SOCIALIST APPEAL NOVEMBER 17, 1939 By Dwight Macdonald ism, but because we are vitally concerned in the defense of the workers state that Stalin rules today as a usurper. And we ll defend that best, we ll ensure the end of all the Stalins, Hitlers, Roosevelts, and Chamberlains, by first establishing our own workers power right here.
SOCIALIST APPEAL VOL III, NO 88 Friday, November 17, 1989 Published Tson Weekly by the SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASSN.
at 116 University Place, New York, NY Telephone: Algonquin 3541 By James Burnham Their SPARKS IN THE NEWS Government Roosevelt Russian Policy In the World of Labor Subscriptions: per year: for six months. For den. In the Onited States oants per copy in Refore pur countries. single coples: cents.
Born The War Boom and Manhattan Bronx 100 for one year acriptions are 50 for mix moraritered second class matter September 29, 1989, at the post omce nt Now York, under the Act of March Well anyway, the war going to provide 1619.
jobs how many hungry lads have though that!
Editer: But it isn so MAX BEACHTMAN The war boom is on. Industrial production has Assoolate HitorMANUEL GARRETT FELIX MORROW gone beyond the peak levels of 1929. But ten General Manager Lestelent YSLEY MARTIN ABERN million unemployed, even by the government SHIRMAN conservative estimate, still walk the streets in vain search of non existent jobs.
Madame Perkins made a speech in WashingFIGHT WITH THE SOCIALIST ton, Nov. 13, boasting that this Fall industrial WORKERS PARTY FOR: production has gone to the peak levels of 1929.
But she immediately had to add: That does not job and a decent llying for every worker. Open the Idle factories operate them ander mean that employment will be correspondingly workers control quite as high, since machine processes are in8. Twenty Bulion dollar Federal public works creasingly efficient and the amount of goods proand housing program.
duced by each worker averages more than it did Thirty thirty 80 weekly minimum wage 80ten years ago.
hour weekly maximum for all workers on all jobs.
It a mad world, my masters, as even Shakes5. Thirty dollar weekly old age and disability pension.
peare fool knew. More is being produced now Expropriate the Sixty Familles.
than was being produced ten years ago; every All war funds to the unemployed.
worker turns out more goods than each individ8. people referendum on any and all wars. ual worker used to turn out. And the result? No secret diplomacy.
Disaster for the working class.
10. An Independent Labor Party.
Where does the money go that used to be paid 11. Workers Defense Guards against vigilante and to some ten million additional workers to turn Fascist attacks.
out the same amount of goods ten years ago?
12. Full social, political and economie equality for the Negro people.
That money now goes into the pockets of the bosses. Instead of more money to the workers because they produce more, and less hours of work so that everybody can enjoy the improved productivity, ten million workers and their dependents take the rap.
The war going to provide no jobs for the unemployed. What it will provide them with is a uniform and early prospects of a coffin.
The war is a good thing for the fat cats and With the careful deliberation that marks all for nobody else. That why we re against the its moves in the field of foreign policy, the war and why every worker who wants to live Roosevelt administration has set about preparshould be against the war.
ing the ground for American intervention in an The real fight for jobs is a fight against the eventual war of the imperialist powers against war and the war makers. All war funds to the the Soviet Union.
unemployed! Expropriate the Sixty Families Besides the open espousal of the Anglo French the war makers! job and a decent living for cause in the present war, this is the cardinal every worker!
premise right now of the Roosevelt foreign policy.
It is demonstrated in scores of ways, big and small. Hitler has theoretically been the main object of hostility but never after any of Hitler The New York Vote many open attacks on the government did Roosevelt have his secretary make a public reIn its first appearance on the ballot in New ply, as he had him do after Molotov recent York City, the Socialist Workers Party polled speech. Roosevelt stepped into the Finnish busi 2, 259 recorded votes in the borough of the ness in a manner precisely calculated to fan Bronx for its Council candidate, Max ShachtAmerican hostility to Russia and let it be perman. The results of the Manhattan write in for fectly plain: this hostility is not aimed at the Lyman Paine will not be known until the final perfidious Stalin, his crimes against the workofficial tabulations are made public.
ers of Russia and of the world, but against the The votes recorded for Shachtman were the root and branch of the workers state itself.
first choice votes given him under the proportional representation system. As soon as he was On the broader diplomatic field the chief field eliminated the second and third and fourth choice of American intervention is with respect to Jap votes given to the were naturally lost in an. American diplomacy is engaged trying to the division of these returns among the other Woo Japan into a bloc of powers for war against candidates. Shachtman actual vote undoubtedly Russia. The Anglo French reduction of garriran many thousands above the recorded figure.
sons in China is part of this game.
But this is not the important thing. The fact Just as Chamberlain tried at Munich to bring that we won a place on the ballot, securing thouGermany and Russia into conflict rather than let sands more than the required signatures to get it, events slide toward an Anglo German clash, represents a long stride forward for our party.
Roosevelt is now trying to embroil Japan and More important still is the fact that in this cam.
Russia and thereby spare Wall Street the ex paign with leaflets, street corner meetings, and pense of dealing itself with Japan first and Rus indoor meetings, we brought many more thousia afterward. Where Chamberlain failed, Roose sands of Bronx workers the firm, uncompromisvelt thinks he can succeed.
ing anti war program of our party.
The New York Times, which speaks with the The boss parties and the American Labor Parvoice of Wall Street imperialism, last Sunday ty came before the workers as the avowed supdrew a pregnant parallel between the present porters of the Washington London Paris axis in attitude toward Russia and the relations the present war. The Communist Party stood as between the young American Republic and the the representative of the Berlin Moscow axis.
revolutionary government in France nearly 150 We emerged as the fighting representatives of the years ago.
third camp that uncompromisingly fights all the war. makers and strikes for a workers peace. Relations with France, not long after our Revolutionary War, were embittered to the exthrough workers power.
treme, said the Times editorial, when the tranThat our vote was small was a reflection only sitory sansculotte government at Paris, overridof the fact that our party is still small and its ing all considerations of international propriety, voice barely heard among the thunder of its opundertook first to interfere in our internal poliponents. But its ideas are great and powerful and tics, next to blackmail our evoys for the safety of will one day encompass the world. The New York campaign was one step in bringing that day our ships upon the seas. The return of friendlinearer.
ness with France, now unbroken for a century, came when orderly diplomatic relations had been restored by the ending of the regime of fanatiJUST OUT. With the vicious anti Red campaign already Why Negroes Should Oppose the War in full swing and the City of Flint hullabaloo By Johnson echoing in our ears, we have no difficulty in un message that affects the life of every Negro!
derstanding just what the Times means, means that this country aims at ending the regime of ORDER NOW!
fanaticism in Russia in order to restore order.
ly diplomatic relations. It issues a call for the Price 50 per copy. Bundle rates 10 to 50 3c per overthrow of the Russian regime and will work copy. 50 or more 242c per copy toward that end, just as the British capitalists SPECIAL RATES TO ORGANIZATIONS worked for years to crush revolutionary France 150 years ago PIONEER PUBLISHERS We ll fight that attempt, not because we are 116 University Place, interested in defending the foul regime of StalinThe Food Stamp Plan again Footnote on Girdler When wrote in the New International several If the Supreme Court upholds the recent de months ago about the Government ingenious cision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Tom The dead end which imperialism has reached is orange and blue stamp plan for feeding the unemployed on Federal surplus commodities. Girdler Republic Steel Company will have to shown with striking clarity by the inability of any of rehire 5, 000 employees fired during the 1937 steel the warring powers looked long and earnestly into the mouth of that strike. It will also have to pay each of them back rhetoric of all the propagandists is unable to hide the state its war aims. All the particular gift horse.
wages for th centire period since the strike, an fact that they cannot tell the people of the world, in There was at that time plan to extend the act of enforced philanthropy which will probably simple and concrete terms, what they are fighting sale of food stamps to families not on relief cost Republic in the vicinity of 7, 500, 000. for.
whose income was less than 19. 50 a week. As pointed out then, this move, although it meant Republic, which was put together just before Germany, in line with its peace offensive, dethe 1929 crash by the high flying Cyrus Faton, clared that there was nothing to fight about. What an immediate gain in living standards for these non relief poor families, had some dangerous this meant, of course, was that Germany wanted to has never been able to accumulate the fat cash long range implications.
reserves of the other big steel companies. Finan preserve its conquests while it got ready for new One of these was that it tended to extend the cially, Republic has always been the weak link ones. The older Nazi talk about re uniting the Ger stamp plan as a substitute for relief, since in in the chain of the steel industry. If it actually man race no longer makes sense, with Czechs and many communities local officials, regardless of has to pay ou tany such sum as 7, 500, 000, Re Poles and Slovaks now under Nazi rule.
the intentions of Washington, would so use the publlc may be crippled or even put out of busi Chamberlain has been tryingto get by with the explan. Another, which applies to the whole food ness.
pressed goal of wiping out Hitlerism. This was good stamp plan despite the raptures with which the for a speech or two, but it wears thin with repitition.
This would be tough on Tom Girdler. But liberal press has greeted it, is that the substituEveryone is compelled to ask: what will take the must admit that this particular human tragedy place of Hitlerism? What will guarantee against tion of food stamps for cash relief is a step backleaves me unmoved. If ever there is a fascist worse than Hitlerism? Who will do the wiping out, ward towards the old food basket relief of Hoov drive to power in this country, Girdler will be erian days. Finally, this extension of Government and how?
one of the ringleaders. Even in the steel indusThe moral weakness in this inability to state war control over the consumption habits of those on try, Girdler stands out for his personal ruthlessrelief and, in this latest development of the nonaims is already being widely felt in the belligerent ness and barbarism. There is something warped countries. clamor is arising especially, it seems, relief poorer families was one more step in the and subhuman about his personality. He is a in England. for something more definite in the way process of tieing down the masses with bureaucratic regulations.
great hunter and horseman, and he makes it clear that he infinitely prefers horses to men. The only of a perspective and goal. modest enough request.
surely: if we are to die, we should at least be told time ever saw him, years ago, long before the what we are dying for.
Too Many Guinea Pigs!
Little Steel Strike and the Massilon and MemHere and there, publicists, journalists and even The WPA plan was to try out the exten orial Day massacres, received an unforgettable statesmen are trying to put some sort of goal into sion of the foo dstamp idea first in Pottawatomie impression of inhumanity and even positive malwords.
County, Oklahoma. Recently, after considerable evolence.
delay. this initial test experiment got under The Federal States of Europe weigh. report in the Times explains the Like Shooting Rabbits.
reasons for this delay. At first, all non relief famIt is of very great interest to observe that, in alilies with an income of under 19. 50 a week were Republic had just taken over the Corrigan Mc most every case, when imaginations get going they declared eligible for food stamps. survey of Kinney steel plant in Cleveland, and was ration reach out toward the notion of a federated Europe.
the county, however, showed that such maxializing it that is, firing about half the em Even before the war began, Clarence Streit essay mum would place on the eligibility list almost ployees. In describing this operation, Girdler along these lines (Union Now) gained considerable half the families in the county.
dwelt with evident pleasure on the hundreds of popularity and a society has been formed to propaThus the social breakdown of American capi Corrigan McKinney workers he had been able to gate his plan. In recent weeks, several British writers talism has already gone so farhail the Ameri eliminate. He told how he and four or five other have presented their varieties of similar schemes.
can Standard of Living, at 19. 50 per family per top executives made a tour of the entire plant In his Armistice Day address at Swarthmore Colweek! that it is now found impossible to in the day Republic took over, constituting them. lege, no less a figure than the Marquess of Lothian, crease the income of the masses even in the nigselves a sort of firing squad to execute on the new British Ambassador to Washington, came out for gardly and bureaucratic way proposed by the spot the superfluous workers. We see five or the same slogan. True enough, Lord Lothian is hardly food stamp plans. The WPA officials temporarily six men working around a blast furnace, he yet a fiery crusader. Nobody, he remarked, had offer avoided this difficulty by arbitrarily restricting reminlaced pleasantly. We go up to them and ed any practical scheme of Federation and a large the test experiment to four hundred families. But point out three or four You. you. you. scale European federation was not yet in sight; but, the other thousands of families with incomes of get your pay check. You re through! This according to the Times, the Ambassador foresaw the 19. 50 a week down still exist in Pottawatomie seemed to amuse him. With a grin he med eventual application to Europe of the federal prinCounty. And they must still be reckoned with up what the episode had meant to him: It was ciple tried first on the American Continent a century once the new plan gets out of the test tube stage. some slaughter! Like shooting rabbits sitting! and a half ago.
True enough, also, Lord Lothian found that one necessary preliminary is the defeat of totalitarian imperialism. The British are always careful not to clutter up their wars with ideals; Ideals are always a matter for an indefinite future.
But we cannot dismiss this spreading talk about a federated Europe as mere casual daydreaming.
There is more to it than that, and we shall find it cropping By Paul Stevens up more and more prominently. We must be sure to understand what is at issue.
cial legislation abolished and, above all their French Labor Under the Heel 40 hour week transformed into a 72 hour week. The Paralysis of Nationalism of the War Dictatorshipduced anywhere from 30 to 40 per cent, not to It is a fact that the political organization of Europe Only the scantiest scraps of information re speak of the wholesale slaughter of the trade into its madhouse of sovereiga nations makes imgarding the labor movement have managed to unionists sent to the front.
possible a free secure and expanding life for the come out of France. Labor news from that war.
Belin explains all these fruits of independent peoples of Europe. And, when today we listen to the torn country is almost as rare as from Germany.
trade unionism away as follows: Lord Lothians, let us restene that it was the vicThe labor press has been reduced to a shadow tors of Versailles who In a period of war it is hard to see what reon Europe these poof its former self. All the Stalinist dailies have mains of democracy and liberty. In times of litical lines, without regard to the economic, social or completely disappeared. Nor has there been any war, liberty and democracy, like the monuments cultural needs of the peoples.
noticeable Stalinist effort to issue an illegal press.
National states, the political form under which in the public squares, are sort of hidden from Only La Vie Ouvriere, the Stalinist trade union sight by sand bag embankments. Later on, the young and vigorous capitalism pushed through the weekly still appears with a semblance of regular structure of feudalism, have become a most terrible sandbags will be removed.
ity. The last issue of that paper whose contents obstacle to mankind. What an overpowering burden have come to our attention shows that the Stalin Thousands of workers have replied to this state of affairs with a mass exodus from the the blood sucking tariffs; the dozens of swarming it is to Europe: these thousands of customs houses; ists had not yet made their turn from social paunions.
triotis mto the new, camouflaged, anti war pobureaucracies: the border lines of billions of dollars worth of forts, with all the national armies and guns sition by the end of September. Thus, Monmousseau, the editor, writes in a leading article: The First Rumblings of Revolt and planes to accompany them; the passports and The struggle for liberty against Hitlerite bar.
barism does not signify for those who fight in the But the revolutionary voices are not silenced tientity cards and work cards. No rational organizaeconomic and human resources as a whole is altogether in the trade unions. Thus, the Federa even conceivable under such circumstances. And imranks of the countries subjected to this aggrestion of Technicians, with which militants of the measurable human energies are squandered daily, sion merely defense at any price of the nation it. Fourth International have long been identified, even in peace time, to sustain this mad national struc self against foreign oppression; it also means, at has publicly proclaimed its revolutionary interna ture.
the same time, defense of public liberties, of tionalist position. Its stand has been endorsed by And, though these things are most conspicuously democracy and of all that which comprises the several local unions and trade union councils. At true of Europe, they hold for the entire world. Under possibilities of social progress and human liberapresent they are engaged in a struggle to pre the conditions of modern science, technique and protion.
vent their expulsion from the CGT.
duction, the national state everywhere paralyzes the Here and there in a factory, the International progress of mankind.
In the Middle of the Crossing is sung spontaneously by the workers. In the Paris munition works a mass movement against But Whose Federation?
This was written weeks after the had alreduction of wages has begun to make itself felt.
ready been dissolved by the Daladier government, This is why we, as socialists, agree a thousand In one factory a social patriot calling for support and only testifies in part to the great confusion in to Daladier was recently sent to the hospital by times with the perspective of a federated Europethe ranks of the Stalinist functionaries, who for we go much further, and call for a federated world. group of enraged workers. Even at the front, months now have been juggling phrases which But the question does not end with the bare conthe soldiers are beginning to grumble against try to reconcile democratic patriotism with apthe war of the bosses. Our comrades report cept of a federation. We must ask who will do the proval of the Stalin Hitler Pact and the line flowfederating?
that on a recent visit to the front, Daladier was ing from it.
It is not at all improbable that, whoever wins the booed in the trenches.
war, some sort of federal plan for Europe will be set The great trade union daily, Le Peuple, has These are but the first rumblings of a native up. Too many persons have come to realize the imbeen transformed into a weekly. The social demo bolshevism, says one of our correspondents, possibility of the nationalist structure; that structure cratic press has likewise suspended most of its which the French bourgeoisie fears far more than has been proved too dangerously unstable.
daily publications, with only Le Populaire still the so called imported variety which it has been But: whose federation. appearing regularly.
able quite easily to suppress.
Hitler, in his own way, has proved himself something of a federalist. If he has the chance, he will Naturally, as was to be expected, the entire social democratic leadership, both the collective undoubtedly show great talents along federal lines.
For International Solidaritysecurity faction under Leon Blum and the paciHe has already constructed a federation out of Gerfist faction under Paul Faure, is completely From China many, the Saar, Austria, Czecho slovakia, western Poland. It was, among other things, precisely the inbacking the Daladier government in its conduct Recently comrade representing the Chinese of the war.
sane Versailles born national structure that permitted section of the Fourth International passed him to do so.
through here The comrade gave an account of And Hitler federation of Europe would mean, exSyndicalism. Its Fruits the work of that section which is testimony of actly, the reduction of the national states of Europe an unquenchable heroism in the face of untold But even the pacifist syndicalists under Belin to Nazi provinces.
dangers. More than 500 comrades, concentrated and Dumoulin have given up every pretense of an Lord Lothian is now looking forward to a federain the main industrial centers and in the guerilla anti war struggle. Thus, their weekly, Syndicats, tion. It would differ from Hitler only in having its armies fighting Japanese Imperialism, are waging capital at London (or possibly Paris) instead of Berdeclares that we will take care not to give any a daily battle for the ideas revolutionary in lin, and in the reduction of the national states to council (sic) in the conduct of military opera ternationalism. Two monthly illegal papers and a tions and further, that in order to make all the legal weekly make their regularly to the provinces of Anglo British instead of German imperialism.
arrangements corresponding to the necessities of factories in Shanghai and the other industrial such production as is indispensable to armament For Lord Lothian and for Hitler, a federated Eucities.
rope means merely a new name for an advanced type and to the human possibilities (sic. it is necesWe have just received urgent word from our sary that our syndicalism be freed from outside of imperialist tyranny.
comrades in China, however, with amecontrol.
If federation is to mean freedom and peace and diate financial aid their organization faces almost progress for the peoples of Europe, there is only one In other words, their slogan for the independ certain extinction: In the past comrades here basis on which it can be constructed: on the basis ence of syndicalism turned out in practice to be have responded promptly and generously to the of socialism. And there is only one force that can a cover under which control of the trade unions appeals of our Chinese organization. Will we now, set up such a federation: the workers and peasants was transferred from the Stalinists. to Dala at this critical moment, fail to respond again?
of Europe struggling against their imperialist gov.
dier.
We must not let down our valiant Chinese ernments and against their war. In This inauspicious realization of independence section in this hour of need! Rush donations, no German workers fight not against but alongside of has borne some pretty rotten fruit for the mass of matter how small, to the Socialist Appeal, 116 the workers of France and England, the workers in the unions. Thus, their press 18 University Place, New York City! Hold social af federated Europe? Yes: this is what we call to muzzled, hundreds of their militants arrested for fairs! Take up collections among your friends! as the solution to ti war. And we sum up that goal seditious language, correspondence spled, com Our Chinese organization needs your help at in our great slogan: For a Socialist United States of munications suppressed, agreements violated, 80 once. Do your bit!
Europe!
cism.
that struggle