SOCIALIST APPEAL DECEMBER 23, 1939 SPARKS IN THE NEWS Government 10.
11.
Kuusinen People GovernmentofFinland of a Finnish Communist party In the World of Labor the civil war nor the ensuing waves of persecuSOCIALIST APPEAL tion and illegality shook them from their loyal By Dwight Macdonald ty. That loyalty was at last shaken, not by the heir by James Burnham Vol. III, No. 94 Saturday, December 28, 1989 Finnish bourgeoisie, but by Stalin. When he orPublished Weekly by the dered the German Communist party to go down SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASSN.
into the dust without striking a blow against at 116 University Place, New York, NY.
Hitler, the Finnish workers lost their faith in Telephone: Algonquin 8547 the Comintern. And the Moscow trials gave the The 1940 Legislative Finnish Communist party its knockout blow. Understatement Dept.
pedalling up from their living quarters to gun Editors: positions. The phrase, ride to work. 18 FELIX MORROW MAX SHACHTMAN Stalin socialism as experienced by the Finns Experiments in how best to entertain soldiers significant back of the Maginot Line have shown that movie of Soviet Karelia, just across the border, grew Program of the CIO Another report describes the new field uniform General Manager: Assistant Manager: shows come first, cards second and games like more and more abhorrent until today the point dominoes third in popularity. Few men show of the British Army: The Highlanders whom GEORGE CLARKE SHERMAN STANLEY General Gort visited were in their picturesque has been reached where Mannerheim can, with any disposition to read books, possibly because uniforms. The day was one of the last occasions The CIO Legislative Program for 1940, which was Subscriptions: 00 per year 00 for six months out any difficulty, mobilize the Finnish proletar there is always too much interruption. news which these and other Scottish troops report in a recent Times made publie this week, deserves careful study. HowForeign. 00 per year. 50 for six months. Bundle will appear in the field in their traditional uniever inadequate we may think it, however much we orders: cents per copy in the United States: cents The Official Record Death, Inc.
forms. The change is being rapidly made from may disagree with part or all of it, its contrast to per copy in all foreign countries. Single copies: cents, the peacetime uniform to battle dress a most In previous columns, have noted how the the Platform of American Industry (the manifesto of unromantic but eminently practical costume for former sharp distinction between war and peace the National Association of Manufacturers that As a matter of fact, the Stalinist movement Roentered as second class matter December combat, consisting of a one piece khaki overall discussed last week) is immediately apparent and in 1939, at the post offee at New York, NY. under the has made little pretense, during the last two has become blurred in our age, until by now war with a zipper fastener down the front and snaps Act of March 3, 1879.
has been absorbed into the normal, everyday rouall respects favorable to the CIO. The CIO document at the trouser bottoms to keep out the mud.
years, of possessing a Communist movement in tine of life under capitalism.
says something, and what it says is relevant to the Kilts and tantans give way to zippered khaki Finland. Here is what is revealed by an examin This seems to hold true of both the borugeoisie concrete realities of present day life. The said overalls. The soldier has become a mass producnothing: its platform is a meaningless jumble of ab.
FIGHT WITH THE SOCIALIST ation of the files of the Comintern weekly, World and the workers in this war. As to the former, tion worker who wears overalls and rides to work stract rhetoric. There is little doubt that the CIO News and Views (formerly the International after the outbreak of the war that it would pay on his bicycle. If the war drags on this way much WORKERS PARTY FOR: deliberately intends to have its program appear in Press Correspondence. During the entire year compensation for all damages to civilian life, longer, whole industrial towns may spring up bethe public eye as the direct challenger of that of the hind the lines, inhabited by families of soldiers.
bosses. job and a decent living for every worker.
of 1938 in 52 issues Finland appears only limb and property due to action by or against The infantry worker will kiss his wife good2. Open the idle factories operate them under twice in its claborate index two minor articles Sir John Simon, Chancellor of the Exchequer, exbye in the morning and tramp, or cycle of The States the Problems workers control neither of which even mentions the Finnish plained: The risk is one which affects us all and work. a rifle on one shoulder and a well filled Twenty Blon dollar Federal public works lunch box and thermos of hot coffee under the John Lewis has many times proved himself a and housing program.
Communist party. It is ironical to note that one a particular person or a particular property arm. The thoroughly tamed trade union bureau.
sensiti reflector of the moods of the workers in Thirty thirty 80 weekly minimum wage 80 of those articles approvingly quotes a Helsing which is struck is a casual victim of the general cracies in France and England will then raise this country. This, indeed, is the source of his great peril which the State is engaged in doing its best hour weekly maximum for all workers on all jobs.
fors workers mass meeting resolution for desome inspiring new slogans: TIME AND strength and superiority as a labor leader. That he to resist. Thus war is officially recognized as HALF FOR OVERTIME IN THE TRENCHES! ruthlessly exploits and perverts these moods for reThirty dollar weekly old age and disability fense of the independence of Finland, and goes one of the normal hazards of doing business unNO OFFENSIVES ON SATURDAY AFTER actionary ends is another matter. He is the shrewdpension.
on to comment. der capitalism, and the shopkeeper whose win NOONS AND SUNDAYS! Expropriate the Sixty Familles.
est of opportunists, riding on the crest of proletarian dows are shattered by German bombs can collect mass sentiment. It was in this way that he took tri The organized working class of Helsingfors from the state for them just as if the damage All war funds to the unemployed.
Anthology of War Poetry, No. umphant leeadership of the industrial union move8. people referendum on any and all wars. is emphatically in favor of defending the inde had been done by His Majesty police officers in Bernarr MacFadden, publisher of pulp maga ment, leaving behind in his wake the case hardened the discharge of their duty.
pendence of the country. But it demands that the No secret diplomacy.
old fogies.
The British business man can also insure himazines, last year offered a 1, 000 prize for an of An Independent Labor Party.
army shall be purged of those elements who want self with private firms against the hazards of ficial song for the Army Air Corps hithThe new CIO Legislative Program gives witness erto songless. reproduce below the first verse Workers Defense Guards against vigilante and to drag Finland in the wake of the Nazis war peace. Armistice insurance is now one of the Fascist attacks.
of the winning ditty, officially approved by Major once again to Lewis sensitivity. In clear and open policy.
regular forms of insurance in London. For a prefashion, the Program states, and states correctly, the 12.
really major problems facing the American working Full social, political and economic equality for mium of ten pounds on every hundred pounds The other article complains that Holsti has worth of business, a business man can fully inCorps: the Negro people.
class. Every worker will find himself in agreement on been forced to resign as Foreign Minister be sure himself against all losses which might reOff we go into the wild blue yonder, the statement of problems. There is no twaddle about cause of his hostility to Nazi pressure!
Climbing high into the sun sult if the war ends in the next two months. For Hull trade treaties or balanced budgets or muevery additional month after that, he must pay Here they come zooming to meet our nicipal corruption, with which the boss press is now As with these two articles, so in the general ten pounds more.
thunder, filled in an effort to confuse the people, but the war, report on May Day in the Various Countries For the workers as well, this war has taken At em boys, Give er the gun!
jobs, and democratie rights.
Down we dive spouting our flame from for that year, there is no mention of the existence on something of the character of normal peace. under The Congress of Industrial Organizations functioning as soldiers only when they put on Off with one helluva roar!
urges for the serious consideration by the FedDuring 1939 the Comintern weekly again their uniforms. This time in uniform they still We live in fame eral Congresa a legislative program based upon The Stalinist press has had very little to say Or go down in flame certain fundamental objectives. 1) The United retain the character of workers engaged in some mentions Finland only twice. The first time to about Kuusinen People Government of FinStates must keep out of involvement in the forBOY! Nothing ll stop the Army Afr report that The toiling population of the counvast industrial undertaking. Thus one recent news item from the Maginot Line read: So great Corps!
eign wars. 2) The attention of this country land, since it was established. We should like try has taken up with enthusiasm the slogan is are the distances that the troops actually ride to NOTE (by publisher of song. For radio, suband labor leaders of this country, must be directand the energies of our Government, industrial to hear a little more about it and about the backsued by Tanner against fascism (Jan. the work on bicycles. We passed details of them stitute ter ri ble.
ed toward the immediate solving of the probbone of this government, the Finnish Communsame Tanner whom the Stalinists now claim replem of unemployment. 3) The democratic rights ist party. How strong a section of the workingresents no section of the toiling population. In served and maintained; and (4) There must be class and peasantry backs it? What is its membercontinued assurance and protection of the rights Manuilsky report to the Eighteenth Congress of labor to organize and bargain ship ii only in round numbers? Just what are of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union the cornerstone for the preservation and extenthe claims of the Kuusinen government to (March, 1939. there is a lengthy and verbose sion of any economic and social program.
sovereignty?
section on The situation in the Communist ParThese points are claborated in the body of the proWe ask these questions because a painstaking ties. In boastful language it mentions many par By Paul Stevens gram. In addition there are sections on the Wagner study of the records of the Comintern fail to ties, including many which have no real exist. Australian Labor Bucks Comrade Franz Meyer Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, Social Security, Health, Housing and Taxation. So far as they go, no provide us with the answers. More accurately, ence; but among those mentioned the Finnish our study provides us with evidence on the basis exception can be taken to what is advocated in these Imprisoned in Antwerp Communist party does not appear! Likewise in Conscription for War in Europe sections. The demands, it is true, do not in any cause of which one can come to only one conclusion: Resistance to the dragooning of youth for im At the beginning of September, our comrade the general report on May Day for the year, go far enough if we judge them in terms of the needs perialist slaughter goes on in one form or another Franz Meyer, member of the International Com of the masses, but their direction is undoubtedly right.
the Communist party of Finland has been prac there is no mention of the Finnish party. The in all the belligerent countries. It is only rarely, munists of Germany (I. was arrested in As a matter of fact, they are more adequate and entically non existent for years in any shape or Premier of the People Government, however, that censorship allows a glimmer of the Antwerp, Belgium lightened than remember in any comparable CIO or form and, consequently, Kuusinen govern Kuusinen, contributes (March 18, 1939) a true situation to break through to see the light AFL document in recent years.
of day.
Comrade Meyer was charged with furnishing ment has no constituency to represent. We pro lengthy article on Twenty Years of the Comanti war cartoons to the weekly paper of our In passing, it is worth observing that the old CIO munist International. It mentions many things Communist League (Fourth International) car.
In Australia, for instance, our comrades pose to prove this fact to the satisfaction of any the Belgian Revolutionary Socialist Party, La Lutte policy of calling for no amendments to the Wagner Ouvriere, under the name of Holz.
Act, as the means of fighting against reactionary atCommunist party member or sympathizer who and many parties but not the Finnish party ried on a vanguard struggle against the so called is seriously trying to understand the present tempts at amendment, has been changed to a counterReports appear of the congresses of the various National Register, long before the war started. Here is an example of the justice meted attack. The CIO now demands amendments of its own events.
Scandinavian parties, at which fraternal dele. They explained patiently that the registration of out by the so called Socialist Minister of all man power by the government was merely a Foreign Affairs, Paul Spaak, to a man whose terests by providing criminal penalties for employers directed toward strengthening the Act in labor in, gates appear from the parties in the neighboring prelude to conscription. All the opposition parties, alleged crime is that he puts his art in the sercountries but never a representative of the Fin including the Labor Party and the Stalinists, sup vice of the struggle against war. Is Belgian contracts to firms violating the Act, and prohibition offenses against the Act, prohibition of government nish party ported the government then, and ridiculed the democracy really in such a poor state of health of the splitting up of industrial unions.
that it has to resort to the use of police measures The Communist party had been illegal in Fin The second reference to Finland in the year youth for war overaeas.
idea that Australia was preparing to conscript against cartoonists and caricaturists?
Is Spaak What Is Left Out land, for some years before the present events.
1939 appears in the Comintern weekly of July When the war broke out, the Menzies Governconception of the democratic right of asylum but that is scarcely the explanation for its im 15, an article entitled The Finnish People for ment finally proclaimed its intention to put conone in which a refugee artist from Hitler Ger From what have said so far, it might seem that potence. The capacity of the Finnish revolution: Democracy. It reports the results of the July scription into force. However, the Sydney Sun.
many is to be subjected to the same type of per ought to urge support and acceptance of the Program secution as in Nazi Germany?
as a suitable platform for the Socialist Workers Parists to function under conditions of illegality and elections: The results of the Finnish parlia pro Government organ, explained on October 23 terrorism has been established time and time They (the conscripts) will not bleed for Imper Meyer has been imprisoned since September. posals ought to be supported by the and by ty. Indeed, do believe that most of its specific promentary elections on July prove that the peo ial ambitions or capitalistic advantage. They will What is the accusation filed against him? Why is again since the end of the civil war of 1918. ple of Finland are for freedom and democracy simply learn how, if an enemy attacks their own he being held incommunicado? What intentions all workers.
hundred thousand Finnish workers and peasants and against fascism. It records 500, 000 votes country. Australia, to put up a good fight against does the Spaak government have with respect to But a Program has a history, and must be judged were struck down by Mannerheim White for the social democrats, an increase of nearly massacre.
him, instead of being pitched, untrained, into be deported and turned over to Hitler hang amine this CIO Program from a more extended point this refugee revolutionist? Is this rebel artist to by what it omits as well as by what it says. If we exGuards aided by German troops well over 30. 50, 000 over 1936. It records no votes for the men Now we learn that this last shred of deception 000 executed and dead of hunger and sickness of view, we must add new conclusions, Finnish Communist party, not merely because has been dispensed with and that an Australian Every class conscious worker, every upright in the concentration camps, the others tortured The Program, for example, says nothing about that party was illegal; the party itself was il. Imperial Force is to be raised and would pro writer and artist has the right to demand an whom labor must fight against in order to achieve its and then imprisoned for long terms. Despite this ceed overseas early in 1940. This was the anlegal, as we have pointed out, in almost every answer from the Belgian democracy on the objectives; nor how to carry on the fight for them; frightful blood letting, the Socialist Workers nouncement made by Prime Minister Robert case of Franz Meyer.
election, yet up to 1930 managed to express it Menzies in the Australian House on November 29.
nor lo most important what the record of Lewis has been in the past fights for similar objectives.
Party was organized by 1920, was joined by the self in the elections; it records no electoral ac After going along for months in support of the Swedish Section of International vast majority of the organized workers and at tivity for the Finnish Communist party because government measures on the ground of their The Program advocates a minimum of 3, 000, 000 once assumed control over the trade unions. Aftpurely defensive character, the Labor leaders find Front Against War that party had, in the intervening years, com jobs in public works plus public jobs for all youth themselves hard put to go the whole hog when who are out of work and out of school. In the past er its affiliation to the Comintern, twenty of its pletely lost its following the naked imperialist content of the war preparaat head of Reaction also Lewis has been for jobs; but he persuaded the leading members were accused of high treason, In that July 15 article, the Finnish Communtions is revealed.
Stalin invasion of Finland has called forth a workers to fight for them by putting all faith in condemned to long prison terms, and the party ist party is mentioned the first and last men The New York Times of November 30 reports: Roosevelt, who was the man who cut the jobs.
tremendous reaction in Scandinavia. Sympathy press banned. Nevertheless in the elections of motion by the leader of the Labor Party, John tion of it in the Comintern weekly during a perwith the attacked Finns reaches deep into the The Program advocates keeping out of war. In the 1921 the party received 128, 000 or 14 per cent Curtin, that Parliament go on record as opposing workers circles. The reactionaries are utilizing past, too, Lewis has spoken against getting into the iod of two years! It is mentioned in a curious the dispatch of an Australian Imperial Force to of all the votes cast.
the situation for an attack on civil liberties. In war: but he has been and remains a part of the context: the ban it should be lifted, anti fight in Europe was defeated today in the House Sweden the Communist paper Ny Dag has been Roosevelt machine which is itself the chief warIn 1923 some 140 more leading party mem fascist prisoners should be released, etc.
of Representatives. The government defeated the banned and the government has ordered the press making apparatus.
Curtin motion by only 33 to 28.
bers were arrested, in 1924 some 189 more; These measures would be best calculated to distribution bureau, which has a monopoly over The strong vote for the Curtin motion is in the sale of papers on the streets and at the The Program demands democratic rights for labor.
more than 400 years of imprisonment were mobilize the people for the defense of Finland dicative of the tremendous unrest, which serves as kiosks, to stop the distribution of the paper. In But in the past Lewis has got the workers to support meted out to them. In the clections of 1924 a independence and frustrate the big Finnish bour pressure from the ranks upon the Labor leaders.
stead of protesting against this unheard of coup the candidates of the Republican and Democratic parmake shift workers and peasants party was set geois plans of the Lappo fascists for drawing Register from the first. The voluntary recruitof the government, the representative in parlia ties, who, once in office, are the ones who amash.
ment of the Swedish Socialist Party, Flys, has those rights.
up to participate in place of the official Comin Finland into the fascist war of conquest.
ment system. initiated by the government at the become the advocate of even stronger measures.
tern party which had been forcibly dissolved; it outset of the war was a flop.
In a speech at the Riksdag session of December The Program advocates decent housing, medical received 11. per cent of all the votes. In 1925, The final collapse of the Finnish Communist in Official control of the unions will be able to Whether the Labor skates in Parliament and 2, he declared that it was absurd to grant service, social security. But it says not one word Swedish democratic rights to the agents of again, there were mass persecutions, and again party to the point where it is mentioned once in stem the tide, whether the government will be against the rotted system of private property and foreign power and demanded more appropriate illegalization of the party; it was represented in the last two years in the Comintern weekly able to make use of the pro Hitlerite treachery of measures on the part of the government. This private profits which, so long as it continues, guaranelections by a Socialist Workers and Peasants that is a clear index to the stature of the party ter of conjecture. In their bi weekly paper, the adaptation of Flyg to the moods of reaction is tees that the workers will never have decent housing party which in 1927 and 1929 received 12 and or medical service or social security.
which established a People Government Militant, our Australian comrades wind up their not only cowardly but stupid. For, it is clear 14. per cent of all the votes. Again in 1930 the for Finland.
that the attacks of Swedish reaction against free This is the record and this is why the Program, exposure of conscription in the following words: Communist party was proscribed, its property dom of the press will not be halted at the doors There is no better gauge of the enormously Menzies conscription can be defeated. The from the point of view of Lewis and his fellowseized and 269 of its members accused of high of the Stalinists. Already, the weekly of Ture bureaucrats, is a fake, designed not to organize the reactionary role of the Stalinist bureaucracy workers are willing to follow a militant lead, as treason and convicted. This was the time of the was shown by the National Register boycott. It Nemann, Tross allt. In Spite of Everything. workers for a real struggle toward the objectives of than the post war history of the Finnish workis necessa that their pposition be mobilized has been confiscated because its criticism of the peace, Jobs and freedom, but to head off such a struge peak of the Fascist Lappo movement. The illegal ing class. proletariat with a long and glorious and expressed by the medium of mass meetinga, Hitler regime is too sharp. Nermann has been gle and to keep them tied to things as they are.
Communist movement withstood the Finnish past it was in the vanguard in the Revolution demonstrations and above all, by the enunciation hauled into court for that. Flyg is simply digging of a clear cut anti capitalist policy. The Millfascist storm, however, and retained its mass of 1905 and which quickly recovered from the tant, November 11, 1939. This does not mean that the Program should be his own grave.
character up to 1933.
civil war of 1918, which tenaciously resisted cajust forgotten (as Lewis will forget it when the That the Australian Fourth Internationalists Flyg party is a member of the International time for voting comes. It means that if its progresThus, during fifteen heroic years of struggle, pitalist terror and illegality and showed its are doing their bit toward mobilizing the workFront against War, the successor of the London sive aims are to be realized, the workers, and eg.
from 1918 to 1933, the best sections of the Fin strength even by the bourgeois index of electoral ers in this direction is evidenced clearly by their bureau. What attitude do Lovestone, Brockway pecially the CIO members, should take the struggle paper and by the successful mass meetings in nish workers and peasants remained adherents results, was finally driven into the arms of the Sydney and Melbourne, which they carry on in and Plvert take towards the actions of their for those aims out of the hands of Lewis, and fight of the Comintern. Neither the blood letting of Finnish bourgeoisie by Stalin.
cessantly despite the war regime.
Swedish confrere. in closed, militant and independent class ranks.
From 1918 to 1933