The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 10, 1925, Page 12

‘of the feudal jungle. TINY corner of the political jun- gle of the Solid South was il- luminated when Senator Pat Harrison, cemocrat of Mississippi, clashed with Senator Bruce, democrat of Maryland, last: Monday afternoon in the senate. Harrison comes trom the depth of the Southern political and economic jungle. Bruce comes from the edge That partly ex- plains the difference. And from their sharp difference we obtain a littie pic- ture of the deepening class antagon- fsm in that vast, unhappy, decaying and yet living human mass which we call the Solid South, Bruce and Harrison are, both equal- ly political vultures. Superficially they are of the same ‘school of vultures— both are members of the “immortal party of Jefferson.” But the school of | political vultures which is: called the democratic party is dividing. The, vul- ture who lives on the edge of the clearing has learned to live on a dif- ferent kind of meat—the meat which is the political garbage of modern capitalist society while the vulture from the heart of the wilderness still lives on raw jungle meat. Bruce of Maryland represents the bourgeoisie of that northern fringe of the South which has been reached by the march of modern industry—the big bourgeoisie which has been made big, rich powerful, and has been orien- tated toward the financial metropolis. Bruce took his stand with the big bourgeoisie cf the country as a whole on the Melion tax plan. Harrison of Mississippi represents a decaying, backward, ultra-ignorant petty-bourgeoisie, and the decayed remnants of a feudal landlord class. Mississippi has never ceased to be a “slave state’—it is a slave country, not in the sense that all capitalist countries are lands of wage-slavery, but in the sense of stiil retaining to a large degree the old system of pro- duction thru the bodily ownership of chattel-slaves by feudal masters, with an elaborate system of restrictions against “free” competition of workers in the wage-labor market and the “free” production of farm products. Twenty-four years ago there were 137,852 families of agricultural serfs working as “share-farmers” and “ten- ant-farmers” in Mississippi, with many other scores of thousands of slave laborers without even the claim to hold land as tenants; and since that time the proportion of serfs ‘has increased. Practically all of the laboring and tenant farming class are completely. without political rights, and without redress in courts of law. Less than onétenth of the adult population of Mississippi exercises the right of the ballot. Thru a system of agricultural | “credit” the entire class is practically bound to the land as “debtors” for life, their children inheriting the “debts” and living on in slavery with- out hope of freedom. It is a notable fact that in Mississippi we have a large 2gricultural class which has never even known the hope of owning land. The greater portion of these are Negroes—more than half of the population of the state are Negroes— and as such are disfranchised; and “One Single Cohesive Fear” local officers into forced labor for terms as long. as a year, without com- pensation and under corpora! punish- ment. This is the social system re- presented by Senator Pat Harrison. Naturally he does not represent the masses of toilers. He represents their masters, But even the masters are not of the class of the big bourge- oisie—they are a peculiarity primitive and stunted petty-bourgeoisie. The type represented by Harrison is the cross-roads store-keeper, who lends “credit” to the impoverished tenant- farmers and who thus becomes their bedily owner; and the landlord who spends his life haggling with a dozen or ‘a score of “share” farmers, taking customarily one half of their crops as rent and the other half in repay- ment of “loans.” The Mississippi system of serfdom is a backward form of production and cannot be made to produce large re- sults, nor to produce a really wealthy bourgeoisie. Herein lies the peculiar form of stagnation characteristic to the most backward sections of the Solid South. The master class for the most part remains an impoverished exploiting class, and this gives the class character to Senator Pat Harri- son’s constituency. It is this which orientates the Mississippi senator on a myriad of questions, including the! question of whether the burden of the | income tax shall fall directly upon the small parasitic incomes or the large parasitic incomes. Sentator Harrison, representing the snivelling, nickei-nursing parasites, wants the big bourgeoisie of the far- away industrial centers to pay the income tax, Senator Bruce Senator Bruce of Maryland, repres- enting a class of parasites which has been introduced .to the more efftciont | method of exploiting thru wage-slav- ery in industrialized production (and which nurses dollars instead of nickels), wants the burden of taxation to fall upon the smaller incomes. So the two “democratic” senators fight. On the face of it, the two should be members of separate parties, each fighting for separate class interests. But it is not so simple as that. The case was stated sharply by Senator Bruce. He taunted Harrison with the very plain fact that the Mis- sissippi democrat might logically be expected to line up with “Wisconsin, Nebraska and North Dakota”—mean- ing, of course, that the Southern cockroach bourgeoisie might logically line up with the LaYollette move- ment which represents the cockroach bourgeoisie of the country generally. But at the same time Senator Bruce taunted Harrison with the reason why he DOES NOT line up with the coun- try’s general petty-bourgeoise move- ment. Bruce gave the reason as: “ONE SINGLE, COHESIVE FEAR.” Fear of the Negro He meant altho he did pot pron- ounce the words—the “single, cohe- sive fear” of the NEGRO. He meant that the Southern cockroach bourge- oisie does not dare to face the slight- estdisturbance of the political surface of the South, the slightest disturbance of its relationships to the Negro. He those who are not Negroes are mostly} meant that the backward exploiters of disfranchised as “ignorant.” Virtually no schools are provided. Lynch law and the stake are the only law for them, and the paranoiac preachers’ “God” is the only court of appeal. There are no cities of consequence in Mississippi, no manufacturs, no minerals (and therefore no mines), and until recently there was no sea- port. Mississippi is one great cotton plantation, varied here and there with sugar-cane plantation. The vast field of primitive agricul- ture is broken only by a few stunted cities and towns, and by lumber camps in which the timber cutting is done largely by labor recruited thru “vag- rancy” laws under which slave-hun- ters are rewarded at two dollars per head for the destitute and homeless laborers that are caught in a moment in illegal idleness and sold_“to pay costs” of their conviction for vagran- cy, tho they often receive not even a form of trial. For being caught idle, men, women and children are sold by Harrison’s constituency do not dare to break the front of the democratic party. The “Party of the Immortal Jefferson” (and of Jefferson Davis, Grover Cleveland aad Woodrow Wil- son) stood for half a century as the guardian of chattel slavery in the South, and for another half century as the preserver of its remnants. For half a century the democratic party in the South has been the accepted political medium for preserving what is called “White Supremacy.” The master class of the South in general and of Mississippi in par- ticular had never had the slightest aversion to contact with the Negro. To mention the most extreme test, the Southern master class has shown a distinct preference for inter-breeding with the Negro race in numberless in- stances, At the same time, the ruling. class has exercised the most brutal repression and savagery against the Negro. Why? Why does “the one single cohesive 8 fear” of the Negro constitute the power that holds the bourgeoisie of the South in a single political line? Because the fear of the Negro is not the fear of a race, it is the fear of a CLASS. The secret of it is that THE EXPLOITED CLASSES OF MIS- SISSIPPI CONSIST IN OVERWHEL- MING PROPORTION OF NEGROES. The vast majority of the tenant- farmers and laborers on whose backs Senator Pat Harrison’s ruling class | lives, is composed of Negroes. They are exploited as laborers and peasants. But they can be held in political sub- jection and directly applied terror more conveniently as Negroes. The coincidence, that the exploited class is mostly black of face, enables the ruling class of the South to obscure its class oppression under the easy cover of race oppression. (In fact the whites of the same economic classes are almost equally terrorized and oppressed). Contradictions The rotting, putrifying, impover- ished and discontented petty bour- geoisie of the Solid South has many impules toward solidarity with the similar class of the North as against the more wealthy bourgeoisie. But \it dares not let go or disturb its front for the “One Single Cohesive Fear” that it may lose its hold on its serf class which is mostly black of. face. The big bourgeoisie of the North also at various times during the past thirty years has been inconvenienced by the stagnant cohesiveness of the Solid South. Democratic and republi- can politicians alike have made re- peated gestures toward breaking up the Solid South of the democratic party. As a child in Texas in 1896 the writer was astonished to see a local banker’s sons actually flaunting a republican banner, (considered an un- speakable offense) which meant that the danger of the Bryan movement capturing the government thru the capure of the democratic party and hereby using the political strength of the South in a debtor’s drive against the big bourgeoisie, was frightening the Southern bourgeoisie. Since that time republican politicians, Roosevelt, Taft, Elihu Root, Harding and Cool- idge, have made overtures to the South- ern bourgeoisie by offering to commit the republican party to “white suprem- acy” in the Southern states. Today, subsidized Negro newspapers continue to flaunt the slogaii of Frederick Douglass (of the 8 War period) that “the Republican party is the Sip; All else is the Sea,” but Mr. C. Bascom Slemp strives to introduce the republican party to the Southern rul- ing class as the thing it is—another party of “White Supremacy”—which means Capitalist class supremacy over the toiling masses whose faces are largely black. And it has already been proven that the democratic and repub- lican parties act on a “gentleman's agreement” by which they co-operate in killing every gesture (however ster- ile) toward granting political rights to Negroes. History forces the question of the breaking up of the Solid South upon the order of the day. Yet neither the republican party nor the democratic party (both of the big bourgeoisie), nor any party of the petty bourgeoise, will do it or can desire to do it at the cost of extending citizenship rights to the most exploited of all classes in America, the Negro toilers. Such citizenship rights would not free the Negro masses from exploitation, ter- ror and suppression. The break-up of semi-feudal restrictions would make the exploitation more efficient and pro- ductive, and put the terror and sup- pression on a more secure basis. But the existing exploiting class has its lines of operation laid in feudal con- ditions, and dares not face any which tend to substitute a new and more capable set of exploiters in their place, — This is the impasse. : The big bourgeoisie, generally speaking, has an interest in breaking up the backward system of feudal pro- duction. But in concrete cases it be- comes the interest of the big bourge- oisie to make a truce with the rem- nants of feudal conditions. Thus it is, that the republican party in attempting - By Robert Minor ° to introduce itself to the ruling class of the South, offers itself as another party of “White Supremacy.” In past history, capitalism, in order to over throw feudalism as a then ruling sys tem, has been forced to draw the proletariat into political activity. But in the present stage of capitalism it can better afford to ally itself with the beaten remnants of feudalism (as witness Central Burope), than to stir up the exploited masses. With things as they are in the South, no capitalist party, nor any pet- ty-bourgeois party, will or can dare to stir the exploited masses into even “democratic” political efforts.. Under the existing circumstances, none but a revolutionary party—the revolution- ary party—will or can do this, Any effort to break up the Solid South into political divisions of the republican and democratic parties, will be made only with the severest precautions by both parties against political enfranchisement (little as that means) of the black masses. None but the most exploited masses of the Southern jungle (whose faces are mostly black) can set these mass- es into motion, and no party whose purpose is not revolution will dare to lead such a movement. Senator Bruce in a moment of anger can taunt Senator Harrison with in- discrete hints of the fear of the masses whose faces are black. But when his anger cools, the knees of | Senator Bruce must also tremble With the “one single cohesive fear.” The Workers (Communist) Party alone can and must become the em- bodiment of the “one single cohesive fear’—the leader and liberator of the exploited masses cf the backward South whose faces are both black and white. THREE WiGVIES TN ONE EVENING FOR ONE PRIGE The workers of Chicago will have the opportunity to see three live work- ing class pictures in one evening for the price of one. All the pictures were made in Russia during the revolution. The first is “Polikushka,” the fa- mous story of serfdom by L. N. Tol- stoy. Made into a movie by the world famous Moscow Art Theatre. The second, “Soldier lvan’s Miracle,” a comedy, tells a serious story about religion, but in a funny, peculiar Rus- sian way. The third, “In Memoriam—Lenin,” is showing Nicolai Lenin in action. the last picture is shown in connec- tion with the first anniversary of Lenin’s death. The pictures will be shown in Chi- cago only ONE EVENING, THURS- DAY, JANUARY 15, from 6:30 to 11 Pp m. at Gartner’s Independent Theater, 3725 Roosevelt Road, near Indepedence Blvd. The Walden Book Shop 307 Plymouth Court (Between State and Dearborn Just South of Jackson) CHICAGO BOOKS FOR THINKERS SCIENCE, LITERATURE ECONOMICS, HISTORY, Any Book in Print at Once. Jimmie Higgins Book Shop Fr 127 University Place NEW YORK ciTy A Workers Party Book Shop Latucr0 Re ast Worker jer fag