TUESDAY, JUNE 20, 1939 SOCIALIST APPEAL SOCIALIST APPEAL Vol. III, No. 43 June 20, 1939 Published twice toeek by the SOCIALIST APPEAL, PUBLISHING ASS at 116 University Place, New York, Telephone! Algonquin 8547 Subscriptions: 00 per year: 00 for six months. For eign. 38. 60 per year, 60 for wx months. Bundle orders cents per copy in the United States: cents per copy in all foreign countries. Single coples: cents.
Bronx and Manhattan subscriptions are: 60 for six months; 00 for one year. Reintered as second class matter February 16, 1939. at the post office at New York, under the Act of March 1, 1890, Browder Starts Sweeping Purge of in Grand Manner of Stalin IN THIS CORNER Hague and the Editor: MAX SHACHTMAN Associate Editors: HAROLD ROBERTS FELIX MORROW Stay Members EMANUEL GARRETT JOSEPH HANSEN Business Manager: STANLEY or Hague.
membership or even the lead. in advance as the work of selves as spy hunters.
FIGHT WITH THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY FOR: job and a decent living for every worker. Open the idle factories operate them under workers control Twenty Billion dollar Federal public works and housing program. Thirty thirty! 80 weekly minimum wage30 hour weekly maximum for all workers on all Jobs. Thirty dollar weekly old age and disability pension. Expropriate the Sixty Familles. All war funds to the unemployed. people referendum on any and all wars. No secret diplomacy.
10. An independent Labor Party.
11. Workers Defense Guards against vigilante and Fascist attacks.
IS Minneapolis Elections against us.
that yoke. Anything includes sabotaging a campaign whch, like Eide s, was a break away from the War Deal and a step toward an independent Labor Party program.
As in the task of furthering militant tactics in the trade unions for economic demands, so in Report to Communist Party National Committee, Which the task of militant labor politics, the trade union Undergoes Several Changes in Its Published Versions, movement can advance only as it rids itself of the syphilis of Stalinism.
Announces Plans for Purge to Meet Growing Discontent (Continued from Page 1) ferred to evidently include the utilize for creating differences By Max Shachtman or work in state office technic problem of the purge. and disputes, which he tries to al staffs; some are found in We have adjusted our ex. lead toward the crystallization Some Additional Comments section leading committees. pectations of growth, Browder of factions. Such agents are alFollowing the anti Hague decision of the Browder further reveals that says later on in his report, to ways more revolutionary he has had his own at that which can reasonably be than the Party leadership and On Earl Browder Report Supreme Court and the more or less undisturbed work hunting down malcon expected to be assimilated in the members generally; they Elsewhere in this issue is reported the purge meeting of the Civil Liberties Union in Jersey tents and all others who, to long term activity. Our im are impatient for revolutionthat has been going on quietly in the Communist City, the liberals and the labor bureaucratic one reason or another, are mediate problem is revealed by ary action. their talk runs to party for some time and is now openly proclaimed friends of the Democratic party have again filled pionage work, he declares, has fall even below this reasonable the advocates of violent overin Earl Browder report to the party National Committee early in May.
the air with their praises of the Supreme Court, been carried out for some time expectation.
throw of the government who There is one part of Browder report, however, the virtues of democracy and the burial of May without the knowledge of the party membership, of even the is indicated by Browder else. Communist. Their special pur.
Another reason for the purge are Martin Dies Ideal of a which is so sensationally important and at the same time so deliberately obscured by its author, We ve heard that before, in fact every time that it deserves and requires elaboration. Speakposed to direct all the work of where in his report, namely, pose, besides furnishing em.
and police with evithe party and its secretary.
that all criticism of the reac ployers ing of spies who are always more revolution some court, or some statesman signed his name ary than the Party leadership. Browder adds. This knowledge is the result tionary, pro imperialist policy dence, is to exert influence to what immediately became a scrap of paper in of intensive investigation by the of the Stalinist leadership upon the activities of the Party historical example was the government poHague domain. Hague did not come into powlice agent, Morrow, who was sent to the BridgeNational Committee, without made by discontented party an atmosphere of conspiracy. is whole Party engaging the and suspleion, to appear them.
man Convention of the Communist Party in 1922, er by means of solemn and imposing sheets of and cast the deciding vote between the two equal paper, and he will not be unseated that way. He ing cadres in a spy hunt. spies and informers. Here too That the purge is not directed factions that deadlocked the convention. Those two factions, as we learned later, were the work of rose to power because he represented a grow considerable number enemy agents have been recopied to the letter, and any pigeon, and not even only at more clever and subtle wrecking agents, wwe stome ingly aggressive organized force, with a clearmoved from the Party: others Party member who dares discontented rank and Tilers.
cut, unambiguous anti labor program. He can be express his ites, who were not cleaned out of the Party until almighty were smashed, and labor rights restored in Jersey they 1928 1929. Since that time, this type of agent has under suspicion. party bureaucracy and its pol al prominent party officials, is had a more difficult job, but they abound in the City, only by an equally militant, organized BUT THE PROBLEM icies will be subject to immedi also made clear by Browder.
STILL BEFORE trade unions and work among the newer, less exUS. ate expulsion as a Trotskyist, like Zinoviev and Bukharin preJust as Stalin had to have men force, with an equally clear cut, unambiguous perienced organizations of the Party.
Our emphasis. And: pro labor program.
In his report, Browder fur to use Browder own terms. sented as enemies of the peo We know that some of them. spies. have The secretary of the New Jersey Industrial ther indicates that one of the Their (the Trotskyist and ble for a period of time dating been or are members of state committees or Union Council who apparently knows reasons for the frank spy Lovestoneite spies and pro back to the Bolshevik revolu work in state office technical staffs: some are hunt which is now on in the vocateurs main occupation is tion and even before that, found in section leading committees. This knowthe situation a little better than some of his staropen, is to find scapegoats for furnishing revolutionary rea Browder, on his own pettier ledge is the result of intensive investigation by ry eyed fellow officials, was, according to the the debacles of the Browder sons for the performance of re scale, is framing up his presthe National Committee, without engaging the News Service, skeptical about the de leadership, which is itself prob. actionary deeds. They are con: the time being, as wrecking whole Party membership or even the leading cadres in a spy hunt.
cision ability to take the sting out of Hague criticism from its bosses in among Party members, espec. agents for the past twenty vehement anti unionism.
Moscow.
ially discontented ones, for years!
Who Will Be the Victims?
In his whom they have an established The Supreme Court decision will help a lot, LOSING GROUND report he hints broadThose familiar with the gradual but inexorable he said, but it will drive Hague underground.
ON MANY FRONTS technique to transform into ac that the leadership of the Communist Party as far back manner in which Stalin, starting with obscure figures, ended up with men like Zinoviev, Bukharin There he will try to mobilize his supposed to be The Stalinists have been los tive agents.
ing ground on many fronts, in(The last sentence is not a as 1922 that is, nineteen years and Rakovsky, will not fail to recognize the stereveterans and his other stooges to foment trouble cluding the trade unions, and defect in Browder syntax; it ago was composed of clever otyped pattern disclosed by the quoted paragraphs.
the revulsion against their re the literal translation from the and subtle wrecking agents and sples. Added significance Those familiar with the history of the Communist Russian. Secretary Goldsmith is substantially correct.
Party in the United States will not fail to recogactionary policies is producing is given to these references by nize, in Browder anonymous references, the the inevitable reaction in the DESCRIBES VICTIMS Browder pointing to the fact Hague is not demobilizing his reactionary mob membership records. Twice in OF THE PURGE that such agents not only names of the victims slated for the American purge.
sters. They are still on tap functioning a little bis report Browder takes note that there is dissatisfaction abound in the trade unions with the official Stalinist line and work among the newer, The first victims of the Stalin murder bund folless ostentatiously for a time, perhaps pre of this phenomenon. As our Party membership pro war, pro Roosevelt, anti less experienced organizations lowing the death of Kirov were, it will be pared to maintain Hague in power and keep approaches the 100. 000 mark, revolutionary. may be gath of the Party. but are also rep recalled, obscure and for the most part unnamed labor under their heel.
we have noted a slackening of ered from the way in which resented in the higher commit young communists in Leningrad. Zinoviev and Kamenev merely bore the moral responsibility To try facing these mobsters with a copy of the rate of growth. This is an Browder describes the intended tees of the party.
for Kirov assassination. Only later were they Supreme Court paper is foolhardy as well as almost infallible sign of the ac victims of the purge.
There can be no doubt that charged with directly plotting and organizing the cumulation of ansolved prob. higher type of provoca the Stalinist party in this counfutile. Hagueism, like fascism in general, can be lems of adjustment of the Par teur is the one sent into the try is in for a tremendous killing of the Leningrad party boss. And still later, Zinoviev, Rakovsky. Bukharin and Trotsky had smashed only by mobilizing the militant, trained ty to its tasks and environ. Farty to obtain, or already shakeup along the lines made forces of the labor movement.
equipped with, political train so notorious by Stalin in the the origins of their crimes located at the very dawn of the revolution, which, considering the The unsolved problems re ling which he is instructed to Soviet Union.
And that means: Union Defense Guards, the names of the men involved in these charges, shield of labor in its resistance to reaction proved that the Bolshevik Revolution was organized and led by a gang of German and British march spies.
Following the same procedure, Browder now presents the Trotskyists and Lovestoneltes who have been counter revolutionists and spies since they were expelled in 1928 1929, as having been spies and more clever and subtle wrecking In his May report to his National Committee, agents as far back as 1922. And since it must Earl Browder, party secretary, who looks under By a Special Correspondent with newspaper statements, labor. He has started his own have required some time before the convention to HOUSTON, June 10 month promising to clean house of investigation, and is making a organize their wrecking they must have been his bed cach night for Trotskyist and Loveago a Harris County Grand all radicals thus giving their blacklist of agitators, commu at it for two or three years before 1922, that is, at stoneite spies. describes them as follows: Jury began an investigation of sanction to the boss lie that is nists, and bad eggs in the lothe very birth of the Communist Party in the They are impatient for revolutionary ac labor violence and commu being used to smear and smash cal Teamsters and o. un United States ions, whom he demands that But more important, for the moment, is the selftion. their talk runs to blood and thunder nistic activities in the Hous the labor movement here ton.
evident fact that not all the leaders of the two they are the advocates of violent overthrow of lowed directly the heels of from the Trades Council visited city will get rid of them its own delegation of reactionaries the unions expel, or else, the equal factions that deadlocked the convention are the government who are Martin Dies ideal of a year of rapid progress of the Mayor to assure him that way.
both the o. and the progres they were as worried as he Monday.
expelled and triply accursed Trotskyists and Lovea Communist.
June 5, Sewall stoneites. Many of them, and not the least import sive unions. Houston has over the influx of radical agi Meyers, city attorney, who is ant of those days in 1922 at Bridgeman, continue We pick up a book called State and Revolu had some hard fought strikes: tators and they would do also retained by the State. clever and subtle wrecking agents that they tion issued in a new edition by Browder pub the Coco cola strike of the everything possible to stop the Federation, declared are. to occupy commanding posts in the ComTeamsters, the Shell strike of violence that was ruining our before the Ministerial Alliance lishing house seven years ago. The author of the Oil Workers Union, fair city.
munist Party leadership today. And it is theythat 28 Communists had been and not Cannon or Lovestone whom Browder has the book was a man named Lenin. Also, he was the Longshoremen Violence Against Labor imported from Detroit who in mind when he utters these ominous sentences, a Communist and, if we may say so, a genuine strikes, the Up strike of the Meanwhile the Grand Jury were responsible for this la Few of the Men Involved Communist. Tanker strike. The performed an amazing job of bor disorder. as this FL.
Who are the men involved in this historical exOn page 18, Lenin writes: courage and endurance of the glossing over the real cause of lawyer terms the exercise of la bor right to picket and fight ample. Here are a few of the leaders of the two here, while daily Fifthly, in the same work of Engels, from organized labor movement violence boss violence. He also 1922 factions which, as we learned later (When?
which every one remembers his argument on having proved too much for the smearing the union movement.
charged that a certain firm of From whom? Who confessed. Were the work of bosses, they have resorted to Frank Hamer, ex Texas Ranmore clever and subtle wrecking agents.
the withering away of the state, there is also a the law. courts to stop the rapid ser. and notorious anti labor labor lawyers. Mandell and There was William Weinstone, first New York deputy, on the pay roll of most the Teamsters and undisquisition on the significance of a violent rev organization of Houston and more recently Detroit party commissar: Wil of the town largest concerns, olution. The historical analysis of its role be Pretext and Reality testified concerning the highly violence. This is a joke to those ions. were responsible for the liam Foster, still chairman (as we go to press: of the Communist party: William Dunne, about comes, with Engels, The immediate excuse for inaginary beef squads im who know the real role of these veritable panegyric on the Grand Jury investigation whom so very little is heard nowadays: Max Bed violent revolution. This, of course, no one rewas the threat of American ported from Chicago for vari legal parasites on the labor acht, boss of the International Workers Order; the members. to talk or even to think of the im can co to close its strike looked the role of the notorious movement They have done two New York state party sachems, Israel Amter (a violent opponent of the Comintern decision in portance of this idea is not considered good small Bewley Mills, where the state government, whom the keep the workers from militant commissioned by the everything in their power to favor of a legal party in 1922 looks bad for him. and Charles Krumbein: Herbert Benjamin (is he hear, Browder. and in daily propaganda and done the week before. This had companies hire at the first section by raising the fear of referred to in Browder remark about impress the fields of work are in mass organizations of a proagitation among the masses it plays no part striking members of the pany police have followed, in aging them to put complete their property. These com every occasion, and by encour gressive character. Alexander Bittelman, one whatever.
Steel Workers Union, but it oft the fiercest factionalists of them all, and with out doubt a British spy from that day to this; Al.
On page 20 fred Wagenknecht, removed only the other day as I! the bourgeois state) cannot be replaced bosses to throw the labor hat traditions of their kind, by pro ne liberal Holcombe adminby the proletarian state the dictatorship of the The boss papers, including even offered to pay strikers to Cunningham, strike ing press into a panic. Is it against the state law heir jobs longer. They have to be a communist? aked St. Louis organizer of the already! Remem ber Yagoda. and last but far from least, BROWproletariat) through withering away but, as a the liberal Scripps Howard continue to stir up disturDER HIMSELF chairman. It is as far as am general rule, only through a violent revolution.
Now, if the two factions of 1922 were the work day after day, predicting that bances.
Again, on the same page: of more clever and subtle wrecking agents, are Workers, beaten up by bosses concerned, replied the Stalin we going to be so gullible as to believe that BrowHouston would become another thugs are refused the right to ist supported mayor. The necessity of systematically fostering ehost city like Akron is sup: me charges in the city courts.
Mandell and Combes have der, who led one of the factions, was only an inamong the masses this and just this point of posed to be, featuring fantastic Notices are left on the doors of just counselled the nocent victim of the wreckers? To be sure, he will view about violent revolution lies at the root of protest that he was guiltless and didn know the statements of the Real Estate union members warning them Strike Committee to turn over foul ends he was being used for: So also, when Board that 16. 000. 000 worth to get out of town. Bonds their picket records to the the whole of Marx and Engels teaching. The of investments was being driv men have been stopped from Grand Jury. Contrast this with their time comes, will Foster and Bittelman and neglect of such propaganda and agitation by en away from Houston. This bonding union men.
Minor and Amter and God knows who else. But handled by the Minneapolis who will believe them? Didn they all protest both the present predominant social chauvinist back page the very news that Mayor Leads Pack Teamsters. their innocence at first in Moscow only to con.
to the front page Mayor This boss offensive has weld fess the truth in the end?
Fortunately for Foster and or any of Browder relief. The replacement of the bourgeois by the in 1940 building permits (Indus with the endorsement of most gressive and un other intended victims, the General Secretary trial and residential toward of the o. and unions ions.
in this country does not have at his disposal all of proletarian state is impossible without a violent the second million dollars secured by the Stalinist stooges The response of the progres Stalin means for extorting confessions which revolution.
worth, the fact that Houston is and old line labor leaders, has sive unions has included leaf Krivitsky describes in such horrifying detail in the almost the only city in current Saturday Evening Post. Browder has no Browder ends his report by saying that we United States that is but the taken the lead in this vicious lets, protest delegations and anti labor campaign. true newspaper statements. On Fri armed bands of assassins, no private pris have the party for which they (the people have si the 1929 level.
boss politician, as soon as the day, June 10, there was a 10 ons, no concentration camps, no Siberia, no ceme.
been looking, a party worthy of our great prinLabor Skates Cowardly bosses needed him he dropped hour boycott of The Rice, Hous teries for the recalcitrants. He only has a powerful ciples and aims, a party worthy of Marx, Engels, Central Trades Council. In The first move of the all pretence of being pro ton most aristocratic hotel, machine for lying and the power of expulsion from by the Taxt drivers in answer the party.
Lenin and Stalin.
which the progressives are in to unreasonable police restric But these two weapons he intends to use to the If only he had left out the names of Marx, a minority was to decree that At Your Service tions. This showed the real full. Foster, Weinstone, Dunne, Wagenknecht, AmTHE APPEAL fighting spirit of the Houston ter and Co. cannot possibly have any illusions on Engels and Lenin, he would have been literally no strike will receive their sup port unless they are consulted workers. They will fight for the that score. Haven they already used them and scientifically exact.
beforehand. This they followed POSTER SHOP unions they have built.
against others. Texas Bosses Resort to Courts InjOffensive Against Unionists Martin Dies Ideal Eide, organized labor candidate for Mayor in last Monday Minneapolis elections, was hardly known to anyone except active trade unionists before his nomination. All the more significant are the 75, 000 votes cast for him, but a few thousand short of victory.
All the more significant were these votes, too, in the face of disastrous defeats of labor endorsed candidates throughout the country during the last year, in the face of the indubitable growth of reaction. All the more significant in contrast to Farmer Labor Governor Benson annihilating defeat last November.
The key to understanding Eide splendid run is to understand why a half million voters who were for Benson in 1936 were for the Republican Stassen in November, 1938. Two years of the New Deal had intervened; all its promises had proved empty, and the New Deal had become the War Deal. When the labor movement, instead of presenting its own candidates, backed the War Deal, millions of votes that would have gone for independent labor candidates were instead cast against the status quo; and since the only alternative to the status quo was the Republicans, these deluded millions voted Republican.
The Minneapolis trade union municipal canpaign represented the widening rift between labor support and the War Deal a move from Rooseveltism to independent class action. That break was not clearly etched in positive terms, but the tendency was indicated by programmatic demands on issues which the War Deal has ducked jobs and relief, housing, rights of unions, etc. Almost all the candidates were active trade unionists. Unfortunately an apparatus had to be built overnight, and on a temporary basis, for the old Farmer Labor Party was dead and the unions were not ready for a permanent Labor Party organization, many union leaders hoping to re organize the Farmer Labor Party on a state basis afterward. But essentially the municipal campaign was a great step forward in presenting independent labor political action as the real alternative to the War Deal.
Equally significant is it to understand that in making this turn from being a tail to the War Deal to standing at the head of the oppressed masses, the labor movement will find its most perfidious opponent to be the Communist Party.
That organization, which is neither communist nor a party, is the most frenzied supporter of the War Deal, and will leave no stone unturned in destroying an independent Labor Party movement. Stalinist dispatch dated June 12 the day before the election to the Daily Worker says that Trotskyite activity has weakened the progressive campaign how? By constantly claiming that the united progressive ticket is a trade union. slate. And the next day the Stalinist sheet had the effrontery to report that the narrow gap that separated the progressives from victory. resulted mainly from the failure to make clear to the people of the city that the Farmer Labor candidates defended the New Deal objectives. The argument itself is of course beneath contempt, for precisely because he identified himself with the New Deal, Benson was annihilated and with him the Farmer Labor Party last November. But what is significant is that the Stalinists are so determined to keep organized labor yoked to the War Deal that they will do anything, literally anything, to maintain. off their main of Marx and Engels teaching into prominent propagandas the continued use inden van Holcombor choice eat even besser les per