The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 13, 1929, Page 4

———_ of the U.S, A. Lsovestone’s Pacific ‘Hopes’ Glimmering By A. JAKIRA. The Pacific Coast is becoming of more and more importance to the revolutionary labor movement of this country in view of the present period of feverish preparations for a new imperialist war, in which the Orient and South America will play a most important role. The Pa- cifie Coast is the center of the lumber and oil industries, both of great- est importance in the present preparations for the imperialist war. Many new industries are springing up on the Western Coast from day to day. The results of rationalization of the industries, wage cuts, speed- ups and unemployment, are felt here at least just as much as in any other part of the country. In this situation the Communist Party has an important role to perform both in the California and Seattle Dis- tricts. Our Party, however, while the only revolutionary workin organization on the coast fighting for the interests of the workers, ha failed up to the present time to play the role that it must play and failed to fully utilize the favorable situation existing in that region. This was due to many errors made in our work in the past and to a wrong orientation on our part. These errors were sharply brought to light prior and immediately after the Sixth National Convention of our Party.. Due to the factional situation that existed in the Party and the factional approach to the question the errors, however, were not and could not be corrected. For example, it was pointed out, prior to our Sixth Convention, that the social composition of the Party in Los Angeles was far from satisfactory, that the Los Angeles organization had no contact with the various industries existing in that section (Oil, Marine Transport, Rubber, Canning, etc., etc.), that we had no contacts with the Mexi- can or Negro workers who play a most important part there. These errors were pointed out and severely criticized, but we failed to correct them. In San Francisco we had practically no contact with the Marine Transport Industry, no shop nuclei, whatsoever, This was pointed out, but no steps were taken to correct these as well as the numerous other shortcomings which were justly criticized sharply during the precon- vention period. In Seattle, likewise, we had very little contact with the main and most important industry—the Marine Transport Industry—no contacts | with the Oriental workers, no shop nuclei. These shortcomings were even not criticized by the Party and surely no steps were taken to correct them. In California the factional situation reached its climax shortly after the Party National Convention and an open split took place. Some comrades, led by Manus and Glikson, have developed an anti- Communist theory—which is now being defended by Lovestone, Gitlow and Wolfe—that they can be better Communists outside of the Com- munist Party and the Comintern. They have shown, as the Love- stonites are doing at present, lack of faith in the Comintern and the Communist Party as the revolutionary leader of the working class. In Seattle, likewise, things did not run smoothly since the Party Convention. Sorenson, the district organizer, apparently influenced by the rotten anti-Comintern campaign which was carried on at the Party Convention, lost faith in the Communist Party and the Comintern and proceeded to break up and liquidate the Party. He shortly found him- self isolated and repudiated by the vast majority of the proletarian membership. Under these conditions, it surely was not an accident that it was precisely in the California District where the Comintern Address was misunderstood and misinterpreted and that as late as in the month of August we found the two old groups existing as solid groups as in the good old preconvention days, as though nothing had happened since then. The minority comrades claimed to be for the Comintern Ad- dress but failed to see that one of the main instructions of the Address was the liquidation of the old groups, the abolition of factionalism, and the application of severe self criticism. The comrades of the former majority claimed to be fighting against Manus and Glickson because of their anti-Party, anti-Comintern stand. But these same comrades found it permissible to line up with Lovestone, who was following the same path as Manus and Glickson, who was openly fighting the Com- intern and the Communist Party of the United States. These com- rades have failed to realize that Lovestone was leading them into a ditch of opportunism and counter-revolution. Likewise, it was not an accident that Sorenson first secretly, then openly, lined up with the Lovestone group and succeeded at one meet- ‘ing of the District Bureau to get a majority for the Lovestone so-called appeal to the Comjntern. This is the same Sorenson who refused to call a meeting of the Bureau when requested to do so by the majority of the secretariat on the grounds that “the Party Constitution pro- vides for but one Bureau meeting a month.” It is no accident that a young comrade, a member of the District Bureau of the Young Com- munist League of Seattle District and a follower of Sorenson makes a statement against the Comintern Address which begins with this in- teresting sentence, “I am for the Comintern Address, but am opposed to its decision on the American question.” The sharpening of the class struggle throughout the country, in- cluding the Western Coast, the attack of China on the Soviet Union, the open anti-Communist nature of the Lovestone group and the assistance given the Western Coast by the Central Committee opened the eyes of the comrades in the two districts. In California the old split was liqui- dated, the leading committees strengthened, a new policy for future work adopted—all important steps in the direction of proletarianization and Bolshevization of the Party in this district. Both of the former groups were definitely broken up. The Lovye- stone anti-Comintern group was repudiated by the entire membership, with the exception of a few isolated cases here and there. California district is now on the road of recovery and promises to grow and de- velop into a‘real. mass Communist Party. In Seattle District, also, Sorenson and his sole supporter in the Party, was repudiated in such a decisive manner that he dared not show up at the membership meet- ing where the writer of these lines was reporting for the Central Com- mittee and where he, together with his entire Lovestone group, could not muster a single vote. The district bureau of the Party which was strengthened by the addition of several new proletarian elements and a Negro comrade is proceeding with its task of building and strengthen- ing the Party, especially among the lumber and marine transport work- ers and is trying to make up for the damage done by Sorenson since his return from the Party Convention. The Party onthe Western Coast has done well in smashing the old factional situation and laying the foundation for real Communist work. The membership and the leading committees must continue this “work and build the Party in line with the Comintern Address. The first task in California is to wipe out all remnants of factionalism which still may be hidden here and there. In Los Angeles the Party must, thru intensified Communist work, clear its ranks of the non- ~ proletarian. elements who still compose a too high percentage of the organization, it must. instead proceed with an intensive organization campaign to recruit new members from the main industries—rubber, oil, marine transport, canning, etc. All along the coast special atten- tion must be paid to the formation of shop nuclei in the main shops. The Party must intensify its work for the organization of the unor- &"ganized,-especially the lumber workers, the auto workers, the marine transport workers. Attention must be paid to the Mexican, Oriental and Negro workers who compose a large percentage of the exploited workers all along the Western Coast. More discipline, more education in order to raise the ideological level of our members, The struggle against the Right danger must be intensified, but it must be done in an absolute non-factional manner. ao) There are yet many problems to be solved in the two districts on .the Western Coast. These will be solved-much easier now with the factional situation crushed and with the Communist forces working as a united body. With the cooperation of the Central Executive Committee si California and Seattle Districts will soon play the role in the labor » movement that a Communist Party really must play. Denounces Provocative Acts of Lovestone Gang 5 Unit No. 2, Section 4, District 2, unanimously adopted a resolu- tion at its regular meeting Tuesday denouncing ‘the political line of the Lovestone right wingers, branded them as having placed them. selves at the service of the bourgeoisie and social reformists and havin; acted as provocateurs in raiding the national offifce and stealing im portant political documents. Pledging its full support to the Centra! Executive Committee and the Distnjct Executive Committee for their ee against pel Suby Ne se rats ie ate ro ge unanimously jahama, an, Will Herberg, Dr. Eugen and Qr, Wm. Burtan from the ranks of the Party, UT DATLY WORKER, NEW YORK , FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1929 ¥ ——e THE SHERLOCK HOLMES OF GASTONIA! By Jacob Burck County Solicitor Carpenter (after a hard day’s lynchin g): “Now We'll Investigate!” the Communist International Report of Com rade Kuusinen T THE TENTH PLENUM OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE COMINTERN The Situation of China. Resting on its economic power, the United States concentrates in China first and foremost on the conquest of important economic posi- tions, on the financial and diplomatic subjugation of the central gov- ernment, the hope to compensate itself in this manner for the absence of a territorial sphere of influence,such as Great Britain and Japan possess in China, in order to adopt subsequently coercive methods. Fart of the Chinese bourgeoisie harbor the illusion that it will suc- ceed—by making use of the rivalry of the various imperialist powers, and especially now through the support of the United States—in achiev- ing considerable successes with regard to the independent development of China, But in reality, the Chinese bourgeoisie cannot get anything but “rights” which e at the given moment the purpose of the im- perialist policy of this or that big power. For instance, what does the formal customs autonomy mean? You will remember how the Trot- skyists exaggerated the importance of this question, making it almost appear as the decisive question of the Chinese Revolution. Well, the Nanking Government has now Customs autonomy, but the existing Custom tariff is nothing but a financial tariff which will increase a little the revenue of the government, but is not at all conducive to the development of the productive forces of the country. Certainly, a cer- tain development of national capitalism is possible and probable in the near future in China, although accompanied at times by great. difficul- ties. But the tendency connected with this, to develop the productive forces on independent national lines, is bound to meet always with the tendency of colonial subjugation on the part of world imperialism; and in these conflicts the Chinese national bourgeoisie is sure to betray time after time the interests of national independence. This capitulation policy of the Chinese bourgeosie is, on the one hand, connected with the association of its direct profiteering interests | with the capital of the various groups of imperialist capitalists, and, | on the other hand, with the enormous accentuation of class differences is - gio which took place already during the last revival of the workers’ and peasants’ movement, during the revolutionary events of 1927, which caused the Chinese bourgeoisie to go over into the counter-revolutionary camp. Moreover, the internal struggle of the various militarist cliques behind whose back the various imperialist governments aré carrying on their machinations, has demonstrated how impossible for the Kuo- mintang government is the task of establishing the real unification of China, All the fundamental tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolu- tion in China are closely connected with the agrarian revolution and the destruction of the relics of feudalism. But this biggest of all the Chinese problems cannot be solved by the bourgeoisie. One can see even by the superficial press news that the Chinese village is an ocean which, once disturbed, can never be calm again; guerilla war goes on almost uniterruptedly in some place or other. The maturing of pre- conditions for another revival of the revolutionary workers’ and peas- ants’ movement in China proceeds on the basis of an accentuatign of the agrarian crisis. All talk about the prospect of a quiet, “Kemalist” development in China is mere twaddle. Not a diminution, but an ac- eentuation of the chief existing differences goes on in China. This will lead inevitably to another general revolutionary crisis which will be of a wider and deeper character than ever before, The Growth of the Indian Revolution. An ever growing international importance attaches lately to the growing revolutionary movement in India, at the head of which is not the bourgeois opposition, but already the proletariat. Last year’s mighty wave of economic strikes has developed this year in Bombay into a huge political strike movement. This was the revolutionary an- swer of the Bombay workers, firstly, to the general provocation of the British authorities (incitement of Moslem workersagainst Hindus), secondly, to the shooting down of strikers and the attack of the govern- ment on the leaders of the so-called workers’ and peasants’ parties. The characteristic attitude of the Indian nationalist-reformists (Swarajists and others) finds expression not only in defense of employers’ interests and their ruthless exploitation of the workers, but also in their treach- erous capitulation policy practiced already adong time by them in the national movement, and lately, in making common cause with the noto- | | plete independence for India at the last National Congress. At a time when in Egypt the “sovereignty” granted by Great Britain is demon- strated as British coercive regime pure and simple through the dissolu- tion of parliament, the politicians of the Indian national bourgeoisie are begging of Great Britann a problematic constitution within the frame- work of “dominion autonomy” which cannot be worth anything as long as British authorities and troops remain in India. The real national-liberation movement of India was represented not by the last bourgeois-national congress but by the proletarian mass demonstration against this national congress. Apart from whether in the near future the hope of the Indian national bourgeoisie for fevor and support on the part of American imperialism will strengthen a little its wobbling (in principle “non-violent”) opposition to the British regime or not,—the mass movement in India against the British colonial rule will certainly grow in regard to size and fighting spirit. The growth of this movement depends on the growing contradiction between the forces of the independent economic development of India and the mono- poly of the British finance capital. Closely connected with this contra- diction are the crises which have arisen lately in various spheres of the native industry. In face of the invitable development—though a very difficult, slow and uneven development—of the industrial productive forces of India (what Purcel so dreads), British imperialism, in its ef- forts to maintain its monopolist .position, cannot pursue any other colonial policy than that of impending and retarding the industrializa- tion of India and increased pressure against its independent develop- ment. This accentuates above all the agrarian crisis which constitutes in India the basis for the maturing of a general revolutionary crisis. The collapse of the backward system of agriculture, which is inseparable from the domination of feudal relics in agrarian relations, has been assuming in the last years the form of a chronic agrarian crisis which makes India dependent on the import of foreign foodstuffs and is lead- ing to famine conditions among the millions of peasants exploited by imperialism, big landlords and usurers. The enormous masses of paup- erized peasants, driven to despair, are at last showing signs of political awakening, are rallying around the struggling proletariat and are get- ting ready for revolutionary struggle against their oppressors, against the feudal and semi-feudal landlords, against usurers and imperialist authorities. Against this standpoint, Comrade Roy suddenly raised his voice lately—I do not know if I am still to call him comrade (interjections: He is no longer our comrade!)—considering that he contributes to the press of the Brandlerite renegades. He is against us because we refused to have anything to do with a bloc policy with the nation! bourgeoisie. He would like to keep up an alliance between the labor movement and the national-reformist bourgeois parties of India. He cannot forgive us that we do not want to have an alliance with the “Inedependence Party” (his new name for the Swarajists) after these gentlemen had voted at the last National Congress against the slogan of independence. Roy praises the Swarajists as fighters against the anti-Communist law, but.their merit is much more modest: they have caused in the legis- Jative assembly the postponment of a law which concerns only the deportation of foreign Communists. Quite apart from this law, the Communist movement in India is outlawed, exposed to brutal govern- ment persecution, which Roy does not mention. And Have not the same Swarajists helped the government lately in the legislative assembly to pass the anti-trade union+law? With these Swarajists, who cannot make up their mind if boycott is better than acceptance of high gov- ernment posts from the British government, we are to enter into alliance. We say, no, thank you. Roy also accuses us that, because of our radicalism, certain leaders of the petty bourgeois intelligentsia in the “Independence League” have dissociated themsevles from the revolutionary mass movement and have effectd a rapproachmnt with bourgeois capitulators. But he himself points out that in spite of this the petty bourgeois masses have remained revolutionary. Well, if we had really achieved what Roy asserts, namely, that the wobbling leaders of the petty bourgeoisie have gone into the camp of the big bourgeoisie while the masses have remained loyal to the revolution and are march- ing with us, this would not be such a bad result after all. We will shoulder this accusation in good conscience. But what advocates, chontirigtant x cate ieanyrnte be ars “ f he The International Situation and Tasks of | Reprinted, by permission, trom “I Saw It Myself” by Henri Inc, New | published and copyrighted by E. P, Dutton & Co, SYNOPSIS Five politicals who have escaped from Rumanian jails meet near | the Turkish frontier while en route to Soviet Russia. They recall the { | tortures which the white terror has visited upon them—the cage, the , | gherla, disease, i } . . . THE WORST TORTURE OF ALL. “OT the idea? See how they get round the law abolishing the ' death penalty! Lice? Microbe carriers? What do you expect | them to do about it? So, all of a sudden, you find you’re thick with ' | them; your skin’s like a newspaper sheet with the printed letters all ' | running about. “There was one-eyed Simeon; for three weeks he lay alongside of us unconscious. He tossed about weirdly, and raved from dawn till evening and from night till dawn. 4 “*Pooh!’ said the doctor. ‘Stomach convlusions; a trifle, a trifle.” “And they gave him camomile and purgative mixture, “But we—there were twenty-five of us prisoners shut up in the same cell with him—we knew well enough what it was, thanks to the hours and: hours we spent watching this bundle of rage kept tossing and groaning by the last of his clockworks inside, and lying on a mat- tress like a dung heap—for you can bet they never changed his clothes, still more that they never carried him to the pan. The stench that hung around him was so thick that you felt you were touching it with your hands. “A week after that someone took on himself to say to the chief | warder: ‘What about giving Simeon a bath?’ “The chief warder’s face went as red as a voleano. “A bath!’ yelled back his lordship. ‘He’s come through five years without baths, And there are others in this prison who've got on fine without one bath in seven years!’ he bawled. ‘And, anyway, what. business is that of yours?’ * * . “YOU see the odds we were up against: dressed in rags left to us by prisoners gone underground, our only food cold polenta, tepid soup made witherotten beans, and a little hot water called tea, never washed, no sick attendant, a doctor who didn’t want to be a doctor, bitten by poisonous vermin, tumbling over one anather—and the game was how to escape this deadly infection. “Sometimes we hoped: dreams as wild as that come to men some- | times! a “But mostly we were afraid. Every day our teeth chattered | louder; we felt the death-hold in our stomachs, and the smell of Sim- eon’s couch hung about us like Death itself. “One night Simeon died. “On the next day, they make us take off our clothes to hang them in the steam from a boiler. What could this whiff of steam do when it would have taken fire and floods to clean out that one prison cell! “And now the warders and entire prison staff stopped visiting us. | They kept clear—vamoosed! The work was done by soldiers, who are good for any job, as you know. “Bu tit was we prisoners who took Simeon out of his bed. They- made us drunk—a bright idea; we floured him in lime, then buried him. “And then, that very same day, this was what happened: one after another, Vasili, robber; Fedor, pickpocket, and Wasja, politica'— fell. ill. “Nobody troubled about them. Our masters, as I’ve said, were in- visible now. They sat tight and waited, at the far end of their web— the prison spiders. “The three men struck down grew rapidly worse. And now..in the cell, there was delirium, threefold; they began calling out... From the mouth of each one came some vital scrap of this earthly story. Wasja, who had been sentenced because ah official wanted to steal his ficld from him and he resisted (they call that politics, and perhaps they’re not so very far wrong) yelled at the top of his voice: ‘A man’s rights are his rights!’ Vasili thought he was surrounded by. :gen- darmes and struggled, shouting alond and calling on the.robber god to lend him a hand. AS for Fedor the pickpocket, he volleyed down curses on the head of the police commissioner with whom he thought he was sharing out spoils (as was his wont, and after the manner of many of his kind in Rumania) and by whom he had been: swindled of his. fair share. (It was the division of the booty, not the taking of the booty, which had landed him in prison.) “Then their cries quietened down, as well they might; for at the end of the sixth day, all three were in lime, and three white lumps were laid in the earth. “And the rest’ of us waited and waited, eating our heads off with fear, for the sentence to be pronounced inside us. i “At that time there were sixteen other typhus cases in various cells at Galata. Spiru told me this and he only talks of what he’s seen or what he knows for sure. To be Continued) « intelligentsia, but these masses can be drawn into the anti-imperialist struggle only to the extent that they are freed from the influence of the national bourgeoisie, the Swarajists, etc. This is the only way of promoting their revolutionary development. The weak points of our movement in India are not those which Roy gives. Our greatest weakness there is the fact that we are not yet firmly enough established as a Communist Party. A good mi Indian Communists have worked in the ranks off the “Workers’ and Peasants’ Parties.” We have advised them to endeavor to induce these parties to reorganize themselves, to assume another organizational form, in keeping with the principles of Leninism. But not the two-class char-- acter of these parties was the worst thing, much worse was the fact that hardly any practical revolutionary work has been done yet among the peasantry. The objective situation in India is rapidly. becoming more acute, There are unmistakable signs of the maturing of a rev- olutionary situation. For instance, we can see almost daily from the Bombay press news: spontaneous development of a mighty political mass movement; gigantic demonstrations and strikes owing to the ar- growing revolutionary situation. A symptom of this is also the attitude of our own Indian comrades. They are this year not the same by far what they were last year. What enormous vacillations and errors we witnessed last year among Indian Communists, and how different is their attitude now! We can see an enormous difference, and this growth is also a sign of the times. Of course, we witness the greatest ferment in Bombay, the movements in other places cannot be compared with it. But this does not mean that Bombay is an exception; it only means that the Bombay workers are marching at the head of the Indian rev-. olutionary movement. Alreddy the railwaymen’s strike last year in- dicated the spreading of»semi-revolutionary movements. Events since then have only confirmed the correctness of our prognosis at the Sixth World Congress: the maturing of a big revolutionary crisis in India. The recently arrested leaders of the Indian Workers’ and Peasants’. Parties and of the Bombay cotton operatives on strike who are now in the dock in Meerut are an jmportant group of the best representatives: of the Indian proletariat and peasantry. Their courageous behavior at this trial shows that they are the representatives of a great: revolu- tionary mass movement by which they are supported outside prison. The next few years will probably show that everyone of these defen. dants represents not only thousands and tens of thousands but hunde:: reds of thousands and perhaps even millions of revolutionaries... | pro= pose to the Plenum to send fraternal greetings to the accused in. the. Meerut trial in India, bet. Se (This proposal was enthusiastically welcomed.) ie fe, " The strategy of the class policy of the ruling sbou jie has nae turally-always aimed at an economic and political stabilization and con- } solidation of its strong positions. But the new thing in the present. ; period is—that owing to the external and internal weakening of the’ capitalist regime, the former methods-of stabilization are no, Jonger ef- fective and must be replaced by new.-methods, In the A policy, of the bourgeoisie this takes at present the’form (1) oe iar of- fensive against the standards of living of the working’ ¢lass and (2) ° of an ever growing fascisation of the bourgeois class rule. I have al- ready spoken in the first part of my report on the growing pressure on the working class for the purpose of worsening its economic position; this includes not only intensification of labor and wage reductions, but partly also lengthening of the working day, worsening of social 1 tion, higher taxes, rising prices in regard to fc rest of the leaders of the movement, all of them signs of a rapidly® | f