The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 25, 1935, Page 7

Change World! By MICHAEL GOLD TRUE, as Edward Dahlberg pointed n this column several days ago, that the literary criticism of Granville Hicks and others of our Marxian critics, occa- sionally gives off the musty smell of the Pedagogue. This is a flavor that also pervades some of the revolutionary writing and speaking, in the political field Many of us are familiar, no doubt, with Communist propagandists who are forever talking down to their audience. They know so much and the masses know so little, it seems. It amazes them that so few people have ever heard of Karl Marx and his theories. It is difficult for them to be patient with uninformed. What, you have never heard of surpius value? Off with vour head. Or at least, take the foot of the class. And if you have heard of it, it has not been along the cor- rect lines. We can only give you a passing mark on that. No such pedagogue can really be a good Marxian, for he has divorced theory and practise, theory and life. He has lost sight of the dynamic and irregular development of life. In this connection, the anecdote teld by John Reed in his “Ten Days” has significance. c IS There Are Two Classes— 'T SEEMS that a big, raw Russian peasant boy, a sailor, was on guard at the bridge that led to the Winter Palace. The Bolsheviks were just tak- ing it from Kerensky and his white guard officers. Some of the Socialist revolutionaries were trying to get to the scene, to “die with Kerensky.” But the Red sailors wouldn't let them be heroes, it seems. So this imposing Socialist intellectual with his portfolio and pince-nez, stood on the bridge anid argued with the peasant boy in uniform. “Do you really know what this fight is all about?” he shrieked at the sailor. “Have you ever read Marx? Look at me, I have studied Marx for twenty years. I am a veteran of the social revolution. I have been in jail and exile. And now you come along—I repeat, have you read Marx?” “No,” the big sailor stammered, his face turn- ing rec, “I am very ignorant. I have never read Marx. But I have learned there are two classes—” “Aha!” crowed the intellectual, “vou see! You have read nothing. You know nothing. And you try to tell us how to run a revolution.” “There are two classes—” muttered the sailor— “Never mind that,” shouted the intellectual. “What do you know about historic determinism? Have you ever read Value, Price and Profit? I have read them all, and more, besides. Let me through!” “Yes, you are a Marxian,” the sailor muttered, scratching his head, “but you see, there are two classes—" “I know all that,” shouted the intellectual, “I knew it twenty years ago! The imnortant thing is to let me through.” “There are two classes,” the sailor went on dog- gedly, “and I belong to the working class, and you can’t get through.” Straw Boss Crities 'VERY Communist must be a teacher, but more important, he must be a leader. No real leader ever talks down to the masses; for he is able to understand them better than they do themselves. He knows the background out of which they come, and the forces that hold them back from emanci- pation. He wins them over by his ability to point out their weakness to them, and to convince them that his tactics are superior. He is a strong and trustworthy friend, not a dictator. He is an elder brother, a comrade, not the straw boss of a gang. Workers resent the sort of Communist who acts as ff everyone ought to have known Marxism in his cradle. And writers resent the sort of critic who takes no account of their struggles to achieve Marxian clarity and wisdom, who patronizes them or thinks, | because he has mastered the theory of Marxist criticism, he car. tell them how to write. * Wholesale Blasting ‘RANVILLE HICKS, of course, is not one of these. He happens to be the master of a firm and scholarly style, and to date, the critic who has worked the hardest and gained the most respect of the writers. He grinds no axes, and he knows American literature. His book, “the Great Tradi- tion” is the finest summary in the field. It may be true that he lapses into the pedagogic at times, and seems unaware of the living struggle and chaos and pain in which books are born. He shares with many critics the tendency to perform scientific autopsies on a cadaver, instead of diagnos- ing the ailments of a vital human being. But I disagree with Dahlberg’s wholesale criticism of the critic, Granville Hicks. This kind of blast, it seems to me, is a cure that is worse than the dis- ease. We must all learn to be more responsible and comradely to each other, and to point out each other’s faults with no trace of personal feel- ing. All of us are in the same fight; we don’t have to love each other, certainly, but we must learn that we need each other. The difficult relation between critic and crea- tive writer will be one of the problems, I hope, that our Writers’ Congress in May will help clarify. * * TUNING IN 7:00-WEAF—Robert Burns Anniversary Program. WOR—Sports Resume—Stan Lomax WJZ—Amos ‘n' Andy— ‘WABC—Myrt and Marge— :15-WEAF—Stories of the Black Chamber—Secret Ink WOR—Lum and Abner— WsZ—Plantation Echoes; Robison Orchestra; South- ernaires Quartet WABC—Just Plain _Bill— 7:30-WEAF—Hirsch Orch. WOR—Mystery Sketch WJZ—Red Davis—Sketch WABC—The O'Neills—Sketeh 7:48-WEAF—Uncle Esra— WOR—Front Page Drama ‘WsZ—Dangi Paradise— WABC—Boake Carter, Com- mentator 8:00-WEAP—Bourdon Orch.; Jessica Dragonette, So- ; Male Quartet WOR—Lone Ranger—Sketch ‘WJZ—Dramatic Sketch, with Irene Rich, Actress WABC—Variety Musicale 8:15-WJZ—Dick Lelbert, Or- Relations 9:00-WEAF—Lyman — Orch.; Vivienne Segal, Songs Frank Munn, Tenor; WOR—Hillbilly Music WJZ—Beatrice Lillie, Com- edienne; Perrin Orchestra; Cavaliers Quartet WABC—March of Time— 9:30-WEAF—Bonime —_Orch.; Pic and Pat, Comedians WOR—Al and Lee Reiser, WJZ—Phil Baker, Comedian; Gabrielle de Lys, Songs; Belasco Orchestra WABC—Holiywood Hotel Sketch with Dick Powel Jane Williams, Tel Fi Rita Orchestra, Others; Dunne 9:45-WOR—Singin’ Sam 10:00-WEAF—Dramatic Sketch WOR—Blaine Jordan, Songs WJZ—The Third Ingredient 10:15-WOR—Currern: Events— Frank Black, 4 WOR—Pasternack Orchestra! Mixed Chorus ? ‘WJZ—Facts About the Jew- gan; Armbruster | and ish People—Rabbi Barnett Kraus, Piano; Mary R. Brickner Courtlandt, Songs; Male WABC—The O'Flynn—Mus- Quartet jeal_Dre: WABC—Edwin C. Hill, Com- | 11:00-WEAF—Talk — George mentator Holmes, Chief Washington 8:30-WOR—Katzman Oreh.; Bureau, INS Lucille Peterson, Songs; | WOR—News Choristers Quartet WsZ—Danee Orchestra WJZ—Goodman Orchestra; ‘WABC—Nelson Orchestra dane Froman. Songs; Bob | 11:15-WEAF—Ferdinando Or- Hope, Comedian chestra Ww. of Human WOR—Moonbeams Trio DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, JA NUARY 25, 1935 Page vs LEFTY Suovts-the FAMILIAR CRY ON HIS FIRST DAY AS A NEWSBOY gee Educational Exhibit Is Gl | Exhibit Now On View! At N. Y. Museum of | Natural History By OAKLEY JOHNSON HE first exhibit ever to be shown in America portraying education in the Soviet Union is Aow on vicw at the Museum of Natural History at 77th Street and Central Park West. The large Maxwell Hall on the ground floor is packed full of the most varied charts, maps, out- lines, pictures, models and samples of school work that have ever been assembled. As Professor George S. | Counts of Teachers College says, |“In the field of educational devel- | | opment the Soviet Union has set a record unparalleled in history.” | The exhibit was prepared in the | Soviet Union by V.O.KS. (Society | for Cultural Relations with Foreign | Countries) and the People’s Com- missariat for Education. It is shown | |in the United States by the Ameri- can Russian Institute for Cultural | | Relations with the Soviet Union, | with offices at 56 West 45th Street. | | This is the same organization thet | sponsors the Soviet Art Exhibition | now showing in Philadelphia, which | |has received high praise from all | | critics. | The Soviet Education Exhibition in New York, on view daily until February 22, is of broader scope |and even greater significance than | the Soviet Art Exhibit in Philadel- |phia, It gives a complete survey of |the whole educational system, with | the chief emphasis upon the schools | for young and adolescent children. | A special and more detailed section | ‘is devoted to education in the; | Ukraine, as a sample of the educa- tional systems in each of the con- |stituent republics of the Soviet Union, Broad Unified System Soviet education 1s revealed as a | broad unified system, bringing into | |its scope not only the schools but | jail cultural institutions—theatres, | | museums, libraries, etc. The Soviet | | plan has, as Dr. Stephen P, Duggan says, “linked education and scientific | research to the economic, social and jcultural life of the nation in al |fashion that has aroused the in- | terest of scientists the world over.” Even the New York Times (Jan. 16, 1935), in discussing the exhibi- ; tion, was forced to caption its re- | Port, “Soviet Education Wins Praise | Here.” Many prominent people | made speeches at the opening of the exhibition on January 16, including | F. Trubee Davison, president of the | The Silent Partner! NEWSTO@ND close Le mrornPn by del ~ | Guess PRrorits -—— The School Workshop attached to the Ivanove Textile Factory, Museum of Natural History, and Boris E. Skvirsky, Soviet Charge d’Affaires at Washington. Cultural Autonomy for Minorities As the exhibition shows, Soviet | education is completely co-educa- tional. Boys and girls are together in_ all classes: for example, both learn to do domestic tasks and car- | pentry. There are no private schools in the Soviet Union. Racial and na- tional groups have equal rights and advantages: for instance, samples are shown of text beoks written in 46 different languages. There are | 152 different nationalities in (he Soviet Union, and 72 of them have already adopted latinized alphabets. Forty new alphabets have been created for nationalities which pre-| viously had no written language at all. “The U.S.SR. is a free brotherly union of nationalities,’ says the slogan at the head of the section| in the exhibition which deals with the education of national minorities. | This, Professor John Dewey points out, means “cultural autonomy of | the various racial minorities.” | As all the news reports Phasized, the educational system brings the machine into full use all through the school years. The poly- technical schools, which are basic institutions throughout the Soviet Union, are operated on the system that the productive processes of industry and agriculture should be interwoven with all the other cultural skills—literature, painting, dramatics, etc, as well as with |games and with social and political! knowledge. Revolution in Pedagogy The result hag been a virtual rev- olution in pedagogical method. While there has been a borrowing of pedagogical techniques from the capitalist countries, including espe- |! cially the United States, resulting in a merging of the “project” and “laboratory” methods with the older lesson-learning disciplines, yet the polytechnical and socialist features have created an actually new type of education. “Practically nothing | was left as it had been,” says Pro- fessor Counts. “Even the teaching of arithmetic was changed.” The system of education in the the | se (Photo by Soyuzphoto) under four heads. First, there are the nursery schools and kindergar. three tens, for children from en years old. Soviet education has been exte: ther than in any other count: millions of children are in the Sovie' | nurs schools. Second, there are polytechnical schocls already re- ferred to, which are planned to children through a ten-year ing period from the ages of to eight to eighteen. At present the) polytechnical schools cover seven! construction of socialism,” said rs of work, but they are being| Lenin—the quotation looms large de into ten-year schools of all! among the slogans of this educa- cluding art schools, prep-| tional exh m—"it is necessary | # for engineering or other: to master knowledge, technique, | ns, and so on. Fourth aré/| culture.” the colleges and universities, and » York the post-graduate scientific insti- Lda eg fete thie EB) a tutes for the training of finished | | professional workers, for teacher- training, and for research. Besides, there are adult education classes by the thousands, ficient that the percentage of ill reduced from nearly 60 to less than 10 for the country as a whole, Descriptive Creativeness acy has been | owing Tribute To Extraordinary Cultural Advances in U.S.S.R 7 Record "Unparalleled | In History, Says Prof. Counts n drawing n aged six or seven range in subject matter from but- terflies to the mausoleum of Lenin A five-year-old child has a drawing called “War in Chi with much shooting. A twelve-year-old boy has| a drawing of a “Kulak, a bearded peasant standing. feet apart, hands truculent and pompous. ear-old has a pen and wing entitled “Bolshevist Spring.” The exhibition makes it clear that there are children’s theatres and ren’s libraries in the land of ts. The text books are attrac- and varied, and are based on| real life. Those for young children | phones how to ow mitt ees, It i | al jthat toy manufacture occupies high place in the Soviet Union. ‘The Toy Institute in Moscow, for ex- ample, designs experimentally new types and kinds of children’s toys. | In the exhibition we see sophisti- | cated designs of animals and toy| machines right alongside the tra tional doll toys that are made in old way. | | Health and Pieasure The health of children and youth is of paramount concern in Soviet | Schools. They have play, fresh air,| ing. sun baths. In the Soviet | view, children are entitled to health and pleasure, and every guarantee | is given that both will be achieved. | But skill and understanding remain always the central aim. “For the able absence of direct propaganda for socialism,” but the Sun's re- Porter must have been either a “liberal” or a Trotskyite. The whole exhibit is a tribute to socialist cul- tural advance. Moreover, a prom- inent slogan declares to all who wish to read: “Our route is the five- | Union Communist Party Bolsheyi! | Engels Appraises Marx’s Theories | In ‘Feuerbach’ Karl Marx's formulation of the materialist conception of history— the theory which put the revolution- ary labor movement on a scientific | | footing by insisting that “the mode of production in material life deter- | |mines the social, political and in-| tellectual life processes in general’ | cannot be considered as a theoretical | discovery only, Frederick Engels| shows in the latest edition of his| book “Feuerbach.” “Not only tor economics, but for all historical sciences (and all sci-| ences which are not natural sci-| ences are historical), a revolutionary discovery is made with this proposi- tion.” Engels writes in an appendix to the book, just released in an authentic translation by Interna- tional Publishers. “This propasition involves highly revolutionary con- Sequences, not only for theory but also for practice,” he writes. Quoting from Marx’s preface to “The Critique of Political Economy,” Engels traces the development of capitalist society to the stage when “the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production or— what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of | development of the forces of pro- duction these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes a period i of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the en- tire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. . .. “AS we pursue our materialist thesis further and apply it to the present, the perspective of a tre-| mendous revolution, indeed the most | tremendous revolution of all time, | therefore immediately unfolds itself before us.” Engels’ article appears under the title: “Frederick Engels on the Ma- terialism and Dialectics of Marx.” It was originally written as a review \of Marx's “Critique of Political Economy” and appeared in the German periodical “Das Volk” in London in 1859. Help the Daily Wo-ker drive for 10,000 new daily and 15,000 new Saturday subs, Write to 50 East 13th St, The Daily Worker is printing | serially the extremely valuable | and popular booklet by R. Palme Dutt, “Life and Teachings of Y. I. Lenin,” published by Inter- | national Publishers, | January 21 was the eleventh anniversary of the death of Lenin, During these ten years the teach- ings of Lenin have spread to ever wider sections of the globe, inspir- ing the workers and oppressed to | greater assaults on capitalism. CHAPTER Itt. Teachings of Lenin t. | ITH Lenin, as with Marx, the immediate revolutionary outloox and practice in relation to the par- | ticular period in which each lived | was based on a fully thought-out | wider general world outlook and understanding. Lenin constantly insisted that communism cannot be regazded as a special body of doctrines or dogmas, or “ready-made conclusions” to be learned from text-books, but can only be understood as the outcome of the whole human science and culture, on the basis of an exact study of all that previous ages, in- cluding especially capitalist society, had achieved. Speaking to the Third Congress of the Communist Youth in Russia in 1920, he said: It would be a serious mistake to suppose that one can become a Communist without making one’s own the treasures of human knowledge. It would be mistaken to imagine that it is enough to | adopt the Communist formulae | | and conclusions of Communist science without mastering that sum-total of different branches | of knowledge, the final outcome | of which is communism. . . . Communism becomes an empty | phrase, a mere facade, and the Communist a mere biuffer, if he has not worked over in his cons- | ciousness the whole inheritance of human konwledge, Therefore he urged the youth to acquire the whole sum of human knowledge and to ac- quire it in such a way that com- | munism will not be something learned by heart, but something By R. PALME DUTT —— * which you have thought out your- selves, something which forms the inevitable conclusion from the point of view of modern educa- tion. In the same way he wrote with reference to the contzoversy on “proletarian culture”: Marxism won its world-historie significance as the ideology of the revolutionary proletariat, because it did not reject out and out the most valuable achievements of the bourgeois epoch, but on the contrary made its own and worked over anew all that was of value in the more than two thousand years of development of | human thought. (“Draft Resolu- tion on Proletarian Culture,” 1920.) (eae SSE. 2 ENIN thus saw in Marxism, not some special “system” of dog- mas, but the culmination of the many streams of previous human | thought, development and advance to a_ scientific outlook. Marxism brought for the first time the com- pletely scientific, theoretical and practical, approach, not merely to one or two isolated departments of knowledge, but to the whole of life and existence. The outlook of Marxism is the outlook of dialectical matezialism. of which something has been said in the first chapter on the Epoch of simultaneously | | Life and Teachings of Lenin Lenin. Lenin was materialist. in every problem and in every re- lation of life, in the aims he set himself, and in the methods of their achievement, were completely gov- erned by this basic understanding cf fexistence and life, of the role of human beings, of the laws of his- torical development, of the nec sary forms and methceds of advance within the conditions of class so- ciety, and of the future world orde: | to be achieved of associated hu- 'manity in control of its destiny. This gave him his strength | against the shortsighted, interest- | ridden and illusion-soaked stat men and theorists of the bourse order. The achievement of his iife was a powerful demonstration of | the correctness and efficacy of dialectical materialism. | But dialectical materialism is no |closed metaphysical “system”—to become out-of-date, as all systems |inevitably must. Dialectical mate- rialism, as Engels pointed out, re- quires to be constantly renewed in eyery age, with every advance of science and of concrete knowledge. This task, also, Lenin carried out, | especially in his Materialism and | Empiro-Criticism. Here he carried \forward the understanding of dia- |lectical materialism in relation to the new p-oblems of science of the | twentieth century, and fought the reactionary idealist mystical-relig- ious tendencies which weer increas- \ingly creeping in under the protec- tion of many bourgeois scientists, * . N the one hand, Lenin brought to new clezrness the understanding of materialism as the necessary basis of the scientific outlook, He fought without mercy religion and all the allies of religion: all the subjective religious and semi-7eli- gious “idealist” outlooks and iwi- | sions which enslave the mind and are, in fact, as he insisted, even in their mos: “modern” and pseudo- scientific trappings, nothing but forms of “clericalism’—that is, of apologetics of the existing order as divinely and mysteriously ord: ; maintenance of servitude, and pre- venting of clear thinking and facing cf reality, a dialectical (To Be Continued) 1 His thought and action | + | the tert. Meus of Short | Wave Radio | Clubs in U.S.| HE Short Wave Radio Club of | Manhattan is still minus full- time headquarters, which fact | |should bring home forcibly the | truth that it is not enough for the club members to understand the necessity for a club room; such un- derstanding has existed ever since end even before the kw. xmitter was obtained. | In contrast to the SWROM, we! get a report from Brooklyn, N. Y. |Saying that at their last week’s meeting six enthusiastic members | | showed up and made an outline of | | work for the next two months. | At the next meeting, tonight, to | be held at 9 p.m. at the home of M. Starkopp, Apt. D-3, 30 Bay 25th | Street, the Brooklyn club will hear a lecture on “Fundamental Prin- | ciples of Electricity” by a member- ham, | The lecture at the Manhattan | club tonight (42 Union Square): is by Albert West on “A Modern Ama- teur Phone Xmitter.” The full | evening schedule follows: 7:30, code | practice; 9, business meeting; 10, lecture; 10:30, discussion; 11, ad- fournment, rag chew till midnight. | | JERE'S an interesting field of re- | search for advanced hams. Some day it may prove useful. | In the so-called “scrambler,” the | voice frequencies are inverted (the low tones are made to sound high | and vice versa) with the resulting | unintelligible speech as received on Fe ordinary radio set. To under- stand the speech, an “unscrambler” is necessary (to invert the frequen- cies once more). Another method of making the voice unintelligible | used by the A. T. & T., and called “intelligence.” consists in dividing the voice frequencies into four | bands and then manipulating each |band. Only fourteen unintelligible combinations are claimed (other | combinations being more or less in- | telligible). The latest development | | —hot yet ready—is to change the fourteen intelligence combinations | several times a minute according to | @ prearranged schedule. At present, | intelligence combinations are } | changed only about once every half- | hour, | | ha | | Clyind, pse wek up et snd us *| serves casually that “there is a not- || | year plan, our compass is the All- have em-'Soviet Union may be thought of! The aim of Sovict education from | t = Ge i] Hestions page. tions 13th S: SERS’ SCHOOL. ical cle the clea tcal cleans est kind of struge gle ion as the class, By purging i agents the Party is able to link jonary clas itself in- dissoluably to the life of the working class and win the confidence of this class and all the ex- ploited masses. 01 if the Party consists of a conscientious and loyal Communists, trained steeled revolutionary ice and it be ble of leading t deci cverthrow of capitalism been built up ou in Germany and in C! n Party is making rapid strides t Book of Burck’s Powerful Cartoons Is Vivid Record Of Five Years of Crisis N FEBRUARY 1, the Daily Worker will publish Hunger and Revelt: Cartoons by’ Burck, in a limited edition of one hundred autographed capies. This beautiful, deluxe edition is a pictorial history of the world crisis, as revealed in the powerful drawings of one of America’s outstanding revolu- tionary art Covering 248 pages, Hunger and Revolt con- tains the following chapters: Unemployment; Socialist Party, The N. R. A. and the “New Deal The Farmer; Strikes and Labor Leaders; Politics — BURCK AT WORK JACOB and Politicians; The Negro; Imperialism; Fasci: The U. S. S. R.; and War. Each one of these eleven chapiers is introduced by a foreword by <nown to the revolutionary movement, ip includes Henri Barbusse, Earl Browder, William F. Dunne, Michael Gold, Clarence Hath- v Langston Hughés, Corliss Lamont, Joseph , John Strachey, Seymour Waldman and rguerite Young. This combination of text and pictures tells the story of the struggles of the working class d the past five years as has no other document that has grown out of the crisis. It is a book that will be re! 1d and discussed when tod strug= ¢ tomorro’ ctories. ho are familiar with the drawings of Jacob Burck, for the past four years staff cartoon- ist for the Daily Worker, will be interested to learn that he is leaving for the Soviet Union in March, where he will become a staff cartoonist for Komso- molskaya Pravda. The publication of Hunger and Revolt on Feb. 1, therefore, becomes a fitting tribute to this artist whose talents have won for him the reputation of being the outstanding newspaper care toonist of the United States, as well as one of the leading revolutionary artists of the world. In the words of Earl Browder: “This book will become the necessary possession of all our agitators and propagandists, as well as for everyone intere ested in revolutionary art.” Limited? Autographed! HUNGER d REVOLT: Cartoons by BURCK This beautiful, DeLuxe edition is limited te 100 numbered and signed copies. Printed on heavy art paper, in large folio size and con- taining 248 pages. HUNGER and REVOLT will be ready on February Ist. Orders accepted now. Five dollars, postpaid. DAILY WORKER, 50 E. 13th St., N. Y.