The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 4, 1924, Page 7

a Education and the Need of a System By MANUEL GOMEZ, E are still paying for the sins of the past. They continue to be potent forces leading us astray, and their effect is felt not only in the per- sistence of certain elements of social- ist ideology, but in the very revolt from that ideology. The socialist party was a party of propaganda. We pride ourselves on being a party of action, knowing that only in the full tide of the struggle can the workers + learn the lessons of the struggle, and that only in struggle can they acquire the solidarity, and temper, and will to power, necessary for the overthrow of capitalism. The members of the Workers Party participate actively in all phases. of the class fight, striving to win the leadership of the workers, to deepen; idelogical content of the tendency, showing it to be a deviation in the-di- rection of anarco-syndicalism. their consciousness, to increase their Striking power. Thus the party is establishing contact with ever-wider proletarian masses, At the same time it cannot be denied that the spread of the fundamental principles of Com- munism is not keeping step with the rapid growth of influence of the party. Inside the party’ itself, the number of comrades who have anything like a real Communist background is sur- prisingly small. Moreover, our com- rades do not feel the need of educa- tion. In the swing back from the old socialist concepts, we have been obliged to emphasize action, action action—with the unavoidable result that many of our members, especially the younger ones, are losing all sense of proportion. There is growing up in our ranks a+positive scorn for edu- cation. This is a form of proletarian snobbery which is likely to Cost us dear. The Propaganda Theses adopted at the Fifth Congress of the Communist International point out that the inter- national conflicts in the C. I. “are at the same time ideological crisis in the respective parties,” that viewed funda- mentally, “all right and left devia- tions are.due to deviations from the class ideology of the proletariat, from Leninist-Marxism.” Evidence to sup- port this is all around us. When the delegates to the historic Second Congress of the Comintern ar- rived in Moscow, they were given copies of a new pamphlet, which in the days preceding the congress was to become the topic of feverish and ex- cited discussion. This was Lenin’s work on “The Infantile Sickness of Leftism.” Never was anything better timed. The delegates were, for the most part, ardent revolutionary fighters such as John Reed from the United States, ‘Willie’ Gallacher from Great Britain and Bordiga from Italy. They had engaged in bitter struggles against socialddemocratic opportunism and social patriotism, and had learned to despise everything. that smacked of compromise. Many of them did not believe any true revolutionary could ever be “too far to the left.” Lenin’s pamphlet showed the direc- tion in which this cult of “leftism” was heading. Penetrating beyond slogans-and programs of action, Lenin laid bare, for the first time, the rea] That was the virus of the malady, “left sickness,” which was finding ex- pression in the “Dutch Marxism” of the meteoric Western European Bu- reau of the International; in the strange phenomenon of an -“anti- party” party, in the person of the Communist Labor Party 6f Germany; in the anti-parliamentarism of the American, English, Spanish and other parties, and in the failure on the part of nearly all the parties to compre- hend the need of centralization and discipline, until it was explained again and again. Just as the controversies of the Second Congress revealed an anarco- syndicalist ideology, so the recent con- flicts in the German and other par- ties, following the October defeat were traceable to remnants of the old social-democratic ideology, which resulted in deviations to the right. In our own party, the effects of in- sufficiently firm Communist ideology have been apparent. First we had a severe dose of leftism, which we were a long time overcoming, and which even today has by no means been entirely eliminated from our system. Some of the more serious consequences were anti-parliamen- tarism, a distorted trade union policy and a ‘peculiar prejudice against the idea of a “legal” Communist party. Today, many of the same comrades show evidence of “right sickness.” They wish to “go ‘to the masses,” with a carefree disregard of the tasks implied in that slogan. Opportunistic mistakes on the part of these com- rades do not mean that they are op- portunists. Opportunism in our party springs from exactly opposite sources from those responsible for the inher- ent opportunism of the professionally opportunist socialist party. However. precisely because we are a party of action, the danger of opportunism for us is especially great. Our mistakes result from, entering into struggles, and participating in them without guiding principles, or without a firm grasp of principles, which in the long run amounts to the same thing. If our party is to become a real “bolshevist” party, in the spirit of the | Fifth Congress of the Communist In- iternational, it must be solidly rooted in revolutionary theory. This applies particularly to the individual members of the party. The propaganda theses already referred to, lay great stress on the importance of ‘more deeply hammering Marxism and Leninism into the consciousness of the Com- munist parties and the party mem- bers.” “Only by a real and organized as- similation of Leninist Marxism,” con- tinue the theses, “can the parties re- duce the possibilities of political, tac- tical and organizational errors to a minimum and bring about the emanci- pation of the working class.” Hand in hand with our political and industrial activity among the masses must go the systematic education of our membership. Education must not be divorced from action. At the same time, it must not be exclusively “prac- tical,” limiting itself to special phases of trade union work, to interpretation of current problems, to tactical and strategic considerations, etc. To be truly: practical, to equip our comrades for Communist work in-all situations, there must.be education in the funda- mentals of Marxism and Leninism t the present time, there is an alarm- ing number of party members who are insufficiently grounded in Communist theory to talk about it convincingly to their! shopmates, let alone answer objections which may be interposed. Nowadays we are taking applicants into the party with little or no pre- liminary examination. This policy is a decided step forward from the rigid sectarianism of a few years back; it is the only way in which we can hope Protagonists of Slavery - -— N an introduction to A. Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the writer, E. B. Bax has this to say: “Another pass- age, also from the ‘Politics’ (Aris- totle’s) shows that the ancients looked upon slavery as no less a nat- ural and permanent institution, than the modern middle class economists regard the system of wage labor at the present time.” The comparison is absolute—without flaw. Go into any bourgeois college, university, graduate school, high school or elementary kin- dergarten and you can’t escape the ever present fact that this whole crew of pedagogues are hammering into the heads of their students directly and indirectly that the present system of wage labor is the crowning glory of man’s achievement. There may have been evolution and revolution in the past but since capitalism and sham democracy have been established there is no sense in having any more evolution or revolution. In other words those who say that the world and its institutions have not stopped evolving are dreamers, visionaries in fact are crazy radicals. This smug conception of life so pleasing to the money bags of all countries assures the cowardly pedagogues the conveni- ences of life at the price of sacrificing their manhood. One cannot plead ignorance as an excuse here. For these men and women of the schools are well versed in the teachings of Darwin. They have heard enough of the fatal criti- cism levelled by Marxians against the Be ke DN Th «Ett AD le srt: i Es tin i tte Es AID A wil aN oP El oS LOE 5 co conception of capitalist society as the be all and end all-of evolution. And yet they never cease to look upon the present system of wage labor as the most natural and most permanent in- stitution—an institution incapable of being scrapped. Now what are the historical data in this connection? When slavery reign: ed supreme over the whole world, we find well-fed Aristotle, the chosen god of modern pedagogues—-and the cour- tier-flunkey of Alexander of Macedonia —putting it down in all “seriousness” that a society without the existence of chattel slavery is impossible and even inconceivable, exactly as the professional flunkeys of the trustee- managed universities put it down in all “seriousness” that a state of so- ciety where wage labor is eliminated is impossible and even inconceivable. The inference to be drawn from this is that there undoubtedly existed in embryo form in those ancient days of chattel slavery a nucleus of thinking slaves who saw the practical possibil- ity of a society where slavery was su- perseded by some sort of co-opera- tion. The rebellions of Spartacus and Bunus, indeed, dissolve all doubt on this point. Why, you will ask, then the complete absence of all historical records dealing with the aspirations of the slayes? The answer is that no full-stomached writers like Aristotle & Co. thot it respectable to mention them just as the middle-class. econo- mists of today purposely ignore in their + ago the criticisms advanced by the Marxians. Furthermore read- ® ¢ 4h ing and writing being a great luxury the slaves were on the whole illiterate and even if revolutionary slaves did succeed in publishing a work against slavery they would have no readers except the nobility which means that none were published. We do not mean to allege that there existed in ancient civilizations founded on chattel slavery well organized revo- lutionary parties whose object was to overthrow the ruling nobility of those days and establish a socialist com- monwealth. But we do insist on the fact that the slaves did not take slavery as a naturat and permanent institution but on the contrary did whatever was in their power in those days to fight against it. We claim that the Spartacus and Eunus affairs are proof enough—even if there was no other. Hence the well-chiselled phrases of Aristotle & Co. about su- perior and inferior men created by God is nothing but pedantic bunk cal- culated to please the slave owners of his day. ‘ But the sophists and Aristotle not- withstanding, slavery—that is the di- rect ownership by one human being of another—did pass away and was succeeded by serfdom. Under this state of society where a man was neither a chattel slave or “free” we find the sophists and philosophers handing out the same well-starched hokum that our friend Aristotle was used to doing only modified to meet the new form of production. Thus Locke toward the end of his ssay on the Human Understanding tells us to become a mass party; moreover, we should be no Communist party at all if we were not confident of our ability to make real Communists of the newcomers once they are inside the organization. But the policy, like everything else of value in our strug- gle, has its dangers Unless we are careful not to neglect the fundamental education of our new members, they will become familiar with the idea of maneuvering and flexibility in action, without ever comprehending the prin- ciples upon which the maneuvers are based. The character of our party will undergo a subtle but inevitable change, and we shall soon find that we are not a Communist party at all. Participation in Communist activity will do more than any amount of con- sciaus study to make Communists dut of the new members, but study is nevertheless indispensible. All education is, to a very great ex- tent, self-education. Without the en- lightened co-operation of the member- ship, the most satisfactory educational program will fail. And large numbers of our members are still so completely dominated by the swing back from socialist party ideology, so carried away by the idea of “action,” that they are wont to consider any meet- ing at all that has to do with immedi- ate, “practical,” work, more important than any study class. A vague senti- ment prevails, that such education as is needed will be acquired haphazard, absorbed in some way or other in the natural course of things. Where this state of mind leads to disregard of systematic study it must be vigorously combatted. Comrade Browder recently raised the slogan in our ranks: “Make it a party of Leninism!” Leninism is ap- plied Marxism, or rather Marxism ap- plied, to the period of monopoly and imperialism. It is a doctrine of class struggle, with its own tactics and its own fundamental strategy. A Lenin- ist ~party must be a revolutionary party, which means that it must be a party of action. But action without theory becomes sporadic, confused, contradictory, and leads inevitably into “left sickness” and the swamp of opportunism. Let us remember the significant words of Lenin: “Without a revolu- tionary theory, a revolutionary move- ment is impossible!” os By M. Wilgus that he sees no way out for the de- grading mass of serfs to better their condition physically, economically and intellectually. Or in other words this philosopher who did some good work in his time by contending against the ~ stultifying influence of the church against all new ideas, saw serfdom as a natural and permanent institution. But serfdom too has gone in spite of Locke & Co. And now we have capitalism or wage slavery and the professors and vulgar economists mever cease telling us in five-inch words that a system of society where wage labor is not ‘in existence is utopian, visionary and impossible of fulfilment. The poor, say these ora- cles of bourgeois wisdom, shall always be with us. The world however did not stop revolving because the Vicar of Christ on Earth rebuked Galielo for his “foolishness” and wage slavery too is being dragooned out out of ex- istence by the merciless march of Revolutionary Labor. The Seligmans and Tausigs do not deserve pity. Men, well studied fn the science of evolu- tion, who say that evolution existed in the past but has stopped existing with'the era of capitalism and hokum democracy, do not deserve our pity. Contempt should be their reward. Meet us at the > Prudential Restaurant 752 NORTH AVE. The only place to eat.