The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 9, 1924, Page 10

THE THIRD PARTY QUESTION - - \That after all would clearly indicate Vy aen the last party convention decided to withdraw from the Labor-Party thesis the part relating to the Third Party, it was distinctly understood that the question would be discussed,in the party presx How- ever, fundamental discussion has been carried on only in the language press. Comrades John Pepper, C. E. Ruthenberg and Max Bedacht, from whom we would have expected analytical ability and _ theoretical knqwledge, have dealt with this ques- tion mostly polemically and so that they have erronously “analyzed” more or less imaginary “groupings” in the convention and, instead of fundamental discussion of the Farm- er-Labor movement, we have had as- sertions that the “majority” do not “love” farmers so ardently as the “minority,” that the “majority” is formed from “sectarians,” “propa- gandists,” etc., that “something more than an assertion of a report in the Volkszeitung is needed to make the world believe that the Finnish language group in alliance with analytical ability of these comrades in other respects, I wish to say that the majority of the delegates from the Ninth district considered the Third Party thesis, not only untimely but of such nature that, published as the resolution of the Communist convention, it would have created confusion and mistrust not only among our own members, but also among other sections of the Labor movement, and so, instead of clari- fying our positionand guiding us, the real work for a Farmer-Labor class party would have been weak- ened and confused, The question of forming an alli- ance with a bourgeois Third Party, depends wholly upon a given situa- tion, on actual conditions and the stage of development of the class struggle. Therefore, it was tactic- ally wrong to state in the Third Party thesis: “Where the Farmer- Labor party candidates have no chance to win and the Third Party unquestionably can win against the capitalist parties with our support we will vote for the third party Comrade Ludwig Lore, Alexander | candidates.” Trachtenberg, Juliet S. Poyntz, etc., are all at once promoted to cus- todians of radicalism in the party,” and other such nonsense. Without troubling myself to an- swer these silly “analyses” and “polemics,” which, I must confess, have in my mind minimized the Suppose, that the May 30th con- vention be so successful that a na- tional Farmer-Labor party is formed, fundamentally based on the plan of federating at least many of the dif- ferent workers’ and farmers’ organi- zations? Naturally, the Workers Party would be with this movement. THEY WILL TELL ANY years from now, when the united human race is liv- ing the world over under the admin- istration of things, the adults, after 2 full happy day of work and study, will gather their children around them and tell them this tale: “Long years ago, when the world -was divided into states, there was a section of the world that you learn about in your histories, called the United States. This state was established by means of a revolution, and those who were instrumental in establishing it called it a Democracy. Democracy in those days was a skele- ton and the statesmen and politic- ians of that state saw that a skele- ton could not rule over millions o2 people, so they sought to clothe it in flesh and blood, “But they could not make a real, living thing out of a skeleton, so before they proceeded. to compound the clay with which they in- tended to cover the skeleton, they told the people that those who would not believe in the Democracy were unpatriotic, traitors, and ‘many other ugly but meaningless things. “You see, these statesmen were the servants of a rich and pow- erful class of people cafled capital. ists. Capitalists were men who, by some accident of birth or for- tune, had come into possession of land or machinery, and _ allowed others to use these easly y of production for the purposes of earn- ing a bare livelihood, in exchange for which the Capitalists received what they called Profit. Thus the Capitalists did little or no work and lived in ease and luxury, while great masses of people toiled many hours each day, scarcely earning enough to obtain the necessities of life. A VISIT TO MAX HOLZ HE main entrance to the prison where Max Holz lies, opens on a quiet suburban street in the north of Breslau. It is a modern insti- tution. The officials live in separ. ate houses near the street, Four security police patrol the street, The sign “police station” at thy main entrance shows that the bourgeoisie deems it necessary to ard the dangerous Yevolutionary frith ispe- cial police as well as with prison officials. I ring at the main entrance. The gate ig noisily opened. I show my yar am F seayainaae to enter, and across two courtyards with locking and lock- ag yl him immediately. The di- rector, a Roman Catholic priest, re- ceives me in his office. After greet- ing me, he assures me that Holz “So you can see that the great majority of the members of the hu- man race were slaves to land and machinery, antl also to the owners of this land and machinery. The Capitalists deviseé many ways of keeping them enslaved, such as en- couraging them to hate people who lived’ in other sections of the world and spoke different languages, or had skins of different color, magnifying pepmereoenenahinewieritecilintniataaiaenticnasiiniimetipemnstabing The Young Comrade Come on to the Meeting. their religious differences, and teaching them to hate those whose opinions differed from their own. “The servants of the capitalists compounded their clay of many sub- stances, such as ‘Freedom of Re- ligious Worship,’ ‘Equality Before the Law,’ ‘The Right to Life, Lib- erty and the Pursuit of Happiness,’ ‘Government of the People, and By the People,’ and similar phrases. “As the country grew, it came into conflict with other nations and has all the privileges that can be granted in a prison. He orders Holz brought in. Comrade Holz enters, I have often had the op- portunity, professionally, to see prisoners, especially those who have been sentenced to long terms in ison, I was shocked. n in prison since A two years. The 1921— sono t time I saw him was in Moabit, the day he was sentenced. What these two _ have made on him! His face is marked with the inexpressible suffering caused by deprivation of lil + Max Iolz is a man of ac- tion. The mass influences him and he influences the mass. lies in his temperament. He out the uprising of the slaves and will continue to do so, and his ‘whole soul yearns for freedom. His will and his health are. broken nst the walls af prison. the basis of the im- pression I received during my con- versation with Hol, for ~4 several Hola has| He” inroads coutenes.* a “rime eel in His strong excoptios ihe Even if LaFollette were named as the presidential candidate, our posi- tion would not be different, if the party were fundamentally based on | workers’ and farmers’ organizations and not on artificial territorial, political lines. Let us then assume that LaFollette did not join this Farmer-Labor| party, but instead, after the old! party conventions, being defeated there, with the other “radical” poli- ticians and in conjunction with the Railroad Brotherhoods, would launch a Third Party regardless of the Farmer-Labor party established on May 30th, then we would have the! Farmer-Labor Party and the Third Party. How to solve this question? It would be clear that the require- ment of our thesis, ‘where the Farm- er-Labor candidates have no chance to win,” was self-evident and many of our party members would specu- late that “the third party can un- | questionably win” and therefore, ac- | cording to our thesis, “we will vote! for the third party candidates.” } Would that be the right position, altho it were according to our thesis? Of course, the solving of a situation like that would require, not a specu- lative thesis, but a careful analysis of the actual situation. It might te possible that the Farmer-Labor party, in spite of the LaFollette Third party, would be real enough, strong enough, to get a vote of a million or two. THIS TALE engaged in wars, when the servants mixed some new clay, made of some new phrases, (ind renewed in the minds of the people the illusion that they were governed by Democracy. When the United States entered the great World War of 1914, for ex- ample, the statesmen told the peo- ple that this was a ‘War for De- mocracy,’ a ‘War to End All Wars,’ and so on. And countless numbers of workers died fighting for this sham Democracy, this lifeless thing of clay. “By this time there were people who realized that Democracy was but a skeleton dressed up in phrases that meant nothing but that were intended to keep the workers in bondage. You see, the workers used up So much of their time and energy in producing profits, that tney had very little opportunity to learn the truths of histo: ; and science, so that most of t did not know ‘what was wrong. with the world they lived in, and thought that things always gg OP and always would be as they were then, Thev therefore, believed everything the capitalists told them thru their statesmen, their newspapers, their schools, churches and motion pic- tures. “So when these few wise people tried to show the workers that De- mocracy was only a lifeless figure, all the mouth-pieces of the Capi- talists said to the workers: ‘These people are traitors, anarchists, hor- rible Bolsheviks. They are inter- fering with our sacred War to ‘Make the World Safe for Democ-|' racy.” And the workers, because they were too tired and uneducated to do their own thinking, silently permitted things to go the Capital- ists’ way. The servants of the Cap- hours, I can testify that Max Holz must be pronounced unfit for im- prisonment. He is troubled with nervous and rheumatic pains. He suffers from lack of sleep and ap-. petite. He eats no bread, but lives ° on - nutritives, nerve foods, etc. has frequently collapsed. He hurt himself in a fall in which he suffered must loss of blood. It is even probable, that with continued prisonment, The in which Holz, with the exception of the brief interval of must spend ee er nights, is 25 cubic meters size,’ twith a floor i of 8.4 square meters, Even a normal person, a long residence in so small a space, results in an impairment of health. But for so high-strung a person as Holz, a long residence in this By GEORGE HALONEN that at least the real beginning of a large class party had been achieved. But we, with our thesis, might be ad- venturing with the “winners” and instead of profit we would have to record a big deficit, by losing the faith of those labor elements which remained in the Farmer/Labor party and whom me betrayed with our thesis, This simple example is sufficient to show that the thesis was untactical, giving weapons unnecessarily into the hands of our “yellow” as well as “leftist” opponents, creating con- fusion in our own ranks and making us, in the eyes of many workers and farmers, just the same as bourgeois politicians, because without actual happenings, real facts before their eyes, they could not understand our tactics otherwise than that they were based on the same “dealings” with the “‘winners” as they have seen in the other parties. The communist tactics are so well , defined that details how to vote and whom to vote for, do not need to be given before the situation requires it. The Central Executive Commit- tee of the Communist party is well qualified (especially when of such quality as the majority of the pres- ent C. E. C. of the W. P.). to decide questions of this nature when the actual struggle with its experiences can convince us of the real necessity and benefit of such steps. By IDA DAILES italists. passed laws which permit- ted them to put some of these wiser ones among the workers in a place where they could not talk to other ‘workers, called a prison, and kept others quiet by threatening them with punishment, but they could not suppress this new -message alto- gether, and a brave few, inspired by the successful establishment of the First Workers’ Government, at that time called Soviet Russia, kept up their work. “As you all know, they were finally successful, after many hard strug- gles, in exposing Democracy. When the workers finally came to exam- ine Democracy, and puiled off the painted and perfumed clay, what do you suppose they found? Not even a solid skeleton, for in the course of times the bones had crumbled and now, at the touch of the workers, they fell into a little heap of ill- smelling dust, which the workers buried deep underground,” 4 The Structural Iron Worker. er pcan By DR. FELIX HALLE, Berlin a | condition,