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

( —— Page Six Daily = Central Organ of the Workers (Communist) Party ann valLY WORKER, NEW YORK, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1928 Published by NATIONAL DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING ASS'N, Inc., Daily, Except Sunday 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. SUBSCRIPTION RATES By Mail (in New York only): $4.50 six months $2.50 three months Sper year @6.00 per year Cable Address: “Daiwork” By Mail (outside of New York): Phone, Stuyvesant 1696-7-3 $3.50 six months $2 three months ‘Address and mail out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. <: <= Acsistant | Editor. .WM. F. ....ROBERT MINOR DUNNE ee New York, N Entered as second-class mail at the post-office Y under the act of March 3, 1879, VOTE COMMUNIST! For Vice-President BENJAMIN GITLOW For President WILLIAM Z. FOSTER For the Workers: War—More Effective Than Ever Some of the lesser lights of the Mellon- Hoover-Coolidge administration are far more frank than their political leaders. Not possessing such a high degree of skill in the art of duplicity as some of the older heads, they sometimes bluntly state what their superiors are thinking. A case in point is the recent utterance of W. Frank James, republican congressman from Michigan, and senior member of the military affairs committee of the house. In announcing that he was preparing a bill ad- vocating a single department of national de- fense under one head, with under-secretaries for the army, the navy and aircraft, James said. “TI believe that with a department of national defense administered by a single cabinet offi- cer, whose acts are those of the president him- self, preparation for war will be better and more economical and the conduct of war will be far more effective than it ever has been in the past.” The Kellogg pact called upon nations to abandon war as a national policy, yet here we have the plain admission from the ranking member of the military affairs committee of the house of congress that active prepara- tions for war are in effect. Perhaps Kellogg will explain this by saying that the particular type of war he had in mind was only between nations with alliances against other com- binations of imperialist rivals. That would be as logical as the pact itself which ex- plicitly gives a free hand to the imperialist nations to ravage the colonial and semi- colonial countries. There is no inhabitable spot of that part of the globe under capitalist domination that is not the scene of war preparations. Even the act of recognition of the Nanking govern- ment of murder and rapine in China is part of the war preparations. It is impossible to analyze the terms of that recognition of , Nanking. They are not known except to the agents of the state department and the Chiang Kai-shek regime. One thing, however, is a certainty, and that is that the Nanking regime is bound to carry out American im- perialist policy in the Pacific, which involves at this moment a struggle against Britain and Japan and provocation against the Union | of Socialist Soviet Republics. Congressman James’ action in blurting | out the real intent of the government is nothing new to Communists. It is only one more piece of evidence that is already piled mountain high that indicts the Mellon-Cool- idge-Hoover government as the mad-dog of the whole world. The only force that is actively mobilizing sentiment against the predatory policies of the government is the Workers (Communist) Party. The policy of the present government is the policy of Wall Street, the power that owns and controls both the republican and democratic parties, and the power the so- cialist party really serves when it denies the elass struggle and spreads dangerous paci- mongers. ' Soviet Unio: allies! farmers. versities. For the Party of the Class Struggle! Against the Capitalists! fist illusions among the working class. support of any other party than the Workers (Communist) Party is support of the war- Down with the conspirators against the Smash the jingoes and their yellow socialist Vote for the class Party of labor! Vote Communist! Alanson Bigelow Houghton Heading the New York State ticket of the republican party is another of that new type of “statesman” of whom Andrew W. Mellon and Dwight Morrow are the particular bright and shining lights. Houghton, candidate for United State senator for the millionaire club at Washington. His principal qualification is that he is rich and that he devotes his time to acting as messenger boy for the rest of the im- | perialist gang on Wall Street. He was twice | a member of congress, but even in those be- nighted surroundings he was a mediocrity. He demonstrated only the fact that he could be used as a rubber stamp. His only audible characteristic was a supreme contempt for and a deep hatred of the men and women who produce the wealth of the world; the useful members of society—the workers and The He is Alanson Bigelow Houghton is a graduate of Harvard and | has degrees from a number of European uni- | Such people have to have certifi- cates to indicate that they are supposed to be | intelligent, as there is a pitiful lack of other evidence to that effect. Houghton’s income is principally from | non-union and scab concerns. | stockholder in the Corning, New York, glass | works and was formerly president of that | non-union concern. | vice-president of the scab-herding, strike- | breaking Ephriam Creek Coal and Coke Com- pany of West Virginia, and is a director of | the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. After the war Houghton was appointed ambassador to Germany where he served as messenger boy for Wall Street. His present | post is that of ambassador to Great Britain. The republican press is now busy trying to | | create a giant out of a pigmy, by concocting | | myths about the exemplary virtues and | colossal ability of this millionaire politician, just as it manufactured the Coolidge myth of a strong, silent man with a creature of putty as material to work upon. The democrats will likewise choose a tool of Wall Street and workers will be told they can exercise their inalienable democratic prerogatives by voting for one or the other of the puppets for senator. Intelligent workers will hold these candi- dates in contempt and vote for candidates of the one class Party of labor, the Workers (Communist) Party. He is a heavy | For a long time he was | Irish Trade Union Misleaders Meet By JACK CARNEY. 'N 1920 there assembled in the city of Cork 246 delegates represent- ing fifty-eight trade unions and thirty-one trades councils. Eight years after there assembled in the ‘ity of Belfast 131 delegates repre- senting thirty-four trade unions and “our trade councils. In 1920 there were 240,000 workers affiliated to this body. In 1928 their number had fallen to less than 94,000. The Con- gress met in August in a city where unemployment is rife, where the basic industries, linen and ship- building, have declined to an appall- ing extent. In an atmosphere of capitalist decline, where the promise of a job becomes a jest in the hearts » of hungry men, what did the con- ress do? A The opening address of the chair- nan, W. McMullen (Irish Transport Union) was confined to vague gen- sralities. The only militant note was contained in a reference to the Trade Union Act, in which the hairman stated that “soon it will be ‘wept into oblivion, along with its -uthors and instigators, by the epresentatives of a virile and irre- ‘stible democracy on their march to he conquest of political power.” The hairman forgot to mention that his “virile and irresistible demo- vacy” had devlined in trade union strength from 240,000 to 93,000, There was no class appeal in the chairman’s address. It was the usual appeal of the politician ap- pealing for votes instead of sound- ing a rallying cry to the depressed masses to organize their forces on \the basis of a real struggle. Thus ended the first day of this congress. A Day of “Protests.” A man working in the South of Ireland cannot draw unemployment benefit if he moves to the North and vice-versa, The congress spent the major portion of the second day in “protesting” against the refusal of the North to come to an arrange- ment with the South. The remain- ing portion was discussed around the needs of creating a tariff com- mission in the North to work in harmony with a tariff commission in the South. The third day was given over to a discussion on the question of. in- land transportation, Trade union leaders with workers on tramways | and others with workers on the rail- |ways demanded the control of the omnibuses. The congyss decided to demand the co-ordination of inland transport. A visit to the local co- operative organization concluded this day’s work on kehalf of the workingclass and peasantry of Ire- land. typical liberal intellectual, tells us that it is “much more usual either |to praise or to blame Marx than to | understand him.” purpose | whose minds are saturated with illu- |sions of fairness, justice and | bedraggled the impression that the TELLING IT TO THE MARINES By H. M. WICKS his contribution in the October Current History to the general A Typical Liberal Intell | ” jsubject of “Marxism Today,” Pro- \fessor, Harold J. Laski, approaching the question in the manner of a - ectual’s Curious Version of Revolutionary Strategy ‘from which to attack the revolu- |tionary movement, climbs on a self- Such an approach serves a double | constructed promontory from which in appealing to readers | he hurls the javelins of mendacity at the theoretical founders of our other | movement. ; ° It gives| The Marxian interpretation of author is | history, Historical Materialism, cor- anbiased and that he alone under- rectly states that the mode of stands Marx. The first thousand | wealth production in any given so- words of his article are skilfully de- | ciety determines the general char- signed to create the notion that the acter of all our political, religious author is a creature reared in the|and other social institutions. No- atmosphere of lofty idealism; a where, in all the voluminous writ- product of kindness, sweetness and ;ings of Marxists is it possible to light. \ tind Ve lightest (nitee ee a ‘ ‘ _|a vulgar conception a: - geois sophistry discusses “The ‘value Bee Bees at at wbiate yest nd Defects of the Marxian il | tg be i aca.” Laski says the questions | superstructure of society. of the adequacy or inadequacy of | Much Too Simple. surplus value, of whether the ar-) Jf history could be interpreted in rival of the proletarian revolution such a fashion it would indeed be in Russia is or is not a fulfillment possible for Oxford graduates and of Marxian prophesies, important | }arvard and London professors to as they are, “in the general signifi-|}ecome accomplished historians, in- cance of Marxism they are of schol-| stead of devoting their talents to astic interest rather than of prac-| writing hackneyed apologies for the tical, hearing.” The essence of |imperialist bourgeoisie. _Institu- Marxism, declares Laski, “from the | tions, customs, thoughts, ideologies, angle of our generation, must be | art, literature, laws, do not emerge sought in other directions.” The|from a given economic foundation angle from which it must be ap-|,s automatic, mechanical effects. proached is the recognition that: Quite the contrary. The process is “It is, above all, a BBTOSRORY yery complicated. Marxians, Ga Ki Cea ce Ps th more than others, recognize these thereto. Or teey at. and, in |facts, To attribute to Marxism that the second place, it is a soctal | identical vulgarization against which tactic intended to give substance every Marxist in the world has vies shibboleths. in the event to the prophesy Marx made. . - orously fought is to reveal one of “The Marxian philosophy of |two things—either a total incapa- history is . the argument that city to understand Marx, or a vile at any Biver hange in acociety attempt deliberately to misrepresent mechanism of change in a society is the system of production | his teachings. which obtains. To its require” | ‘There have been, and are today, ments all other forms of social A Tei. WHO’ pres ttecrt necetearig iadact. them | wumercers Or Marx Hee ita selves. . . It follows, therefore, |tend to be followers 0! arx, concoct elaborate apologies for their failure to participate in the class struggle, or their cowardice, by re- peating over and over the stupid formula that when economic condi- tions are “ripe” the revolution will ‘automatically appear. For such as on the Marxian View, that those | who control a system of produc- tion have in society a position of special authority. They are, in sober fact, the effective govern- ment; and what we call the state is the weapon they possess for securing the service of their in- terest.” Laski, in order to secure a base omic and political supremacy of the | jruling class enabled it to use against the working class. | If it were not for the widespread use of just such weapons by the im- perialist war-mongers of today who ‘are at this moment preparing new |butcheries of the working class, en- |deavoring once again, on the field of Mars, to bring about a redivision of the world between the conflict- ing powers, such people as Harold J. Laski would be out of jobs. To contend that Marxists of the past were less aware of such weapons against the working class than the |revolutionists of today is to display 12 flippant disregard of the facts. | But, while fully recognizing all \factors involved, Marxists also em- phatically assert and prove that, in the last analysis, a change in the |mode of wealth production and dis- \tribution must inevitably produce a | corresponding change in the entire superstructure of society. | The “Mechanism” of Change. This brings us to the next stu- |pidity of Professor Laski—to his \assertion that Marx held that “the primary mechanism of change is the |system of production which ob- | tains.” The development of the produc- tive forces to a poirit where they come into conflict with the existing relations of society—with the in- |stitutions held in the hands of the ruling class for the purpose of keep- ing the oppressed class in subjec- |tion—places revolution’on the order of the day. Whenever the economic |forees develop to a point where the lold forms of social organization be- come a fetter upon production they by the mechanism of the system of production. Such an absurd notion an intellectual scavenger of calibre of Laski. + the environment—the field for strug- |gles—in which the revolution de- velops. could only originate in a mind of Society, through the development | of its contradictions, furnishes the | But today, under modern} By Fred Ellis Laski on “Marxism Today” “The weapons now at the dis- posal of violence are more catas- trophic in their nature than at any previous time. Applied in- tensivelyy or over a long period, they may even destroy exactly the machinery upon which the successful consummation of the revolution depends; they may even make impossible the main- tenance of civilization. We have also to bear in mind the qualities produced, both in governors and governed, by a long habituation to methods of violence, It is | difficult to see that a regime built on the use of hatred and fear and calculated relentless- ness can give birth to a society nguished by fraternity. | ‘or is it fair to predicate that social justice is unattainable peacefully through the normal channels of representative gov- ernment. | “It is worth while to remem- ber—and the experience of Rus- | sia has only reinforced this truth — that’ a dictatorship, | whether or not it is proletarian, is in simple fact the exchange of one tyranny for another. “The future of our (well said, you miserable lackey!) society depends very largely upon the willingness of those who now control the instruments of pro- duction to make large conces- sions to the proletariat.” How exquisite! How exceedingly nice! What profundity, what exalt- ed sentiments! There is one question that irresist- ably arises: When and where and under what conditions, in all the history of the world, has there ever been a time that the slave master | sought the liberation of his slaves who made possible his wealth? vain we await an answer to this. The mouldy walls of effete Oxford ‘are silent on this point. joffer, From the dark chambers of the University of London there comes only the whimpering and snarling of the bastardized litter of grovelling whelps called the facul- ty. Only the revolutionists, the Marx- | hates and fears with the same in- \tensity that all his class trembles before the revolution, face the facts of history. We state emphati- cally that liberation from wage- slavery will come only through the revolution of the working class, not through the goodness of the capi- talist class. Also we wish to inform Professor In| Bloody, | |murderous Harvard has nothing to! are burst asunder, but’ certainly not |i**® the Leninists whom Lasky | Laski then dwells for a time upon | the division of society into two classes, the masters, who own the instruments of production and try | to purchase labor as cheap as pos-| ihese the orthodox Marxist has only the deepest contempt. Non-Economic Factors. Marx and Engels constantly re- ferred in their historical writings to There are 90,000 workers unem- sible, and the workers, who try to|the role that is played by custom, ployed in the South of Ireland and nearly as many in the North. So that there are more unemployed than there are organized workers. The congress gave no lead on un- employment. There is a deep and serious de-| pression in agriculture. The un- employed agricultural worker is drifting into the towns and cities and creates a situation that must be | met by the industrial workers, congress made no mention of. sell labor as dear as possible. He emphasizes the fact that Marx con- | sidered this antagonism thus gen- erated as fundamental and irrecon- cilable. The divorce of the workers from the means of productior keeps them in subjection to the capitalist | regime. | Finally the workers create a rev- | clutionary party which insists upon seizure of the state, so they seize “in open warfare the institutions of | law, tradition, religion, etc. The fa- mous quotation from The Eighteenth ‘Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, “The tradition of all past generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living,” is no mere figure of speech, but a profound historical observation. Marx and Engels, in their time, fully recognized certain non-econo- mic factors as obstacles to the de- development of the revolution. In The the state and establish a dictator-|the famous work, Revolution and | this. ship of the proletariat, which, by Counter-Revolution or Germany in ae Northern Labor Party acts its iron rigor, controls the transi-| 1848, we read the following esti- class collaboration, while making tion from a capitalist to a Commu-|mate of the situation prevailing vague speeches against it. The Southern Labor Party begs and! whines for a Mond conference in| Southern Ireland. Irish labor as a/ whole presents a sad spectacle. The | time calls for concerted action on the part of the militant trade| unionists. Work has commenced along that line. On the political field | the Irish Worker League battles’ against the open opposition of the| government and the employing class | and the treachery of the Social] Democrats. The task ahead is no| light one. Scabbing by alleged trade unions and unemployment! have made the mass of the workers | very apathetic. nist society.” Now Comes the Objections. After thus stating, with all the | arrogance of an Oxford snob, what | he imagines is the Marxian inter-| pretation of history, the eminent | professor proceeds to deliver a lec- ture on the shortcomings of Marx: | “His Interpretation of history, | in the first place, gives too little room to the significance of non- economic factors. Religion, race, nationality, these have their ideologies which shape, even as they are shaped by, the economic ronment, . . “Every stage, moreover, of the tactic of revolution as Marxism | conceives it, is dubious in the | modern time.” | Like all opponents of Marxism, then: In passing judgment upon the slowness of political develop- ment in Germany no one ought to omit taking into account the difficulty of obtaining correct information upon any subject in a country where all sources of information were under the con- trol of the government, ‘Where from the Ragged School and the Sunday School to the newspaper and university nothing was said, taught, printed or published but what had obtained its approba- tion.” This is but one of many observa- tions of the founders of the revolu- tionary movement that could be quoted to prove that Marx and En- gels fully recognized the potency of ideological weapons, which the econ- |capitalism, it is the proletariat that |Laski and all the other liberals and lis the motivating force. Marx em- fabians and anarchists who prattle phasized repeatedly that it is the @bout the sacredness of the indi- historic mission of the proletariat|Vidual and the debasing effects of to become the grave diggers of capi-|Violence that we are fully aware of talism. ae plenty weapons of destruction elas . \that have been perfected for use to- AnnInieinig Biraw, Men: day. But we also know that in fender of capitalism, Professor Car-|attempts to suppress revolutionary ver, with whom I dealt yesterday, activity the Thus, Lasky, like the avowed ge- imperialist wars of conquest and in| erects a straw man labelled “Marx- ism” and then proceeds to demolish it. Like a typical vacillating liberal and fabian socialist he conceals his subservience towéhe capitalist class tends to respect that which he, de- \fames. In that attitude he is less honest than Professor Carver. * But the true purpose of Laski’s contribution is revealed when he launches into an assault upon the mightiest of all historical vindica- tions in action of Marxism, the Bol- shevik revolution in the domain of the former czars of Russia. Like a miserable theologian who preaches pacifism to the workers so they will be at the mercy of their assassins, Laski asSails the Bolshe- vik revolution because it uses state power to maintain the rule of the working class and defend it against the imperialist hordes who are con- stantly plotting to launch new at- tempts to destroy it. First he tries to frighten us with prospects of the annihilation of what he calls civil- lization. under exalted sentiments and pre-| ruling class depends ‘upon conscript armies that, at cer- tain stages of development of crises that will inevitably be generated as tradictions of capitalism, will. go over to the side of the revolution with these marvelous weapons of destruction in their hands. , Laski and the preachers of pa- jcifism would have us renounce the revolution and accept slavery (which he calls “civilization”) so that he and his kind may be able indefinite- ly to continue their sermonizing. | He would have the workers ‘and ‘peasants of the Soviet Union sur- render state power so the imper- ialist butchers could turn that land into a vast slaughterhouse where the extermination of the revolution- aries could continue unabated, Just what role the Laskis would play in a revolutionary situation was revealed by their position in the days preceding the general strike in England. During the nine months and every agency of British reac- \tion was preparing to smash the a result of the irreconcilable con-| that the Baldwin tory government} miners’ union and the whole labor movement the entire yellow crew from MacDonald and Thomas to the university apologists for imperial- ism were lecturing the working class on the evils of preparation for con- flict and. admonishing the trade union membership to trust implicit- ly in the ability of the general coun- cil and other union officials to con- vinee the bosses and their govern- ment of the beauties of peace and harmony and the milk of human kindness. These people are indeed wonder- ful leaders of the working. class— jinto the slaughter house prepared for them by the capitalist class. The Use of a Workers State. Nothing is more typical of the de- | based talk of the university drivel- lers than Laski’s attempt to assail the Soviet Union with the charge that it is like all other dictatorships. |Although professors of _ political economy in Harvard, Oxford and | London University may be unable to |perceive the difference, the class- conscious worker will not cavail at dictatorships alone or assail, anar- |chist fashion, all states, but will |ask: In whose interest does the |state function? Is it the dictator- ship of the working class or a dic- |tatorship of the capitalist class? Likewise, it is a piece of intel- |lectual dishonesty to talk idly about |some abstract hatred. While the in- |tellectual retainers of imperialism |may not be able to understand how |the dictatorship of the proletariat, | based as it is and must be, on the |forcible suppression of the former | exploiters by the former exploited, can realize any degree of fraternity, |the working class will be able to | understand perfectly well that there can be no harmony between these |classes, that only by destroying ut- | terly the base of the class power of capitalism can we ever speak of |ing rol in any hope of its becom- ing reality. As long-as slavery ex- lists it is imperative that the revolu- tionist preach an indomitable class hatred, endeavor to implant in the \breast of the oppressed’ masses the |deepest contempt for capitalism and jall its institutions and retainers un- | til the oppressed of the world have become welded together into an im- |placable fighting force that will |scourge the oppressive s}stem from |the face of the earth, Our frater- |nity is that which is based upon jclass solidarity. | That may be too realistic, too stern, too brutal, for the gentlemen of the university chairs, who fear. |for their own hides, but it is a his- |torical necessity for the working {elass. The revolutionist will not listen to the teachings of a slave re- | ligion to “turn the other cheek,” but when someone strikes us on one side of the face we will anrthilate |him if we can. | The prelude to a society fit for | people to live in must be the deep- jest hatred on the part of the work- ers for their murderous exploiters. | And as for this twaddle about the | vanishing of civilization, let us re- inind the professor that history also |is eloquent on that point and proves | that when a certain stage f eco- |nomic development is reached it is \cajable of surving not merely revo- lution, but even barbarian invasion, |as was the case when Rome fell be- | fore the invading hordes at the close \cC the fifth century and again at the close of the rinth. But then it is an old trick of the defenders of a decadent system to \view its passing as the end of tre world. Only Real Democracy. | The insipid liberals pine for pure democracy, embracing all classes, | without realizing, as Lenin said, that the very conception of purity im- plies that human investigation has been applied in a narrow, one-sided manner. (“The Collapse of the Sec- ond International,” Lenin. Page 40, S. L. P. [British] edition.) Here, again, arises that one ques- tion that constantly plagues all lib- erals and fabians—the CLASS ques- tion. In whose behalf and by whom lis democracy exercised? Then there arises the next question: Which is the more democratic, the capitalist state or the workers’ state. This answer to the erudite Oxford gentleman will be left to Lenin: “Tt capitalist soctety we have a democracy that is wretched, curtailed, false; a democracy only for the rich, for the minor- ity. The dictatotship of the proletariat, the period of transi- tion to Communism, will, for the first time, produce a democracy for the people, for the majority, side by side with the necessary suppression of the minority com stituted by the former exploiters. Communism alone is capable of giving a really complete demo- cracy.” . . (State and Revolu- tion.) When, through the democratic dic- \tatorship of the proletariat, we have destroyed not only the capital- ist class as a class, but destroyed |also the very soil upon which it springs there will then be no need of a state as a special instrument of coercion in the hands of one class against another. Hence the state it- self will wither away and, as Engels, ‘said, “the government of persons is replaced by the administration of | things, and by the conduct of the process of production.” In such a society people who are entrusted with the task of education will have to develop their minds so that they can at least understand the books they read and also be able to learn the lessons of history, in- stead of indulging in brain contor- ions such as have been exhibited by Professor Laski. Y | Thursday—Reply to Hillquit. NEAR NEW FLIGHT RECORD. SAN DIEGO, Calif., Oct. 1 (UP). —Edward F. Schlee and William S. | Brock tonight neared a new world record for sustained flight as they continued to pilot their Bellanca plane over Southern California, a nee