The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 14, 1932, Page 7

‘DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1932 The 80th Anniversary A FEW OF THE THINGS THAT of Marxism in America | KARL MARX SAID ABOUT ALEXANDER TRACHTENBERG 1852. ~ The first Communist periodical in the United States was published exactly eighty years ago. It is true that another “publication, Die -He- publik der.Arbeiter (The Republic of Workers), published in the inter- est of labor’ and which might.~be considered -semi-Communist; ap= peared two years earlier. Its editor was that redoubtable Wilhelm Weit. ling, jjourneyman tailor, political immigrant, utopian Communist, labor organizer, Free-Soiler, colo- niger, etc. Weitling's paper helped to organize the German workers who emigrated to°this country, par- KARL MARX orn May 5, 1818—Died March 14, 1383. - ticularly “after the defeat of the Revolution of 1848, in Germany. Due to Weitling’s activity the. first national “convention, representing about 5,000 German workers in the United States, was held in Philadel- phia in-the fall of 1850, from whieh the American Socialist movemen ean claim its origin. But-it is Die Revolution (The Rev- olution), published in the spring of 1852, that must be considered as the first Communist publication in this country. Due to financial dif- ficulties only two issues of this pub- lication were published, but they mark the definite beginning of Marxist publication in America, The publisher and editor of The Revolution was Joseph Weydemeyer, a friend and co-worker of Marx and Engels, a participant in the Revolution of 1848 who emigrated to the United States in 1851. Weyde- meyer was thoroughly versed in the teachings of Marx and Engels as propounded by them in the €om- munist Manifesto, and, on coming to the. U: S., he soon became active among the German workers, spread- ing among them the ideas of scien- tific Communism. He felt the need for a periodical publication, and he was determined to establish a Com- munist weekly. He wrote about his plan to Marx and asked him to write an article for the first num- ber of the magazine, which was to be published early in 1852. Marx reacted favorably to the idea, but when he had already sent off the first installment of his contribution, he heard that it might have to be abandoned for lack of funds. ‘Marx’s biographer, Franz Mehr- ing, tells of the extraordinary hard- ships under which Marx lived and worked at the time he was writing the “article’ «for Weydemeyer’s paper: His wife, Jenny, was ill, one of his children had died, and the family was experiencing the direst poverty. On a winter day of that year Marx wrote in a lettetr: “For a week I have been unable to leave the house because my coat is in| @ pawnshop; and we can no longer get any ‘meat, for the butcher has refused further credit.” While Marx was working under these conditions on what was des- tined to become one of the classic pieces of revolutionary writings, Weydemeyer was hurrying to ap- prise him of the good news that he had secured the funds with which to publish the first issue of the magazine. “Unexpected aid has at “last removed the obstacles in thé way of. printing your booklet,” Weydemeyer wrote Marx on April 9, “The executive of the modern State is nothing else but a committee for managing | the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”--From the Communist Manifesto aoncneeieeispleeeibacmesis endear henaestinanethnptodioeitaeec~ jeeesetenti gto ¥ shat “Just. after I wrote you, I chanced to meet one of our Frank- furt workers, a tailor by trade, who ‘like myself crossed the Atlantic last summer. When I told him of my straits, he placed all his savings, a sum Of $40, at my disposal.” Weydemeyer was going to publish the -first-issue of a magazine and expected to include among osher maetrial an article by Marx. He asked Marx to write on the coup d'etat of Louis Bonaparte of De- cember 2, 1851. When the last in- stallment of the “artitle” arrived in April, .Weydemeyer did not: need any more copy for his first number of The Revolution, ‘The — entire issue was devoted to the “article,” which was entitled: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. The Frankiurt worker who gave “all his savings” for Weydemeyer’s publish- ing project, made possible the pub- lication in New York of the first editiom: of one of thé :most brilliant historical writings that came from the pen of the greatest genius oi the Nineteenth Century. The Eigh- teenth Brumaire was published in Europe only seventeen years later, and Marx reports that only a few hundred copies of the American edition reached Europe afier its publication. In celebrating Marx’s 114th anni- versary Ameriean Marxists celebrate the eightieth anniversary fof the publication in- America of one of his best works in his Mterary herit- age, as well as the ‘annivérsary of the appearance of the first “Com- munist journalin this country. Al- though penned four generations ago The Fighteeath Brumaire, about which Engels exclaimed “it is, in truth, the work of a genius,” still erves as-|a source book for the study of class relations in society, ‘}of revolution and_ counter-revolu- | tion, of. class collaboration, of the independent role of the proletariat, | of petty-bourgeois reformism, of the role of the peasantry in the revo- lution, of bourgeois-democratic re- volution—of many other fundamen- tal problems of the theory and practice of the revolutionary pro- letarian movement. The Eighteenth Brumaire is an inspired work and, anyone who has been under the spell of Marx’, bril- liant analysis of the class relations of the Second Republic and of the developing counter-revolution ‘in | France, will readily agree with En- gels’ {pllowifig characterization of the book: “Never have we had an example of so fine a penetration into the meaning of living history, |history as it is written before our very eyes from day to day.” maire, the workers must relate the ‘lessons of that important social struggle in French history to] the struggles of which they are them- selves a part. As* Lenin himself practiced and as he never tired of adjuring us: “Marxism is not a dogma, but a guide to action,” we must approach the study of the classics of Marxism-Leninism. with this in view. We must tie up re- volutionary theory with revolution- ary practice, as Marx himself al- ways did. And Lenin, the most il- lustrious pupil of M>rx, became the world leader of the revolutionary proletariat and the oppressed co- lonial peoples precisely because in him more than‘in anyone else was found the corgplete fusion of revo- lutionary theory -and_ practice. Stalin, too, speaks about the fruit- lessness of activity without the sup- pert of revolutionary theory, and of the bareness of theory without re- volutionary. experience. Every worker can read The Eigh- teenth Brumaire for the joy of reading it, for the joy of seeing the stature of Marx rise higher and 'higher, But greater joy is in store \for the worker-reader who will make out of this book an instru- ment in the struggle for the liber- , ation of his class, for the triumph jof. the proletarian revolution to which Marx devoted his life and his great talents, and to which the little volume published ‘in .New York eighty years ago was dedicated. ~ In studying The Eighteenth Bru- UNEMPLOYMENT By BILL DUNNE On the anniversary of Marx, with its more than 12,000,000. unemployed workers in the United States; with the additional millions of part-time workers, whose condition in. many instances, such as in the steel in- dustry, where workers rated as erm- ployed are given one ‘day's work per month, are |but ‘little better than those, of the entire unem- ployed; with the stagger system and the speed-up making devastating inroads on workers’ health, living and sotia) sandards; with unem- ployment increasing, it is well. to recall what. Marx. wrote. 75 years ago about capitalist production, un- employment. and ‘the effect upon the working class. Especially because of the |whole. libraries that were written up to the period of the crisis to. prove that the steady improve- ment, of the wages and lfving condi- tions of workers were inherent in the so-called mass production and high wage theory put forward by the apologists of capitalism and es- pecially by the leadership of the American Feleration of Labor. The theory of “organized capital- ism” also had as its base, and this was one of the chief .demagogie appeals of the socialist parties o the Second International through- out the world, that improvement of workers’ conditions and social stan- dards went hand in hand with the higher organization of capitalism. > Even the gigantic national and international combinations of cap- italism, the huge trustification es- pecially of basic industries, the mergers and re-trustification that took: |place in the United States, Germany and other countries, like- wise found their apologists in the V. I. LENIN’ Born April 23, 1870—Died January 21, 1924, ae leadership of the soctalist parties and social fascist trade union lead- ership, The American working class, in terms of factory workers employed, actually decreased in numbers dur- ing the post-war period. Unemploy- ment involving two and three mil- lion workers became permanent even during the greatest boom peri- od that American capitalism ever passed through. The organic com- position of capital reached unheard of proportions. Entire huge plants still capable of producing at a tre- menhdous rate of speed were scrapped and stil high speed ma- chinery and faster production proc- esses involved. Production reached new high levels. All of this was interpreted by capitalist economists as a complete refutation of Marxian economic theory. While the total sum paid in wages rose, the relative condition of the working class became worse. But this fact, of course, escaped the capitalist economists. It was likewise concealed to the best of their ability by the social fascist leaders. On this point Marx said: “The number of laborers com- manded by capital may remain the same, or even fall, while the’ vari- case if the individual laborer yields more labor, and therefore his wages increase and this although the price of labor remains the same or even falls, only.-moere slowly - than the mass of labor rises. Increase of variable capital, in this case, becom?s an index of more labor, but not of more laborers employed. # is the- absolute. interest of every capitalist to press a given quantity of labor out of a smaller, rather than a greater number of laborers, FRIEDRICH ENGELS Born November 28, 1820—Died -Au- gust 5, 1895. if the cost is about the same. . . We have further seen that the cap- italist buys- with the same capital-a great mass of labor power, as he progressively replaces skilled labor- ers by less skilled, mature labér by immature, male by female, that of adults by that of young persons or children.” : What could better describe {the speedup process in America? During the boom period American capitalism was steadily creating “the industrial reserve army” which, as Marx says in one of his most brilliant passages, “during the period of stagnation and average prosper- ity weighs down the active labor army; during the periods of over- production and paroxysm, it holds its pretenses in check. Relative sur- plus population is therefore the} pivot upon which the law of demand and supply of labor works. It con- fines the field of this action of this | law within the limits absolutely convenient to the activity of exploit- ers and to the dominance of cap- | ital.” | During the boom period of Amer- ican capitalism the policy of “worker - management-cooperation” became openly the major line of march of the official leadership of os the trade unions. Nothing was to be done which would interfere with the freedom of the capitalists to install ‘the newes® and speediest labor .processés; nothing must. be done to interfere with the efficiency of American capitalist production; The American working class was deluged by floods of-speeches, mag-’ .azine and newspaper articles, beoks and pamphlets, all trying to con- vince the worker that any interfer- lence with this right af capital would- ;decrease the number of workers em-" ployed, lower wages and worsen: conditions because capital had to be left free in order to-carry-out its: benevolent task of always employ-' ing more workers at ever- higher: wages. Even some Communists were de-’ luded by the superficial results of the rationalization process. It ap- peared to them as something en- tively new im capitalism and not as ‘what. it was—-an intensification of the proééss ‘continuously at work in capitalist society, the relation be- tween employer and- worker—that- ef securing more ‘work ‘from- less workers’ at lower wages. ° Rational- ization was t:> intensification of this process in the period of im- perialism. Marx described with great exact- ness the way by which the spokes- men and publicists of capitalism of his day glorified this .process and” tried to make it appear jin the earlier days of capitalism as their © socialist. prototypes and. leadership’ of the’ American Federation of Gabor did, and stili ‘do “for that’ , |matter, “in the declining period of. capitalism. On this point Marx said, speaking of what he called “one of the great- est exploits of economic apolo- getics”: “It will be remembered that if through the introduction of new, or the extension of old, machinery, a portion of variable capital (wages) is transformed into constant, ma- chinery, plant equipment, etc., the economic apologists interpret this operation which ‘fixes’ capital and by that very act sets laborers ‘free,’ in exactly the opposite way, pre- tending that it sets free capital for the laborers. Only now can one fully understand the effrontery of these apologists. What are set free are not only the laborers immedi- ately turned out by the machines but also their future substitutes in the rising generation, and the addi- tional contingent, that with the usual extension of trade on the old |basis would be regularly absorbed.” Perhaps we can see, in the words of Marx, that today, in the third year of the worst crisis in the his- tory of capitalism, “only now can one fully understand the effrontery” of the boosters of the theory of “permanent American prosperity.” The Liberating Movement —— of the Working Class By V. I. LENIN The greatest liberating mover ni in the world of the oppressed class, the most revolutionary class in his- tory, is impossible without revolu- tionary theory. It (theory) cannot be invented, it grows out from the cumulation of revolutionary exper- ience and revolutionary thought in all the countries of the world. And such a theory grew out of the sec- ond half of the 19th century. It is called Marxism. One cannot be @ socalist, one cannot be a revolu- tionary 8. D. (socal democrat) with- out participating, to the extent of one’s ability, in working up end applying this theory, and in our days~in the merciless struggle against its being distorted by Plek- hanov, Kautsky and Co. (1915, we able capital increases, This is the Honest Voice of a French Socialist.)