The Daily Worker Newspaper, June 2, 1930, Page 4

Va Published by the Com Sonare. New York ¢ Address and mail all ic eaceaneneeaedl y Publishing Co., Inc . our y, N checks ae gaily Y. Teley the Dai ne Stuy y Worker. 26-28 Union Squat UNEMPLOYMENT, THE #.F, L. AND THE S72: ment Comrade In the preceding 1 Dunne exposed the directly the A. F. of L. in relation t and piled up the evide cialist” party—Editor. st role of By BILL DUNNE, ALLOUS and cynical, American capitalist government does not even Co! ile for unemployment: “The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics makes the most comprehen- sive collection of data concerning t employment in the United Stat wes do not refer to unemploy ling—Current History, April, 1930.). ; The U. S. senate committee on unemp! ment recently state Government interf ence in the establishment and direction of un- employment insurance is not wéce and not advisable at this time.” President Hoover is insurance furnished by the government A king of France, who after lost his he: said when told of the misery of the mass: “After me, the deluge.” The Communist Party raises the demand for full unemployment insurance to be paid by the government from the profits of the capitalists on the basis of full union wages. Th one of the immediate and pa demands of our Party. ; To abolish unemployment the working class must abolish capitalism and set up the dictator- ship of the working class as against the pres ent dictatorship of the capitalist class. In So- viet Russia, where the working class, led by the Communist Party, headed by Lenin, carried through the social revolution, employment is increasing. This is the only country in the world of which this is true. Hungry workers will be asked and compelled to enter the armies of their bosses’ government and fight to make the robbers richer, to de- stroy the only working class government in the world. against unemployment lll The Objective of the Imperialist Drive— The Communist Program. The Present drive against the working class and its most advanced section, the Communist Party, is no ordinary wage-cutting campaign. There is a tendency even among militant work- ers to look upon the capitalist offensive merely as the result of the natural desire to take advantage of the economic crisis and mass un- employment to reduce wages and increase profits. They fail to see that the difference between the present offensive and the previous “open- shop campaigns,” “American plan” drives, ete. consists in the fact that American imperialism has for its objective .in this offensive the de- struction of the whole historical and social base of the living standards of the working class. ‘The speech of Owen D. Young, spokesman for the big capitalists, whose name has been given to the financial plan which enslaves the German working class to American finance capital, with the enthusiastic aid of the Ger- man social-democrats, leaves no doubt as to their intentions: Young. said: “Det no man think that the living standards of America can be permanent- ly maintained at a measurably higher level | then those of other civilized countries.” By “America” Young means the American working class and the working farmers. Does anyone think that Young is proposing that the capitalists reduce their huge profits? The return to the big corporations of $163,000,000 in back taxes by the Hoover-Wall Street gov- ernment when millions of workers are jobless and hungry is the answer to this question. American imperialism has loaned billions to “stabilize” the shattered capitalist tems of the European countries. It has insisted, and the social-democrats of the Second Inter- national and the Amsterdam International of trade unions have gladly agreed, that these loans were to be guaranteed by the drastic re- duction of wages and living standards of Eu- ropean workers. This has been done. Only the Communist Parties and the sections of the International of Labor Unions have led the working class in struggle against these attacks. democrats (Kautsky, Hilferding, Mueller, Zoergiebel, etc., in Germany, Vandervelde in Belgium, MacDonald, Snowden, Caxton, etc, in England, Jouhaux, Boncour, ete. in France, Bauer in Austria, etc.), have all joined with the capitalists and their governments to make the working class bear the full burden of “stabilization.” Now the leaders of American imperialism demand that the American working class ac- cept, be forced to accept, the still lower living standard of European workers in order that _ their rulers can add to their swollen fortunes at home and compete more successfully in the world markets. This is no ordinary wage-cutting offensive. It is the beginning of a new phase of the class war in which the offensive of the capitalists and their government has for its objective the wiping out of all social, economic, historical and political factors which have resulted from the fact that in its rapid rise to a position of world domination American imperialism has had to bring in from outside its territorial confines only one important commodity—labor power. The American ruling class intends to destroy every economic and social advantage that the working class has gained from the fact that American capitalism developed in a huge coun- figures | The social- | try re free land existed up to three de- cades ago, had no mass of peasantry which it could drive from the land into the industries, that rising italism, as compared with the European capitalisms which arose | on the ruins of the feudal system of society | with its millions of serfs, was faced until re- | cently (in the historical sense) with a con- | | tinual shortage of labor. The so-called “American standard of living,” the special features of capitalist democracy, etc., are the result of these factors. (Among others whigh we cannot go into here). | Marx pointed this out with the utmost clear ness. Writing of conditions in the United States in the early period of capitalist devel- opment he said: “Tp, colonial countries (Marx here refers to new countries like the United States and Can- ada where there was no mass native popula- ited) the law of supply and de- tion to be exp) mand fators the working man. Hence the relatively high standard of wages in the United States. Capital may there try its utmost. It cannot prevent the labor market from being continuously emptied by the continuous con- version of wage laborers into independent self- sustaining peasants. The position of wage la- borers is for a very large part of the Amer- jean people but a probational state, which they are sure to leave for a longer or shorter term. The exhaustion of free land closed the ave- | nue of escape for the workers. First herded into the industries with no other means of livelihood except that of selling themselves to the capitali: between seven and eight m lions of worke@s are now driven out of the in- dustries by rationalization and the inevitable cyclical crisis of capitalism. The capitalists see in permanent mass un- employment a factor which, coupled with every available means of suppression (mass arrests of striking workers, fascist terrorism, injunc- tions, long prisen sentences for Communists, deportation of foreign-born workers, lynching of Negroes, against whom special methods of torture and terror are used, and upon whom the misery of unemployment and low wages bears heaviest, etc.) will enable them to put across their slave program for the working class. Enlisting the services of the fascist leaders | and upper stratum of the A. F. of L., finding | in the socialist party an agency whose his- torical role is to confuse and betray workers into the camp of their class enemies, the capi- talist class and its government, are trying to turn American workers into a slave class. cowed, submissive, disorganized, chained to the machines of the imperialist order, driven into the slaughter of a new war for the destruc- tion of the Soviet Union and the conquest of the entire globe for American imperialism. American imperialism can live only by the lowering of the social, economic and political standards of the working class to the slave level. Without the destruction of the historical part of the value of the labor power of American workers, which will allow the still more drastic lowering of the physical factor to the point where workers exist below even the present subsistence level, all advantages obtained so far from rationalization by the ruling class will | be lost. American imperialism will be driven from all the world markets except those it can hold by military force. S “The value of laboring power is formed by two elements—the one merely physical, the other historical or social. Its ul- timate limit is determined by the phyisacl ele- | ment, that is to say, to maintain and reproduce itself, the working class must receive the neces- saries absolutely indespensable for living and multiplying. . “Besides this more physical element, the value of labor is in every country determined by a traditional standard of life. It is not mere physical life, but it is the satisfaction of cer- tain wants springing from the social condi- tions in which people are placed and reared up. The English standard of life may be reduced to the Irish standard; the standard of life of a German peasant to that of a Livonin peas- ant.” (Value, Price and Profit.). American imperialism is trying to destroy entirely that portion of the value of American labor power which has its origin in special conditions of American capitalist development. It is this fact which the A. F. of L. fascists, and the socialists, carefully try to conceal from the working class, It is quite clear that the strategy and tac ties of the working class must be of a much higher order—open political struggle of the most militant character—to combat a capital- ist offensive of the character we have proved it to be, than if we faced merely one of the many “open shop” drives of the previous period. It is precisely in their attempt to ¢onceal the class character of the struggle and the sweeping objectives set for itself by the capi- talis& class, in conformity with its desperate needs, to confine the struggle to the mere ques- tion of wages and hours, to try to. conceal the (extent and imminence of the danger facing the working class, to delude the workers with the theory thet the election of “friends of labor,” of the parties of the class enemies of the work- ers, will change the course of events, as the A. F. of L. does, or to spread the still more dangerous delusion that legislation secured by the election of candidates on a reformist pro- gram will change the capitalist system, as the socialist party does, that the treachery of these fas and social-fascist betrayers of the mass- es consists, | | i | | | (To be continued) The Renegades By K. E. HEIKENNEN a the Lovestone “Revolutionary Age” No. 12 (dated April 21) we read an article carrying the headline “The Crisis in the Finnish Co- operatives.” For one who has followed the English “Pyramid Builder” and the Finnish official organ of the petty bourgeois Halonen’s clique, it is self-evident, that this unsigned article originates from Halonen’s office in Superior, Wis.—from sources the present counter-revolutionary Lovestone in bygone - years used to characterize as “social demo- cratic,” because the content is word for word “a Find Eac & repetition of what Halonen has for the last nine months been peddling. In the first paragraph of said article we read the following: “The chain of consumer co-operatives in Northern Michigan, Northern Wisconsin and Northern Minnesota, which unite about 20,000 Finnish workers and poor farmers, has always been one of the largest mass organizations under the ideological leadership of the Com- munist Party and has always constituted an important support for the revolutionary strug- gle in this country. Tor the last few years h Other Sunday, at 26 28 Onton APU , “DATWORK." geeer™ New York, NY. | i aan Day these co-operatives have been thriving and their real (not formal) relations with the Communist movement growing closer and closer.” A Year and a Half Ago. This is what Renegade Lovestone’s official mouthpiece now states. About a year and a half ago, when in the leadrship of the Party, the same Lovestone officially instructed the Finnish Bureau to open a struggle against these “incurable” opportunists “drifting away from the Communist line.” Officially these instructions are recorded in the Poleom min- utes from January, 1929, This in itself proves that Renegade Love- stone has become a political bedfellow of George Halonen and tha@ he thereby gives his official indorsement to Halonen’s anti-Com- munist united front built officially by the fas- cist bureaucracy of the A. F. of L., social fas. cist S. P. elements, Trotskyite Sulkanen (whom Lovestone with great beating of trumpets ex- pelled from the Party), with Calumet and Hecla controlled Finnish white elements, with elements directly under the control of Finnish white consulates, with petty bourgeois anar- cho-syndicalists, ete., etc. All of these elements | who hitherto bitterly fought the Communist line in the co-operatives, are now united with | Renegade Halonen against the Communist Party and the line of the Comintern and state word for word exactly what the Lovestone “Revolutionary Age” prints in its columns. Lovestone and Halonen. In the light of all this it is no accident that, despite the fact that Lovestone some 18 months ago issued instructions to fight Halonen’s social democratic line in the co-operatives, he Ceotial Organ of the Communist Party v! { he | Party under the pretense of “being neutral towards different tendencies in the labor move- ment.” This “neutrality” included the appeal- ing to the fascist bureaucracy of the A. F. of L. to organize a strike against the Finnish Communist daily, the Tyomies (as a recent bulletin of the Minnesota State Federation of Labor proves), a brazen attempt to acquire the control of the Party daily, the Tyomies; of initiating a splitting move in the workers’ clubs and women’s councils against the Communists, etes, etc., which were decisively defeated. Fur- thermore these opportunities developed in an amazingly short period in open fascism in the struggle against the Communist line. Love- stone’s sheet makes a plea for the poverty of the Co-operative Central Exchange, when the question of giving financial support to the struggles carried on by the masses, by the in- itiative of the Party was concerned. But this has by no means prevented this same “poor” | Exchange from spending some $30,000 in the struggle against the Party line during the last six months! The Meaning of the “Crisis” “Fortunately,” states the Lovestone sheet, the Finnish co-operative movement has been saved fromthe Party! Looked at from the surface and: without taking into consideration the: dialectical development taking place, the renegades may for a brief time rejoice from their “victory” in the Finnish co-operatives. This they achieved by padding the delegation, by padding the membership meetings of the local co-operatives where the delegations were elected—and in most cases even as such, re- ceiving a “majority” varying from 1, 2 to 5. at the same time refused to raise his finger | to remove Halonen from the position of the C. C. co-operative fraction bureau. secretary- ship and that he refused to take any steps against Halonen, when the latter in the last pre-convention period came over to the ex- majority! The tragedy of this new alliance is, however, the fact; that the same Halonen opened a struggle against the Party last spring by pretending to fight the Lovestone- ites and by pretending to defend the line of the Comintern Address in doing this! All this, however, does not prevent Lovestone from printing in his counter-revolutionary sheet the following about the origin of this struggle: “It is clear that at the bottom of the crisis in the co-operatives is the same ‘third period’ idiocy that characterizes the line of the Party and the Comintern everywhere”! And furthermore: “According to the new ultra-left theories, the mass organizations have no right to be non-Party organizations . . . with the result that these organizations are being wrecked ... this is what was attempted against the Finnish co-operatives — but fortunately it has failed... This is what. the Secretariat was informed by Comrade Halonen (our ital- ies) ... but this of course meant nothing to the Party,” etc., ete. Is it true, as the Lovestone sheet claims, that the co-operatives “have constituted an important support to the revolutionary strug- gle in this country”—under the leadership of Renegade Halonen? No! This is a wanton distortion of facts. Quite the contrary. The facts are that at first the opportunists in the | co-operative movement raised the importance - of the basically reformist co-operative trading on the same level with the trade union work and the revolutionary party of the proletariat. In practice this meant that all the activities | of organizing the unorganized and of building the Party were dropped, even the building of the Party fractions in the co-operatives were branded as “unprincipled machinations,” all Party forces were drowned {n building big business turnover for the co-operatives, per- sistent efforts were being made for gagging the Party press from saying a word about the issues of class struggle in connection with co- operatives—whatever forces the Party had. were to be at the disposal of the business ef- forts of the co-operatives, but the Party was | not to be in a position to ask anvthine from ‘the co-operatives, following the line of Ren- ; egade Lovestone’s “Comrade Halonen.” ‘Neutrality.” Exactly against this petty bourgeois line the Party finally took up a decisive struggle. During this struggle the opportunists built the above mentioned’ united front against the However, in this struggle the Party has for the first time been built in District 9. This “crisis” has been nothing else but a bolsheviza- tion process in the traditionally social dem- ocratic Party organization of District 9 and in the mass organization surrounding it. The Party organization has purified itself and is gaining decisive influence amongs the masses. The best proof of this are the mags demonstra- tions of August 1, March 6 and May First. Another undisputed proof of this is the ris- ing of the Lumber Workers Union, the Metal Miners Union and of the new Marine Workers Union in this District. An unquestionable proof of this is the fact that the workers’ mass organizations have categorically rejected the brazen social fascist line of Halonen. And the organization of the revolutionary left wing in the co-operatives, having in its first delegate meeting some 300 delegates present, the car- rying on of a” systematic struggle against these agents of the bourgeoisie, the fact that over 10 large local co-operatives have already in-this brief time openly declared themselves | against the social fascists and for the Party. and the ever more acute growing ceapitali crisis both in the industrial field and in agri- culture, will give sufficient guarantee of the fact that neither Halonen nor his new ally, Lovestone, will have time to grow gray on the laurels of their “victory” in fighting the Com- munist International and the Communist Party of the U. S. A. in line with the multi-million- aire, Dr. Warbasse, now in the leadership of the American consumers’ co-operatives, deteri- orating rapidly into agencies of the chain store system of finance capital, and becoming an open adjunct to the capitalist oppressive sys- tem, directed against the workers. In the Brooklyn co-operative, an open ally of Halonen and through him of Renegade Love- stone, a clear example of this development was given a few days ago in connection with the May Day preparations. When the Brook- lyn, N. Y., police arrested a worker employed by the Brooklyn co-operative (under the lead- | ership of S. P. and Trotskyite forces (for dis- tributing the Daily Worker, the S. P.-Trotsky- ite management ‘promptly fired him upon his veturn from the jail after being released on bail. . Renegade Lovestone finls himself in a very worthy company! We may congratulate him, ; because the sooner he openly parades in this company, the sooner will his “majority group” of a few score ef degenerated intellectuals | dwindle in the oblivion of the serap -heap of | history. Already now we may. justly speak about him by starting the story: “Once upon | a time there a was...” th AL Ry mail everyw Machetian and Bronx re éar $6; six months $3; $2: two months $1; excepting Boroughs of New York City, and foreign, which are: Ove year $8; six months $4.60 | PRE-CONVENTION DISCUSSION Not Only Self-Criticism But Also Self-Correction! By I. AMTER (Written in Jail) HE demonstration on March 6th marked the beginning of a mass movement, in the real sense of the term, behind the Communist Party. These demonstrations indicated two things: (1) The radicalization and militancy of the | workers. (2) The recognition of the Communist Party as the fighter for the working class ani its power to rally them. May First, in many cities, demonstrated the same fact. Demonstrations and parades took place in districts and cities where none had been held before. The mobilizing achieved through March 6th, the readiness and ability of the Communist Party members to lead the action, the arrest of hundreds of Com- munists—Party and Y. C. L, members and Young Pioneers—have made the workers un- derstand that there is but one leadership in their struggle and that is Communist lead- ership. Two Facts. It is true that two facts have enabled the Party to become the leader of masses, namely the crisis and the ridding of the Party of its former opportunist leadership and tzeir policy, together with the co-ordination of all Party forces. These are two potent factors that take the first rank. In judging March 6th and May First, how- ever, we find that what, was stated in criti- cism of March 6th has to be repeated—almost without modification, namely: (1) Failure of the shop nuclei to carry on organizational work in the shops by forming united front committees (which serve as embryos of shop committees affiliating to the T. U. U. L.); (2) failure to concentrate upon certain select- ed shops and factories of basic and particu- larly of war industry; (3) failure to mobilize the T. U. U. L. as a whole (although some affiliated unions and leagues functioned better than for March 6th); (4) failure of the T. U. U. L. groups in A. F, of L. and other unions. to raise the question of May Day and of strike {although the Executive Council of the A. F. of L. reported rmhore than 20 per cent of its membership out of work at that time—40 per cent of the organized building trades in New York City; (5) failure to rally Negro workers (an unpermissible neglect); (6) failure of the , sections and nuclei to be given and to assume responsibility not only for carrying out certain tasks, but for developing initiative in devis- ing methods of doing the work, issuing leaflets, shop bulletins etc.; (7) failure to bring the unemployed to the demonstrations in organized bodies. B Although the fraternal organizations -re- sponded better (which showed an improvement in the language work) nevertheless the demon- strations indicate: (1) Failure to correct at all the mistakes of March 6th as far as the districts, sections and nuclei are concerned; (2) failure to draw all the T. U. U. L. unions, leagues and groups into organized mobilization work; (3) failure to build the T. U. U. L.; (4) failure to build the Daily Worker. Resolutions Not Hnough. Tt was not sufficient for the Central and District Committees to adopt resolutions on the March 6th and May First campaigns and discuss them with the membership. It was not sufficient to get united support of these resolutions by the-membership and in drawing up the plans for May Ist to get recognition of the mistakes of March 6th and look for the correction of the mistakes. The error of the Districts, and therefore of the Central Committee, was a major political record | and organizational error, which, if repeated, * will lead not only to the Party’s “reliance on spontaneous response” of the masses to the slogans of struggle of the Party, but to the Party losing its ability to mobilize and lead the workers in struggle. The Question of Spontaneous Action, * The question must be put fundamentally: 1) Can the masses attain the revolutionary goal through spontaneous action; or must the Party organize them through struggle for im- mediate issues and lead them through more and better organization, greater consciousness and militancy to the overthrow of capitalism? 2) Can the Party expect to organize for the revolutionary liberation of the masses if it continues to fail to plan concretely, carry out and lead in organized manner the masses in demands and demonstrations for immediate is- sues? 3) Can the Party and the masses Jearn _ | to approach the revolutionary goal in organ- ized manner if there is continued repetition, with little correction, of basic weaknesses and | errors? Many of these defects are duc to the type of district and section committees and nuclei functionaries and bureaus, This must be radi- cally changed in the elections of the coming conventions, at which live, young, militant, new elements who have made the turn and are quickly responsive to rapid changes and new situations, must be elected to responsible posi- tions. Check-Up and Control. Secondly, the Party must, from top to bot- tom, at last institute a regular system of check-up and control. The time has come when we must know exactly where we stand: our forces, strength in the unions, general support, work done for the Party press,’ building up mass organizations, etc, Finally, the Party must learn that organ- ization for demonstrations like March Sixth and May First is not- mere mobilization for a certain day, but entails the building up of permanent organization, establishing the Party press. The Party has not yet learned how in the process and just in the swing of organ- izing the masses for a specific demonstration, the best conditions exist for building up the revolutionary unions, the Party press, the workers ‘defense, the I.L.D., F.S.U., W.LR., ete, for building up the Party. The, Party still conceives of the building up of these or- ganizations as distinct and separate” cai paigns. This is a serious mistake. March Sixth and May First afforded splendid opportunities for doing all of this work, which would not only have made the demonstrations even more im- pofing, but would have left permanent organ- ization in many shops and factories. Coming Tasks. : 4 The Party now faces many union conven- tions, the July 4-5 Unemployment Convention, August First. These are all part and parcel of the campaigns carried out on March Sixth and May First. They are not separate cam- paigns, but must be integrated as parts of one another and particularly of the election campaign, which must be their immediate climax. If. this is not done, the Party will develop good agitprop qualities, but will not organize and mobilize the masses in organized manner for the struggle. The Party will not establish itself in basic industry; it will not reach the masses of Negro, women and young workers. The errors of March Sixth and May First must be corrected at once ideologically and organizationally. Not only criticism and self- criticism, but also correction and self-correc- tion! Language Fractions and T.U.ULL. By JAMES LUSTIG. TE foreign born workers working in the steel, mining, auto and the other basic in- dustries are those who are feeling the greater burden of the present economic crisis in the United States. The bankers, the capitalists of this country want to solve this crisis by put- ting the burden on the shoulders of the work- ers. They want to produce cheaper articles in order to be able to take up the fight on the world market against their rivals, They try to accomplish their aim by speeding up the workers, by wage cuts, by lengthening of the hours of the workers and worsening the gen- eral conditions of the toilers. The attack of the boss is aimed firstly and mainly against the unorganized and unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Hundreds of thous- ands of foreign born workers belong to these categories. This is why these workers are hit the hardest by unemployment, speed-up, wage cuts, ete. Every class conscious worker must draw the conclusion that it is his or her duty to build up the Trade Union Unity League. There are hundreds of thousands of foreign born workers organized in different fraternal organizations, the problem before us is to link up these workers, organizing these organizations with the T.U.U.L. The first and ‘most important step in this direction is to bring before these organizations the question of the T.U.U.L. The most ~im- portant form of organization between the for- eign born workers are the different sick bene- volent societies. Now we must present the question of the T.U.U.L. in such a form that each and every member of the organization shall realize the importance from the point of view of his or her organization, the necessity of building up the-T.U.U.L. We can bring up a number of reasons that will convince every thinking worker of this necessity but we are mentioning only a few. 1) With the intrody industrial accideyts are increasing very rapidly in New York State. Last year alone there were 8,000 mortal and 590,000 injurious accidents. From this fact alone you can prove to the members of the sick benevolent societies that their members are liable in connection with the speed-up to get hurt on the job and in this way increase the expense of these organiza- tions. The Trade Union Unity League is the only organization which takes up the fight ion ef speed-up the | against speed-up. It is self-evident that it is to the interest of the members of the sick benevolent societies to help build up the T.U. U.L. and fight against speed-up. 2) With the lengthening of the hours and with the introduction of new machinery the number of unemployed is increasing. From this follows that many members of these organizations on account of unemploy- ment. are incapable of paying their monthly dues. This is one of the reasons why these organizations are losing so many members. It is the T.U.U.L. who takes up the fight against unemployment, against the lengthening of the hours. Therefore, it is clear to each and every | worker that it is in his interest to help to buildup the T.U.U.L. These two examples are sufficient to prove to each member of these fraternal organizations, the absolute necessity of their participation in the building up of rev- olutionary trade unions, It is not sufficient to carry on agitation and propaganda among the workers organized in these fraternal organizations. Outside of edu- cation and propaganda we must take organ- izational steps. Therefore, it is imperative that at the very earliest moment possible we shall elect T.U.U.L. organizing committees of the branches of these organizations. The business of these committees will be to get the names, addresses and occupations and all the other necessary statistical data about the workers organizing these fraternal organizations. This material shall be turne] over to the local office of the T.U.U.L. This very important work will be successful only if the Party comrades who are member's in these fraternal organizations are going to take the leading part in the work in the com- mittees to be elected at least one Party mem- ber must be represented. Those comrades must make the reports_every week to ther units in which they are.members in order that the work, shall be carried on systematically. The T.U.U.L. shall issue a leaflet directly to the foreign born workers organizing these organizations where we did not have any Party fraction and in this way trying to get into contact with these workers, The Party comrades working in the fraternal organizations must understand and realize that the most important campaign of the Party at the present time is to get 50,000 new members for the T.U.U.L.,, in this light they must carry out these instructions of the Party in these organizations, iin i oS, ane - |