The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 19, 1928, Page 6

. THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 19, 1928 Baily Central Organ of the W Worker orkers (Communist) Party Published by NATIONAL DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING ASS’N, Inc., Daily, Except Sunday 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. Cable Address: “Dziwork SUBSCRIPTION RATES By Mail (in New York only): 8 per year $4.50 six inonths $2.50 three months By Mail (outside of New York): $6.00 per year $3.50 six months $2 three months Address and mail out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. Editor Assistant Editor SS .-ROBERT MINOR WM. F. DUNNE Entered as second-class mail at the post-office at: New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. VOTE COMMUNIST! For President WILLIAM Z. FOSTER For the Workers: Mencken and Smith Grovel Before the Same God The newest adherents of Wall Street’s democratic party circus are those super- sophisticates of the American Mercury, 12 I BG Mencken and George Jean Nathan. The Mercury editors have achieved eminence and affluence as satirists of the American bab- bitry. Their chief customers, however, are the smart-alecky sons and daughters of those whom they hold up to scorn. Pro- claiming themselv relentless enemies of mediocrities who strut upon the political stage, they have come forth as supporters of the man in the brown derby, the most pal- pable fraud in political life, the very per- sonification of all the gutter-snipe, ward- heelers of the lumpen proletariat. The choice of the Menckens, the Nathans, as well as the Heywood Brouns and all the other limpid lib- erals is the big chief of the sewer grafters, the building inspection shake-down artists, the license swindlers, the corrupt police, the denizens of the “roaring forties,” the confi- dence men, the professional ball players, the race track touts, proprietors of gambling joints, the pickpockets, the second-story men, the comedians, the bootleggers, the gang- sters, the soft-shoe and buck-and-wing danc- ers, the leaders of jazz bands, the ladies of the evening and their business agents. As the candidate of the democratic party controlled by the House of Morgan, Al Smith, is the connecting link be- tween the parasitic lowest strata and the parasitic upper strata of American society— the figure-head of a combination that is the class enemy of the useful members of so- ciety, the workers and farmers. This man Smith, with his brown derby in ofie hand, a cane in the other and an elon- gated cigar tilted at an angle of thirty, de- grees, presents a picture that ought to fur- nish a lively topic for the satirists. But what do the editors of the Mercury say about this low buffoon, this court jester of Wall Street? Mr. Nathan states briefly: “My choice is Smith. At least he is no shuffler and no hypocrite.” Let us examine the fate of the main Smith plank of last year. It was the question of prohibition. Smith was the most audible wet in the whole country. Yet, in his campaign, he is careful to avoid anything that might be interpreted as unwillingness on his part to enforce the Volstead Act. In fact, as far as the main plank of his pre-nomination plat- form is concerned, his campaign has com- pletely collapsed. Perhaps Mr. Nathan may be able to find another name for this sort of evasiveness, but to us it appears as shuffling and hypocrisy of the most transparent type. Mr. Mencken is more explicit. But his ob- servations are as banal as those of any of the babbits, the dolts and yokels he scores in the “Americana” column of his Mercury. Says Mencken of Al Smith: “He is an able man and a very good public official. He has the sort of ‘experience that the presidency needs, and he has the sort of courage and frankness that it needs even more. After this eulogium, Mencken qualifies ‘his support of the disciple of religious supersti- tion: “The objection to Al on account of his faith seems to me to be sound. In every religious man there is a screw loose; he is not to be trusted completely. But we must take what we can get, Al as a catholic plainly su- perior to the methodists and baptists who now run the country. The superstitions he cher- ishes at least have some dignity; they are not merely low-down. If we must choose between being governed by the pope, who is a scholar and a gentleman, and the methodist bishops, who are bounders and ignoramuses, I choose the pope.” A more trivial, inept attempt at political observation would be hard to find. It is identical with the political analysis of the ku klux klan, which claims that the election of Smith means the domination of the na- tion by the pope of Rome. The differ- ence between the ku kluxers and Menc- ken is that the kluxers annihilate the straw- man they erect, while Mencken embraces it as the best that can be had out of a bad sit- uation, one that forces the avowedly highly cultured, civilized and scholarly Mencken and his crowd to choose between catholic and protestant administrations. If Mr. Mencken and his followers and ad- -mirers would devote even a Sritall portion of their time to investigating politics they ld discover that the real power that gov- this country, whether the republicans For the Party of the Class Struggle! For Vice-President BENJAMIN GITLOW Against the Capitalists! or democrats are in control, has its seat in Wall Street, not in the vatican at Rome or in the house of a methodist bishop. And even though the ku klux klan, the popes and the bishops as well as the politicians and the Mercury editors claim to have divergent be- liefs, in reality they all worship, under dif- ferent names and forms, the same identical god, the one, universal diety that determines the destiny of them all—CAPITAL. It is not the pope that will dominate the United States government, in case off the election of Smith, but the identical power that dominates the government of Andrew W. Mellon, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover—Wall Street, the citadel of the mightiest imperialism the world has ever seen. And this same power influences the pope and the other political puppets in the vatican with the same decisiveness with which it influences the protestants of the world, as well as the eminences of the Ameri- can Mercury and the lame-duck columnists of | the calibre of Heywood Broun. These gentle- | men, who profess to be spokesmen of the “in- telligent minority,” (to resort to the euphe- mism with which they flatter their bour- geois prejudices) talk much about the achievements of science. Has it ever oc- curred to them that there is a science known | as political economy? That there is a scien- tific analysis of politics as a reflex of the economic antagonisms of classes? If these gentlemen ever heard of Marx, Engels, Lenin and other giants of the revo- lutionary movement, it was only in the most superficial form. With typical bourgeois flippency and intellectual snobbishness they amuse their masters by devising myths about the labor movement. If they publish a story about labor in their magazine it must be | written in the form of the old fashioned yel- low back novels containing the exploits of heroes of the wild and wooly west or follow the style of “Old King Brady detective stor- ies,” in order to hold the interest of the ladies and gentlemen and scholars who sub- | scribe to the Mercury. It would be a waste of time to try to con- vince such people of the scientific accuracy of the Communist criticism of capitalist so- | iety, or to talk to them of our program of revolutionary action that will initiate a so- ciety wherein ignorance and superstition will be eradicated because the very ground upon which they grow will be destroyed? Such an attempt would only evoke an outbrust of hilarity on their part. The Menckens, the Nathans, the Brouns and their followers mock everything except the one god they all worship, the god of capi- talism—gold. Before that god the pope and Smith, the methodist bishop and Hoover, Mencken and Billy Sunday all grovel in utter abasement as dogs crawl before the master that kicks them. The New Mine Strike in Illinois. The strike of 2,000 Illinois miners employed by the notorious Peabody Coal Company against the attempt of the operators and the Lewis-Fishwick machine to enforce a wage- cut emphasises the invincible militancy of the coal diggers. There was a time when the miners would have accepted the decisions of the Lewis machine, but the struggles of the past two years have completely un- masked them as agents of the employers. Not only did Lewis, Fishwick & Co. wreck the miners union by endeavoring to remain in control of it after they had been repudiated by a referendum vote of the membership, not only did they aid the employers defeat the miners in the strike in Pennsylvania and Ohio, but at this very moment they are try- ing to force the miners to accept agreements ratifying their betrayal. The ex-labor faker and discredited stool- pigeon of the Peabody Coal Corporation, Frank Farrington, praises his successor as president of the Illinois miners, Harry Fish- wick, and condemns the new National Miners’ Union. It is indeed a tribute to the new union to incur the public denunciation of such a rat as Farrington. It is to be hoped that the other miners who voted overwhelmingly against accepting the wage cut agreement will follow the example of the Peabody miners. It is not enough, how- ever, to strike against such sell-outs. The Tillinois miners should affiliate enmasse with the new National Miners’ Union in order effectively to conduct a struggle against | wage-cuts and for “ conditions, ys Phone, Stuyvesant 1696-7-8 PIOUS WINDOW DRESSING FOR WALL STREET By J. LOUIS ENGDAHL Two major features among others characterize the Sixth World |Congress of the Communist Inter- |national that met nearly two full months—July and August—in Mos- jcow. These are: | First:—The unusual number of important questions placed on the agenda of the congress, all of them |receiving careful and detailed atten- |tion, including the report on the in- | | ternational situation and the tasks |of the Comintern by Comrade Buk- harin, the program of the Commu- nist International, the imperialist war danger, colonial question, the economic situation in the U. S. S. R. and the situation in the C. P. S. U. | Second:—Increasing representa- |tion from the colonial and semi- colonial countries and the vast American Negro ‘population, with China, Indonesia, India and Latin | America, as well as the Negro prob- lem in the United States and Af- rica being continually in the center of the discussions in the c-tgress. Ten Years. The Sixth Congress assembled \after the triumphant celebration of | the glorious tenth anniversary of the | Bolsnevik Revolution, and on the eve of the tenth anniversary (March, | 1929) of the Comintern itself. In pointing out that the tasks of the world Communist movement have become extremely complicated, Comrade Bukharin said, in opening \the congress, that: “The decline of capitalism does ‘not follow a straight road. It pro- \eeeds along zig-zag lines, through |partial improvements of various |parts of the capitalist system— through, what we call, partial cap- litalist stabilization. This created for the Communist movement new and great difficulties. It confronted (the Communist International with ‘new problems. It compelled the Communist International as 2 whole and its parties individually to think and elaborate very intricate tactics of preparation and mobilization of the forces of the working class. It compelled the Communist Interna- |tional to seek in every-day life, on |the basis of the development of the | contradictions of capitalist stabiliza- |tion, the means of mobilization of the masses for a new battle, for a new, more sweeping and more de- structive blow at capitalism.” Intricate Problems. The entire discussion of the whoie ecngress was bent toward solving these intricate problems; the task of this congress “of proletarian rev- olutionaries.” Thus the gathering | general staffs of the various detach- ments of the International Commu- nist army.” Unanimous on all the vital ques- tions that came before it, the con- gress also registered unanimity for the declaration that at present the principal danger in the Comintern comes from the right tendency. This |danger is kept alive by the period | ot stabilization, the survival of par- War Danger and Colonial Questions Among Those Taken Up at Communist Meet | |as was the case in regard to the |Chinese revolution, and in trade union a¢tivities where general trade |union discipline is frequently. con- sidered more important than our | Party discipline. | Score Trotskyism. The greatest danger to the Com- lintern came, some time ago, from the so-called ultra-lefts. These en- | deavored to set up an international lorganization. The collapse came |with the complete rout of the Op- | Kosition in the Communist Party of ithe Soviet Union. . It was declared that Trotskyism is a social-demo- cratic tendency. The history of the Lenin Bund has shown that the core of the opposition has migrated to | the social-democrats. The dialectics of the relationships between the so- lealled “ultra-left” and the right could be distinctly seen. After the defeat of the Trotskyist opposition, which represented a bloc of the right and ultra-left, the chief dan- ger is undoubtedly the right wing | danger. The congress showed itself fully | aware that the imperialist war dan- \ger is growing from month to |month. In this connection Comrade | Bukharin, in his closing remarks on the tasks of the Comintern, criticized those comrades who “keep internal | contradictions in one pocket and ex- |ternal contradictions in another,” \declaring that this was a reflection ef an under-estimation of the war danger. From the objective point lof view it is the reflection of the right wing dangers in the Commu- nist International. The principal |danger that threatens us is the un- \der-estimation of the war danger. \It was pointed out that the various |parties do not link up the war dan- |ger with other questions in such a | way as to subordinate all other tasks \to the task of combatting approach- ing war, i Fight War Danger. Thus the struggle against the im- perialist war held the center of at- tention at the congress in the dis- cussion, not only on the general re- port submitted by Comrade Tom Bell (Great Britain), but also on the supplementary reports of Comrades Schneller (Germany), Garlandi (Italy), Lovestone (United States), \and Barbe (France). The Eighth Plenum (May, 1927) the raid on Arcos in Great Britain, the assassination of Voikov in Po- ‘land, and the attacks on the Soviet embassies and consulates at Peking vand Shanghai, had already thor- oughly considered and acted on the |war danger. The Sixth Congress, | therefore, had behind it a year of struggle against the war danger, and the many valuable experiences ivesulting therefrom. The congress |great economic and _ pclitical strengthening of the Sovict Union, by the rapid growth of the national revolutionary movements in the |eolonies and semi-colonial countries, | cbove all, in China. [deals with this problem under five main headings: (1) The Imminence |of Imperialist War; (2) the Atti- jtude of the Proletariat Towards | War; (3) the Attitude of the Pro- letariat Towards the Army; (4) the | Attitude of the Proletariat to the Disarmament Question and the |Struggle Against Pacificism, and |G) the Defects and Tasks of the Communist Parties. The Theses declares that a war of imperialism against the Soviet Union is an open counter-revolu- tionary class war of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat of every country. Its chief aim is the over- throw of the proletarian dictator- ship; the basis for the tactics of the proletariat of capitalist countries for the struggle against his war is furnished by the Bolshevik program of struggle against imperialist war; the transformation into the civil war. In this connection consider- ‘able attention is given to the fact |that the social-democracy is serving |more and more brazenly as an ac- tive counter-revolutionary prepara- ‘tion for war against the Soviet | Union. The proletariat is urged to igive the greatest attention to the |methods of the social-democracy with which the latter is ideologically Freparing the war against the So- viet Union. Some of these methods are: (a) Dissemination of such lies and slanders as “Red Imperialism” and “Red Militarism,” “Identity of Fascism and Bolshevism,” ete.; (b) \the malicious propaganda that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the jcause of war or one of the causes ‘of war; (c) the hypocritical attitude that “We are for the support of the Soviets but against the Communists and the Comintern”; (d) propagation cf defeatism towards the Soviet rovernment under a “left” mask. The war danger during the last year has given us several examples, especially on the part of the Ger- man_ social-democrats. These ex- amples are no less clearly expressed ly the allies of the social-democracy, the Tretskyists, e.g. in their ‘phrases about “Thermidorism,” became a “serious review of the of the Comintern, in the midst of “kulakisation,” ete. | Reformist Betrayers. | The so-called left leaders of the | social-democracy, who were chayac- terized by the Eighth Plenum as the most dangerous enemies of Com- munism in the labor movement, vhave completely confirmed this | characterization in recent months, ‘particularly at the Brussels Con- ‘gress of the Second International. Considerable attention is given to ‘liamentarianism, the influence of joined in the international demon- the national-revolutionary wars of | social-democracy and certain speci- | fic peculiarities in trade union ac- | tivities. This danger, various forms in the different par- | ties, manifested itself in the aspira- | tion to legality at any price, by ex- cessive submission to bourgeois laws, in ignoring the necessity for \accentuating the class struggle, in _wrong policies toward the social- \democracy, insufficient accentuation ‘of the struggle against the “left” \strations against war on the anni- versary of the outbreak of the Eu- ‘nearly ten years ago with the armed ‘truce that still suspends the world on another voleano’s brink. | Note Changes. The Theses on the Struggle Against the Imperialist War points | out that the changes in the world isituation since the Fifth World \Congress are characterized by a the oppressed colonies and semi- \colonies which Lenin predicted in assuming ropean slaughter, which ended now 1916, have changed from a theoret- ‘ical certainty into a world historical fact in recent years. As examples of such wars are mentioned the war in Morocco against French and Span- ish imperialism, uprisings in Syria, wars in Mexico and Nicaragua against American imperialism, and *inally the great Chinese northern expedition in 1926-27. Since the \social-democracy, in the inadequate. tremendous intensification of all the | national-revolutionary wars will ‘Spternationalization of the parties \contradictions of capitalism, by th lay an important role in thg pres- The Theses* By Fred Ellis | |«nt epoch of the world revolution, | the proletariat is called upon to de- vote the greatest attention to the experiences and lessons of these | wars. | In outlining the struggle of the \Proletariat in capitalist countries ,;2gainst pacifism, it is emphasized that the most important tool of the imperialists in the disarmament farce is social-democracy which spreads among the masses the illu- sion that genuine disarmament and abolition of war are possible with- out the overthrow of imperialism. | Colonial Question. | The Theses on the Coionial Ques- tion, presented by Comrade Kuusi- nen, was based on the Theses of the Second Congress written by Lenin. It was rhuch more detailed and re- viewed developments up to the pres- ent. time. The Sixth Congress de- clares that the “Principles on the National and Colonial Question” adopted at the Second Congress still | have full validity, and still serve as a guiding line for the further work of Communist Parties. Since the time of the Second Congress the actual importance of the coionies, |however, has vitally increased as jcrisis factors in the capitalistic world system. All basic questions of the revolutionary movement in |the colonies and semi-colonies are |immediately bound up with the greatest epoch-making struggle be- tween the capitalist and socialist systems, which are now being fought out on a world scale in the form of the struggle of world imperialism against the Union of Socialist So- viet Republics, and within each of the various capitalist countries be- tween the existing bourgeois class regime and the Communist move- ment. The Theses reviews in detail the essence of imperialist colonial pol- iey, the various types of colonial countries and the position of the peasantry, the question of the bour- geois-democratic revolution in the most important countries, and sets forth the immediate general tasks of the Communists. Most important features of the theses are its dec- larations on “decolon‘zation” and its analysis of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. The theses declares that all the talk of the imperialists and their lackeys about the “decoloniza- tion” policy of the imperialist pow- ers towards their colonies, about the fostering of their “development in liberty,” is nothing else than an im- nerialist lie. .It is extremely im- vortant that the Communists, in both the imperialist and colonial countries, shall completely unmask this lie. Communist Program. The phase of the bourgeois-dem- oeratie revolution which is at pres- ent involved in countries like India and China, with relatively broadly developed class differentiation, and the Union of South Africa, the Phil- ippines, Algiers and Tunis, and in part of Morocco, where class differ- entiation is likewise relatively de- veloped, is the phase of transition to the Socialist revolution. The his- torical meaning of this phase con- sists precisely in the preparation of the pre-conditions for the prole- tarian dictatorship of the socialist revoluticn. One of the monumental achieve- ments of the tongress was the build- ing of the program of the Commu- nist International, This task had been specially referred to the Sixth Congress. The original draft as submitted by Comrades Bukharin and Stalin went through a long pe-' fC a Ped femal Told You So HE DAILY WORKER staff does not get paid frequently which makes it extremely inadvisable for son to visit the editorial rooms. It means a hold- up. But to make s| up in some de- gree for the mo- notonous irregu- larity of the cashier’s visits the management has provided the boys who pro- vide you with snappy head- O'Flaherty lines and the low - down on things of interest to the proletarian home, with as good a view of Union Square as can be had from any vantage point in the United States. eee Hef * EING a “visiting fireman” who drops in occasionally to snap out a few paragraphs, I can enjoy the scenery with joy unalloyed by the thot that it is a substitute for salary. back however. It breeds wanderlust. This does not mean to imply that' the Daily Worker journalists hanker for more luscious assignments but that a wide open space tempts one to see what is on the other side | of it. vies ES train of thot is provoked as much by an attractive advertise- ment that lies before me as by the | scenery, and the fact that my brain is somewhat fagged as a result of | sitting up until 3 a. m. listening to a spirited and interesting dialectical discussion on the latest attempt to solve the mystery of why people live, at least some of them. The | advertisement I speak of is from the | office of World Tourists, Inc., 69 The Sixth Red World Congress Fifth Avenue, New York City. And it gives many reasons why a solvent proletarian should wish to wander, * * oe Wa I would like to go, if I had $375, is Soviet Russia. As most of you know the anniversary of the Russian Revolution is approaching and thousands of people from all over the world are flocking to the Red Capital of the Soviet Union to witness the celebration of this great- est event in world history. The Sov- iet Union is worth visiting any time of the year but to be able to take in an anniversary of the Revolution is compensation for a lifetime of misery. Lon OMobesty viod of the most intense and search- ing discussion, both in the congress self, as well as in several commis- sions. The program is not only a summing up of the experiences of the Russian Revolution and the in- a generous per-q H This vista has one om | u BY ternational labor movement, but is a i} fighting weapon of the world pro- letariat. It is emphatic testimony to the growing internationalism of world labor under the Marxist-Len- inist banner, convincing proof of the fact that the Communist Internatio- nal has fallen heir to the traditions of the First International, while the Second International, with its in- superable national antagonisms con- tinues to give convincing proof of its bankruptcy. The Program testi- fies to the Leninist Unity of the Comintérn, the international fight- ing party of the world’s proletariat. The world program is the best proof that the Comintern is a world party, the collective will of the vanguard of international labor. One of its treasured contributions is the esti- mation of the new functions of the social democrats. It also refers to the role of the American Federa- tion of Labor in the regime of the dollar imperialism. The Program says: “The commercially cynical and secular imperialistic form of sub- jection to the ideological influence of the bourgeoisie is represented by contemporary ‘socialist’ reformism. Copying their gospel from the tab- lets of imperialist politics, their mo- del today is the deliberately anti- socialist and openly counter-revolu- tionary American Federation of La- bor, The ‘ideological’ dictatorship of the American servile trade union bureaucracy, which in its turn is the expression of the ‘ideological’ dic- tatorship of the American dollar, has become, through the medium of British reformism and His Majesty’s socialists of the British labor party, the most important composite part of the theory and practice of the whole of international social-demo- cracy and the leaders of the Amster- dam international. Moreover, the leaders of the German and Austrian social-democracy embellish these theories with Marxian phraseology and in this way mask their utter be- trayal of Marxism.” Thus from the sixth world con- gress, an epoch-making event in the forward march to victory of the world’s working class, there goes forth the appeal of the closing para- graphs of the world program de- claring: “Communists do not think it neces- sary to conceal their views and in- tentions. They openly declare that their goal can be achieved only by the violent overthrow of the present social system, “Let the dominant class tremble before the Communist revolution. The proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains! It has the whol world to gain! i ; ee