Tuesday, February 28, 1939 SOCIALIST APPEAL An Open Letter By Dwight Macdonald LEFT JABS OFF THE RECORD To Members of the Communist Party On the Other Side of the Railroad Tracks The 1938 edition of the Periodicals Directory is a volume of 465 close printed pages which lists and describes 10. 200 publications, most of them cery Trades, with 29 publications listed, another.
headed Vending Machines, with 4, and so on.
But there is no section headed either Munitions or Armaments or War Supplies, and the only trace of the subject in the lengthy index is. Rifles See GAMES AND SPORTS: Hunting: Shooting.
SWP showed, In militant success, because the board signa The munitions industry apparently boasts not a single trade paper. As the respectable citizens of community don talk about the red light district across the railroad tracks, so the business fraternity observes taboo of silence on that great Industry which has become the very heart of modern capitalism: Death, Inc. The furriers have trade journals, and so have those who make paper cups and harmonicas and perfumes and ice cream, but the merchants of death, whose vast enterprises are keeping the great capitalist economies of the world going along even as Hmpingly as they are today, these gentlemen do not discuss their trade in public. Their business lies across the railroad tracks.
Fig out of Thistle According the Good Book, thistle trees don produce figs. But challenge any reader of this column to guess what periodical printed the following editorial comment on Roosevelt re cent War Message to Congress. We must make up our minds, said the Pres!
dent, to save our religious and democratic institutions, for we know what might happen to us of the United States if the new philosophies of forces were to encompass the other continents and invade our own. Although the aggressor States were not named, it was sufficiently obvi.
ous that Mr. Roosevelt had in mind Germany.
Italy, and Japan. He falled to indicate, however, that whatever these countries formerly could boast of freedom and tolerance was destroyed from within, and not from without wis any reference made to the complete improbability of an attack by any or all of those ageressor kov: ernments upon the United States, or to the even more remote contingency of success in any for eign attack so long as the liberties left us by our own government are worth fighting for and preserving. This voice of sanity in a mad world was raised by The Commercial Financial Chon Icle. The moral scarcely needs underlining. 1)
businessmen talk among themselves realistically and not in the tones they use for wide public consumption. 2) unlike the liberal intelligentsia, finance capital has a serious stake in capitalism and so thinks twice before risking its vast prop.
erties in the maelstrom of a world war. Which doesn prevent it, of course, when the moment has arrived at which it judges war is necessary.
MORE SIDELIGHTS Am Joining the LA GUARDIA COPS ON THE ANTI NAZI BEAT UP NEGRO IN DEMONSTRATION POLICE STATION Law and Order, 1907. 33 39 (Continued from Page 1)
camp. Where are your party comrades now in Germany, Austria, McLaughlin, ex head of eyes: they give aid and comfort to the fascists and fight the anti Czechosolvakia, Spain? City detectives who quit the from swinging its heavy battalions decisively into post in 1907, just one jump ahead fascist workers.
You must break with the party and program and leadersbip of it commission of inquiry, died line between the liberal and reformist skirmishers. But if the Chronicle is to be taken as an inYour party tells you that the fascist danger lies only across of defeat and treachery and lies!
leaving 734, 019, Called to explain dex of Wall Street opinion, that moment has not the seas, in Berlin or Rome or Burgos.
We must fight the fascists, fight them not in the distant fu.
why policemen were shifted yet arrived. In this, at least, the editors of the around to suit Dutch Schultz while No, comrades. The main fascist danger, the fascists who will ture or in distant lands, but bere and now, in the streets of New he was in office, ex police ComNation are in advance of their age.
whip and club and stab you, who will put you into concentration York and throughout this country. We must fight them every step missioner Bolan testified at Afterthoughts on Monday Night camps, smash your political and trade union organizations, drive of the way. We must resolve that never again will the fascists of the Hines hearing that all he knew about Schultz was what he read in you into slavery, are right here at home. They are gathering their New York be allowed to repeat their provocation of last Monday After the splendid demonstration put on by the papers. Assistant Attorney forces in the vigilante hordes of the West Coast, in the Silver night, that wext time ibeir meeting shall not take place. We must General Amen is investigating the Socialist Workers Party last Monday, it may Shirts, in Hague legions. They were meeting in Madison Square shatter and smash them.
charges that six high ranking po seem ungrateful to offer criticism. But precisely because the affair WAS Garden on the 20th.
Join the Ranks lice officials in Brooklyn received action, its superiority To Fight Fascism graft for suppressing strikes to of the Fourth International!
the tune 100, 000.
over the other parties of the Left, think certain serious shortcomings should You Must Break With Stalinism pointed out. Can the fascists be defeated? Of course, of course they can. Maxim Litvinov must begin by stating that from eight o clock on, Do you think that the fascist gangs are going to break up They are, at bottom, contemptible cowards. They gain strength After Russla had entered the was inside the Garden hope it not neces and dissolve if we just keep quiet, shut our eyes and bury our only through our failures, only through our failure to launch on a League, Litvinov played the role sary to add was there on business, not pleasure.
heads in the sand? Don let us fool ourselves. The fascists are broad scale the real fight; the militant workingclass fight against of social lion in International But have checked my criticisms with those circles in Geneva and Paris.
who saw the whole business, and think they growing stronger month by month. They are much bolder, much them. The workers are ready and willing: they have shown that remember one party at which are justified.
more insolent since Munich, since the terrible defeat in Spain. in New York as throughout the world. But the workers are in the Princess Stahremberg, the mother Generally speaking, should say the SWP did And they will soon begin more attacks against the workers end powerless unless we show them the road, the road of revolu of Rudi, the aspirant dictator of not plan the affair carefully enough, did not use and their organizations.
Austria, presided, and where Lit tionary class struggle.
vinov, his face wreathed in smiles, showmanship in putting Its message, and The fascists can be stopped only by the direct resistance of Comrades: cast from your shoulders the party that ties you failed utterly to exploit the demonstration as a the workers; only when the workers, under revolutionary leader. helpless in the La Guardia Roosevelt straightjacket, that forbids Tortonia and the Countess Coumeans of advertising to the general public the ship, smash them. There is no other way.
SWP and its press. By the time arrived on the you to join with us in the front of the militant struggle against the denhove Kalergi, with a couple of the Princesses of the blood on scene about 7:00 there was not a banner or at fascists and for socialism Where was your Party Monday night? What lead, what tabourets at his feet. Go and look placard to be seen except for one small card guidance did its lying, cowardly press give to the workers of New Let us together guarantee that the February 20 concentration at Rasputin with his whiskers off, a girl was holding aloft in her hands, York? Where were your leaders?
of the fascists shall prove to be their last. sald Van Beek en Donk, the corwithout benefit of a stick. was told the police had seized and destroyed all such signs at the It is easy enough for your leaders. What does it matter to respondent of the Nieuwe RotterTake your place in our fighting ranks, under the shining beginning of the demonstration. But this should them when the fascists conquer in the United States and institute banner of the Fourth International, the banner of the defeat of damsche Courant, when arrived. Pierre Van Passen in Days of have been foreseen, and reserve supplies should the regime of the concentration camp? They have their funds and world reaction and the triumph of international socialism!
our Years, 119.
have been provided, smuggled in under coats or.
their passports. They do not have to feel the lash on their own Socialist Workers Party Pope Pius, Poland and the Without signs or banners, the public saw merely backs.
Young Stalinists what saw: a confused, anonymous mass of But for you, comrades, it is not so easy. You have Local New York funds, Three items from Times, demonstrators, Far moro serious was the failure no passports. You must remain, under the whip, within prison 116 University Place Feb. 12. cols. 6, 7, and In to distribute SWP literature. saw not a single copy of the APPEAL or the NEW INTERNA column Father Coughin praised the dead Pope for his work against TIONAL offered for sale, and am told there radicalism, especially in saving was told, Indeed, that during the speeches by was no effort made at any time to sell literature.
Poland from Bolshevism. Column Max Shachtman, James Burnham and others, dispatch from Moscow.
By RUTH RAFFER just didn know what to say or Soviet Press criticised Pope Pius there was least one enterprising vendor cirI am joining the Socialist Work do so he just beat it: because, XI as a defender of Capitalism.
culating among the crowd offering for sale the ers Party.
after all, could he have denied for his crusade against Soviet Dally Worker! Among the tens of thousands of Where was Norman Thomas on Hitler agents the right of free Russia. and for maintaining outsiders who in the course of the evening either Monday night when the Fascists speech and protection, by thougood relations with Spanish Intook part in the demonstration or watched it Among the thousands who made their first stand in New sands of the peoplers public serr Driven By Mounted surgents and Japanese. Column sympathetically, there must have been thousands of who would have paid three conts for an APPEAL.
answered the call to Police At Nazi For that matter, my own pamphlet, Fascism streets making as courageous an the people? Of course he could the New York Communist League the anti Fascist counter demon.
attack upon New York fascism deny the right of the people to was brought to a close yesterday and the American Scene, should have sold well Meeting stration last Monday night as he made on Newark fascism? assemble peacably and picket, be afternoon with a resolution exin such a crowd. But no one Including myself were many members and sym. Can the local brand of Nazism cause he didn want them to get pressing sympathy to young Caththought of exploiting the occasion.
parbizers of the Communist possibly be a more democratic hurt. His police did bang a few Brutally beaten by La Guardia Olies on the death of Pope Plus XI.
dozen heads and try to gouge police, who were protecting the Coming Publications type?
Small matters, these? It was just their superlority in details like banners and showmanship and Socialist parties and of the Lovestoneite Independent La Where was Angelo Herndon, out an eye or two but that a meeting of fascists at Madison that gave the Nazis a great advantage over their who used to symbolize the rights more generally accepted, and less Square Garden last Monday eve the Communist Party is arranging Izzy Amter, state secretary of roundabout way for the people toning. Peter Saunders, Negro for early publication of his comleft wing opponents. Hitler is said to design his bor League. Here are a few of the workers of all races to party Insignia and flags himself. Today, when of the many incidents reported organize against their common set hurt (and that way you make worker, was still under doctor plete correspondence with the late the Enemy has reduced mass propaganda to an sure that the people get hurt. enemies? Can it be that the fear care suffering from contusions 10 the Appeal of the reaction exact science, a revolutionary party must pay Pope under the title Correspon These well known leaders and and possible internal injuries. now that he is a Twentieth Cen friends of the people were not on am not a member of the Solomon Mines dence: Izzy to Plus Plus to Izzy.
attention to the details as well as the broad outamong these demonstrators tury American) of embarrassing lines, to the technique as well as to the content whose own organizations re his new bourgeois friends proves hand on the day they have spoken Socialist Workers Party, he told of when fascism first rears its a staff reporter of the Socialist mained silent and inactive in rightier than any former forr of of its appeal to the masses.
If the Judiciary haven ugly head. They all had reasons Appeal. was just returning round the wisdom of Solomon the face of the gross Fascist chain ganga?
for provocation: Where were the Leaders of deploring demonstration. home along 53rd Street after vis some of them at least appear to But the people of New York did iting some friends on the evening have discovered his fabulous Much to my surprise saw a have been thinking to have are anti Nazi and not afrald to Jewish Thought? What can they not deplore demonstration: they of the lice turned me back be revealed hanked a million bucks meeting.
mines. Judge Manton, it is now member on our picket line drugged their followers into the The He was trading blows with La traditional Jewish state of passive in the Fourth International, who and went to 50th Street.
sty so. And they found leaders, fore reached a subway entrance while meting out equal justice to Guardia police on 8th Ave. along non resistance? Perhaps these were ready to raise their slogans, both rich and poor.
with our comrades and doing a Nazis will shrivel at the thought and lead their ranks thousands Black Son of a Bitch Forgery not Widespread right fine job of defending him of being beneath the contempt of strong in the most heartening there, and one of them mounted names of policy holders to ballots There were quite a few police Faced with proof of forging of self. Later on, during our parade the civilized Jew?
mas demonstration New York on a horse rode up on the side in the company blennial elec on Broadway saw him again.
Where, just incidentally. was has seen in many a year This time he was selling the sowalk and said, Get back. tions, officials of the Metropolitan BY EMANUEL GARRETT cialist Appeal. His Liberty Bell the Little Flower who springs am joining the Socialist m going home. told him. Life Insurance Company said the attracted the attention of many from two oppressed peoples? He Workers Party. Get back you black son of e practice was not widespread. And other ers and ers and bitch, he said. Then he stuck what a little bit of forgery in played a dominant role in the labor battles of they were listening to his salesthe 80 s, his spurs in the horse flanks, the business world talk.
making it lunge at me.
Lost 1, 000, 000, 000 Hours Having separated himself from the main body The next day we met on the reached up my arms to proof Work of American anarchists in bitter controversy project where we had been distect myself from the horse and Most sought out and united in October, 1883, in cussing ne program of the pulled on the bridle. survey by the reports the organization of the International Working his The cop yelled to the other that 1, 000, 000, 000 work hours have People Association (the Black International. Liberty Bell was. threw it in a La Guardia Entire Conduct Reminiscent cops standing around, Grab that been saved by the introduction of with Parsons and Spics. The platform of the sewer on 18th Street. and ir Of Democrats in Italy, Germany black son of a bitch. Black International pointed to the inefficacy you people ever need me again to Two police held me while the more than this amount of new of ballots as a means of conquering power: it fight the fascists, just let me mounted policeman climbed of work has been created in the concalled for the destruction of the existing class know ll be there. never James Farrell, noted novelist, other one, trapped by several po his horse. When he reached me sequent expansion of automotive.
rule by all means, that is by energetic, relentless, thought the Communist Party who was present as an observer licemen, and obviously only try he doubled up his gloved fist and rubber and petroleum industries.
revolutionary and international action.
would actually desert the workers at the Madison Square Gardening to defend himself, was brutally struck me in the mouth.
Elight to Afteen million unemployed at a time when the Fascists were counter demonstration, has sent to punched by a detective On Forty On the way down to the police workers searching the highways Brilliant Orator planning a real attack in New the ress several promi Nint Street, aroun: the corner station he kept repeating Just and boy ways of the for the York.
nent individuals in New York, the and just cast of Broadway, there wait until we get you to the sta past ten years have been unable Most toured the country. The brilliance of his It took me more than 20 years following letter of protest against were other demonstrators, most of tion: to find the missing Billion hours attack on capitalist rule, his wit, his biting sarcasm gave many fat growing money bag sleep to learn. said an old worker at police brutality which he sent to them youths, with bruised heads At the station house he wanted of work.
less nights. Extirpate the miserable brood. our newsstand this morning. To Mayor LaGuardia and other city and faces, and young girls scream to make an assault charge. He think that in 20 years the Social officials: ing hysterically started the frame up going by cried Most, Extirpate the wretches! Workers, many of them come to the United States as Democrats would learn nothing To Mayor LaGuardia: Why was this? What principle telling the desk sergeant that exiles from Bismarck tyranny, applauded. Bossfrom the defeats in Europe. Why was an anti Fascist dem of democracy was upheld when had Jerked his horse and took a es, frightened by the venom and vigor of his saw the leaflet in the Daily onstration broken up in front of one group was permitted to meet punch at him, News and said to myself, Yes, the Rivoli Theatre at Forty Ninth at Forty Ninth Street and Eighth Beaten At Station words, demanded he be jailed.
the Trotskyltes are the only ones and Broadway between ten thirty Avenue, and another suppressed Why don you bring a charge (Continued from Page 1)
And so he was for inciting to violence just who are wise to the Fascists. and eleven o clock last night while by force at Forty Ninth and of cruelty to animals against will go along with them to this the fascist meeting of the Ger. Broadway?
before the Haymarket demonstration. Hardly him? asked the desk sergeant.
city officials by George No was he released from Blackwell Island when he picket line and to hell with the man American Bund at Madison Citizens of New York were That would be a better charge. vack, secretary of the American old bureaucrats in the Rand Square Garden was protected by treated to the following policy by After booking me and filling Fund for Political Prisoners and was returned there for pampe Later, after on the scien tific art of revolutionary School. And did go along. See cordons of policemen, not to menthe authorities: police protection charges of cruelty to animals Refugees was: the assassination of McKinley, he was sentenced this lump on my face? Well, tion an army of uniformed storm for Fascists, police clubs for anti and assaulting an officer, they On Monday evening, February got in a couple of beautiful socks troopers who did police duty in Fruscists. Why?
to a third term on Blackwell Island. He claimed dragged me it e into a back room and 20, many thousands of anti fascist that the greatest indignity done him in jail had myself. This worker, a machin side of the meeting. These events are reminiscent sat me in a chair. Then the poworkers gathered in the vicinity been the shaving of his beard, ist, is over 60 years of age and he In front of the Rivoli Theatre, of pre Fascist Italy and pre Fase loeman who had brought me of Madison Square Garden to has decided that he is not too old after the anti Fasclat demonstra in Germany. In these countries, down took off his coat and said, protest against the provocative Rejects Individual Terror to take his place on the line with tors had been dispersed, saw the democratic authorities also You god damn black Communist. Nazl meeting. Numbers of these of helpless Towards the end of his life, though he con tional)
demonstrators who were at thelr protection on Fascists, and the under the American flag. ing but exercising their consti Where were you and where mercy. Witnesses of this were benefits of the police power on He started benting me while tutional right of picketing the tinued to be hounded for his violence, Most fashion, rejected individual acts of terrorism, except was the LLL (Independent Labor herded off by the police officers anti Fascists. quote from what was in the chair. When stood meeting in a peacefu where they would awaken the masses to revolu League. said an excited girl in with all the necessary efficiency. Miss Dorothy Thompson, who at up from the pain of it, he kicked were ridden down and trampled tionary action. So that when Alexander Berkman the union hall. You say the One of these men was lying help tended the Madison Square Gar me in the stomach. If this is the upon by mounted polioe, and bru shot Frick, the steel baron, Most criticized the Trotskyltes are only a small hand less on the sidewalk, crying out den meeting, stated in this morn way Americans do, said, m tally beaten by uniformed and act as ineffective in advancing the cause of anful of sectarians yet they were the that his leg was injured, an ex ing HERALD TRIBUNE: The shared m an American. plainclothes policemen, only ones who dared take the lead pression of pain on his face. The entire meeting was familiar to Ball of 100 was furnished by The American Fund for Poarchism. With this change in viewpoint, the mainstream of the American anarchist move in this fight which the Workers me. saw an exact, duplicate of it the American Fund for Political litical Prisoners and Refugees ment, represented by the new figures of Emma Age talks so much about. Don replied that the leaders told in the Berlin Sports Palast in 1931. Prisoners and Refugees. Herring energetically protests against these unwarranted attacks against the Goldman and Alexander Berknian which he had come around here with that kind them not to associate with the That meeting was also protected was set for February 23.
anti fascists by the police, who up to then nurtured and which had looked upon of baloney. Go on back to Local Trotskylte Fascists. But why, by the police of the German Rehim as its ideological leader, broke from him.
22 and help make deals with the asked, is all right for your public. Three years later the peo streets of New York last evening devoted their entire energies to Stalinists. don peddle your leaders to break up Trotskyite ple who had been in charge of going to be investigated? Or do protecting the fascists. We tak Porsecuted every year of his 18fe, from his childhood spent under the Insh of beatings, left the ILL. Inst night, my for Bontings and not meetings of the that meeting were in charge of the taxpayers of this city support that the mayor and other respon the government of Germany, and the police department in order sible city authorities immediately through his adulthood spent under the whip of mer friend, and will be with the They marched along and with the the German citizens against whom that these men can herd the pub institute an investigation into capitalist repression, Most died in 1906. Few, if Trotskyites fighting not talking. Trotskyites went into action in 1931, exactly the same state le like sheep, attack anti Fascist these actions.
The American Fund, any, of his works are now read, few victories When saw a couple of Club against the Fascista. Now they ments had been made as were be pickets, tear their banners from which has offered its services to remain as monuments to his ploneer work. Yet, Malraux (a Young Communist understand why the leaders ing made to night by Mr. Kunze, them, and alug them?
several of the demonstrators who Most with his speeches and burning tracts League club) members on the tell them not to associate with were being beaten, expropriated Why was this. Mr. Mayor? were beaten and arrested during helped educate the American proletariat into picket line asked them why the Trotkyites. They know now what and murdered.
Who is responsible?
the demonstration, is prepared to militaney of action, to stir it into a realization did not come out and dem. the Trotskyltes stand for and submit affidavits fully substan Is this policy to continue? Or Sincerely yours, that it alone could fight its own cause.
onstrate against the Fascists. They now!
is the ennduct of the police on the tiating its charges against the poJames Farrell lice.
MEN AND WOMEN OF LABOR Out of of the Past JOHANN MOST Farrell Demands Mayor Explain Protecting Nazis Protest Delegation Stalled by Mayor (Feb. 5, 1846 March 17, 1906)
Into the somewhat placid labor movement of the American 80 came Johann Most the flery proprgandist of the deed. Great struggles were pending, the eight hour movement was just then getting into full swing, individuals like Parsons and Sples were already spreading the doctrines of militant labor action. Haymarket Square was soon to be the center of the first great anti labor frame up in the United States Jailed in Every Country When Most arrived in 1882 he had behind him years of activity in the socialist movements of Purope, and a reputation so great that a huge mass meeting was organized in New York City to welcome him.
He also had behind him, this ex journeyman bookbinder who startled bourgeois German sen sibilities by his bitter proclamations, years of jail sentences. These were to be continued in the United States. For though Most agitated for his propaganda of the deed primarily in speeches and tracts that were rarely matched in specific deeds, he was regularly imprisoned for the vio lence of his words.
In Vion na he had been sentenced to five years imprisonment, and released after twelve months on condition that he leave Austria. Back in his native Germany, he engaged in socialist editorial work, and was elected to the Reichstag. But not for long. Bismarck exiled him under the antisocialist laws. In London, to which he went, he was twice sentenced to jail for articles that ap peared in the famous anarchist journal he founded, the Frehelt.
Gives Labor Slant to Anarchism Before he came to this country, the German Social Democratic Party had expelled him for his trenchant denunciations of parliamentary action. Arrived in the United States he almost immediately quarreled with the various anarchist groups then existing most of them bred in the Thoreau tradition of peaceful retirement from active life. Most brought to American anarchism labor slant, and with it separated the old school, which enjoyed a certain respectable popularity in the United States for generations, from the new school which sought, however un clearly, to wrest power from the bosses through class struggle. It was thus largely through the intuence of Moat that the anarchist movement