The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 12, 1929, Page 4

heu by New the Cor hing Co. leph the Daily Worker York ¢ Page Four unist Pa By Mail Gin Ny By Mail (outsid@ot New York): y of the U. SUBSCRIPTION RATES York only): $8. $2.50 three months 34.50 six) months: $2.00 three months $3.50 six months; 00 a year: $6.00 a year; Central Orean of the Com: ‘Religion, Marxism an ue Second International In printing the following article for American readers, the Daily Worker calls attention to the outstanding spokesman of the American social democracy, the Reverend Norman Thomas, endorsed by many other “reyerends” in the recent New York election. With the growth of fascist tendencies in America, as in other lands, reaction in the form of superstition also becomes more active. We have only to recall the appeal to darkness of Prosecutor Carpenter at Gastonia, rolling on the floor and screeching prayers that the workers at the bar be buried alive in prison; we have only to recall the role of the thurch against the workers by citing the expulsion from the church of a hundred Marion, North Carolina, strikers in an effort by this advantage taken of their lack of scientific enlightenment to use the influence of the church to break the strike. In New-York, the Cath- olic rector of St. Patrickss cathedral only Saturday urged support of the Inter-Faith Council of Jews, Protestants and Catholics “to pro- vide a religious training for every child in the city.” It is necessary that all workers be aware of the need to struggle against reaction of superstition, which enlightened workers often forget until confronted in some crucial moment, when it rises to startle one, like a dinosaur encountered on Fifth Avenue.—Editor. * . (“La Vie Socialiste,” April—May) Inthe last few months an extremely interesting controversy has has been conducted in the columns of the Vie Socialiste, the organ of | the Socialist Party of France, on the question of congregations and of the relations between the party, religion and the church, that, is, he: tween socialism and religion. It is not by chance that the socialism of the Second International was forced to revise its program on this question, In Germany and Austria, not to speak of Italy and Poland, clericalism, the church and religion, has entered upon a militant phase, a “religious renaissance” is in progress, strongly supported by the entire bourgeoisie and by every kind of intellectual, for the intellectuals have long forgotten their old “atheism” or religious indifferentism and have stretched out a saving hand to “consoling” religion. Even France, the land of Vol- taire, the land with such old traditions of bourgeois “free thought,” of the separation of church and state, is now settling down to help religion, making concessions to the papacy and preparing itself ideologically for the fight against the proletariat. How far this religious ren: has spread among intellectual circles, among specialists, technicians, engneers, chemists, etc., is shown by the interesting statistics published in La Vie Socialiste. They deal with the so-called “pascal mass,” the Easter masses organized by the students at the various higher educa- tional institutions. The figures refer to such important and influential educational institutions as the Ecole Polytechnique, the Ecole Centrale, Polytechnique, Mines de Paris, Ponts et Chausees, and all the more im- portant provincial schools. The flower of the French intelligentsia study at these schools, where th ientific brain of bourgeois France is trained, and it is from these circles that the most solid and capable scientific minds, as well as the core of intellectual free thought, arise. The Ecole Polytechnique instituted the mass for the first time in 1913, and only 128 students attended. while the invitation to the mass was signed by 2,588. At the Ecole Centrale, 600 engineers attended in 1920 and more “than a thousand in 1928. The invitations bore 2,293 signatures, and the same tendency is true of all other important educational institutions in France. Taken as a whole, more than 12,000 men of science officially acknowledge Catholicism. It should not be forgotten that these are the very people who will occupy important positions in industry and come into contact with the working class movement, and that they penetrate very deeply into the central schools and educational institutions as teachers and professors. The Union of Catholic Engineers, which in 1920 had a membership of 1,200, has now 5,600 men in its ranks. These figures speak eloquently. Henry of Navarre, when he went over to Cath- olicism in order to get control of Paris, is reported to have said “Paris vault la Messe”—that is, it was worth paying the price of the mass— for Paris. Today the flower of the French intelligentsia, which leads industry and science, might be regarded as saying, “The struggle against the proletariat is worth the mass,’ that is, it pays to go to mass if that. will supply them with new weapons in the fight against the proletariat. As opposed to this, and to the government offensive in Parliament concerning the relations with Rome, to the revision of legislation against the congregations and to the advance of the Catholic reaction in the schools and universities, the tasks of the proletarian revolutionary party are clearly and sharply marked out. These are the conduct of a bitter struggle against religion and the church, propaganda to explain the principles of Marxism in the sphere of religion, the relations between religion and state, religion and socialism, religion and parties, and piti- less struggle against any infringement of the separation of church and state . To carry out these tasks an intense struggle must be waged against the slightest attempt on the part of the churches to conduct educational work in the schools, and in favor of obligatory uniform secular schools, those private schools which are controlled by religious bodies to be abolished. These are the most elementary, the most well known demands and axioms. Only very faint traces of this line of thought can be found in the columns of La Vie Socialiste. One thing, however, must be conceded to the French; they have an advantage over the Austro-Marxists and the German social-democrats in that they are less tedious, far less pedantic and long-winded; they do not come for- ward with the pomposity of an Otto Bauer or a Max Adler, they do not swear every moment by Marx and Marxism, as Bauer does in his pamphlet on religion and social democracy. The Frenchman Kahn expressed the whole “great scientific ac- complishment” in one brief and polished sentence: “Religion is an act of belief in justice after death; Socialism is an act of belief in justice possible on the earth. This is the contradiction between religion and socialism, and we have no right to penetrate into the conscience of those | who solve this contradiction in one way or the other.” This is just the same as Otto Bauer’s lengthy and tedious reitera- tions: Socialism is concerned with life here and now, religion with life hereafter, and consequently socialism and the party have nothing what- ever to do with religion. Marxism simply leaves the hereafter to re- ligion, and that’s all there is to it. Kahn knows nothing of Marx and does not appeal to Marx, but Bauer goes so far as to wish to prove that it is in accord with the basic principles of Marxism to leave the subject of the hereafter of humanity to the particular form of religion. We wish to say quite frankly that we greatly prefer the Frenchman Kahn who, without studying much and without “Marxism,” reached the same conclusions as Bauer, the “learned Marxist.” Another French Marxist, Deixoune, expresses himself on this sub- ject with equal polish. He has discovered that the basic principles of Marxism consists in the ideal it puts forward: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” Whoever says that, Deixoune maintains, accepts an ideal which “makes the christian more christian and the atheist more atheistic, when they find themselves in one and the same party, the party which recognizes as its motto, ‘Proletarians of all countries, unite!’” As far as he is concerned, the principle of secular schools answers everything in the question of religion. For, says he, this gives us a weapon against the reaction expressed by both the Jacobins (Radi- cals, (Communists) and the clericals; both these tendencies have the same results, for they both occupy the attention of the proletariat with religious disputes and, thereby serving the interests of capitalist op- pression, mislead the workers from the path of class struggle. More pearls from Bauer’s treasure-chest. If Communists agitate for struggle against the church, against congregations and religion, this means that they are renouncing the class struggle. As though the struggle against religion, against the clerical danger, were not a pare of the class strug- gig! What-a wonderful picture! ! The “Socialists” of France, the boot- lif&ers of Poincare, led by Paul Boncour of the League of Nations, playing the part of acknowledged saviors of the purity of the class struggle! ‘It is quite natural for these class fighters to welcome representa- tives of all religious beliefs with open arms. The result is rather amusing, for here are Catholics and Protestants of every shade and dye, all members of one party, and each one praising his own little pet concern. One fears the Catholics because they are so numerous and 80 strongly organized, but has no objection to the Protestant and Jewish members of the party. Another is deeply concerned with exposing the differences between clericalism and christianity. If he renounces cleri- calism, then his advocacy of christianity, of “true religion,” becomes more vigorous. He even makes the astonishing discovery, which he feels that he must communicate to the “Marxist” Bauer, that “We have te consider religion not as a social, but as a biological factor; its fruits alone are of a social nature.” Amazing discovery! Religion is a biological, not a social factor. logy has gained little from it, and as for an appreciation of the biological value of this discovery—we leave that to the biologists. Perceau, the only man who went so far as to maintain the incon- sistency of socialism and religion, although in a wholly un-Marxist, fashion, was attacked by all other religious socialists. Caucalon, for apologises for Perceau, iihia In 1928 there were 1,100 present, | i Green of the AFL: “There Are Great Opportunities for Us In the South’— JUDAS: By F. Ellis KES Ss ES Jay Lo stone and the Soviet Union. By G. WILLIAMS. Who is there at the present time who does not praise the economic achievements of the Soviet Union? Hardly a petty bourgeois of the type of the Nation or New Republic readers, hardly a suave social democrat or renegade from Communist can be found who is not eager to praise these achievements, of course, being careful always to draw a distinction between the “Soviet Union itself” and the Bolshevik Party, Soviet Union Section of the Communist International, its policy and leadership. Why, even the noble Lord Curzon, in his famous ultimatum threatening war upon the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics made, in his own innimitable manner, a strong distinction between the achieve- ments of the “Russian people” and the infernal Bolsheviks and their Communist International. Small wonder then, that in the first issue of the “Counter-revolu- tionary Age,” the freshman of the Communist renegades, Jay Love- stone, applies the same time-honored method of social-democrats of every hue. He writes an article, “Twelve Years of the Soviet Union,” which he stuffs with resplendent phrases about the “crimson banner” of the international working class, “unfurled by the first Soviet Re- public,” proclaims that “the strengthening and consolidation of the Soviet Union constitutes a most powerful force in the development of | | a victorious proletarjan revolution in all countries,” and goes on to praise the economic achievements of the Soviet Union; but—just a little but—he presents all these victories of the Soviet proletariat as some- thing accomplished apart from or even against the present policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union carried out by the present leadership. We should not trouble to mention this old social democratic trick if there were not in the same article other opportunist twistings and garblings of the policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, aimed at deceiving the American worke bout the fights and victories of their class brothers in the Soviet Union. First of all, in this very detailed article of Jay Lovestone, there is not a single word about the sharpened class struggle of the Russian proletariat against capitalist elements in the towns and in the country- side. Yet this sharpening of the struggle is precisely the main point in all the resolutions of all the last conferences, plenums and meetings of the Soviet Union Party. Why this reticence of Jay Lovestone about the victorious offensive of the Russian proletariat against the kulaks? Precisely because the companions of Lovestone in the international right wing were and are still opposed to the offensive against the kulak, because the right wingers of the Russian Party in the past year, when they saw this offensive began to shriek about the “feudal-military exploitation of the peasantry” (Bukharin), because so little time ago as the April, 1929, plenum of the Central Committee of the Russian Party, Bukharin put forward a demand for the abolition of the special taxes on the kulak, and a demand for high grain prices, and other econ- omic concessions to rich peasants. Jay Lovestone ought to know this, since his lieutenant. Gitlow was at that plenum and even intervened there with the statement in which he supported Bukharin’s attacks on the C. I. Lovestone keeps quiet about the kulak danger, because his companion-in-arms, Renegade Serra, now excluded from the C. I. (and praised in this very same number of the Counter-revolutionary Age as an “outstanding leader of the Communist Party of Italy”) advocated | in his memorandum to the plenum of the Italian Party, the retreat of | the Russian workers before the kulak on the highly “Marxist” ground | that there was “no scientific definition of the kulak.” Lovestone simply lies to the American workers in concealing from them the growing re- | sistance of the capitalist elements, especially of the countryside, to the | victorious march of the socialist reconstruction of agriculture. He | conceals the fact that the Russian proletariat under the leadership of | the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and against the right ele- very solemnly puts forward the following “deeply philosophic con- sideration”: “The hypothesis of a creator is by no means absurd. Even Voltaire said that a watch presupposes a watchmaker. I, personally, cannot understand how it is possible to avoid propounding the God- pr@lem. Philosophic materialism does not exclude the deistic hypo- thesis. In these times moreover, is it possible to speak of materialism when science itself affirms the dissolution of matter into energy . . .” After Voltaire comes Jaures—historical determinism by no means frees us from the God-idea—and Jaures himself declares that “a few mechanistic interpretations far from exhaust the meaning of the universe.” And this is written, in the year 1929, in France, the land of Diderot and d’Alembert, more than one hundred and fifty years after the great Encyclopoedists, the land of Voltaire, and in the central organ of the socialist party, almost fifty years after the scientific achievement of Marxism! The grave'danger which such religious poverty of mind threatens, in the terribly serious situation at the present time, must be made clear to the workers, This is not mere stupidity, it is more; it is political treachery. The wire-pullers, the Blums and Renaudels who want to surrender the workers, have something to sell, and all means, all ways are good which facilitate their dirty traffic with the bourgeoisie. It is the job of the Communist Party of France, a task as simple as it is grateful, to take up this matter with all its weight and mental energy, and to expose to the working masses the moral level of these French socialists. JA | publies. ments in the Party of the Soviet Union and in every other country, began and victoriously carried through this offensive against the kulaks who did their utmost to hamper the Soviet power in last year’s grain campaign. He conceals from the American workers the fact that there was this severe struggle of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union against the right. wing elements on the question of the Five-Year Plan, when he puts forward the name of Rykoff and so attempts to spread the impression that Rykoff is “the father” of the plan. Lovestone lies when he says to the American workers that “whatever differences there may have occurred (in the Russian Party) were only over the methods of the application of the industrialization program and not over the Five-Year Plan as such.” This lie is designed to cover the right danger in the Russian Party. Already in the fall of last year, as Lovestone knows well, at the very moment of the Five-Year Plan’s elaboration by the Gosplan, Bukharin plunged jn with his platform article, “Notes of an Economist” which advocated the confining of the industrialization program to the “narrow places” of the Soviet economy, that is, to the most backward sections of the industries, such as brick-making. Lovestone knows, too, that Rykoff and Bukharin did not vote for the Five-Year Plan resolution to be presented at the Sixteenth Party Conference, did not vote for it even as a basis. In its stead they pro- posed their own “Two-Year Plan” of aid for agriculture which would have called a halt to socialist industrialization ,much to the profit of the rich peasant. Gitlow, who was at the April Plenum, knows this very well. He knows too that at this plenum Bukharin defended his old opportunistic theory, which was thought to have been buried in the Russian Party, on the “drafting” of the kulak into socialism. Lovestone hides from the American workers the fact that the Five- Year Plan is a victory of the Russian Party over the right wingers that its first year’s splendid results are a knockout blow to all the pro-kulak theories of the Bukharins, Serras and Lovestones. We add the name of Lovestone to this trio because in this very article Lovestone steps forward with an opportunist theory of the rela- tion between socialist industry and agrarian economy in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. The standpoint of the Lovestone theory he formulates thus: “for the successful organization of the new economic order they (that is, socialized urban industry and rural economy) must both proceed together, side by side.” Here we have the remnants of Bukharinesque theories long ago rejected by the Russian Party. The success of socialist construction in the Soviet Union is built precisely on the theory and practice of the dominating, leading role of socialist urban industry, which must be the prime mover of the sociilist reconstruction of agriculture, which is creating and must create the new high productive forms of bond (smych- ka) between the industrial proletariat on the one hand, and the poor and middle peasant on the other. Not the. “proceeding together, side by y BY ALEXANDER NEWEROFF Reprinted, by permission, from “The City of Bread” by Alexander Neweroff, published and copyrighted by Doubleday—Doran, New York. . Continued.) In the night he had to go out. On the station, lamps»were burning with a pale light. ‘The darkness swarmed with people. : A great mass of them moving, postling, foundering in a sea of cries, in the feeble voices of wailing children. The famine-stricken mujiks lay around in droves, wept, prayed, cursed. Like eyeless owls the women pushed one another. . With muffled heads, with disheveled heads, they dragged babies along in their arms, they dragged babies bound to their backs, they dragged babies hanging on to their skirts. Like exhausted ewes, the women fell near the car wheels, threw their babies down on the thin icy rails. The babies lay there, like puppies thrown out of doors to be drowned. Naked. Bundled in rags. Hoarsely, feebly whimpering. P Wailing aloud, trying to drive away death with their futile cries. Still another sorrow comes to swell the dense mass of wretchedness and hunger packing the little Kirghiz station. Another drop of human suffering is adder, that nobady cares about, nobody notices. The conductor had put Mishka off the train, saying: “Well, I’ve brought you so far—you can thank God for that! Now go and look for your father!” Mishka’s father was far away. Mishka’s mother was far away. He wandered among the alien starving throng that had been driven together out of countless towns and villages, and he sighed heavily. He began to search for the car into which Comrade Dunayev had placed him, but at night all-cars looked alike, all cars were locked, like granaries filled with grain. Louse-ridden misery had shut itself in and would open for no one. Mishka knocked at the door of one car, someone shouted through a crack: “What do you want?” “My people are in there.” “Go on! Yours have left, only ours are here .. - He knocked on another car—no one answered . . - From the third car somebody shouted: “What are you going round disturbing people for? tramps in here.” Twice Mishka trudged around the long train of cars, then he sat down, shrank into a little heap, and blinked his eyes. “Devils without pity! Am I going to eat your damned cars?” He got up again and went on. But there was nowhere to go. The dark railroad cars stood in three rows. And if you went round | all night, they would not open for you; and if you went round all day, , they would not open for you. Everywhere people swarmed. Under the cars. Behind the cars. On the station. Behind the station. But no one to press close against, to tell of your sorrow. Mishka’s sorrow forced its way to his heavy eyes, but he must not cry: that he knew well. No one would pay any attention to the sound of his weeping no one would dry his tears. Patience. His father always used to say: You'll never mend misfortune by tears.” i He had set out on this journey—he must keep on till he reached his goal. It surely“could not be much further now, he could not turn back .. . If he came to a big city, he could sell his knife and his leather belt. Mishka began to reckon how many days it was since he left home, and got all-mixed up: if today was Wednesday, then it was ten days; but if today was Friday, then it was twelve days. Behind the station a boy was digging round in a big manure ‘barrel, standing in it right up to his shoulders. Mishka paused near him and watched him curiously. “What are you doing there?” The boy did not answer. He looked around indifferently, then plunged in again up to his shoulders. He pulled out a bone, thrust it into his bosom. Then Mishka went over to the other side of the barrel ,and he too began rummaging around in it. Both of them dug in silence, their hands meeting. After a moment Mishka too crawled into the barrel, and the boy dripped him savagely by the arm. “Did I call you?” “Came myself!” Mishka looked tiny in the barrel—only his head stuck out. The other boy was either on the point of punching him in the head of snatch- ing his cap off. But just then a dog came running by with a large piece of bread between its teeth. The boy saw the bread between the dog’s teeth, and dashed after him, waving his arms as he ran. Mishka jumped out of the barrel too. “Throw a stone at him!” No stones around. Mishka grasped a railroad tie but could not lift it. The two starving children ran after the dog, one on either side, but the dog, with its raw, hairless hind quarters, ran past the station out into the fields, Lightly it leapt across the ditch bordering the station garden, and came to a halt on a mound, holding the stolen bread between its'teeth. ‘ The chidren stopped too. (To be Continued) TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN We don’t want try from economic and consequently political penetration by foreign capitalists, Even under all these enumerated conditions, it is ridiculous to say of the country of proletarian dictatorship that its participation in foreign trade makes it more independent.” Independence of a socialist country from foreign capitalism rests upon thefact of the proletarian dictator- side” of socialist industry and peasant economy, as Lovestone’s pro- kulak theory proclaims, in its endeavor to lay the basis for a kind of “parity” between the working class and the peasantry, for a surrender of the hegemony of the proletariat, but the leading role “of socialist industry, which transforms individual peasant economy into collective and socialist economy, and the leading role of the proletariat in the “smychka” (alliance with the peasantry)—such was the teaching of Lenin, such is the present policy and practice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. To complete the picture of the counter-revolutionary position by Lovestone on the. principal questions of the socialist construction of Soviet Russia, let us niention another opportunistic “discovery” made by him in the same article. Lovestone speaks about “inestimable im- portance of the foreign trade monopoly as the regulator of the relations | of the Soviet Union with the capitalist world,” stating that the develop- ment of the participation of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics in world trade “is to be greatly welcomed.” . Here it is not yet clear why amongst all the other tremendous economic achievements of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics Lovestone stresses especially the develop- ment of foreign trade with capitalist countries (by the way the foreign trade monopoly is not only the regulator of the relations of the Soviet ship, upon the political, economic and military strength of the prole- tariat organized as a ruling class upon the firmness of its alliance with the middle and poor peasantry, upon the growth of the socialist recon- struction of the country including socialist reconstruction of agricul- ture. The monopoly of foreign trade preserves independence of the country only in the field of foreign trade. Lovestone’s theory as applied to the U. S. S. R. is nothing other than the very old theory of the bourgeois and the social democrats who were for the establishing of economic relations with Soviet Russia in the hope that penetration of foreign goods, foreign “civilization,” foreign “influence” (i.e. capitalist influences) would “soften” the proletarian dictatorship and would pre- pare the return of “normal” (ie. capitalist) economic and_ political conditions, that is, of a gradual Thermidor and the reestablishment of capitalism in Russia. But Lovestone presents his theory as applicable to all countries being only “all the more true” for the U.S.S.R.). Let every honest work- er consider the application of this theory to, say, Latin American coun- tries: the more they buy American products, the more they allow Amer- ican capitalists to grasp the raw materials of these countries, the more independent they become. This theory is the theory of the Hoovers, Morgans, Dwight Morrows, Greens, of the imperialists and their lackeys Union with the capitalist world, but the main prerequisite of the inde- pendent inner socialist’ industrialization of the country, as well as a considerable source of socialist accumulation. Here as in many other qvestions, Lovestone’s eyes are fixed only on the “external” side of the question.). But Lovestone’s enthusiasm about the development of for- «.,a wade becumes comprehensible when we look at the ‘immediately following phrase in which Lovestone develops an astounding theory: “Relatively speaking, those countries participating most .in world trade are the most independent. This is all the more true for the U. 8. S. R.”. Very seldom can one find even amongst renegades such ‘openly bourgeois, imperialistic theories. Lovestone here establishes a general law about all countries, that the more they buy and sell‘from the im- perialist power the more independent they become; and this general law is “all the more” applicable to the Union of Socialist Soviet Re- For every one who does not take the impertalist standpoint it is perfectly clear that participation in world trade can safeguard the independence of the country against the imperialist robbers only on the condition that there is a proletarian dictatorship defending its, s0- cialist fatherland by every means, beginning with the bayonets of a Red Army and ending ie ibe monopoly of foreign trade. From the the suas of en Mets cout in the Pan-American Federaton of Labor, a theory which covers up imperialist robbery.’ This theory leads to the conclusion that not the révolutionary struggle, but the development of economic relations with the U.S,A. will. make the country independent... This. theory is dished with a sauce of lying phrases in an article which pretends to praise socialist: construction in the Soviet Union.’ : It would: be hard to find a worse example of ideological turpitude, of political degenration and of class ‘treason. aS : “We are fighting for Communism,” writes Lovestone at the end of his article. Clearly the word “for” is a misprint. Lovestone is fighting against Com.aunism, with his lies about the Soviet Union, with his’ pro-kulak ‘conceptions, with his pro-imperialist theories. He is fighting against Communism also in deeds, creating a counter-revolu- tionary party, with a complete organizational apparatus, including national council and press organ. It is by fighting against the Commu- nist International, against its American Section, against the Communist - Party of the Soviet Union and its leadership, that Lovestone in reality “celebrates” twelve years of struggles and victories of the Russian proletariat. During these twelve years of hard and bloody struggles, the Russian workers learned the value of a traitor’s praise. The Amer- ican’ workers also must learn to judge at their true value the pro-kulak and pro-imperialist opportunist Lovestone and his renegade pany, 4 ee ENTREE ETAT