The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 17, 1931, Page 4

Page Four rf 4 A of Vv nh Sa 1t ogorsk Begin to Roar By Two yea Sage of 100 pop JACK PERILLA ‘0 a small steel mill story of M The gorsk and other s the foundation of dependence of the ov is the final blow t the ability of the w their own resources a own direction, to build a industry. During this huge blast furnaces of will begin to roar The steel ind world practicall, while in tt ose who doubted large be likes of which cannot be se of the capi duction in the United lowest ebb in In be 400 per cent of its war tion. A general c n of euts is being cond in the industry of the United States, bu in the Soviet Union wages are stead ily rising. The total pre-war productior 4,000,000 pig iron in Russia In Magnetogorsk al u 1933 2,500,000 tons will be p to be increased to 4,000,000 n, (The tng the second five-year pl U. &. Steel Corporation in Gary, In- diana, the largest in the world until the completion of the Me metogorsk plant, has a production cxpacity of 3,000,000 tons.) With the -ompleti of Magnetogorsk, Kt ot steel mills in the Ukraine. ng the present five-year plan, the U.S.S.R. will reach and overstep many of the Yeading imperialist countries in this basic industry. In 1929 the produc- tion of pig iron in Great Britain was 7.1 million, in France 10.45 and in Germany 13.4 million tons, In the Urals alone, during the present five- year plan, it will reach the capacity of 8,000,000 tons. The economii foundation of a socialist economy is being completed. nets American Workers their s > played their role ot | n mnstruction of the ting the plans so that 000 t on of the River for the Ural power and nths ahead of the n engineers. two by Shock competition, col- ative, is the answer to the bosse who blabber that under a e, ur lism, there | e no incentive or initiative. } the Urals and from Kuznets | away on a new al that w re of Man- steel for tractors and ary for st industrialization of the U. R. A total of 7,500,000 tons of oal will be needed yearly for the| steel production in Magnetogorsk. To keep up with the production fig- vload of 10 cars (40 tons each) will leave the Mai netogo: m range for the blast furnaces every 8 minutes. The whole section of the Urals, which until recently was uninhabi- ated, will feel the effects of the in- trialization of Magnetogorsk eet. cars and busses will connect plant with the Socialist City and the various other institutions being ed. An electrified railroad radius of 50 kilometers is be- | tructed that will tie up the ction with the developments etogorsk. whole s in Mag In order to overcome the dust and asses that emanate from the steel plant a forest is being planted between the plant arid the Socialist City, in order to make the homes livable. Capitalism has no such concern as the healthyof the work- ers in industry In spite of all obstacles the work- in the Soviet Union Helping to Build Socialism Last spring this group of American carpenters took their tools and woodworking machinery and moved workers rule, where unemployment wage cuts unknown but wages are to the Soviet Union, the land where does not exist, where not only are constantly being increased. A few months ago, when American miners’ living conditions were @ much driven down to the starvation level that in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia there broke out strikes of coal miners of tremendous militancy—just at this time wages for miners in the Soviet Union were increased 30 per cent. On Oct, Ist one million steel workers in the U. S. received wages of steel workers in the Soviet Union were raised 30 per cent. a wage cut—on the same day the In the last 12 months the Soviet Union opened 518 new factories, mills, and mines, while in the U. 5. in this same period factory after factory is either completely shut down er i a week. s working part-time only a few days In the heart of the Urals (whichers in the Soviet Union forge forth ts a new Socialist industrial center), this plant will be able to serve the heavy machine industry in the vari- ous centers of the Urals and the Soviet Union with pig iron and partly finished stecl. ‘The total investment in this plant {ts 700,000,000 rubles ($350,000,000) This will include not only this im- mense steel plant, but also a large coking plant, chemical plant and so- cialist city, Schools, technical in- stitutes, laboratories, communal kit-| chens and laundries are part of this tremendous program—much of which has already been completed. Many were the obstacles that they were confronted with, but through) | building their own Socialist State. | The achievements of the Soviet Union |must be popularized among the | American working class—in the coun- try of plenty (starvation). The | achievements of Magnetogorsk must jbecome a real point of agitation among the steel and metal workers of this country who bear a great portion of the brunt of the present |crisis and who are confronted with | one wage-cut after another. IL P. | INNOCENT, SERVED 23 YEARS: CHESTER, Tll., Oct. 8.—Jesse Lucas the correct leadership of the Com-| left prison a few days ago after serv- munist Party all the obstacles were overcome and the plan completed. | Consider, for example, the fact that 90 per cent of all workers, employed in building the plant were former peasants, never employed in indus- try, and in spite of this they accom-. ing 23 years of a life sentence for a crime which another man’s confes- sion now shows Lucas did not com- mit. He was convicted in the same kind of a court they use on arrested strikers e a produc- water ve-eighths of @ and the | sur- constructed | time } railroad | rship of Bill| the | the | Furnaces BY GROPPER | “We Need Economists of 200 Years Ago---” || By E. BERT. { Under the title of “We Need Some {Economists 200 Year Old” Leonard | | P. Ayres, economist of the Cleveland Trust Co. and one of the leading| |lights of bourgeois economists has | | written an open confession of the |present futility of bourgeois econ-| omists. This ‘Cleveland Trust Monthly is the elegy of the “new era” economics and an mission that bourgeois economics was not only incapable of under- i standing the development of the cap- | italist economy prior to the crisis but | (was incapable of understanding’ it| after it had occurred, | He introduced his article with the} | following statement of the impotency | | of bourgeois economics to even grasp | the significance of this most serious | lcrisis that the capitalist world has | ever known. i | “Few people foresaw this depres- | sion. Among the few who gave warning of its coming there can be | found scarcely anyone who realized that it was likely to prove unusu- | ally severe, exceptionally widespread | and of prolonged duration. These | | statements are true alike of econ- omists and business executives, of bankers and business statisticians, of American and of authorities in foreign countries. The truth is that | two years ago the world was en- tirely unprepared for any such per- lod of hard times as has befallen us. During the past decade the econo- mists of the capitalists have been | collecting data in a manner and to lan extent never before attempted by | the capitalist class. They have pre- |pared graphs and charts to cover | | tens of acres. | | They have prepared indexes of | every conceivable series of data. They jhave used every conceivable math- ematical device to twist and turn this |data, They have derived out of this | data cycles of business activity vary- jing in length from months to years or decades. And then they have |fought over their data, their cycles | jand their indexes. | Ayres points this out for it wor- | ‘ries him, | “This nearly universal failure to recognize the significance of the gathering stormclouds of business trouble is specially disquieting in view of the fact that more and bet- ter research work relating to the problems of business cycles has been done both here and abroad during the past ten years than in all the previous decades.” ‘The bourgeois economists have per- formed all their contortions for naught. ‘They have collected and collected. ‘They have torn this data |in shreds in six different directions jand have put the puzzle together | again, But it makes no sense now. |It was a maze and remains one, They have hung their intellectual gymnastics around their necks and they have sunk deeper in the morass of incomprehension as the crisis of their economy, the capitalist system, has become more acute. They have learned that it has be- come more acute, Ayres points this out. He writes that “This is not merely another major depression. It is a major secondary post-war de- pression, which is something differ- ent and more serious.” But he hasn’t learned anything. After this statement that this crisis is in some ways unique he fills his articles to the extent of several hun- dred words with a rehash of the | most superficial summary of all bour- geois economics has said in describ- ing the course of crisis. He lumps this together under the following heads: “Price inflation, farm land prosperity and speculation, price de- flation and depression, city prosper- ity and speculation, secondary price deflation and secondary depression.” It would be rather futile to analyze his description of crisis. | | | | | | ing revolt flared forth in ready res- | at once their allies and their lead- | bearable slavery, increasing starva- Whet is Ayres’ conclusion from his , analysis and from the analysis and | hundred years has been in vain. The | and squirmed in a frenzied endeavor | of the found: bourgeois economics of the past two data that the bourgeois ha so pa~ | bourgeoisie cannot understand its own tiently piled up. “What the country | system which has reached maturity— | needs now is some well-trained econ- | omists who are 200 years old.” This | is the intellectual bankruptcy of | bourgeois economics. This is the open | has already entered the period of de- cay. But Ayres does not want even the bourgeois economics of 200 years ago. icle published in the |@dmission that the development of ‘The bourgeoisie has during the past By RICHARD B. MOORE (Head of the National Negro De- partment, LL.D.) “Praise be for the LL.D.” With this spontaneous cry of joy, mil- jions of down-trodden .Negroes on the Black Belt of the South hailed the united, militant, mass struggle of the International Labor Defense to save the lives of the nine Scotts- boro boys. Smarting under the bloody yoke of the white, slave- driving, lynch-oppressors, these bit- terly exploited and persecuted black toilers instinctively knew this move~ ment of white and Negro workers, + rising for united fight, against this ruling class lynch frame-up, to be | theirs. Over the “grape-vine” telegraph, through fields and shops and streets and houses, the struggle of the LL.D. was heralded with light- ning speed. Even in the churches where the religious, slave-supersti- tions of the hypocrital lynch-mast- ers weight heavily upon them, the Negroes burst forth with new spirituals, singing not of the slave- drivers’ Jesus, but of the LL.D. as their “savior.” In such forms even among the most backward, their spirit of ris- | | | | In the I. L. D, and other working-class organiza- the Negro masses recognized ponse. militant tions, ership for the fight against the un- tion, and savage terror of the land- lord-boss system of racial and na- tional oppression. Equally significant is the militant mass response of the white workers to the Scottsboro campaign. For the first time do we see-millions of white workers in the United States and throughout the world battling in the forefront of the struggle in defense of the Negroes, demonstratng in the face of brutal Police terror, giving of their last pennies, fighting side by side with their Negro class brothers, taking their stand squarely against the capitalist. Jim-Crow lynch system, for equal rights and self-determin- ation for the doubly oppressed Ne- gro toilers. Th's effective solidarity and fight of the white workers against the Scottsboro “rape” frame-up, despite the vicious and lying white ruling class howl for the “protection of white womanhood,” is of the most tremendous importance. It shows that under the pressure of the in- creasing exploitation, misery, and terror of the deepening capitalist crisis, the white workers and poor farmers are realizing in life and deed that unity and common strug- gle with their Negro fellow-toilers is the only hope for the protection and emancipation of the entire working-class. No less significant is the savage offensive of the white ruling class terrorists and their fascist and re- formist agents against the united mass defense movement led by the LL.D. The vicious attacks upon the International Labor Defense, the Communist Party, the League of Struggle for Negro Rights and other proletraian organizations; their furious drive to split and smash the united front; the violent attempts of the police thugs and | fascist gangs to break up protest meetings and demonstrations thru- out the United States and in other countries; the terror at Camp Hill, Birmingham, Chicago, Barberton, and elsewhere against the Negro toilers—all prove that the imperial- ist. lynchers realize only too well that this working-class mass strug- gle is the only force which can free the Scottsboro boys and smash their savage lynch system. ‘The treachery of the Negro mis- leaders of the N.A.A.C.P., Urban League, UNIA, etc., is of the great- est political significance. The mass struggle cf the ILD forced these reformist master-class agents into the open, to expose their true class role as the best@servants of the white ruling-class lynchers and the worst enemies of the Negro masses. The betrayal of the Scottsboro boys by the NAACP top leaders through the Klan lawyer Roddy who urged the boys to plead guilty, aided the lynch court, and was the first to launch the attack of the blood- thirsty slave-masters upon the LL. D, and the united front mass move- ment, has ‘been followed by ever more vile betrayals. ‘Wm. Pickens appeared at first to support the LL.D. only the better to betray the Negro people. Speak- ing at Chattanooga, Pickens open- ly incited the southern lynch ter- rorists against “the Communists sapping through the densely ignor- ant masses of the Negro popula- tion.” The very lynch press which howled for the blood of the Scotts- boro boys praised him for this “warning.” The Camp Hill mas- sacre which followed when Ralph Gray and four other share-crop- pers were murdered by a police mob and scores arrested, and the murderous terror Jet loose in Bir- mingham, shows how effective was this ominous “warning.” ‘The entire line-up of imperialist ' lynch terrorists and their white and Negro lackeys must be met by reso- lute struggle and merciless expos- ure. The united front must be built from below, winning still broader masses of white and Negro toilers and all who are ready to join in the struggle. The Scotts- boro campaign must be intensified and’ broadened. It must be linked up with the defense of the 44 Negro and white miners of Harlan now facing another capitalist death frame-up, with the struggle to free Mooney, with the local defense struggles against the rising persec- ution of the Negro masses, with the fight to free Yokinen and against deportation of foreign-born work- ers, with the campaign for the lib- eration of all the victims of boss terror, The murder of the Scottsboro boys has been halted thus far by the mass pressure of the workers, white and black. But a still more powerful fight is necessary to force their release from the clutches of the imperialist lynchers, and this depends upon persistent organiza- tion. Thé°struggle to save the lives of the nine Scottsboro boys is of the greatest moment to the entire working-class. Workers of a'l reces and nationalities! Rally to the | j century clawed its way, has wriggled to escape just that economics whose foundation was laid by the fathers) of political economy. They tried to} | transform bourgeois economics from | an objective science into a subjective | searching of the soul of the shop| keeper, of the soul of the higgler and | |peddler. This was marginal utility. | But this theoretical way out left them | nowhere—the advent of imperialism, | of the day in the sun of United States | |finance capital had as much rela-| | tion to marginal utility as to palm-| istry or Christian Science, ‘They have given up the ghost. They have bidden farewell to theory. They started out again with institutional |economics under the leadership of | Veblen and ended up collecting fig- ures and drawing charts. This is| | the end of bourgeois economics—us- ing adding machines and calculating | machines, chart.paper and India ink. | They don't want their economics |of 200 years ago, And why not? Be- | cause Marx took up ecunomics, drain- ed it of every bit of real insight these fathers of bourgeois economics had | been able to gather ane “1 the basis | of the further develo,iuent of the | capitalist system since their time laid |bare the very soul of capitalist ex- | Ploitation and drew the historically | logical conclusions. To hide this ex- | | ploitation, to cover up the historical | role in the proletariat in cleaning out | this system of exploitation the econ- omists of the bourgeoisie fled to mar- ginal utility, to institutional econ- emics and to statistics, While the bourgeois has fled from its heritage of theory of a century and two centuries ago this heritage fell to the class that is destined to sweep out this bourgeoisie—the pro- | letariat. It is only in the ranks of | | the preletariat that that heritage has | been evaluted for the analysis of the imperialist era of capitalism. The proletariat has had need of the econ- ; omics of 200 years ago and through | Marx has used them. The bourgeoisie jcalls for a return of this two cen- | | tury old analysis of the foundations of capitalism. The proletariat has! gone forward from this foundation | dissecting every stage in the further | development of capitalism—analyzing the growth of capitalism into imper- jalism and clearly showing the path of the downfall of capitatisin, This bourgeoisie harks back two centuries because it has not been able to understand this greatest of all crises that capitalism has yet known in its history. ‘The proletariat through its world party, the Commu- - SS Mooney - Harlan - Scottsboro cam- paign! Build the united mass strug- gle led by the LLD. into a mighty force that will sweep over the lynch terrorists—that will free all work- ing class prisoners! The Scottsboro struggle marks a turningpoint in the struggles of the toiling masses of the world. In the U.S, the militant working-class led by the LL.D. came forward as the defender of the Negro masses agains white chauvinist terror. This struggle demonstrates the rapidly growing invincible solidarity of the toilers of all races and nationalities. It proves the correctness of the program of the International Red Aid and is itself a great forward stride towards its full realization. “The struggle of the Negro mas- ses for social and national eman- cipation are an igseparable part of the proletarian struggles against imperialism.” “Labor cannot eman- cipate itself in the white skin where in thé black it is branded...” Karl Marx. “The fiercer and more bloody becomes the murderous attack of capitalism, the more indissoluble must become the international sol- idarity of the exploited and .op- pressed masses of the world.” (Re- sclution of the International Red Aid on Work Among Negroes), | tion. This delegation is now being | visit to Soviet Russia—but a brief oes The Decisive Year-- Socialist Speeds Building Ahead By A. A. HELLER Note:—The following is an extrac’ | from the pamphlet, “The Decisiv: Year in the Soviet Union,” publishe. | by the Friends’ of the Soviet Unio The author has spen many years it the U. S. S. R., studying conditions there. The pamphlet may be obtain- ed from the F.S.U., 80 E. 11th St. Room 221, New York City. The grea! socialist construction that Heller describes will be studied at first- hand by the American Workers’ De- legation that wil leave this month to aitend the celebration of the 14th anniversary of the Russian Revolu- organized by the Friends of the Soviet Union. | The year 1931 is the third year of the Five-Year Plan, called the Deci- sive Year. This year is to prove whe- ther the Five-Year Plan is going through as anticipated or whether through foreign or domestic com- plications its fulfillment will be re- tarded. Ten years passed since my first space of time in human history. In the capitalist world these ten years have brought the. masses greater misery than they knew in 1921 — more unemployment, severe wage reductions, harder labor thru speed- ups and rationalization’ schemes, a general lowering of the standard of living. Nor ‘has the millenium ar- rived in the Soviet Union. Commun- ism is not yet established there; but the amount of preparatory work accomplished in these ten years to- wards the establishment, of a so- cialist society, the depth and strength ations already laid is nothing less than heroic. If John Reed were alive, he would write an- other book: “Ten Years That Changed the Face of the Earth”; | for that is exactly what the Bolshe- | viks achieved in these ten years— | literally changed the face of Old Russia, as eventually they will change the face of the world. | As I write this I see in my mind | the Russia of 1921 and compare it} with the Soviet Union of today. Then } —idle factories, hosts of unemployed, broken down transport, flooded mines, silent oil wells, and what was most painful—the wretched villages with a strip of land cultivated here and there, but miles and miles of waste land, unused, neglected, over- grown with brush and wild grass. Now—what a change! Let me take you around with me, on my all too brief journey through the Soviet Union, and let us together examine this change. A glance at Moscow. First of May, International Labor Day. The great- est demonstration of workers’ solid- arity the world has ever seen. A genuine holiday spirit pervades Mos- cow, bright, warm sunshine, smiling | skies, the sound of music everywhere. ‘The marching hosts pass through the Red Square, in front of Lenin's mausoleum, at first regiment after | regiment of Red Army men, then the | workers of Moscow, young and old, | men and women, over a million strong. They are greeted by Soviet leaders, by delegates from distant lands. From early morning till late in the day the paraders file by; all nist I'sternational, on the basis cf the international development of im- perialism in the past decade unde:- stands this crisis, and more, was able to pretict it. At the fifteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which was held in December, 1927, two years prior to the present crisis, Comrade Stalin summed up the an- alysis of the Communist Interna- tional of the historical period in} which capitalism then found itself. Comrade stalin stated: “On the contrary, from the very fact of stabilization, from the. fact that industry develops, from the fact that trade increases, from the fact that technical progress and industrial possibilities increase while at the same time the world market, the limits of that market and the spheres of influence of various imperialist groups remain more or less stable, arises the most profound and sharpest crisis of world capitalism, pregnant with new wars and menacing the exist- ence of any form of stabilization, “From partial stabilization devel- ops an intensive crisis within the capitalist system, the developing crisis shatters stabilization—such is the dialectic of capitalist develop- ment at the present historical mo- ment.” This is the Marxian analysis of the crisis that the capitalist class finds only a maze which their statistics make no sense of. This is the an- alysis by the proletariat of capital- ism in the present period. ‘Through Marx the proletariat took the genius that wes contained in ti wiitings of the fathers of political economy. ‘The 1eve:utionary proletariat led by the Communist Party has, out of the magnificent heritage lett it by Marx forged o1e of its mightiest weapons for its ettack on the system of im- perialist exploitation. The bankruptcy of the capitalist system is reflected in the bankruptcy of its “theoreticians.” The bankruptcy of its “theoreticians” of the bour- geoisie is admitted and revealed in the demand of one of its chief pro- phets, Ayres, ‘that the capitelist class of the United Stetes needs econo- mis!s “200 years old.” | Moscow is out in the streets, in fes- ive mood, But let us see the city in its work~ lay clothes. Here is the Amo Plant automobile manufacture). In 1921, vhen I first visited it, it was standing still, now it has grown into an enor- mous plant; it is already putting out thousands of automobiles (trucks mainly, Soviet type); while a year from now its production will reach , 25,000 trucks. Next to it is Dynamo —another huge electrical plant, em- ploying over 10,000 workers, quade tupled in size and capacity within the last few years, and still expands ing. A whole new city has grown up around this section of Moscow—new plants, workmen’s homes, clubs, téch- nical institutes. Nearby is my fami- liar Ragas plant, now called Wat— All Union Autogenous Trust. In 1928 this was an empty lot. Today almost a dozen acres are covered by handsome buildings, housing the latest machinery, working 24 hours a day every day in the year (except legal holidays) and planning addi- tional buildings and equipment, to satisfy the demand. “Come Visit us next year,” the plant director said to me, “we shall clean up all this muck around the buildings—some of them are on the point of completion—and put down lawns and flower beds!”— We visit another Wat plant, at Ros- tokino, at the other end of the town. I saw it completed in 1926, a bit/of a plant then. Now it has kecéme a huge establishment. So if is with other plants in Moscow — electrical plants, (Electrozavod), metallurgical (Hammer and Sickle), rubber (the famous Bogair), clothing and shoe plants, furniture plants, etc., ete.— old and brand new, huge establish- ments, employing thousands of work- men, operating two and three shifts a day, 350 days a year. The popula- tion of Moscow is near three million now; in 1921 it was less than two. million! Dnieprostroy We arrive at Alexandrovsk in the wee hours of the morning; this is the railway station nearest to Dniepro- story. It was formerly called Zapo- rojye and was the headquarters of the Ukrainian Cossacks; a sort of natural fortress with the impassable Dnieper protecting. the place; from here the Cossacks ¢arried on their depredations over a wide territory, coming back to Zaporojye with their —is a peaceful, sunny -town, basking in the glory of nearby Dnieprostroy. booty. Now Zaporojye—Alexandrovsk © | To throw a dam. across the Dnieper» here at the Porogi (rapids) in the [ heart of the former Cossack country, _ was an old dream of Russian en- | gineers, Already “under the old re- | gime surveys and investigations were | carried out, the. tsarist government considering it of military importance to raise the waters of the Dnieper in order to make it a navigable river; but the project never got beyond that stage. It was left’ for the Bol- sheviks to bring the project to reali- zation, not at all out of military con- siderations,.but in order to tap a vast amount of power for the rapidly growing Soviet industries. Already in 1919-20 Krzhizhanoysky, in his plans for the electrification in the Soviet Union named Dnieprostroy as one of the chief sources of electric power; and Lenin heartily supported Krzhiz- hanovsky—for to. Lenin, as you will recall, electricity’ plus Soviet power: equal Socialism.“ ° Cossack Country Work on Dnieprostroy is now near- ing completion; it-‘comprises a dam of magnificent, proportions and beauty, a power station to house nine turbogenerators of, 90,000 h. p. éach, and a lock canal to ‘permit ships to pass above the’ Fajilds, ‘The raising of the river levet“some 25 feet will flood a territory, fifty miles in extent, and will provide, sufficient storage capacity to permit uninterrupted operation of the plant. With the dam and power stationas the center, a whole new industrial-city 1s rising all around; an aluminum: plant, chem- foundations—in a hum of machinery,. the passing, ships and frains will, hav replaced what was a short time a robbers’ nest and an impassable barrier. Dnieprostroy was to be com- pleted, according te original plans, 1933, but the Five-Year Plan has hastened construction, so that it will be completed at the end of 1932; and part of the powér plant, I was told may be in operation this year! I was so impresséd by Dnieprostroy —its sweep and magnificent dimen- sions, by the industrial undertakings projected in the. immediate proxi- mity, by the vast and daring scope of the whole layout—that I accepted this as a symbol of the growing might of the Soviet Union, as a mile- stone on the road to universal Com- munism. And Dnieprostroy is but one of a number of great undertakings that are beginning to dot the Soviet land in every direction and that create an impregnable foundation for the approaching Socialist State. . We bid goodby to our hosts—at 3 in the morning—and speed along to the next point Rostov-on-Don, for’ @ sight of Selmash (agricultural im- plements plant) and the large state farms, Giant and, Verblud, in North- ern Caucasus, some. little distance? from Rostov.” _