Sat:rclay, August 9, 1919 THE REVOLUTIONARY AGE war.
from making any protest by the bludgeon of The meat trust of the Big Five is a typical ply of words. As is usual with instinctive folk the patriotrickster and the Sedition Acts, and product of the monopolization of industry by. philosophy, the adage in unity there is partly cajoled by the hope of prosperity and finance capital characteristic of the era of strength constitutes only a partial truth.
lower prices after the coming of peace. Peace Imperialism.
The Social Democratic Party of Germany did come; but the promises did not materialize. The facts, as gathered by the Federal Trade made a fetish of unity; and the consequences On the contrary: unemployment and lower Commission, are briefly as follows: were deplorable. The organization inity was wages came; while the cost of living, instead There is an approaching packer domina maintained by the sacrifice of principles, by of declining, soared upwards again. Capital tion of all important foods in this country and concession after concession to non Socialist insists on its profits, during peace as during international control of meat products with for groups and purposes; until the Social Demoeign companies. the Big Five, the five pack cratic Party was not a unity but a swamp.
There is feverish activity in the Wilson ing companies dominating the industry, jointly According to Franz Mehring, the fatal defect Administration concerning the high cost of or separately hold interests of 762 companies, of the Independent Socialist Party was that living. Conferences are being convened, in producing or dealing in 775 commodities; their it split away from the old party too late. The vestigations ordered; the President is to ad gross sales for 1918 amounted to 3, 217, 000. indecision of the seceding elements bred indress Congress on the domestic problems of 000; they control the hide market and can decision in the new party. When the test of food prices, race riots, strikes, discontent gen regulate the price of shoes; they control 87 action comes, the indecision that that develops erally another cascade of verbal syrup with per cent of the production of lard compounds, out of superficial unity proves disastrous, inwhich to drug the minds of the people. Secretary Baker is disposing of the army food half of the poultry, eggs and cheese in the hibiting action and fatal to the unity of deeds.
The unity of the Socialist Party was never main channels of interstate commerce, as well more than formal. It was never fundamental.
the people a drop in the ocean of require as scores of other commodities over which The loose policy of the Socialist Party was to ments. Congress is considering legislation of they exercise partial control or complete invite all radical elements into the Party, the most puerile character. This is action monopoly. The Big Five are now completon the crisis!
ing a monopoly over meat substitutes. They unified on purposes and means. Formally, with the consequence that the party was never The wrath of the people is being cunningly tion, such as securing from railroads supepursue the usual trust methods of competi petty bourgeois Socialism dominated; but only directed against the meat packers the whole formally; the moment the call of revolutionrior service at lower rates than wholesale capitalist system being guilty, it tries to evade ary Socialism was heard, the proletarian eleits guilt by making a particular trust the scapegrocers pay for similar service.
ments in the Socialist Party revolted against goat. This wrath against the trusts breaks out All this means monopoly, international in the domination of petty bourgeois Socialism.
now and again; a particular trust is disci scope. The British Government has been inBut this revolt is simply the first act of the plined and legislation adopted; but still the vestigating the American Meat Trust, and drama. The logic of the situation compels trusts proceed to make profits and monopolize according to former Food Controller an absolute separation of the revolutionary industry. The memory of the masses is short, Clynes, the trust is a peril against which some but one may still remember the wrath against effective form of inter Allied action is not im proletarian elements from the petty bourgeois moderates. The unity of the two. in one party the Standard Oil Trust, its prosecution and possible. Monopoly is international. dissolution and then reorganization, with The financial aspects of the Packers? Trust and proletariat in parliamentary democracy would be equivalent to the unity of bourgeoisie the trust still dominating the oil industry, and are important. Their financial power is very the bourgeoisie would inexorably come into con its stock more valuable than previously, divi general and mighty. They are factors, a montrol again: unity of bourgeois and proletarian dends still higher.
cording to the Federal Trade Commission, in necessarily means bourgeois domination over cattle loan companies making the necessary the proletariat. The unity of petty bourgeois The claim is that the Big Five among loans to growers and feeders of live stock; are Socialism with proletarian Socialism inevitthe meat packers constitute a trust. Precisely; interested in railways and private car lines but there is plenty of anti trust legislation: transporting live stock and manufactured ani ably means the supremacy of the petty bourwhy has it not been invoked? Simply because mal products; in most of the important stockgeois.
as a matter of fact, the meat trust (and the yard companies the public market for the It is necessary, accordingly, to rigidly sepfinance capital it represents) is more power bulk of food animals and in live stock trade erate the two. This means breaking the unity ful than the government. During the war Food Administrator Hoover realized that market news. They are interested in banks papers on which growers and feeders rely for of the Socialist Party. But this unity, let us remember, was broken by the moderates. Nor ing interests was to let them deal with them borrow money; in companies supplying mathe only way he could deal with the big pack from which their competitor packing houses is it the task of the Left Wing to restore that unity: the restoration of the old pestilential selves so he invited them to participate in a chinery, ice, salt, materials, boxes, etc. unity means abandoning the tasks of revosystem of self government which included a deal in hides, oleo, fertilizer.
lutionary Socialism. Out of this split, hisgovernment exercised by them over all the lesser lights in the food industry. The public dustrial as much as it is financial: it is the the Communist Party of the United States, This centralization, accordingly, is not in torically necessary and vitalizing, must come imagined that the government dominated the domination of industry by finance capital, for affiliated with the Communist International trusts; but it was the trusts which dominated purposes of speculation, market control and and united on revolutionary fundamentals.
the government, using the government to con world monopoly.
Division and separation are indispensable in the trol competitors and garner fabulous profits. The centralization of production should process of developing revolutionary underTrust investigations mean simply playing mean plenty for all.
with the high cost of living. That was the simply means huger and more regular profits.
Under Capitalism, it standing and unity But, objects the sentimentalist, we must experience of yesterday, and is the game of Centralization under Capitalismº regulates unite all our strength against the common today. The high cost of living is a product production in order to insure profits; and part enemy bourgeois oppression.
But strength of the whole system of relations, national and of this regulation consists of limiting prointernational, of Capitalism. To break the duction. This limitation of production, necescomes not out of the unity of compromise, but out of the unity of conscious and identical high cost of living it is necessary to break these sary to Capitalism, is a factor in high prices revolutionary ideals. In the first two months relations, which are a fetter upon the forces and responsible for the impossibility of Capi of the Russian Revolution, with a crisis inof production to substitute production for talism ever assuring plenty to all.
finitely more acute than ours, comrades in the use in place of production for profit. The packers are part and parcel of that Bolshevik Party urged unity of all Socialist But they are making the meat trust the financial Imperialism which now dominates forces. But Lenin implacably objected. Let scapegoat. Senator Kenyon, Progressive, has American business, and the world. To crush us not isolate ourselves, they urged. Lenin introduced a measure to regulate the packing their power means to crush financial Imper answered: This isolation is temporary, and industry to drive out the packers from con ialism that is why all promises of relief under will ultimately become a source of strength.
trol of stockyards, to make refrigerator cars Capitalism are illusory. Congress can not Unity with the others is compromise, and common carriers, to license the packers and act: it is impotent. The only way out is eco compromise is fatal. It is not a question of confine them to the packing business. But nomic reconstruction by means of the Com numbers, but of correctly expressing the actual these measures would not lower the cost of liv munist Revolution.
tendency of the revolution. Lenin was right: ing, except slightly and temporarily perhaps, events justified his relentless opposition to a they would simply foster the illusions of indefraudulent unity.
pendence of the small producers, but with the Unity? Yes the revolutionary unity of a frust actually still dominant. It is precisely HERE is a magic in the plea of unity Communist Party, uncompromising, implacthe campaign against the trust, still fondling But unity is not unity unless it is of strength the unity of conscious agreement on the illusion of independence and success. fundamentals a unity of deeds and not sim revolutionary fundamentals.
Unity