The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 8, 1928, Page 6

Page Six Daily Published by National Daily Worker Publishing Daily, Except Sunday, at 26-28 re, New York, N. Y. Telephone, 1696-7-8. Cable Address “Daitoork” panes, Stuyvesan ROBERT MINOR.......- WM. F. DUNNE... The Dietzgen Centenary ® At the international congress at the Hague in 1872, Karl Marx introduced one of the German delegates with the remark “Here is our philosopher.” That delegate was Joseph Dietzgen, who was born near Cologne, Germany, one hundred years ago this Sunday—December 9, 1828. Dietzgen was distinctly a product of t revolutionary movement. He became a class conscious socialist at 20 years of age, in 1848, when he became familiar with the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Enge S published to the world that year. Partici- pating in the great upheavals of that year he, like thousands of other German revolu- tionaries, came to the United States, where he spent two or three years as a tramp, wandering from place to place with other migratory workers and securing odd jobs: as tanner and journeyman painter. Returning to Germany he engaged in his trade as tan- ner and took up the study of philosophic problems and had a few articles published in radical and revolutionary newspapers. In a few years he journeyed back again to the United States in the hope of establishing a tanning factory of his own that would give him leisure to persue his studies which by that time had completely engrossed him. Locating in Alabama, he was hardly able to realize an existence- The outbreak of the Civil War prevented him continuing his venture. His openly ex- pressed sympathies with the North com- pelled him to leave the South post haste when a number of his friends were hanged by the slave-owners. Returning to Germany he devoted as much of his time as possible to writing his first important work, while working at his trade. Being a devoted Marx- ist, he sent his work to Marx for criticism. However, illness prevented Marx immediate- ly replying, but that he was appreciative of the efforts of Dietzgen in the field of dia- lectic materialism is indicated by a letter to Kugelman, Dec. 5, 1868, in which he said: “It is long since Dietzgen sent me his manu- script which, despite some confusion of ideas and too frequent repetitions, contains many excellent thoughts, and which is the product of a worker and worthy of admiration.” Dietzgen’s first work entitled “The Na- ture of Human Brainwork, Discussed by a Workingman,” appeared first in 1869, when he was 41 years of age. In the introduc- tion to the work he signed himself “Joseph Dietzgen, Tanner.” A study of the work itself and the “letters on logic” which appear in the English edi- tion is bound to impress upon fhe reader the fact that it is the product of a worker who was so anxious that he be understood that he used dozens of examples to illustrate one point. The publication in the United States of his. chief works some twenty years ago was of real service to the revolutionary move- ment, surfeited as it was with bourgeois in- tellectuals, spiritualists and christian social- ists of the calibre of George D. Herron, J. Stitt Wilson, Carl D. Thompson, John Spargo and others. For more than a decade after the publication of Dietzgen’s works they were among the textbooks of American op- ponents of the official socialist’ leadership. For a time there threatened to grow up a cult calling themselves “monist-material- ists,” that viewed every word of Dietzgen as the final utterance on everything. These elements tried to reconcile all contradictions in the working class movement and confirm it with a Dietzgen benediction. This was particularly pronounced among the syndical- ist element of the movement who preached reconciliation of socialism with anarchism and based their ideas upon the action of Dietzgen when he took over the editorship ENSLAVING THE CANADA FISHERMEN HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Dec. The number of men engaged in shore fisheries of Nova Scotia in ~jare kept in and demand J oe —s Le = Central Organ of the Workers (Communist) Party storage e|when the supply begins to decline, employment elsewhere. increas: SUBSCRIPTION RATES: By Mail (in New York only): $8 a year $4.50 six mos. $2.50 three mos. (outside of New York): $6 a year 50 six mos. $2.00 three mos. Address and mail all checks to The Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. of the anarchist paper in Chicago in 1886 after the victims of the Haymarket frame- up were arrested. They forgot that Dietzgen, himself, had carried on long controversies with August Spies before the conspiracy against the 8-hour movement. In spite of a number of shortcomings, the works of Dietzgen are of immense value to- day. Certainly they are an excellent anti- dote to the present-day pseudo-psychology of the Freudians with their twaddle about the unconscious. Particularly is Dietzgen useful against such spurious doctrines as those propounded by Max Eastman who talks learnedly of “the logical instinct of an unborn child.” (P. 70; Since Lenin Died.) Dietzgen shows that there can be no thought without contact with some material object. He states: “The materialist theory of knowledge amounts then to this statement, that the hu- man organ of cognition radiates no metaphy cal light, but is a piece of nature which pic- tures other pieces of nature. . . .Our facul- ty of cognition is not a supernatural source of truth, but a mirror-like instrument which reflects the things of the world, of nature.” Lenin, in his remarkable work, ‘Material- ism and Empirio-Criticism,” gives Dietzgen credit for his work, and at the same time | criticises certain shortcomings—most of which were the result of unclear expressions rather than a fundamental misconception. Says Lenin: “Taking Dietzgen as a whole, he does not deserve to be very much censured. He is nine-tenths materialist and never made any pretensions to originality or boasted a special philosophy distinct from materialism. He spoke of Marx many times, and invariably as the head of the moyement. Dietzgen was a Marxian.” One fact should be remembered in connec- tion with the celebration of the Dietzgen centenary and that is that so-called “pro- found” questions of science and philosophy are not the monopoly of any group in so- ciety and is not attained by the display of a sheepskin diploma from a university. The mind of a worker is as capable of grasping such things as that of a doctor of philosophy. And when the final estimate of his work has been made, that is when in a society without masters or slaves the history of the proletarian world revolution is written, Dietzgen will occupy a prominent place therein. Campaign for Y. W. L. Weekly The National Executive Committee announces that the Young Workers (Communist) League of Amer- ica will conduct a drive to establish the Young Worker, it official organ, as a weekly paper. At present, the Young Worker appears as a monthly, occasionally somewhat more frequent, and occasion- ally somewhat less often. The latter case is more often true than the former. The Young Worker is the only paper for the work- ing class youth in the United States. It has earned for itself a reputation for championing the cause of the young workers everywhere, particularly dur- ing strikes. among the young miners during the last miners’ strike, and was very popular, the young miners con- sidering it as their own paper, because of the mili- tant way it fought for them. The same can also be said of the textile workers in New Bedford. The Young Worker fills a need in the working class movement, It is organizing the working youth to fight against the war danger, against capitalist militarism, for the 6-hour day, 5-day week, against child labor, for organization of the young workers. In the election campaign it also fought for the fran- chise for the youth. In short, the Young Worker is the constant champion of the demands of the young workers and fights energetically for their in- terests. It is the organizer of the young workers | in the struggle against capitalism. | _ It is urgently necessary to establish a weekly It has won wide-spread circulation | DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1928 . | MOBILIZE THE NEEDLE TRADES By Gropper By A. LUNACHARSKY. | Continued An important factor in the cul- |tural struggle is the method em-) |ployed in the free education of the | population. Under czarist rule thi | was altogether unimportant. The so- | called enlightenment of the people is a creation of the revolution. The education of the population outside {the schools consists mainly in the liquidation of illiteracy. In this re- | spect we have attained considerable !success, but we must not rest on jour oars. As a result of the great | backwardness of the female popula- | tion, there are in the R. S. F. S. R. | still some eight million illiterate adults. Added to this it must be re- membered that after learing to read | and write, a great number of people | very speedily forget what they have learnt. For this reason we are now applying the more expansive but) |more thorough system of reading | and writing instruction in one-year} schools. | For the development of knowledge |among adults there is a growing stem of the most varied instruc-| |tional establishments; at present! |they number about 1000 and com- | prise 150,000 pupils, In the first place we have the workers’ univer- ies, of which there are about 40,/ One of the innovations of the rev- |olution are the reading-rooms. Of} these there are about 22,000. They) are ‘small centers of culture, dis-| Radio and Movies. with 100,000 students. 1 Achievements of the New Type of Education; Proletarian Theater and Literature covery and evinces a pronouncedly revolutionary aspect. Its great achievements in the direction of rep-| resentative technique and stage) management have been recognized in} all the world. The repertory of our theatre, too, has improved, being in-| fluenced by the requirements of the| country. True, our dramatic litera- ture still falls short, both in quantity and in quality, of the requirements of the country and even of the re- quirements of theytheatre and of its possibilities, but ideoolg:cally it is infinitely superior to that of the rest of Europe or of America. Proletarian Literature. Russian fiction has of late been giving signs of a remarkable rise, but at the same time of a variegated ideological surface. We are grati- fied to say proletarian literature is increasing. In the realm fo poetry and the drama it has achieved re- markable success and has particu-| larly developed in regard to novels. We can already boast a considerable library permeated by a sincere pro- letarian spirit and bearing compari-} son with the best productions of | Russian literature in general. I may| point to three novels which have ap- all of them quite recently, “Bruski” | tistics regarding our press. As early as 1922 we surpassed the circulation totals of the best pre-war years, Be- fore the war there appeared in the whole country 2,500,000 copies of newspapers in the aggregate. As early as 1926 we had 8,000,000. Our bodk-production in 1927 was as great} as before the war in regard to the number of publications, but the ac- tual number of volumes was 5 per, cent greater. The returns of scien- tific editions are particularly in- structive and interesting. In 1910, 464 works of scientific interest were published, comprising 8000 printed pages and an aggregate edition of} 19 million copies. If we take the year 1927, we shall see that there are) detailed statistics in this regard. In that year, 945 purely scientific works were published with a total edition of 16 million copies. In 1910, the number of technical books of in- struction published was copies. In 1926 the total was 35,000- 000, or just ten times as many. Pav- lov’s “Functions of the Great Hemi-| spheres of the Human Brain” was published in 10,000“copies at three roubles each. Many collaborators of | the ste publishing works declared persed in the most primitive villages.| peared almost simultaneously and/ that such a large edition of so dif-| ficult and expensive a book would Our political education and the| by Panserov, “Tichij Don” by Sho-| suffice for many years in a back-) | improvement of the cultural level of | lochoy, and “Lieso-Zavod” by Kara-| ward country such as ours. How- the population owe much to broad-| vayeva. These three novels deserye| ever, the first edition was sold out leasting and to the cinematograph.| In this respect we have naturally |not got so far as would be in our interest but nevertheless our achieve- ments are most significant. Broad-| casting and the films have not only conquered the towns, but have to a| great extent penetrated into the| rural districts. Both the Party and) j the government have of late been| Young Worker. Every worker and working class | paying great attention to the! organization -should help the Communist youth furtherance of the penctration of achieve this task. Money and inquiries should be | the country by these two factors of sent to the office, at 43 E. 125th St., New York |culture. In the near future a re City, N. Y. markable advance in this directi vd EE may be expected, Though the rep- roaches we hear in regard to the ideological contents of our films are or disposal |to remain in the industry and seck: In_ other Fishermen Lack Organization. 1927 was 40 per cent less than in 1890. There was also a substantial decrease in the number of men em- ployed in the deep sea fisheries. But the value of the fish calch of the province in 1927 was greater than in 1890 by more than 600 per cent, sy ° The decline in the number of shore fishermen is attributed by the majority. report of, the Maclean Commission, which recently investi- gated the maritime fisheries, to overproduction, following the em- ployment of steam yessels operat- ing beam and otter trawls, a drag net towed over the bottom. According to the fishermen’s statements, when there are large catches of fish, the companics op- erating steam trawlers do not, buy words, these companies control the market and the output. Fishermen Quit Trade. | The shore fishermen have re- ceived as low as 60 cents per hun- dred pounds for cod; and the usual price paid until the last few months (last summer) has been from one cent to 1% cents a pound for cod id haddock, depending: upon the classification as “steak” or “mar- ket.” Recently the price has reached 2% to 3 cents, but this’ is far in advance of the average price over a period of years. Shore fishermen say that the | average cost of production is three- |quarters.of a cent per pound. As | the fisherman,has to sell, as a rule, lin the cheapest market and buy in from the shore fishermen, or they |the dearest, and as the cost of the buy at their own prices, as 9 rule | necessities of life in fishing villages far below a reasonable return. They | and of implements of production then make the surplus unsold fish jhave increased rather than declined, ds iato fillets, smoked or frozen, which he feels that it is hopeless longer 'Union Telegraph Company. > a Lack of organization explains some of the troubles of the fisher- men of the three maritime proy- inces. Unions have appeared from time ta#time, but have not developed vitality to keep them alive and spread. The organized fishermen of Newfoundland end the Gaspe Coast cf Quebec have suffered less from post-war changes than the unorgan- among these fishermen. RT WIRE MERGER (By United Press.) Radio Corporation directors to- |day authorized formation of a sub- cations business. The move was re- | garded as the first towards a com- munity of interest with the Western metimes merited, they and aw: in advance of those of western Europe. The bourgeois, but S| decidedly progressive and enlight- ened German critic Kerr, who has} written a preface for the book on! |“The Russian Film,” deals with the question as to how it is possible that in spite of its backward technique and the small means at its disposal in comparison with American and tother European produc Russian film can yet productions in its artistie effect. He finds the answer to his question i | the explanation that in the capita i 1 of the maritimes, An energetic | countries the commercial considera-| Dec. 7. crganizer could probably get results | tion is paramount in the production effectively with European automo- jof a film, while in the Soviet Union| hiJe manufacturers, especially Brit- | the film is intended to serve cultural | aims and the discussion of the great | problems with which the country | occupied. There is no lack of ideas} and of sentiment. In the Sovie Union the cinema is in every sense) of the word en artistic means in the | sidiary to take care of its communi-| service of enlightenment. New Theatre. What has just heen said in regard ee is to be consten::od, to the cinema also applies to other) realms of art. Out theatre is like- _/ cently masses in art exhibitions, concerts, |1esults of their research work. Par- | flected in thousands of satisfactory | and museums. This broad contact | ticularly instruetive in this respect | circumstances, f to be translated into all civilized languages. They are, however, by no means single instances; there are a number of products which at times | attain the same level. I may call to} mind the highly artistic works pub-| lished by the proletarian writers! Fadeiev, Lebedinski, Gladkoy, and| others, . A less important reflection of the} cultural revolution is to be found in} the realm of the creative arts and| of music. We may point to the re-| apparent interest of the! with the main masses of the work- ing and peasant public is the guar-| re yet farpantee of a further sound develop- ment of these branches of art. Press and Publishing. Great interest attaches to the sta-' | particular cultivated Marxism. | this direction we have achieved much | within the year and a second is about to appear. This shows that manu of our cultural workers, stu- dents among them, save their copeks many of our cultural workers, stu- dying first class and important works. Scientific Work. Our scientific work has not only not ceased, but has rather constantly been developing since the revolution. A series of international congresses have shown that our scientists can! record important and interesting was the Congress of Geologists in America. Alongside the development of sciences in general, we have in In and the number of our publications, ‘ 3,500,000 | FORD SPEEDS UP TURKS’ CONSTANTINOPLE, Turkey,} n order to compete more) ons, the Workers to Be “Westernized” in Plant machinery for the plant and all parts for the construction of the machines, | Ford paying $30 for each completed unit. The company is required to em- ish firms, and at the same time offer) ploy only Turkish workers and to |the United States an airplane as-|yse only Turkish coal. The ration- sembling base in the Near East, the _ Ford Motor Company concluded a palization and speed-up, which Ford | devéloped for the exploitation of contract yesterday with the Turkish| American workers, will now be ex- government for a concession in Con-| tended to Turkey, where workers stantinople, where an assembly plant wil] get their taste of American ex- for automobiles, trucks, tractors end) ploitation methods as a part of their with ¢ concess! training in “westernization.” is to last for 25) It is estimated that the workers ecial customs privil- will be made to produce at least 200 wise showing signs of a rapid re-!eges permitting free entry of all'cars daily, ¥ | both scientific and popular, is very | great. It is the classics of Marxism in| particular that are published, The} Marx-Engels Institute, founded in 1922, has become a first class scien- tifie institution of world-wide im-) portance. The sections and the work | of the Communist Academy, of the) All-Russian Council of Scientific In-| stitutions, and of the Academy for} Material Culture have likewise aug-) mented, Our Scientific Academy is now} being reformed; new forces are be-| ing enlisted, and the institution is) being brought into line with the times. There can be no doubt but that the Academy is about to enter! upon the most brilliant period of its | existence. Together with the Russian | Academy of Sciences, the Ukrainian Academy has developed, while White Russian Academy has just been founded. | Women and Culture. | In my report in the Central Exe-| cutive Committee a year ago, I also| had occasion to speak of certain fac-| _tors characterizing yet another zidet of our mass-culture. I refer to the important progress of women in} public work and the great advance! in the consciousness of women, even of the most primitive among them, such as the peasant women and the women of the East. The Women’s | Congress which took place last year) showed some surprising achieve-| ments in this respect. It is only for) lack of space moreover, that I re- frain here from speaking of the rapid development of physical culture among us, of its qualitative and quantative success, and of the im- portant achievements of the Health Protection League, which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. | Added to these results, we have\the| undeniable fact of the regression of | infant mortality and in consequence a satisfactory development of the population, The growth of the Party and of its influence, the development of the Young Communist League and of its activity, the rising cultural level of the working masses and of the young | peasants—all these factors are re-| Cultural Self-Criticism. The principle of self-criticism de- | mands of us that we should be cir- cumspect and that we should not) cease to control and report. If a widespread development of self- criticism were to show up all sorts of things which are faulty about ‘our development—seeing that criti- ‘cism must in the first place reveal the unsatisfactory side—this would discourage no one who has really a proper conception of the internal character of this process. It must be pointed out, however, that the realization of Gorki’s idea is now at hand, for a special publication, to be known as “Our Athievements” is shortly to appear and will’ con- front a sound self-criticism with the enumerations of the results attained Such an enumeration must be tho- roughly healthy} it must reveal the character which distinguished the resolution of the Central Executive Committee following on my report on our cultural work, delivered on the occasion of the tenth anniver- sary of the revolution. Without for- getting our achievements, we must always remembor that they are still slight in comparison with what the population and our great cause de- mand, jents on the farms. Cultural Revolutions Darwin and _ Gold in State | of Arkansas Savarese years ago the state of Tennessee made itself the laugh- ing stock of the world by its “monkey trial,” in which a school teacher had to defend his right to teach Darwin’s doctrines. Now Tennessee’s neighbor, Arkansas, has opened a barrage against atheism and the theory of evolution. Its courts have imprisoned an atheist for distributing anti-religious pamphlets, and its voters have rati- fied a law forbidding favorable men- tion of evolution in state institutions. Religious Bigotry Dominates South Religious bigotry, accompanied by an uncomprehending hatred of evo- lutionary doctrines, is widespread throughout the South. This section lof the United States, where machine |industry has begun to spread, is still primarily agricultural, and re- jtains much of. the backwardness |which characterized it when it was \a semi-feudal civilization based on Negro slavery. The white popula- |tion, out-numbered by the Negroes, is itself divided by profound social and economic differences. The hand- {fal of wealthy plantation owners jand manufacturers dominates a mass of land-poor whites, and a still \greater mass of white and Negro peng and factory workers. This-eco- |nomic backwardness, with its ac- |companying race and social antag- jonisms, has spawned religious, social and sectional fanaticism. The South |is the cradle of Negro lynching, of |the Ku Klux Klan and of the most superstitious religious sects. Laws against the teaching of evo- lution have been passed in several southern states, and it is only a dramatic incident which has called attention to Arkansas. The official reports of this state reveal the back- wardness of its population and the medieval mentality of its ruling strata. Only half the children of school age in that state go to school; and even these attend only an aver- age of 131 days a year, spending the rest of the time helping their par- Negroes are segregated in special schools, and teachers receive an average wage of $21 a week, compared with the aver- age American factory wage of $27 a week. Negro teachers, of course, receive an even smaller wage. * @ Laws to “Protect” Morals. Teeess Arkansas does not pro- vide enough schools for its chil- |dven, it has passed several laws to “protect their morals.” In 1923 the state legislature passed a law re- quiring the teaching of morals in the public schools. Another law com- pels the teaching of patriotism and \the display of the American flag in the class-room. This law provides that teachers who fail to teach these things or to disy’ay the flag shall lose their posts, and may even be imprisoned. This year the Arkansas legislature attempted to protect god’s reputa- tion by passing a law forbidding the teaching of evolution in state insti- tutions. Schools are forbidden to use any book which teaches that man “descended or ascended from a lower class of animal.” The law even forbade teachers to take the initial step of “defining evolution.” It has been nointed out that under this law every American dictionary and the Encyclopedia Brittanica would be barred from the schools of Arkansas. since they not merely “define” evolu- tion but refer to it as a fact. Some liberal elements undertook to fight against the anti-evolution law. Charles A. Smith, president of the American Association for the Ad- vancement of Atheism, opened head- quarters in Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas. Smith was himself born in Arkansas. He started his career intending to enter the Metho- dist Church as a mémister, but an atheistic book which he read as a student cured him. He served in the American army during the world war, and for 18 months was sta- tioned with the American troops in Viadivostock. On his return he founded the atheist organization of which he is president. He has carried on an uncompromising struggle against religion, although without any reference to its economic class functions. To Be Continued “We’re Not for Sale, Mr. Hoover,” Remarks South American Paper MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Dec. 7. —Under the heading “America is Not For Sale” (referring to the fact often forgotten in the United States that it is not all of America), the newspaper “Diario del Plata” com- ments on the trip of Hoover again as it did two days ago, in a. hos- tile tone. The, paper declares that the news about the “unanimity” of Latin American opinion with the ideas of Hoover is impossible in reality, be- cause that would mean that Latin American opinion acecpts the the- ery of Coolidge in respect to the right of the United States to inter- vene with armed forces. in whatever conflict occurs in Latin America. ’ The editorial ends by saying that Hoover is wholly mistaken if he thinks Spanish America can be won with gold (referring to loans), be- cause Latin America does not ac- cept the historic phrase of the Cae- sars: “This. city is for sale: only it lacks a buyer.” The Workers (C oN ae