SOCIALIST APPEAL TUESDAY, AUGUST 8, 1939 By Dwight Macdonald An Appeal for International Solidarity New York Public SPARKS IN THE NEWS Against the Repressions in France School System Crippled by Cuts The Old Misleader Some one remarked to me the other day that for a long time he had thought the tone which Bolshevist revolutionaries used towards the reformists was much too sharp and melodramatic. Recently, however, r, he has come to see that every epithet, every hangman of the workingclass. every lackey of capitalism! was and is justified, that it would be almost impossible to paint in too black colors the treachery and cowardice of groups like the Social Democratic Federation. The closer American capitalism draws to its supreme crisis of war and fascism, the more implacably anti revolutionary become the reformists.
The working of this process can be seen easily if one has followed, as have, the last year of the organ, The New Leader.
As the war draws near, this journal has taken on an ever increasing similarity to the Jingoistic, chauvinist socialist sheets of the Europe of 1914. The one difference is all in their favor: they at least waited until the war had actually broken out before dropping the socialist mask and appearing frankly as recruiting agents for the bourgeois war maMass Action by Negro Workers Brings Victory chines.
But The Old Misleader isn waiting for Day to dish out what Engels was vulgar enough to call the old crap. Week after week, its front page is black with scare heads about the inroads that fascism is making in Peru and the heroic defense measures of brave little Poland, the current workersfatherland This week glad tidings for the American working class is the front page head: POLISH CAVALRY CAPABLE OF ROUTING MOTOR IZED NAZIS Removes the Fig Leaf When it comes to domestie news. The Old Misleadér is, just now, in a really pathetic position, as are its comrades in arms, The Nation, The Daily Worker, and The CIO News.
It is getting increasingly harder to kid the masses about their friend in the White House when he publicly congratulates Congress on the prevailing wage provision from this year WPA act, when he denounces the WPA strikers and looses his men on them.
and when he appoints to head the Social Se curity Board the quasi fascist machine politician Paul McNutt.
And so a hasty glance at The Old Misleader fails to indicate there a WPA strike on at all.
Its issue of July 15, at the height of the whole business, relegates the strike to less than a column on page two. This story, Incidentally, is a masterpiece of falsification. By carefully mixing up two entirely separate sections of the WPA bill the one nullifying the prevailing wage clause, and the one forbidding regional differences in wage rates the author is able to write: Although the Administration opposed abolition of the differentials, the President has announced that his Administration will attempt to carry out the new provisions of the law. Actually, of course, the President favors the abolition of the first (or preremoving Fisher Body Strikers Eager To Carry Fight Through to End MEN AND WOMEN OF LABOR vailing wage) differential, and is opposed As we have many times re Bureau of the Party decided to that, without delay. and by only to the abolition of the regional wage dif ported in the Appeal, the Dala instruct its locak to hold public means that you will judge apferential dier regime in France has been ineetings on the 30th of this propriate (press demonstra The only other reference in the whole eight regularly persecuting revolu month to protest against police Lions, meetings, etc. you will pages to the ticklish subject is a cut and dried tionary militants who have abuses and the government reorganize active solidarity with By BRUNO JOHNSON little notice in a corner of page eight, headed been opposing the government pression which is striking more our movement which is in the One purpose of Big Money The New York City Board of obedient servants in Albany is in small type: Scores WPA Cuts. war preparations. From the and more at the militant com heat of the struggle against the The banner headline on page one is: ANTI International Commission of rades and the revolutionary imperialist war. Above all do Education on Thursday, July not yet achieved. They are tryAXIS FORCES ANGERED BY NEU the Workers and Peasants So press. On this occasion our not delay to send us immediate 27, adopted a budget crippling ing to frighten the public by TRALITY. with the subhead, amazing even cialist Party (P. we party will affirm its firm de ly the next number of your pub the whole public school system showing what the schools would in this cloud cuckoo land: OLDER GERMANS, have received news of addition termination to continue its anti lication in which you will pub or the coming year. The crip suffer unless the teachers took EMBITTERED BY CONGRESS ACTION, al persecutions. Below we militarist and revolutionary ac lish an article on this question, pling began when LaGuardia a cut.
TURN TO HITLER. It seems that Jack Sand print their letter in full. The tivities in spite of repression. an article that we will wel. Board of Estimate cut 3, 000. The New York City Board of ford, the Misleader enterprising correspon Cherbourg incident that is men. special edition of Juin 36 come, followed by an appeal in 000 from the appropriations and Education tried its best. It dug dent in France, performed a remarkable jour tioned in the letter refers to an will appear also on Friday next favor of the persecuted anti the New York State Legislature up the ancient dodge of volunnalistic feat. As soon as he received the news agitation that the con on this question.
militarists and giving support cut 5, 300, 000 more from state tary salary cuts, ranging from International Solidarity aid to the city.
that Congress had refused to revise the Neu ducted among the soldiers sta2 to 6. the joker being to our struggle.
trality Act, he at once took a Gallup Poll of tioned at Cherbourg in protest You doubtless understand the For the International Com The 8, 300, 000 deficit thus ac that the younger and poorerthe eighty million citizens of Germany to see against the arbitrary extension significance of this repression mission of the quired has been absorbed by paid teachers, whose salaries how they felt about it. He is, naturally, some of the military service period which seeks to stifle resistance the Board of Education in the would be cut less, would not rewhat excited about his findings, as, evidently. beyond two years.
to war and the sacred union Marie Guerin. following ways: classes, al ceive any yearly increments were the editors. The psychological effects.
We therefore expect from you July 25, 1939 ready overcrowded, will be en either, and so would actually he hints darkly, may be incalculable. And larged or not decreased; eve be cut by while the highlythen for the real news scoop: learn already Dear Comrades, ning elementary schools, serv paid fat cats, the superintendthat it has thrown masses of the elder generaWe inform you that today, ing 30, 000 adults yearly, will be ents and politicians in the sysdropped from the school system, would be cut only to tion of neutral Germans into the Nazi camp. July 25, an investigation of sevThat hitherto unchallenged mass psychoana cral hours took place at our tem; evening high schools will 54. This proposal was so lyst, Walter Duranty, had better look to his party local, 42 Rue Rochebe limited to students working nearly identical to the bills in laurels!
chouart. Three investigating for Regents credit. Day class Albany that the parents assocommissions officially investies for adults in English and ciations smelled the rat and Those Terrible Trotskyites!
gated the following questions: citizenship are to go. Com were not impressed, in spite of On this same front page there is another 1) the anti militarist leaflets munity and recreation centers, the pious wails of the reactionstory which deserves a few words: TROTSKY sequel to the Cherbourg affair ITE GUARDS DRIVE AIDS COUGHLIN. of May last, details of which as well as after school athletic aries about saving the kinder(Continued from Page 1) Sunday demonstration centers, will be closed com gartens.
This is a very snooty little piece, very superior you have already read in Juin Judge Lupe, was just another marked a high spot in the long pletely. Thus 75, 000 students Mayor LaGuardia tangled up indeed the tiny Socialist Workers Party. 36, official weekly organ of the attempt to throw monkey fight of the Negro workers for will be tossed out of school, and the mess still further with a the obscure Trotskyite newspaper, The So We must remind wrench into attempts of the decent living facilities. The the 2, 500, 000 people who have marvelously skillful piece of cialist Appeal, etc. Specifically, the Misleader you to be used in whatever Negro workers to get better prompt withdrawal of the in been using the community cendemagogy: he promised to inis sore because Comrade Milton proposal way you can, that Marceau housing.
junction was a victory obtained ters are locked out.
sure the continuation all that his local of the ILGWU form a Workers Plvert is rt is being prosecuted for Negro housing on Chicago by militant mass action, and it Lehman Role vital educational services with Anti Fascist Defense Guard gave Father this as the political director of South Side is the nation worst. served to show the Negro work The American Labor Party out cutting teachers salaries.
Coughlin a chance to attack the LGWD and our party. 2) La Caserne, anti white chauvinism forces the ers all through the South Side supported. Governor Lehman, The Stalinist controlled Teach to wound the tender sensibilities of that shrink militarist Journal but complete Negroes to live in a real ghetto, the power of organized working instead of fighting the issues on ers Union whooped for joy and ing violet, David Dubinsky.
ly unconnected with our party within the boundaries of the no class action to attain their de its merits, took shelter behind congratulated the Mayor.
When it comes to more general criticism, and for which it is in no way torious iron ring. Unable to mands.
the unconstitutionality of the That the Mayor statement the usual Stalinist objections are raised. It is responsible. 3) La Jeune Garde move, they are exploited un Solidarity of Negro and white budget passed by the legisla was only political tripe was interesting how indistinguishable on all major (The Young Guard youth pub mercifully by big real estate workers was demonstrated by ture; when the budget was clearly shown when his law sec.
matters are the lines of the and the lication) July August number, companies which exact exor the members of the Socialist thrown out of courts the legis retary, appointed for one day to Such guards provoke violence. They for its anti militarism (you will bitant rents for the vilest kind Workers Party and the Young lature in special session passed the Board of Education in order are illegal. There is strong public opin receive under separate cover a of housing facilities. Repairs People Socialist League, who another, differing from the to make up a quorum, voted for ion against private armies. And, above all, copy of this number which was are the exception and not the participated in the demonstra first only in being in accord the school wrecking budget.
what wrong with the police as protection today again confiscated. In answer to protests. LArule. It is not uncommon for a tion and in the parade organ ance with the state constitution, for workers meetings against the Coughlin Organize Protest Meetings family of 12 to be crowded into ized by the Washington Park and Lehman said not a word. Guardia passed the buck again: ites?
All of these arguments, except the one about We have been informed that small rooms, infested with Forum, spearhead in the Negro The same vicious slashes in the he laid all the blame on the legislature for cutting 5, 300, illegality (which is news to me. would apply wo warrants of arrest have vermin and rats, with no pri worker fight for improved school system remained.
to any strike. But the workers would be fool. against Comrade by the police vate toilet facilities.
housing in Chicago.
000 from state aid to the city, Poulain.
COUGHLINITES BRAG chicken feed cut of three milconveniently forgetting his own ish to listen to any such line. Despite the danger of provoking violence, despite the un inember of the fifth section of doubtedly strong public opinion against the age with sixty years of activ.
the Paris 86 years of lion.
ABOUT FASCIST Teachers Union Hog tied use of force by pickets, and despite the splenity in proletarian parties bePREPARATIONS The Teachers Union, because order, the strikers must nevertheless, how. been issued against him in his The warrant has of its Stalinist line, has had one ever reluctantly and with however heavy (Continued from Page 1)
hand tied to its back throughhearts, wreak violence on the persons of any capacity of manager for the taunted the Jews to dare to out the fight. Time and again scabs in the neighborhood. Any one who has has already been arrested. Also party of La Jeune Garde: he hold a counter meeting.
the anti Stalinist progressives been on a picket line knows this, and any one another warrant has been is. Continued from Page 1) complete a job well started who has seen LaGuardia cops protecting cued against comrade Lucien At the end of the meeting the in the unton have brought up Screaming edttorials in all Only the most insistent and chairman held up a huge plac motions to put pressure on LAanti fascist meetings or has had a glimpse of Weitz, political secretary of the the capitalist papers call for persistent pleading by the lead. ard, reading Buy Christian. Guardia as well as on Albany.
the Social Justice goon squad in action knows youth and a member law and order. presumably ership has so far prevented the that this corner was now under either howled down or passed why Worker Guards are necessary.
of the Central Committee of meaning the riding down of workers from again taking to our party in his capacity as helpless women and children, the streets in mass fighting and that they would hold meet politics and then forgotten.
Comrade Weita had given in ing and gassing of unarmed from the leaders, and the auto ings there every Wednesday The Stalinists are playing the Garde Information on the their rights to strike and picket. the other plants as they did cops and others in plain clothes politicians for this fall and fair with which you are ac them under the influence of the out of all the hot gone era willing to give the fascists full offend the progressive Little Flower in City Hall. Also, in quainted. At the time of writ Stalinists, have weakened and dinances and injunctions which protection.
When a worker here and their has been detained.
Ing we do not know 11 Weitz are telling the workers to obey the bosses are waving in the there in the crowd voiced ob the aesperate zeal to remove label from the union the law. that is the. arbi workers faces.
By EMANUEL GARRETT Following these events, the trary ruling of a mayor whom jection to the anti Semitic and they lay off any kind of miliDangerous Precedent anti labor tirades, police pulled tant action or picket line. They these same strike leaders have denounced as a paid tool of the most dangerous precedent them out of the crowd and into did the best they could, with the instinct of workmanship.
half a million leaflets and hunThe higher learning in America is managed corporations, the Chamber of for future strikes has been set a taxi cab.
Commerce and of a boss ruled by the acceptance of these formed afterward in a near by few to LaGuardia. which dreds of telegrams (but very for the exclusive benefit of the business men Yet the court.
law and politics are mere cloaks for the prelegal traps by the union lead. park decided that something time has passed when a legisdatory interests: patriotism and business.
Lesson for Workers ers. It is to be expected that in should and would be done. The lator will pay any attention to useless to the whole community, are the chief Once again for all the work the future battles, which are proposal to build Workers De telegrams.
barriers to peace; and the vested interests ers to see is the fact that when bound come, the city offic fense Guards met with approv When one of the Teachers. a marketable right to get something for the workers really unite their ials and corporations will crack al of those present, even two Union leaders did criticize the nothing. control our lives. Germany became torces and fearlessly resort to down on every strike with Communist Party members ad Mayor for sending his officea great power by imitating England indusmass action on the streets, no every imaginable legal restric reitting that action and not boy to vote ruin to the schools.
trial technique but not her democratic ideas and politics: the feudal military abso (Continued from Page 1)
and their government can beat mass picketing. The only way fend the neighborhood against the Mayor hate and said iutism of Germany fitted far better with the them down. But when they sub to win a strike is to shut the the fascist gangs. The youths that though a progressive, he realities of capitalism; here Veblen gives an ment of the United States by mit to the treachery of legality work down cold; that means present, about fifty, all between had yielded to pressure.
interesting premonition, if not a prediction of any one, anywhere, at any and boss made laws, they are mass picketing, the only suc the ages of 18 and 25. decided Just why a progressive cannot the necessity of a Hitler to maintain capital time. Those leaders who licked in advance.
cessful weapon against the that they would meet at an ap yield to progressive pressure ism. Almost parallel with Lenin. Veblen have moved to exploit the pro The lessons of the Battle of bosses and strike breakers. pointed place next Wednesday is left unexplained.
pointed out the relentless growth of monopoly tests of WPA workers in viola. 140th Street. are imperishevening. make the rounds of All the workers of New York capital toward a world of war and the stran tion of Federal statutes will be ably graven into the minds of the local clubs to secure aid, City must remember the fight gling of the common man, or elseprosecuted. The next day all the auto workers here. They Join the Socialist and then gather to demonstrate on education as an essential Roosevelt issued his infamous are full of fight, and the rank their opposition to the Coughlin factor in this fall elections to Defended Bolshevik Revolution You can strike against the and file is more than anxious to Workers Party gangsters.
the City Council government statement Veblen made only tentative stabs at the Murphy in his July 13 stateclass struggle: as editor of The Dial he de ment singled out Minneapolis fended the Bolshevik Revolution, signed pro as a place where evidence of Who Against the War Referendum?
tests against the trial of the 101 Wobblies in labor racketeering or criminal Chicago, and denounced the Palmer Red Raids conspiracy against the nation as the dementia praecox of rotting capitalism. relief program may result in And in one of his last books, The Engineers indictments.
and the Price System, he sketched a new plan in accordance with Murphy for revolution, the formation of soviets of en orders, District Attorney gineers and technicians who are the real Anderson announced on July 19 By HAL DRAPER bottle neck of production and who are irked that the Federal government by the sabotage of big business. He even undoubtedly will issue comWhat are the arguments on the war with Mexico in 1846 his completely peaceful inten. he is a thousand times correct: helped to form the nucleus of such a soviet, plaints and begin prosecution against giving the people the without any consultation even tions, or his argument is non the people will not sacrifice the Technical Alliance; but lacking organizing of strike pickets or demonstrat right to vote on war?
with Congress. It was Presl sense!
themselves for that. If he was ability and misunderstanding the nature of the ors within a few days.
In January of last year, the dent McKinley control over Furthermore, Roosevelt thinking of the right of Wall class struggle, he failed.
to Get In his earliest and greatest book, The The The grand fury opened its in. Congress, and there was a dan ted him to do before congress was here attacking the Ludlow Workers and peace hacks scoute ory of the Leisure Class, Veblen dissects capt vestigation on July 24. It quick ser not so much that it would and call for war with Spain the guts out of the proposal to America, he is correct. He is talist culture and finds it rotten. The literary ly developed that the Federal be passed but that it would while concealing the fact that let the people vote on war by afraid of the war referendum lights who loved and quoted the book for its authorities were out to get set to be discussed. In this Spain had granted the making it inoperative in case because the war which he has tionary implications: the only way to create 544, sponsor of a Federal Work welt went over the top and gotiations with England in 1916 torial possessions, or on any real interests of the masses: len irony shows the roots of art and the social leading unemployed organiza laps of Congress, denouncing tells us: the President con sphere. It is this resolution of the American 60 Families graces under capitalism as merely the desire tion. The st. Paul Pioneer the proposal. Its leading idea trol over foreign relations has which concerned itselt only against foreign plutocrats!
for conspicuous waste and conspicuous Press headlined that Activity was been instrumental in getting us with a frankly and openly ak.
leisure (i. e. showing off money. The rich of higher ups in Minneapolis Such an amendment as No Confidence into imperialist wars behind gressive war by the that.
man pecuniary reputability demands that General Drivers Union 544 dur.
that proposed would cripple the backs of the people! Roosevelt said, will hamper his Washington wants the right The bosses government in any President war useless servanta clutter up useless estate, being investigated by the is there for all to see: to put it that only costly things can be considered beau eral grand Jury. The Minne it would encourage other na dent conduct of foreign rela moderately, Roosevelt does not the heads of its imperialistike tiful, that education be classical, useless, and apolis Tribune reported that tions to believe that they tions? Roosevelt has sworn up exclude an open war of convals, and the right to go into good only to prove that the rich man did not Witnesses who told about could violate American rights and down the land that he is quest!
such a war, when it becomes have to work for a living while acquiring the union operations in connection with impunity.
innocent of any intention of necessary, without the consent Lesson from History with the strike spent more time into war.
ceremonial futility of his manners.
throwing the 4. How will the war referen of the people.
It is typical of this detached, ironic, scholar in the jury room than did those Cripple the President The proposal which he denounc, dum encourage the violation of The answer to Roosevelt is: ly genius that his last work was the transla who told of interference with autocratic control over Ameri es bears only on the power of American rights? WHAT Your very opposition to the war tion of an old Norse saga. Yet the revolution werkers, can foreign affairs? Any one making RIGHTS? If referendum shows why we have All measures AMERICAN ary movement in America must always acwho knows the lessons of his short of war would still be (un Roosevelt was thinking of the 10 confidence in you or your knowledge its debt to Thorstein Veblen for his Subscribe to the tory will say: Good thing! It fortunately) left in his hands. right of Standard Oil to pile government. Let the people de savage analysis of the rottenness of our its cide! who society.
SOCIALIST APPEAL executive powers which brought (a hypocrite when he protests with the backing of the Navy, will have to fight and die!
OUT OF THE PAST INSTIGATOR OF STRIKE RIOT PROMOTED Roosevelt Gives the Whole Show Away THORSTEIN VEBLEN (July 30, 1857 August 3, 1929)
Thorstein Veblen, a radical intellectual who stood aloof from the class struggle, was yet the sarcastic author of some of the most effective attacks on the profit system and perhaps America most original thinker in his generation.
Born on a Wisconsin farm, of Norwegian immigrant parents, Veblen spent most of his life, except when unemployed and living off the old folks, in colleges, studying, teaching.
writing The college authorities never liked to have him around. because they thought his ideas as well as his life not re spectable, though he brought a certain fame to the college. Most of his students didn like him because they didn understand him. The public never knew whether his books were serious or not.
Veblen books, however, were his real contribution to the labor movement. In a pendantic tone, using six ons Laizeci words instead of one short one. he solemnly ridiculed the stuffed shirts of America, the business men, so skillfully that they never got the point.
The implications of every one of his books were revolutionary, but they remained only sarcastic implications, careful student of Marx, Veblen did mucn to explode the criticisms of bourgeois economists. He showed that the labor theory of value, so mightily belabored by the critics, was self evident as expressed by Marx. His The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx, is a brilliant outline of capital. But Veblen rejected the law of capitalist accumulation be cause, writing in 1906, he could not see what follows from that law, the constant growth of the reserve army of labor (the unemployed) and the increasing misery of the workers. Had he written in 1939, so honest an observer could not have failed to see the predictions borne out. Veblen made mincemeat of the Marxist revisionists like Bernstein, but he seemed at this time not to have read the work of Lenin or Luxemburg.
Veblen System Fragmentary Veblen wrote no book that contains his whole system of thought. The reader has to pick it up from side remarks and sly comments. But from these remarks, in such books as The Instinct of Workmanship. The Theory of Business Enterprise, and Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, one can see the outline: the common man, the worker, works for perfection. But the business man, who is interested not in industrial production but in profits, practises a conscientious withdrawal of productive efficiency (Veblenese for sabotage) which kills war This column on Thorstein Veblen was contributed by Bruno Johnson.