The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 22, 1930, Page 6

Page Six Square, New York Published by the Comprodaily Publishing Co., Inc. City, N. Address and mail all checks to the Daily Worker. Y. Telephone Stuyvesant 1696-7-8. Gaily, except Sunday, at 26-28 Union Cable: “DAIWORK.” 8 Union Square. New York, N. ¥. Baily Centra! Organ of the Communisi Party of the U. S. A. 4OBSCRIPTION By Mail (in New York City vga $8.00 a year; By Mail (outside of New Yotk RATES: ity): $6.00 a year; $4.50 six month: $3.50 six month 50 three months 00 three months $2. $2. SOME ISSUES IN THE RECRUITING DRIVE Letter to the Organization Department Organization Dept., Central Committee, Dear Comrades: You say in your letter “in order to mobil- ize the Party fully we request you to write an article.” This is dated February 14. It fol- lows the proper urging by the Comintern upon all districts that greater intensity be put into the recruiting campaign during the remaining days (or weeks). The organization department of the Central Committee wants to insure the Party a “grand conclusion on February 26.” The points of the article are to be linked up with the necessity of “taking the Recruiting Drive into the factories.” Fine, our Bolshevik membership wants as many new Party mem- bers proletarians from the factories—as pos- sible—and right now. But how hard are they How drastically good are the plans? trying? But what conclusions have been reached by our leading committees as to remedies for existing short- comings? Should we not have gained a few times as many new Party members and tenfold increase in the T.U.U.L. and new unions given the period of radicalization we are in? How does it come that a section organizer can re- port that only 25 per cent of those who showed up for a Sunday recruiting were “old” mem- bers and 75-per cent were new (recent) mem- bers? What is our “veteran” membership doing? Talking and arguing among them- selves, or committee-ing themselves to ex- haustion? Where is the organized Communist application of the old “Jimmie Higgins” zeal for propaganda and getting members and read- ers of our press? How is The Daily Worker linked up with all our work? How serious efforts, based on analysis down to the roots, are being made for matic Leninist re- cruiting,’ ete.? Absolutely intensify the drive. This would mean, as of major importance also, the building up of mass organizations of the millions of unorganized—into the T. U. U. L., the new unions, etc. Then, to work at recruiting Party members out of these mass movements (which must have a sufficient ap- paratus and structure), while at the same time winning directly to the Party other thousands of workers. No sharp turn has really been taken by the Perty organization, as a whole toward recruit- ing—and persistently giving out papers, leaf- lets, etc.—on the job at factory gates, etc. One still hears even leading comrades jn the districts say that “we can’t get our members to this.” There we have rank capitulation on the one hand, and an unawakened, old “oppor- | tunist period” attitude of certain types of mem- bers, on the other. Even at mass meetings, protest and unem- ployment demonstrations, etc., there is, in many cases, no good systematic preparation for recruiting, handing out propaganda matter. For instance, no real follow up to appeals for members; sometimes no application cards on hand and so forth. There is still far too much of the idea that we only recruit on certain days, even during an intensive campaign. Sunday canvasses are excellent, have brought results, but surely other productive plans cu be given for even more effective recruiting. Our new members have been gotten primarily only at mass meetings, house-to-house vistug and unemployment meetings. (Am I wrong in this?) What is needed now is to get to the em- ployed workers, also, more than up to the present; to reach them at the shops, mills, ete., to get them into the unemployment councils and movement; to build up the revolutionary unions; to go to the factories with the unem- ployed workers; to get unemployed workers into the unions as well as into the Party; to get the employed workers organized—into unions and the Party. Much more solidifica- tion is required, also, of the loosely organized Unemployed Councils and movement. They must take further steps—move speedily—be- | yond the agitational stage. Better prepared and instructed and co-ordi- nated apparatus is required for all our work; the “link-up” between agitation (and demon- strative defensive battling of police) and the crystallization into organization results—a mass membership—must be effected. We don’t have any longer, at least, to prove our fighting militancy to the working class; we don’t need further convincing of the readi- ness of masses of workers to struggle. We need to give them organizational leadership as well as political. The two things cannot be separated from a Bolshevik standpoint. (If you get what I mean.) Not less important, more energy, more zeal, guided by understanding, Communists must be called forth on the part of the membership and non-party workers. Especially in this period of rapid development it is complete clarity and greatly increased activity that count. No patience with old and wrong methods and practices. An awakening out of the “pro- fessional” habits by many “old comrades.” We are living in 1930, February. We have to build a proletarian, factory-based mass Party. GEO. MAURER. The International Day of Struggle Against Unemployment By LEON PLATT. N March 6 the international proletariat will be mobilized under the leadership of the Communist International in the struggle against unemployment. On March 6 the work- tng class of the world wil! fight not only for immediate economic demands and unemploy- ment relief and insurance, but the international proletariat will also be mobilized in the strug- gle against the roots of unempoyment—against the capitalist system. The international day of struggle against unemployment will be the answer of the working class to the attack of the bosses, to the attempts of the bosses to put the entire burden of the economic crisis upon the shoulders of the working class. March 6 will also bring to the forefront the decaying capitalist stabilization and the readiness of the masses to struggle against capitalism. Correctness of the Policy of the Communist International and the Communist Party. The resolution of the Tenth Plenum of the C. I. and the October Plenum of our Party show clearly that the contradictions of capi- talism are becoming sharper and more accentu- ated, and that unemployment is not an iso- lated phase of struggle which the Communist Party and the revolutionary trade unions lead, but it is part and parcel of the general strug- gle of the workers entering into a counter-of- fensive against the attack of the bosses. The growing radicalization of the masses was clearly expressed in the various strikes that swept the industrially developed capitalist countries, as well as the colonial countries in the beginning of the present third period of post-war capitalist development. August 1— the International Red Day of struggle against the imperialist war and for the defense of the Soviet Union—was a concrete act on the part of the international proletariat definitely demonstrating its readiness to follow the lead- ership of the revolutionary trade unions and the Communist Party, and exposing the treach- erous action of the social democratic parties. March 6 is another step in the direction of further developing the political class-conscious- ness of the toiling masses, and a further step showing the decline of capitalism. March 6 will bring to the working men and women the world over the definite proof that the capital- ist system is no longer in a position to solve its contradictions and that the crisis of capi- talism at the present time is deep-going and *undamental. The response of the international woletariat to the struggle of the unemployed in every country conclusively proves the cor- sertness of the policy of the Communist Inter- aational, the correctness of the analysis of the October plenum of the Communist Party of the U.S.A, and more glaringly exposes the bour- geois Hooverian program of the right-wing opportunists, the Lovestone group in the United States and internationally. The Role of the Right Wing Opportunists. The right wing has unbroken faith in capi- talist stabilization. They see only the positive side of capitalist development, without taking into consideration the consequences resulting from the sharp contradictions of capitalism. At the same time they lack faith in the readi- ness, determination and ability of the inter- national proletariat to struggle against capi- talism, to meet the capitalist offensive with a counter-offensive, | | | The right-wing in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and in the Communist Inter- national as a whole repeated the apologists of capitalism concerning the inability of the Rus- sian workers determinedly to wipe out every vestige of capitalism in the Soviet Union and increase the tempo of industrialization of the country and develop collective agriculture. To- day, life itself exposes the dangerous ideology of these renegades of Communism. Today, any American worker with any semblence of class- consciouness can see that American capitalism is part of world capitalism and that the United States is not exempt from the general con- tradictions of world capitalism. More so, every worker can see that the crisis in the United States became an instrument for the broaden- | ing and sharpening of the economic crisis on an international scale. After their political policy was exposed as anti-Leninist, bourgeois reprint, the right-wing Lovestone group is now stripped naked by the Party and the Communist International before the eyes of the entire American working class. What happened to Lovestone’s theory of the Victorian Age of American capitalism? Where are these Hooverian predictions of unlimited prosperity? What happened to these famous nine points of Lovestone and Pepper why the program of the Fourth Congress of the R.T. L.U. could not be applied in the U. S.? Their opportunistic social-democratic theories were smashed, destroyed by life itself, by the strug- gles of the American workers, and today Love- stone and the international right wing stand beaten politically by the American Party and the Comintern, with nothing to offer except slander and attack on the Soviet Union, the Comintern and the Communist Party. Concerning August 1, Lovestone and the in- ternational right wing not only opposed the political line of the Communist International, but openly came out in a strike-breaking fash- ion, calling upon the workers not to strike in those places where the Party decided to call upon the workers to down tools and strike for the defense of the Soviet Union and against imperialist war. Against the present struggle of the unemployed, particularly in connection with international day of struggle against un- employment—-March 6—the right wing in the United States. are concealing their opposition, in a system of double bookkeeping. While on the first page of the (Counter) Revolutionary Age of February 15, Lovestone calls for par- ticipation in the international demonstration of the unemployed. On another page he de- nounces it as a “putsch” in the same terms as the traitors of the Second International in all countries, e The Lovestone organ states: “The Comintern adopts an estimate of the. present situation (the comparison of the present crisis with the world war in its con- sequences) and a policy on one of the*most important problems facing the Parties (un- employment), which are not only ultra-left, but which are actually putchist.” Here, according to Lovestone, we find that the struggle of the unemployed, and the in- ternational struggle against unemployment on March 6, set aside by the Communist Interna- tional is not a correct and. justified. method that will bring forth and mobilize the working class of the world not only in the struggle against unemployment, but also in the strug- By Fred Ellis The Relation ot the Workers Party to Religion NOTE—This is the third installment of Lenin’s article on Marxism and religion. At a time when the imperialists are seeking to split the working class along religious lines, when they are using religion for an ideolog- ical campaign preparatory to an armed at- tack against the first workers and peasants republic, it is especially important to make the position of the Communist Party clear to every worker. © be oe By V. I. LENIN. (Continued) Let us now consider the conditions which in Western Europe have produced an oppor- tunist interpretation of the thesis, “Proclama- tion of religion as a private affair.” Certainly there are also general causes here in play which at all times lead to opportunism, as the surrender of the permanent interests of the working ciass for the sake of temporary ad- ventages. The party of the proletariat de- mands from the state the proclamation of re- ligion as a private affair, but does not re- gard as a private affair the question of the flight against the opium of the people, the fight against religious superstition, etc. The opportunists distort the question so as to make it as if the Social Democratic Party actually regarded religion as a private affair. But in addition to the vicious opportunist distortion (which in the debates of our Duma fraction on the treatment of the question of religion was not at all made clear) there are also certain historical conditions which have produced the present, so to speak, excessive indifference of the Western European Social Democrats in questions of religion. These are conditions of two kinds. First, the task of the fight against religion is an historical task of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, and in the West this task has to an important extent, or at least partially, been fulfilled by the bour- geois democracy in the epoch of its revolu- tions against feudalism and mediaevalism. Both in France and in Germany there is a tradition of the bourgeois fight against re- ligion, which was begun long before Social- ism (the Encyclopedists and Feuerbach). In Russia, in accordance with the conditions of gle against capitalism as a whole. Lovestone therefore considers the policy of the Commu- nist International in this important unemploy- ment struggle as a “Putchist” campaign. Love- stone here advances the same accusations as the social-democrats and the capitalist class as a whole, that the Communist International is only a band of adventurers playing with the real interests of the workers. Lovestone does not dare to come out openly to call upon the workers not to participate in this international demonstration—this would lost him his last remnants of following. However, in his descrip- tion of the policy of the Party in the unem- ployment campaign as a “Putchist” campaign, Lovestone is taking the same strike-breaking role as he took in the demonstration of August 1 against imperialist war and for the defense of the Soviet Union. However, it will-not be difficult for any class-conscious worker to un- derstand’ where such Lovestone ideology comes from. What are the roots of such political thinking on the part of the renegades of Com- munism who are today clearly playing the role of agents of American imperialism? The first section of the above quotation explains it. (To Be Continued) our bourgeois democratic revolution, this task also fi almost entirely on the shoulders of the working class. On the other hand, the tradition of the bour- geois war against religion in Europe has pro- duced a specific bourgeois distortion of this war in the hands of anarchism, which, as the Marxists have long ago and repeatedly shown, stands on the is of a bourgeois world con- ception, despite all the of its attacks on the bourgeoisie. The anarchists and Blanquists in the Latin countries, Most (who was a pupil of Duhring) and his s in Germany, and the anarchists of the ’eighties in Austria raised the revolutionary phase in the war against religion to the highest pin- nacle. What wonder that the European social democrats today fall into the other extreme! This is comprehensible and even in a certain measure justified, but we Russian social demo- erats must not forget the special historical conditions of the West. “vehemence” Secondly, in the West, after the conclusion of the national bourgeois revolutions, after the introduction of more or less complete free- dom of religion, the question of the demo- eratic fight against religion was already to such an extent historically overborne by the fight of bourgeois democracy against social- ism, that the bourgeois governments con- sciously attempted to draw the masses away from socialism by sham-liberal crusades against clericalism. Such was the character of the “Kulturkampf” in Germany, as also of the fight of the bourgeois republicans in France against clericalism. Bourgeois anti-clericalism as a means to draw the attention of the masses away from socialism in the West is what pre- ceded the present “indifference” among so- cial democrats towards the fight with religion. This is also comprehensible and justified, since the bourgeois and Bismarckian anti- clericalism must be held in check by the social democrats on the ground that the fight against religion must be subordinated to the fight for socialism. In Russia the conditions are quite different. The proletariat is the leader of our bourgeois democratic revolution. Its party must be the spiritual leader in the fight against all re- mains c* ~~Jiaevalism, including the old effi- cial re! as also against all attempts to renovate .., or reconstruct it either on a re- formed basis or on a completely new one. If Engels corrected with comparative mildness the opportunism of the German social demo- crats—who, in place of the demand of the workers’ party that the state should declare religion a private affair, put forward the proclamation of religion as a private affair for social democrats themselves and the So- cial Democratic Party—it can be imagined how a taking over of the German distortion by the Russian opportunists would have earned a hundred times sharper criticism from Engels. Our Duma fraction, in declaring that religion is opium for the people, acted entirely rightly, and has in this way established a precedent which must serve as the basis of all future er Fight the Right Danger. A Hundred Proletarians for Every Petty Bourgeois Rene- gade! STARVE OR FIGHT! A Challenge to the Unembloyed By GRACE M. BURNHAM, Labor Research Association. (Continued) s Unemployment Insurance. Employers’ Schemes. ERHAPS 60,000 workers in the United States are partially insured against unemployment. Schemes voluntarily initiated by private em- ployers cover less than 12,000 workers. “The remaining number—about 50,000—are receiving some form of unemployment benefit through trade-union schemes or agreements between the union and the employers. Private insurance schemes arbitrarily con- trolled by the employers are dangerous wea- pons held over the heads of a few thousand workers, by means of which these workers are kept unorganized, speeded up and used as shock troops in the employers’ production. drives. There will doubtless be an increase in this type of insurance in the near future since the large insurance companies can be counted on to exploit this field. It is therefore im- portant to examine the various schemes of this kind now in operation and to see what workers get out of them. The much heralded Columbia Conserve Com- pany of Indianapolis, the first plant to estab- lish an unemployment insurance plan in this country, confines its beneficiary features to the office force in return for which they are worked 70 to 80 hours a week in busy seasons With n> extra pay. The Dutchess Bleachery, headed by another “Jiberal” employer, established its unemploy- ment fund in 1919, a year of huge profits. The scheme provides that workers have to he with the company one year vefore they can draw benefits, and then they receive oniy half pay. The fund started with $85,000, and by October, 1927, had dropped to $18,926. The plan of the Dennison Manufacturing Company limits the paying of unemployment benefits to six days. Workers with dependents get 80 per cent of their weekly pay and others only 60 per cent. Temporary workers are not eligible for benefits. The Dennison Company runs an open shop. It is an ardent advocate of rationalization in industry. Its unemployment compensation is of no value to the hundreds of workers it has laid off in “stabilizing” its prof- its. In this process its force of compositors has been permanently cut down from 89 to 15, Electrie trucks and conveyors have replaced skilled with unskilled labor, and materially reduced the average number of workers em- ployed. The “belt,” split operations, and im- provements in machinery have already cut che working force from 20 to 40 per cent. The United Diamond Works, the only non- union cutting factory in the diamond industry, started a plan of unemployment relief in 1921. To become eligible to benefits workers must be with the company six months. In case of shut down, factory employees receive 25 per cent of their average earnings, while men in super- visory positions get 50, 75, and, in some cases, 100 per cent of their wages. Women ottice workers receive 50 per cent, but factory hands get only 20 per cent. Less than 109 workers are covered. The Crocker McElwain Paper Company uses unemployment insurance to reward strike breakers and weaken the union. In 1920 when the skilled workers took the jobs of the un- skilled who were on strike, the company intro- duced unemployment insurance as a reward. Workers must be with the company tive years acts of the Russian social democrats in ques- tions of religion. Should one have gone fur- ther and set out in full detail all the atheist conclusions? We think not. This might have called forth an exaggeration of the fight against religion on the part of the political party of the proletariat, and have led to a blurring of the boundary between the bour- geois and socialist fight against religion. The first task which the social democratic fraction could do in the Black-Hundreds Duma has been honorably accomplished. The second, almost the most important task of social democracy—the exposure of the class role of the church and the clergy in the sup- port of the Black-Hundreds government and of the bourgeoisie in their fight against the working class—has also been splendidly ful- filled. Certainly, there is still much to be said on this theme, and the social democrats will on further occasions know how to amplify the speech of Comrade Surkov; but his speech was neve....-less ¢ ellent, and it is the daty of our party to spread it among all party organ- izations. Thirdly, the right’ sense of the thesis which is so often distorted by the German oppor- tunists—the “proclamation of religion as a private affair’—should be explicitly made clear. This, unfortunately, Comrade Surkov did not do, This is the more to be regretted, as the fraction had already committed an over- sight in this question, which the Proletarii at the time nailed to the counter, namely, the error of Comrade Beloussov. The debates in the fraction show that the discussion on atheism concealed the question of the right in- terpretation of the demand for the proclama- tion of religion as a private affair. We shall not lay the blame on Comrade Surkov alone fc this error of the whole fraction. More, we state openly that it is the fault of the whole party, which has not sufficiently cleared up this question and has not sufficiently made social democrats aware of the meaning of Engels’ comment concerning the German op- portunists. The fraction debates show that there was an unclear approach to the question, not a deviation from Marxism, and we are cor ‘xced that this error will be put right at a later meeting of the fraction. In broad outline the speech of Comrade Sur- kov is, as said, of outstanding excellence and should be circulated by all our organizations. In the handling of this speech the fraction has shown a conscientious fulfillment of ite social democratic duty. It only remains to wish that correspondence conc:rning tie debates in the fraction should appear more frequently in the party press and so build up a close ideological unity in the activity of the: party and of the fraction. ‘ AThe End) covered by employment guarantees. Wages for these “guaranteed” workers have been steadily reduced in comparison with the “non- privileged” employees. Some 5,000 to 6,000 workers employed by the Proctor and Gamble Company, soap manufac- turers, are covered by unemployment insur- ance, Fortyeight weeks’ employment with transfer any employee to work other than at which he is regularly employed.” This includes the arbitrary imposition of wage cuts and overtime. Thus the working force can be con- stantly manipulated to let out employees eligi- ble for pensions. Even a cursory analysis of these schemes shows that they are designed entirely in the interests of the corporations who initiate and terminate them at will. The majority are frank- ly anti-union in intent and purpose and are used to build up a small group of workers to be used as loyal pace setters for the rest of the working force. Moreover they cover a mere handful of workers. (To Be Continued) j \ | full pay is assured workers who have been | with the company six months or more. “The | company reserves the right to discharge any employee at any time for any cause and to b Geneva Coal Conference By GUSTAV SOBOTTKA (Berlin). ae Geneva Coal Conference began on Jan- uary 6 and ended on January 13. The course of the conference has plainly shown how the mine owners and their governments in the various countries regard the question of regulating working hours in the mines. of compelling necessity would the lengthening of the working day be considered, but that such necessity might arise. Germany does not yet know how the Young Plan will affect its economy, therefore, he argued, we could not tie our hands and renounce the employment of one of the means which in a given case would render it possible for us to fulfill the obligations laid upon us. The representative of the Polish mine own- ers, Dr. Falter, declared that Poland is suffer- ing from over-population and therefore can- not accomplish so much as the other countries in the sphere of social policy. The repre- sentative of the Polish government, Mr. Sokal, also spoke to the same effect. Mr. W. R. Smith, as representative of the English Government, declared that his gov- ernment is urgently desirous that hours of work and also wages and other conditions in the mining industry should if possible be settled internationally in the near future. A miserable role was played by the repre- sentatives of the Miners’ International. They were all in favor of the seven-hour day, but this should be voluntarily granted by the mine owners and the capitalist governments. What the latter think of this proposal was shown by the vote taken at the end of the conference. The proposal that a seven-hour day be fixed was rejected by all the representatives of the mine owners and governments. A further proposal in favor of a seven and a half hour working day was likewise rejected. It was the German Government representative who was responsible for the turning down of this pro- posal. He declared that he could not vote for it as the underground lignite mines are in- cluded in this convention. This was not the veal reason for the rejection as the lignite mines in Germany in which the workers are employed underground are of quite minor im- portance. The real reason for the rejection , of a seven andga half hour day by the Ger- man Government representative is the desire to retain the 8 or 8%-hour working day in the mining industry. After the seven and the seven and a half working day had been rejected, the Dutch rep- resentative brought forward the proposal that hours be fixed at 7%. The vote on this sug- gestion proving a tie, it was not adopted. Thus the comedy at Geneva reached an end, with which its reformist wirepullers are highly dissatisfied. The “Vorwarts,” the organ of the German social fascists, writes that the con- ference was wrecked owing to the resistance of the mine owners, while the workers showed complete understanding. Quite right! The social fascist representatives of the workers showed a complete understanding for the wish- es of mining capital, and mining capital wants an eight to nine-hour day and not reformist phrases. i The miners of all countries can, however, once again see that the conferences are in- tended to deceive them regarding the true state of affairs. The seven-hour shift cannot and wil? not come by means of international agreement, but the mimers in the different countries must win it by determined fight both on a national and international scale. Workers! Join the Party of Your Class! Communist Party U.S. A. 43 East 125th Street, New York City. 1, the undersigned, want to join the Commu- nist Party. Send me more information. Name .icsscsseccecveseveveccccsccccecwes®® AdArORS ., oi. cee ccvoenecces UbYerscooves . Occupation .. Age.. Party, 43 Eest 125th St., New York, N. ¥. Mail this to the Central Office, Communist Se before receiving an employment guarantee of 52 weeks a year. In 1927 the company ha@ about 600 workers, less than half of whom were | Every capitalist representative spoke in favor of a regulation of working hours, but a regu- lation such as he would like to have for his own country. It was the representative of German mining capital, Dr. Jungst, who de- clared most openly for a prolongation of the | working day. He stated that only in the case | 7