The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 9, 1932, Page 4

( Published By the Comprédafiy Publishing Ca, tc, Ealty except Bunday, at 60 Mast 13th Gt. New York City. N. ¥. Telephone Algonquin 4-7956. Adéréss and mail all checks to the Daily Worker, 50 East 13th Street, New York, N. ¥. Cable “DATWORK.” Dail Yorker’ Porty U.S.A. By mail everywhere: One year, of Manhattan and Bronx, New York City. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: 96; siz months, $3; two months, $1; Foreign: one year, xcepting Boroughs six months, $4.50. Toward Revolutionary Mass Work ( DISCUSSION O THE 14TH PLENUM, Opportunity and Danger Confronting the Party GRAVE.danger facing our Party is that it should not fully appreciate the deep radical- zation now taking place among the masses and not take the utmost advantage of the un- exampled opportunity to organize and lead these masses in struggle and to build itself up in so doing. Many signs indicate that this danger is actual and real. Undoubtedly there is a far- reaching underestimation of the radicalization and also of the leading role of the Party in the existing situation. This tends to make the mobil- ization of the Party more difficult; ft weakens all our campaigns and struggles. It must be over- come at all costs and the Party thrown mili- tantly into the fight at every point. During the period of “high” prosperity it must be admitted that we were very much isolated from the masses, not only organizationally but ideologicaly. Save for some sections of mining and needle, the workers did’ not understand us or our program. They tended to look upon us pretty much as an extreme sect which had little to do with their actual life. And the worst of it was that we tended to fit ourselves into this sectarian isolation, both ideologically and by our general methods of work. But now a fundamental change is beginning to take place in the attitude of the masses to- wards our Party and its program. Great masses of workers, under the press of circumstances, are beginning to be more responsive to us. On the one hand, in the midst of the deep economic crisis and confronted with wage cuts, unemploy- ment and mass starvation, these workers are becoming distinctly more responsive to our struggle slogans. Our program begins to become intelligible to them. And on the other hand, the great rise of Socialism in the Soviet Union is also having profound effects upon them. Even the most backward of workers ate beginning to realize that something very important and revo- lutionary is taking place in the U.S.S.R. More and more the advanced elements are seeing in By WM. Z. FOSTER | | For Revolutionary Parliamentarism “Anti-parliamentarism”, in principle, in the sense of an absolute and categorical repudia- tion of participation in the elections and the | parliamentary revolutionary work, cannot, therefore, bear criticism, and is’ a naive, | childish, doctrine, which is founded some- times on @ healthy disgust of politicians, but which does not understand the possibilities of revolutionary parliamentarism ‘Besides, very often this doctrine is connected with a quite erroneous idea of the role of the Party, which in this case is considered not as a fighting, centralized advance guard of the workers, but as a decentralized system of badly joined revolutionary nuclei, (From the Second C. L Congress resolution on Revolutionary Parliamentarism, reprinted in full in the February issne of the COM- MUNIST.} ‘ | | the U.S.S.R. the way out of the present intol- erable crisis, and to correspondingly take it more seriously. More than that, these workers inevitably tend, to some degree or other, to connect up our Party with the success of the Five Year Plan. Our recent experience contains many practical demonstrations of the new fighting spirit of the workers and their growing readiness to ac- cept the leadership of our Party. Typical among these were our big unemployed struggles in Chi- cago, Cleveland and Detroit, the strike move- ments in Western Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Colorado, the Scottsboro campaign, the success- ful Party recruitment, the huge mass character of our May First demonstrations, etc. Indiana Plans a Second State Hunger March By NAT ROSS 'H® Indiana Hunger March of May 2-3-4 of last year was the first step in the direction of a mass movement among the unemployed of | the state. The militant response of thousands of | Negro and white workers and the fact that the most enthusiastic meeting en roue was held in Marion, scene a few months before of the lynch- | ing of two Negroes, scared the lynch bosses of Indiana. The bosses fear was evidenced on May 22 in the vicious sentence given to Theodore Luesse, secretary of the Indiana Unemployed Councils and militant fighter for Negro rights. At the same time the bosses saw that terror and jailing alone could not hold back the movement, as indicated in the statement of Jay E, White, Legion leader, that “the truth is that the state- ments these leaders make (in the Hunger March bills) are all true . It means that we must meet the situation with something besides force.” But neither ‘terror nor demagogy has availed the bosses. In the past year the Unemployed Councils have developed from a sectarian move- ment in ten cities to a movement in thirty cities throughout the state, with an ever growing num- ber of supporters and with an outlook for devel- oping mass struggles, Despite this progress, the Unemployed Councils are still impermissibly weak compared with the possibilities. Weakness of Unemployed Movement What are a few of the reasons for this weak- ness? First and foremost, the Unemployed Coun- cils have been too much of a relief organization FOR the unemployed and not a fighting organi- zation OF the unemployed. We were too sec~ tarian and didn’t get down to brass tacks, but acted as bureaucratic leaders from above with- out involving the masses themselves in the activ- ity, We acted as the tail -to the charities without feeling the real pulse of the masses and we did not use the slogan of unemployment insurance as the central unifying slogan of the un- employed. We failed to reach the part time workers and make them the link between the unemployed and the factories. In addition we did not give popular Marxian explanations on the basis of the experiences of the unemployed themselves, of the role and class character of the government and the charities, of the cause of the crisis, etc. All of this allowed the reformists and fascists of all shades to gain strength among the unemployed. More Starvation The conditions of the workers and poor farmers of Indiana are steadily growing worse, Wage cuts again face the staggered miners, steel and metal workers of the state. The measly relief given to the unemployed through forced labor is being cut everywhere. Miners are starving and are forced to live on dandelions, causing the Seripps-Howard Times to say that “A new gen~ eration is starting with a viewpoint that is any- thing but American. Under such conditions the outbursts of violence are not surprising.” In Kokomo, where the unemployed were to be put on the soup line, the city officials prepared to call on Governor Leslie for Indiana guards- se" men and to establish martial law to “quell riots,” % Indianapolis 10,000 pre-school children went without milk during the winter, according to the city doctor. In West Indianapolis, where the soup kitchen was recently closed, hundreds of workers face starvation. The same is true of the Calument steel region. Despite the existing mass misery, the bosses are planning an intensified hunger drive to bring the level of the workers down tn an animal ex- istence, as seen by the recent appointment of an “efficiency” committee in Indianapolis to cut down on the shameful relief now being given. Leslie's Cabbage Soup Plan. All this is in line with the state program of Governor Leslie, the Wall St.-Hoover agent in Indiana, Only recently Governor Leslie an- nounced his “relief plan.” All unemployed were to obtain vacant lots and cabbage seed somehow and were to use the fruit of their garden labor for cabbage soup next fall and winter, with no other relief to be given. The Times, fearing the ‘Mass resentment to this brazen cabbage soup plan states: “The garden plan is a trek back to the days of hand labor, to primitive standards of living, to the abandonment of the machine in industry. It is a return to semi-savagery. fine picture of American civilization! On March 16, in connection with the calling of a special session of the Staté Legislature for tax “relief,” Governor Leslie declared he would oppose the special session because “what if they should come here and appropriate one million dollars. for the unemployed?” This open hunger talk was repeated on March 26, but the governor raised the ante to 25 million dollars, which was the demand of the Unem- ployed Councils of Indiana. But under the pressure of the Unemployed Council and espe- cially as a result of the realization of the broad support to this demand for a 25 million dollar immediate appropriation, the governor was forced to change his tone, and on April 21 de- clared: “I have been misunderstood about not wanting to call a special session for fear that something would be appropriated for those in need. I would only be too glad to do so, but the constitution of the state does not permit it.” The nightmare of hundreds of elected delegates | from all over the state and thousands of work- ers marching up the State House steps demand- ing food has already scared the governor. | On to the Indiana Hunger March. ‘The Conference of the Indiana Unemployed Councils, which will be held on May 8 at 2 p.m, at 932% S. Meridian St. in Indianapolis, will bring together delegates from the committees of the unemployed throughout the state and fra- ternal delegates from labor unions and workers’ organizations. The conference will lay final plans for a gigantic State Hunger March in June, to be preceded by militant local struggles throughout the state. The whole program of the Hoosier bosses indicates that only by the most persistent, bitter and militant mass battles will the unemployed be able to put a halt to the hunger drive of the bosses and force them to give real relief. ‘The Hunger March must actually voice the sentiments of hundreds of thousands of work- ers and poor farmers who will organize and fight for a concrete program of demands against hunger and misery and for relief and social insurance. The Hunger March must be a mighty weapon in cementing the bond between Negro and white workers and breaking down the segre- gation and lynch atmosphere which the Hoosier bosses and their agents create, ‘The Hunger March must establish the Com- munist Party as the political party of the work- ers. It must gain wide support for the election program of the Party. This is particularly im- portant since the bosses and their lackeys are trying to separate the Communists from the Unemployed Council. A splendid example of this is shown by the remark of Chief of Police Morrisey of In- dianapolis, who told some arrested workers that the “Unemployed Council was O.K., but the Communist organizers are poisoning the minds of the unemployed.” The bosses know full well that the native American workers will fight like all hell when they are convinced that the Communists are the best fighters for the working class’ They know full well that under the leadership of the Communist Party the Unemployed Council will become a revolutionary fighting army of the unemployed against hunger. That is why the bosses are scared stiff. The Hunger March must go over the top! Forward to building a network of committees of the unemployed throughout the state. Forward to mass preparatory struggles in every section of Indiana! For the immediate release of ‘Theo- dore Luesse, jailed leader of the Indiana unem- ployed! For $25,000,000 immediate cash relief from the special session of the legislaturé and for unemployment insurance at full wages at the expense of the government and bosses! On to the state house plaza and into the legis- lative halls with the mighty roar of the hunery against hunger! “mM But it is clear that the Party does not fully realize the significance of all this. We do not entirely appreciate the changing attitude of the masses towards our Party. ‘There remains too much of the old feeling of sectarian isolation. There is not enough of a Bolshevik confidence in the ability of the Party to lead the’ masses, not enough of a realization that the Party is in fact as well as theory, becoming the real mas= leader, At its worst this sectarian lack oi ov_- fidence results in the development of theories, or the practice, that the masses of workers just beginning to| wake up must pass through the stage of Social Fascist organizations and illu- sions before they are ready for Communist leadership. All this is bound up with and greatly wors- ened by our generally sectarian approach to mass work which the resolution of the recent Plenum of the Central Committee so sharply corrects; the failure to concentrate upon shop work and shop organization, the sectarian han- dling of partial economic demands in the every- day struggles. of the workers, the formal and sectarian application of the united front tactics, etc. All these sectarian methods and viewpoints prevent the Party from coming forward effec- tively as the mass leader of the workers. It is necessary that these sectarian tenden- cies to overcome as quickly as possible. The | Party must fundamentally improve its mdss work at once. It must break with the old methods and outlook. It must make the turn that the Comin- lutely come forward as the leader of the workers. All its mass campaigns must reflect the new turn. Only in this way can the Party rise to the height of the great tasks and opportunities con- fronting it in the present situation of rapidly growing struggle and radicalization of the work- ing class. The Election Campaign and the Struggle Against Social Fascism, Especially must the Party throw all its forces into the election campaign and make a deter- mined effort to apply the new methods of mass work. The developing campaign will not only be @ great opportunity for the Party, but also a severe test. It will demonstrate to what extent the Party can free itself from sectarianism and formalism, to what extent it is conscious of its leading role in the sharpening class struggle. The election struggle, better perhaps than any other of our present mass campaigns, will most clearly indicate our ability or failure to really understand and apply the resolution of the Central Committee Plenum. Our enemies are keenly awake to the situation and we must be also. Demagogues of all kinds aré busy to confuse and mislead the awakening workers. The Socialist Party aims to utilize the election campaign to rebuild its scattered forces. Tt 1s throwing all its energy into the campaign. Meallister Coleman expresses their sentiments when hé Says: “The Sosialists go into the strug- gle of the presidential eampaign, knowing very well that such an opportunity as now presents itself may not be repeated in their life-time”. Our Party must be even more awake to build itself, to lead the workers in effective struggle against the bosses and their Social Fascist agents. * ‘The coming election campaign offers our Party the opportunity for the greatest mass mobiliza- tion in its history. We should be able, if we rise to the occasion, to greatly stimulate the strug- gles and organization of the revolutionary unions and the minorities in the reformist unions; vastly strengthen our unemployment work and our work among the Negroes; we should be able to make the fight against war and for defense of the Soviet Union real issues among the Amer- ican working class; we should be able easily to triple or quadruple the membership of the Party and the YCL, and we should be able to enor- mously increase our vote. The election campaign should mark a turning point in the life of our Party. If we can appreciate its opportunities and properly mobilize our forces it should carry us far along the road to a mass party and really establish our Party as a powerful factor in the American class struggle. Unemployment - Social Insurance --- Central Demand Lin. Elections campaign must be the demand for unemploy- ment and social insurance at the expense of the state and employers. Placing in the cen- ter of the mass election work the immediate demands of the workers and toilers in fac- tories, bread lines, unemployed gatherings, in towns, the Party must on this basis pre- sent concretely and popularly to the broad working masses its program of the revolu- tionary way out of the crisis. In exposing the whole policy of the bourgeoisie, the Party must make clear to the workers that only through the revolutionary class struggle, fighting for the program and supporting the candidates of the Communist Party, can workers counteract the attacks of the bour- geoisie and protect and secure their immedi- ate demands and prepare the ground for the further advance of the working class inter- ests: ‘The main slogans which the Party must put forward are: (1) UNEMPLOYMENT AND SOCIAL IN- SURANCE AT THE EXPENSE OF THE STATE AND EMPLOYERS. (2) Against Hoover's wage-cutting policy. (3) Emergency relief without restrictions by the gavernment and banks for the poor farmers; exemption of poor farmers from taxes, and no forced collection of debts. (4) Equal rights for Negroes, and self- determination for the Black Belt. (5) Against capitalist terror; against all forms of suppression of the political rights of the workers. (6) Against imperialist war; for the de- fense of the Chinese people and of the Soviet Union. (From the main resolution of the 14th’ Ple- nam printed in fall in the April issue of the COMMUNIST and in the DAILY WORKER of April 28.) tern has so long insisted upon. It must reso- | ~~ waite © GvARDIST WALL STREET’S “PEACE” DELEGATE By BURG; AVID SHUB, a writer for the “New Leader” (organ of the Socialist Party of New York) recently had some articles in the issues of Feb- tuary 6 and 13 of that periodical, entitled, “Un- employment In Soviet Russia”. These articles are filled with the worst malice and viciousness against the only Workers’ Republic. They deal not only with the alleged situation of the unemployed workers of the Soviet Union, but also with the function of the, trade unions in the Soviet Union, Shub paints a gruesome pic- in the Soviet Union, seeing bnly hunger, misery and slavery. He does not make any effort to understand thé life of the peasantry of the So- viet Union; of the rationalization that has taken place, as a result of the introduction of trac- tors and electric power; of the freeing of mil- lions of peasants from the land for the use of industry in the cities, and that in the passage from the land to the city there is a temporary unemployment. He does not believe that Social- ism is being built in the Soviet Union, and de- clares that the Five-Year Plan is a failure. He denies the need of two million men in the fac- tories of the Soviet Union. He therefore comes to conclusions that fit beautifully into the pro- gram of the imperialists and counter-revolution- ary Social-Democratic International and the Socialist leaders the world over. 1, Shub declares: “Nowhere is the situation as tragic as it was in Russia in the years 1919-- 1921, when more people succumbed to the Com- munist experiment than to the World War”. Any novice in history knows that the years 1919- 1921 were the years of struggle against the counter-revolutionary invasion of the Soviet Union, which was aided by the Social-Democrats all over the world and the imperialist governments. During these yéars, a famine took place, and the Soviet government had to struggle on two fronts—against hunger, and imperialist inter- vention. Shub knows this, or should know, and lies about it. 2. Again, he says, “At the present time, the position of the Russian people is much worse than in all other countries”, This is a lie, as even capitalists who have been in the Soviet Union attest, since they recognize that the So- viet Union has unlimited markets for capitalist supplies, and that the Soviet Union is the only government which meets its obligations prompt- ly. This, Shub, who pretends to be an expert on Soviet matters, knows and lies about it to the workers. There are 50 million unemployed workers in capitalist countries, who together with their dependents represent a mass of 200 million peo- ple. In every capitalist and colonial country wages are being slashed, and the standard of liv- ing is being brought down almost to the starva- tion level, while in the Soviet Union, on the other hand, wages are continually increasing. 3. “As poorly organized as was Russian capi- talism before the Revolution, it was better able to assure the populars of the living necessities than is the Soviet Government”. 'This is another deliberate lie of Shub, who knows of the starva- tion and famines in the cities and on the land under Czarist Russia, and that the peasants and workers were “shot down when they rebelled. There is no hunger in the Soviet Union at the present time, because on the basis of collectivza- tion and of state planning of agriculture and in- dustry, food is not only produced, but is stored up for any period of drought. Compare the situ- ation of unemployment in the U. S. with 12 mil- lion unemployed, and even in the period before the crisis in the mining and textile centers—in fact, throughout the South, where families are continually undernourished—with that of the Soviet Union where every worker and his family is provided for. 4. “It is a mistake,” says Shub, “to believe that with the completion of the Five-Year Plan, the situation will itnprove. As the Five-Year Plan progresses, we are treated to the spectacle of in- creasing hunger, and find in the country, while the enslavement of the populace grows, the land is becoming more impoverished daily. The Five- Year Plan sucks the marrow from the bones of the entire Russian people, and transforms. the workers into virtual slaves.” Workers’ delegations have gone from all capi- talist countries of the world to the Soviet Union, members of the sister-Parties of the Socialist Party of the U. S., from the Social-Democratic Parties of Germany, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, etc. have gone to the Soviet Union; have freely gone about from factory to factory, from collestive to collective, and have ) / ture of the situation of the workers and peasants || Before the Conventions of Our Enemies The New Leader---Open Enemy of the USSR. By I, AMTER witnessed what is taking place there, and when these workers returned to their respective coun- tries, they were expelled by their Social-Demo- cratic parties, for telling the truth about the Soviet Union. Capitalists recognize the growing production of the Soviet Union. American engineers, like Hugh Cooper and John Calder, and many others who are occupied in directing the construction of the big factories and plants in the Soviet Union, and who know the difficulties that the Russian workers face because many of them were recently recruited from the ranks of the peasantry, declare that Secialism is being real- ized in the Seviet Union, But David Shub, a counter-revolutionary “so- ¢cialist”, declares that “with the completion of the Five-Year Plan, the situation will not im- prove”. So fearful are the imperialists of the success of the first Five-Year Plan and the pro- gram of the second Five-Year Plan, and of the rapid, unheard-of development of industry in the Soviet Union, that they are preparipg to de- stroy the Soviet government in order to destroy one of the greatest hopes of the working class of the world. 5. “When the Five-Year Plan is completed, a real and terrible unemployment situation will arise in Soviet Russia. No sooner will these plants be built than many of them will be com- pelled to cease operations, for they will have no internal market”. Shub makes this state- ment because he misrepresents Socialism as merely another name for state capitalism, just as the Socialists all over the world do. Pro- duction in the Soviet Union is for the benefit of the workers and peasants. Production is being increased and will be intensified to cover the growing needs and desires of the workers and peasants. As production increases, the amount of necessary labor power expended will be re- duced in conformity with the needs of the popu- lation, not as in the U. S., where, with the in- crease of production and rationalization, the workers are fired, thereby further limiting mar- kets, and industry slows down. In the U. S. at the present time new inventions are not being installed, because there is no market for in- creased production. On the contrary, there is a tendency to return to primitive and obsolete methods, particularly in relief work with the use of the hoe and shovel, etc. In the Soviet Union, on the other hand, all science, industry and tech- nique are reaching an ever higher level, because every new invention decreases waste, and light- ens the labor of the workers, which results in a general heightening of the well-being of the ‘ workers, To what final conclusions does Shub come? “Capitalism, it is true,” he says, “has not solved the problem of unemployment. Still less, how- ever, has Russian Bolshevism contributed to the solution”. If Russian Bolshevism has not con- tributed to its solution, then Socialism, which means the control by the workers of the means of production and distribution, is a Utopia, Pro- duction and distribution are completely in the hands of the workers and peasants in the Soviet Union. This is supposedly the aim of the So- cialists the world over. This is the method whereby Socialists declare that capitalism and all its evils will be wiped out. If this is no solu- tion for capitalism, then why does Shub call himself a Socialist? He calls himsef a Socialist because he is against Socialism, because he is against Revolution, and therefore is a fit mem- ber and representative of the Socialist Party, and clearly unmasks the Socialist Party and the Socialist International before the working class of the world. HOW TO BEGIN WORK AMONG FARMERS [OW to begin to organize farmers for the class struggle still remains a mystery for most of Party districts. These districts usually “solve” the problem by forgetting it. The time will come when the proletariat will find itself face to face with the question of allies in the struggles for the seizure of power. The natural allies of the proletariat are the terribly impoverished small and middle farmers, the tenant farmers and share croppers and above all, the agricultural wage workers. These va- various categories of agrarian masses make up the overwhelmingly majority’ of the 27,000,000 farm population in the United States. With the deepening of the economic crisis and the sharpening of the class struggle, these masses will either be won over by us to the program. of class struggle, or they will form the mass base for a Fascist movement, the effect of whose demagogy we see well demonstrated in Finland, Germany, Italy, Hungary, etc. They can be won over to the program of class struggle only to the degree in which the vanguard of the proletariat, the Communist Party, organizes and gives them leadership in their efforts to better their in- creasingly miserable living conditions, only to the degree in which the Communist Party systema- tically and energetically points out to them the correct road in their struggles against the in- creasing exploitation and oppression of finance capital. _ Below are outlined some practical steps that all districts should take at once to properly begin agrarian work. ‘ Minimum Steps 1, Every district should have at least one comrade in charge of agrarian work,and if pos- sible, a ‘small committee to work with him. Comrades assigned for this work should be willing to, devote their full time and serious attention to it and must be interested in it. 2. Every section and street nucleus in whose territory there are farms must likewise assign a comrade for agrarian work. On the basis of a preliminary survey of local agricultural con- ditions made by this comrade, together with our general agrarian program, the nucleus should have a throrough discussion of the question. Plenty of matérial for this can be secured from the Agrarian Department of the Central Com- mittee. some agricultural wage workers or smal] farmers, the number to depend on the extent of farming in the district. In these schools the agrarian question should be taken up, particularly with reference to local conditions. ‘The above are absolute minimum steps. There can be no excuse for not carrying them out. Some Further Steps The best way for the units to begin work among farmers is to send out comrades on Sun- days to make personal contacts with~ farmers. From these farmers that they visit they shouild try to find out their main griveances. On the basis of their grievances a meeting of small and middle farmers can be called to dis- cuss ways and means of improving their condi- tions, The meeting should result in the for- mulation of a short list of demands which answer the burning needs of the small farmers, and a Committee of Action should be elected by the farmers to present these demands to the county government, A further and the main task of the Com- mittee of Action is to organize additional masses of farmers around the demands which the farmers themselves put forward. We must warn the small and middle farmers to beware of rich farmer elements who may try to take over the leadership of a militant move- ment, particularly when it is directed against taxes. Such elements can be fought only by presenting the! tax fight, as well as the entire struggle of the small and middle farmers for better conditions as a class struggle against the capitalist class and its representatives in the countryside, the rich farmer and the local banker who are very often one and the same person. Comrades must not hesitate to expose such elements who will try, under the guise of “sympathy,” to divert any militant mass move- ment ifto reformist channels, and utilize it for their own selfish class interests. As examples of this we can cite the history of farm movements at present under such leadership, the Farmers Union, Grange, Farm Bureau, Farmer-Labor Party, Non-Partisan League, the Cooperatives, ete. For further information on agrarian problems, write to the Agrarian Department, Central Committee, P. O. Box 87, Station D, New York City. ss cS ct LLL LLL EEE alee { ’ \