The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 19, 1924, Page 9

J The Farmers and the American Revolution By JOHN PEPPER. ] T was a eharacteristic and interest- ing scene in eur Party Conven- tion. The chairman annotnced that Joseph Manley would make the re- on the agricultural question. omrade Manley walked up from his place to the front of the hall. fie was received by giggles from many delegates. Many comrades and good . comrades and good trade unionists at yee found it funny that Manley, the typical city worker, tor twenty Saag & member of the Structural ron Workers’ Union, should appear before the Convention of the Work- ers Party to picture the bankruptcy and misery of the farmers, to describe the political revolt of the modern American “peasants.” The giggling comrades could not understand the fundamentally revo- lutionary significacnce of the fact of a city workers, a typical trade un- lonist, appearing as an ardent advo- cate. of the idea of the solidarity of workers and farmers and of the revo- anes resolution of the Central xecutive Committee on agriculture, as a fervent exponent of the idea that the Communists shall attempt to — leadership of the rebellious ‘armers, Not 3 Temporary Bankruptcy. Our me must understand that the most important revolutionary fact of our last Party Convention was our gtand on the. agricultural crisis in the United States and our bold attempt to place ourselves at the head of the farmers’ revolt. I know there is a big opposition in our Party to that idea. Many com- rades think that we overemphasize the importance of the farmers, that through our agricultural work we divert precious forces from the work in the labor movement, in the trade unions, or from direct Communist ae age Many comrades main- tain the opinion that the farmers are a -born counter-revolutionary class, inseparably bound to private prop- erty, and that therefore, an alliance between Communists and farmers will only soil our revolutionary vir- ag & Many comrades think that the nkruptey of the farmers is something temporary. They say that one or two good crops, and the farm- ers who are discontented today will be again conservative citizens. We must state emphatically that these comrades do not understand how to analyze the most elemental facts of American social and political life. The bankruptcy of the farm- ers is not something temporary, The last crop was qne of the best in the history of the United States. The deepest cause of the bankruptcy of the farmers is the unbridgeable in- ternal conflicts of capitalism itself. The final, the imperialist, phase of capitalism hag created, thru the trusts, an absolute monopoly on in- dustrial products, The farmers must pay for industrial products, the prices dictated to them by the trusts, and they are forced to sell their products at less than the cost of production. And ruling capitalism has no remedy for the farmers. President Coolidge declared that the farmers must help themselves. At the same time, the government power, which is in the hands of the trusts, concentrates its font and ever growing force, or the deliberate ruination of mil- lions of farmers, ~ if The Chinese Wall of the Fordney McCumber tariff excludes the cheap industrial products of foreign coun- tries, and renders the monopoly of the trusts impenetrable. ; The Department of Agriculture re- ported that no less than 30 per cent of the farmers’ income goes for taxes. Secretary of Agriculture Wallace reported that “Investigation has dis- closed that, of the owner farmers in fifteen corn. and wheat-producing states, on an average over 5 per cent had lost their farms through foreclo- sure or bankruptcy, while nearly 4 per cent had turned over their farms to creditors without legal process, making a total of about 8% per cent. In addition, more than 15 per cent were in fact bankrupt, but were hold- ing on through the leniency of their creditors.” The government itself has to ad- mit that not less than 28% per cent of the owner farmers are bankrupt. In 1922 no less than two million farmers and their families left the farms. In 1928 it is estimated that not less than three million farmers and their families were forced to abandon their land. And _ millions more are only tolerated by the mort- gage-holding bankers because the bankers can do nothing with the land, because the cultivation of the land by farm-laborers would cost more than the products which can be pro- duced. At the same time that the owner- farmers are being ruined by the mil- lions, the trend to tenancy is dan- gerously and eg growing. A Part of the World Crisis We see before us the madness of capitalism grown to imperialism in its final development, Great Britain and Germany are faced with the problem of reducing their industrial working class by many millions. Un- employment as a mass phenomenon is menacing them ever more, There is no hope for selling industrial prod- ucts to an impoverished world, and there is no hope, therefore, of feed- rs 3 the British and German indus- trial population. - And at the same time there is the enormous agricul- tural crisis in the United States. Millions of farmers are unemployed, the acreage of cultivated land is shrinking more and more, simply be- cause the farmers cannot sell their products at such prices as will make it possible for them at least to re- ceive wages for their labor. We must understand that the reduction of the farming class in the United States is one side of that same process, the other side of which is the reduction of the industrial working class in Great Britain and Germany. Many comrades do not realize the the farmers as a mass phenomenon are inevitable. Secretry of Agricul- tural Wallace said: “It will be con- ceded that the unrestricted operation ef economic laws in course of time will bring about better material con- ditions for those who farm. These laws are at work. They are driving people from the farms and will con- tinue to do so until farm production is reduced to a point where the de- mand for food will compel a fair price. They are tranferring the land from those who farm it to those who do not, increasing the number of non-resident land owners and the at- tending evils. They are compelling those farmers who manage to hold on to follow methods of farming which | - deplete the fertility of the soil and permit their buildings, fences, and the productive plant to deteriorate at a rapid rate, thus using up capital investment. They are reducing the standard of living in the farm home, compelling hard labor by the farm mother, depriving the farm children of their rightful educational and so- cial. opportunities and creating in them a hatred for farm life which will lead them to leave the farm at the first opportunity. The free operation of economic laws is work- ing all these evils, and more.” The representative of the capital- ist government of the United States admits the complete bankruptcy of the government and of the present economic system in solving the pres- ent agricultural crisis. The spokes- man of the government admits that A BIRD OF PREY The Capitalist Shadow on the Farm. tremendous revolutionary significance of the agricultural crisis in the United States. Many comrades see only the proud industrial structure of the trusts, the lofty financial ed- ifice of the banks, and they think that American capitalism is basically sound and does not feel a particle of the convulsion caused by the world war. The world crisis of capitalism does not follow a fixed pattern. It start- ed on the industrial side in Germany and Great Britain, but it attacks the agricultural side in the United States. The capitalists themselves, altho they try to hide the crisis, see much more clearly thando many communists, Secretary of Agricul- ture Wallace, in a ‘speech recently made before a meeting of the Farm Economie Association, said: “Now the need is not for greater produc- tion but for a better adjusted pro- duction, and to some extent, for a reduced production, That is a very difficult matter. The plowing up of meadows and pastures and seeding to grain fields back into grass js not so grain fields back into grass is not so easy.” Ca italism has only one remedy for the agricultural crisis; reduction of the acreage of cultivated land, return to more primitive modes of roduction and driving the farmers y the millions off the land, And the capitalists see—what certain commu- nists fail to see—that under the rule of capitalism and capitalist govern- ment the bankruptcy and misery of the economic laws of capitalism drive the farmers inevitably into bankruptcy, that they lower the standard of living of the farmers to that of the Russian peasants of Czarist times, and lead to inevitable and complete expropriation of the farming masses. A process of the greatest historical import is taking place before our eye’, A process which finds its counterpart only in the “Bauernlegen” in Germany after the Thirty Years’ War and the mass ropriation of farmers in Great Britain thru the then new and ruthless eapitalism. Many comrades have accused me of exaggerating, not only the revo- lutionary importance of the far- mers, but the significance and tem of the agricultural crisis, But the pieture which a Wallace ives of the effect of the economic ws of capitalism bears out the analysis of the Central Executive and political situation of the United States, and the analysis of the agri- cultural resolution adopted by our last Convention, On the contrary, if we make a mis- take, it is in not emphasizing enough our agricultural work, and revolutionary import of the farming crisis. We must understand that the econdmic bankruptey of the farmers goes’ so rapidly forward that our work among the farmers cannot keep pace with it. And we must understand further that the political revolt of the farmers, the entering of the farmers into the various Third Party and Labor Party move- ments represents nothing else than the political expression of this ter- rible bankruptcy and misery. When, under these circumstances, comrades persist in declaring that we must ait comfortably on our dogmas which prescribe (as they imagine) that the crisis of the industrial side of im- perialism must come first, without seeing the existing agricultural crisis, it shows that these comrades do not understand the most. elemen- tary duty of revolutionary Marx- ists, namely, to analyze, and rackon with, facts as they are. The Farmers and the Proletarian Revolution We can arrive at the correet esti- mation of the importance of the far- mers for the communist movement only if-we connect it with the ques- tion of the seizure of power by the working class. We must understand that as long as the capitalist class can maintain political leadership over the farmers, the working class has no possibility or even hope of com- ing into power. That is true for every country, but especially for the United States, We should not forget that the United States is not as thoroly industrj- alized as Germany or Great Britain, Industry in the United States is the most highly centralized and concen- trated in the world, but it covers only certain parts of our country. The United States is at the same time the greatest agricultural coun- try of the world. The United States has a tremendous agricultural popu- lation. In this respect our country resembles Russia more than it does Great Britain which has no agricul- tural population to speak of. And we ought to bear in mind that the overwhelming majority of industrial workers in our country are foreign- born, who, just because they are for- eign-born are greatly handicapped in their role of a political factor. The Workers Party, as a faithful mirror of the composition cf the American working class, with its 25,000 mem- bers would play a seventeen fold greater political role if it had not contained by necessity seventeen foreign language federations. The bulk of the native-born workers are skilled workers and foremen, and be- long to the labor aristocracy. It is of vital interest to our party to win over and influence as great a mass as possible of native-born English- speaking workers. But it is highly improbable that we can win over ih the near future the majority of this labor aristocracy corrupted by impe- picliam Th. - formers as a class pre- sent a different picture than the working class. We have many for Gagi-vorn iaarmers, especially Ger- mans and Scandinavians, but the bulk of the farmers are native-born Americans, A revolutionary movement in the United States which embraces. only the foreign-born proletarian workers of the basic industries and only a narrow stratum of the native-born workers, has no real hope of gaining power without .the support of the millions of native-born, working far- mers. Nor should we forget this fact, that in no country (with the ex- ception of Russia) have the farmers such an old political tradition, or have made so many attempts at poll- tical upheaval against capitalist leadership (Greenback Party, Popu- list Party, Non-Partisan League) as in the United States. It is an uncon- tested fact t (with the exception of Russia other country {s there such an ‘old and deep-rooted tradition of political co-operation be- tween farmers and city workers as in’ the United States. It would be political blindness not to see the opine importance of the fact that all these numerous farmer-labor par- ties, spontaneously sprung up, are everywhere the expression of a poli- tical alliance between city workers and farmer. Guild Interests or Revolution? It is not revolutionary Marxism but on the contrary, a caricature of Marxism for communists to reject the alliance with the farmers in the name of proletarian purity. Marx- ism does not mean the representation of the interests of the working class narrowed to a guild basis. It means the representation of the general in- terests of the proletariat as a revo- lutionary class, We communists must conduct all our campaigns and actions in such a way as not to lose sight of the proletarian revolution (Continued on page bs