The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 30, 1933, Page 5

ee a ge | antlers t a A tion program to cost about $516,- 900, 4, Abstixe, WALL STREET’S CAPITOL ‘By SEYMOUR WALDMAN. ASHINGTON, Dec. 29.—The dent Roosevelt for naval $238,000,000 allotted by Presi- construction under the guise of “public works” is just an appetizer in comparison with what the United States naval to Congress. The Admirals will ask Con- gress for a blanket authoriza- iion for a five-year construc- “This program, of course, has the approval of Presi- - dent Roosevelt?” Yasked the Navy Department. “Well, it would hardly be pro- posed without his approval.” The new war proposal calls for the building of 102 warships to supplement the present 32 ship program w is being fulfilled under the “public works” fiction. When Caipias. it will bring the steel manufacturers, their uniformed jingoes and other imperialists, to “full treaty (London) strength” by 1939, according to Navy Department figures. War preparations are prominent everywhere in Washington. Bullets, armor and gas, rather than federal unemployment insurance at the ex- pense of the employers and the goy- ernment, comprise the menu for the uwmemployed worke Imperialism’s @nly solution for the unemployed | Yaborer is cither to starve or| Slaughter him. | ni Hl also be in-| the Budget ing the Navy De-| for more cannon | vision has been made in | « for the next fiscal 1 personne) of 82,-/ 1 of 2,609 over the S. Waldman | that , the ly 2 in- | to Sre-eate far the Corps oe the x by ® command plans to recommend EE months after the passage of the boycott resolution, Green pro- noses the formation of committees “to deal with the problem in accord- ance with the economic, social and business requirements of each com- munity...” But he gives not one directive for effective boycotting, such as instructions to A, F. of L. seamen and longshoremen, In/a long recital of the woes suf- fered by the Socialist trade unions whose advances were contemp*u- ously rejected by Hitler (he said he had no need of them anymore) Green makes a stab at calling for a@ united front without eyen men- tioning the Communist Perty or the |revolutionary trade unions. | Let there be no mistake about; Green’s failure to fight fascism. “Labor,” he says, “is. . ing against any political order set | up in Germany or against *he Ger- man people; we are asking only that the annihilation of German trade unions shall cease and that the per- secution of German working people and of Jewish people merely because they are Jews, shall be terminated.” All this despite his shameless admis- sion that “tt did not help the Ger- man General Trade Union Federa~ tion that it had called on the work- ers to participate in the Hitler dem- jorstration of May ist” The action of Green is not at all surprising, especially in view of the fact that the A. F. of L. bureaucracy (MeGrady, Lewis, et al.) is one of the strongest supporters of the strike-breaking, starvation wage WN. R. A., the wedse for the gradual fas- cization of America. Assurediy, it will not be vague ‘committees” which will fight fas- e‘sm to the bitter end, but only real hard-hitting united front rank and jfile workers” committees and organi- zations as the Marine ‘Workers’ In- dustrial Union. It takes guts and revolutionary ardor to stop a ship j}from leaving its pier or to prevent | scabs from unloading it. More Baby Cannon an 85 per | ot for | men ¥ cent the + Jent of the | Labor, | and | ed Federa- | n which he id half -cried nade | officially | called upon all oft and members of organizations F. of L. to m In iggested | the formation of comunitiecs: ‘I suggest tha at Sapriilite be ee | i each comni- committees unite rreated for | mm of the an Federa- convention of tion of Lal Fodder Sought By Boss Governments NEW YORK.—The governments of | France, Germany, Italy and Poland were frantically calling today for more baby cannon fodder in govern- ment-sponsored ceremonies honoring motherhood, A United Press dispatch from Paris, declares that births are being spurred to grow 1950 troops—“so that in 18 to 20 years’ time, the babies might be ready for war. No effort is made to conceal the underlying motive.” The governments are rushing fran- tic preparations for war in the im- mediate future, and are seeking to replace the man-power they exvect to slaughter in the coming war, Sub- sidies are paid and mothers of large families are brought to capitals and feted by Premiers, The United Press dispatch again admits: “In each case the object is to pro- yide names for the draft lists in 1950 ‘and subsequent years.” not Aght- | DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1938 His Life in Danger | ERNST THAELMANN ioe ta ae | | ‘Nazi Forgers Busy | On ‘Evidence’ for Thaelmann Trial Also Seek to Avoid) Mistakes Made in Reichstag Trial BERLIN, Dec. 29.—The Nazi forgers | and perjurers are working overtime | in feverish preparations for the lynch trial of Ernst Theelmann, leader of the German Communist Par over nine months in jail although no| indictment has ever been brought | against him. | These preparations are directed to- ward avoiding the weaknesses of the Reichstag trials, which were utilized by George Dimitroff and the three other Communist defendants for a brilliant exposure of Nazi responsi- bility for the Reichstag firing, To} this end, not only is the indictment being kept secret, but the largest | possible amount of forged material | designed to implicate Thaelmann in| acts of arson, etc, is being collected | from police spies and renegades from | Communism, In this connection, a certain Georg Schwarg, expelled from the Commu- | nist Party in 1928, has bee! ing material to the s: some time, in the form of publica-! tions in periodicals and books, with | regard to Communist functionaries, The latest book pubiished by this renegade and police spy deals in par- ticular with Thaelmann, and the} questionable “revelation concocted | by the author are likely to play a considerable role in the impending} trial, Big Gain in 1 Soviet Gold Production | MOSCOW, Dec, 26—A tremendous rise in Soviet gold production is re- ported during the past few mont! with a production of $10,000,0 September, a total 83 per cent higher than for the same month last year. Gold production will be further speeded up as a result of the discovery of extremely rich deposits along the Laba River in the North Caucacus, and in Tadjikistan, near the Afghan border. Two gold veins in these dis- tricts are said to surpass in richness any similar deposit in the world. | Lenin, the N. R. A. and the Historical Fraud of Liberal Journalists By SAM DON === The following article by Comrade Sam Don is the second of a series | of 3 articles. The first one appeared in the Dec, 23 issue of the Daily and dealt with the article by L. Fisher of the Nation who in his article entitled “Lenin to Roosevelt” gtori- fied the NJ 1d Rooseve!t on the pamphlet “The astrophe and How to Fight It.”—Editorial Note. 16 How extraordinary is the capacity of Uberals for untenable historical analogies! For example the New Republic, a |leading liberal organ, wrote in its jissue of May 7, 1933, as follows: “...rather striking general like- | ness between Lenin’s prescription | ond that now beinz suggested (N.R.A—S.D.) in Washington.” What was the occasion of this very Lberal analogy? It was the review | by Prof, Beard of Lenin's two vol- lumes which contained the pamphlet |“The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It.” | Wherein did the editors of the New | | Republic see the “striking general likeness” between the revolutionary proposals of Lenin and Roosevelt's slave codes? ‘They saw this “striking likeness” in the fact that Lenin's pro- posals speak of the need of “regu- aoe economic life’ and that the N.R.A. also set out to “regulate eco- nomic life”.,... But what did our “impartial” lib- eral friends fail to “notice”? when they read Lenin’s pamphlet? They 3| completely overlooked and felled to understand the striking difference between “regulating the economic life” of the country with power in the hands of the proletariat and “regulating economic life” with power n the hands of the capitalist class, in the hands of finance capitalism. A Paradise for Bankers Lenin in his pamphlet (which our liberal friends have completely failed to understand), refutes any possible analory which would concoct a triking likeness” between his revo- lutionary. proposals and that of the N.R.A. Lenin prophetically warned against any such analo: He wrote: “Both America and Germany ‘regulate economic life’ in such a manner as to create a MILITARY PRISON for the workers (partly for the peasants) and a PARADISE for the bankers and the capitalists. | Their regulation consists in ‘tight- ening the screw’ of the worker to the extent of near famine and se~ curing for the capitalists (secretly in a reactionary bureaucratic way) LARGER profits than those they had before the war.” (Lenin’s em- phasis.) The Striking Difference Not a “striking general likeness” but a striking difference, gentlemen of the Nation and New Republic! When Lenin speaks of “regulating economic fe” he has in mind regu- lation under the rule of the workers which will do away with the capi- talist profit system. When you gentlemen speak of “regulating the econonomic life” of the country, re- gardiess of what your pious wishes are, it creates in the words of Lenin, “a military prison for the workers” and a “paradise for the bankers,” And a no more striking example of “s, military prison for the workers” and a “paradise for the bankers” can anywhere be found than in the NRA. as it is developing. Take the N.R.A. as it was conceived and as it operates. ‘The supreme purpose and effort of the N.R.A. is |to assure the regular flow of profits in the midst of growing human mis- ery. This and nothing else is the “social function” of the NRA. In short, the N.R.A. was conspicuously created as the instrument of monop- oly capitalism. | N.R.A. Has Not Failed Wall Street Has the N.R.A. failed monopoly capitalism? By no means. But be- fore we prove this point, let us an- swer the auestion whether Roosevelt | and his administration conceived of | the N.R.A. as the instrument of | trusts, banks, of finance capitalism, or whether the huge profits made} by finance cavitelism is due to the | fact that there are chiselers and that | labor is not taking advantage of the | NRA. Let us consider a few vrogrammat- lic statements made by the President jand the press. On June 10th the| President declared: “No employed and no group of | less than all the employers in a { | sinele trade could do this alone and continue to live én business | | competition. But if all employers in each trade now band themselves faithfully in these modern guilds, without excevtion, and agree to act together and at once, none will be hurt.” | What is the substance of the President's statement? Let Mr. Samuel Urtermeyer explain. “The anti-trust laws will be wrtually Scrapped and trade combinations and acsecistions. instead of being proscribed, dissolved, and punished as crimes, will come under govern~ mental supervision with price fix- | ing and restrictions of preduction, | which is the antithesis of the pres- ent Jaw and system.” (Our empha- sis, S. D.) Hastening Trustification Mr. Untermeyer is quite right. The |N.R.A. is to “regulate economic life” | lin svah a manner that it will hasten | | trustification in order to curb com- | petition, restrict production, so that Monopdly capitalism can fix prices. | {All for what purpose? To exact | \exorbitant profits from the toilin | masses in a world of falling prices! ae you examine the individval “codes of fair competition” the rob- ber’s hand of monopoly capitalism erabs you by the throat. Take the first heralded textile code. The lan- guage is quite clear. We read, “It projects the devel- opment of an open trading asso- ciation through which, as in the case of commodity changes, prices and terms of trading would be reported by all companies with | @ view to avoid and e¥minate un- fair and destructive competitive prices and practices. It further proposes to fashion instruments of relf-government for dealing with 9 the problems of over capacity and overproduction by subjecting the |talism was c¢ | drive installation of additional produc- tive machinery to its scrutiny, and to the approval or disapproval of the administration.” (Our empha~ sis, 5. D.) What then is the purpose textile code and all other cod: is to maintain high prices by a ing “destructive competitive prices It is the purose of the textile code, as that of all other codes, to the “problems of over capacity overproduction” not by reducin prices, so that a ragged population is in a position to buy, but to “con- trol and regulate” overproduction so that production will be restricted in order that prices are kept up high— starvation wages for the worke S producers, high prices as consumers | and mounting profits for the handful | This social of trust and bank magnates. is the “social function and vision” of the N.R.A. code. Lenin on Monopoly Capitalism As far back as 1916 Lenin spoke of the American tru: “as the highest expression of the economics of im- perialism or monopoly capitaliem. The N.R.A., the organ “of the eco- noinics of impe! ” in this period of the gene is of world capi- r the purpose of has ss of trusti- fication and strengthening the death grip of monor talism. Lenin, in Fis “Imo: ” written as far baci 1917, “Crises of N sorts and in par- | ticular those of an economic na- {rengthen to a trenmendous | ture « extent the tender tion and monopol; How exactly, to a detail, one might say, does the N.R.A. confirm Lenin’ to concentra- Wo! Dp To rive a few examples to illus- trate further the nature of the N.R.A. in the light of Lenin’s teachings, Mergers to Increase Profits Willis B. Rice, a lamp manufac- turer, voicing the opinion of the| small producer, said the following at | the hearings on the electrical code: “The electrical industry is dom- inated by five big corporati They have 86 per cent of the busi- ness. The code tends to perpetuate the mononoly and might easily be | designed to elimin: And the Commercial and Financial Chronicle, in it sue on July 29th, wrote as follows: altogether probable that the scheme of the blanket code for increasing mass employment will result in decreasing the number of those in gainful occupations, instead of in- creasing them, inasmuch as if en- forced in the way indicated, it will many of the store keepers and shop keepers out of business, iting the number of who will find em- ployment throuczh the reduction in the number of hours of those now uncement of the renh, telephone, and Yradio companies is in line with the general purposes of the N.R.A. The Journal of Commerce in ii c, 15th issue, tells us that this pro- posed mercer “ ... wou'd doubtless tend to advance the rate level (read raise profits) for some or all of these communication services.” Only a few comments are neces- Dec. | further mplaint ts such as the ady highly Mie will drive independent te the mo- 1 the other case it is ad-| ed that the purpose of the blan- 2 is to “drive many of the epers and shop keepers out and increase unemploy- Imperialism ly quoted and dis- atements on the its codes to prove our contention that if the N.R.A. operates | |to create profits for monopoly capt- , it does so precisely because conceived and called into} of the most poly capital- | 3. FINANC! at eatin | creator of | e codes, 1s] ervant of | ye purpot he earlier h is the highest ex- pression of the “econo of Ameri an imperialism.” It is ‘the ist way out of the crisis par excellence—more profits for the fi- nanciers, hunger ard imperialist | x the toiling masses. } ly the results of the N.R.A.| to a minvtest detail the | by Communist se the C, P. is the only is canable of under- | ding and apnlying the teachings | oe Marx and Lenin) the only party | which from the very outset. opposed and fought the N.R.A. and its slave | odes. Wall Street Reaps Huge Profits The first issue of the “changed” | New York Evening “Post” told Wall Street editorially the dering the | profits it has made, it had no just | jcomplaint against Roosevelt. Indeed | Wall Street hasn’t any complaints | nor docs it really make any. Why/| |should it? Just consider these sta- | | tistics and what they mean in terms} of the lives and conditions of the | vs. This year, 425 of the larg-| 11 Street monopolies report | | profits of $373,802 000, an increase of | jover 450 per cent road compa- ni ge industrial monopolies it dividends g of the pres- confirm 1é possible for Wall | such huge profits in| | the midst of such a devastating crisis? | First of all, it is due to the low wage d by the codes. The $ e an average minimum ge (which is really becoming the imum) of $13.87 a week. But even s merely on the basis york week. The cot- ton and textile codes are lower than the a’ ve—512 a week in the | South and $13 fn the North, |__ The National Industrial Conference | Beard a $ that the cost of living hes risen at least 10 per cent since | March. tion, an integral part of Roo: recovery plan, still | es and drives down }Teal wa’ Keeving the wages of |the we at the barest minimum through the code, raising the p: of commodities consumed by workers to the maximum, this is the source of the huge profits reaped by made |for dispersing mobs . | private property . Page Five ~~ || Got Any Property? NEW YORK.—Have you any pri- vate y to protect? If so, go to | the Ford “Exposition of Progress” in |the Port Authority building, 111 Eighth Ave., New York, and see the fully equipped riot car that Mr. Ford is selling. Innocentty enough, it looks like any Ford car that tours the streets. It is only when you Jook inside that you see the weapons for murder, sup~ Plied for the exhibition “by courtesy of the Federal Laboratories, Pitts- burgh, Pa.” Tucked away on one side is a Thompson machine gun and maga-~ zine in a velour case. Other equip- ment includes: one 20 gauge sawed- off shotgun, one gas riot gun of which the placard says: “A perfect weapon protecting used by large industrial corporations. It ts capable of shooting either a short range or long range gas projectile.” A gas billie Hes on the rear seat of the car. Six gas bombs line the rear wall, and six gas hand-grenades line the right | wall of the car. A gas mask lies on the floor, and, ironically, a complete | first aid kit makes up the full com- pliment of riot equipment. the trusts under the protection of the Blue Eagle. (The question of the RF.C. subsidies will be discussed later.) Indeed, as Lenin has prophesied, ... larger profits for the bankers, near famine for the toflers.” Stalin on Monopoly Capitalism The purpose of monopoly eapital- ism to raise prices is clearly stated by Comrade Stalin at the 17th Party Conference of the C. P. 3. U. held two years ago. He said: “Present-day capitalism, as dis- tinct from the old form of capital- ism, is monopoly capitalism, and | that determines in advance the in- evitabilty of a struggle on the part of the capitalist associations for the maintenance of the high monop- oly prices of their commodities, despite the existence of over-pro- duction. It does not meed to be stressed that this circumstance, which makes the crisis particularly distressfal for the masses of the people—who are the chief consum- ers of commodities and impover- ishes them, necessarily leads to a protraction of the crisis and must hinder its normal solution.” It is precisely the purpose of bg NRA. to help the “maintenance of high monopoly prices, despite the existence of overproduction” and it is exactly this “which makes the crisis | particularly distressful for the masses of the people who are the chief con- sumers of commodities and impover- ishes them.” Is it not clear that to see “any striking likeness” between what Lenin wrote in his pamphlet on “The | Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It” and the N.R.A. is really to obscure the “striking difference” be~ tween the N.R.A., the organ of op- pressing, murderous monopoly cap!~ talism, and Lenin’s program, the pro- gram of struggle against monopoly capitalism, In our next and last article we shall deal with the question of state monopoly capitalism and the role of the state, and the distortions which the liberals of the Nation and the New Republic have made of Lenin’s writing on these questions, Their glorification of the N.R.A. and Roosevelt is based on the distortions of Lerin’s teachings on state capi« ‘alism and the role of the state. AGAINST AN AMERICAN THIRD CAPITALIST POLITICAL PARTY. By JOHN STRAC) HEY Today tt elming impression | ‘which the 1 upon an ouside ‘ mont. There is ferment in every class of | Society; th is uneasiness, doubt, | ‘unpara! eet italist class: 2d with wi ila | hope in the! t sections of the jOwer middle class; there is smoul-| dering revolt amongst the farmers: | there is a deep, slow-moving and as} yet confused tide of anti-capitalist| sentiment amongst the working mass. ; What, in such @ situation, is the | function and role ofthe American j Communist Party. It is not, of} course, for me to attemp’ to answer | this question. But certain very broad! questions are surely beyon.: disnute. | First, of course, the question of the Party is to disseminate the broad principles of Marxism. For Marxism and Leninism are the only keys to} qn understanding of the situation, gnd are, therefore, the only guides to the construction of a new life for the | masses out of the ruins of capitalism. But the dissemination of Marxism is not merely a question of propaganda —of writing and talking. It is also a question of action—of the leading gnd guiding of the ever-growing class struggles which the workers and farmers are forced into undertaking— not hecause they are Communists, but secause capitalism leaves them no al- wnative. For if these struggles are not infused with Marxian conscious- ness, they will remain blind, confused and foredoomed to failure. degree amon; there is de: and almost New Deal, British Experiences ~All this represents a gigantic task before American Communists, and it is certainly not for anyone from an- other country to tell them how to aceompiish it. But it is evident that they are already making heroic, and in some cases significantly successful, efforts to get on with the job. * Tb is difficult, however, to ayoid speculating on some of the problems which, as it seems to me, will face the Party in America in the near fuiure. Whether we like it or not, if seems clear that events are moving so quickly that all sorts of new and ostensibly left-wing movements of re- | volt against capitalism will arise in! ‘America. The Party will be faced with many exceedingly difficult drci- sions. And I, of course, have neither ® sufficient knowledge of American ‘conditions nor the theoretical equip- Ment to offer any advice. Bui it may be that some considera- fon of the experiences of British Marxists during the period of the birth of independent working class action in Britain may be of interest to American Marxists today. In ; many respects there seems to me to be a striking analogy between the America of today and the British of the last decade of the Nineteenth Century. It seems probable that America will go through a period in which all sorts of new and ostensibly working class parties and groups, such as, the Independent Labor Party, the Social Democratic Federa- tion, the Socialist League and finally the Labor Party itself, arose in Britain forty or fifty years ago. it seems to me that American Marxists today might be helped in avoiding the opposite dangers of op~ portunism end sectarianism, which necessarily confront every Commu- nist Party in such » situation, by a study of the tragic experience which the British working class movement. went through. Historical of British Background Labor Party The crisis of British capitalism in 1889 produced a rapid growth of trade unionism in Great Britain, somewhat similar to what appears to be happening now in the United States, Unfortunately the resulting move- ment towards independent working- class political action split up from’ the very outset into two divergent streams. Two antithetical and com~- plementary errors quickly developed. First, the majority of those who felt the need for a new working-class party in Britain seem to have felt that need instinctively rather than rationally, They knew that a new “third party” was needed, but they , did not seem to have realized what it was needed for, In other words, though they rejected the existing Liberal Party, which the organized British workers had hitherto mainly supported, they had no clear concep- tion of what to put in its place, They had rejected the Liberal P: , but they were quite unable to free their minds from Liberal principles and Liberal ideas, Tt was such men as these who founded, in 1882, the Independent Labor Party, Eight years later, in ; 1900, the Trade Unions, the Fabisn , Society, and other advanced bodies, came together with the Independent Labor Party and made an all- inclusive merger. This was the foundation of the present British Labor Party. From the outset its ap- parent success was very great. The Trade Unions provided adequate funds, and in the very first General Election in which it took an active part, that of 1906, no less than fifty labor representatives were returned. But the men who came to the top,! both as practical organizers and as the guiding thinkers and theorists of the new party, were deeply imbued with the characteristic doctrine of British capitalism, 1. e., with Liberal- ism. The most imyortant of these leaders was Ramsay MacDonald and Keir Hardie, as active parliament- arians and organizers, while Bernard Shaw, whese prominent part in the foundation of the Labor Party is | often overlooked, and Sidney and | Beatrice Webb were the dominating theorists, Hence, from the very outset the new working-class party, the British “third party” had a double character. One, the one hand, at its base it un-, deniably represented the fact that the British workers had grasped in- stinctively that neither of the two great capitalist parties could repre~ sent their interests. The very fact of the foundation of a political party based on, and financed by, the} Trade Unions, instead of by the} great. capitalists, marks a decisive) loss of faith by the British workers in British capitalists, But, on the other hand, the new Labor Party was led and dominated | at its top by men who were still part and parcel of the liberal tradition. This, in turn, reflected the fact that the British workers were only groping their way out of the domination of capitalist ideas; that they were still possessed of every kind of illusion as} to the possibilities of changing and reforming the capitalist system; that they were still easy prey to the Mac- Donalds, the Webbs, and the Keir Hardies, who, with varying degrees of consciousness, used vaguely Socialist phraseology to clothe their essen- tially Liberal-Capitalist point of view. ‘The foundation of a Labor Party of this character represented the main stream of the political consequences which flowed from the awakening of the British workers in the late 80's and early 90’s. But there was, as I have suggested, a second and antithe- tical, though much smaller stream, There were a certain number of peo- ple in Britain who from the outset had grasped the fact that, if the British workers were to achieve any- thing, they must free themselves not only from the organizations of the capitalist, viz. the Liberal and Con- servative Parties, but also from cap- italist ideas and capitalist economics, These men had some grasp, though, as it proved, a most imperfect grasp, of working-class economics and phil- osophy, as they had just been scien- tifically formulated for the first time by Marx and Engels. Their most characteristic leader was a talented, if perverse, figure, Hyndman. JOHN STRACHEY This group founded the Social’ Democratic Federation. immediately split off from the Fed- eration under the leadership of the poet, William Morris, and called it~ self the Socialist League.) But, if these two groups had a much clearer conception than had the Independent Labor Party or the Labor Party of the need for rejecting capitalist economics and philosophy, they had opposite and just as serious defects. From the first they began to exhibit the most ruinous forms of sectarian- ism, With disastrous folly, they cut themselves off from the real and powerful, if extremely confused and politically unconscious, struggles which the British workers were ac- tually engaging in at the time, They committed acts of folly, such as re~ fusing to assist in a great London dock strike because the workers would not use the red flag on their platforms, Non-sectarian Markets Again, they boycotted the main working-class party, the Indepsndent Labor Party, which was founded, as T have said, in 1892, and which might conceivably have been prevented from becoming Liberal and opportunist if the Marxists of the Social Demo- eratic Federation had worked inside it. Hyndman and his followers hug~ ged their own theoretical superiority, misunderstood the practical appli- cation of Marxism as seriously as they misunderstood much of its theoretical basis, and remained 3 barren and unimportant sect. There did exist, however, a still smalier group of non-sectrrian Marxists. This group was led by fived in London it Sone wa jon, (A sub-group | Liberalism of the Fabians, the Trade Union leaders, and the Independent | Legal Eight Hours and International} an Labor Party, and the barren sect-| arianism of Hyndman and the Social Democratic Federation. This is how Engels, interviewed by a Liberal newspaper, the Daily Chronicle, de-| ‘ined his position in 1993. I quote ‘rom a valuable book which aa just come out in England entitled, “ne Class Struggle in in ak the Tpoch of Imperialism” by Ralph Fox: The Fabian Society I take to be nothing bat a branch of the Liberal Party. It locks for no social sal- vation only through the means | which that party supplics. We are | opposed to all the € ng politica! parties, and we are going to fight them all. The English Social Dem- ocratic Federation is, and acts, only ike a small sect. It is an inciusive bedy. It has not understood how to take the lead of the werking-class movement generally, and to direct it toward socialism. It has turned into an orthodoxy, Thus it insisted upon John Burns unfurling the red flag at the dock strike, where such an act would have ruined the whole movement, and, instead of gaining over the dockers, would have driven | them back into the arms of the capitalists. We don’t do this. Yet | our program is a purely socialist | one. Our first plonk is the so- | cialization of all the means and instruments of production, What Engels wanted was, on the | one hand, to create a group of men and women who had really under- stood Marxism and freed themselves from the whole capitalist point of view, yet did not on that account think themselves superior in any way , to the workers, but, on the contrary, would devote their whole energy to furthering the practical, if half blind, Political struggles of the British working masses, ‘Engels on British Labor ‘This is, of course, the policy which all Communist Parties today seek to | pursue. That it is the correct policy thas now been proved over and over again, and, although Engels forty years ago in England was only able to persuade a tiny group to follow his lead, he was able to achieve some notable successes. True to his prin- ciples of basing his work on prac- tical limited demands, which the workers really felt, he led an agita~ tion for the eight hour day. A United Front Commiitee was established, and powerful demonstrations, which shook middle-class opinion badly, marched from the East End, the workers’ part of London, through the whole of the West End to Hyde Park, Later | for this failure: United Front Committee became the Labor League. In spite of these successes, however, the forces which Engels was able to muster were not sufficient to prevent the disastrous divergence of the Brit- ish movement into the opposite er- | Pe rors of Liberal opportunism and So- cial Democratic sectarianism. 1885 Enge!s himself died, and there was no one left to ca.ry on his work. This is how Fox sums up the reasons There can be reason why the letarians and srouped themselves around Engels in the 80's and 99’s failed to form leading cadres for the new labor movement was the inability to ab- sorb the theoretical positions of revolutionary Marxism and apply them to English reality, They were drawn to Engels by their dislike of the sectarianism of Hyndman and the 8. D. F., but one by one the dif- ficulties ef manoenvering in the sea of English opportunism overcame them and they went back to oppor- tunism themselves, or even as in group of able pro- | the case of John Burns, directly into the camp of the bourzeoisie. Tom Mann alone, after long years of wandering was to find his way back again into the camp of the revolutionary proletariat, the Com- | munist Party of Lenin, Lessons for American C. P. It is not for me to draw the lessons which the American Party might pos- sibly But it does seem that what may be needed today in America is a policy similar to that which Engels at- tempted to pursue in Britain, For- tunately there exists today in Amer- ica an organized, nation-wide Com- munist Party capable of pursuing such @ policy, instead of a tiny group | of individual Marxists which was all that Engels was able to command. It may be worth while to begin to consider the problemwhich the Amer- ican Party may be soon faced with, It is possible that there will be an attempt to create either an American! Social Democratic Party, or a psuedo | revolutionary movement, which would almost certainly contain within it many of the germs of Fascism. Let us take first the possibility of the creation of a gradualist, third Party on the British Labor Party model. For example, there seems a possibility that Mr. John Dewey would like to play the part of theore- tical godfather to such a Party, play the part which Mr. Shaw played in England. But surely even Mr. Dewey cannot want to create an- the! other British Labor Party? Perhaps, | no doubt that the | intellec‘uals who | Jearn from this experience. ! to | however, | however, he thinks that, even though American third Party were j fou unded in the same way as the ish Labor Party, by a fusion of all | ist bodies, of the farmers or- | ons, and of the trade unions, | it might turn out very differently. s he or his supporters think r unfortunate experience was ng to any factors in the Labor but to the personal minzs of our Brit- rs—of Webb, Shaw, or MacDonald. I be- a complete misreading oT eee A hold no brief di e British Labor e that it was i them, not they | that | ever s which mo! | who molde d events. Third Party Developments |. Alternatively it may be suggested that the American farmer-labor third party which it is hoped to create will be a fundamentally different type of organization from the British Labor Party; that there can be no analogy between the British and American | situation; that the farmer-labor party will be in fact revolutionary in method, and far-reaching in aim, oiding only the alleged “doctrin- aire and sectarianism” of the Com- which it is charged famcae: ; fascism. eed if we may € *. Thomas the new Federation, number of n of the reported in Commen Sen. third-party moveu methods of the present leaders oi the farmer- labor movement are to be avowedly revolutionary, When we come, however, to the aims of the new movement, we find that Mr. Amlie defines them as the carrying, by force, of an amendment to the American Constitution forbid- ding “absentee ownership” of any part of the means of production, and providing for their public ownership and operation, The effect of such) a law would be, of course, to nation- | alize all large-scale, and indeed med- jum-scale, production, leaving in private hands only such small-scale enterprises as could be conducted by a man and his family without hired help. ‘The itical objective of this de- mand is dbvious. Mr. Amlie hopes to swing thejlower middle class to him nises that he is attacking Immediately, here leaps to mind the fact that Amlie is not the first to make tl s_ promise. Who was it who conducled the most violent and ; also enormous apparently tra radical propaganda J on exactly these lines—who “promised to nationalize all the big banks and trusts,” while leaving the property of the small man untouched? It was Hitler. It is true that Mr. Amilie’s speech is incomparably more rational, more “Marxist” than anything which, so far as I know, was ever said by the German fascists. Moreover, I am sure that Mr. Amlie and his friends today sincerely believe not only that they are not fascists but they arr the one true bulwark against the ris of fascism in American. Alas whs we believe about ourselves howeve sincerely, is of very little importanc What we do is everything—what think we are doing, nothing. And the ominous fact remains that the present leaders of the Farmer-! ¢ Political Federation have choseri line of policy and propagands. “have the typical characteristics o: Fascist parties. If, as seems to me probable, parties of this type arise in the United States, important and difficult deci- sions will face the Communist Party. For it will not be sufficient to point out the errors, and in some cases, crimes of such parties. It will be nec- essary to observe that they will al- most certainly contain large masses cf sincere and potentially revolution. ary workers and also farmers and the first class large sections of th petty-bourgeoisie. The winning .o; these masses to a clear-sighted rev olutionary policy, and away on leadership which will range all th way from the cynical and vile be trove’ of the Fascists, to the wel inienucned confusions of farme Javor groups, will be the vital task the Party. r ‘The immediate future of the Com munist Party of America seems me to present great difficulties t a ‘a opportunities, political situation seems to be bot point of becoming extremely fl And a correct application of Mar: Leninist tactics, such as Engels tr to employ in Britain, may lead enormous growth in the power and influence, *e es @ {N. B. Certain portions of this . ticle have appeared in the Am_ ean Mercury, to which journal we are indebted for permission to reprint this.)