The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 11, 1930, Page 3

5 Growing Struggles and ULiain a indce: ginnin: lowed the fi weeks, t the month’ ith the enth , the proephe: jaspe of the Soviet power, to come forth. In- y be remarked that | prophets did not have sufficient confidence in their own prophecies and in their own God to let it go at that. True to capitalist style they applied the slogan of the old cheat in Lessings comed “Corrigez la fortune. By mean: blockade,, of inv m and of finan- | cing and arming the counter revo- prophets tried cies. of an ul- The fo zaged as time went b: ophets looked for alibie: Litovek, the introduction of EP, the death of in | ited from the pi to the ef: ‘cu are; didnit rophe' hopes and aspirations pro; ies of the capitalist world | found their invariable reflection in the propaganda of the social trai- in the ranks of the social de- | in the proposals | jements within the | The last forms | which this latter reflection took was the Trotskyist insistence on the ibility of building socialism | Yr ja. Practically the reverse | e of this a ion is the insi tence of the right wing elements in the ssian Party which has no confidence in the growth of the socialist element of Soviet economy | and insists on greater concessions | to the capitalist element. The latest economic developments | of the Soviet Union are a most decisive answer to all capitalist | prophets, their social democratic | agents and all other elements who | Jack confidence in the constructive | revolutionary powers of the pro-) Jetariat. The building of socialism | in the Soviet Union makes tremen- dous strides forward. Major Problem of Revolution. The greatest problem of the pro- letarian revolution is the construc- tion of socialism. The defeat of the bourgeoisie as the ruling class and the establishment of the pro- Jetarian dictatorship does not com- plete the revolution but only creates the indispensable prerequisite for its completion. The essence of the revolution is the building of social- ism; and the building of socialism js accomplished by the proletariat by means of its political dictator- ship. Those, who saw in the NEP the collapse of what they termed “Communism” conceived the revo- lution as a fully accomplished his- torical fact after November 7, 1917. They did not see that the NEP was not an acknowledgement of defeat by the Communist Party, but a method to accomplish communism. They did not understand that capi- Re g Sociali of Capitalist World, Propaganda of) ai-Traitors and Anti-Leninist Proposals | the | remaining capitalist elements in the ithe sec Tasks for the Seventh ; Yenr ! By Fred Ellis Build the Socialist Commonwealth Organize Une mployed Councils Organize the Working Women S Come to m in Soviet Russi Naught pitalist class, but also a most} ‘mportant economic factor, present n the form cf organization of the | | production and distribution of the | sities of life of society. The, sive political factor of capital- ism, the rule of the capitalist class, can be eliminated with the defeat | of capitalist rule and the establish- ment of a proletarian dictatorship. | No matter how long a period of | struggle may precede the proletar- | victory, this result of the pro- | arian revolution is achieved with | establishment of the Soviet | power. But the economic reorgani- tion of society cannot be accomp- h a short and abrupt In order to guarantee the sical life of society there must be a continuity of its economic life. And such a continuity is possible only with the continued use of | a considerable part of the economic | structure left to the proletarian | dictatorship by capitalism. Parts of | this structure can be socialized im- | mediately. Other parts must be| maintained and utilized as they are. Those parts, that can be socialized | at once, must be enlarged, improved | and extended so that they will) gradually replace and crowd out the le | | | } economic structure. It is the func- tion of the proletarian dictatorship first of allsto carry through this socialization and its extension. But the remaining of some capitalist | in the economic struc- | tures of the revolutionary country is the source of a continued life of remnants of the capitalist class. | The conscious suppression of this remnant of the capitalist class is ond importan‘ function of the arian dictatorship. an Revolution Must Wrestle | with Backward Agriculture. ‘The Soviet power in Russia found, | after its establishment, a really tre- mendous section of the economic structure of Russia incapable of immediate quick socialization. This was the backward agricultural sec- tion of Russian economy. This backward section of Russian econ- omy also maintains the politically most backward section of the Soviet Union, a remnant of capitalism, the peasantry. Side by side with this most back- ward section of Russian economy there existed a comparatively limit- ed industrial devélopment of the economic structure of Russia. Russia therefore was burdened with a tremendous number of small pro- ductive units as well as a large sector of independent small dis- tributing agencies. The technical backwardness of these units and sectors did not allow a speedy: social- ization. And their comparative im- portance in the national economy did not allow their radical elimina- tion. The New Economic Policy, insti- tuted in March, 1921, and designed by Lenin, represented a system of transitory national economy for the revolutionary Sovet power. This system, commonly known as the NEP, allowed the exstence side by side of a Soviet sector of economy, a co-operative sector of economy, and a private or capitalist sector of economy. All of these three sec- tors were to supply the Soviet Union with the economic necessities of its existence and further development. With the use of the proletarian state power the Soviet and the co-opera- tive sectors of economy were to be systematically extended, while, at the same time, the capitalist sector was to be used and exploited but also kept in bounds. The building of socialism would succeed in the ratio in which the Soviet and the co-opera- tive sectors of economy would out- talism is not only a political factor, grow the capitalist sector. The t in the political rule of the 1 gradual crowding out of the capital- | ist sector would indicate the equally gradual completion of the building of socialism and would also crowd out and eliminate gradually the last remnants of the capitalist class. The Right Wing “Estimates” the Problem. The recent struggle with the right wing in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union grew out of differ- ences of the estimation of the prog- ress of the building of socialism. The last year or so has seen a sharpening of the class struggle in Russia, The remnants of the capi- talist class in the agriculural sec- tions of the country attempted to organize resistence against the grain collections of the Soviets. They realized that these grain col- lections supplied the Soviets with indispensable means for the exten- sion of the socialist sector of econ- omy. The right wing -elements main- tained that this sharpening of the class struggle, that this resistence of the Kulaks to the grain collec- tion, was a result of the comparative weakness of the socialist economy of the Soviets, was a result of the slowness in the progress of the building of socialism, and of a con- | sequent comparative strength of the village bourgeoisie. The Central Committee of the Communist Party, on the other hand, afalyized the sharpening class struggle as a result of the rapidly | growing strength of the socialist sector of economy, of the rapid progress of the building of social- ism. The remnants of the capitalist class in Russia see the rapidity of this growth and resort to a resis- tence by force as the last hope of desperation. They see that the rapid progress in the building of socialism spells their doom as a class because it takes from under them the very basis of their eco- | nomic and social existence. It is clear that these two funda- mentally opposite analyses must come to opposite conclusions. Thus the right wing which proceded from the premise of the weakness of the proletarian power, proposed con- cessions to the remnants of the bourgeoisie and a slow and cautious policy in the building of socialism. Their contention was: We are weak,,, we must make concessions, we have to go slow. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, however, proceeding from the premise of the inherent strength of the revolutionary power, proposed a policy of most aggressive advance in the building of socialism, no concessions and no quarter given to the remnants of the bourgeoisie. This policy not only concentrated on a plan of speedy and systematic expansion of the socialist sector of economy but also proposed to deal with the counter revolutionary ac- tion of the village bourgeoisie with revolutionary firmness and with revolutionary measures. The his- tory of the Soviet Union of the past year has definitely decided the con- troversy in favor of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Policy of CPSU Solves the Problem. The plan of the Central Com- mittee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, known as the five year plan, proposes to undermine the very basis of existence of the village bourgeoisie. It plans to crush the economic position of the Kulak by aid of a systematic collectivization of the numerous small units of agri- cultural production of the mass of poor peasants. A parallel develop- ment of the industrial sector of socialist economy was to provide the necessary means for this collectivi- ation of agricultural production. Socialist industry is to replace the individual plow with the tractor and eS ! gang plow, and the tractor and the gang plow, in turn, are to replace the individual productive unit of the | poor peasant with the collective | farm of the combined pocr peasan- | try of the village. The Five Year Plan is now in op- eration for one year. The first year provided for an increase and exten- sion of the large sized socialized |industry by 21 per cent. The ac- |complishment of the first year ex- ceeded this assignment with an| actual extension of 24 per cent. The Five Year P’ 1 provided that the cultivated area of government , farms was to increase during the jfirst year by 71 per cent. The | actual increase during the first year was 27.5per cent. A most astonishing progress can jbe recorded in the program of col- jlectivization of agricultural pro- jduction. The plan provided for the first year an increase of the sown |area of collective farms by 112 per cent. The actual increase is 330 per {cent. The number of collective farms increased from October 1st, | 1928 with 21,394 of collective farms, |to over 35,000 collective farms on June 1, 1929. The rapidity of growth of socialist economy in the Soviet Union opens the perspective of putting the econ- | omy of the Soviet Union at the head of all nations. Even assuming that | the growth of the economic capacity of the capitalist United States will | maintain its past rate of speed the Soviet Union will outstrip the| United States within about 15 years. | But the progress of the building of | |socialism can not and will not be | measured merely by its productivity |or by its productive capacity. This progress, because it is the progress of socialism, must manifest itself also in rapid improvements in the conditions under which the working class of Russia lives and works, and it does. The working hours of the Russian worker are today already | the shortest of any other worker lof the world. While wages and | working conditions of the capitalist countries in most instances are con- siderably under the pre-war stand- ards the Russian worker not only registers a tremendous improvement over the pre-war standard, but wit- nesses and produces a rapid further | progress in this improvement. In | the capitalist countries the post- \war days have witnessed a system- atic liquidation of social insurance and protective labor laws. The | Soviet Union, on the other hand, has | initiated and is carrying thru the most extensive social insurance and labor protection ever conceived. To this we must add that in their appli- cation the capitalist gavernments have always nevated such laws when they existed, while th: proletarian dictatorship in the Soviet Union is an unchallengeable guaranty for their enforcement. Success of Five Year Plan Defeats Enemies. The progress of the building of socialism in the Soviet Union is} showing up all of the prophecies of its capitalist enemies for |what they are. It is disprov- ing and liquidating all of which intend to slow up its progress, and to block its success. The facts the theories and theoreticians |] STRUGGLE OF CLASSES IN SOUTH Workers of the South Follow Class Party By CLARENCE MILLER, National Secretary N. T. W. U. ASTONIA, Marion, Ella May, these are symbols of the shzrp- ening class struggles in the South. The extreme ex: ploitation of the workers, the low standard of liv- ing, the social oppression of the workers, as ex- pressed in the mill villages, the even greater op- pression of the ba are the forces driving the work- C. Miller ers ‘to struggle. Class Consciousness Growing The growth of the National Tex- tile Workers Union and the Trade Union Unity League, International Labor Defense as well as of the Communist Party shows clearly that the Southern workers are be- coming class conscious. The South- ern workers, themselves, have an- swered Mr. Lovestone and his theory of the South being a force of reaction. The South, today, is an outstanding expression of the class struggle. The working class of the South are today a powerful force in the ranks of the Amer- ican revolutionary movement. The Negro masses, suffering not only under the economic and social oppression that the white workers must bear, also are bur- dened with an extreme racial op- prssion and discrimination. The capitalists foster the division be- tween the black and white work- ers. Under the leadeship of the Communist Party and the revolu- tionary trade unions, and the I. L.D., this racial division between white and black workers is being broken down and this will consoli- date the power of the masses for the coming struggles. Communist Party’ Must Assume Lead The Southern workers are ready for organization. They are taking their place in the extending class struggle and they are providing new | forces for the revolutionary move- ment. The task before the Com- munist movement and the revolu- tionary trade unions is to assume the leadership of these workers and direct them in the struggle against capitalism. “Prosperity Herb” of its growth turn the Cassandra calls of Trotsky into parrot like repetitions of the stereotype capi- talist prophesies: “It can’t be done.” And the right wing with its lack of confidence in the creative capa- city of the revolution must either confess its utter bankruptcy or es ‘ ‘stand convicted as a conscious and) | wilful opponent of this progress. EDUCATION FOR SOVIET WORKERS MOSCOW, U.S.S.R. (By Mail).— The government is considering & plan to have workers three days a week on the job and to study three days, taking the seventh for recrea- tion. \ Workers, don’t you remember ’way back a year ago—how Hoo- ver brought us “all” prosperity? Five million workers without jobs now; lots of wage cuts, etc., rather punches us workers below the belt, eh? But Hoover should worry, look at these fat jowls! Don't miss any meals, docs he? Negro masses} -| their door tomorrow morning, and, By HARRISON GEORGE eee agraran crisis in the United | 4 States is not a new thing. But | it is now developing new aspects of }such great im- | portance that no | Communist must fail to take them into account, and no worker can fail to be inter- ested in seeing | that the proper | alliance between the industrial proletariat and the increasingly pauperized farm- ing population is established and maintained. For no revolution can succeed if it leaves out of reckoning the agraran revolution, even in a country highly industrialized as the United States. The utopian and fake “left” re- formists, such as the I.W.W., want) to leap over this stubborn reality. | They want the ultimate delivered at H. George they sneer at everything less as “opportunist.” The openly “Right” opportunists, meanwhile, either find nothing at all wrong, no class strug- gle on the land itself, or when com- | pelled to face the issue, go along | with the bourgeoisie as a sort of | quarrelsome partners. | What are the conditions faced? Comrade I,enin in 1913 gave the fol- | lowing general analysis: | “Capital freed agriculture from feudalism, bought it into the or- bit of market, exchange and thereby into the system of world economic development. It also tore agriculture away from the stagnacy and torpor of the middle ages and patriachalism. But capi- tal has not only not done away with oppression, exploitation and poverty, but on the contrary, it creates all these calamities in a new form. Capitalism, which de- velops primarily in trade and in- dustry, becomes ever more oppres- sive in the sphere of agriculture.” The Farm “Hands.” If we go from the general to the | specific, we see immediately the | mute but eloquent figures express- ing the suffering of the agricultural | wage workers, with whom our Party and the revolutionary trade | union center, the Trade Union Unity | League, must certainly establish | contact and organize for class strug- gle directly on the land. Behind | these figures are countless trage- dies, let us never forget that! | The figures show that while male | farm wage workers constitute 21.7 | per cent of the total of all wage workers, they receive only 10.5 per | cent of the national wage total. They | lost most of the slight gain they | made in money wage during the war and the increased prices of commod- ities bought undoubtedly makes their real wage lower than pre-war, bad as it was then. The census shows how these terrible conditions have forced great armies of wage work- ers off the land to beg at the city | factory gates for jobs, (Let us di- | gress here to contradict the pleasant | lie of the capitalists that the farm wage worker becomes a tenant, the tenant an owner, and so on). The census says: | | In 1910: Wage workers, working on home farm ........ 3,310,534 Wage workers, working “out? ssseseses 2,636,966 roreiie's see 5,947,500 In 192 Wage workers, working on home farm ........ 1,850,119 Wage workers, working HOUtY .ceceesedeweres 2,055,278 Total .........+...- 3,905,895 Leaving the “Old Home.” We, therefore, see that in those ten years 2,042,105 wage workers were forced off the land to seek The Agricultural Q the Communist Answer This Problem what their lives are, driven by the speed-up and stretch-out at low wages and long hours in industry. Of this 2,042,105, there were 1,460,- 415 who left the farm of their fam- ily, the “old home farm” so tenderly spoken of by poets and other fools, but which, with the agrarian crisis making it impossible for the farmer to pay wages to his grown or youth- ful children, caused the great exodus and thousands of family quarrels, discontent and humble heartbreaks. But we must look to the wage workers still remaining on the farms. The Trade Union Unity League must most particularly launch a fight to organize the wage workers on highly capitalized farms in the most accessible divisions of the agricultural industry: dairy, truck gardening and small fruits, and in the South the cotton and tobacco farm workers. At Our Elbows. The comfortable illusion, tained with opportunism, which relegates such work to the West alone, and ignores the eastern and Great Lakes regions, must be combatted. New York State has far more than twice the farms as North and South Da- kota combined. Wage labor on 30,009 New Jersey farms is vital to the life of New York City. We do not have to travel to find the agrarian wage worker. They are at our elbows and all that we need is to open our eyes. But while it is of extreme neces- sity that we establish the new Agri- cultural Union of the T, U U. L., the poor farmer who is a tenant, a debt-ridden mortgaged farmer or the farmer who, without capital to hire labor or buy machinery works himself and his family to death try- ing (usually in vain) to keep from falling into hopeless debt and ten- ancy in an effort to keep alive in the race with the mechanized farmer capitalist—these present us with a “poor farmer” poblem that is sharper, more full of explosive, than even the problem of the agrarian proletariat. Bourgeois authorities admit that 40 per cent of the farmers are “miserably and desperately poor,” that 20 per cent are “mod- erately poor” and only 40 per cent “moderately well off.” Fun- damentally, the poor farmer is robbed in three principal ways: 1. By landlords in rents. 2. By usury, chiefly interest on mort- gages and loans for capital he simply must have to produce crops. $. By lack of control over marketing his product, which is held and will be held so long as capitalism lasts, in the hands of marketing monopolies dominated by the banks. Progress of Poverty. The percentage of tenant to all farmers grows: In 1880 it was 25.6%; in 1900, 35.3%; in 1910, 37.0%; in 1920, 38.1%; in 1925, 38.6%. What a toll they pay to landlords in rentals is enomous. The exact figures are not obtainable, however. As to mortgages and other debts: The farm debt has trebled since 1914, And the power of finance capital is ever welded tighter around the farmer with marketing monopo- lies which rob him under the dis- guise of “co-operatives.” At the bot- tom of the scale are the millions of pauperized “share-croppers” of the South. This is absolutely a serfdom, in no wise different than the con- dition suffered by the Russian peas- ant under Tsarism. Share cropping is a feudalist vestige that was be- stowed as a blessing upon the South- ern farm poor, both black and white, by the abolition of slavery! What an emancipation! The tenants are said by the Labor Research Bureau, to have harvested (and can we say to find?) better conditions in indusiyy, We know more crop land than full owners in 1924. In the west south central Steps to Settlement of} uestion and states 59.2% of all farms were ten- ant farms in 1925. Robbed by Jand- lords, usurers. and marketing ban- dits, the poor fatmers are one of the most explosive forces of social unrest, What to Do?, But the question arises—what shall we do about it? No Marxist- Leninist can wave the question aside. Nor can we ignore the petty- bourgeois character of this sea of agrarian discontent. We --must, without illusion as to its petty- bourgeois character, organize and direct it in a revolutionary strug- gle against big finance capital. We must take the class war to the countryside with proposals for action which will throw ,.these petty-bourgeois, masses into strug- gle with authority and teach: them continually that only in an alliance with the wage working revolution- ary proletariat can their condi- tions be permanently bettered, that only when agriculture js so- cialized under a Workers and Farmers Government can they be free of the exploitation and in- security of life under capitalism. Yet there are approaches to. that goal of understanding through which these petty-bourgeois masses must go, They must and can learn only by struggle. Hence our slogans are either good or worthless accord- ing to whether they will bring the agrarian masses into struggle..Much will depend upon the special regional conditions, y Slogans of Struggle. .» We must raise the demand for reduction in rentals and seek:to or- ganize wide mass strikes of renters to enforce such reductions. We must set a demand for cancellation of debt and abolition of usury, and or- ganize a physical conflict against foreclosures. We must demand aboli- tion of taxes on small farms and advocate a tax-payers’ strike of poor farmers on a mass ‘scale to gain some relief from the grossly unequal taxation. With a condition where more than half of the crop lands are worked by tenants, and mortgages oppress still wider masses, with only 25% of | cultivated land being worked by owners, it is folly to say that the slogan “The land to the users 6f the land” has no revolutionary méaning in rallying such petty-botifgeois masses to struggle against landlord- ism and the governmental power of finance capital. With the teaching of the Communists they will learn in the struggle from us and from experience combined, that we were correct inadding to. such a slogan that all methods,short of socialization of agriculture under.a.Workers and Farmers Government are unable to emancipate the agricultural masses from poverty. But to dispense with the slogan now of the “Land to the users of the land” and to set as in opposition to that, as against that and against all transitional slogans, the slogan of a Workers and Farmers Government and socialization of. agriculture} is a | means of evading the issue of @ pres- ent and immediate struggle for a very “left” sounding but actually opportunist slogan. Especially. so, since no intermediate steps are of- tered. i 7 This terribly “left” solution for doing away with all struggle was recently, it should be remarked, of- fered by one who at the same time used this excuse for withdyawing from even the shadow.of activity by demanding that the United Farmers Educational League take his name off their letterhead. It is always the mark of those who would quit the fight for Communism when it begins to promise a danger, to “justify” themselves by accusing the Com- munists of not being revolutionary enough for them. By expressing a violent distaste for anything: short of a Workers and Farmers Govern- ment, this person can now sit down comfortably while Communists are organizing an agrarian revolt.