The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 20, 1929, Page 6

Baily Sas Worker Central Organ of the Communist Party of the U. S. A. { | Published by the Comprodally Publishing Co., | | Sunday, at 26-28 Union Square, New ¥ | | Telephone Stuy : | SUBSCRIPTION RATES: | | | ul sant 1696-7-8, By Mali (in New York only) $8.00 a year $4.50 six months three months By Mail (outside of New Tork), $6.00 a year $3.50 six months 00 three monthe Adéress and mai! all checks to the Daily Worker, Union Square, New York, N. ¥. <es> <1 Millions for War—Not a Cent fer Farm Relief OOVER’S federal farm board in session at Washington slaps in the face those farmers demanding relief from the exploitation of the elevator trusts, the harvester trust, the flour trust and the railroads, by announcing that it is “in no position to give consideration to application for loans.” The farmers are told that they must first exhaust the credit possibilities of the cooperative marketing associations, be- fore the question of loans will even be discussed. No inquiry is made toward ascertaining whether the point of exhaustion has already been reached. The plain facts are that the Wall Street bankers and their subsidiary country town banks do not consider farm loans profitable investments, owing to the great disproportion between agriculture and industry. At the same time the war department, the army, the navy and air forces receive immense subsidies, while private aircraft corporations receive millions of dollars worth of orders for increasing the power of air fleets for-all branches of the armed forces. There are millions and even billions for imperialist war preparations, but not one cent for the farmers. Instead of functioning for the relief of the farmers, the federal farm board exists only to further enslave the poor farmers, the tenant farmers and farm laborers of the coun- try. To cheapen the farm products, thereby making avail- able at low prices food supplies for imperialist armies, is the real motive for the government using its power to reduce the farmers to a condition of beggary. ; This beating down of the standard of life of the farm population is part of the war preparations and the fight <against it must be made a part of the general struggle against “imperialist war. The Marine Workers Organize ‘HE marine transport industry, key industry in peace and absolutely vital to the prosecution of a war by American imperialism, has a dozen unions and is not unionized. The International Seamen’s Union, split into tiny craft ‘tions, the International Longshoremens Association, and a Blandful of small and powerless independent unions make a Serazy quilt picture of organization, and include a few thou- “sand of the hundreds of thousands of exploited workers in the industry. All the old organizations are bitterly hostile to each other, and willing to scab on each other. The seamen are a persecuted race, without most of the guarantees afforded by the mere fact that a worker toils on land. It is not possible for a seaman to quit his job in mid- sea, and every ship’s officer is a petty czar, with practically unlimited powers. No industry has suffered more from rationalization, from new and labor saving inventions. Gains which were wrested from the employers in periods of better erganization such as the three watch system, are lost, and working conditions are frightful. The International Longshoremens Association is a graft ridden, gangster. ruled combine, for the benefit of Ryan’s machine men, and no one else. The longshoremen too, are hit by the rationalization process. Wages for the hardest work in the world, have gone down to as low as 25 cents an hour in southern ports, and in the North will begin to fall as soon as winter nears and the harvest workers come back to the waterfront. A remedy for this situation is an industrial union for the whole industry, with a leadership drawn directly from the ranks of the workers, and as militant as they are. The At- lantic Coast Conference of the Marine Workers League, called to meet at 28 South St., New York on August 17, is the be- ginning of such a union, and the hope of the Marine Workers. The local Marine Workers League’s ship, fleet and dock’ com- mittees, and progressive groups in other organizations should send delegates. “This is not a war for freedom. It is not a war for the liberties of mankind. It is a war to secure the invest- ments and profits of the ruling class of this country. . “The only reason we dre in this war is because it is to the interests of the ruling class of this country to have us in the war.”—C. E. Ruthenberg, speech in Cleveland Fed- eral Court, July, 1917. - Can Daily Survive? funds vital if our press is to live | Respond immediately to the abbeal of the Daily Worker for aid in its present crisis! ‘ The Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square, New York. ctsAfter reading the appeal for aid in the Daily Worker I am Maked tn the “Dally” without | “ALWAYS READY” DAILY WORKER NEW ® hes Y ravedin an ih § 4 4S, fen WU protecy nie a am [Garasé LL, Wire, “ee gon | CAKp YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1928 By Fred Ellis | | | By ERT (Berlin). | The s are known to all: 28 dead and 150 more or less seriously injured men, women, and children of the Berlin working class—such are the victims of the police attack of the Social Democrat Zérgiebel. The jlast resources of the “Freest Re- public on Earth,” truncheons and police revolvers, have triumphed magnificently. An examination of the casualties showed that they were all victims of the arms of the police, including the only policeman |wounded by a shot. The police pro- |ceeded as if they had been in the country of an enemy. The indigna- tion at their cruelty is universal, Even the docile democratic press re- fuses to be identified wtih such pro- ceedings. Only the Social Demo- crats, led by Stampfer’s “Vorwarts,” defend every action of Zérgiebel’s. The reactionaries are content with the Social Democratic “preservers of the peace,” merely regretting that the sanguinary first of May was limited to Berlin, Social-Democratic Plot. Zérgiebel is known to have “pro- ceeded throughout in collusion with the leaders of the Social Democratic Party and of the General German Trade-Union Federation.” To quote his own words, he “was in constant touch with the leading comrades.” Nay, there is an unrefuted rumor to the effect that the reformist trade- union leaders had insisted on a pro- What Next? May Day and Its Consequences easion, too, Severing attempted to|giebel must continue to drive the |}procure a backing in the Hose i Oeeeee from the streets and to \foreign countries.” The Red Front| maintain the peace. The prohibition Fighters League was forbidden on| of the Red Front Fighters League the grounds that of of its members|and the sanguinary May-Day were had taken part in plain clothes in| merely the beginnings. If the So- |the May demonstrations of the C, P.| cial democrats are to remain in the G. and that, as a military organiza-| government, they had to promise the tion, it had infringed the enactments | Zentrum the concordat and buy the of the Versailles Treaty. Again it|consent of the Volkspartei to this |was the “Temps” for whose praise | reactionary step by concessions of a |Severing was fishing; the reply he | social nature, while at the same time jreceived, however, was that natur-|abandoning all resistance to expendi jally such military organization as|ture for armaments, Z the Hitler Guard, the Steel Helmet,! In spite of all these sacrifices at the “Jungdo,” and the rolling com-|the cost of the workers, the bour- |mandos of the Reichswehr did not/|geoisie are not content with the re- infringe on the Peace Treaty at all. Therefore there is a deficit }of two thousand millions in the |treasury. The employers call cate- |gorically for thrift. Saving means | getting more out of the workers and giving them less for it. To save the bourgeois apparatus from financial |ruin, Hilferding submitted the plan | of a loan of 500 millions, which even | the spokesmen of the German Na- | tional Party considered unparalleled in history in its callous deprivation of the poor for the enrichment of | the very richest. | The Social Democrats are not only |ready to commit this act of piracy; Right Renegade in Plot. The offensive carried on by the | Social Democratic Ministers for the |trial of the “Communist May-Day |criminals” has not met with the de- |sired effect, “unfortunately,” as all {men of the Severing stamp will be sure to think, The Communists had |in most instances to be acquitted for jlack of evidence. This was certainly |not the doing of judges who sympa- |thized with the accused, as in 1919 the public prosecutor Jorns did with {tite Social Democratic Ministers Wolfgang Heine and Landsberg in | sult. hibition of the May Day demonstra-|the trial of the murders of Lieb-| ‘hey are even willing to pay the tion. This is also in accordance with | knecht. rich for being allowed to do it. On the accusation of the bourgeois press| To judge by the jubilation of tte day on which the loan was that the Socialist Party of Germany, | Kunstler, chairman of the Berlin So- |P#8Sed, the “Bergwerks-Zeitung” de- frightened at the Communist suc: cesses at the factory council elec- tions, organized the massacre for cial Democratic Party, who accused |the government of slackness in its | treatment of the Communists when |clared it to be “the duty of every |patriotie German not to subscribe to ” Hilferding, it said, should raise reasons of rivalry with the Commu-|speaking at Cologne and Hamburg, |"h® Money by paring the expenses nist Party of Germany. Be this as |one would think the S. P. G. had won| 0£,the social budget. Meanwhile the it may, in the Prussion Diet Grzesin-|a regular Tannenberg victory over | B°Sen-Zeitung,” the organ of the ski approved all the measures of the|the C. P. G. The latter, it would Berlin financial capitalists, declares police, the Social Democratic chair-| appear, are absolutely floored. ‘This |(°" May 24th) that “the government man of this assembly forcibly eject- |is how the renegades of the Brandler|'* Stubbing the subscribers to the ing a dozen Communist Deputies |group also argue. These preyious | loan” by making no suggestion as to from the session hall on account of |“Communists” and “revolutionaries”¢*¢ Testriction of the social budget. their protests, S. D. Police Provocation. With a view to clear himself and his police of the unfavorable impres- sion aroused by the shooting and truncheoning of defenceless people, among them several foreign and na- tive journalists, Zérgiebel convoked a conference of representatives of the foreign press, To the question, |how it was that no policeman had been killed or wounded by “shots ‘fired from the windows,” he replied that this fact was merely owing to the agility of his men. He there- upon “disclosed” that Manuilski had | been sent from Moscow to Berlin for | the purpose of organizing the rising. |The Social Democrat with the tradi- | tional police brain hoped by this im- | pudent assertion to gain the under- | standing and approbation of the | foreign journalists for the violence he had meeted out to many non-Com- |munists. Severing made an equally stupid mistake in attempting to evict the correspondent of the “Pravda” for his report on the May-Day oc- currences, Praise of a sort, it is |true, was not withheld from the lead- jers of the S. P. G. abroad, The “Temps” remarked that the German Social Democrats had acted “with \of the German nat This kind of praise, however, is jnot suited to gaining Germany friends abroad. This was recognized by Stresemann, who therefore asked Severing to refrain from interfering in foreign affairs, The May massacre was imme- \diately followed by the prohibition |of the Red Front Fighters League. Thus. a long standing. intention of |the S. P. G, leaders was realized. | Years ago Severing boasted that he |would prohibit the said league, and Grzesinski now seized the oppor- tunity to get rid of it, On this oc- |the brutality which is characteristic | ” before and after the first of May. They furnished the Social Demo- cratic and bourgeois butchers with arguments for their justification of the arbitrary police measures, In jissue No, 21 of the publication “Gegen den Strom,” Paul Frolich announces that the C. P. G. and the Comintern have the intention of-pre- paring a fresh “putsch” for August 1st. This method is. not-new. Part of War Drive. But what are the problems facing the German bourgeoisie, the S. P. G. and the working class? We shall briefly enumerate them here. The complications at the Paris Repara- tions Conference furnish a good illus- tration. From this position the bour- geoisie sought to issue by means of. an offensive against the working |class and. by participation in a war against the Soviet Union, for which it is now preparing. Growing com- petition, the payment of debts, and armaments are all things that cost |much money. This can only be drawn from the marrow of the workers. ‘ For this operation the S. P, G.. is indispensable. Hilferding’s budget | therefore provides for new duties and taxes on mass consumption and economy in social expenditure, while Wissell’s draft of the workers’ protection laws envisages the ten- hour day. Unemployment relief is to be restricted and emergency relief abolished, Wissell’s apparatus of arbitration must avoid strikes and bind the working masses by long- termed contracts, It is up to the trade-union leaders to get the work- ers to work more, to work cheaper, and to work for two extra hours daily. Any workers rebelling ‘at uch a “march into Socialism” will be dismissed from the unions, really covered themselves with glory | This, too, the Social Democrats are | willing to do for the sake of retain- | ing their position of authority in the | government, Such are the prospects after the Social Democratic victory of May ist. The “Frankfurter Zeitung” is therefore right in its fear of the “social bogey.” The bourgeoisie knows that in such a situation the workers would not run away from the Communists, as the Brandlerites proclaimed at all street-corners, The raasses are urged towards the C. P. G. by their present position, There- ;|fore both the “German” and the Hugenberg press call for a prohibi- tion of the C. P. G. Severing, the “Dictator of the Coalition with Para- graph 48,” is willing to pay this ;price too for his seat in.the Ministry. S, D’s May Lose Posts. Nevertheless, most of the big S. P. G. bugs are bound to lose their well-paid positions in the govern- ment and the municipalities. When they have served their turn they can go. The sleek bourgeoisie has plenty of candidates in its own ranks for well-paid positions and more in- telligent people than the “comrades” that have risen to such positions of dignity. But even if the great majority of the professional hood- winkers of the working class are ousted by their bourgeois colleagues in the Coalition, the Social Demo- cratic Party will remain what it is, the corruptible strumpet of the bour- geoisie, Under circumstances such as these, the greatest tasks arise for the revo- lutionary workers. They must recog- nize the full complication of the posi- tion, so as to prepare themselves for the solution of the tasks before them; they must train the entire working masses for the inevitable fight and lead them to victory. Severing, Grzesinski, and Zér-| From the sanguinary May-Day of ; 1929 the same harvest will spring as | once from the massacre on the banks of the Lena in 1912: the victorious Communist revolution. | ice om | Supplement. | After my article had been pub-! lished in the German edition of the “Inprecorr” I read the article of Comrade R. L, Worrall (London) in |No. 26. of the English edition en- |titled “The Significance of the May |Day Events in Berlin.” The con-/ |tents of this article have caused me to write these supplementary words |to my own article. A person not sufficiently acquainted with German conditions might assume from Com- rade Worrall’s article that such a) revolutionary situation already exists in Germany that all that is neces- |sary is a certain pressure of the British and American workers upon} their respective governments in or-| der to produce a situation in which a successful armed insurrection of the proletariat might be carried out} |in Germany. In order to support his | contentions, Comrade Worrall des- cribes the difficulties of the German | bourgeoisie which make for the speedy development of an acute rev- jolutionary situation, and gives aj | “quotation” from Lenih, to document | |his argument. | By the way it must be pointed out! that in none of its documents has |the German Party spoken of any |so immediate acute revolutionary | situation. On the contrary, the Ger- ;man Party has pointed out again |and again that there is no situation |at present for an armed insurrection |and that the characteristic signs of such a situation are missing. What ithe German Party does say is that |there is a tendency making for the speedy arrival of a revolutionary situation, and this is correct. | And.now with regard to the Lenin |“quotation.”. Comrade Worrall “quotes” the famous passage from Lenin concerning the acute revolu- tionary situation and uses a shoe- horn to force the present situation in Germany into the limits of this quotation. Unfortunately Comrade Worrall does not quote Lenin, he censors him, for he presents Lenin’s opinion concerning the acute revolu- tionary situation as follows: 1. “The impossiblity of the ruling classes to preserve their domination without a change of form ... political crisis of the ruling class. 2. “The more than usual in- crease of the needs and misery of the exploited classes. 8. “The marked growth of the activity of the masses ... . inde- pendent. action.” What Lenin actually does write in his “Left Wing Communism” is to be read in Chapter 9 on “Left Wing Communism in England” as follows: “The fundamental law of rev- olution, confirmed in practice by all revolutions and in particular by the three Russian revolutions of the twentieth century, consists in the following: for revolution it is not sufficient that the exploited and enslaved masses realize the impossibility of living on in the old fashion’ and demand a change; for revolution it is necessary that the exploiters are unable to live and rule in the old fashion. Only when the ‘Understrata’ are unwil- ling to continue living in the old fashion, and the ‘Upperstrata’ are unable to continue living in the old fashion, can the revolution be victorious. The truth can be also expressed as follows: revolution is impossible without a general na- tional crisis (a crisis affecting both the exploiters and the ex- ploited). “In consequence the revolution requires, first of all, that the majority of the workers (or in any | case the majority of the conscious, | derstand? | over to working-class Russia | ‘Translated by A. S. Arthur and C. Ashleigh All Rights Reserved—International Publishers, N.Y. all Gleb Chumalov, Red Army Commissar, resurns to his town om i the Black Sea after the Civil Wars to find the great cement worke, where he had formerly worked, in ruins and the life of the town disorganized. He discovers a great change in his wife, Dasha, whom he has not seen for three years. wife, dependent on him, but has become a woman with a life of her own, a leader among the womén of the town together with Polia Mekhova, secretary of the nist Party. The town is attacked by a band of counter-revolutionaries and Gleb is in command of one of the defense detachments and the attack The town resumes its routine. - Gleb works hard, planning the reconstruction of the cement works, 8 NEAR by, five of the ship’s seamen were standing in a little group, is cepulsed. their pipes between their teeth. listened as though they understood. speaking. nodded to them. “Hullo, Englishmen! Come on!” The sailors looked about them. They walked nearer and saluted, their fingers to their caps. “Now, try and understand us, Brothers, not by words, but by my face. Look! I’m a Bolshevik’”—he “Those are Bolsheviks over there.” “And where are your Bolshev: The sailors shifted their pines. “Bolsheviks—! Hurr: “Have you heard? Isn’t that so, Englishmen? English? red hands and red hair. “Com-in-tern!” And after him the other sailors, like a chorus: “Com-in-tern! All right!” * LEB stamped on the deck, enraptured. “Ah, the rascals, they understand us, eh? to understand each other, without any trouble! went to the guts of them!” He grasped the sailor's hand and shook it heartily, laughing, The Cossack with the flag stepped forward. “Here, I know how to speak them some good stuff! Listen, you—and you! Join the Bolshe like we did. Hang the officers to jae sailors laughed and exchanged a few words with each other. One must drive it into them, through. Let them feel the pain which has been given us. Putting his hands on their shoulders, Gleb spoke to the seamen, sternly and directly. “You Englishmen—fools!—Comrades! are you English! was! to see it, Comrades, Englishmen. material, building material. vention, swine, scoundrels! you’re as coy as girls: ‘I’d like to—. capitalists won’t let me.’ speak of that. we have Lenin—. about Lenin in your country?” The sailors gesticulated now, Helmet in hand he waved to them to come nearer and Come over here and let’s have a little chat, ! Proletarians. . . . The workers smell the same in every land, What's your most important word, you Your best, most important word, that everyone can un- Important words, important deeds. to put the question, dear Comrades!” One of the sailors walked up close to Gleb. Taking his pipe from his mouth, he raised his hand above his head and said sternly and earnestly: * Look at that factory over there—how powerful it The mountains trembled with her power and almost burst! Now, there’s just a whisp of smoke. . . Coal is needed, machines, transport, And then you—you come with your inter- And when one asks you for something, And then, the Comintern, you hardly dare Although we’re beggars and are starving, all the same Yes, we have a Lenin, you Englishmen! By FEODOR GLADKOY, She is no longer the conventional Women’s Section of the Commu- They were blinking, calf-like, and Gleb looked at them while he was Were they being watched? pointed to himself with his helmet. He pointed towards the town, q That’s how you've got He had a red face, * You see it’s quite easy Just one word, and it to them, Comrades, Let me give . Join with us—and Send your officers to the devil, the mast, and we’ll make the ship * until it hurt, what we have gone What worthless scamps . It’s almost dead. It hurts one I really want to—. But the And what all talking together. Puffed out | Proletariat!” their cheeks, banged their fists upon their palms, “Lenin’s all right—. Lenin. « . . Lenin... . Gleb didn’t laugh at them; but the sweaty compact crowd did with all their might. “Aha, you Englishmen! out to the whole world: Comintern! ” Who can call us slaves? And we call Soviet Russia! English brothers! * $0 ae eheene came up, working his way through the crowd, and went straight up to the sailors. He began to speak with them in Eng- lish, and at once they became engrossed and serious. Gleb could hardly recognize Polia: she was so different, excited, full of energy, feverish; she couldn’t keep still and her eyes could not contain her joy. “All right, Comrades. I want to see your sailors! Lead me to them! I know that they’ve been shutting them away from the Bol- shevik infection. That doesn’t matter, we'll get hold of them. Let’s see them! Ask them about it, Shidky; go on, talk to them, that’s the thing to do!” The sailors wer2 grinning broadly and blinking eagerly. One of them, a lanky fellow, pressed his palm against his round cheek, The’ muscles of his face played like violin-strings. Polia, as- tonished, raised her eyebrows’ aad said roughly: “Blockhead!” A GIRL stood on the deck of the steamer, gazing at the town, from behind she looked quite young. lustrous. Serge seemed to remember having seen her in the crowd—or, rather, he had not seen her, but only her eyes. But by her eyes he recognized her. Fever burned in them, and tears that had never dried, Then she had disappeared; her eyes had been lost in the crowd. Un- consciously, he had been looking for her, for some time, through his sorrow and fatigue. When he again saw her on the deck, standing near the railing, he silently approached her and stood by her side, also looking out towards the town. In such a silence there are sometimes unforgettable moments of unspoken communion. (To Be Continued) THE GIRL ON THE STEAMER. Seen Her hair was black and thinking and politically active workers) have completely realized the necessity for a change and are prepared to risk death in order to bring about that change; secondly, that even the ruling classes experi- ence a governmental crisis which draws the most backward masses into the sphere of politics (a char- acteristic of every real revolution is the tenfold, even the hundred- fold increase of the representa- tives of the toiling and exploited masses, who up to then were apathetic, capable of taking part in the political struggle), weakens the government and facilitates its overthrow by the revolutionaries.” Here we see something fundamen- tally different from Comrade Wor- rall’s quotation from Lenin. If this quotation from Lenin, which char- acterizes the essence of a revolu- tionary situation in which the prole- tariat can carry out an armed in- surrection, is taken as a basis much more is demanded than is actually present in Germany at the moment. The German proletagiat is still on the way to such a situation, and many severe struggles (including defeats) will be necessary before it has learned to guarantee on its part the necessary conditions for the final struggle with the bourgeoisie. With regard to the situation of the German bourgeoisie, it must be said that its leading section feels itself still very secure, despite the diffi- culties of the reparations negotia- tions, With regard to Comrade Wor- rall’s conclusions: “But a political crisis is being. held off by means of the help afforded by the bourgeoisie of other imperialist nations, England and America are giving such sup- port to the German ruling class that the latter is able to suppress the workers under the old bour- geois democratic method of gov- ernment.” That is conditionally correct, but by no means to the degree repre- sented by Comrade Worrall and not in the sense that if this assistance were suddenly withdrawn owing to action on the part of the British and American workers, then the immedi- ate result would be the creation of an objective situation in Germany for an insurrection. It is clear of course that it is the duty of the proletariat of all countries to make their governments the greatest pos- sible difficulties in order to assist the revolution, but when the problem is presented as Comrade Worrall presents it, then this does not serve to clarify the situation, but t awaken illusions which can only re sult in disappointments. What mus the working masses say about Party leadership which is not abl in a situation such as the one de’ scribed by Comrade Worrall, speed up the revolutionary maturity of the situation in order to mak¢ the armed insurrection possible?,