIST laws rests on the doctrine of Aryan race superiority, tuals their departure from Stalin that is, the algebra of artillery. the blood drenched chaos. the exactly the doctrine characterized as scientific faking, ism signifies complete break If the army of the proletariat suf. beacon of Marxism.
WORKERS PARTY FOR: mumbo jumbo, and dangerous nonsense by Mr.
deWallace.
Marxism is the reconciliation with nationalistic generates, then this does not at job and a decent wage every worker.
All the bestial repressions against which Roosevelt, provide you the medium unioned all invalidate Marxism, which is strongest Reality Open the idle factories operate them under Ickes, and now Wallace lavish so many words of eris for the bacilli of scepticism Victor Serge himself is passing that is rational is real. This Hegel was fond of saying: all workers control.
sympathy and stigmatize so graphically, when they and pessimism.
through a crisis, e. has bemeans: every idea that correoccur on the other side of the Atlantic these the They say: It is impossible to come hopelessly confused like Twenty Billion dollar Federal public works pillars upon which their salaries and their political Europe will fall wholly under the is clear enough. But Victor Serge Victory. No intellectually honest do anything at the present time thousands of other intellectuals sponds to objective needs of de and housing program.
rule rests sway of Fascism anyway, and the in crisis is not the crisis of Marxindividual can deny that the ana4. Thirty thirty! 30 weekly minimum wage 30What does Mr. Wallace say about the Jim Crow bourgeoisie in the United States ism.
lysis and prognosis made by the hour weekly maximum for all workers on all jobs. laws which brought him into office, the lynchings, the far too powerful. The revolu. The Coming War Will Bolshevik Leninists (Fourth Intionary roads lead nowhere. We Shatter All Illusions blow torch on quivering flesh?
ternationalists) during the past must adapt ourselves to the dem5. Thirty dollar weekly old age and disability pen It is easy to point indignantly at Nazi brutality and ocratic regime; we must defend it tionist would think of using in with confirmation in the events of In any case, no serious revolu 15 years have met and still meet sion.
with fine ironic phrases reduce their racial theories to against all attacks. There is no tellectuals in confusion, Stalinists our time. It is precisely in this the stench which is their natural level. Expropriate the Sixty Families.
But Mr. Wallace, like all the other hypocrites wieldtional, at all events, not for thojection as a yardstick with which the basic sections of the Fourth next two or three decades. to measure the march of history International are strong and im All war funds to the unemployed.
ing power in a democracy, is much more discreet and so forth and so on.
World reaction has unquestion mutable. The catastrophes of Euabout the sewage in his own backyard. people referendum on any and all wars.
Fellow Travellers Join ably assumed monstrous propor. ropean and world capitalist The Disillusioned tions nowadays. But thereby it which are hovering over mankind No secret diplomacy.
has prepared the soil for the will clear the path before the The Rockefeller gift of a 145, 000 plot of ground to The ranks of the disillusioned greatest revolutionary crisis. Fas steeled cadres 10. An independent Labor party.
New York City brings his total of gifts to the city up to 11, 500, 000. Thus raising the percentage dis also the temporary fellow travel whole of Europe. But it will not let the disillusioned ones bury II. Workers Defense Guards against Vigilante and gorged to something like ninety four hundredths of lers of Bolshevism. Victor Serge be able to maintain itself there their own dead. The working Fascist attacks.
one per cent of what he gouged out of us. to eite an instance has recent not only for a thousand years, class is not a corpse. As hitherto, ly announced that Bolshevism is as Hitler dreams, but not even society rests upon it. It needs a passing through a crisis which for a decade. The fascization of new leadership. It will find this presages in turn the crisis of Europe means the monstrous ag nowhere but in the Fourth InterMarxism. In his theoretical in gravation class and interna national. All that is rational is nocence, Serge Imagines himself tonal contradictions.
real. Social democracy and Stal.
Every time the masses demand that the relief budget the first to have made this dis It is absurd, unscientific, unhis inocracy even today represent few weeks back, Captain Anthony Eden. smooth be extended, or even maintained, the capitalist politi covery. Yet, in every epoch of torical to think that reaction will stupendous fictions. But the mouthpiece for the British imperialists. was over here cians answer that there are no funds available.
reaction, scores and hundreds of continue to unfold at the same Fourth International is an imtrying to convince the American people how virtuous, unstable revolutionists have risen gradual pace at which it has been pregnable reality.
democratic and upright the masters of the British Em.
The same answer is given when demands are made for a vast housing program, old age pensions, and othpire are cr elementary needs of the people crushed by the crisis.
But evidently Chamberlain, Eden and the whole lot The truth is that funds, plenty of them, are availof slave masters that lord it over the world wide m able.
The Spiritual Head of Almost One Fifth of Mankind ng anyone least of all the 365, 000, 000 enslaved peo. following news on its financial page: In one day (Feb. 12. the Times reported the Was Not a Man of Peace and Progress but an Active ple of India And Consistent Advocate of a Program of Reaction The American Can Company and its subsidiaries re News coming to us from all parts of this vast counWhile the body of Pius XI les ing break the Milan general the Pope bitterly defended reacported for 1938 a net income of 13, 645, 498, after try show that the British raj is in dire straits. Millions deducting interest, depreciation, Federal income taxes, state within the magnificence strike, earned him the admiring tion from a moral, philosophical of St. Peter Cathedral, the sixty praise of the rising Mussolini. and theological point of view. In of organized peasants are on the march against British etc. The underpaid slaves of American Can will be two Cardinal Princes of the Ro When a few months Inter, he the encyclical Quadragesimo An.
and native landlords. In Burma a British Province tickled to death to learn this.
man Catholic Church are this was elected Pope, he began at now and in a more recent (1937)
10, 000 hunger marchers descended upon the city of United States Tobacco, after similar deductions, reweek converging on Rome to once the policy of reconciliation encyclical, he attacked socialism Mandalay militantly to present their grievances to the take part in the election of his with fascism, seeking only to and communism as the scourge of ports a net profit for 1938 of 3, 358, 135. And successor to the powerful office guarantee the authority and the world and proclaimed the government.
Kresge Company took the modest net profit of carrying absolute sway over an privileges of the Church. The eternal validity of the rights of In Dhekhanal, a state ruled over by a feudal Prince 997, 051.
institution numbering among its lengthy and skillful negotiations private property the right to the people are up in arms against his bloody dictator members one firth of mankind, were finally climaxed by the sign own private property has been The masses starve, live in slums, and wear rags. Achille Ratti, who took the ing of the Lateran Treaty with given to man by nature or rather ship: Jute workers of Calcutta, textile workers and The corporations continue to draw heavy profits.
name of Plus XI when crowned Mussolini in 1929.
by the Creator Himself.
printers of Cawapore, sugar workers in Burma all are as Pontiff in 1922, died, according To feed, shelter and clothe the masses, funds are He attempted the same policy conducting agressive battles and strikes.
to the reports, with the word at a more rapid rate in the case Marriage he put forward concer In an encyclical On Christian needed. They are available. All that is necessary is a Peace on his lips, and this has of Germany. On July 1933, less tions the effect of which could onRebel India is marching forward towards independ power able and willing to put its hands on the funds. given the imperialist press of the than six months after Hitler had to be to reduce women to the ence and freedom The Roosevelt regime, now in power, is more interAnd how do the hypocritical democrats of Eng ested in preserving the profits of the corporations than picture him to their readers as were in the midst of the first condition of medieval serfs, and others whose arguments have been land reply to this mass movement of the people? In The Pope of Peace. Long edi frightful terror against the workused widely in this country torials pratsing the Pope life ers and were completing the ruthin preserving the lives of the masses.
Dhekhanal, 79 peasants have been killed in the last campaign against the Child Labor long fight for peace have ap less suppression of all oppositions amendment.
The answer to the problem lies in the masses themmonth by His Majesty Scottish Guards; in Burma peared in all of the papers, their Plus signed a Concordat with the British provocateurs precipitate race riots of Hindu selves the workers taking power. Once they have cynical hypocrisy evident enough Germany. Its terms have not been He made blanket condemnaagainst Moslem and then cold bloodily shoot both it, they will not hesitate to carry out the most element from the constant war mongering kept and difficulties have arisen tions of modern art and music, ary social duties of the day.
that now daily fills their columns, but the example of Italy proves and fostered the anti scientific groups down. And above all, the British are preparing Bulwark that the aim of the Church is anti educational theories which have to set up a one man military dictatorship over all of Nazi only to the extent necessary lately been gaining some strength India. They call this scheme of theirs Federation.
Great Britain played the part of the good neighbor of Reaction to bring about an accommodation in this country through the influActually, it is a Slave Federation, with the British im. at Munich, much as United States has towards Mexico The policy of Plus XI did not, between Nazism and the Churchence of the Catholic schools and pecialists wielding the whip.
and Brazil, declares Sir Charles Morgan Webb, British of course, flow from any personal which will safeguard the sociny of such men as Mortimer Adler, economist.
characteristics of his own, but position of the Church Scott Buchanan and Robert The India Nationalist Congress. now controlled by from the position in which he Blesses War Against Hutchins.
the elements grouped around the Congress Socialist Party has demanded complete freedom within six institution rooted deep in the ex Ethiopians Freedom Dispels isting social structure. Compelled Not merely did the Church us Religious Need by the requirements of that posi der Plus accept the pitiless war will persevere along this line. The great mass move The promises made by President Roosevelt about tion, as will be his successor, he of Mussolini against Ethiopia That social actions and docments of the India people of the past have been dis.
what he would do for the forgotten man and the functioned as a defender of the through the persons of some of trines so antithetical to all the persed time and again by the weakness and often by submerged one third of the nation would, if laid status quo on a world scale, as a the most prominent Cardinals and needs and aspirations of mankind the outright treachery of the Nationalist leaders.
consistent bulwark of social reac Bishops of Italy, the war was should so widely influence hunend to end, go a dozen times around the world. tion.
The entire civilized world and above all the inter.
blessed and hailed as the means dreds of millions of workers and He was going to clean out and clean up the Achille Ratti spent his 61 years for carrying God and the true pensants can be explained only national working class cannot but rejoice that the rule Democratic party in quiet and scholarly tasks. His faith to the benighted black sav through the continuing need felt of Britain dictators over India is being challenged, public career did not begin until ages of Africa, by the masses, deprived of human and will hope that this time it will be smashed forHe was going to smash the economic royalists. 1918 when, in May, he was sent From the beginning of the well being now within their grasp.
ever. English imperialism has made of India a country He was going to put the Tories out of the as Papal representative to Poland. Spanish War, the Vatican threw for the consolation of religious running The Treaty of Brest Litovsk had its entire influence on the side of superstition. This need, we may bowed down with poverty, taxation, ignorance and opjust been signed, and there is the fascists. Denunciations of the be sure, will disappear only pression on an unparalleled scale. The uprising of its He was going to make American economic life a sound authority for the opinion savagery and terror of the through the building of a new mass population will signify a revival in the entire joy for the people and political life a paradise.
movement of the colonial peoples against their foreign Now, niearing his sixth anniversary in the presito attempt to undermine the oppressors.
dential office, one of the staunchest New Dealers in Bolshevik regime so that the Rus was spoken by Rome at the un sian armies could again be swung believable slaughter not by CathThere is almost certain to be a the country draws a woe begone balance sheet. Jay back into the imperialist slaugh olies but by Moors of thousands tion of the new Pope, which reprolonged struggle over the elecMinnesota House of Representatives rejects a bill Franklin, Washington columnist of the Post, ter on the side of the Allies.
to permit legislators and other officials convicted of of Innocent civilians in the bull quires a two thirds majority of writes the following sad summary on Feb. 7: This attempt failed, but he re. ring at Badajoz: and only vague the College of Cardinals. It is receiving bribes to hold office again after seven years. On the wbole, the same men control business. Army swept into Poland and ing Franco armies directly, were Church headed by the Jesuits favmained in Poland. When the Red general remarks, never mention rumored that one faction of the One doesn talk of the rope in the house of the hanged.
banking and politics who controlled it before the reached the gates of Warsaw, he published against the horrible ors a leader who will adopt an Hoover depression.
was one of the few leading figures bombings of unarmed cities who remained in the city. He is And, we might add, the old gang will continue to On April 17, 1988, Plus sent outspoken anti Hiter policy that credited with an important role control everything until labor scops relying on cap in the defeat of the Red Army is, a policy of lining up the the following telegram to the butcher, Franco: Church behind the democratie im.
italist parties, leaders and governments and puts into a defeat that struck a shattering perialism for the coming war. The We are glad to hear vibratbulk of the Italian Cardinals, who blow against the worker state ing in your Excellency mes Before a meeting sponsored by 28 distinguished power a government of its own really capable of and helped block the extension of sage the traditional faith of comprise a majority, dependent scientists in the Waldorf Astoria hotel on Lincoln kicking the old gang out.
the revolution, thereby hur on Mussolini, will doubtless opCatholic Spain, whose crown of birthday, Henry Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture, European civilization hack on the pose any such affront to Musso faith is enriched for its better characterized as pure scientific faking the Nazi lint axis partner.
Fact of the Week road that has led to fascism and fortune by a new hero of Chrispropaganda that the so called Aryans are superior to Stalinism tian fortitude, and we send you The difference, however, can in all other races and therefore have the right to domi.
The Socialist Workers Party proposes a weekly Contributes to with all our hearts the apos the long run be only secondary minimum of 30 pay for a maximum of 30 hours work, tolle benediction, propitiatory of neer over them.
since the Church by the very naRise of Fascism Divine favors.
ture of the case is committed to Secretary Wallace is something of an authority not At the minimum rate of pay, 1, 330, 000 workers Upon his return to Italy in 1822, Sanctifies Private the defense of th status quo; and only in the Democratic Party. He credits himself with could be employed for one year at a total cost of 2, 000, 000, 000 the status quo can now be defendauthority too in the field of genetics. His studies in the midst of the struggles be Property ed only by a deepening reaction The Roosevelt war budget for the fiscal year 1940 tween the workers and the fas During these same years, in a in every sphere of human thought in this field over a period of many years convinced is 2, 000, 000, 000 cists. His achievements in help. remarkable series of encyclicals, and activity.
While we draw up our final accounting of the Civil war in Spain, resolved that no bitter lesson of the staggering defeat shall be left unlearned, we must not forget to leave open a column for the record of Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt, you will have noticed from the papers, is soon to be leading us on the cru.
sade to wipe fascism off the face of the earth. Before we put ourselves wholly into his hands, it would be circumspect to know as much as we can about our leader State of War China and Spain Shortly after the Spanish civil war began, Roosevelt, acting under the authority granted to the President under the provisions of the Neutrality Act, clamped down a governmental embargo on the shipments of munitions to either side. This step was no way required by the Neutrality Act. The Neutral ity Act states that an embargo must be applied when a state of war exists. but it leaves to the President the definition of just when that may be. It might seem absurd to argue over whether a state of war existed in Spain; but parliamentary language is often an absurdity The proof that responsibility for the embargo rests directly on Roosevelt, that his action was not required by the Neutrality Act, is furnished, of course, by the fact that so far as he is concerned no state of war has to this day existed in China, and consequently no embargo has been imposed on the Far Eastern combatants.
The effect of the embargo on Spain is notoriously known.
It cut munition shipments to the Loyalists virtually to smuggled minimum, since no nations except Mexico and occasionally on small scale France would carry out their trans shipment from the United States. When it was discovered that a few airplanes and machine guns were reaching Madrid through Mexico, suits were immediately instituted Against the shippers in this country.
But the Embargo Did Not Hurt Franco Trans shipments to Franco, in contrast, were an everyday occurrence. Boat after boat called away from ports, paid a legalizing courtesy call to a Portugese, Channel of North Sea harbor, and discharged their loads in Franco territory. Especially numerous were the neat black bombs which, taking off from Baltimore, ended their journeys among the mangled bodies of the women and children of Valencia or Madrid or Barcelona, When the volunteers began leaving this country on a large scale to join the International Brigade, the comment of Roosevelt State Department was a declaration that all American citizens fighting in a foreign army would have their pasaporta cancelled and would lose their citizenship, and that non citizens would not be permitted to return. Only the pressure of mass opinion compelled this threat to lapse Into passivity.
American Consuls Protected. Property During the war the consular officials have remained on the job. Their chief assignment ha been to keep a careful eye on American propertyInternational Telephone Telegraph monopoly, the plants of General Motors. They have made clear to the Loyalists whoever was to win the war the corporations intended to guard their own and thus they contributed to the sabotage and elimina tion of workers ownership and control, the weakening of which so irretrievably undermined the anti fascist struggle.
In short, with respect to the Spanish civil war Roosevelt has played exactly the same part as Cham.
berlain And Blum Daladier. He is merely one other sworn member of the gang. Through his telegraphic and diplomatie intervention, Roosevelt was as fully present at Munich as if he also had sat around the green table, and he participated as directly in the bloody deal In the same way he was a member with full it not formalized rights in the infamous NonIntervention Committee through which imperialism did its strangling and choking of the Spanish workers and peasants. Wherein did his policy differ from that of Chamberlain? Only in the slightly different brand of demagogy used to put it across Roosevelt Did Not Betray His Own Interests Was Roosevelt, then, one of the betrayer of the Spanish workers? Let us not be naive, or hypocritton. man can betray only his own cause; when he helps defeat the enemy he is not a betreyer but a good soldier. And Roosevelt cause is not the cause of the Spanish workers.
To Roosevelt, the defense of democracy quite correctly means, when translated into more concrete language, the defense of the interests of imperialism. Paced with the actual choice in Spain, imperialism like every other imperialism and Roosevelt as its governmental director preferred the victory of Franco as the lesser evil. They did so because, in spite of what Browder and Norman Thomas and The Nation tried to tell them, they knew that the only alternative to a Franco victory was not victory for the bourgeois democratic government of Negrin but the victory of the Spanish proletarian revolution And anything, anything whatever, is for imperialism, for any imperialism, preferable to the proletarian revolution, As always in but the class criterion proved to be decisive. serious matters, not words or ideals The Politics of Pope Pius the months. It remains to be seen whether the Congress The Same Old Gang that Baticem originahassignment Reds were spread throughout and joyous world of plenty and Labor Looks Through The Press By ARTHUR HOPKINS President Wilkins of Oberlin College urges revision of the neutrality act to forbid sale or implements of war to any foreign nation. It is obviously absurd, he says, that we should strengthen the military hand of a potentially hostile state. But it damned good business for the bosses. Dangerous Nonsense Advertisement: For 27 cents, Porto Rican nighties, hand embroidered and hand appliqued, meant to cost much more! Isn it just dandy that those Porto Rican girls aren as unreasonable as our American girls, and are willing to work for five cents a day?
Senator Henrik Shipstend of Minnesota, in explaining his vote against the 725, 000, 000 rellet appropriation, which failed of passage by one vote, says: will vote for more money later, if necessary. Mean while the unemployed lopped off relief rolls can sleep in the parks and eat grass. The Senator is noted for his dry humor. but the unemployed might appreciate it more if he had waited for summertime to display it