TUESDAY, AUGUST 29, 1939 SOCIALIST APPEAL By Dwight Macdonald Stalin Capitulation to Hitler THE SPARKS IN THE NEWS Increases War Danger; Threatens NEGRO. QUESTION Existence of Soviet Workers LABOR WITH WHITE SKIN CANNOT EMANCIPATE ITSELF WHERE LABOR WITH BLACK SKIN IS BRANDED KARL MARX. Business Is Business The great nations are today helping one another to be ready to fight, quite possibly with each other, as never before. From their prin cipal ports hundreds of ships are streaming over the seas with the finished products and the materials which war must have. Business is business, and in no business today is there more intense competition than there is in this great business. All perfectly legal, of course: yet, for example, it cannot be exactly pleasant, just now, for an Englishman to learn that Britain is sending 300. 000 tons coal to Germany every month; that Italy has just arranged for 1, 000, 000 tons of that necessity, from British mines; that during 1938 Germany received from Britain, France and Belgium ten million metric tons of imports largely of a character of potential assistance to her in preparation for war: thal during 1938 Germany imports of pig iron and scrap were nearly five times greater than they were two years before; that Britain, France and Belgium sent Germany 45 per cent of that nation recently imported supplies of iron ore and ore containing manganese. And the great supplies of oil that Britain has sent to Germany are, of course, a matter of common knowledge.
Britain aircraft factories are producing large quantities of planes for export as well as those for her own defense, The United States exports to Japan have been, and are being, of enormous assistance to that country. The Netherlands East Indies are practically de fenseless, and the jittery mood of those important islands is evidenced by the wiring of oil wells for destruction. Yet the Netherlands were one of the three countries which supplied Japan with 75 per cent of her war necessities Liberal Weeklies, Disillusioned, Break with Stalinists over Pact Warning of Stalin Perfidy, The Appeal Forecast the Pact We continue in this issue excerpts from the numerous issues in which we predicted the Hitler Stalin pact and explained its meaning.
Our last issue carried excerpts from October 8, 1938 until December 31, 1938.
the PACT TOO MUCH FOR BROUN SOCIALIST APPEAL, MARCH 17, 1939: Stalin offers olive branch to Hitler in apolo gizing for the fascist war mongers (article by Max Shachtman on the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The democratic front on which all stalinist foreign policy hinged the united front of the democracies against the fascist aggressors and war mongers Stalin has dropped overboard without a splash. In its place is something so new that it must have had a stunning effect upon the Stalinist parrots all over the world.
Stalin holds out the olive branch to the fascist powers, to Germany primarily. The thunderous denunciation of fascism which, up to now, have filled the pages of the Stalinist press. give way in Stalin report to an extremely soft and restrained comment on the activities of the Axis powers. But his change in front is far more drastic than that. In actuality he offers an apology for them and their activities.
Which, bolled down to essentials, means that Stalin has turned over the initiative for the next step in world politics to Hitler!
SOCIALIST APPEAL, MARCH 21, 1939 editorial: On Friday, March 10, Stalin addressed the opening session of the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Stripped of its heavy overload of incredibly dull verblage, of its bluff and bombast, the central point of the speech boiled down to a whining.
cringing bid for a deal with Hitler. Hitler did not answer by another speech.
He answered in blunter fashion, by moving his troops and tanks and airplanes into what was left of Czechoslovakia. He answered by advancing his front line within less than two hundred miles of the border of the Ukraine.
And how does Stalin propose to meet that danger? As Utopian as he is contemptible, Stalin proposes to meet it by begging for a deal, Ironically enough, he triest adopt the policy of appeasement which he himself declares has been Hitler chief support.
And once again, for the thousandth time, history is making clear: The Soviet Union cannot, and will not be defended by the degenerate and counter revolutionary Stalin and his gang.
The Soviet Union can be defended not by appeasing any imperialism, democratic or fascist, but by overthrowing every imperialism, democratic and fascist.
To struggle against every imperialism, above all their own imperialist states, this is the task of the worker of the world. And to carry through this task they must cast from their backs the hangman of the Kremlin who last Friday drove one more nail deep into the coffin which he has designed for the October Revolution.
By JOHNSON last year. Russia, of course, has sent vast supplies to China, but Germany deep affection (Continued from Page 1)
for Japan has not interfered with her also en Stalin defection as a new step in organizing the masses gan: everywhere. that is a vital raise higher than ever the sio The Race Riots in Chicago Twenty years ago this summer, there took place the notoritering the rich Chinese market. Indeed, Tokyo argument to justify the coming for the struggle against the im Down with imperialist war! ous Chicago race riots. They are a good example of how necesbelieves that Germany has aided China in this war. The New York Times and perialist war.
Take away the war making sary it is to turn our backs on whatever the American bourrespect more than has any other nation. In the the yellow socialist organs. With the thoroughly degener power from the President and geoisie says about the Negroes.
World War thousands of German soldiers per the Jewish Forward and the ate Communist Party smashed, Congress! Let the people de What precisely happened in Chicago twenty years ago? Thouished before Verdun on barbed wire made in New Leader now sing in chorus the yellow reformists of the Socide!
sands of Negroes will unsuspectingly glve you the account given Germany which France received, through that, as a result of the signing cial Democratic Federation and Against international capital. by Congressman Ellender the debate on the Anti Lynching Switzerland, shortly before the war began, and of the pact, the lines have beihe other lackeys of the dem ism and its war, and against its Bill, Feb. 15, 1938. Many revolutionists, including Johnson, many en els that soldier emperoduse dea this home come clear the democracies ocratic imperialists can be stalinist and social democratic for years accepted it in outline, and it is probable that many stiri. land. So it would be again.
talitarians. The United States, gage the main enemy, the cap LONG LIVE THE WORLD Krupps still find business satisfaction in the they say, can now with an easy Italist class! EVOLUTION OF THE Bourgeois History fact that at Jutland both the British and Ger conscience join forces with Only revolutionary class WORKING. LONG man fleets carried their products. Before Hit England and France for col struggle can be effective LIVE SOCIALISM!
Mr. Ellender quotes extensively from the World Work for ler. Krupps employed 46, 000; today, 105, 000. lective security.
against the impending war. LONG LIVE THE FOURTH December 1922, whose version runs as follows: Business is excellent. recent annual report Fake Line Up Against the enemy here at INTERNATIONAL, WORLD The great exodus of Negroes from the South created probof Krupps ended thus: In conclusion, the committee desires to reNo doubt many of those nur home against Roosevelt and PARTY OF PROLETARIAN lems of adjustment between whites and blacks and of course the Negroes were the ones who caused the trouble. They were port that it has taken full cognizance of re tured until today in the Stalin. the rest of the war mongers, we REVOLUTION!
Williterate. their manners were uncouth. their clothes outports that a conference designed to bring to ist collective security line landish and bad smelling. When they found themselves sitting pass a reduction of armaments is to be held, will join the democrats side by side with white people in not know how to behave. They need in their seats. They cars, the Negroes did and that it has definitely established that against the totalitarians.
these reports are baseless. The industry But this ideological line up insisted on sitting when white women were standing. They went may, therefore, be assured that the coming is as fake as the previous one to live in quarters which white immigrants had for years reyear will be a period of undisturbed activity of democrats against fasgarded as their own; their children began to mingle in large and steadily increasing prosperity.
cists.
number with the white children in the schools. But what caused Makers of armaments in other lands also Already the democratic the greatest ill feeling was the increasing presence of Negro sce few evidences of any depression.
veneer of Great Britain and men and women in the public recreation centers. These impuFrance is wearing thin, Cham The Nation and the New Re. What of the immediate dent Negroes sat in considerable numbers on the park benches, NOTE: What you have just read is the full berlain and Daladier rule by public, the two liberal weeklles effects in Europe of this reori. played baseball and basketball on the public fields, they aptext, reprinted without addition or alteration, dictatorial decree. Roosevelt is which have been most closely entation of Moscow? Obviously peared in the municipal dance halls, they shared public bathing of an editorial which appeared in the rushing in the same direction. Allied with the Stalinist party, the danger to Poland is inten. beaches with the whites, and, the final crime, the mere fact Organizer of Defeats broke with it this week on the sified. Berlin is now forecast that they attended band concerts in large numbers added to the Times for August 21, 1939. Just what was in back of the mind of the editors of the Times Throughout his terrible reigns, Hitler Stalin pact.
ing action within the present 111 feeling.
in printing such an editorial, don know. But Stalin has organized nothing Ardent defenders of the Mos week and is boasting that ad Thus was the atmosphere created in which any small inclanyway, they have my thanks for doing a job but defeats. In the name of cow Trials, apologists for any vance knowledge of this coup dent could and did precipitate a fearful race riot. couldn have done (much better myself. country. Stalin turned his they refused to publish any crit screws.
building socialism in one number of Stalinist crimes had enabled it to tighten the Now the natural reaction of a Negro, or a white person who resents white arrogance to Negroes, is to say as follows: If back on the world revolution. icism of the Stalinist murders These liberals have broken Negroes went to the parks, played baseball and listened to conBut only word soon. Interest Nation and the New Republic and that is significant as dem. took place, it was not the Negroes fault. liberal would deplore save the Soviet revolution could of revolutionists in Spain The with the Stalinists on the pact. certs, they were perfectly justified in doing so, and it race riots ed only in defending the bur now carry bitter editorials onstrating that, despite all the sad fact and rush to set up an inter racial commission.
eaucratic oligarchy which against the pact.
Browder explanations, the revolutionary who was not on his guard would say that here raised itself on the backs of the Stalin Abandoned Poland Pact means the abandonment was another example of white workers beig dominated by the Soviet workers. Stalin has brought the Soviet Union to the Stalin Munich is the title of the collective security reactionary ideas of the bourgeoisie. As a matter of fact, such brink of disaster.
of the New Republic editorial line. But in breaking, these lib a revolutionary would be himself dominated by bourgeois ideas But not only the fate of Stal in its August 30 issue. The so erals have not moved an inch on the Negro question. Far from being a demonstration of the in clique is at stake. The last viet Union. has abandoned nearer a real anti war position. difficulties of adjustment between white residents and black conquests of the October Revo Poland to Hitler, it declares. The Nation remains grooved in immigrants, the Chicago race riots are one of the greatest exlution, the lives of the Soviet The moral prestige of the the war for democracy line, amples of racial solidarity in the whole history of the American botage of the class struggle of the French workers and peasants, are in. Soviet government while the New Republic makes working class.
proletariat.
sured both at home and abroad. half turn towarde isolationsmate The Bosses Seek to Split the Workers volved.
The fundamental trait of Stalin interna The overthrow of the Stalin movement has been preaching against war struggle In 1919 there were some 12, 000 Negroes working in the stock tional policy in recent years has been this regime that is the first step in collective security. But now against the capitalism which yards of Chicago. The Stockyards Labor Council, founded in that he trades in the working class movement a realistic defense of the Sovietit lles slain at the hands of its breeds war, the struggle to or July 1917 had been struggling to organize the industry. The cap just as he trades in oil, manganese and other Union.
goods. In this statement there is not an ota The wiping out of Stalinism chief supporter. Some ra. Ranize the international work italist bosses countered by introducing an increasing number of of exaggeration. Stalin looks upon the sections and some new line will be enakers, these liberals remain and by playing white against black to defeat unionization. The of the Comintern in various countries and upon Stockyards Labor Council repudiated the color line and made the liberating struggle of the oppressed na Browder Won Talk; promulgated. no doubt. But as hostile as ever.
drive to organize the Negroes, for without them, the whites imperialist powers.
Not Even When Radio throughout the Communist Incould not win. There were inter racial socials, Negro was When he requires the aid of France, he sub ternational, will be confused elected Vice president of the Council. In June 1919, the Council Time Is Offered Him and disheartened. The antijects the French proletariat to the Radical began to organize street corner meetings of whites and Negroes.
bourgeoisie. When he has to support China Stalin opposition will be jubiThis was death for the meat packing bosses and they used lant and will redouble its efmounted police to break these meetings up. Against this, the against Japan, he subjects the Chinese proletariat to the Kuomintang. What would he do Earl Browder, big, strong. viet Union and more suppresforts. More treason in the SoStockyards Labor Council called a protest strike and won, and in the event of an agreement with Hitler? and very much silent man in to celebrate, they called a great parade of white and Negro sion of treason or so called Hitler, to be sure, does not particularly require these days of Moscow Madworkers in the Negro neighborhood for July Stalin assistance to strangle the German treason is likely. Non Communess, generated another nists throughout the world who Communist party. The insignificant state in thunderclap of me no talk which the latter finds itself has moreover been had been sympathetse with the the Stalinists and rabid defen: claim that this parade is going to cause racial contilietre They for his dismayed and silence.
Soviet regime and friendly to der of all stalinist policies in made Negroes and whites parade separately, but the two groups assured by its entire preceding policy. But it deafened disciples. It was is very likely that Stalin would agree to cut learned by the Socialist Ap ready chilled by the political broken with the Stalinists on there was a grand demonstration of nearly 30, 000 Negroes and off all subsidies for all illegal work in Germany. peal from excellent authority the Hitler Stalin pact!
This is one of the most minor concessions that within the Communist Party trials, will be further puzzledI do not see how anybody whites (despite the fact that many of these Negroes had gone to he would have to make and he would be quite that the Earl of 13th Street and alienated.
The August 26 issue of the can get away from the imme held firm and the capitalists had to break it. So on July 27 they the band concerts. The working class front of blacks and whites willing to make it.
rejected an offer of free. We can state one thing with certainty. time over a local radio staNation says editorially: here and now contributed to the burned a block of houses where white stockyard workers lived.
The agreement between Stalin and Hitler tion to debate the Soviet Given Hitler Victory would essentially alter nothing in the counter Dact. It seems that Eugene Red Star and Swastika, wrote Broun in his August 23 The police followed up this outrage by sending a large force of revolutionary function of the Kremlin oligar Lyons, his adversary to be, once mutually exclusive sym column in the New York militia, police, etc. into the stockyards to prevent racial chy. It would only serve to lay bare this func was unacceptable because he bols, have come together, and World Telegram.
strife. and agents provocateurs were let loose among the white tion, make it stand out more glaringly and was tainted with Trotskyism. the diplomatic map of Europe Its net result constitutes a workers to incite them to violence.
hasten the collapse of illusions and falsifica Eugene Lyons, for anybody bas been redrawn overnight. threat to all the democracles Black and White Workers Remain United tions. Our political task does not consist in who cares to discover it, is a Russia has not joined the Anti of the world, including the saving Stalin from the embraces of Hitler, well known member of the Comintern Pact, but by con. United States. It has always The Council called a mass meeting of 30, 000 white workers but in overthrowing both of them. American Labor Party and senting at this precise moment seemed to me that the failure which unanimously voted solidarity with the Negroes and de was directing manager of LEON TROTSKY, IN SOCIALIST APPEAL, to adopt the role of a disinter of the German Communists to manded that the police withdraw all its armed men from the that Party campaign for ested neutral it has given Hitler co operate with the republic stockyards. The 4, 000 Negroes endorsed the vote.
APRIL 7, 1939: re election of Lehman in a colossal diplomatic victory made the rise of Hitler pos During this period, the riots did take place. Police and their In his speech to the Congress of the 1938.
und laid foundations for an sible. believe that no leader allies, let loose in the Negro district, led the rloting. In their lother Munich Stalin openly shattered the idea of the of the party ever made any efforts to keep order. they killed not one white man, but half alliance of the democracies to resist the Faspublic admission of that fact, the Negroes killed met their death at the hands of the police.
but.
cist aggressors. The instigators of an interseemed to say as much.
by implication, some But despite this desperate provocation, the 35, 000 whites and national war are now neither Mussolint nor Free Hand for Hitler work until the police and militia were removed from the yards.
Hitler but the two principal democracies of The whole theory of the white and black union men worked together help wounded.
Europe, Great Britain and France who, acpopular front appeared to be the whites gave financial aid to the Negroes who came to the cording to the speaker (Stalin. want to draw based on the belief that Fas headquarters for assistance instead of going to the bosses bread cism was a thing so deadly lines. Among 35, 000 workers there was only one single case of Germany and the into conflict under that radicals must make com violence.
the guise of a German attack on the Ukraine.
mon cause against it with lib The workers black and white had caused the police to be Fascism? That has nothing to do with it.
erals and progressives. Fas withdrawn from the yards. On the day that they went back there There can be no question, according to stal(Continued from Page 1)
cism is still deadly, but the wasn a single indication. of any racial feeling. In one plant, popular front now becomes ex Negroes and Slavs met as old friends. Many of them put In words, of an attack by Hitler on the Ukraine and there is not the slightest basis of indifference to the people needs and well being, in their tremely difficult, if not impos their arms around one another necks. Negro and a Pole instant readiness to sacrifice the health and security and a military conflict with Hitler.
got on a truck and rode all around the plant to show the other Suche.
pact between Russia workers that a good spirit still existed. Says the official report: The abandonment of the policy of alliance blood of the people to power and privilege.
and the Reich opens up new ter There was nothing in the contact of the Negro and the Pole or of the democracies is supplemented at once With the same gesture with which they betray millions have a free hand to sell his in Chicago, and there was nothing from the beginning of the race ritory in which Hitler will now the Slav that would indicate that there had ever been a race riot with a humiliating cringing before Hitler and by diplomacy, they and the present rulers of the United wares, both material and spir riot to the end that would indicate there was any feeling started a hurried polishing of his boots. Such is Stalin!
In Czecho Slovakia the capitulation of the States in their front rank are prepared to butcher tens of tual. The tide of Fascism has in the stockyards or in this industry that led to the race riots. democracies before fascism found expresmillions on the battlefields of the war toward which they said that England and France Stalinist press ten years after, and some of it is in official re: sion in a change of government. In the plunge. thanks to the totalitarian regime, Stalin are well equipped to keep a ports. But the bourgeois press and bourgeois publicists still cir.
is his own Benes and his own General Syrovy.
Whom can the people trust?
corner of Europe safe from the culate their les about the Chicago race riots, and with their babHe replaces the principles of his policy preThe people can trust only themselves, only their own Nazi peril. It would seem to ble about maladjustment, they cleverly obscure one of the most cisely in order not to find himself replaced. strength, only their own courage.
me as if they now are in deadly significant events in American working class history. These les The Bonapartist clique wants to live and peril. The whole of western penetrate even into the revolutionary movement, and will congovern. Everything else is for it a question We must take the decisions out of the hands of the pres Europe may now be ground be tinue to penetrate unless the revolutionary movement does not of technique.
ent rulers.
neath the Nazis within our own merely content itself with saying No to the capitalist Yes. What is the lesson?
time.
During the last We cannot permit the power to make war to remain in but turns its back completely on whatever the capitalists say three years Stalin called all the companions the hands of the President and Congress, who will use that ally reveals his conviction that In his indignation, Broun tar about the Negroes.
of Lenin agents of Hitler. He exterminated power only against the people.
the Stalinists in Germany made the flower of the General Staff. He shot, discharged and deported about 30, 000 officersWe must rally our forces to wrest from Congress the of course, believes that the inust parties have repeated evthe rise of Hitler possible. He, cists a crime which the StalA REQUEST all under the same charge of being agents of Hitler or his allies. After having dismembered power of entering war and, through the requirement of a German republic could have erywhere.
All available copies of Vol.
the party and decapitated the direct referendum on the issue of entering war, place that been saved by a popular front Broun remains. popular No. of this year Appeal army, now there and he ignores the fact fronter, with whom we have Stalin is openly posing his own candidacy for power in the hands of the people.
that a popular front did exist, nothing in common.
are needed for purposes of In his binding, the role of principal agent of Hitler. Let the Let the people deside!
hacks of the Comintern lie and get out of this of the Social Democrats and break with the Stalinists, he We would appreciate it how they can. The facts are so clear, so conWe must cast from our backs the false friends, the be the bourgeois democrats which proposes merely to continue on vincing that no one will succeed any longer trayers, the traitors, who will lead only from defeat to like all popular fronts, proved yesterday stalinist policy. The Appeal readers would send in as many coples of this isimpotent, as in France and struggle for the overthrow of deceiving the public opinion of the internation disaster.
sue as they may have avallal working class with charlatan phrases. BeSpain. The real crime of the all forms of capitalism, the We must carry through the fight against the war and for fore Stalin falls, the Comintern will be in freedom, in our own way, with our own means, by our German Stalinist party was its militant struggle against faspieces. It will not be necessary to wait for failure to make a proletarian cism at home this road Broun Join the Socialist years before these things come to pass. own unconquerable might united front, build Workers De remains as blind to as when Irense Guards to stop the fas he was a Stalinist.
Workers Party Whom Can The People Trust?
SOCIALIST APPEAL, MARCH 28, 1939: The nature of an agreement, its aims and its limits, depend directly upon those who conclude such an agreement. Lenin government might have been compelled in BrestLitovsk to conclude a temporary agreement with Hohenzollern in order to save the revolution. Stalin government is capable of entering into agreements only in the interests of the ruling Kremlin clique and only to the detriment of the interests of the International working class.
The agreements between the Kremlin and the democracies meant for the Sections of the Communist International love nunciation of the class struggle, the strangulation of revolutionary organization, the support of social patriotism and, in consequence, the destruction of the Spanish revolution and sable.