The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 18, 1928, Page 8

a o he e ¥ Page Bight THE DAILY WORKER Published by the NATIONAL DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING ASS'N, Inc, Daily, Except Sunday 83 Ficest Street, New York, N. Y. Cable Address: “Daiwork” SUBSCRIPTION RATES By Mail (in New York only): By Mail (outside of New York): $8.00 per year $4.50 six months $6.00 per year $3.50 six months $2.50 three months, $2.00 three months. Addrest and mail out checks to HE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. cst 31 Baier. . ROBERT MINOR ee” Assistant Editor. ..WM. F, DUNNE Entered as second-class mail at the post-office at New York, N. ¥., under the act of March 3, 1879. Phone, Orchard 1680 Rift in the Imperialist Conference It is quite certain that if the real representatives of the peo- ple of the Latin American countries were permitted to attend the Havana conference the whole structure would be smashed, the | arrogant United States delegation, under the pompous Hughes, would not have one single delegation to support their stand, and | the delegations would unite to form a bloc of anti-imperialist nations against Yankee imperialism and its murderous bandit hordes. But every precaution has been taken to guard against any real expression of the people of South and Central America. A whole array of sychophants, grovelling lackeys of puppet gov- ernments maintained in power against the will of the peoples of their own countries by American armed terror, is on hand to pay homage to the tyrant. In spite of all precautions, however, the enmity for Wall Street and its government at Washington cannot be completely suppressed. The Argentine delegation, under a petty-bourgeois nationalist chairman, makes a feeble protest—all too inadequate to meet the demands of the situation which cries aloud for a definite break with and a fierce denunciation of the intrigue and ! hypocrisy of the United States ruling class, in order to wreck | completely the Pan American Union. True to the traditions of | the class he serves Dr. Pueyrredon contents himself with a mo- dest, almost apologetic withdrawal from the conference. The same attitude, in an even milder form, is taken by the Mexican delegation, which submitted Thursday a proposal to the international law committee of the conference, to consider “all aggression” illicit and demanded that it “accordingly be pro- hibited.” This is inadequate, inasmuch as even the monstrous ravaging of Nicaragua by United States marines is not specifically classified as aggressive action by the American imperialists. But the Mexican proposal, like the action of the Argentine delegation, reflects a mass resentment against the United States policy that cannot be smothered even in the Havana imperialist conference. Such puny proposals as the one submitted by the Mexican dele- gation do not aid the anti-imperialist movement, but play directly into the hands of the Washington government, as is indicated by the fact that Charles Evans Hughes accepted it, knowing full- well that “aggressive action” has never been admitted no matter how flagrant the action of a predatory nation may be. The masses of the Latin American countries who, after all, bear the real brunt of imperialist reaction, must create such formidable anti-imperialist movements that no government can exist in their countries that in any way helps to conceal in the velvet glove the bloody iron fist of the northern murderer. In such a struggle the Latin American masses will have the unstinted support of the advanced section of the American working class who are forced to fight at home against the same relentless enemy that is conspiring at Havana for further enslavement of the south- ern republics. The Cruisers Will Be Built In spite of the slash in the naval appropriation bill the im- perialists get what they want—$300,000,000 for fast cruisers armed with eight-inch guns. P The note of sorrow over the reduction is drowned by the joy over the fact that the cruiser program will be carried out. As we have pointed out before, these fast cruisers are de- signed especially for harrying the commerce of a rival power and for terrorising colonial and semi-colonial peoples. The comments of naval officers and high government offi- cials relative to the necessity for these cruisers appearing in the ports of nations where it is desirable to increase American pres- tige is very enlightening. It establishes the connection between commerce and cruisers and thereby destroys the illusion that gunboats are for purposes of “defense.” The navy is the instrument of Wall Street imperialism and nothing else. The feverish activity in naval circles is a further and very decisive sign of the preparation for imperialist war. The cut in the naval appropriation bill is not an indication of the peaceful intentions of the ruling class but solely a con- | cession to the mass resentment aroused by the intense prepara- tion for carrying out the imperialist program. The imperialists will continue their conspiracies and will adopt more careful methods—methods calculated to conceal their bloody purposes more skilfully. The liberal and pacifist journals will now rejoice but Wall Street government has not changed. Its program for world conquest remains unaltered. Gunboats and troops are in Nicaraguan ports and on Nicaraguan soil and in China. The organization of the masses for war against imperialist war must be carried on with greater energy and all tendencies to claim that the danger is past must be relentlessly combatted. Mellon Finances Greek Fascists Andrew W. Mellon, billionaire secretary of the treasury and real boss of the Coolidge administration, through Ogden L. Mills, lame-duck appointee as under-secretary of the treasury, requested the house ways and means committee to approve a loan of $12,- 167,000 to the Greek government. The amount of the loan is not of itself significant. The important factor is that it follows a whole series of private investments by Wall Street bankers in Greek bonds. Ever-increasing masses of workers are coming to realize that the most vicious, relentless and rapacious defender of fascist and white terror is the Wall Street government of the United States, Greek-American workers of the International Labor Defense of New York city and their sympathizers are to be congratulated their action in picketing the Greek legation in protest against e frightful mass murders being carried on against the working fass of that country by, the fascist government, maintained in fpower by American dollars. While protesting and fighting against the terror in Europe, workers here must never forget that without the support of the Mellons and the Coolidges in this country fascism would soon cease to be an international menace. Our heaviest blows must be dealt the very fountain-head of fascist support with its economic ‘base on Wall Street ang its political head at Washington. ; ” *” {HE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1928 LEAVINGS In the winter of “prosperity.” By Fred Ellis @ (EDITOR’S NOTE: In Thurs- day’s and Friday’s issues of The DAILY WORKER a letter written by A. Joffe immediately before his suicide was published for the first time in complete form in the United States. Garbled and partial ver- sions of the letter had previously appeared in anti-labor papers, among which we include the “social- ist” press. The DAILY WORKER prints below, on the subject of the Joffe letter, an article by Comrade J. Yaroslavsky which correctly characterizes the utterances of Joffe under the title “The Philoso- phy of Decadence.) ay care By J. YAROSLAVSKY. By our publication of the letter written by A. Joffe just before his death, we desire to put an end to the irresponsible speculation which the Opposition started attaching to that event prior to the XV. Party Con- gress. Immediately before the XV. Party Congress, the Opposition at- tempted to describe the death of Joffe as an act of heroism, a case of “death in the.name of life and the fight.” In the illegal publication “Material for Discussion” (November 19, 1927), issued by the Opposition prior to the Party Congress, we find the following remarkable passage: “The suicide of Joffe is no deca- dent phenomenon of social pessi- mism; on the contrary, it is a phen- omenon of social optimism. If our deceased comrade had not believed in the working class and its Party, if he had not believed in our future, he would not have departed this life merely because he had no longer the strength to carry on the fight. “As Joffe died, only revolution- aries can die who place not their personal interests but the interests | of the class before all else. Joffe died, so as to induce others to do what he himself had not the strength to do, i. e., to carry on an uninterrupted fight for the sake of the future. That is really a death in the name of life and of the fight. That is a decided protest against the danger of backsliding, against the danger of contentment with what has been attained. Such a death can arouse neither discour- agement nor pessimism among the fighters; on the contrary, (7!!! J. Y.!) it stimulates, it elevates, it leads us forward. Joffe did not throw aside the flag’in dying; he died under the old flag (of Menshe- vism? J. Y.), in the name of the flag of Lenin, in the name of Com- munism, in the name of the great cause of the international proletar- iat. (Those are indeed the words: “Under the old flag, in the name of the flag of Lenin...” J. Y.) Verily, the flag of Joffe is the flag of Marx and of Lenin. “We shall carry this flag for- ward, we shall carry it on to the end.” (Emphasis ours. J. Y.) It is not for the purpose of a pole- mic against the ingloriously decadent Opposition that we have cited this classic example of a speculation with the death of a sick man like Joffe, but we bear in mind that this rotten philosophy of decadence is being forced upon several thousand former and present members of our Party, that it is spreading its influence among them, and that in such circles individuals are living and “acting” who are determined to pursue their! path “under the flag of Joffe.” i Decadent opinions can also appear | in an arch-revolutionary guise, aj combination described by Lenin asj “left phrase and right action.” At| the time of the defeat of the first revolution, the decadent influences } were disguised in an anarcho-syndi- calist garb; religious mysticism fre- quently appeared robed in the most extravagant “left,” “revolutionary” )phraseology. Even those who at the time of the “liquidators” placed the Sexual problem in the centre of at- |tention, desired to make this symp- |tom of decadence appear as a revolu- | tionary symptom. The Trotskyites are | past-masters in the art of cloak- ing anti-revolutionary political ten- dencies with “left” phrases, This is ie fact often remarked by Lenin. The period of transition to the : Corrupt By BILL DUNNE. The average member of a union his fellows are deceived, robbed, be- trayed and manipulated by official- dom in the interests of enemy forces whose workings he has sensed but could not see and clearly understand. Strikes would be called off mysteri- ‘ously after being called just as mys- teriously. Union officials would re- sign to take a juicy job with the same employers his union had been fighting with, or to accept a govern- ment position at the hands of office- holders elected with the support of union hating corporations. Many of them came back as union officials when their political appointment ex- pired or there was a new turn of he political wheel. Like political appointees who “sel- dem die and never resign,’ labor officialdom became a separate caste, sharply separated from the rank and file, with its own code of rules and wganizational discipline superseding hat of the union. Today labor offi- cialdom in this respect is much like the British Admiralty—a sort of super-government, * ¢@ e The trade union bureauere” has: has suspected for years that he and| The Philosophy of Decadence “Nep” likewise proved too much for certain comrades. Some quitted the Party, others retired from their poli- tical activity, again others committed suicide. We may call to mind the suicide of J, Lutovinov. But no one thought of calling these events “phen- omena of social optimism.” All recog- nized that the difficulties and ordeals of the revolution owing to the delay in the advent of the world revolution had surpassed the powers of these comrades. No one dreamt of glorify- ing these suicides, though the victims were very valuable revolutionary and Bolshevist comrades, whose merits were at any rate not inferior to those of A. Joffe. In analysing the reasons leading up to the suicid: of J. Lutovinov, Radek wrote as follows: “Lutovinov sometimes failed to comprehend the fact that the prole- tariat cannot make one jump from capitalism to socialism; quite par- ticularly not in a petty-bourgeois country like Russia. He readily grasped all difficulties, but his whole nature revolted against them; and this contradiction between logi- cal reason and sentiment imprinted upon him the tragic stamp of inner disharmony. He did not hear the calm and even tread of the advanc- ing working battalions of which Lasalle once spoke; he was impa- tient and ill at ease. Were such sentiments to prevail among the broad working masses, the revolu- tion would experience serious con- cussions at critical moments.” Have we here a single word in glor- ifying of suicide? J. Lutovinov, who was a member of the Workers’ Oppo- sition, had serious differences with the Party, but only the worst enemy of the latter could have had the idea of justifying his suicide by the inter- nal party regime. Radek, on the con- trary, proved that the internal dis- cord in the mind of Comrade Lutov- inov cast discredit neither on him nor on us, Now the case is different. The sui- cide of a member of the Opposition— can -nch a fine opportunity be al- lowed to pass by unused? Whatever may be the explanation of his death, it must be furnished with a justifica- tion making it appear as much as pos- sible a matter of principle. Histori- cal, philosophical, moral, and political motives must be attributed to him. In a word the suicide of this sick man must at all costs be made into a case of “death in the name of life and the fight.” * * In their illegal publication “Mater- ial for Discussion,” issue of Novem- ber 24th, 1927, the Trotskyites pub- lished such fragments from the let- ter of Joffe as they required for their attacks on the Party. Immediately after the death of Joffe, this letter was sent to all members of the Cen- tral Committee and the Central Con- trol Commission, Nevertheless the Trotskyites everywhere hastened to say that the letter had been sup- pressed, hidden, and so forth. With the full knowledge of the Trotskyites, (and on whose instructions?) this mean accusation was spread abroad by the foreign organs of the Mas- lovites and the French Oppositionists, e. g. in No. 2 & 8 of the magazine called “Against the Stream,” the jour- nal of Treint and other muddle-heads. Against the Party. Joffe indited this letter with the in- tention that it should be used against the Party. “I naturally hope you will make full use of this letter,” he wrote L. Trotsky. But he did not think his letter would come into the hands of the Party before it had been altered in some way or other. k “T have some misgivings as to this letter of mine,” he wrote, “for such a letter cannot but be subjec- tive. And in view of such subjec- tivism the criterion of objectivity may be lost sight of. And any wrongly expressed phrase might distort the whole impression of the letter.” Joffe’s fears were not ungrounded. There are so many unharmonious phrases in this letter, that it would have been submitted to a wholesale revision, had the original not been in the hands of the Central Committee of the Party. Joffe gave his express consent to having it so revised. (To Be Continued). e weathered political storms and re- mained in power so far because of its control of the organizational machin- ery, its ability to identify itself in the minds of the membership with the union itself, the economic and political pressure it can bring to | bear on the opposition by reason of its support from the capitalist class and capitalist government, and the confused and organizationally weak character of the opposition move- ments which developed before the Trade Union Educational League program gave political clarity and effeciive organizational forms to the left wing forces. . . A close acquaintance with the labor movement uncovers an apparent paradox i. e. while it is probable that no labor bureaucracy in the world is hated so cordially by the workers whom it rules, in no other great in- dustrial country has officialdom been able until recently to crush opposi- tion movements so swiftly and tho- roughly, to isolate their leaders and destroy their influence. The upward development of American imperial- sion. Workers have felt that renew- ed prosperity would follow depres- sion and have followed the reaction- aries rather than trust new leaders and experiment with new policies. This conservatism of the organized workers, based in the continual ex- pansion of American industry, has been a firm foundation for the bureau- cracy. But this by no means can be said to have won for them the respect and devotion of the union member- ship. There is no more common phe- nomenon in the labor movement than the never-ceasing denunciaiion of the bureaucrats. The membership expects to be robbed and even be- trayed, and while it may accept this as inevitable under the circumstances| it does not like it. * * @ The trouble has been that “cor- ruption” has been interpreted large- ly in the sense of the misappropria- tion or outright theft of union funds or the actual sell-out of a strike for a cash consideration. When such crimes have been proved, the mem- bership has usually revolted and de- ism has made it possible for the|manded punishment. But such cases bureaucracy to maintain its grip|have' always been pictured to the even in veriads of industrial devres-imembership as instances Sa on in the Labor Movement of corruption. The bureaucracy as a whole has not been indicted. It is true that the huge salaries and inflated expense accounts of of- ficialdom is a constant source of ir- ritation and rank and file criticism but it is also true that on no other issue will officialdom present: such a solid front. I do not recall a single instance of a reduction of the salaries of international and national union officialdom but the records of all conventions register the fact of salary raises, * 8 6 The ability of the bureaucrats to eajole and club their way to a salary increase over the protests of wage- earners receiving a fifth or a sixth of their income, is one of the marvels of American trade unionism. To ac- complish this feat they will descend to anything. I have seen them feign illness and appear before conven- tions, their fat frames racked with heavy sobs and tears running down their porcine jowls, to procure a raise in pay from workers who knew they were getting ten times too much but who nevertheless voted for the increase. i Much of all this to the uni.n mem- bership has long been commun knowl- AnalyzeGraft in Trade Unions edge and much more has been sus- pected. William Z. Foster’s new book, “Misleaders of Labor,” will in- crease greatly this knowledge and turn the suspicion into certainty. * . *. The bureaucrats themselves and their most skilful apologists like Ben- jamin Stolberg have been the first to recognize that “Misleaders of Labor” is the work of an expert. Stolberg, in his review in the New Leader, pays {the book the highest compliment pos- sible by tacitly admitting his inability to find errors in fact and to make any defense of the crimes against the working class there set forth with a lavish wealth of detail. Under the circumstances Stolberg does what for him is the only thing’, possible—he says the left wing lead- ers of the labor movement are just as bad as the reactionaries. With this statement we will not deal here except to say that if it were true the Greens, Wolls and Lewises long ago would have made Stolberg rich if he could have given incidents, names, dates and places. * Foster, equipped by his years of experience in the labor movement for what for him must have been a labor of love, an organizer of workers in the great capitalist fortresses of the lumber, food packing, railway and steel industries of such skill and cour- age that even the bureaucrats them- selves are forced to admit it, ap- proaching the role of the bureaucracy from the vantage point of Leninism, has taken a scalpel and ripped loose the soft, pink skin of labor official- dom and shown the festering corrup- tion underneath. It is not a pleasant sight and the smell is as horrible as the spectacle. But many painful surgical operations will have to be performed upon the American labor movement, much gangrene cauterised and much putrid- ity cut away, before the clean red flesh and blood of a new and healthy labor movement can take its place. Foster is more than diagnostician —to continue the medical analogy. He is a Communist and he cuts not only to expose infection but to cure it, He does not stop after discovering the disease but proceeds to find its cause and to isolate the germ. With Lenin as his guide he finds the underlying cause of the corrup- tion in official labor circles in the fact that the bureaucracy is the col- lective agent of imperialist govern- ment in the labor movement—*Wall Street government’s outposts in the ranks of the working class,” I said one time. Bribed in dozens of dev- ious ways, many of which Foster de- scribes in detail with painstaking documentation, labor officialdom fol- lows slavishly the domestic and for- eign policies of imperialist govern- ment. Their share of the tribute which the imperialist rulers exact from oppressed peoples in almost every quarter of the globe flows to the bureaucrats thru many channels and is the price of their betrayals of the masses. 3 * 6 & All this Foster makes clear in such an exhaustive yet interesting manner hat the book could well have been entitled “The Militant’s Guide to the Judases of Labor.” No crook of any importance escapes. The disastrous results of the continued corruption and the long series of betrayals are vividly portrayed. The connection between the present crisis in the la- bor movement and the corruption of the official leadership is made clear. No better moment could have been chosen for such a work to appear, but it is not by accident that it appears at a time when desertion of the working class by labor officialdom and the open surrender to the imperialist rulers is arousing big sections of the masses to the realization of the danger. he growing unemployment, the vici- ous drive on the United Mine Work- ers, the beginning of a wave of at- tempted wage-cuts, the increasing imminence of the imperialist war menace, give Foster’s book an appli- cation to the daily lives of the work- ing class of the most practical char- acter. It will be read by thousands of workers now who a year or two ago would have dismissed it with a con- temptuous “just another red getting something off his chest.” “Misleaders of Labor” is a book written with a definite purpose. That purpose is to expose the upholders of reaction in the labor movement, arouse workers against them, give American workers a correct estimate of the social forces at work, organ- ize masses to defeat reaction and those who personify it, and to fe- cruit working class fighters for the Communist program, 8 @ “Misleaders of Labor” is a period book i.e. it marks the end of a period of apathy in the American class struggle and the beginning of a period of struggles. The book is Foster at his best and if the author of “Misleaders of Labor’—the most prolific of American Communist writers—had turned out nothing but this book, he would have a splendid and historically significant achieve- ment to his credit. 3 “Misleaders of Labor” is the most powerful and damaging blow to the enemies of the working class in an out of the labor movement yet dealt by any Continue ta * “ _“Misleaders of Labor”—By Wil Z. Foster—Published by the The industrial depression, © ——+