The Daily Worker Newspaper, June 12, 1926, Page 11

_bandits to the lamp-posts. F t His Life “Svesda” (The Star) was published. The Duma fraction split into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Lenin conduct™] from abroad the activities of the representatives. In a conference, one of the Duma representatives, Badayev, explained how he wanted to study the details of the budget, ete.; Lenin laughed and said: Why do you con- cern yourself about those details? You are a worker, tell them about the life of the workers; throw it in the face of this black Duma that they aré® ‘exploiters and ‘scoundrels, Present a_ bill. ‘ealling for the hanging of the Black Hundred This will be the right sort of a bill. (Of course Lenin did not make fun of detailed knowledge, he himself knew exactly the finances of Russia, but he wanted to phasize what is the most important thing: to epresent the revolution in the parliament and not be carried away by “legislative work,” like the Mensheviks. ; Strikes began to occur in Russia more and more frequently. The bloodshed in the Lena gold fields in Siberia was the signal of the new revolutionary wave. The Bolsheviks were busy in the unions. And although the Mensheviks had “experts” on this field and more legal func- tionaries, the Bolsheviks gained ground in the unions. A big victory was the capture of the metal-workers’ convention in 1912. In the same year, Lenin called a convention in Prague, which declared itself. the party convention, exluded the Mensheviks from the party and elected a Leninist central committee. From that time on the Bol- sheviks exist as a separate party, adding to the e of the social-democratic labor party of tussia, the word Bolshevik. As a-program for he Bolshevik Duma fraction, there was adopted e demand for a democratic republic, the eight- hour. day, and the.expropriation.of the lands of the nobility. The Mensheviks.. demanded only: liberties, and other reformist measures. ‘Lenin and Zinoviev settled ‘in Krakow, in Polish Austria, close to the Russian border, where they were close to party work. They par- ticipated in the editing of “Pravda”, the legal daily in Petersburg. From the pennies collected for this paper, compared with the money raised for “Lutsh” (The Ray), the Menshevik paper, Lenin calculated who had the majority among the workers. The small arhounts, but from larger number of people, came to the “Pravda”: ; the big- ger amounts, from bourgeois circles, to “Lutsh”. All other groups held a conference abroad and built the August bloc. In Russia, the fight went _ on. The government dissolved the metal work- ers’ union, which already had ten thousand mem- bers. A strike wave went over the country in the summer of 1914, and just before the war barricades were thrown up in Petersburg—at the same time that Poincare was in the city, making the last arrangements for the war. F rankfurters - By Jackson C. Herman ORRIS was ashamed. The boss told him to come to work that night and he had come. Morris was a.good union man. What of it if he worked below the scale, and if he worked nights, though night-work was not permitted by the union. That morning the boss had given him an ul- timatum: “Come in to work tonight and I'll pay you time-and-a-half. Don’t come in then eh? don’t cOme in at all, then. Not at-t-all!’”’ Morris was terrified at the prospect of losing his job. It was in the middle of the season, and if he didn’t work now, he’d have to come to grips with starvation during the slack-time. But night-work? Morris was a union man, even if he worked under the scale. And he had promised Annie he would take her out that night, and now he couldn’t. But if he shouldn’t come to work, he’d be fired. Maybe the union would get him a new fob? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha! He was one of the best paid workmen in the “wurst-trade,’” and he worked under the scale! So that was out. So he’d come that night. And, anyways time-and-a-half wasn’t so unpleasant either. The grinding machine was exchanging com- pliments with the machine that took the bones out of the meat, as the stench of old meai rose from the caldrons which were one clouc of smoke. And the workmen sweated anc yelled at each other; each doing his work fast as he could. If they got finished early, they would go home early. Go home. To ‘sleep. Gee! They were tired as hell! Morris, standing by the huge grinder, vowed even while telling the foreman that night- work wouldn’t be so bad if only he could meet his freinds by day, that never again would he work at night. To hell with the boss! To hell with the job! Who the devil wants to work at night? Night time is sleep- time. ‘What the hell does the boss think he is, a slave? Yea, he is a slave! Didn’t he come to work when he didn’t want to? What ‘the tell Rind of ‘free wountty “ts” this? | You can work for whom you want, and when you want. There’s freedom of speech, press, and assembly. Sure. Didn’t he learn all that in night school? Where was it he read it? Yeh, now he’s got it. In the constitution! But last winter he wanted to get a job, and he couldn’t. Once he was distributing Communist leaflets, no they weren’t Communist, they were some- thing about the workers’ youth conference, and a big cop had come over to him and told Lenin and the Second International. SOME comrades ask, how Lenin could stay in the Second International, where reformism was so wide-spread. You must remember, that Marxism was accepted there as the guiding doc- trine. In the Amsterdam congress of 1904, revi- sionism was condemned. In Stuttgart in 1907, the resolution drafted by Lenin and Rosa Lux- emburg, against war, was accepted; and, what was most important, the Second Internatoinal, up to the imperialist war, never condemned the pr oletarian revolution. And revolutionary Marx- ism was propagated in all the partiés, although by only a minority in many of the countries. And Lenin never participated in the reform- ist deviations of the Second International. In his collected works, you will find articles from all periods, analyzing and criticizing the internation- al conferences,‘and the main parties. However highly he estimated Kautsky and Bebel, he cirtic- ized their deviations from the Marxian ‘line. Once when the Mensheviks referred to the example of Bebel, Lenin warned them, saying that if Bebel sometimes stepped into a morass, he picked him- self out again, but not everyone can do the same. After 1909, when the “Way to Power” was pub- lished, Kautsky began to depart from the Marxian line more and more and there was consequently antagonism to the left radicals—Rosa Luxem- burg, Clara Zetkin, Franz Mehring and others. And then, at the beginning of the war, Lenin explains that the centrist position of Kautsky is a hypocritical form of social-patriotism and worse than dpen betrayal. But even the radicals were criticized by Lenin. Rosa Luxemburg did not wholly under- stand the importance of a strongly centralized party. This was the result of her incorrect theoretical conception of capitalist accumulation. him to get a move on, or he’d be locked up. A friend of his got put in hock, the other day, for speaking at a meeting in Passaic, where they were pulling off a strike! And when he tries to speak about it, they tell him, “You don’t like this country? So why don’t you go back to where the hell you come irom?” $o he lets up. Sure, this is a free country. People can strike, if they don’t picket. People can speak all they want, until they’re locked up. His friend was put in hock, and he’ll never be oe the same again. Louie tells about “Third degree” and all that; but, Morris knows better. tight years of high power exploitation would each anybody but scissorsbills what kind of country this is, and Morris isn’t a scissorbill. Morris was working swiftly: The sooner he’d finish the sooner he’d go home. But something was the matter with the ma- chine. The knives weren‘t so sharp, and he had to push the meat in with all his. might. Why didn’t the boss see to it that the knives were sharp? There was a big hunk of meat that the machine couldn’t grind. It must be from an animal that when it was killed was as old and wheezy as the hills. The company advertised, that “only the best und freshest meats are used in our products,” jure! This particular piece of meat had been aying around for the last four months, and as he meat they used goes, it~was “the freshest neat. used in our products.” But what the devil was the matter with this meat? The machine wouldn’t cut it. Morris stuck his hand into the machine and pushed the meat. At last it was moving. Suddenly there was a tug at his fingers, and an electri- cal thrill ran through his body. Morris pulled his hand out, and there. four fingers. Morris fainted. The workmen next to him shouted; the foreman yelled, and the machinery was stopped. The boss, a little Jew with a red beard, came lifining in. edalod ba} i “What’s the matter, broke?” The foreman told him. All the boss could say was, “Thank God, I’m insured!” The workmen turning away disgustedly picked Morris from the floor, and sent him to the hospital. When Morris came to, he was thankful that it wasn’t his right hand, and anyway, he didn’t work, with that finger. is the faded at, On the question of imperialism and the self- determination of nations Lenin criticized the views of many left radicals. On February 1, 1914, Lenin wrote a statement to the secretary of the Second International, in in order to explain the differences between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. He pointed out how the Russian party, in 1909 and 1910, had con- demned the liquidators; in this question the dif- ferences are irreconcilable. The organizational committee, elected in 1912 by the Mensheviks, has formally abandoned the liquidators, but actually tolerates and endorses them. Then the same ques- tions which in all countries divide the reform- ists and the Marxists appear also between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Just as iwreconcil- able are many differences caused by the fact that the liquidators fight agaisnt revolutionary slogan in the legal papers. They explain that the demands for the republic and the confiscation of the land- lords’ lands are not suitable. And their argu- ments cannot be discussed in the legal papers. Therefore their attitude must be regarded as treacherous. On the national question, there are differences: the Mensheviks advocated autonomy where the party advocated the right to separa- tion; they tend to a nationalist point of view. Within the party, the national question also causes differences: the party does not accept the autonomy of national federations. The liquidators advocate blocs with bourgeois parties. The men- sheviks do not admit that the Bolsheviks have a crushing majority among the Russian proletariat; they have artificial organizations abroad. With concrete facts, Lenin proves that the Bolsheviks have the majority among the organized prole- tariat, and that experience has proved the or- zanization method of the Bolsheviks to be cor- vect. a a | ee