Lest We Forget SPARKS IN THE NEWS NEWS The Lessons of Loyalist Spain Act of Marco. One New York, under the der in Spain; once again late pottery. in casual sen 5.
10.
12 The Red Army SOCIALIST APPEAL DECEMBER 30, 1939 his bureaucracy now dominates the Soviet Union SOCIALIST APPEAL instead of the revolutionary leadership of Lenin By Dwight Macdonald and Trotsky! How gleefully the lackeys of imVol. III, No. 95 Saturday, December 30, 1989 perialism write about the weakness of the Red Published Weekly by the Army under Stalin!
SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASS We recognize those weaknesses and we know at 116 University Place. New York, Telephone: Algonquin 8547 the causes. The Russian workers, passionately attached to the Soviet Union which they created with their flesh and blood, and determined to Editors: FELIX MORROW MAX SHACHTMAN chines could have been employed in making defend it against any and all imperialists, must Book Bargain By FELIX MORROW come to recognize that only the overthrow of houses, the extra income would have been Without much question the book bargain of General Manager Assistant Manager: enough to provide a new 6, 000 house for ev Among those who have now joined the flight from GEORGE CLARKE SHERMAN STANLEY the Stalinist bureaucracy can guarantee the de the year, of many years, is a quarto of 398 pages entitled The Structure of the American Econery family in the country. If, Instead, the lost Stalinism is Ralph Bates. His case is worth examin feat of the imperialist armies.
omy, Part I, Basic Characteristics. It is put out income had been used to build railroads, the ing for a number of reasons. Bates was one of the entire system of the country could have been The Soviet workers are compelled to fight on by the National Resources Committee, a governmost valuable agents whom the Stalinista had durSubscriptions: 32. 00 per year: 00 for six months.
scrapped and rebuilt at least five times ing the civil war in Spain. Although in Spain it wit by a Foreign: 00 per year. 60 for six months. Bundle two fronts: against the Finnish bourgeois army ment research agency, and was presection of economists under the large staff over. Failure to use available resources orders: cents per copy in the United States: centa a matter of public record that he was a member of and against the Stalinist bureaucracy. They must Gardner Means (who was co author, with meant a lower standard of living for practi the PSUC (the Stalinist party of Catalonia) he passed per copy in all foreign countries. Single coples: cent.
not permit the Finnish capitalist army, fighting Adolf Berle, of The Modern Corporation and Prlcally every group in the community.
in England and America, on his propaganda tours, vate Property. It is printed on coated stock, Later on. Means puts it in another way: If as a non partisan anti fascist. under this guise his in behalf of world imperialism, to be victorious.
Reentered as second class matter December the whole waste of the depression due to idle men articles, in the New Republic and elsewhere, appeared the post They must defeat that army; and to do so quick with many charts, graphs and maps, covering and idle machines could have been used to build to give independent weight to Stalinist alibis.
ly and decisively, in the interests of the workers two hundred biggest corporations to the amount agricultural and industrial plant, the existing In the very act of breaking It takes the form of of the world, they must overthrow the treacher of money spent by various income groups on plant could have been completely rebuilt. That an article in the December 13 New Republic. Bates FIGHT WITH THE SOCIALIST is, if we had had an economic system not in conous and reactionary Stalinist regime which is whitewashes the Stalinist record of betrayal and murtradiction to our productive forces, if socialism WORKERS PARTY FOR: undermining the Soviet Union and the world obtained by sending one dollar to the Superinof Documents, Washington, had replaced capitalism in 1929, then every steel praise of that revolution plant in the country, every cotton mill and packMarxists should find this book as absorbing tences following his lavish praise, he makes his only Job and a decent living for every worker.
ing house and shoe factory and every other inreading as any detective story. They will not exFord River Rouge criticism of the Stalinists: The theological bitter2. Open the idle factories opérate them under MUDDLING ALONG dustrial lant to pect Mr. Means and his staff to reach any valid ness of the Communist party, however, could be seen the smallest one room machine, shop, every mile workers control.
Ambassador Neville Henderson in the British We conclusions, and in this they will not be disap: in its attitude toward the POUM party. That party of railroad track, every locomotive, every barn Twenty Boulon dollar Federal public worla policies would have been disastrous had they been put and silo and grain elevator all of this and and housing program. Things are different than they were 125 years ago, in fact, which is in this case perhaps a virtue. thousand other such categories of productive basis for the utterly unscrupulous charge that the into effect. That indisputable truth was made the Thirty thirty 80 weekly minimum wage 30 says Hitler; and Henderson replies, Not so far as England is concerned!
But he does present frankly and honestly within plants could have been duplicated if the unemhour weekly maximum for all workers on all Jobs the limitations of the ruling class outlook the POUM was in actual contact with Franco and was ployed had been fully employed in those eight working exclusively and consciously in the Interests Thirty dollar weekly old age and disability basic data on which any sort of effective political years. Today we would be able to produce just of the fascists. But this criticism is so carefully pension.
thinking, Marxist or not, must be based.
twice as many goods and services as we actually phrased and so placed that the sum total of what II Expropriate the Sixty Familles.
are able to produce.
Bates has to say on Spain is that the Communist All war funds to the unemployed.
In the next New International plan to analStill More Party played a glorious role in the anti fascist strug8. people referendum on any and all wars.
Lenin said that he would accept help from gle.
yze and sumarize some of the wealth of data in Nor is this all. Even when our cockeyed capiNo secret diplomacy.
the devil and his grandmother, but he never this book. But there is one point made here which talist system is functioning at its very top form, An Independent Labor Party therefore embellished the devil and his relations is so dramatic an exposure of the insanity of our even in the boom year of 1929, it was unable to Bates Conceals More Than He Reveals 11. Workers Defense Guards against vigilante and capitalist system that it seems worth emphasizmake anything like full use of our productive reas fine, upstanding people. In every contact beIt is no wonder, therefore, that Bates confuses insources. The Brookings Institution, writes ing here.
Fascist attacks.
stead of enlightens his readers on the present course tween Stalin and Hitler which becomes public, Means, has estimated that in the peak year Full social, political and economic equality for of Stalinism. Bates begins his article by saying: Every one knows that during the last ten years 1929 both production and national income could. we have the duty of understanding how the we are provided with further evidence of the the Negro people.
thee have been from 8, 000, 000 to 16, 000, 000, 000 have been increased 19 percent by merely putting Russian crime against Finland came to be perpe fundamental difference between Lenin concep American workers for whom the system could to work the men and machines that were idle in trated. Only in that way shall we, free liberals and tion of maneuvering among the imperialist pow. not provide jobs. Every one, and especially the that year, even without the introduction of imradicals, learn what we have to do. But we never ers and Stalin servility toward the imperialists. subhuman depths of poverty these millions have proved techniques of production.
learn what we have to do from the article; how the The latest instance is the exchange of felicita been reduced. But it will come as a shock to most Nor is this all. Means figure of two hundred billion dollars only goes through 1937. But in the is left an impenetrable mystery.
Russian crime against Finland came to be perpetrated tions on Stalin birthday. Stalin is not the offi people to learn that if the available manpower fall of 1937 there occurred the sharpest economic thick veil of censorship and newspaper procial head of the Soviet state. By what conceivand machines in the country had been employed decline in the history of American capitalism. Stalin policy in Spain was, in reality, an even paganda hides the detailed facts about the milifully in the eight years, 1930 1937, our society In half a year, unemployment rose by 3, 000, 000 greater crime against the international working class able diplomatic conception need he express his tary situation of the Red Army in its invasion of would have produced two hundred billion dollars to a total 13, 000, 000; in a year, the farm price than his present crimes, for in Spain Stalin Inter thanks and gratitude for Hitler good more goods and services than it actually did. Index dropped from 128 to 92, the index of in vened against a full fledged social revolution, forcing capitalist Finland. There is no first hand inforwishes? The really greusome touch was in Stalthe masses back within the limits of bourgeois demfell from 118 to 76. Only now, Two hundred billion dollars is so huge a sum mation available concerning the actual condition dustrial partificial stimulus of a war boom, is under the ocracy and, in the process, destroying the morale of in message to von Ribbentrop: The friend that it might as well be two dollars. When figures of the Red Army, its equipment, its food supply, our economy painfully climbing out of the wreck the workers and peasants and decisively facilitating ship of the peoples of Germany and the Soviet reach a certain magnitude, they cease to make age of 1937 the victory of Franco and his Italo German allies. To its morale.
Union, CEMENTED BY BLOOD, has all any impression on the mind at all. They become Means has no estimate of the losses from un turn the clock of the revolution backward, to destroy The reports in the bourgeois press that the abstract concepts, like the number of trillion grounds to be prolonged and stable. Daily light years it would take to reach some distant employment in the last two years, 1938 1939, the collectivization of the factories and the land, Finnish army is winning victory after victory, Worker, Dec. 26. constellation. This volume however, makes it Considering the severity of the 1937 38 slump, it revolutionists. have tried to tell this terrible story Stalin had to destroy the very flower of the Spanish decimating the Red Army, that the Red Army is seems conservative to put the loss in the last Cemented by whose blood? The blood of the clear what this figure means: two years at the same rate as in the preceding in Revolution and Counter Revolution in Spain. But badly equipped, that its morale is low, that it is anti fascists in Hitler execution chambers? The The significance of this figure of two huneven in book space could record only a name here eight years. This would mean adding another hungry and on the verge of mutiny all of this blood of the German communists who fled to dred billions is hard to grasp, but some idea and there Camillo Berneri, Andres Nin, Alfredo Mar.
fifty billion dollars, which would be enough to can be obtained by considering what two hun.
must be taken with more than a graiti of salt replace every residential building in the country, tinez of the thousands upon thousands of POUM, the Soviet Union and were murdered by Stalin?
dred billion dollars would mean in terms of Some of the stories read like thost of the period from Park Avenue apartments to sharecroppers anarchist, left socialist, Trotskyist and dissident StalThe blood of the Polish workers whom Stalin concrete goods. If all the idle men and mainist workers who were assassinated by the Stalinist shacks of the Civil War (1917 20) when the heroic murder squads in order to crush the revolution. Bates delivered to Hitler?
soldiers of the Red Army were pictured as a whitewashes all this, even today, because he was an accomplice in this bloody work and has not the charstupid, unkempt, cowardly mob.
SUCCESS STORY actor to come clean now.
The capitalist press is fond of comparing the John Wanamaker promised his mother never to sell playing cards in his store.
lightning like speed with which the German army Bates and the New Republic in 1937 smashed Polish resistance and the slow pace at By Paul Stevens Read again the sentences have quoted from Bates is.
in which he mildly criticises the Stalinist attitude toFourth International Activity ployed, of the soldiers. Long live the united front ward the POUM. One would never guess from his deof all the oppressed for immediate demands which tached words that he was one of the most effective factors as the more difficult terrain upon which If a French peasant sells a pig to a German In Germany Confirmed will put an end to the starvation plans of the agents in securing non partisan anti fascist acceptthe Red Army is operating and the greater help Some time ago, the Appeal carried a dispatch ance of the Stalinist murder policy!
worker, that trading with the enemy. a capitalist reaction supported by the leaders of the Labor Party. Make the rich pay!
made available to bourgeois Finland by the Scanquoting a Paris Temps report on Trotskyist accrime punishable by the firing squad. Meanwhile, tion in Berlin. This is corroborated by a news cite, almost at random, two of his articles, in the dinavian, British, French and American capitalNew Republic, October 20 and 27, 1937. There we however, French big business is regularly ex report in the Copenhagen Politiken of October 26.
Moscow Confessions in England: read that three days before the Twelfth Internationists.
changing Lorraine iron ore for German coal. According to information gathered from di Pollitt and Campbell Recant al Brigade attacked Huesca in an attempt to help Nevertheless, as revolutionary defenders of It like the difference between stealing and high lice is engaged in a widespread raid action vers sources, writes Politiken, the German poThe Kremlin old wheel horses in the democBilbao, the POUM troops were playing football with the Soviet Union we consider it our first duty to the fascists in no man land. There are venomous finance. If you take a few dollars, it stealing, against numerous cases of assassination and acts racles were caught short completely by the Stalin Hitler pact. Thus, Harry Pollitt, General Secsneers at the revolutionary mystics who called Negtell the truth about the terrible ravages of Stalinif you take millions, it high finance. The of sabotage. It has organized in Berlin and in retary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, rin government the agent of Stalin counter revoism in every field, military as well as economic.
French peasant would be shot as a traitor, but and volunteers to quell disorders resulting from wrote in a pamphlet issued early in September: lutionary and who said a professional bourgeois array Only in this way can the defense of the Soviet could not win against the fascists. Free political disthe French bankers and industrialists are ac blackouts. The Communist Party is convinced that the cussion is denounced and its suppression justified beUnion be strengthened and the world struggle people of Great Britain are united as never before counted economic statesmen. On a recent night raid, a patrol discovered in cause this atmosphere was one in which enemy in their determination to win this war against for socialism aided. The dreadful effects of Stal dispatch from Copenhagen to Iron Age, batches of leaflets bearing the insignia of the the former Communist strongholds of Berlin Fascism and the friends of Fascism in Britain, agents could work with ease. When even such an inism are manifest today in Finland, both in the steel trade magazine, last week revealed that, Red Front and the words: Down with Hitler and and to end the horror and anxiety that have observer as Brailsford uneasily noted that the act of an invasion carried out against the will overshadowed Europe since Hitler came to pow remnants of the bourgeoisie wefe finding a haven in through the medium of Belgian firms, the French Stalin! Long Live TROTSKY!
er.
the Communist Party, Bates sought to explain it away the Finnish workers, and in the plight of the and German capitalists are transacting this busi Belgian Calls for Fight Another Stalinist stalwart of People Front with a literary phrase: Perhaps, after all, a grocer Red Army. The Red Army is no longer the kind ness in coal and iron. The New York Times, in Against National Unity Gov days, Campbell, whipped himself up into may have deas abou freedom, democracy or even of army that fought in the days of Lenin and revolution. Often deliberately dishonest bodies such a rather awkward editorial, December 27, seeks in Belgium, the government of National such a frenzy over the defense of Danzig for Polish imperialism, that he saw a Fifth Colas the POUM, the May rising of the POUM and Trotsky because the Soviet Union is no longer to justify the transactions. It insists that, Al Unity under Pieriot and the socialist Spaak umn lurking behind the opposition of pacifists their sympathizers, partisan control of the front the same kind of Soviet Union. The difference to the government declaration of war. Thus he enabled arms to be illegally returned Barcelona to is embodied in Stalinism.
though the thought of such trade between bel ter preparating for its part in the Second Worla attacked the Glasgow Forward, mouthpiece of be used against the Popular Front government, the ligerents, especially in the sinews of war itself, War by instituting a tax program which is to the centrist Scottish Socialist Party The soldiers of the Red Army come from the the fol POUM proposal would have meant military disaster is repugnant, the ethical point involved is subtle. bring a revenue of some 1, 443 million francs. It lowing words: and was therefore counter revolutionary, the enormasses, from the ranks of the workers and peasSo subtle, indeed, does the Times make the eth is by far the most extensive tax program ever No demonstration of the Fifth Column would mous stock of arms since found in the illegal possesants; the morale and spirit of the masses is reical point, that the point vanishes altogether of the 1, 443 million, less than 120 million or be complete without a pacifist contingent and so sion of the POUM and uncontrolled anarchist groups we find the Forward demanding Should we fight. these Stalinist frameup slanders were written by flected in the army and in the way it struggles. under the skillful hand of the editorial writer. per cent is to be levied on the trusts and the over Danzig (horror of horrors. Bates.
By crushing every form of democracy within the But let that fact sink home in the minds and inheritances of the wealthy. The balance of more The final upshot was that Moscow ordered At that time exposed what Bates was doing, conSoviet Union the Stalinist regime has destroyed hearts of the German and French workers and tobacco, coffee, beer, fruit, etc. in other words, these two to act as scapegoats when the line was fronting him with indisputable facts. One article the wonderful spirit and initiative that characfarmers who stand firing at each other across taxes which place burden of the war preparachanged. Pollitt was removed from his post wrote was condescendingly published by the New and Campbell was denounced in the press.
terized the workers and peasants in the early Republic as a communication, with Bates having the the Maginot Line: Our masters go right on tions squarely upon the shoulders of the workNow they have both confessed in the best style last word and with an editorial in the same issue days of the Soviet Union. Bureaucratic discipline of the Moscow trials. In their statements (Londoing business with each other while they sending class population of the country.
The reformist Belgian Labor Party, in its of (November 10, 1937) upholding him against me. In has supplanted the self imposed discipline of con us to kill and be killed in these trenches. ficial organ, the Peuple, fully approves this plundon Dally Worker, November 11) the former says the two and a half years of the civil war, that was scious fighters for the revolutionary cause.
that he played into the hands of the class eneLet that fact sink home, as in the last war dering program of the bourgeoisie. In its issue of the only article published by the New Republic givmy, and especially the reactionary Labour leadNovember 11, it gives the usual social patriotic We long ago, precisely at the time when Staling the revolutionary side of the Spanish story.
Russian soldiers learned that the Czarina ers, who saw in my attitude the justification of grounds for that support: In the grave hours inist intellectuals and even military experts of court remained friendly to the Germans; as the which we are now witnessing, it is necessary to their own policy of supporting the Chamberlain Bates reply included an especially sinister touch.
Government and the latter, that he slipped in Possibly Mr. Morrow believes those funny httle notes the capitalist states wrote with admiration of the French soldiers learned that the opposing gen act rapidly. At a moment when public opinion to a position of national defense in an imperialist that were secretly sent to Mr. Trotsky (from the great Red Army pointed out that the Stalin reproaches the government, although sometimes eral staffs had arranged not to bomb each others Aragon front by the Belgian Lutte group. The Joke wrongly, with being too hesitant, it is desirable war, involving objectively support for our own ist regime could not but weaken the Red Army.
is on Mr. Morrow. Note those quotation marks headquarters or steel plants.
imperialism.
that parliament give it at once the means of facA better characterization of the treachery of around secretly. That was Bates coy way of makWhen Stalin decapitated the Red Army by Let the simple fact really sink home in the ing its responsibilities which are urgently necesing clear that he, thanks to the GPU, was in possesexecuting its best commanders, he struck a territheir People Front politics could not be given minds of those who carry arms, that there is one The only party in the country which is mobileven by us. But two questions remain. 1) Since sion of the mail sent by our comrades almost all of fic blow at the Soviet Union and at the Red law for the masters and another law for the op izing public opinion against the anti working Stalin was the sponsor of that policy in the first them murdered by the Stalinists afterward.
army. The Stalinist lackeys laughed at us. The pressed and not all the editorial writers in the class National Unity government and its tax purge, they said, would strengthen the army.
world will be able to prevent those guns from program is the Revolutionary Socialist Party from him. 2) Since both Campbell and Polutt Let Bates Keep That Promise. the Belgian section of the Fourth Inare now for accepting the peace offer of Hitler, We can see now how it has been strengthened There is one sentence in particular of which Bates being turned against the master class.
how long will we have to wait until we get their ternational should now be forcibly reminded. Referring to Mr.
in the battles in Finland.
In its paper, La Lutte Ouvriere it concludes an confession of playing into the hands of Hitler Morrow obvious debater trick concerning personThe Red Army is composed of the same huCZARIST BONDS GO UP as well?
attack on the tax program with the following alities of the Spanish political scene the personalWe call to the attention of Norman Thomas and words: ities were those assassinated by the Stalinista!
man material as in the days of Lenin and Trotsother such defenders of Finnish democracy the At no time has the slogan of the sliding scale At Cairo, Egypt, a university which is older Bates said: Some day, if by any chance any honest ky, the same workers and peasants who would following unadorned news item from the Dec. 23 of wages, which is inscribed in the transitional than Oxford ceased teaching only a few years supporter of the Spanish government were troubled gladly give their lives for the Workers Father issue of the Wall Street Journal: program of the Fourth International taken on ago that the earth is flat. But it still teaches that by these things, would be prepared to debunk Mr.
land and for the World Revolution. But the PARIS minor flurry in Russlan Ozarist bonds such importance as at present.
Capital is Labor best friend.
Morrow uninteresting farrago.
heavy hand of the Stalinist bureaucracy has occurred on the Paris Bourse yesterday coincident The working masses must give themselves a Well, Bates, that day is here. Thousands of honest with Finnish claims of victories over Soviet Russian clear account that they can no longer depend for HORROR ITEM workers and liberals who supported the Stalinist crushed the spirit of that army by destroying the troops on all fronts.
their self defense, upon the reformist leaders Says James Farley: Comparisons are odious, Spanish committees in this country are now evidencparty that led the workers and peasants to vic About twenty of these obligations, dating from whose whole devotion belongs to big banking but having been in business for a number of ing their troubled thoughts about the connection of tory, by depriving the masses of the right to 1822 onward, have been quoted below five francs for and industrial capital.
years, think it can be said that the standards stalinism in Spain with stalinism in Finland. Are you 500 gold francs nominal for many years. Yesterday, They cafi rely only on their own action. They think and act without fear of repression.
of conduct among office holders and politicians prepared to discuss personalities. Are you presome purchasing came into the market, sending the must create their own organs of defense and are at least as high as they are in commercial pared to defend your role as accomplice to the GPU How happy are the imperialists that Stalin and price upward one frane.
struggle: Committees of workers, of the unem Hfe.
murder squads. In the World of Labor They deliberately omit from consideration such Business Is Business