The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 12, 1927, Page 10

ee ee Disintegration in Belgian S. P. HE powerful Belgian Socialist Party, which for its size can boast as large a collection of cab- inet ministers as any Socialist Party in, the world, is beginning to crack as its continued support of capitalist governments makes it more and more unpopular with the Belgian working class. Its leader, Emile Vandervelde, the revisionist, who long before the war had “discovered” that Marxism was “out of date” and who during the war and post-war period was his majesty’s minister in various cab- inets and even prime minister for a time, is at present part of a coalition government in which the capitalist parties have a majority of the min- isters. The Belgian masses, who for a long time fol- lowed Vandervelde blindly as a result of his prom- ises that the working class of Belgium would get some definite advantages out of his participation in various cabinets, find their lot slowly worsening instead of getting better. Consequently, they are beginning to desert the Socialist Party and, at the same time, an opposition, or left wing move- ment, is growing up within that organization. The man who has succeeded in putting himself at the head of the opposition for the moment is De Brouck- ere, {an old time “orthodox Marxist” of the Kaut- Skian school). He is playing the game of left leader to prevent the opposition movement from going too far to the left and his real attitude is revealed by the fact that he has been and still continues to be a delegate from Belgium to the League of Na- tions, and thus participates in the super-govern- ment of imperialism. Nevertheless, he sounded the warning at the special congress of the Belgian La- bor Party in Brussels recently to the effect that further participation in the coalition government. would result in the disintegration of the party. He declared that the party and the parliament, in which its deputies make up the largest single party bloc, had capitulated before the bankers who are the real masters of Belgium, He felt that all the Socialist Parties of Europe were standing at the crossroads, that if they continued on the path of cooperation with capitalist governments and coali- tion ministries, they would be completely swallowed up in the capitalist system and will have ceased to represent the interests of labor and its struggle for emancipation. “I have confidence in. the tri- umph of Socialism,” he ended, “and if you make a mistake the torch will fall from your hands and ethers will raise it again.” But Vandervelde, the seasoned capitalist cab- met minister and reali leader of the party, is net easily to be frightened by such warnings. Capital- ism still requires his support to carry through the stabilization of the Belgian franc and the rational- ization of Belgian industry at the expense of the Selgian working class. He boasted of the achieve- ments of himself and his party in helping capital- ism to survive the storm which it had raised among the masses through its policy of plunging the world into war. He boasted of the stabilization of the Belgian franc. He boasted that the participation of himself and his party had aided in the stabilization of capitalism, which in simpler English means that he had made capitalism more seeure. He declared that he was not only afraid of a government more to the right of the present one, but also of a gov- ernment more to the left! Either of these would endanger stabilization. He was supported by the Mussolini—“The attempted assassination is due at 12:50 prompt. What shall Y¥ wear fer it?” 4 —Simplicissimus, Munich ° By BERTRAM D. WOLFE ns ne yellow trade union leaders and the conference fin-' ally authorized the executive to draft a legislative program on the basis of further participation in the capitalist government by socialist ministers, this program te go to a referendum. In the meanwhile, the opposition within the Bel gian Labor Party grows and the support of the Communist Party by the working masses grows siso. The Belgian Communist Party, which since its inception has been very small, and, thanks to the continued belief of the masses in the leadership of Vandervelde and the Beigian Labor Party, was till recently comparatively without great mass in- fiuence, has been growing very rapidly. The re- peated failure of the socialists in the Vandervelde coalition government to fight for the most ele- mentary interests of the masses, the complete capi- tulation of the Poullet-Vandervelde coalition cabinet before the attacks of high finance, the formation of a bankers’ government with the support and participation of the secial-democratic leaders, the abandonment of a proposed capital levy on the rich and the substitute of a 50 per cent increase in the taxes hitting the masses, the recognition of the American debt, the handing over of the govern- ment-owned railroads to a private company-—such is the kind of socialism that the Vandervelde coali- tion policy has given to the Belgian workers. In Octeber 1926, the Communists participated for the first time in municipal elections (municipal elections are held in Belgium every six years). The party, which is numericaliv and financially weak, was able to put forth candi2dstes in only 63 munici- palities. which municipalities embrace only 28 per cent of the total clectorate. The party has only about a thousand members, but it got 70,000 votes and succeeded in electing 26 candidates. In the big industrial cities, the Communist vote varied be- tween 25 and 30 per cent of the social-democratic vote, running in one case as high as 61 per cent. This represents a tremendous advance for the Com- munists. The Socialist Party during the period in which it acted as the savior of capitalism degen- erated so far that it is even incapable of making the about-face that de Brouchere proposes in order to save some shreds of its reputation. The Belgian Labor Party, one of the. oldest and best crganized reformist parties in Europe is decaying. The future belongs to the Communist Party of Belgium. The Aftermath of “The Jungle” (Continued from page 1) the American papers, at the instance of the Czarist embassy, began to denounce Gorky, on the pretext that he had “insulted” the American people by bringing with him as his wife a woman to whom he was not married. It was known to those who made the charge that Russian revolutionists mar- ried without the churchly processes which alone were “legal” in Russia, and that Medame Andreieva was his wife according to the revolutionary code; they had known that all along, and had not made use of the fact. Now they unloosed upon him the furies of a hypocritical moralistic journalism. He was hounded out of New York hotels, denounced in every pulpit and newspaper in the country; his mis- sion was destroyed. And the American men of let- ters who had been proud to be invited to dine with this Russian giant, were afraid to brave that storm; one and all, the respectable writers turned tail and fled, not daring to call their souls their own—a black day in the calendar of American letters. Great reputations fell that day, Mark Twain’s among them, in the minds of boys and girls; now gtown up, who saw that humiliating and cowardly action with the clear eyes of youth and were ashamed for their country. If American literature is now less timid about sex, that young indignation may have some- thing to do with it. But those boys and girls did not know why America and American men of let- ters had suddenly become so prudish: they did not - know that Maxim Gorky’s influence had been de- Stroyed in that sudden journalistic whirlwind, ‘not because of the lack of churchly blessings upon his union with Madame Andrieva, but because he had rashly intruded into an American economic struggle on the unfashionable side. He, and the writers of America, must be taught a lesson, and made to real- ize who was running this country and what hap- pened to anybody who tried to interfere with them. The stage of Upton Sinclair's literary career, im- mediately ensuing upon his immense celebrity as author of The Jungle, falls within this period when “muck-raking” was being outlawed and editors and writers taught a lesson by those in control of Amer- jean business. He was one of the few who dared to brave this Thermidorian reaction, and he was chief of those to suffer from it. It is his temerity which explains the fact that his reputation in America as a novelist fell during that period to zero, or lower. He missed, by remaining a “muck-raker,” his chance of regaining literary respectability. His next novel, The Metropolis, published in 1907, was an attack on New York society; and The Money- changers, published in 1908, was an exposé of Wall Street. Nor is this explanation to be discounted by the fact that The Metropolis and The Money- changers were not very good novels, The point is worth laboring. Novels far inferior letwe to these two would, in that period, have maintained Upton Sinclair in American critical esteem, if they had been of a different tendency; not to realize that is to*be ignorant of American criticism and its fashions. It was the fashion to sneer at Upton Sinclair, and to accept the yellow-journal pictures of him, in which he was represented as a mere sensation-monger and a fool to boot. George Brandes, generally accounted the world’s greatest modern critic, was astonished at.this Amer- ican neglect of one of its greatest writers; on visit- ing this country in 1914, he took pains to say to the reporters who met him at the steamer that there were three American novelists whom he found worth reading, one of these being Upton Sinclair. The statement, as it generally appeared in the press,- referred only to Frank Norris and Jack London, omitting Upton Sinclair’s name altogether. Doubt- less it was naively regarded as incredible that any- one should really take this disreputable “muck- raker” seriously.... And it was not until a new rebellious literature and criticism emerged after the war, under the leadership of Sinclair. Lewis and H. L. Mencken, that Upton Sinclair was again men- tioned among American writers by any reputable native critic, who was not a Socialist. HELP WANTED 6 Bo New Magazine is as hungry for : rt stories of approximately twelve hundred words, as an evangelist is for a wealthy sinner. The proletarian woods are full of writers who can draw a word pic- ture of things that happen around them. Poetry is welcome though, to paraphrase a heavenly invitation, many may come but not all will be chosen. Cartoonists are the salt of the earth, without them our press would look like a file of the Weekly Peo- ple. In addition to the decorative value of a cartoon there is more propaganda con- densed in a good drawing than in several hundred phrases. Since The New. Magazine is not in a posi- tion to pay, for anything except the print- ing of it, and since we are so under-staffed that our week is one long day, we urge our contributors who may not receive even a letter of thanks for their pains ‘that the victim who is charged with the responsi- bility of getting out The New Magazine has so much other work to do on The DAILY WORKER that picking letters out of a typewriter, after writing heads, editorials and trying to find out what is happening in half a dozen world capitals is cruel and unusual punishment. Letters written in such a physical condition might drive the recipient to reading the New York (Porno) Graphic. But like the three wise men of the east who saw the star in the west which led them to the stable in Bethlehem, we also see a star in the west, though we have been waiting for it to come our way so long that we now see two stars instead of one. When this star eventually arrives the staff will be augmented by one individual and the clouds of gloom that have been hang- ing over three over-worked slaves will be dispelled somewhat. Poets whose compositicns: have gone into. the waste basket by mistake, writers whose names have been omitted for the same reason and cartoonists whose draw- ings have been vivisected to suit a make- up man’s fancy, are appealed to in humble- ness of spirit to stop grinding their teeth in righteous wrath and to begin turning out masterpieces for The New Magazine. Bs a, SAY CAN YOU SET ,. .?”" Thiele in the Winston-Salem Journal, ity f ep cnem