The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 2, 1928, Page 6

Page Bix ee ee THE DAILY WORKER Published by the NATIONAL DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING ASS'N, Jae Daily, Except Sunday 48 First Stroot, New York, N, Y, Cable Address: Phone, Orchard 1080 “Dalwork" SUBSCRIPTION RATES By Mail (in New York only): By Mail (outside of New Yor 8.00 per voar $4.50 six v..aths $6.50 per year %7.50 six mon 82.50 threa months, $2.00 threa months. Address und mail out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. Bator... .ceseveese -ROBERT MINOR Aseistant Editor. ...- WM. F, DUNNE <u me second-class mail at the post-office at New York, N. ¥, under the act of March 3, 137% VOTE COMMUNIST! For President For Vice-President WILLIAM Z. FOSTER BENJAMIN GITLOW KY | A | WORKERS (COMMUNIST) PARTY | For the Party of the Class Struggle! Against the Capitalists! For the Workers! The Democratic “Labor” Plank The democratic party has always had a “labor plank.” Its first labor plank was—chattel slavery. After its defeat at the polls in 1860 on that “labor plank,” the democratic party favored secession from the Union and civil war for the preservation of slavery. After its military defeat in 1865, the democratic party’s “labor plank” became peonage—the nearest possible approach to the restoration of slavery. If the foregoing relates most specifically to Negro labor and the South it is nevertheless in keeping with the whole attitude of the democratic party toward the working class as a whole, black and white, of city and farm. The democratic party is tra- ditionally the party of slavery. *. * * : If it were only a matter of historical association about a name, these facts would be of little importance. But the demo- cratic party of Al Smith is as truly a party of slave labor as was ’ the democratic party of John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis. Adapted to historical conditions, it is now (just as it is in the republican party) a party of wage slavery, the open shop, strike- | breaking by military force, and the imperialist conquest of weaker nations for the exploitation of colonial slaves. Because Woodrow Wilson’s second administration marked the tremendous accelérativa of United States imperialism, re- quiring intensive corruption of the American labor bureaucracy, this vulture-parasitism feeding upon the American trade unions has created the myth that the democratic party performs some puny service to the organized portion of the working class—or rather to the higher-skilled labor aristocracy. The democratic party has on several previous occasions had “labor planks” which attempted to capitalize on this myth. But the labor plank of the present campaign is the most cruel joke in the whole history of this traditional party of slavery. It is an open secret that William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, now. engaged in the most exten- sive campaign of gutting the trade unions in alliance with the open shop employers ‘against the reds,” had a big part in de- vising this vicious (anti-) labor plank of the democratic party. The most outstanding point in this “labor” plank is the pledge of the democratic party to enact legislation for a federal anti-strike law inténded to rob the trade unions of any rights of action in labor disputes they may yet theoretically possess and to establish a dictatorship of the federal executive over the trade unions. This is called an anti-injunction provision! This portion of the democratic party’s labor plank is a prom- ise to put into law the infamous anti-labor project which Green hatched in conspiracy with a committee of the American Bar Association and others high in the councils of the open-shop manufacturers and which has come to be known as the “bar association” project. It reads: “The expressed purpose of representatives of capital, labor and the bar to devise a plan for the elimination of the presert evils with respect to injunctions must be supported ard legislation designed to accomplish these ends formulated and passed.” Note: “Representatives of capital” and “the bar.” This is, the only portion of the plank which promises “legis- lation.” On other points the plank “favors the principle of col- lective bargaining” and thinks “labor should choose its own rep- resentatives,” etc., but no legislation is promised and it means nothing more than that Green is invited to drag as much as pos- sible of the working class to support the bosses political party, with no promises given, s s s There has scarcely ever been a fouler piece of political treachery than this collaboration of Bill Green with the Tam- many servants of the open shop manufacturers. Other labor skates, for example John L. Lewis, are calling upon the working class to support the republican candidate of the open shop capitalists, Herbert Hoover. But in this cam- paign undoubtedly the “labor face” is to be painted under Al Smith’s brown derby by the dominant trade union misleaders, eo elm For those workers who have the intelligence to understand that a federal anti-strike law is the nearest thing to a “labor Plank” that a capitalist party can offer, the treachery of the A. F. of L. bureaucracy will not be hard to discern. But this is only an eye-opener of the crudest sort. What the American work- ing class must learn is thut under no circumstances is it pos- sible for a capitalist political party to do anything whatever for the working class, irrespective of the camouflaged “labor planks” which may be adopted. . The only political party which can offer anything to the working class is the class party of the working class itself. Just as the republican party, the classic party of capitalism, had the historic mission of putting the capitalist class into power as the ruling class, so now the only party which can claim to be the class party of the workers must be a party whose purpose is to put the working class into power as the ruling class. There is only one such party. It is the Workers (Commu- nist) Party. Vote Comifunist. By V. I. LENIN. yet socialist proletariat must con- sider the basic principles of the literature of the Workers Party in order to develop these principles and express them in their most complete form. These principles are in con- trast with bourgeois customs, with the commercialized bourgeois press, with the individualism of the ambi- tious adventurers of bourgeois liteta- ture and their “splendid freedom,” and with the scramble for profits, What do these principles consist in? Not only in the fact that the literature of the proletariat must no longer be a means of enriching groups or individuals but still more that it ought not to bear an individual char- acter nor be independent of proletar- ian control, No more “non-party” writers; no more literary super-men! Literary activity should be a part of the whole work of the proletariat. It should be a cog in the great ma- chine which will be put into motion by the whole vanguard of the work- ing class. Literature should become one part of the work of the party, organized, thought out, unified, and revolutionary. “All comparisons limp,” says a German proverb. It is so of my com- parison of literature with a cog in the machine of the movement. There will be no lack of hysterical intellec- tuals to yelp in distress at this con- ception, which, according to them, will debase, will destroy, will “burocra- tize” and mechanicalize the free “struggle of minds,” free criticism, free “literary endeavor,” ete. Their laments are nothing but an expres- sion of bourgeois intellectual individ- ualism, , * * * Obviously, literature is the last thing to be treated mechanically; it cannot easily be graded by, or submit to, the decisions of the majority. In this matter, one ought undoubtedly to By I. AMDUR. The Eighth Congress of the All- Union Young Communist League opened here May 6. The. Bolshoi (Big} Theatre was crowded with dele- gates and guests. The delegates, of whom there are about 900, represent- ed a gathering of the most active of the youth of the League organiza- tions from every quarter of the vast country. Here were White Russians and Great Russians, Caucasians and Armenians, Tartars, Uzbekistans, Si- berians and _ representatives from the German Volga Republic. Here could be seen young Kirghizian girls from Central Asia who haye still not yet quite freed themselves from the superstitions and religious traditions of the extremely backward people of their far country away in the Asiatic steppes. One young girl in particular, I noted, looked around somewhat timidly at this huge con- gregation of singing, joyous youth, and it was perhaps only now, sitting in the Red Capitol and surrounded by this happy, gay spirit of the young Communists, that she realized to what heights the revolution placed her and her womenfolk who, until but a short few years ago, lived in the most wretched conditions of semi-slavery. Even today, the position of the Kirghizian women and of the women generally in the Far Eastern portions of the Union are none too enviable— ten years is a very, very short time in which to combat successfully the century-old traditions and supersti- tions of an almost, in some respects, primitive people—but they are no longer treated like so many cattle and ONDAY, JULY 2, 1928 dividual initiative, for personal in- clination, for inspiration and imagin- jation, in form and content. All this is indisputable but it proves only one thing; that the literary side of the Party’s work cannot be me- chanically identified with the other side of proletarian activity. This by no means destroys the truth—incomprehensible and strange as it may seem to intellectuals..and bourgeois democrats—that literary work ought to be most strictly bound to the rest of the socialist work of the party. Writers ought to enter the party without making any stipu- lations. Publishing — establishments, bookshops, reading rooms, libraries, everything to do with literature ought to be placed under the control of the party. The organized socialist proletariat ought to supervise and control all this work; it should infuse into it the vital spirit of the workers, and in this sphere, should throw off the out- look of the mercenary bourgeoisie, who see in the writer only the man who sells his writings to earn his liv- ing, and in the reader simply a cus- tomer who brings in money. Naturally we do not imagine that this change in literature can be brought about at one swoop, especial- ly in this Russian literature, which has so long been crippled by an “Asiatic” censorship, and corrupted by a Europeanized bourgovisie. We are far from expecting any panacea whatever in the shape of decisions and resolutions settling the whole thing in an arbitrary manner. That is not the point. What concerns us is that our class-conscious proletariat should understand that here is a new problem that has to be faced frankly, ae everything possible done to solve t. After having delivered ourselves from the chains of censorship, we do not want to be the captives of bour- to the village soviets and other of- ficial bodies is slowly bringing about a tremendous change in their ideo- logical make-up, that will place the rising generation of girls on a totally different social level after some years. Came 4,000 Miles to Congress. And this young Kirghizian girl, who in all probability has never ven- tured further than the boundaries of her village in the steppes, had come jover a distance of some 4,000 miles jin order to attend the congress and to relate to these wonderfully en- |thusiastic young workers of the work ‘that the Communist youth are doing in her far-away republic; of how the spirit of revolution has permeated the Kirghizian youth and of the hard and difficult battle that they are putting up against old customs and tradi- tions; of their struggle in agitating the parents to permit children to at- ‘tend the schools which are being es- jtablished with each year; of the We want to create a press that is| freed not only from police ecntrol, but also from the influence of capi- tal and from private ambitions, and | above all freed from anarchist-bour- geois individualism, These last words will be an object of derision to many of the reading public, “Good heavens!” some burn- ing apostle of “intellectual freedom” will doubtless exclaim. “Good heav- ens! You want to submit to the masses so subtle and so personal a thing as literary workmanship. You want workmen to decide, by the ma- jority of votes, high questions of philosophy, science, and taste. That is the way you suppress the spirit’s freedom to work, which is essentially what is for and what is against the Party we have the program of tne Party as a criterion, its tactical reso- lutions, its statutes, and finally the experiences of International Social- ism, the whole experience of the vol- untary associations of the proletariat. Our Party is becoming a party of the masses; we are in an epoch of rapid transition towards an open le- gal organization, and at this period many useless people (from a Marxist point of view) and perhaps a few who are Christians or mystics as well, join us. But, we have a strong diges- tion; we are Marxists hard as ada- mant. We shall assimilate all the con- fusionist elements, Furthermore, may we inform our friends, the bourgeois individualists, that their talk about “absolute liber- ty” is nothing less than pure hypo- crisy. In a society which maintains itself by the power of capital, and where the mass of the workers lack the nec- essities of life, there is no real lib- erty. Are you free in relation to your bourgeois individualists, are you ‘ree in relation to your bourgeois public, which demands from you _ porno- Communist Press and Literature allow a great deal of scope for in-(geois commerce and its relationships. Absolute freedom fs a bourgeois or anarchist fiction (for anarchism is a bourgeois theory the wrong way round). The freedom of the bour- geois writer, or artist, or actress, is a mask of independence concealing a real dependence on the money of par- asites and souteneurs. We Marxists tear aside this hypo- crisy and unmask their false stand- ards, not: to arrive at a literature “above class” (that will only be pos- sible in a socialist society, in a so- ciety without classes), but to oppose this so-called free literature which is. really allied with the bourgeois 2} literature bound openly to the prole- tariat, This will be a literature truly free, because corruption and ambition will have no place there, and socialist ideals and sympathy with the op- pressed will continually bring into it new forces and new groupings. This will be a free literature, for it will not depend on the blase ‘heroine nor the ten thousand bored and fat- tened high-brows, but on the millions and millions of workers who are the pick of the country, its power and its future. This will be a free literature, which will enrich itself with the latest crea- tions of revolutionary thought, with the experience and living work of the socialist proletariat. Get down to the job, then, com- rades! We have before us a great and difficult problem; we must create a rich literature, narrowly and in- dissolubly bound to the socialist work- ers’ movement. It is only after this work that so- cialist literature will deserve the name; it is only then that it will be capable of carrying out its tasks; it is only then that even within the framework of bourgeois society, it will be able to free itself from bour- geois bondage and bind itself to the graphy and prostitution as a supple- ment to “sacred dramatic art”? struggle for the introduction in the household of the elements of hygiene. A storm of cheering announced the opening of the congress by Chaplin (general secretary) who briefly mar- shalled the most important of the problems that the congress discussed, the role of the youth in rationaliaa- tion; the position of the League in the village and its work in the co- operizing and eommunalizing of the rural economy; the problem of devel- oping and increasing the strata of young worker specialists (engineers, technicians), and here the shadow of the Donetz economie counter-revolu- tion arose before one; and finally, the question of the day, the problem of preparing the youth for the de- fense of the republic. The threat of war was a very actual one and its realization was imminent. The latest move‘ of Downing Street (Birken- head’s trip to Germany) in the form- ing of an Anglo-French-German anti- Soviet bloc is fraught with the pos- Miners Laud Appreciation of the part played by The DAILY WORKER in the great mine struggle was voiced in .a letter received from a Renton, Pa. coal dig- ger who declares the miners. will fight on until a new union is established. His letter follows: “Dear Editor: “Tam a striking miner and I wil! take this opportunity to express my gratitude as well as that of my fel- low strikers for the splendid support beasts of burden, and their election given by The DAILY. WORKER in Daily Worker behalf of the miners’ cause. “Here at Renton the men say that it is the best paper that they have ever read. “The state cossacks (mine police) call us “Red Neck” and hundreds of other names that they don’t even know the meaning of. But although we have been on strike for 15 months we don’t intend to go back until the new miners’ union is established in every mining camp in the cov: 5 “For a Complete Victory.—B? V.” movement of the truly revolutionary class. Young Communists Pledge Defense of Soviet Union sibilities of plunging the world into another blood-bath. The League must prepare its forces and lead the way for the youth in military prepara- tion. Youth Receives Honors. The entire house rose to its feet and the roof was almost lifted when Commander Unschlicht (member Pre- sidium Revolutionary War Tribune) on behalf of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet government, presented the Order of the Red Ban- ner to the League in recognition of the great services rendered by young Communists during the years of in- | tervention, civil war, and in honor of the thousands of its brave young members who fought and fell in de- fense of the first Workers’ Republic, Replying, Comrade Chaplin in a ringing voice pledged that the League, which has always, in the hour of need, given its. whole-hearted support to the Party and to the gov- ernment, as in the civil war, during the struggle against counter-revolu- tion, during the inner-Party discus- sion, in the present period of social- ist construction—will be prepared, when the moment comes, to throw it- By Fred Ellis. H A NdOuTS Gems of Learning Nathan Straus: “The rise of Alfred E. Smith from a lowly East Side home to the governorship of the Em- pire State is a dramatic illustration of the possibilities in American life.” Give any boy a brown derby, a strong, hand-shaking right and a cor- rupt and powerful machine like Tam- many and he ought to make the grade in American polities. Bernarr MacFadden, Editor of the Graphic:—“Make your body strong with wholesome food and outdoor ex- ercise, Breathe in the air to the full- est capacity of your lungs. Give God’s sunshine a chance to vitalize your body.” This is O. K. for Rotarians ind bank bandits, but try and do it on a worker’s salary, C. Augustus Lindbergh, tool of the Imperialists: “It is time the public started landsliding. It surprises me they didn’t start sooner.” All of us, Louis Behr, Jewish student winner of the Kenneth Sterling Day trophy for “Christian character” at Univer- sity of Wisconsin: “If I have the per- sonal requisites for the Kenneth Ster- ling Day award—if I have a sound moral character—it is because my parents and my religion have taught me the wisdom of not having an im- moral character. If I have the power in any way to influence the life o the student body, it is because the student body is inherently good.” He ought also to have been awarded one slice of meatless bologna for bring. a champion fi thead, nape) Mellin Flaming Youth “Oh Ma! Quick! Look at the pic- ture! What in the world have they slipped under the hat?” “That's John Coolidge. He has just graduated from Amherst College.” “How did he do it?” “Adolph, there are some things in life that science cannot explain.” “Well, what does his old man do? “Everybody. When anybody on Wall Street wants a drink of water or a change of linen he gets it for him.” x “What do they teach a student at college?” “How to keep the workers down.” “Do they learn fast?” “Some of them. But unfortunately the most receptive part of the av- erage student’s head is his mouth.” “Well I think they ought to teach them where to buy hats.” * * * The German Red Aid sent amongst other things a collection of Honoré Daumier’s political caricatures to 4 political prisoner Max Schulz in pri- son in Luettringhausen. This con- rade then wrote that he had been re- fused these pictures by the auther- ities. Sure enough a few days after- wards the authorities themselves re- turned the cartoons with the remark that “all the things sent were un- fitted for the prisoners, in particular, however, the cartoons of Daumier!” * * * Don’t Shoot! ES The’ man in the picture, who dresses so well and knows so little he ought to be a mayor, is Sir John Buchanan Jardine. People who have the habit of making scurrilous remarks have referred to him as the “Jimmy Walker of self into the front ranks for the de- ferse of the revolution. The entire assembly rose to its feet and the International was sung as it has rarely been sung before, The congress met at a moment when the hovering war-cloud was nearer than it has ever been, and if it bursts it will find that the youth of the Soviet Union are sprung from the same steeled stock that scattered and smashed the enemies of the toilers during 1917-21, England.” The two most impor tant things he does in life are help spend a big proportion of the na- tional income on horse racing and entertain the workers by appear- ing in the above masquerade cos- tume. Among the comodities used to establish the above trick effect are a gray top hat, neck-tie and- umbrella, After the workers revo- lution in England the light grey umbrella ‘shown above will be re- _ placed with a dark brown shovel, > =r RRS Se ee >