TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 1939 SOCIALIST APPEAL By Dwight Macdonald Anti Labor Laws Before the Nat Party Convention SPARKS IN THE NEWS Enacted by Penn.
Inventory of an Armory Two weeks ago wrote the editors of Time a letter asking why they took so seriously the New Masses exposure of General Krivitsky and pointing out that the Socialist Appeal had revealed that General Krivitsky, when he broke from the Communist Party a year and a half ago, stated that his name was Samuel Ginsberg few days later, received the following letter, signed Van Meter, for the Editors of Time. Thank you for your critical note in regard to Time report on the New Masses recent exposure of General Krivitsky. What you say is quite true as far as it goes. But there are a couple of big guns that is still sticking to. We are planning to publish your letter in the forthcoming issue, together with an Editor Note giving an inventory of the M, armory.
In Time for June 5, my letter was printed, followed by this Editor Note: Says the New Masses: Krivitsky Ginsberg never was in Russla, never was a Soviet official, is a fake. To these guns it sticks. Time sticks to no guns but its own. Obviously, when Time called the New Masses, it found that the armory of data about Krivitsky Ginsberg was a myth.
The one new allegation is that the General never was a Soviet official. This is deft nite and important, unlike the New Masses previous charges.
But the editors of the New Masses apparently have already forgotten Stalinists must needs have short memories these days that in their original exposure they wrote: You are just the kind of adventurer the infamous Yagoda would pick for his anti Soviet dirty work. They must now deny and probably will do so without turning a hair that the infamous Yagoda was ever a Soviet official. can imagine Joseph Freeman scratching his head: Yagoda? Name sounds familiar. Who was that fellow anyway?
Indiana Harbor Episode Comrade Herbert Martin writes from East Chicago, Indiana, about the Memorial Day parade in nearby Indiana Harbor, where Inland Steel and Youngstown Sheet Tube have major plants. The parade, he writes, Was organized and managed by the local post of the American Legion and was composed of all the local patriotic and chauvinistic organizations of the community. An added and most unexpected feature of this year parade was the inclusion of the Indiana Harbor section of the (Stalinist controlled) International Work ers Order. After all these years, the local stalinists have finally achieved respectability enough to march in patriotie, Jingoistic Memorial Day Parade along with the American Legion, the Boy Scouts, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the National Guard. The Stalinists, carrying American flags, marched right behind a contingent of Polish LegionMEN AND WOMEN OF LABOR By JAMES CANNON All attention of the revolutionary militants in All this is sealed book to these skeptics the United States is now turned toward the who, in general, have thought very little about anti war convention of the Socialist Workers the scientific analysis of capitalism upon aires. These Legionaires were in wartime uni. Anti Alien Bill, First of Kind in the Party, which is to convene in New York City which revolutionary calculations are preforms and wore decorations from Pilsudski on July Without doubt this assembly will dicted, and still less about the laboring masses himself for having served in the army which Typifies Reactionary Legislation mark an important stage in the development as the all powerful makers of the revolution.
fought with the White Guards, and particularof the only serious, the only genuine opposition Their melancholy sentiments have no relation ly for having fought against the Red Army at By FOSTER companies. When the bill came to the impending war.
to the actual situation in this country. They the famous battle of Warsaw. am bring. PHILADELPHIA. In ses up for final reading. 10, 000 convention will produce any new prescription It is not to be expected, however, that the attempt to record the status and the prospects ing this item to your attention for whatever sion for twenty one weeks the miners of the revolutionary movement by the fluctuinterest It may be.
ating fever chart of their own unstable moods.
The item has plenty of interest, should say. adjourned after enacting Pennsylvania Assembly has around the State Capitol, in alor panacea. Those who look for miracles will pro demonstration reminiscent of be disappointed. We do not conceive of the They are mistaken; and doubly mistaken are And speaking of the socialist movement in gram which may well become the hunger march of a few struggle against war as some sort of special those militants who even for a moment heed Poland the Soviet press a year ago carried a a pattern for American reac years ago, carried on such a task separated from the struggle against the these counsels of petty bourgeois impotence number of articles slandering the memory of tion.
militant and vigorous agitation capitalism which breeds it. Anti war sentiand despair.
Rosa Luxemburg and her companion in arms, The growing disillusionment and so scared the surroundedi ments, as such and in themselves, mean nothThe pessimistic brotherhood comprises sev.
Leo Jogiches, actually going so far as to of labor, and reliet epresentatives that the bin ing: everybody, more or less, is against war. eral categories, loosely united by a common charge them with organizing the Social Demo groups, farmers and those in was killed on vote, some of its opposition to war that aims at social revolu bond of of despair, who carry on like keeners at cratic Party of Poland under instructions the lower income brackets. supporters voting against it. tion that alone is significant. And that, in wake. Some of them, the well known tired radicals, are like gymnasium fighters who of course, was that Luxemburg and Jogiches march backward with the elec and his coal owner sponsors, build a revolutionary party which points the exhaust all their strength in training and enter enjoy a prestige, most uncomfortable for the tion of the Republican regime and its defeat was a bitter blow way and to connect it with the masses of the real battle in the ring beaten and ready to self termed heirs of Marx, Engels and of Governor James. The Dem to them.
workers who have the power.
quit before they start. Others have looked so Lenin, as internationalists and revolutionists. ocrats, swept to power four After the brutal labor baiting convention any convention is not an alloften for the revolution before it was due and The specific reason, am told, was that at years previously with Roose program had practically gone saving instrument; its potentialities are strict were so often disappointed that they can the time the Kremlin was preparing to ridvelt New Deal, were not able through the local leaders of laly limited. It can sum up the past but it can recognize it when it finally approaches. Others, itself, via the concentration camp and the to withstand the growing disap bor suddenly became articulate not assure the future. It cannot change any and they are numerically the least, are firing squad, of a sizable group of Polish mili pointment of the masses at the with denunciation of the gov thing in the status of the party which exists simply afraid of the shadow of war and fastants and revolutionists who many years ago Pallure of Governor Earle toernment. During the session on the day it convenes. It can at best only cism and flee the battle before it really had found sanctuary in the Soviet Union from abate the crisis in spite of en when militant demonstration estimate what is valuable in the work of the begins.
the White Terror of Pilsudski.
actment of Little New Deal would have proved effective, as past, what has been achieved and must be Most contemptible of all are those who seek the miners had shown, the bu firmly retained as well as what must be remeasures for the State.
The Axe Falls to cover their desertion and retreat by hurling James, previously unknown reaucrats did little, but became Jected. The future tasks can be indicated by newly invented ideological disagreements my in to with Marxism over their shoulders. Taken all tional described the preparations of the re victory with promises to hu. they were from battle. How their default will rest with the party after the together they are an unattractive and uninactionary State Legislature and the manize relief, Take relief could they demonstrate against convention adjourns its sessions. Even so, spiring aggregation. It is nothing less than a progressive LaGuardia city administration to out of politics, am a miner, the slashings of a Republican conventions are large and irreplaceable exmonstrous travesty to consider them as in any slash over 8, 000, 000 from New York City I know the miners problems, regime when the administra periences in the life of every democratic, that way reflecting the movement of workers school budget. The Legislature has now done etc. This apostle of honesty tion of their idol, Roosevelt, is every real, party.
emancipation which, by its very nature, is its dirty work, slashing an arbitrary 10 off and virtue continued to draw was doing the same thing on a ESTIMATING OUR PAST alien to all pessimism and defeatist sentithe educational budget of every city and town an 18, 000 salary as judge of national scale with The forthcoming anti war convention of the ments. It is criminal folly to waste time or in the entire state. What this will mean in the Supreme Court while abAmerican section of the Fourth International even to argue the question with these runNew York City is clear from the statement of sent from the bench and ac Vicious Syndicalism will enable us to pause and look collectively away boys and heralds of defeat before the the local Board of Education: The elemen tively carrying on an election Bill Is Passed by in two directions at the past and at the fu battle.
tary schools will suffer a cut of about 000. campaign.
ture. Our survey of the past can only assure TURN TO THE SOURCE OF POWER 000 in services. In addition to the elimination Act for Bosses House of Congress us that our preliminary work is done, and for of 200 supervisory teachers, 600 anticipated Adding to the reaction sweepthe most part, not badly. We have built firmly.
Our convention must let the dead bury the dead and turn the face of the party to the vacancies will not be filled and approximately ing the United States, the new (Special to the Socialist Appeal) our achievements have a mighty historic sig.
workers who are the real source of power 984 teachers will be dismissed. Kindergartens ly elected James administra WASHINGTON, June The nificance. This we know and nobody can tell and of inspiration and well grounded optimism.
will be abolished. Evening high schools tion immediately began to car. House of Representatives us differently. Our program has withstood all We had said this before. More than once we and evening trade schools will be eliminated, ry out the mandate of its real passed today, in the form of the tests of theory and experience and stands have incorporated it in resolutions. But we. The day classes for adults in English and supporters the mine owners an amendment to the Espion unassailable. We have assembled the forces have not made the turn in forthright fashion.
citizenship and the evening elementary schools and large industrialists who are Act, 6075, one of the of the vanguard in a single organization. We That is why we are lagging behind. That is the main reason we are suffering a certain nating a long and honorable tradition of the Most of the legislation passed ism bills that has ever been is problems of unity require a second thought.
stagnation. That is why we are even flirting school system in the Americanization of im had one object: to depress fur sued against the labor move. The ten years task of clearing the air of conwith the danger of a degeneration of the party migrants and the removal of adult illiteracy, ther the social standards of 1a ment, by a vote of 142 to fusion and programmatic disorientation, of along the lines of conservative passivity, InThe community and recreational centers and bor and those on relief.
The amendment, introduced regrouping the scattered forces of the revoluThe work or No Relief Bin by Representative MeCormick tionary fighters under a new, clean banner: afternoon athletic centers which play such an trospection and futility.
important part in the fight against delinquen otherwise known as the chain of Massachusetts, would make the same work which occupied so many of the The proletariat of the United States is the cy must also be abandoned. Summer play Gang Bill was passed over it illegal for any person to ad years of the time of Marx, and after him of source of unlimited power, it can raise the whole world on its shoulders that is the unschools and nature education will also be the protest of James own De. vocate the overthrow of the Lenin, is already behind us. Indeed, the hour eliminated. According to the Times, partment of Welfare Head. It covernment by force, and for our full concentration on broader tasks shakes premise of all our calculations and members of the Board of Education have forces all able bodied relief re would punish the offender by struck some time ago.
all our work. But what, say the croakersstated that these cuts will turn the educacipients to work for their re sending him to jail for years THE ROOT OF ALL OUR EVIL pointing to the heavy defeats in Europe what if France and all Europe goes down tional clock back nearly 100 years. Thus our lief, and enables private inter as well as fine him 5, 000.
Our sluggishness in making the abrupt turn McCormick jammed through to mass work with all force and energy: the capitalist society, its advance blocked by in ests to draft employes from before fascism? We answer: The issue in soluble economic contradictions, begins to re relief rolls, with the aim of the amendment without debate persistence of old habits of our days of isolaFrance is not decided yet, but even in the trace Its steps. When this sort of regression lowering general wage scales. In the opening minutes of to tion as a propaganda circle; our failure to worst case, the workers of America have reaches a certain velocity, we call it fascism. Lists of relief clients are to be day session when only reach new, fresh strata of workers: our hestpower enough to topple over the structure of House tion is to be decentralized and were present.
members tatlon, half hearted, at the brink of the great capitalism at home and to lift the whole world with them when they rise!
placed in the hands of local Explaining the amendment. movement herein is the root of all our evil.
stream represented by the workers mass boards composed of James Representative The foundation convention of the party a McCormick henchmen. The relief appropri said: Hitherto, we have been these facts and say something decisive about The convention must take sober account of year and a half ago gave us pretty clear directives regarding orientation to the workers atlon itself was cut from 209 able to punish advocates of them. With the tasks of yesterday accommass movement. The revolutionary transition million for the two year period, forcible overthrow of the gov. plished and those of today only half underprogram has equipped us with the necessary to 120 million.
ernment only by proving that a stood and approached in a gingerly way, we slogans and proposals for effective agitation Union Busting Campaign conspiracy existed between are marking time while the forces of reaction, on the realities of the day. We made some The State Little Wagner Act two or more persons, or by which already outline the features of an auprogress, but all too little when we consider was smashed to preces. The proving that an overt act had thentic American fascism, grow by leaps and the breath taking speed at which the social By EMANUEL GARRETT check off system for unlon me been committed. The burden bounds. The position is becoming dangerous, crisis is developing. The fault for that is not in the objective circumstances they are fasent to a socialist deputy who, however, rather than at any particular it punishable by 5, 000 fine and and summon the party to rigorous measures at the principle of unionism ment. This amendment makes matters, but it can and must sound the alarm vorable enough nor in our stars, but in our selves. We have not yet grown up to the level waited months before exposing the facts. Filippelli, arrested as a scapegoat on June 16 by tion on the part of one worker five years in jail for Whoever for speedy rectification in the coming of our gigantic tasks.
order of Mussolini, drew up a memorandum to another to join a union Is United States government by of the essence of the contract. There is not We made some headway while other parties in which the details of the abduction and mur. punishable as an unfair labor force or violence, willfully or too much time, even in America.
making pretensions to radicalism were slipder were listed. Rossl, another Fascist, wrote practice: the sit down strike is ping backward. We held our cadres intact a letter giving the facts of the case after he outlawed: employers are knowingly.
We can make up for lost time and begin to while others suffered disintegration. We was arrested on June 14 as a sop to the en lowed to petition for arbitration sion is the Dempsey Bill, makPreviously passed at this ses forge ahead if we turn our faces in the right sloughed off quite a few crack pots, and that is an advantage not to be discounted. By dint raged populace.
of labor disputes; and grounds ing it a criminal offense for an backs on the pessimists and calamity howlers, direction. That means, first of all, to turn our of considerable effort and sacrifice we estabMussolini himself referred to the murder as for anti union Injunctions are alien to advocate the overthrow the soul sick intellectuals and tired radicals lished the twice. week Appeal. But all this a blunder. But he proceeded to use it as an widened.
opportunity to consolidate his regime by force As a prelude to this unton. McCormick amendment of the government. The present who whine and dawdle around the fringes of weighs too little in the scale against the mushroom emergence of fascist movements and the in the movement and even, to a certain extent, of terror.
busting campaign a 7, 500, 000 cludes American born as well infest its ranks. These gentry, whose baze is sweeping growth in influence of fascist demaMass resentment was at a high pitch both delphis against the Apex sitconcentrated on their own navels, do not see gogy. There are our rivals in the struggle for inside and outside Italy. Mussolint ordered a down strikers power. Comparison with them is the real crt.
the Sher what going on about them simi mock trial. All the criminals were known. man Act.
fact that American capitalism, the most terion by which we must estimate our own Dumini laughed at the trial. He testified that, And that criterion tells us achievements.
Anti Allen Bill powerful of all, is already seized by paralyz We were riding along peaceably when sud The Workmen Compensaing senility. It writhes in an ever deepening warningly: Slow, modest, steady growth will denly Matteotti developed tuberculosis and tion Act was revised at the besocial crisis which its most perspicacious pollnot avail; we must leap ahead.
died of hemorrhage. verdict was brought hest of the large mine owners, ticians no longer hope to cure but only to For us there is no way but forward at an in: unintentional homicide, nobody guilty. whose premiums are reduced, alleviate, and that only by the desperate gam accelerated pace. Can we solve the financial Failure of Socialist Policy and so are the benefits. With ble of war. It is a fact that the furious on crists of our twice a week Appeal by means the new set up little exists in slaughts against the workers, employed and of expansion? Can we strengthen and improve Matteotti had sacrificed his life heroically. the way of workmen compenunemployed, signalize in essence the acknowl our responsibility, our discipline and our moBut in doing so he also proved the inadequacy sation for the worker, except edgement that over rich American capitalism rale? Can we blast a path to fresh circles of of personal honesty and valor where sound the name. The legislation was (By Staff Writer) can no longer pretend to assure a living to the undefeated and undiscouraged workers, and revolutionary politics is lacking. Matteotti written a representative NEW YORK, June petislave within his slavery. It is a fact that the make our party in truth a party of the prolehad been consistently loyal to his own ideal. who is admittedly a lawyer for tion signed by hundreds of sum total of all these circumstances is rapid tariat in its composition and in all of its activity?
Something of an authority on criminal law, he the coal companies. Teachers prominent individuals was toly preparing all the pre conditions of a social had given up his profession to engage in polit wages were cut and their pen day presented to Commissioner revolution. And confronting it is a working Affirmative answers to these questions and Edwin Gill of the Board of Pa class that has not known defeat, that has inical work. Elected as a deputy, he opposed sion and tenure rights made in concrete, practical plans to implement them, Italy entrance into the World War. Elected secure. Not to discriminate be roles at Raleigh, North Carovincible numbers and boundless power. are what the party needs from the convention again in 1919, and in 1924, he achieved promi tween the sexes, woman was lina, asking for the pardon of nence as an anti fascist, and as the leader of given her rights by lengthening Fred Beal, framed labor creasing number of persons, as the parliamentary opposition. Therein lay his her working day by hours. leader.
great weakness: mere parliamentary opposl most ominous act, the first Fred Beal, leader of the fa they become familiar with the tion. member of the reformist, moderate of its kind in the United States. mous Gastonia strike of 1929, circumstances in this case, are wing of the Socialist Party, he could offer only is the Alien Registration Bill. is serving a sentence of from convinced that Beal was in no his own Integrity in the anti fascist struggle. All aliens in Pennsylvania with seventeen to twenty years for The socialists had facilitated the coming to its large foreign born popula. the alleged shooting of Chief of real sense guilty of the crime power of Mussolini. They had not held the tion, over 18 must register and Police Aderholt who was killed for which he was convicted. A critical appraisal of the Martovism, between Alper factories when these were spontaneously carry certificates to be pro in a shooting during an attack hold with a significant body of war position taken by a group of South Africa and Albert the considered opinion throughout of militants in Palestine is Goldman, who recently tion, except for the bankers and bosses, earn lice officer. The foreigner is strikers on June 1929. With the country that the circum made in an article entitled viewed Martov posthumous estly anti fascist, Mussolini nevertheless rode being officially branded. This no real evidence against him. stances surrounding the trial Step Towards Social Patrio criticism of the Bolsheviks.
into power over the hesitant, uncertain bodies is a beginning at national res Beal was railroaded to Jall on were unhappily not devold of tism by the editors of the Rus of the socialists. Most of the socialists prompt. Istration of alien and non alien the framed charge because of passion and prejudice emanat sian Bulletin, featured in the crisis in French socialism, Rosa Luxemburgon ly sought cover as the castor oil, murder alike. It passed amid con: This part in the strike. After ing from the bitter labor con July issue of the New Internatroversy that sharply divided tional, which is to come off the which deals with problems of squads of the fascist banditti took possession the formal negative vote of the viet Russia, but, disillusioned the community in which the press shortly.
the labor movement startingly of the country.
Democrats.
with Stalinist practice, re trial took place.
Some, like Matteotti, continued their oppoOnly one force can stay the turned to face Jall and see Am those who signed Other articles to appear in similar to those confronting it the July issue include: today. Dwight Macdonald has sition with appeals to law. justice and humant hand of reaction mass action. vindication. The Stalinists have the petition are the following: Ernst Toller Suicide, by written a number of explanatory notes to this essay, helping side of the socialists. But they lacked the will in one instance. measure ers and boss courts in seeking Will Durant Professor Paul Oskar Fischer.
to go out and rally the masses for revolution proposed by the large coal cor. to keep him in Jall.
Brissenden, Kallen, An analysis of Thomas Mann to bring it up to date.
ary action to expropriate the factories, estab porations would have thrown Not Guilty Marc Connoly. Suzanne LaFol record and his position, by Numerous other features lish workers government.
on relief twenty to thirty thou The petition which was re lette, Alexander Meiklejohn. Johre, a well known revolution complete what is sure to be a popular number.
The masses looked up to Matteotti because sand small producers and so leased by the Non Partisan De Eugene Lyons, Mencken, ary German militant.
be had stood his ground against fascism. His called bootleg miners who havefense Committee for the De Benjamin Stolberg, Burton Roosevelt and the War Modeath came near to kindling the fire of revolu sprung up since the depression, fense of Fred Beal, reads in Rascoe, Meyer Shapiro, Probilization Plan, by Hal Draper. Get Your APPEAL tion. There was however no revolutionary and dig their coal on unused part: fessor Robert Morss Lovett. An exchange of letters on the And perty to guide the flame.
subject of Bolshevism At the Newsstand land or land given up by the large and steadily in and William Green.
OUT OF THE PAST al BOARD GETS PETITION FOR BEAL PARDON GIACOMO MATTEOTTI (1885 Murdered, June 10, 1924)
Giacomo Matteotti, son of a well to do far.
mer and expert in criminal law, rose to speak in the Italian Chamber of Deputies on May 30, 1924. Leader of the small, and dwindling, parliamentary opposition, he rose to present an indictment of the fascist regime, to read a list of its crimes, to denounce its electoral frauds.
The Fascist Dogs Strike Mussolini sat in the chair writhing. Several times he interrupted, and growled ominously as Matteotti sent thrusts of irony and wit in reply. Matteotti charged Mussolini with us ing public funds for the benefit of big business to refloat a near bankrupt enterprise, to buy 18, 000 shares of Mineral Oil Refinery, etc.
Matteotti charged that Mussolint had used armed militiamen in the elections.
The session over, a few of Matteotti friends collected around him to congratulate him on his speech. There weren many of these. good part of the socialists had long since turned tail. Matteotti told them: And now my colleagues, you may prepare my funeral oration for the chamber.
Mussolini made it clear that he was going to take some kind of action. One of his close henchmen remarked that if they (the socialists) knew what going on in Mussolini head at such times, they would lay low. On June 1, Popolo Italia, edited by Mussolini brother, referred to the monstrously provocative speech made the day before which deserved something concrete in reply On June 10, Matteotti, leaving his home, was whisked into a waiting car by a band of men.
One of these men later reported Matteotti last words: You will not kill the ideal. My children will be proud of their father. The workers will bless my dead body.
Three months later that body which workers have truly come to revere as the embodiment of unrelenting anti fascism, was found in a woods near Rome. There were thirty six stab wounds in the chest. The rasp was still embedded in the body.
By chance, the license number of the kidnap CAT had been noted by passers by. cry went up for the apprehension of the criminals.
Testimony piled up pointing the finger of responsibility. directly at Mussolini. It was learned that the car had been used by one Dumini, despicable criminal and hanger on of the fascisti who had been hired for the job.
Finzi, Under Secretary for the Home orfice, afraid he was to be made the scape goat for the murder, composed a testament, and sent copies to several people. One of these was Social Patriotism, Ernst Toller Discussed in Coming New Int rethe