The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 30, 1929, Page 4

uprisned by the Comp Four A : 1 N. ¥. ®Telept ks to the Da ally Publishing Co., Inc, @afly, § ant "169 at 26-28 DAIW w York, N. ¥ except Sunds Union * . dbs | THE LOVESTONEITES IN ACTION. The complete x nowhere 1 organiz ne Lovestoneite group is n those mass hed its influence. 1 naive enough to ex- ar against the Party 7@ comrades helping to build, gan ions they nd conscious role being played t d social demo- d disrupt the are e in the mass organiza- | role of the Lovestoneites tions have no delus about t | for these traitors to | | | | but are the working as the these or exposed themselves nis careerist t ele in rly pernicious on, where the influ- iron solidarity large d have won these nst the rent | x weeks in an militant program. 5 mselves with the become the bed-fellows of ght to use the League for nd were interested, there- and futile co they were attacking these ele- aplete is their rene- united front with Morris Nem- the petty- ay the And attempt to ¢ In this at th worst elements in th the petty t i the advance fore, in dive methods of stru gade dege these same eler ser, Anna Thomps bourgeois ca hard-pressed te with them is alli Failing in their inside, the renega more effect by organizing 2 that the leade would desre of the lanc nd destroy the League from the | erist allies have decided they could ’ game of demoralizing the tenants reby the landlords could be assured d be such as they, the landlords, leadership, the interests spread confusion and n: lem, the disruptionist all their league the Harlem Tenants 1 the six hundred and more members of rlem Tenants League, the name these of their organization! And these ist state to assist them in the steal 5 1 their intention to have the name incorporated so that the mi rking ¢ tenants who have all le of most labor unions and other working fusing to put their heads into the noose of regulation and control through the machinery of sed of the name which has become a synonym for militant struggle against the landlords. In this way, the disruptionists seek to smash the weapon and shield which the oppressed tenants of Harlem have forged, thro victorious struggles, against the landlords! agents of the League, elected to ste the militant, landlor tenants have renegades plan to call in the of the name—t have 4 used since t ‘lass organization: landlord and emp the state, may be many o spread confusion among the ten- s, in the name of the Harlem’ Tenants League, and ves “Members of the Executive Board” They e pe letters “Note New Address.” This in spite of the fact that the regular Harlem Tenants League is meeting every M ight at the same address as formerly—the Public Library, 103 West 135th Street. The fight in the H n Tenants League was wilfully precipitated by the renegades unde open leadership of Campbell, with the secret guidance of Anna Thompson, on the fake issue of the barring of Welsh at a ection Conference to which he presented creden- | tials as one of the delegates from the League. The conference in ques- tion accepted the credentials of the other delegates from the League, but on the question of Welsh there was a unanimous vote not to seat him. The delegates present, most of them non-Party delegates, voted on the basis of their knowledge of Wi as a disruptive force in, working class organizations. When the question was brought up in | the League it was clearly pointed out b¥ the president and by several speakers from the floor that while the League had a perfect right to | elect We! e, the Conference also had the right to bar him if i d his presence inimical to the successful carrying out of But the renegades dd not want explanations. They wanted | They had been holding caucuses with the petty-bourgeois ele- democratic and republican politicians, landlords’ s) trong enough to start a struggle for the leadershi Their petty bourgeois allies had long objected to the pr ant leadership. The first step of the rene- gades and their allies was to center an attack on the leadership; their { next step was an ef on and action to the Executive B In their effort to perpetuate tt secutive Board and deprive the In furtherance of ants, they have issued ¢ a fight! ments in the League. s, etc.—and considered th general membership « say in the matter, or of any word in the governance of the org: brought in the following resolu- | tion: | ague that requires delibera- , should first be referred to “That any problem confronting the L tion, political, organizational or otherwi the Executive Committee for action.” They sought to jam through this and several other similar reso- | lutions. They soon discovered, however, that the tenants of Harlem were not so dumb as they thought. And in the meantime, the Com- mittee on Reorganization of Committees, which had been appointed before the fight began, brought in its recommendations for the reorgan- ization of the Executive Committee. These recommendations were ac- cepted by overwhelming vote of the membership in spite of the hyster- ical abuse of the president of the League by Campbell, and the unprin- cipled attacks by Welsh and &hers. A motion to adopt the report of the Committee on Reorganization was carried by 41 to 3. Previous to this a motion by Welsh to take up the report of the old Executive Com- mittee as the first order of business was crushingly defeated, 51 to 2. Campbell then made a motion to add Welsh to the reorganized Execu- tive Committee. This motion was defeated by 43 to 14. These four- teen votes were the highest given the disruptionists throughout the fight. The vote directly after this of 43 to 3 to adopt unchanged the report on Reorganization of the Executive Committee showed a change of mind py some of the tenants in the- meantime, demonstrating that not all of the fourteen who had voted with the disruptionists in the previous motion were solidarized with them. The recommendations on the reorganization of the Housing Committee were next taken up and adopted by a stentorian YEA, with only two weak NOES audible thru- out the hall. This was too much for at least one of the petty bourgeois careerist allies of the renegades, and at this point C. B. Jenkins, a typi- eal self-seeking opportunist, lost his head and stalked out of the meet- ing after expressing his opinion that the tenants “were a bunch of gorillas and not worth bothering with.” This same Jenkins is now one of the leaders in the opposition league. The example of Jenkns was followed by the rest of his group a few weeks later. Evidently, Campbell, who refused to participate in ten- ants’ street meetings “because it would jeopardize her job” . _ "Welsh, whose activity in the League begun and ended with the attempt to disrupt the League from the inside; Nemser and Thompson, whose first appearance in the League synchronized with the offensive against the leadership; these, together with Battle, Hendrickson, Hen- derson and other elements who have always been opposed to a militant tenants’ struggle, evidently all of these agree with Jackson that work- ing class tenants who go in for militant struggle against the rent gougers are a bunch of gorillas and not worth bothering wjth. So much the better for these same tena! The Harlem Tenants League, the mlitant tenants’ organization which they tried in vain to wreck, will continue to wage the fight against rent oppression and will soon forget these disrupters. (Appropriately enough, the first meeting of the op- position league was held over “a theatre whose billboards announced as the feature of the night, the picture “Forgotten Faces.”) The tenants of Harlem will soon forget these disruptionists, but first they will sweep them out of their path as they will all allies and defenders of the landlords. The Negro and white workers becoming daily more and more radicalized under the pressure of capitalist rationalization (speed- up, longer hours, lower pay, higher rents, etc.), will recognize these renegades as enemies of the world working class movement, as enemies of working class emancipation. ‘The radicalized workers will in- t , THE “THIRD PERIOD” IN WALL STREE T. VY SUBSCRIPTION RATES: ae | By Mail (in New York only): §8.00 a year: % By Mail (outside of New York): $6.00 a year; $2.50 three months $2.00 three months six months: $3.50 six months; Bukharin’s Theoretical Conclusions and the Political Conclusions Drawn by Comintern (Continued from Yesterday.) According to Bukharin it seems that Lenin taught his Bolshevik Guard nothing but “caution” in relation to the peasantry, “caution” in relation to the kulaks, “caution” in relation to the tempo of inlus- | trialization. “The greatest caution,” Bukharin proclaims, “in those points of policy which deal with the relations between the workers’ state | and the peasantry.” “The greatest caution,” in Bukharin’s interpreta-. tion, is the infusion of kulaks into our co-operative system, the peaceful merging of the kulaks into socialism. “And the day will come when the Kulak’s grandson will be grateful’—for the “cautious” and delicate (Leninist, omrade Bukharin?) way we handled his ancestors. This is not Leninism. It is a substitution of Leninism by a new Communist Bernstein-ism. The Leninist conception of the “period of education” is interpreted in the style of the Liberal professors. The Whole period following the civil wars is represented as a period of peaceful educa- tional work. The Leni conception of the democratic reserves of the proletarian revolution is treated as the union of the working class with the whole of the peasantry. Certainly Lenin was not speaking of the kulaks. Bukharin would put a stop to the process of eliminating the capitalist elements in the Soviet village. After this it is not surprising to find that Bukharin completes his own “political testament” by a most enormous theoretical blunder, cal- culated, when worked out, to become the starting point for a new op- portunist platform. “Our chief guarantee of Socialist construction,” Bukharin declares, “lies in developing the most advantageous combina- tion of class forces, which would ensure us the possibility of further Socialist construction ... To develop the combination of the ‘proletarian revolution’ with the ‘peasant war’ in a new form, this is now ‘construc- tion.’” The peasant war, according to Marxgand gels as well as | Lenin, is the war of the whole peasantry, tH® agrarian revolution— + bourgeois-democratic in its content. Bukharin wants to take us far back, to a historical epoch long gone when at the present time, in | the epoch of collective farming and Soviet farming, in conditions of vigorous Socialist reconstruction of the Soviet village, he takes his point of departure from the “peasant war,” i.e., from the general peas- ant interests, as a further factor for the Socialist reorganization of the Soviet village. Bukharin, it is true, speaks of some “new,” “construc- tive” form of combining the “peasant war” with the proletaran revolu- tion. But this new statement of Bukharin’s only deepens the opportunist character of his whole formula. The union of the working class with the whole peasantry in a constructive’form is absolutely inacceptable. The acceptance of such a formulation would mean at the same time Finneran oenesinaesnkaedestenesdastsiieeea shaiehsidiacasinaataiaatieeaeetaeteaeneeeel Se 7 stinctively recognize the truth of the remarks of Comrade Manuilsky in his closing speech in the Tenth Plenum of the ECCI: , “He who will hinder the proletariat abroad from carrying out the task of the offensive against capitalism, is an enemy of the U.S. S. R., an enemy of the socialist oyder which is being built in our country. On the other hand, he who hinders the struggle against the capitalist ele- ments in the U. S. S. R. is an enemy to the proletarian revolution in other countries. International opportunism is,a double-faced Janus with one face turned towards socialism and revolution, hampering their progress in every way. One cannot conceive such a situation that the world proletariat should take up the offensive while the U. S. S. R. was upon its defense. Neither can one imagine the reverse, that the U. 8. &. R. should be marching forward without causing at the same time an increase in the militant activity of the proletariat throughout the world.” With the withdrawal of the disruptionists, the meetings of the League at the Public Library have proceeded with marked smoothness and efficiency. The tenants, for the first time in weeks, are now enabled to report on their individual troubles with the landlords who, as predicted in the League several months ago, are now in a new offensive of rent raising.. Tenants report that rents in houses where they or their friends live are being raised ten, twenty and thirty dollars at a jump. So far, the members of the League have been able to resist rent raises by following the advice of the leadership of the League to “pay no rent raises but resist every effort to raise your rent.” Through the cooperation of the International Labor Defense, the League is able to see that its members get legal advice without charge and that only nominal fees, within the reach of workers, are charged for cases where it is necessary to defend the tenants in the capitalist courts, The vicious system of landlordism is particularly hard upon the Negro tenants of Harlem and Brownsyille. Because of the capitalist policy of segregation the landlords are able to exploit these workers to the nth degree, exacting of them the most exorbitant and unreasonable rents, often two and three times in excess of the rentals paid by white workers for similar accommodations. The Communist Party must mobilize the white workers to fight shoulder to shoulder with their Negro fellow workers, against segregation, against rent extortion, against discrimination vf any kind. The Party must give its full sup- port to the struggle of these harassed, landlord-oppressed, boss-exploited | tenants. Every help should be given the Harlem Tenants League in | prosecution of its struggle against the landlords and their courts, in organizing house and block committees, and in building the Harlem Tenants League into a powerful instrument of struggle, e | t acceptance of the theory of peaceful conversion of the kulak to Social- ism. This new formulation of Bukharin’s, indeed, bears a suspicious resemblance to the “constructive” Socialism of the European reformists, who also use as their point of departure the theory of gradualness, of the general national interests, of the peaceful transformation of capi- talism into Socialism. It was because of this that the Tenth Plenum resolution stated that “in his opposition to the line of the C.P.S.U., Comrade Bukharin had | slipped into a liberal interpretation of NEP, leading, under the slogan | of liberating trade, to allowing the free development of the capitalist | elements in the country, to abstention from crushing the criminal spe- | culating kulak elements, to denying the necessity for individual tax- ation of the kulaks, and opposing the policy of the Party directed to intensifying the taxation of the capitalist elements of the country... But this means that Comrade Bukharin has slipped into the policy of class alliance with the capitalist elements, substituting for the policy of proletarian class war against the kulaks the policy of ‘transforma- al tion of the kulaks into Socialism.’” Up to this point Bukharin’s declarationg, only referred to the C.P.S.U. and Socialist construction. But in defending his opportunist | standpoint these opportunist errors inevitably blossomed out into an | international system: all the more so because, as we have seen, they | were present in embryonic form already at the Sixth Congress of ‘the | Comintern. It also followed because of the deep international signifi- cance of the problems of Socialist construction in the U.S.S.R. The | man who underestimates the growth of Socialist construction in the U.S.S.R., the man who cannot see the immense pride and enthusiasm shown by,the masses there, must inevitably underestimate the growth of revolutionary initiative among the working masses in capitalist coun- tries, and the beginning of a new revolutionary wave. The man who approaches the kulak with timidity and “caution,” and who attributes too much strength to the capitalist elements in the U.S.S.R., must in- evitably overestimate the stabilization of world capital The one follows the other. The one makes the other more precise. . It is not an accident that, on the eve of the Tenth Plenum, almost simultaneously here Bukharin came out with his “organized economic chaos” (or to put it in another way, organized capitalism), while there Serra came out with his full-blown criticism of the general line of the C.P.S.U., even up to the fateful question—in the style of Pontius Pilate—“What is a kulak?” Bukharin’s recent’ article about “organized economic chaos” exhib- ited also the development of a Right opportunist deviation in questions of the international workng ¢lass movement. If in his former articles Bukharin was undermining Lenin’s political testament, in this one we have beyond question an effort to undermine the system of the Com- munist International. The part that Lenin played in creating the theoretical foundations of the Communist International is well known. And, in this work of Lenin’s, the part played by such problems as im- ism and its contradictions is also well known. Lenin, as well as arin, saw the growth of capitalist concentration, trusts and mono- lies. Lenin’s classical work on Imperialism opens with a description «f,this very process. But Lenin’s powerful dialectics saw also at the onme time the other side of this process— that these capitalist mono- polies are the highest expression of the internal and external contra- dictions of the capitalist system. “It is just this fusion of its contradic- tory principles—competition and monopoly—that is the characteristic of imperialism,” Lenin wrote in 1917. After this, what is it but a revision of Leninism when Bukharin talks of the smoothing over of the internal contradictions of monopoly capitalism, of the overcoming of the anarchy of capitalist production and the market, of the planning and organizing capahjlity of trust capital? To base all perspectives of the proletarian revolution on the “immense sharpening of competi- tion between the capitalist countries” means for the practical work of the working élass movement to deprive ‘the Communist advance guard of all initiative, and the passivity of the working class int the face of both an intensifying economic struggle and an unprecedented sharpening of class contradictions between labor and capital. Lenin understood the imperialist epoch as the epoch of contradigtory processes. He fought mercilessly against the pedants who do not understand that revolution is a living process, against the mechanical, non-dialectic in- terpretation of the proletarian revolution as a single act. “The Social- is revolution,” he wrote, “is not a single act, not one fight on a single front, but a whole epoch of class confliets, a whole series of battles on all fronts.” This was Lenin’s answer years ago to Bukharin and those who then were of his mind. And this, on the basis of Lenin’s teaching, is the answer of the Communist International to Bukharin now. The source of* Bukharin’s present openly-opportunist errors is historically the same as in 1916, when in the fight against Lenin he cloaked his opportunist errors with “left” phraseology. It is his misunderstanding of the unequal development of imperialism, his misunderstanding, or more exactly, his anti-Leninist {nderstanding of the epoch of imperial- ism. Just as at that time the passivity of the colonial and oppressed peoples in the face of imperialism was concealed under the slogan of “pure” imperialism, so today the slogan of “pure” (planned, without internal contradictions) monopoly capitalism covers up the most danger- OF BREAD sion, from “Dke City of Bread” by Alexander ed and copyrighted by Doubleday—Doran, New York, TED FR RUSSIAN TE Reprinted, } Neweroff, pu (Continued.) ISHKA apprvoed of the hos It was painted and had many dov If they put Serioshka in there, he would get well. They would give him medicine, some kind of powder, and he would get well again very quickly. And Mishka would stop and get him when he came back from Tashkent. He would get all he wanted in Tashkent, and he would share everything with Serioshka, so that Serioshka should not envy him. Any one might get sick, it was not his fault. The stretcher with Serioshka halted at the foot.of the stairway. The stretcher bearers went away and for a long time no one came out. You could hear the crows in the tree tops. “This looks bad. .I hope nothing goes wrong.” Serioshka came to himself and began to cry. “Where are they taking me?” “This is a hospital. Don’t be afraid.” “And where will you be?” “Here with you.” Mishka sat down on the steps beside the stretcher and began to tell him the whole story. He had met a very kind woman who was sorry for them both. She had given him bread. “I will certainly make Seri- oshka well,” she had said, “that will do it.” He, Mishka, would not go on by himself, he would go over to the market place. There was a market here beyond the station, like the one in Buzuluk and you eould buy anything there you wanted. Only Serioshka must not be angry at him because of the fight they had had—you can’t go on traveling to- gether all the time without fighting about anything. Then he remembered the iron nut which he had won, “Did you think I took the nut for always? What do I want with some one else’s nut? I was only teasing you...” He pulled the nut out of his deep warm pocket and laid it in Serioshka’s, hand. “There, take good care of it.” - When the doors of the hospital opened and Serioshka went through them forever and ever, Mishka experienced an intolerable pain and bitter loneliness. He stood by a table at which a woman in a white uniform sat writing, and said wearily: “We are peasants from the village of Lopatino. Dodonov, he is Sergei Ivanitch.” “What is his surname?” Serioshka’s surname had completely slipped from his mind. It had just been on the tip of his tongue! He wanted to give Serioshka’s middle name instead, but the woman insisted on his real surname. “Well, just put him down under my name: Michael Dodonov of the Lopatiner district.” ‘Can you write?” “Of course!” “Sign here then.” Mishka sprawled over the table, thrusting out his lower lip with the effort. It was a long time since he had written anything, and his hand would not work. When he had finished signing his name he felt lost. He left the hospital and there on the steps lay the nut. “Ech, Serioshka forgot to take it with him!” He looked through the window—no one to be seen. He crept round to the other window—some one motioned him away. He prowled around the hospital like a homeless puppy, then came to a halt again on the steps. “How ean I get the nut to him?” Some one was carried out on a stretcher. That is Serioshka, he thought, but it was a woman, dead, and the feet of the woman were naked. The sorrow of death overwhelmed him. Hunger tortured him and grief for his comrade. “Why did he have to go and forget the nut?” ie Mee 14. es 'HE whole day long Mishka roamed about the market place among the merchants and peddlers, listening to how much was asked for a skirt, how much for a blouse, how much you must pay for bread if you wanted to buy it for money. He was about to pull his grandmother’s skirt from his sack when he heard the mujiks say: “The Kirghiz beyond Orenburg buy anything you want to sell them, and pay high prices too. That’s the place to sell.” Mishka thought: “T’ll have patience a little longer.” He tried begging, but the women here got angry right away. If you said: “Auntie!” to them, they wouldn’t even look at you. If you went on and said: “For the sake of Christ,” they would get ready to strike\ you. One of them tried to beat Mishka over the head. She must have seen him take the bread from the mujik, because she shrieked out all over the market place: “You're coming around here now, are you, you cursed little thief! I've seen for a long time how you keep sneaking around!” Mishka pulled his old cap down over his eyes, and escaped from the uproar. They’d take him to the Tcheka, and there he would have to stay for two weeks. They didn’t stand on ceremony with our kind... They’d ask for his passport—he hadn’t any. They’l ask for his ticket—he hadn’t any. Better take himself out of the way... It was not till evening that he remembered Serioshka ... as if some one had stabbed him right to the heart. “Why don’t you go to him? Didn’t you promise?” He wanted to run to him, but the talk of the mujiks troubled him. “They are getting the Tashkent train ready. It will leave at once, ....” Mishka’s brain was split in two halves. rush to Serioshka, the other half warned him: “Don’t go, you'll miss the train!” i But again the first half whispered in his ear: u “Aren’t you ashamed to desert your comrade in a strange place? You made the agreement yourself and now you don’t want to stick to it. Will it take you long to run to the hospital? Say good-bye to him for the last time and then go. It will be easier for him too. If he knows you've surely gone, he won't keep on waiting and waiting for you to come...” / The other half reassured him: i “The agreement doesn’t hold for this kind of accident. If you go, you won’t catch the train. You'll have to wait around here a whole day and night, and in that time you could go a hundred versts. You're going because you must... . You're not leaving him on purpose .. © For a long time Mishka was tortured by doubts... He went to the station. First he cast a glance toward the hospital, then toward the railroad cars. Were they beginning to move? The cars stood motionless. (To Be Continued.) ———>>——>—*<xK<*—iaa~—==—~—~~~>&>[———————————————— eee ous opportunist passivity at a period of developing crisis within cap- italist stabilization. On whose scales does Bukharin put his new theore- tical goods, if not on those of the Right renegades, the ultra-Left pessi- mists and the social-democratic theoreticians of super-imperialism? “A I am Michael One half told him to ® I ‘theory’ of this kind, which serves as an ideological basis for all Right ° elements in the Comintern, is refuted by the whole development of cap- italigm, and is in essence a capitulation to reformist ideology” (Tenth Plenum resolution on Bukharin). ; Thus the position underwent a fundamental change when Bukharin passed on from particular “corrections” to the creation. of a theoretical basis for the whole of international opportunism, from particular ma- neuvers to an attack on the line of the C.P.S.U. and’ the Comintern, from particular deviations from the Leninist line to the open revision -of Lenin’s political testament. Bukharin has rendered outstanding ser- vice to the C.P.S.U. and to the Comintern. But, remembering Lenin’s testament, the Communist International will mercilessly fight all and every kind of opportunist deviations which threaten to weaken the Com- munist advance guard. In the conditions of the “third pexiod,” this is the most important pre-condition for the successful ‘sshd of the coming revolutionary battles. If in order to take the bourgeoisie by the throat our attack must pass over the body of social-democracy, a successful fight against social-democracy requires a decisive struggle against devi- ations from the Comintern line, a merciless exposure of every manifes- tation of opportunism within the ranks of the Communist advance guard, This is why the Tenth Plenum of the E.C.C.I. was compelled to draw its own Bolshevik political conclusions from these theoretical conclusions arrived at by Comrade Bukharin, (THE END.)