The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 16, 1924, Page 6

A LENIN LIBRARY IN AMERICA - HE Central Executive Committee of our Party made an important decision to publish a Lenin library. The Lenin library will contain ten volumes, together about 1,600 pages, ten volumes of uniform size. Each volume will have an explanatory pre- face and notes. Seven of these vol- umes have never been published before in the English language, and three exist only in incomplete editions, DEAD A Lenin library! Ten volumes of Lenin’s writings! One hundred thous- and copies of Lenin’s works in Eng- lish! A hundred thousand soldiers of Leninism! A hundred thousand Communist fighters in the United States—not native-born, but English speaking. It is a great, an enormous undertaking. It is the surest sign of the growth and strengthening of our Party, that we can venture it. It is a sign of strength and it will be a source of strength. The ten volumes of the Lenin li- brary wil be the following: 1. Marx and Marxism. 2. Imperialism, the Final Stage of Capitalism. 8. The Agrarian Question in America. 4. State and Revolution. 5. The Shaping of Bolshevism. 6. The Struggle Against the Sec- ond International. 7. “Leftism”—An Infantile Malady of Communism. 8. The Organization of the Revolu- tion. ‘ 9. The Working Class and the Farmers. 10. The Suppressed Peoples and the Social Revolution. What was the governing principle in my selection (our Central Execu- tive Committee has honored me with the editorship of the Lenin library) of precisely these writings of Lenin as his representative works? Lenin’s complete writings would make up, not 1,600 pages, but ten times as much. The task in the se- lection was a double one. On the one hand, to give a good picture of Leninism. On the other hand, to omit everything which would not be un- derstandable to American workers. The chief aim of the Lenin library is to give a complete picture of Leninism for intel-igent working- men. Lenin was not only the great- est statesman of our period, but at the same time the greatest scholar, in social science. Lenin was the only Marxist who added a new story to the magnificent edifice of Marx- ism. The guiding spirit of the work- ing class in the Nineteenth Century was Marxism. In the Twentieth Century, Leninism. Leninism is Marxism applied to the present im- perialistic period of capitalist society. Lenin was an orthodox Marxist. During his whole life he fought against eclecticism which wanted to “complete” Marxism from various philosophical systems, such as Kant- ism, Machism, Dietzgenism (or in the latest period), Freudism. Lenin considered Marxism as a complete outlook on life. Marxism was for Lenin the method of analysis and interpretation of society. If we want to understand Leninism it is neces- sary to learn to know Lenin’s inter- pretation of the Marxist method of inquiry. The volume “Marx and Marxism” of our library will com- plete Lenin’s essays and articles on Marx and the Marxist method. With the weapon of the Marxist method in his hand, Lenin carried out the fundamental task of Marx- ists, the concrete analysis of the con- crete factg Marx for the first time discovered the essence of capitalism. Lenin for the first time discovered the essence of imperialism, the final stage of capitalism. In “Capital,” Marx analyzed for the first time the revolution of agriculture thru the capitalist method of production. Karl Kautsky in his “Agrarian Question” explained the revolutionary effect of American competition on European agriculture. But Lenin was the first who gave a concrete Marxist analy- sis of Russian and American agriculture in two of his works: “The Agrarian Question in Ameri- ea” and “Agriculture in Russia.” Marx and Engels for the first time analyzed the role of state power in a class, society, and showed that by the development of capitalist society, inevitable necessity goes thru the dic- tatorship of the proletariat to a class-less and state-less society. The decadents forgot and passed in silence over this basic fact. Lenin’s inquiries then again brought the questions of state and dictatorship of the prole- ‘tariat to the consciousness of the | working class. Our Lenin library ‘will have three volumes which give Lenin’s concrete analysis of these basic facts of our period. The vol- ume, “Imperialism, the Final Stage of Capitalism.” This book of Lenin was never printed in English com- pletely. Only the first half has ap- peared. The volume “The Agrarian Question in America” is especially timely for us today in the midst of the agricultural crisis in the United States. Lerin’s analysis is based upon the 1910 census, but we will bring it up to date by using the 1920 NS oo (tienen nage i tates nase iciipenatinenia census as well as the new congres- sional investigation and reports of the government. The volume, “State and Revolution,” will comprise. the most important studies of Lenin on this theme: “The State and Revolu- tion; The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky; and Mater- ial on the Question of the Prole- tarian Dictatorship. The concrete analysis of our im- perialist period led Lenin to the con- clusion that the working class must conduct the fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat. But at the same time Lenin recognized that the working class itself is not and cannot be entirely uniform, thar imperiatism itself has the tendency to divide the working tlass thru buy- ing one part and suppressing the other. The fight for the dictator- ship of the proletariat can be waged by the working class only if it is led by a revolutionary party which, against the sectional, regional, na- tional and temporary interests of the working class represents the com- mon, general, international and per- manent interests of the working class as an entity. No one has had a clearer view of the role of the Communist Party in the revolution than Lenin. The book, “Shaping of Bolsheyism,” will present the writings of Lenin the Mensheviki. Lenin from the beginning saw clearly -the two dangers which the revolutionary party of the proletarians faces: opportunism ana sectarianism. The volume “The Struggle Against the Second Inter- national” will present selections from brilliant essays.and articles of his which appeared under the title: “Against the Stream.” (It is a pity that we cannot print in our Lenin library the masterly articles of Zino- viev which appeared in the same period and in the same book.) The volume of our library entitled “ ‘Left- ism,’ An Infantile Malady of Com- munism” gives Lenin’s ruthless struggle against _ revolutionary phrases and for revolutionary real- ism. The party of the proletariat, cleansed of opportunism as well as of revolutionary phrase, must begin its difficult march towards seizure of power. The Party must in the first place win the confidence of the ma- jority of the working class and then it must organize the armed revolu- tion itself. The volume of our li- brary, “The Organization of the Revolution,” will give those writings of Lenin which he wrote during the NEGRO WOMEN WORKERS - EGRO women who entered indus- try during the war are fast learning that their lot is still “the last to be hired and the first to be fired.” According to a report just issued by the Woman’s Bureau at Washington on the “Negro Women in Industry,” a geat number of Negro women are being eliminated from in- dustry and those remaining are most ruthlessly exploited. Their hours of toil range all the way from eight to sixteen hours a day and sometimes longer; their pay is miserab.y small and the conditions under which they work are most brutal, The report covers a survey of 150 industries employing 11,860 Negro women. The purpose of the investi- gation was made in order to create a better understanding and greater ' sympathy among employers of Negro women with the aim of thereby rais- ing the standard of living. This humanitarian aspiration is strongly coupled with repeated emphasis upon the fact that a higher standard of living will yield increased production. Negro women found their OPPOR- TUNITY in industry during the world slaughter when the need for muni- tions of war created a/labor short- age in the labor market. ‘The five chief industries that women entered were textiles, clothing, food, tobacco and hand and footwear. The N women in the main filed the ga, caused by the advancement of white women into newer and more skilled oceupations, Thirty-two and five-tenths per cent of the 11,860 Negro women investi- gated were working ten hours a day and over; 27.4 per cent were work- ing nine hours a day, and 20.2 per cent were working eight hours a day. These figures do not tell all of the story. Overtime can and does follow the legal work day. Overtime “is permitted as much as desired.” The report tells how workers boast of their thriftiness in beginning work, “before hours, after hours, and work- ing during lunch hour.” One worker puts it, “You just can’t make ends meet unless you do extra work and often you are left in a hole even at that.” A typical case is cited indicating how these Negro women live for the most part. Rise at five, cook break- fast, dress children, prepare food and attend to things about the house, re- port for work at 7, leave at 5:30, re- sume housework on returning home, frequently continuing this work until midnight, dead tired as a result. One woman worker states “I am so tired when I reach home I can scarce- ly stand up. My nerves are so bad, { jump in my sleep.” Another woman complains, “I’d love to go to the Y. W. C. A,. but I am so ured at mght, I can scarcely go to bed. If I. go out at night, | go where there is lots of life and lots of fun; I’d go. to sleep at a lecture or club meeting.” Another case cited, “I am so worried and worn in my strength that I feel at times as if I can stand it no longer. It is not alone the need of money but the responsibility of being nurse, housekeeper and wage earner at one time.” ? The average pay of the Negro women in industry is about ten dol- lars a week, The minimum wage calculated at $16.50. When it is taken into consideration that many of these women have dependents and are sometimes -the sole supporters their families, one wonders whether slavery days before the civil war could have been much worse, The frightful conditions under which most of the Negro women work add to the horror of their wretched of |2 while.” pay. They are often segregated be- cause of race prejudice, given infe- rior and harder work and because of their “ignorance” they are shame- lessly cheated, false computation of wages, scales wrong, count wrong, ete. At the end of the week “you never know what you are going to get; you just take what they give you and go.” The report points out that there is a strong feeling among Negro women workers that they are not getting a square deal. Since the Negro women are unor- ganized they accept -the most out- rageous conditions of employment. They are not alone discriminated against because of their color and often segregated, but they are made to work amidst conditions the United States government would not permit its hogs to live under. Herded to- gether in terrible congestion, in filth, feted dust-laden, poisonous air, poorly ventilated, still more poorly lighted, these women work and often have to eat in the same atmosphere. The report points out, “Confronted with the need for food, clothing and shelter and placed in an environment which was unhealthful and sometimes even degrading, they were seen to have lost themselves in the struggle for bare existence,” The treatment accorded most of these workers is well expressed in the words of one of the managers, is |“They are terribly indolent, careless stubborn, and but we HOW to handle them. We give them rough treatment and that quells them for Yet another manager serves, “You never saw a group of so responsive to kindness? In main, these women are of their industrial and showed timidit; po Bo emo Mon back in assurance and which crystallized and made conscious ; A the Party of the Bolsheviki against |¢T” the “New Economic Policy in By JOHN PEPPER period of masterly maneuvering from March to November, 1917, and his analysis of the lessons of the armed uprising in 1905. But Lenin saw clearly that the revolution of the working class does not take place in a vacuum, that the revolution is never the achievement of a singie class, but that it is al- ways a mighty mass movement ot the various classes of the suppressed and exploited. With wonderful clear- ness Lenin recognized—and this rec- ognition is one of the chief pillars of Leninism—that the proletarian revo- lution in our impertalist period is accompanied by the revolt of tha ruined lower middle class, the re- bellion of exploited farmers as well as by uprisings of suppressed na- tions and oppressed colonies. Lenin again and again repeated—and that is another principal pillar of Lenin- ism—that the victory of the social revolution is impossible if the prole- tariat does not form an alliance with all non-capitalist elements, especial- ly farmers and with the masses of the oppressed nations and races. The volume “The Working Class and the Farmers,” will give the most im- portant writings of Lenin on this theme, such as; “The Attitude of the Communists to the Middle Farmers,” “The Working C'ass and the Farm- Soviet Russia (The Tax in Kind).” The volume “The Suppressed Peoples and the Social Revolution” will con- tain those pioneer essays of “Against the Stream” in the self-determination of nations, and Lenin’s other studies on the question of natfonalities. That will be the contents of the Lenin library. It is only a part of the tremendous riches of Lenin. But we hope it is a picture of Leninism. It mirrors the train of thought of .- Leninism. Our Party, the Workers Party, is today in the midst of the political strurgle. We are forced to man- euver. We are forced again and again to give concessions to the great masses of workers and exploited farmers who today are not yet Com- munists. Our Party is facing great dangers in this maneuvering. One danger is that we see only the masses and forget the revolution: the dan- ger of opportunism. The other dan- ger is that we see unly the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and dogmatically turn away from the masses: the danger of sectarianism. Only a Communist education can ob- viate these dangers for our Party. The Lenin library will be a means to this Communist education, By JEANNETTE D. PEARL speed so necessary in factory produc- tion. Their patient trust and belief in the better day that should come to them as workers is pathetic.” The report points out that bad working conditions and long hours are a serious menace to the state, that the prosperity of a nation 1s endangered when its workers are be- ing crippled with exhaustive labor. Loss of human energy, due to exces- sive working hours becomes a na- tional’ loss and is bound to lessen the nation’s productive yield. The re- porter, therefore, recommends legis- lation for a higher standard of liv- ing, inasmuch as a higher standard of liviag—will produce greater effi- ciency in production and greater profits, _ The report would have self-en- lightened employers and the State jointly’ work out an appropriate “award” as compensation for Negro women in the industries. It would be a sort of benevolent industrialism for greater efficiency and greater na- tional progress—for the master class, To that end is also recommended, “A more conscientious training for efficiency in publie schools, thru fos- tering of pride in encouraging a given task, would , ensure that ‘preparation for life’ which is the purpose of all education.” Against such “purposes” in educa tion must be posed the Communist method of education, thru labor soli- ob- |darity making for self-reliance and self-development. Not a “pathetic” longing for a better day, but a reso- lute expression in action for a better day will result from Communist edu. cation,