The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 13, 1924, Page 11

Editor’s Note—The following is the first of a series of three articles by Comrade O. Carlson on the intense situation in a number of European Communist parties. The writer has been engaged for the last 18 months in active party work in the Scandi- navian countries, in Germany and in Great Britain. He was also present at the Fifth Congress of the Commun- ist International. He is, therefore, well equipped for his task of familiar- izing the readers of the DAILY WORKER with what is going on in the Communist parties of Europe. The next articles will appear in the fol- lowing issues of the magazine. sete OE unto him who does not fol- low the decisions of the Com- intern! Mistakes committed by the rank and file of the parties can be for- given and forgotten, but not so in the case of the leadership. The In- ternational may not always be in a position to act as quickly or as dras- tically as some of our more eager members desire—but act it does once _ the. proper objective and subjective conditions make it possible. Those who have been entrusted with the task of guiding and directing this world-wide revolutionary movement of ours are fully aware of the fact that Communist parties and Commun- ist leaders are not made nor founded over night. They develop; they grow. It is only in the process of the strug- gle that the weak and strong, the demagogues and the sincere revolu- tionists are separated from each oth- er. Each world congress of the C. I. has been a gathering of the ablest-dnd best forces within the whole move- ment, where a critical examination was made of the strong and weak points of the movement, nationally and internationally. Each world con- gress has been the means of tighten- ing up the movement, uniting it more and more into a WORLD PARTY. As this process has gone on we have wit- nessed the dropping off of many would-be revolutionary leaders. To the degree that our international has made actions and not words the cri- terion of membership and leadership within it, it has gained the confidence of larger masses of thé exploited and has lost the approbation of phrase- mongers, centrists and opportunists of all descriptions. Many of the well- known. revolutionists of former days have fallen by the wayside. The last of these is Zeth Hogtund of Sweden, whose actions within the last few months in particular, have been of such a character that he has been ex- cluded from the C. I. Opportunism in the Swedish Party. The fight within the . Communist Party of Sweden against the oppor- tunist deviations of Hoglund and his group have been going on for over three years’ but had never become acute until within the past year. The E. C. of the C. I. has taken Hoglund to task many times for his attitude POINCARE'S MAN IN HER- RIOT'S CABINET General Nollet. . Cleaning House in the International 3) 0-Catm EXIT HOGLUND. on fundamental questions, trying in this way to have him see the error of his ways and to bring him and the whole of the party on the right track. Time and again he has given state- ments or declarations to the effect that he accepted the decisions of the international and would do all within his power to put them into effect. This he did as late as at the Fifth World Congress which was held this sum- mer, altho immediately upon his re- turn to Sweden he launched into a most vitriolic and dastardly attack up- on the C. I. and in particular upon its real adherents in Sweden. All at- tempts at unity have failed, altho the C. I. was exceedingly lenient in the case—too lenient in the eyes of the writer, : “The executive committee of the Communist International is of the opinion that all possibilities of work- ing together with Hoglund are at an end. By a persistent continuation of the false road which he is moving on he most certainly will put himself outside of the Communist Interna- tional,” declares an official statement from the praesidium of the C. 1., dated August 11, addressed to the mempers of the C. P. S., in which it reviews the various actions of Hoglund that were contrary to the principles and tac- ties of the C. L Hoglund Expelled. Less than a fortnight after the C. L had issued the above statement, we find Hoglund officially excluded from the C. I. and the C. P. 8S. A state- ment issued by the representative of the E. C. in Sweden, dated August 23, declares: .“Hoglund and those mem- bers of the C. E. C. who identified themselves with him are outside of the C. I. and the C. P. S., which even as formerly continues to remain a section of the C. I.” The basic rea- sons for this action are that the party majority in the C. E. C. (Hoglund had four members, the minority three) had excluded the minority members from the party, altho the minority ac- tually represented the big majority of the party membership; that the Hoglund majority on the C. E. C. re- fused to allow a referendum to take place on the question of accepting the decisions of the.C. I, altho a far great- er number of members had petitioned for such a referendum than was need- ed according to the statutes; that Hoglund gave out statements to the bourgeois and socialist papers which were direct Hes relative to his own place on the party paper (the board of directors of the central organ of the party had decided to establish an editorial board of three—Kilbom, Hoglund and the representative of the C. I. to be responsible for the paper instead of Hoglund alone.); that he refused to continue working on this basis but instead accepted a position on a syndicalist paper, editing one page in the the name of his party group. The Hoglund group has been attempting to force a split within the party in such a fashion that those who were the supporters of the C. I. would leave the C. P. S. but in this it has not been successful. Not only that, but the Hoglund outfit has lost the central organ of the party, “Politi- ken,” as well as the following daily, semi-weekly and weekly papers: Norrskenflamman, Vestsvenska Kurir- en, and Kalmar Lans Kuriren. The Communist Women’s magazine Roda Roster and the Y. C. L. paper Storm- lockan are also supporting the Com- intern. Hoglund has on his side two weekly papers, His group have also issued notices that they intend begin- ning the publication of a new central organ for their group. These are the bare facts in the case as seen in the most recent develop- ments—but behind these facts lie a mass of interesting mate which throws light upon the e and the split. What I want to do is to deal with this material, to explain the why and wherefore of the case, and in gen- eral, to see what lessons it may have for us. I shall begin with some of my personal experiences or observa- tions, : a Hoglund Supported Levi. My first contact with the mighty eee Hoglund, or Zeth—as he is called in the Scandinavian countries—took place at the time of the national con- vention of the Y. C. L. of Sweden, May, 1921. I had just come from Ger- many, where the C. P. was in the throes of a bitter internal struggle arising out of the now famous “March Action” of that year. Paul Levi, who up to then, had been the leader of the German party, had denounced the party and the central committee for its participation in the uprising. At a time when large sections of the workers in central and southern Ger- many were rising in armed revolt and when, more than ever before, it was necessary for the party to act as a unit, Levi resigned from the central committee, sabotaged the party de- cisions and issued articles and pam- phiets attacking the party. Hoglund became an ardent supporter of Levi. In long leading editorials in ‘Politi- ken” he attacked the German party executive and praised Levi to the sky. At the Swedish League Convention he followed the same policy, using -the Levi case as a means of attack against the more aggressive and mili- tant elements within the league who demanded a more revolutionary poli- cy. We were called “foolish and ir- responsible youngsters,” “putschists, suffering from Bakuninism,” etc., etc. But the Y. C. L., despite the thunder- ings and threats of Hoglund took the road of the Comintern. Just at that time there was a great deal of unemployment in Sweden. The party officialdom was not doing any too much to cope with the situ- ation, altho the unemployed were not only willing but anxious to be given leadership and a program. They came in thousands to hear the Communist speakers. I spoke with Strom, the party secretary, about the unemploy- ed problem. To my surprise he told me that the C. P. could get 15,000 members directly from the ranks of the unemployed at any time if it only made an attempt to get them. I wanted to know why the party was not drawing them into its ranks. He replied, “They can’t pay any dues, so we won't let them in.” I had expected almost any other answer but this. Imagine, not allow- ing workers to join the party because they were unable to pay dues! How can a Communist party become a mass party under such conditions? Last winter when I was in Sweden this same party secretary, as the lead- er of the Communist group in the Stockholm city council, brought in a motion to the effect that the city of Stockholm take the initiative in ar- ranging for an Inter-Baltic States’ Ex- position in 1935., They wanted to ad- vertise to the world the white-guard states like Finland, Latvia, Esthonia, Lithuania. Of course, the motion car- ried. But it seems unbelievable that a Communist should vote for such a motion, much less introduce it. Never- theless, it was Hoglund’s right-hand man and most staunch supporter who did this. At about the same time there appeared two particularly re- markable articles in the Saturday sup- plements of “Politiken,” official organ of the C. P., and of which Hoglund was the eidtor. The first was a two- page laudation of American prisons, but of Sing Sing in particular. Why, it was enough to cause anyone to want to go to the United States for the special purpose of gaining admis- sion to Sing Sing. I wonder what some of our comrades who have made shorter or longer involuntary stays there have to say about it The set- ond article (clipped directly from a big bourgeois sheet in Great Britain) dealt with the wonderful work done by Scotland Yard in Britain and the Pinkertons in the United States. They were held as two of the greatest and finest achievements of mankind. Not a word was said about their role in spying upon workers’ organizations, upon their tasks in framing-up revolu- tionists, in hounding them about from place to place, in intimidating work- ers and in general serving as mercen- aries of the capitalists. At the time when General Von Seekt had become the virtual dictator in Germany and was crushing all economic and politi- cal organizations of the working class there appeared a lengthy article from Germany stating that now for the first time the German workers were really enjoying the eight-hour day. Never an editorial correction or statement on any of these glaring articles ever appeared, altho Hoglund’s attention was called to them on more than one occasion. Hoglund was and still is an im- portant figure in the National Jour- nalists’ Association — an organization made up of the editors of all the capi- talist papers in Sweden. Under his editorship the “Politiken” has in the last few years become an extremely “respectable” paper. Of course, the other papers attack in on occasion, but this is always done in a slightly sarcastic manner, and they inevitably refer to it as, “our worthy, tho Com- munist contemporary.” Time and again Hoglund refused to put able workers and Communists on the pa- per because they were not “journal- ists.” Consequently, the paper featur- ed scandals, murders and other sen- sational news, while the really press- ing problems confronting the work- ers of Sweden were given scant at- tention and were dealt with in a few sentences or paragraphs on the inside pages. Only a short time ago, Gustay Mol- ler, secretary of the social-democratic party of Sweden, wrote a lengthy ar- ticle wherein he maintains that Hog- lund, despite his radical phrases is at heart a social-democrat. He is glad to see that Hoglund has been régain- ing his senses and is not allowing himself to be pulled about under or- ders from Moscow. Not only have many of the social-democrats spoken words of praise in honor of the valiant (!) fight which Hoglund has been waging against the. “asiatics,” but even bourgeois papers make him the savior of Swedish “culture and free- dom.” 5; For every paeon that is sounded by the socialists and the bourgeoisie on behalf of these “good and true tho mistaken men” we have a growing feeling of disgust on the part of the wide-awake sections of the workers. That is why every large industrial sec- tion where the C. P. is organized, has repudiated Hoglund and Strom. They say that their fine phrases are empty and cannot win the day. They are not afraid of being called “Mosco- vites,” for their aim is to accomplish that which the Russians already suc- ceeded in doing—to rule in their own class interest. A Courageous Judge. NEW YORK, N. Y., Sept. 12.—In refusing to grant an anti-picketing in- junction to Gottlieb and Sieff, gar- ment manufacturers at Jamaica on August 20, Supreme Court Justice MacCrate held that employers should not ask the courts for injunctions in labor disputes until all. other remedies have been tried. Subscribe for “Your Daily,” the DAILY WORKER. THE DAWES’ MAN IN GER- MANY Chancellor Marx, et itl