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628

together by merely pocketing the latent values of thisempire. During the period of this pocketing, while in-dividual competition of the spoiler,s was bitter and in-tense, yet there was not existent an intense pressureof class upon class. The enrichment of the bourgeoisiedid not entirely depend on the narrow exploitation o£class by class. Though this exploitation did go on, yet,vast .sources of enrichment for the bourgeoisie also layin the direction of the spoliation of the public domain.

This period has passed. The empire is divided. Andwhile formerly the public domains became sources ofwealth making unnecessary intense exploitation, nowthey necessitate intense exploitation so they may re-main a source of wealth. In order to turn these spoilsinto wealth, producing possessions they had to be turnedinto means of exploitation. So now we have a situationwhere this original wealth is in itself a source of in-creased exploitation and, at the same time thereis no longer any such original wealth ready to be pickedup. Therefore all chances of further enrichment lie inthe direction of intensification of exploitation. Firstthe exploitation of the masses of workers by capital;then the proletarianization of the petty bourgeoisie,and, finally, the exploitation of the farmer masses.

Thus we find that while in the earlier periods ofAmerican capitalism the rule of the big bourgeoisiebenefited the bourgeoisie as a whole, now, in the stageof imperialism:

1. The rule of the 'big bourgeoisie presses upon andexploits iall other classes and groups in society.

2. The ibig bourgeoisie itself is divided into severalgroups with antagonistic interests.

The elections of the second of Novemlber suppliedproof of the above analysis. The outstanding featureof the elections was not supplied by the fight of the Re-publican and Democratic parties, but by the fight for oragainst the World 'Court and by the manifestations oflife of a Labor Party.

A week or so before election, the international bank-ers, including the head of the house of Morgan in WallStreet, the governor of the bank of England and thepresident of the German Reichsbank, issued a manifestocalling for the elimination of all tariff barriers. Thiswas the .signal for an outburst of "unadulterated" Ameri-can patriotism by industrial capital in America. Butthis outburst did not and could not remove the differenc-es thus laid bare. Intensive and extensive capitalist in-terests are tied up with the success or failure of thepolitical and economic structure of capitalism in foreigncountries. The political interests rest on loans madeto foreign governments. But American banking inter-ests have also large shares in the industries of foreigncountries as a result of reorganization schemes of allsorts.

'Capital is self-sufficient. Its interest does not lie inits "country," 'but in itself. Therefore no "country"can make capital subservient to its interest (exceptthrough revolution), but all capital makes its countrysubservient to itself, even though it thus creates revolu-tion against itself. It is therefore very natural that theexporters of capital to foreign countries, all eminentpatriots, to be sure, should be primarily interested intheir dollars, which they sent for conquest into foreign

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

lands. These dollars are to multiply like sand on thebeach. And the children and children's children of thesedollars are to find their way back into the pockets ofthese patriots at home. And the duty of the patriotsat home, in turn, is the creation of favorable conditionsfor the fecundity of the dollars abroad. The ability ofthe debtor nations to find markets for their goods is anecessary prerequisite for their ability to pay interestand principal on their debts. Therefore the demand:Down with tariff barriers.

iBut this cry finds no echo in the breast of the equallypatriotic industrial capitalist whose money is investedexclusively or primarily at home. His dollars thrive onthe tariff (barrier. What is a serious problem to thefinance capitalist is fertilizer which increases the dollarcrop of the industrial capitalist. Therefore: "No en-tangling alliances" for the latter, "World Court" for theformer. "No tariff barriers" for the former, and "pa-tronize home industry" for the latter.

While the differences are already very clear and veryoutspoken, they did not yet find a very clear expressionin the election. But they were there and were more orless articulate at that. The sharpness of the issue wasattested to by the defeat of the republican Senator But-ler in Massachusetts. The lack of clarity, on the otherhand, was attested to 'by the election of the republicanGovernor Fuller in the same state. This, by the way,is also proof of the fact, that the issue is not betweenRepublicans and Democrats, but between different groupsof the bourgeoisie, which try to make both old parties in-struments in the achievements of their aims. In theface of these differences it is not of great importancethat as a result of the election the control of the UnitedStates senate by the Republican Party is in danger. Itis also of little importance that some of the electedsenators rode into the senate on the back of unprece-dented corruption. This corruption is important in con-nection with Democracy as a political system. But it iswithout significance as to the results of the elections.

The most important results of the elections are themanifestations of life of independent political action ofthe workers.

The dissolution of the political army of the bourgeoisietends to crystallize the proletariat as a political entity,separated completely from the political forces of capital.This crystallization is handicapped by the currents with-in the bourgeoisie itself against the rule of the big bour-geoisie. The petty bourgeoisie in revolt against the po-litical rule of the big bourgeoisie, is radical enough inwords to attract all political dissatisfied elements to itsbanners. The only reason why it does not take the ini-tiative, and why it does not score great success where itdoes take the initiative for a political revolt against thebig bourgeoisie, is its own inner divisions. The petty.bourgeoisie as a class has not enough unity of interestto be able to unify any other forces under its leader-ship. And the interests which it has in common, areprecisely those that have the least beneficial qualitiesfor society as a whole. After all, the petty bourgeoisieis as a class absolutely useless for the historic progressof society. It has nothing to contribute to the furtherconstruction of society. In that sense this class is shortof the qualities of the big bourgeoisie which serves so

D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6

ciety in some measure, while it serves itself, or of theproletariat, which will free society while it frees itself.For this reason, the petty bourgeoisie is unable to sup-ply independent political leadership. The best it isgood for is either as a direct lackey for the big bour-geoisie, on the pattern of the Fascist movement in Italy,or as an indirect lackey of the big bourgeoisie as a"leader" of the proletariat on the pattern of the social-democracy in Germany. But the American big bour-geoisie is not yet in need of a Fascist lackey, and theAmerican petty bourgeoisie is not yet ripe for the roleof the German social-tlemocracy.

But in spite of all that, the currents and tendenciesof the petty bourgeoisie for a political movement apartfrom and directed against the old 'political parties of thebig bourgeoisie, are attracting masses of workers alsoin rebellion against the big bourgeoisie. While the re-bellion of these workers is potentially a pure class move-ment, which confines its enmity merely for the presentmoment to the big bourgeoisie, but will gradually de-velop into a movement against capitalism itself, yetthe very parallel development of the political rebellionof the proletariat and that of the petty bourgeoisie re-sults in these two movements temporarily merging intoeach other. To disentangle these essentially unrelatedcurrents is the task of a revolutionary party which isperfectly conscious of the class interests of the work-ers. The recent elections register some advance inthe direction of the progress of this disentanglement.

The Workers (Communist) Party has not made anygreat showing in this election. The reason for this fail-ure is very apparent. The party has not yet overcomecompletely the infantile disease of leftism. Incessantpropaganda and education have created a situation inwhich the individual party member is ashamed to admitany doubts as to the effectiveness and the necessity ofparliamentary action. But this cure from leftist infantil-ism of the individual members is very superficial andhas not touched the organism of the party as a whole.The party goes through the motions of election cam-paigns and parliamentary actions. The party is ashamedto admit any anti-parliamentarian tendencies. But it Isequally ashamed to show any effective activities on thisfield. This matter will have to ibe treated separatelyfrom a consideration of the last election. But it mustbe treated seriously and with a view to completely over-coming the last remnants of leftism.

How serious it is for the Workers ('Communist) Partyto overcome any inner handicaps to its activities on thefield of parliamentary action, is shown by the progressthat independent political action of the workers ismaking. There are a number of crystallizations of la-•bor party activities in different parts of the country. Butthe most important and most instructive development isstill that of Minnesota.

In the state of Minnesota, there exists a farmer-laborparty. This farmer-labor party developed primarily outof a revolt of the farmers of that state. It was orginallya revolt of the rural petty bourgeoisie. This move-ment gradually spread. The petty bourgeoisie attemptedto gather within the folds of its political organizationand for its support the working class elements in thecities. The movement spread and threatened the an-

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premacy of the old political parties. The dominatingRepublican Party thereupon sent some of its leadinglights into the farmer-labor movement, hoping that whileit could not prevent the revolt, it could at least lead it.In the meantime, the attempt of the rural petty bour-geoisie to mobilize tne urban proletarian masses for itsmovement, resulted in another current. The workers,instead of submitting to the leadership of the ruralpetty bourgeoisie, entered the movement in a more orless crystallized form, with an attempt to establish ahegemony of the workers in that party. This attemptwas led and directed by the most conscious proletarianelement, by the CommHinists.

The movement for the establishment of the leadershipof the workers over this political revolt collided with theattempt of the old party politicians to gain leadershipover it. In this collision the Communists were tempo-rarily defeated. The old party politicians raised the cry•of protecting the farmer-labor movement from outsideinfluence. They accused the Communists of entering thefarmer-labor movement with ulterior motives, not benton building it, but rather 'bent on its destruction. Whilequite large masses of the workers were convinced of thesincerity of the Communists in their endeavor to crys-tallize a political class movement out of this rebellion,yet the majority succumbed to the arguments of the oldparty politicians and practically acquiesced in the re-moval of the Communists.

The last election has created the basis for a reversalof this policy. The old party politicians, after they hadsucceeded in getting the Communists more or less outof the way on the ground that they do not act in goodfaith, openly broke their faith with the farmer-laborparty movement and either went back to the old parties,or openly avowed their purpose of leading the wholemovement back to the old parties. Under these condi-tions, the elections became a test of strength of the veryidea of a labor party. And the idea withstood the test.The Labor Party movement is today stronger in Minne-sota than it ever was before. It outlived the treacheryof its old party leaders. It withstood the betrayal of itsoutstanding figures and its vitality even stood up in theface of complete lack of nourishment in the form ofclass issues.

Magnus Johnson, the candidate for governor, did notbring out one vital issue in this campaign. Althoughrunning on the farmer-labor ticket, his campaign speech-es differed in nothing from those of his Republican op-ponent. In this Johnson supported directly the moveback to the Republican Party. The Lalbor Party iseither a party which fights militantly for the issues ofthe working masses—or it is no 'Labor Party and hasno basis for existence. Henrik Shipsted, a farmer-labor U. S. .senator from Minnesota, practically refusedto participate in the campaign. He foretold his owndefection from the Farmer-Labor Party in the near fu-ture by refusing to answer the question of whether hewould run the next time on the farmer-labor or on theRepublican ticket. No answer in this case is the mosteloquent answer imaginable. Yet in spite of all these de-fections and handicaps, the Farmer-Labor Party polledover 250,000 votes. The idea of such a party was sostrong that it outlived all of the attempts to kill it. And

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Did You Ever Hear of ACOTZOFANESTI FSOME days ago Her Majesty, Queen Marie of Roumania, condescended

to visit Chicago. Society turned out in full force to greet her, notwith-standing the fact that she represents a regime of cruel despotism and

terror, which has drenched the soil of Roumania with the blood and tears ofthousands of workers and peasants. The Babbits outdid themselves in theireagerness to grovel before the Queen of Black Roumania. And like a faith-ful mirror, the capitalist press reflected their degrading servility with hugelaudatory streamers and page upon page of the most nauseatng gush.

Throughout this humiliating scramble, one point stood out like a wel-come oasis in the midst of the desert. One voice rose firm and militant abovethe mad hubub — a voice of protest, a voice of fearless challenge — THEDAILY WORKER. "What of Cotzofanesti?" it cried, as it exposed to theAmerican workers the true picture of this scion of the ruling class — a pic-ture of the lowest depravity and debauchery. "What of our murderedBrother Tkachenko?" demanded The Daily Worker in the name of the thou-sands of workers and peasants, who have either lost their lives at the handsof the Roumanian ruling class, or are today rotting in the dungeons of thatunhappy coutry.

This is ot unusual. This is no accident. This is not the first time thatThe Daily Worker has shown its mettle, nor the last. On this occasion as onmany others, The Daily Worker has shown itself to be a powerful weaponof the workers in the class struggle. It played the same part in the Passaicstrike, in the Furriers' strike, in the I. L. G. W. U. strike, and in the Sacco-Vanzetti case. It will play the same part in all struggles of the working class.

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THE WORKERS MONTHLYOfficial Organ WORKERS COMMUNIST PARTY OF AMERICA

MAX BEDACHT, Editor.

Single copies, twenty-five cents—yearly subscriptions, two dollars; foreign, two fifty. Published monthly by the DailyWorker Publishing Company, 1113 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, 111. Entered as Second Class Matter November 8,1924, at the postofflce of Chicago, Illinois, under the act of March 3, 1879.

VOL. V. 290 DECEMBER, 1926 No. 14

After Elections—What Now?By Max Bedacht

Nikolai Bukharin—A Friendly Caricature

rpHE last general elections, uneventful though they mayhave seemed, speak volumes about the disintegration

of the political forces of capitalism in the United States.To study and understand these volumes is an unavoid-able necessity for the revolutionary worker.

It seems a contradiction that American capitalismshould show signs of disintegration in the hour of itshighest triumph. And yet, this contradiction is todaythe problem of the ruling class in the United States

The political forces of American capitalism werenever a homogeneous mass. While the government al-ways represented, more or less outspokenly, the inter-ests of a specific capitalist group, yet the army of ad-herents of the political rule of the bourgeoisie was madeup of all kinds of groups of the bourgeoisie and alsovirtually of all of the masses of the proletariat. Thereis no mystery in the fact, that this army of followersof the government should lose its outward unity, andsplit up according to its inward divisions in the momentwhen the rule of the bourgeoisie has achieved its high-est triumphs.

In the period of upward development of capitalism,the aims of the leading groups of the capitalist class can-not be achieved without, at the same time, benefiting allother groups of the bourgeoisie. In other words: capi-talism cannot be promoted onward and upward withoutcarrying up the bourgeoisie as a whole. In America,owing to the peculiar conditions, with virgin land andvirgin natural resources, even the proletariat could notbe developed by capitalism without giving it some con-cessions. Therefore, upward developing capitalism inAmerica satisfied more or less, pretty nearly everybodyand thus made possible the practical unanimity of thepolitical army of the bourgeoisie. Although in the earlydays of struggle, between the Federalists and the Repub-licans, and then again, between the Democrats and Re-publicans real fundamental issues caused the divisionsand struggles; yet on the whole, the two party systemwas not a sign of division, but one of comparative unity.

But now the period of upward development has been

completed. American capitalism has entered a newstage. Imperialism rules the hour.

This is especially important because it signifies thatthe accumulation of capital goes on so rapidly that thepossibilities at home no longer supply a satisfactorymarket for it. Capital, therefore, needs foreign markets,needs chances for export.

Foreign policies were a comparatively simple matterin the United States in the past. And even if they werenot simple, they certainly were not public issues ofgreat concern. Nobody was interested in what the gov-ernment did in its relation to the outside world. Butthe need of foreign markets for surplus capital changedthat. Those interested in the export of capital becameintensely interested in the foreign policies of the gov-ernment. They wanted the government to carry on aforeign policy which helps to create and to secure for-eign markets for capital exports. The foreign policiesof the government became an important issue inpolitics.

But there are still those bourgeois who are not in-terested in capital exports. They want all the attentionof the government concentrated on the internal policiesfor the improvement of the chances for exploitation. Thebattle cry of the latter group of the bourgeoisie is: "Noforeign entanglements." The former, on the other hand,are for the League of Nations, for the World 'Court, etc.,because "Uncle Sam must take his share in building abetter and more peaceful world." Both groups have in-tensely patriotic slogans, even though their motives areof a less idealist nature.

The division of the bourgeoisie on this importantquestion of foreign policy is not the only one. Thereis another internal division.During the period of upward development of American

capital much of the wealth of the bourgeoisie was gath-ered by primitive accumulation. In all European coun-tries most of this primitive accumulation took place inthe pre-capitalist era. But America was an undevelopedand undivided empire to the advent of the rule of Ameri-can capitalism over it. Immense fortunes were gotten

630

even where the belief In the present Farmer-Labormovement was not strong enough for active participationin the campaign, the pro-labor party tendency manifest-ed itself by abstentions. The workers did not go backto the Republican Party but rather abstained from vot-ing, waiting for a revival of a militant political laborparty movement. This is evidenced by the unusually lowvotes cast in the proletarian precincts of Minneapolisand other cities of the state.

With the movement for a labor party still very muchalive, and with the leadership of the old party politiciansin this movement completely discredited, the Commu-nists face an entirely new situation. They were foughtand attacked for lack of good faith toward the move-ment. But now, they can point to the lack of good faithtoward the labor party movement on the part of the oldparty politicians, who had originated and led the attackagainst the Communists. The Communists now canprove that the attacks against them were not .made be-cause they "lacked good faith,' but on the contrary,because they were the only conscious element which act-ed in good faith toward that movement. These old partypoliticians saw in the Communists the obstacle on theroad to their betrayal. They knew that their desire tolead the rebellious urban and rural masses of Minnesotaback into the folds of the Republican or DemocraticParty could never be fulfilled with the Communistsguarding against 'betrayals. In other words, while theyaccused the Communists of lack of good faith toward thelabor party, they had designs all along to betray thatparty. In order to carry out their breach of faith to-

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

ward the movement, they had to remove the Commu-nists as the element most faithful to the labor party.

The last elections made this clear. They thus clear-ed the field for the further activities of the Communists.The old-party politicians had raised the issue of Com-munism in the Farmer-Labor Party, declaring that theywanted to protect the party against destructive in-fluences. It is now up to the Communists to raise theissue of Communism in the Farmer-Labor Party, as ameasure of cleansing that movement from its treacher-ous leaders, who openly aim at its destruction.

As far as great political issues and changes are con-cerned, the last election campaign was not very event-ful. In fact, the election was the least exciting from thatpoint of view, for many, many years. Yet the signs ofinner disintegration of the capitalist class, which itbrought to the surface, are clearer than they have everbeen before. The struggle between the leading factionsof the big bourgeoisie—imperialist finance capital on theone hand and pro-tariff industrial capital on the other,—overshadowed all other tendencies and currents. Butalongside of this struggle, the revolt of the petty bour-geoisie against the rule of the big bourgeoisie was clear-ly visible. And, running concurrently with this revoltof the petty bourgeoisie, sometimes merged with it,sometimes independent of it, we see the movement ofthe exploited masses of city and country for independentpolitical action. The elections were a new proof of theimportance which the labor party movement has in theclass struggle at present. The elections are over: Nowforward toward a Labor Party for the 1928 elections!

D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6 631

"After Gompers—What?" AnsweredBy J. Louis Engdahl

TTTHEN the Forty-Sixth Convention of the American* * Federation of Labor met at Detroit, Michigan, Octo-

ber 4-14, the memory of Samuel Gompers, so fresh theyear before at Atlantic City, had become faint indeed.It was not until the afternoon of the third day that thename of Gompers was even mentioned, and then only byan unknown outsider, Dr. J. C. Curran, speaking for theside issue of Near East Relief, one of the scores of bour-geois activities in which Gompers interested himself.

Flag of Truce Raised High.

This is mentioned here because for decades great sec-tions of the vanguard elements in the working class hadspeculated that progress would be rapid if Gomperswould only pass out of the picture. Well, Gompers isgone; even as a memory. Those he left after him, torule in his place, during nearly two years of effort, con-fess to having collected only $98.50 in "The Gompers'Memorial Fund." Yet the loosening of Gompers' deadhand upon the American labor movement has unleashedno latent forces of progress. Instead reaction still sitsin the saddle and drives toward even greater conserva-tism. Class collaboration offers an opportunity to sur-render much, with the flag of truce raised high by thelabor officialdom in the industrial struggle.

One may question the degree of security with whichthe labor reaction holds its place. The throne givesevidence of being shaky, although time alone will tellto what extent.

Challenge to Reaction.

It isn't because of any great upsurge from the rank andfile of American labor that the official leadership, withPresident William Green at its head, feels extremelynervous. It is rather because of rapidly developing con-ditions in other lands, especially in three, as follows:

FIRST: The increasing challenge of the Union of So-cialist Soviet Republics. This challenge was voiced atDetroit by Dr. Sherwood Eddy, international secretaryof the Young Men's Christian Association for Asia, andnot by a labor spokesman, like Arthur A. Purcell atAtlantic City last year. This open defiance to the re-action grows as every element in the American popu-lation, even the A. F. of L. officialdom, is forced to admitthe continued and rapid recovery in Soviet industry andagriculture.

SECOND: The growing influence upon American laborof the British trade union movement. George Hicks,fraternal delegate of the British Trade Union Congress,came pleading for World Trade Union Unity, in spiteof "Amsterdam." Hicks and his fellow delegate, JohnBromley, traitorous though their conduct was during thestruggle at home, nevertheless startled these American

"labor leaders" with their explanations of the GeneralStrike launched last May First in Great Britain, and withtheir timid pleas of support for the coal miners' strike.

THIRD: Then there is Mexico. Eddy delivered hisspeech on the Soviet Union, although, it is claimed, bysubterfuge; the two British fraternal delegates were al-lowed their say with respectful tolerance, but the moststrenuous efforts exercised during the convention, andthe weeks immediately preceding it, consisted in tryingto smother all discussion of the Mexican government'sstruggle against the Roman Catholic Church, a clashthat is causing many capitalist-minded labor elements onthis side of the Rio Grande to fear the radicalism of theMexican workers. This fear naturally grows as theMexicans announce that their Confederacion RegionalObrera Mexicana (C. R. O. M.) now enjoys a membershipof approximately two millions, or more than two-thirdsthat of the American Federation of Labor itself, withboth the United States and Canada to draw upon.

Recognition of U. S. S. R.

Developments in these three countries worry the pres-ent leadership in the American Federation of Labor,even as they engage the attention of the imperialist gov-ernment at Washington. The A. F. of L. officialdom maybe allowed to cross the "t's" and dot the "i's" but theactual policies towards these countries is that of Coo-lidge's state department under the secretaryship of"Standard Oil" Frank B. Kellogg. In fact, in the viciousdeclaration against the recognition of the Soviet Union,actual credit is given the Coolidge administration forhaving inspired A. F. of L. policies on this question whenit says:

"We are not interested in the commerical aspect of thequestion, agreeing fully with President Coolidge in hold-ing that American principles are not to be bartered . . .Between it (the Soviet Regime) and our form of socialorganization there can be no compromise of any kind."

Cal Coolidge, instead of President Green, might just aswell have been speaking in reply to the fraternal greet-ings of the British delegates when Green said:

"At the moment there stands an impregnable barrierbetween the working people of the government of thatcountry (the Soviet Union) and the American Federationof Labor. . . There must come a psychological change, achange in the .viewpoint of those who enjbrace the philoso-phy followed by the-peoples in that great country (the So-viet Union) before we can even think of establishingco-operative relations between them and the AmericanFederation of Labor. . . When they (the workers ofthe Soviet Union) embrace a philosophy that is so an-tagonistic to the philosophy embraced and followed bythe American Federation of Labor, then it would be a

632

waste of time and effort to attempt to reconcile ourconditions.

Substitute the expression "the United States govern-ment" for "the American Federation of Labor," and itmight be "Silent Cal" himself indulging in Green's piti-ful attempt at a flight in anti-Bolshevik oratory.

The British General Strike.It was in the same speech, however, that President

Green, altho graciously greeting the fraternal delegatesof the British Trade Union Congress, nevertheless re-jected the philosophy of the British working class thatalone made the general strike possible. To the British,Green said:

"We realize, of course, that the trade union movementin each country must be governed by circumstances andconditions prevailing within their own respective juris-dictions. They know what is best for them.

"And so we say to our British brethren that what youthink is best for you, you may inaugurate and put intoeffect. We have confidence in your judgment, in yourintelligence and in your experience. . ."

"We are committed here (in the United States) irre-vocably to the principles of collective bargaining andtrade agreements. . . As we believe in collective bar-gaining, in the making of wage agreements, so we herein America are religiously committed to the observanceof any contract we make anywhere or any place."

With this pronunciamento, President Green evidentlyfelt that he outlawed the general strike in the UnitedStates for any and all time. But although British labor'sphilosophy ran counter to A. F. of L. policies, PresidentGreen was not in a position to rebuff them as he hadthe workers of the 'Soviet Union.

A. F. of L. and Mexico.

Similarly the Mexican workers, in the rather uncom-fortable position that the A. F. of L. officialdom findsitself, are told that:

"We (the A. F. of L. officials) believe that the Mexi-can labor movement should exercise unrestricted author-ity to make decisions for Mexican labor and to adopt pol-icies to be pursued in their labor policies."

But this does not mean that the Mexican workers areto be permitted to develop their struggle unfettered bythe sabotage of the A. F. of L. reaction. The imperial-ist ambitions nurtured by the Monroe Doctrine are lodg-ed in the bosoms of the A. F. of L. officialdom as well asin the heart of Dollar Diplomacy. Thus we find a wel-ter of piffle in a supposedly serious A. F. of L. declar-ation that says:

"In the early struggles of our own beloved countryto establish justice, freedom, liberty, self-government,free press, free speech, and freedom of worship, to moreeffectively show the world at large that interferencewith any of these inalienable rights would not be toler-ated nor would we brook outside interference even inSouth America, and to accentuate and emphasize thisgreat principle the Monroe Doctrine found life and sub-stance."

Of course, millions of workers from Mexico across theequator to the southernmost tips of Chile and the Ar-gentine will cry out at this hypocrisy, but the A. F. of L.

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

officials frankly and openly tell why they helped organ-ize the Pan-American Federation of Labor. It was toadvance their own love of the imperialist Monroe Doc-trine, "In order that the A. F. of L. might effectively ex-tend its useful experience and knowledge gained in ourtrade union movement it assisted and encouraged theformation of the Pan-American Federation of Labor, withwhich we are now affiliated and in which we are takinga leading part.

Officialdom, Makes Confession.

Here is an open confession that the Pan-American Fed-eration of Labor was organized as a weapon in the handsof the A. F. of L. officialdom over the workers of thiswestern world, and not as a medium for all Pan-Ameri-can labor to develop its power jointly and in harmonywith the most advanced labor principles. Thus, in spiteof its so-called "Hands Off" policy towards the Mexi-can workers, in their present struggles, we find this ad-ditional confession:

"There are many convincing evidences of the suc-cess which has attended the efforts of the American Fed-eration of Labor to influence the working people ofMexico and of the Latin-American republics in favor ofA. F. of L. principles and trade union philosophy andtrade union doctrines."

Labor Imperialists Are Uneasy.Thus the organized labor reflection (the official ex-

pressions of the American Federation of Labor) of theworld's dominant imperialism (the United States govern-ment) betrays uneasiness at the rise of labor's militancyin other lands.

This was more apparent at Detroit than at any previ-ous gathering of the A. F. of L.

Detroit is blatantly "open shop." Its ruling classkaisers yell the "American plan" from the tallest skyscrapers. Terrific snorting from the capitalist beastgreeted the coming of the A. F. of L. convention. Themoloch of industry recognized what it believed a foe.The kept press began beating the torn toms of war. TheA. F. of L. delegates were brazenly told that they mustnot attempt the unionization of even a single workerduring their stay in "The Wonder City". The YoungMen's Christian Association was forced to withdraw itsinvitation to President Green to address the white collarslaves of this nest of scabbery. The invitation was obedi-ently and quickly withdrawn. Henry Ford and otherauto barons, with S. S. Kresge, five-and-ten cent storemulti-millionaire, who pays his help 17.50 per week, hadpledged millions of dollars to the Y. M. C. A. buildingfund.

"Y" Saves Its Building Program.It was hinted that the building program might be

seriously interfered with if Green spoke. The churcheswere called on to close their doors against these here-tics. Nowhere over the city could one find the usual"Welcome A. F. of L." banners. Not even the usualpasters were to be seen on the business-hustling taxi-cabs. Instead it was "Welcome A. F. A." this second setof letters standing for American Foundrymen's Associa-tion, that was holding its conference simultaneously inthe city, warmed by the hospitality of the "open shop-

D E C E M B E R , 1926

pers," the "A. F. A." being one of their pet organiza-tions.

This attack developed no spirit of militancy, even ofthe palest milk-and-water brand, on the part of the la-bor officialdom. They felt themselves much aggrievedthat they should be treated thus shabbily.

To be sure, through an oversight, the hail was notdecorated at first with the imperialist flag of WallStreet, but the convention got started with the strainsof "The Star Spangled Banner." The flags came inlater.

In his opening address, President Green took occasionto notify the Detroit "open shoppers" that the conven-tion delegates were not dangerous men. He said:

"Perhaps they (the American planners) still entertainthe idea that the representatives of labor are viciousbackwoodsmen who know little about cultured life, butas a refutation of that impression, I invite them here;I invite them to come among us during the deliberationsof this convention, sit with us, look and listen, and whenthey depart I will leave it to their judgment and to theirconscience as to whether or not the representative menand women of labor assembled here in this city do notcompare favorably with any other group in society."

President Green did not outline the basis of compari-son, whether it was a question of girth measurements,of professions of loyalty to American capitalist institu-tions, or in extremes to be pursued in attacking the Com-munists. The only additional light shed on this questioncame when Green said, "But, my friends, I am sure thatmuch of this apprehension expressed is due to a lack ofunderstanding of the motives, the principles and the pol-icies of our great American labor movement."

During the days that followed, to be sure, there wasto be no mistaking just what those policies were. Thebitter rejection of any approach toward the workers andpeasants of the Soviet Union found its brother in thewelcoming of the closest possible collaboration with theAmerican capitalists in the conduct of privately ownedindustry. Even the Detroit "open shoppers" were finallyconverted with the result that the "American Plan" pressunanimously acclaimed the patriotism, far-sightednessand great moral courage of these so-called "leaders" ofthe American working class. It was even noised aboutthat Green might come back and address the "Y" crowdat some time apart from convention periods.

Citizens' Military Training Camps.

Great applause came from the enemy ranks when theheavy guns of denunciation were turned against SovietRule. This rose to thunderous approval when resolu-tions were adopted approving in superlative term's ofthe militarist nests known as the Citizens' MilitaryTraining Camps. The executive council of the A. F. ofL., headed by Green, had just been feted at the Platts-burgh Camp, in New York state, and special attentionsshowered upon them by the United States government.They were under the careful guidance of "Major" PeterBrady, the head of the Federation Bank, of New YorkCity, 'but in addition were subject to some excellent su-per-propagandizing by government agents. They cameout praising the stink of the capitalists' war prepara-tions, especially perfumed for their benefit. It might be

633

added here that after the convention President Greenhelped drive "the first rivet" in the building of anotherof Uncle Shylock's warships. Having thus petted capi-talism's dogs of war, Green and his associates becamemore acceptable to the capitalists.

Left Wing Not Represented.

There were no Communist delegates at this A. F. ofL. convention. Not one! Not even a left winger. Dele-gate Max Hayes, of the Typographical Union, was far-thest to the left of any delegate, but he furnished a very"timid opposition" indeed. Hayes was on the floor re-peatedly speaking for the labor party, the trade uniondelegation to the Soviet Union, Soviet recognition, thePassaic strikers and he received the full brunt of theblame for having brought Dr. Eddy into the convention.But when it came to voting, Hayes was usually trailingwith the pack enabling President Green to slam his gaveljoyfully on the chairman's table and declare the propo-sitions carried "unanimously."

The socialists, like Gompers, were a memory. Notone delegate spoke as a socialist although there weremany socialist party members in the convention, likeAbraham I. Shiplacoff, of New York City; WilliamBrandt, of St. Louis, not to mention members of theneedle trades delegations, and the hosts of ex-socialistsand ex-farmer-laborites. They all sat mum before thethrone of reaction.

But in spite of the absence of a left wing, to fight fora militant program, several left wing activities pushedtheir way into the gathering. The two most importantof these were the trade union delegation and the opposi-tion ticket that is fighting the John L. Lewis regime Inthe miners' union.

Here were two living, powerful challenges to the "es-tablished order" in the A. F. of L. The officialdom re-fused to send a delegation to the First Workers' Repub-lic. But it was confronted with open mutiny in its ownranks, in that some of its most prominent internationalofficers were planning to make the trip on their own in-itiative. The task of the reigning family, therefore, con-sisted in browbeating and terrorizing these recalcitrantelements.

Tim Healy, president of the Stationary Firemen, wassingled out for special attack, following a stirring speechthat he made in defense of the Soviet Union. It wasGreen, himself, that tried to drag Healy into line, andthe questions and answers that flew back and forth be-tween them, across the convention floor, are worth re-peating here. Healy had just finished his speech declar-ing, "I know that our government will recognize Russiawithin a very few years. That, to my mind, is as sureas that the sun will rise tomorrow morning." The steno-graphic report then contains the following:

'^President Green: I would like to ask DelegateHealy a question.

"Delegate Healy: Certainly.''President Green: I understand from your re-

marks that you are not advocating the adoption ofthe resolution (for the recognition of the SovietUnion), but rather pleading for the creation of a mis-sion to visit Russia.

"Delegate Healy: You are right, Mr. President.

634

"President Green: I presume you mean a delega-tion to be created by this convention?

"Delegate Healy: By the American Federation ofLabor.

"President Green: And that would be regarded asan American Federation of Labor commission?

"Delegate Healy: Of course, it would."President Green: Well, unless this convention

creates a commission you, as a delegate in this con-vention, would not go on any other commission?

"Delegate Healy: You are seeking information,Mr. President. I will answer that by saying that asa citizen, as a member of this Federation, I feel my-self free to go wjiere I like, not to represent thisfederation. I have nobody to tell me where I shallgo, what church I shall go to, where I shall go orstay. I think that is my prerogative and I claimthat right.

"President Green: That is granted, but there is adifference in going as an individual and going on acommission that would be classified as an allegedlabor commission. I mean you wouldn't accept ap-pointment on an alleged labor commission unless itwas authorized by this convention.

"Delegate Healy: So long as it would not go un-der the guise of representation of the American Fed-eration of Labor.

"President Green: Then a direct answer 'yes' or'no' would satisfy the delegates best. It would me.

"Delegate Healy: We will come to that later on,Mr. President," and President Green gave it up as a

bad job.Crisis is Passed Successfully.

Tim Healy stood by his guns. His flooring of Presi-dent Green may well 'be considered a crucial momentin the sending of the American labor mission to Russia.The proposition was defeated in the convention. Butthis will not stop individual labor officials from joininga mission of their own.

It was immediately following this altercation that Vice-President "Jimmie" Wilson, of the Pattern Makers'Union, went into action for his friend, John L. Lewisof the miners' union, declaring that the "Recognition ofRussia is of minor importance to us," he forgot all aboutthe resolution before the convention and launched intoan attack on the opposition to Lewis among the coalminers. Wilson developed a sorry looking muddle bytrying to show a conspiracy between the Trade UnionEducational League, the Federated Press and Albert F.Coyle, editor of the Locomotive Engineers' Journal. Hecapped it all by reading extracts from an alleged lettersupposed to have been written by Coyle to Powers Hap-good, a Pennsylvania coal miner. Thus the Lewis re-gime adds rifling the mails to its other crimes. It wasannounced -later that the letter was a decoy sent out totrap the Lewis crowd and expose the methods it usesagainst its opponents. It did.

Lewis Corroborating Witness.John L. Lewis himself, growing more pompous every

year, was next recognized by President Green and actedas a sort of corroborating witness for "Jimmie" Wilson.Lewis didn't add much except to vehemently charge that

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Communists were responsible for the troubles of theNova Scotia coal miners when in reality it was Lewiswho used the full weight of the organization to crush theNova Scotia coal miners' union rather than permit itsmembers to adopt a militant program in their strugglewith the British Empire Steel & Coal Co. Green him-self closed the discussion and, in his best red-baitingstyle, called for ""such a decisive vote that there will beno doubt in the minds of the American people and thepeople thruout the world where the American Federationof Labor stands." The vote was unanimous. Althoughthe original resolution, on which the committee had re-ported, merely called for recognition of the Union o£Soviet Republics, not a single delegate would stand tohis feet and declare for this proposition, not even TimHealy or Max Hayes. This was really the low spot inthe convention. No effort was made to debate the is-sues. The speakers were not well enough acquaintedwith the subject to debate the issue. Thus, for instance,"Jimmie" Wilson all along -spoke of the Workers' Edu-cation Bureau, a part of the educational activities of theA. F. of L., when he meant the Trade Union EducationalLeague, the organization of the left wing that the official-dom fears and fights. Vice-President Matthew Woll hadto insert a special correction on this point in the minutesin order to keep the record straight.

Most of the other actions of the convention, stated inlong committee reports, consisted almost exclusively ofjust words. The much heralded organization drive amongthe auto workers was bandied about between the metaltrades department gathering and the A. F. of L. conven-tion. The problem finally landed in the lap of the execu-tive council. There it will be compelled to nestle in si-lence.

Shorter Hours.

The convention met just as Henry Ford announcedthat the five-day week would go into effect in his plants.It came on the heels of the strike of tihe New York Fur-riers in which labor in this industry, thru its own eco-nomic might, won the five-day week. Yet the best theconvention could do was to go on record for the pro-gressive shortening of the work-week. This in spite ofthe fact that one of the printers' delegates had urged thefour-day week to give time for recuperation from theheavy exactions on human energy by modern industry.Little was 'said of the "new wage theory" enunciated ayear ago. When he did re-echo the proposition, Greensaid, "American labor suggests that as the productivityof the individual worker is increased and as his effi-ciency is raised higher and higher throughout the oper-ation of these economic forces, his wages, first of all,must increase in proportion with his productivity andhis efficiency." But whenever the actual problem wasfaced, the delegates had to admit that production perworker was increasing at an astonishing rate withoutwage increases, while every day saw some huge corpora-tion issuing its statement of huge profits. The A. F. ofL. officialdom talks about this problem but dodges facingit through the organization of powerful, militant unions.

In fact, in reply to numerous resolutions demandingthe organization of the unorganized, the convention waspresented with another foul-smelling bouquet of plati-

D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6

tudes. Just as the message from the Soviet Union hadto come on the lips of a Y. M. C. A. secretary, Eddy, sothe question of organizing the unorganized came intothe convention in the speech by the Jewish Rabbi, Dr.Stephen S. Wise, who has interested himself in thestrike of the Passaic textile •workers. Here are hiswords:

"Remember this: Organize the textile industry ofAmerica, basic and fundamental to the life of America.Give your help to the Passaic strikers; organize the tex-tile industry of America, and may you always bear your-selves with tihe courage and tBe dignity . . . withwhich the strikers of Passaic have 'borne themselves."

But the officials of the United Textile Workers' Unionalready feel uneasy under the energetic push of the mili-tant Passaic strikers. Even the plea of the Jewish rabbifalls on deaf ears. In fact, the A. F. of L. officialdomwrithed uneasily under the pressure of "Passaic." Inspite of every effort to push aside this huge, aggressivestruggle in the textile industry, "Passaic" was there, justthe same, demanding assistance. Sarah Conboy, secre-tary of the United Textile Workers' Union, much againsther bourgeois instincts, was forced to make up a col-lection among the delegates, which netted more than athousand dollars. The international officials of the greatunions were compelled to meet and pledge $25,000 forimmediate relief. The convention could not escape"Passaic!"

When the question of company unions came beforethe convention it was again a question of "Words!words! words!" Yet it was the word "Surrender" andnot "Figiht" that was written into the convention recordin deciding this question. It offers class collaborationto the employers instead of meeting them in conflict inthe class struggle. Here are the words of the resolu-tion:

"To accomplish the substitution of union-manage-ment co-operation for company unions and to substi-tute voluntary trade unions for employer-controlledunions will be a service not only to American work-ers but to American industry in all its branches andto the American public in general."

This was the A. F. of L. convention of leaders whoprided themselves on being the new type of labor offi-cial—the banker, insurance man, and real estate experttype that glories in its acceptance 'by the ruling capital-ist class, and turns its back upon t!he agitator-organizertype that built the foundation and began the rearing ofthe super-structure of the American trade union move-ment. It is the task of the left wing to combat andeliminate this labor leadership through winning thegreat masses who toil for the world-wide struggle againstthe capitalist oppressors of the •working class.

Two flags decorated the A. F. of L. convention hallat Detroit: the 'stars and stripes of Wall Street and theUnion Jack of British Imperialism. Even the women ofthe British fraternal delegates were surprised. Theyconfessed the Union Jack would not be tolerated in theBritish Trade Union Congress, while that gathering wasin the habit of adjourning with the singing of "The RedFlag."

Last year, in addition to the American Stars and

635

Stripes and the British Union Jack, there was the flag ofthe German Hindenberg republic. But nowhere the flagof the Mexican republic. There is some significance inthis.

It was James W. Fitzpatrick, the Catholic, a delegatefrom Waterbury, Conn., who denounced the Mexicanlabor movement as "Red from the top of its head to thesoles of its feet." He continued, "We know it, we havealways known it, and it is time that we let the peoplesof Mexico know that we know." Later on Fitzpatrickreferred to what he called "the foul union of Oalles andthe C. R. O. M., arguing that the IConfederacion RegionalObrera Mexicana (C. R. O. M.) dictates the policies ofthe Mexican government headed at the present time byPresident Plutarco Calles.

No delegate arose to reply to Fitzpatrick"s attackagainst Mexican labor. Fitzpatrich continued:

"The first move of the Communist philosophy is todestroy any sense of spiritual responsibility in the mindsof those whom it wishes to enslave. That is what hap-pened in Russia, that is what is happening in Mexico.Once the great sipiritual obstacle (the landgrabbingCatholic church that submerged the peasantry in ignor-ance and poverty—J. L, E.) is removed from the path ofthe Calles regime and every iniquity for which it stands,there is nothing that is going to stop Mexico from beinganother Russia."

Fitzpatrick's conclusion was that, "Until this federa-tion clears its skirts of the, slime which has attached toit thru the deception practiced on the executive councilby the paid propagandists of Bolshevist Mexico, we hadbetter amend our boast that we stand for free speech,freedom of conscience, freedom of the press and free-dom of assemblage." Yet in this convention the gaghad been so effectively applied to the three fraternaldelegates from Mexican labor, that they did not evenutter one word of defense against that vicious andvitriolic broadside. Some of the ofttcial family, Woll,Tobin and Harding, all Catholics, protested there wasno slime on the skirts of the executive council of theAmerican Federation of Labor. That was all.

Altho the A. F. of L. officialdom refused to send a dele-gation to the Union of Soviet Republics, to acquaint theAmerican labor movement with conditions there becauseit already has plenty of information, nevertheless, itconsented, as a sop to the Catholics, to send a delega-tion to Mexico to look into the alliance between the C.R. O. M. and the Calles government. When and howthis investigation will be carried on has not been re-vealed at this writing.

President Green adjourned this convention gloryingin the declaration that, "It is significant that in this con-vention no point of order was raised by any delegateor upon any question and no roll call was demanded bythe convention except the one just taken upon the con-vention city."

In other words, Green confessed that the gatheringwas paralyzed insofar as new ideas, energy and debateover pressing problems were concerned. Gompers inhis grave is not more inert. Next year the conventiongoes to Los Angeles, neighbor city of Hollywood. Whatthen?

636 W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6 637

Lessons From PassiacBy Albert Weisbord

rpHE Passaic strike has been an important experience•*- for the whole working class. The spotlight of pub-licity that was generated by the strike has thoroughlyexposed the terrible working and living conditions whichthe industrialists, in spite of their almost fabulous pro-fits, have forced upon the workers in the basic indus-tries of our country. There have also come into fulllight the huge forces that the working class has to facewhen it does rebel against those conditions. Many ofthose who, sitting comfortably in their rockers, gaspedas to what Passaic stood for, failed to realize that Pas-saic is a typical industrial city in America, that Passaicis the kind of city which forms the very foundation ofeconomic life in this country.

The workingclass knows only too well that the con-centrated industrial and political power of the mill own-ers in Passaic, the intense exploitation, the misery andsuffering of the workers is repeated everywhere.

And the working class finding such conditions every-where also realizes that the needs of the workers basedon such conditions which have given rise to such, asplendid stubborn struggle in Passaie will give rise toother similar and larger struggles elsewhere. The Pas-saic strike is a symbol not only of the suffering but ofthe determination of the workers in general, of thetwenty-eight million unorganized unskilled workers inthis country, of the one million workers in the textileindustry especially.

The Passaic strike, now ten months in duration, hasshown that the will to organize and to fight still burnsfiercely, in spite of betrayal and abandonment by bu-reaucratic labor officials, in spite of the pessimism anddefeatism insidiously injected by those officials into theranks of the workers.

The time has come, now more than ever before, to or-ganize the unorganized into powerful unions embracingall the workers of a given industry. During the last de-cade or so forces have entered into American life whichespecially favor the organization of the unorganized andthe creation of the united front of labor in its dailystruggles against the united front of the imperialist-capi-talists.

Let us examine these new forces for a moment andsee their effects. In the first place we find, due to thestoppage of immigration during the war and its restric-tion afterwards, that the workers have had an. oppor-tunity to settle down and become a more -homogeneousunited mass. The children brought over here fromabroad by these foreign^born workers have 'been taughtin American schools. They all speak and write English.They have American tastes and standards. They arenow working in the mills. They nave become living

links that bind all the workers closer together into asolid mass.

It is no accident that in Passaic the young workerstook an active leading role. It is no accident that theracial and religious prejudices which the bosses triedto disseminate among the workers absolutely failed totake root. It is significant that the only language spok-en during a large part of the strike was English.

Further, the homogeneity of the workingclass in Amer-ica was helped by the forces generated by the WorldWar and its aftermath. The workers who came backfrom the trenches, came back a disillusioned, disciplin-ed, hardened, aggressive lot, who had faced bullets infighting Kaiserism abroad and were no longer afraid ofclubs in fighting Kaiserism here.

In Passaic, for example, it was but natural that whenthe police began their clubbing that the returned sol-diers, now textile strikers, should don their old armyuniforms and put on their steel trench helmets. Againstthe tear 'bombs of the bosses, how natural the gas masksof the workers.

The war and the after-period also produced forces thattended to fuse all crafts into a common standardizeddenominator, sample labor, and to level the ranks ofskilled and unskilled into one class. During the warthe price of unskilled labor rose faster than the wageswhich skilled workers were receiving. After the warwith the ever new machinery introduced, standardizingproducts and reducing skill, with speeding-up the orderof the day, with ultra-powerful employers imposing wagecuts and worsened conditions, many skilled workersfound themselves with their privileges and security gone,thrown into the ranks of the unskilled.

Such conditions make for industrial unionism, andspell doom to the old craft unions. In Passaic we seespinners and loom-fixers fighting side by side with un-skilled side tenders and dyers and actually leading theway, in some respects, for common action.

The Proletarian Revolution in the Soviet Union is an-other new force making the working class riper for ac-tion. The reverberations of the revolution have madethemselves felt among the ranks of the workers, es-pecially the unskilled, foreignnborn workers, in everyindustry in this country. There is a confidence, a steadi-ness among the workers, a deep feeling of power thatcould come only from seeing and feeling that part oftheir class had seized the reins of power over one-sixthof the globe and was leading the world towards emanci-pation.

In spite of these favorable conditions, however, theworking class, under the leadership of the reactionarybureaucratic labor officialdom found itself instead offighting, fawning, instead of becoming organized, becom-ing disorganized. The employers were allowed to take

Men, Women and Children Are Trampled Down in Passaic.

the offensive again and again. Unions smashed in 1919,"hunger-cure" unemployment in 1920-1921, wage cuts in1922, these were the signs of the times. With the spir-ited resistance of the workers in 1922 the employers wereforced back in some cases. More clever devices weretried. Collaboration with the trade union officials through"B. & O." plans, new "efficiency" systems, CompanyUnions, a whole series of tricks was developed to de-stroy the resistance of the workers. Having thus pre-pared the way, the bosses launched their next offensivein 1924.

This time the campaign was conducted far moreskilfully than in 1922. Starting first in the textile in-dustry, particularly in the cotton mille of New England,the ibosses began to out wages 10 per cent. Not all theworkers of a mill had wages cut at the same time, but

cautiously mill by mill, department toy department, cityby city, the drive proceeded. By the spring of 1924, allof the workers in the cotton mills had had their pay re-duced. The same thing started in the woolen and silkmills while a drive to speed up the workers began inthe cotton mills. In some places as much as one-thirdof the working force was permanently displaced, twoworkers doing what three used to do "before. By theend of 1925, this second drive had been successfully ac-complished in the textile mills of New England and thacampaign moved south to New Jersey and the middleAtlantic States.

Not satisfied with this, the mill owners went further.They started to lengthen the hour-week. A tremendouslobby killed the ibill put forth in Albany, New York es-tablishing a forty-eight hour week for women. In Boston

638

On the Picket Line in Passaic

a great agitation has started for the repeal of the forty-eight hour law there. The drive to push down the stand-ards of the workers was now in full swing.

But the situation had 'become intolerable. If the A.F. of L. officials would not act, there would spring forthleaders from the ranks of the workers themselves whowould give 'battle to their masters. The most militantof these workers, the Communists, had already analyzedthe situation correctly. Basing itself on the needs ofthe workers, the Workers (Communist) Party had inces-santly raised the slogan "Organize the Unorganized,"and the unity of labor in its struggle against the em-ployers.

It was therefore, Quite natural that when in Passaicthe textile mill owners cut wages of workers alreadyon the starvation line, that it would be the workers inthe Workers (Communist) Party that should lead themovement of resistance and actually demonstrate theWorkers (Communist) Party could carry out in battlethose slogans it had raised that best expressed the needsof the workers.

II.

The conduct of the Passaic strike itself has been animportant addition to the collective experience of theworking class. The strike leadership, 'because it wasCommunist, having no interests separate from those ofthe workers, had two major principles which it strictlyadhered to during the strike: one was to unify and con-nect all sections of workers together, to have them movein disciplined solid formation; and two, to awaken into

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consciousness all strata of the workers, to train theworkers to know their enemies and how to overcomethem.

During the strike it became again increasingly clearhow powerful the mill owners were. The workers be-gan to see that not only the mills but the governmentbelonged to the owners. The .brutal and unprovoked po-lice clubbings; the stabbing and shooting down of strik-ers; the invasion of hundreds of armed deputies intothe strike area; the illegal arrests and seizures, the tor-turing of prisoners, the irregular trials, the excessivelyhigh (bail and outrageously heavy fines and sentences im-posed; the evictions and injunctions; the closing downof meeting places for the workers and the abolition ofcivil liberty in the strike area; the strike-breaking effortsof the local state and national governmental officials;all these things proved so clearly to the workers thatthe whole power of the state was ranged against themto crush them. The role of the government as strike-breaker, the role of the state as an instrument of forceemployed by the bosses who were beyond the law, tokeep the workers in subjection became thoroughly ex-posed.

All sections of the workers were awakened. Throughmass meetings, language meetings, concerts, leaflets,strike paper, district meetings, songs, games, andthrough the actual experiences of the struggle many ofthe illusions and prejudices in the minds of the work-ers before the strike disappeared. Special meetingswere called for the women, their special problems dis-cussed and special tasks assigned to them. It is thewomen who are the most enslaved. It is the womenwho have the most to gain through organization andstruggle. These women 'became the most active andmilitant strikers, the best enthusiasts of all.

The same good job was done with the several hun-dred Negroes that came out. They proved to be finestrikers and unionists.

Nor were the young workers forgotten. The Ameri-can Federation of Labor officials generally sneer at theyouth. The young workers are not even taken into theunions at all, or are grossly discriminated against. Butit is the youth who are starved most in the capitalistsystem. A real leadership would see that the energyand ability to learn on the part of the young workersmake them the very ibest union material. In iPassaicevery attention was given the youth. The union tookthe position that with the young workers won over, aunion would have to be formed "some time in Passaic.

Even the children were mobilized for the struggle.The children were formed into special clubs and givenspecial attention. In many ways the children were in-valuable. They would ferret out where scabs lived andpicket their homes. And many a scab quit work becausehis child came home with a black eye after a fight inschool. The class struggle entered the schools. Thechildren demanded to know why the schools did notopen up free lunch rooms for the strikers' children. Atevery opportunity the lies spread in the schools aboutthe strike and the union were fought against and thetruth told by the children of the strikers.

It was this intense inner solidarity and unity thatenabled the strikers to smash the company union

D E C E M B E R , - 1 9 2 6

schemes of the mill owners and day after day kept uptheir morale. This inner unity showed itself in themass demonstrations, the mass marches, the mass pick-eting that took place in Passaic. It showed itself in theself-obedience that the strikers gave to their electeddelegates. It showed itself in the stubbornness of thebattle.

Not only inner unity was developed by the Commu-nist leadership, but outer unity also. Again and againefforts were made by the strikers to broaden the strug-gle and to unite with ever larger and larger masses. ThePassaic strike has demonstrated that far from being dis-rupters of unions the Communists can build unions andare the only ones that fight for the unity of labor.

First, the strike leadership addressed Mr. Green,President of the American Federation of Labor, askingfor support in the strike and stating that the Passaicstrikers earnestly desired unity in the textile industryand would do all in their power to join the A. F. of L.

639

Mr. Green evaded this letter. In the meantime the StrikeCommittee had made an offer to the Associated SilkWorkers' Union in Paterson to join hands in an organ-ization drive among the dye workers of Paterson. Thistoo was put off. Again efforts were made to get theFederated Textile Unions, a group of five unions, loose-ly banded together, to begin a drive to organize the un-organized and fight wage cuts. But all to no avail.

While these negotiations were going on the wholelabor world was witnessing the scene where 16,000 tex-tile workers, battling against tremendous odds and suc-cessfully holding their own under Communist leader-ship, were being rebuffed by the officials of that very or-ganization that should have organized them long agoand at that very date should have been fighting theirbattles. Everyone realized that the fight of the Passaicstrikers was the fight of all labor. Everyone realizedthat the Passaic strike had meant the definite checkingof wage cuts and a body blow to company unionism.

15,000 Passaic Strikers Give Weisbord Vote of Confidence.

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More and more, the honest trade unionists began toquestion why it was that the American Federation ofLabor would not take in the Passaic textile workers.It seemed that only the Communists could lead the work-ers in struggle.

It was when the American Federation of Labor official-dom went further and objectively joined forces with thebitterest enemies of labor in attacking the strikers, thatthese questions became challenges to the reactionaryofficialdom. Such organs as the Seattle Union Recordand the Labor Age, actually took up arms against theAmerican Federation of Labor reactionary machine.Throughout the country the Passaic Relief Conferencesmade up of trade unionists—another achievement forthe unity of labor—(began a vigorous attack against thelabor bureaucracy.

The situation had become a scandal. Even liberalsand conservatives took a hand to point out that Mr.Green could not afford to be put in the position wherehe stood against taking workers into the American Fed-eration of Lafoor. Under this growing pressure, theAmerican Federation of Labor officials had to yield.They were compelled to accept the strikers.

The Passaic strike has exposed the reactionary offi-cials. It has shown that not the Communists but theGreens and his crew stand against giving battle to the

bosses. The Workers (Communist) Party has shownthat only the Communists stand for the organization ofthe unorganized, for amalgamation, for unity. Evenwhen the American Federation of Labor officials madetheir strike-breaking condition, namely that before theywould take over the strike, Weisbord and the other Com-munist leaders had to go, the Communist Party showedthat it had no narrow selfish interests to serve, that ithad no interests separate and apart from those of theworkers and having forced the federation officials tofight and having built up a istrong union, could withdrawthe strike leader.

The Workers (Communist) Party can say to theGreens and others: "You have expelled Communistsbefore. You expel Weisbord now. You try in all yourpower to split the unions. But we shall build the unionsin spite of you. You may expel one, you may expel two,tout you cannot expel the Communist Party. In Passaicwe have built so well, you cannot destroy the union orbetray the strike. Throughout the country these ex-pulsions will bring your doom and show more than everto the workers, that only the Communists can leadthem."

It is now up to the Federation officials in Passaic. Ifthey want to, they can settle the strike in a satisfactorymanner. Let us see to it that they do.

The Situation of the Rubber WorkersBy I, Amter

TniVE concerns control the market of Akron: Goodyear,Goodrich, Firestone, Mil ler and Seiberling. Outside

of these five, there are a few other large establishmentsin other parts of the country, especially the United StatesRubber Company. The profits of the five companies in1925 'amounted to nearly $54,000,000. Goodyear "earned"$21,000,000, Goodrich $1,245,000. The remaining six com-panies earned a few millions together making a total forAkron of about $56,000,000 (U. S. Rubber "earned"$17,000,000). The wages of the Akron rubber workersin 1925 amounted to $66,460,705. In other words, for eachdollar that the workers earned by their hard, exhaustive,ki l l ing work, they had to earn 88 cents for the rubbermanufacturers.

Who are the workers in the rubber tire industry ofAkron? About 80% of them are American, 20% foreign-born. There is a section of the workers who have been"in service" for five, ten, twenty or even twenty-fiveyears. For their "loyal" service, they are presented with"service pins," to distinguish them from the commonrabble that travels in and out of the rubber shops, float-ers and men from all over the country attracted to Akronby the abundance of work to be found.

In recent years, the rubber personnel has changed.The average number of workers is 43,391, but the numberfluctuates. In season there are several thousand morein the shops, in slack periods, the number drops. These

43,391 workers include about 5,000 women, 3,000 Negroes,and several thousand young workers. Women and youngworkers can easily do the work in the rubber shops, forthe process has been very much simplified, and is morelaborious than heavy. The heavier work is left to themen—and even to young workers. For a man or womanmust be physically strong to obtain work in the rubbershops. What is to become of the workers who have giventheir best to the industry and are no longer employable,has not been considered—nor do the rubber companiesconcern themselves very much with this problem. The"service pin" is the poor wretch's reward and he is flungout into the world—on to the market of decrepits thatfill the poor houses or depend on their sons, daughtersor relations.

In some of the rubber shops, the applicants are obligedto strip naked, every part of their body being exam-ined minutely. They must weigh so much and must bestrong in every part, otherwise they will obtain noemployment in the rubber shops of Akron. If thisprinciple is to be applied in industry all over the coun-try, there is no saying what is to become of under-weights, deformed workers, and men and women exhaust-ed within a few years by the toil of the mills!

What is to become of the men, women and youngworkers who suffer injury in the industry and may fora few years live on the compensation they receive thru

the workmen's compensation law? The company hospi-tals are witness to the danger of the work—the dangerdue to the speed-up that the workers have to submitto, so that they become careless despite all "SafetyFirst" signs and posters that decorate the walls of therubber shops. For a worker must live—and if earningsthreaten to decline, there is nothing left for the workerto do but to work at top speed, trusting to good luck—till one day he is killed or injured and his usefulnessto the rubber companies is either impaired or completelydestroyed.

The rubber shops work on a three-shift basis—butevery rubber worker detests the third shift—from 11p. m. to 7 a. m. Work in some of the departments isvery dangerous to the health, and when there is addedto it the work at night, a worker feels that he hasbeen condemned for an offense. But work must be done,for money must be earned, hence many workers mustsubmit to the process. Despite the three-shift plan,many men have to work overtime and double shift, re-ceiving as a rule only the base rate (of which weshall speak later).

There is no "Sunday day of rest" in the rubber shops.Akron is a Ku Klux town, whose members boast oftheir saintliness, but who also do not hesitate to admitthat they are a military organization, that each memberbears a rifle—frequently under the "nightshirt" in whichhe parades about. They hold reviews and are preparedai all times—according to the statement of one of thelocal leaders "under each robe there is a soldier." Nev-ertheless, the workers have little choice as to whetherthey will work on Sunday or not. Only the militantshave courage enough to tell the foreman or supervisorthat they will not work. The penalty frequently isdischarge.

Of late, in fact, one of the rubber companies has sentthe men home on Saturday and ordered them to work onSunday. In various departments of the other shops, menare worked seven days a week. The work is so devas-tating that the men want the day off, not in order togo to church and "observe the lord's sabbath," but inorder to recuperate enough strength to go on with thecrushing toil on Monday.

The wages in the rubber shops are, on the average,steadily on the decline. There are some workers whoearn S40 to $50 a week. There are others—women,young workers and Negroes—who earn far less. Somewomen earn $2.70 to $3.50 a day at laborious work.There is no hope of their pay increasing, for the baserate is such that when a certain level is reached byenforcement of the speed-up, the rate is lowered. Thesame wage can be equalled only by the worker producingmore.

The average wage of the worker is $5.50—and althothis sum does not seem low in comparison with thewage earned by textile workers, railroad section hands,and unskilled or semiskilled workers generally, on therailroads, unorganized miners, etc., when one considersthe amount of energy that the worker has to put intohis work, and the nerve-racking process that he has tolabor under—the rubber worker may be considered oneof the most exploited in American industry.

Pay is based on the day rate and the base scale. For

miscellaneous work, the worker gets the day rate, whichamounts to 25 cents for women and 45 cents for men.Production is on the base rate. The worker gets a cer-tain amount for a given amount of production. This i§exactly measured and timed, and all workers are obligedto meet the demands of production. If in the estimationof the rubber manufacturers or their efficiency person-nel, the worker falls too far behind, he is discharged.The worker who prizes his job does not allow his jobto slip out of his hands, for he knows that if he doesnot meet requirements in one shop, he will not be ableto hold a job in another. Hence after the experimenthas been tried on a fast man—one who is strong, steadyand can produce well—the base rate is lowered and allworkers have to speed up. The purpose is first not toallow the workers to earn more than the establishedmaximum, and by constantly lowering the rate to compelhim to produce on a lowering scale.

Cuts in the base rate have taken place with greatrapidity in the past year. At the present time, one ofthe largest companies is considering reducing the scaleabout 30 per cent. The men will be driven to workfaster if they wish to earn a decent wage.

Diminishing scales being based on speed-up, the rub-ber workers are the victims of one of the most viciousspeed-up systems in the country. Stop watches are thecommonest instruments to be found in all parts of theshops. After the efficiency man has figured out whatcan be done in a unit of time—a minute—and how muchmust be allowed for "personal wants"—blowing one'snose, going to the toilet, eating lunch, getting a drink,etc.—a given amount of work must be done. This isdetermined in the following manner:

A day's work—8 hours—is divided into 480 units(4SO minutes). Five per cent is deducted for "personalwants." Through experiments, it is found that a mancan do a certain amount of work, the motions beingscientifically established. It is tried out on a fast work-er—and in order to compel him to do an adequateamount of work—with the hope of earning more, thespeed-up is applied. All other workers have to meetthe demand or they are discharged or shifted to a lower-grade job. The unit system, they call it—and the menwill soon feel the curse of it.

Bedaux, the Taylor efficiency expert of the rubber in-dustry, is the slave-driver of the rubber workers. Tothe workers, the limit has been reached, but the rubbermanufacturers who are looking for every means of in-creasing production at a lower cost—regardless of theconsequences to the employees—are raising the speed-up to a higher notch.

What are some of the forms of mistreatment that theworkers rebel against?

These are best illustrated by typical cases. Womenworking in one of the shops dare not miss flaps on thetires by 1-8 inch, or they may be sent home for threedays. If it occurs more than once, they may be laid offfor a week. In the lampblack department, where thelampblack is applied to the tires to color them, the con-ditions are so fearful that men are not able to workthere very long. They go in clean in the morning, butafter the eight hours of work, they are as black as coal.The lampblack penetrates their lungs and cuts into

642 W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6 643

them. Women are allowed ten minutes' leave twice aday.

To go to the lavatory at Goodyear's, certain girls haveeither to take the elevator or run up three flights ofstairs. A record of every woman is kept as to hermenses, so that if a woman asks permission to leavemore than twice she is confronted with her chart, whichmight show that she has no "reason" to ask such per-mission. Such slavery could exist only in the "civilized"United States.

Workers of one shift are not allowed to stand nearthe workers of the preceding shift. They must be readyto go to work immediately after the first shift finishes.The company, however, tries to keep the men apart, sothat they may not exchange experiences and ideas. Menof the same shift have to go to lunch at different hours—the company wishing to preserve the "morale" of theworkers. Thirty minutes is the maximum for lunch—the foremen trying to reduce it at all times.

"Plying squads," "efficiency departments," etc. are inevery shop. These are composed of men trained to takethe place of a worker in any emergency. They are train-ed for four hours every day, being given a somewhathigher scale and when working are not required to pro-duce so much. Their function is spying—watching themen, reporting to the office whatever they say or do,and thus leading to the elimination of dissatisfied or re-bellious workers.

At the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, there isa "university," the "head-fixing industry," as the work-ers call it. Workers are induced to study at night—to"improve themselves." Lectures on patriotic subjects,"loyalty," etc., are delivered, to inspire the workers withconfidence in the company. News boards all over theshops bear such slogans as "A laborer is a man whoearns a dollar. A capitalist is a man who saves a dol-lar. It is as impossible to separate the one from theother as to separate oxygen from air." The purpose isclear: to ingrain "diligence," "thrift" and "loyalty"into the minds of the workers and make them servileslaves. Company papers, containing nothing instructive—because they dare not deal with facts—but filled withpersiflage, pictures of employees and their families,are the contribution of the company to the mental de-velopment of their employees.

Every company has its sports—tennis, ball teams ofevery character—enhancing the fame and generosity ofthe companies. Some of the companies endeavor to in-duce these employees to purchase stock in the com-pany. When obtaining a job at the Firestone Company,the applicant is compelled to buy stock. Refusal to doso means no employment. Firestone and Goodyear havelarge tracts of land on which they have erected homes,which they enable their employees to purchase on theinstallment plan. The purpose is to bind the workerfor 10 or 15 years, and keep him meek. House furnish-ings, Victrolas and motor cars go along with the outfit,with the result that the worker is bound over on goodbehavior to the company and its lieutenants, the install-ment houses, for the whole term of his employment.

When the Community Fund is collected, the rubbermanufacturers have a terroristic method of obtaining"voluntary" contributions from the workers. They call

the weakest worker into the office and tell him that hemust contribute, say |8, as at Miller's. Knowing thathis job depends on making the donation, he does so.This is put on a card, and the card put on the desk.One after another of the weaklings is admitted to theoffice, the number of cards facing the workers graduallyincreasing. The "tougher" fellows are introduced last,when the following conversation may be heard: "Thisis an $8 concern. If you want to donate only $6, you willbe given -a f 6 job—which means a lower scale job." Ifthe worker refuses to contribute at all, he is told thatthe company adheres to the Community Fund and thathis services therefore are no longer required.

"Voluntary contribution"—because the company hasdetermined that a certain amount must be raised by theemployees, which is then heralded throughout the com-munity as the "Miller contribution," "the Goodyear con-tribution," etc., to the glory of the rubber manufactur-ers, who are praised as great philanthropists, and theiremployees, as "loyal."

Goodyear has an "industrial assembly." This is sup-posed to be "workers' democracy and share in control."It is the barest deceit. The "industrial assembly" con-sists of two chambers—the senate and assembly. Thefactory is divided into districts, wards and precincts, andprimaries are held. The company electioneers for "its"candidates, even to the extent of procuring signatureson the petitions. The assembly elected, it might be pre-sumed that it has some power or authority. This is nottrue. The assembly may discuss and decide about sports,social affairs, but dare not go beyond the discussionstage on questions pertaining to the conditions in theshops, wages, hours, etc.

Not very long ago, the question of "shift allocation,"as it is called, was discussed. The men were overwhelm-ingly in favor of the service system—men who workedlonger for the company being given preference. Thecompany is not interested in the years of service, butin whether the worker can produce or not. Therefore,the company had decided on the merit system. Just be-fore putting the matter to a vote, the general managerrose and stated that the company had decided to adoptthe merit system, regardless of the vote taken.

The unanimous decision of the assembly for an in-crease in wages met with the opposition of the generalmanager; the matter was referred to the board of di-rectors of the company, who vetoed it. It was passedagain, but remained a dead letter. So much for this "in-dustrial democracy," a company union of the most de-spicable sort.

!One element in the working forces in the rubbershops, the rubber manufacturers count upon: they arethe southerners. Many of them have come from fardown south at the behest of their relations and friendswho have found positions in the rubber factories. Atthe present time, they are coming in hordes to Akron,thus forming a reserve army for the industry. There isanother element that the company depends on: the Ne-gro workers. Although the Negroes do the heavy work,the company knows that the southerners hate the Ne-groes, and the Negroes lose no love on their white"friends" from the South.

But the rubber manufacturers do not realize that the

southerners are not accustomed to the hard labor theymust perform and that these men are individualists ofthe strongest type. The men do not know much aboutorganization, but once aroused they will fight ferocious-ly. There is a cleavage in the ranks of the workers—whites against blacks—Americans (primarily with KuKlux inclinations) against foreign-born—men contemptu-ous of women. But above all, 80 per cent American fromevery state of the Union.

And be it said to the credit of these Americans—orthe most forward section of them—they have seenthrough the torture of the industry and the misery thatconfronts the workers slaving away their lives, and havebegun the formation of a union.

The Rubber Workers' Union of America is the out-come of the strife that is going on in the shops. It isnot an open strife, for the struggle has not yet reachedthat form. Last January a few thinking workers of theindustry conceived the idea that it was necessary forthe workers to be organized to fight against the organ-ized power of the rubber manufacturers. The rubbermanufacturers not only control the city of Akron—Akron is a one-industry town—but are organized in theRubber Association of America. They are not inde-pendent concerns, but are part of banking systems ofWall Street. Theirs is a powerful industry, well-organ-ized and controlled.

These rubber workers recognized that they could notorganize openly; hence as good Americans, accustomedto the ways of this country, they organized secretly.The situation in the shops has helped them in theirwork. Although laboring under the greatest difficulties,against the terrorism and intimidation of the manufac-turers and their flunkeys, facing the danger of dis-charge for the attempt to organize the workers, theyorganized and are moving forward.

There has been a Rubber Workers' Union in Akronfor some little time, affiliated to the American Federa-tion of Labor. But the A. F. of L. has done little todevelop the union, just as up to the present it has donevirtually nothing to effect organization in the automo-bile industry, to which the rubber industry is related.The rubber shops will continue to produce tires whethernew cars are built or not, because increased motor trans-portation necessitates new tires. The A. F. of L. unionis stagnant and has not even been pulsed into life bythe efforts of this new organization to gain a footingamong the workers.

The Rubber Workers' Union of America is publishinga weekly, the "Rubber Worker," dealing with the situa-tion in the shop and happenings in the labor world, andadvocating a Labor Party. It has a fine department en-titled "Shop News," containing reports of conditions inthe shops. Although in a few shops the workers arestill afraid to buy or be detected taking or reading the

paper, it is meeting with splendid response from theworkers. One typical instance. A worker took the "Rub-ber Worker" into his department. It passed the roundo£ the twenty-five men working in the department. Edu-cation of the workers is one of the main tasks of therubber workers at the present time, and the union isadmirably fulfilling this function.

The "Rubber Worker" has already voiced the de-mands of the rubber workers, which are as follows:

$40 a week m i n i m u m wage.Equal pay for men, women and young workers for

the same work.Eight-hour day, 40-hour week.No speed-up.Guaranteed full year's work.Right of organization.

Basing their demand on the investigations of the U.S. Department of Labor, to the effect that a man re-quires from $1,800 to $2,300 to maintain a family in con-formity with the American standard of living,'the uniondemands $40 as the minimum wage per week. Thisminimum would not affect the workers who today areearning that amount, since all wages would -be graduat-ed upwards, but it would raise the level of the poorer-paid to a decent level. The demand that equal pay shallbe given men, women and young workers for the samework, will enable many women who must go out towork, to remain at home to care for their children. Theeffect on the young workers will be obvious.

The 8-hour day, 40-hour week is 6he demand now be-ing made by the American Federation of Labor, andalthough the rubber workers have 8-hour shifts, they fre-quently must work overtime. This, the union demands,shall be eliminated and by cutting out speed-up, so thatproduction is carried on by ever fewer hands, and bydemanding a guaranteed full year's work, the workwill be spread out and the iniquities of the system beabolished at least to a degree for the present.

The union, however, recognized that there is onlyone way that the rubber workers will succeed in achiev-ing any of these demands and that is by organization.It is therefore making as its central demand the rightof organization and recognition of the union by therubber manufacturers.

The union will not be born in peace. The rubbermanufacturers have exercised terror and will continueto employ more vigorous terror against the workers. Butthese American workers—not to speak of the foreign-born—have little fear. They know what they face andwill face it courageously. In this fight, Americans—KuKlux and otherwise — foreign-born, men women andyoung workers will break down the feudalistic regimethat exists in the rubber shops and will try to intro-duce a little light into the darkness of this devastating,man-killing rubber industry.

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A Queen Serenades Wall StreetBy Thurber Lewis

"T)EPORTERS were excluded"—this phrase shone^brightly from an otherwise casual report in the New

York Times of a reception in ihonor of the queen of acountry that could be bought and sold ten times overwith the pooled resources of the Wall Street bankerswho were in attendance. It shone brightly because itwas the first time it appeared in numerous press ac-counts of the many aristocratic and exclusive functionspreviously accorded the queen of Roumania in New Yorkand Washington. Reporters got into the Ritz, the Bilt-more and the White House. They were barred fromthe Bankers' Club.

The gentlemen of the press had to be satisfied withcopies of prepared 'speeches that were supposed to havebeen spoken by Marie and a more experienced country-man of hers who dwelt at more length and with far moreskill on matters relating to the comparative finances ofHer Majesty's country and those of her banker audience.The correspondents also had to be content with hurriedassurances by departing financiers that the question ofa loan to Roumania was not mentioned.

The queen, in her dollar a word releases sponsoredby a well known press syndicate, 'has repeated manytimes that she came to America solely because, "Myheart went out to America and I simply had to come."She has a great love in her heart for the people of thisglorious country. She wanted to see Niagara Falls andNew York's sky line. She has specifically denied on anumber of occasions that she has any intention of both-ering about such a thing as a loan.

'But somehow, the rumor that her trip to "your greatdemocracy" is a bit more materialistic than a journeyof love persists. The more the reporters are excludedand the more the queen and her innumerable spokes-men deny it, the more persistent it seems to become.

And with reason.Let us see what basis there is for the rumor.There are three chief reasons. One is that Rou-

mania is broke and badly in need of outside financialassistance. Another is that Queen Marie has heen usedby the Roumanian government as a financial coquetteon at least two previous occasions. A third is that QueenMiarie comes to the only big power that does not rec-ognize the Soviet Union at a time when Roumania isopenly preparing for war against the Soviet Union. Anincidental reason is that reigning monarchs are not inthe habit of going on extensive journeys of state forlove or their health. They go only when they are, sent.And they are always sent for political reasons.

A Minneapolis alderman put it very aptly to his fel-low councilmen when he called Queen Marie an "interna-tional gold-digger." From time immemorial, queens havebeen used for just such a purpose. With long experi-ence, Marie has become particularly adept at the art.

[But let us not be dazzled by the queen. Let us lookat Roumania.

I.We first observe that Roumania, strictly speaking, is

not all Roumania. Only a little more than half the popu-lation are Roumanians; only half the present territoryof the kingdom is oW Roumania. The rest is Bessarabia,formerly part of Russia, Transylvania, Banat and Bu-kovflna, parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.The population of these latter provinces do not speakRoumanian. They are Slavs of several tongues, Jewsand Germans. Roumania has always been a "backwardcountry." It is predominantly agricultural. As withczarist Russia, government has been largely by persua-sion—at the point of a sword. This is all the more truenow that there are millions of unassimilated members ofnational minorities to hold in check. Roumania is ruledby an oligarchy that still retains many of the ear-marksof the feudalism whose offspring it is. Capitalism iscomparatively new to the country. Like all new capi-talists, the Roumanian brand rule with the same ruth-les'sness as their traditionally brutal land-owning breth-ren. This necessitates a miliatry machine out of all pro-portion to the resources of the country. Bribery andcorruption are rife. The workers and peasants are ex-ploited to the saturation point and are held in leashby terror. Latterly, foreign interests have become in-trigued toy large deposits of oil tout so far the influx ofoutside capital has not been large. Despite the largegains in population and territory made by the countryas the result of the war, the financial drain, as withother European countries, has left its mark. Roumaniais far from being solvent.

'Summed up, it is a country badly 'managed by a mili-tary despotism that, to survive, must have assistancefrom outside sources.

The biggest single political power in Roumania is rep-resented by the so-called "Liberal Party" over whosedestiny rule the three Bratianu Brothers. They aresons of a sort of Roumanian Garibaldi who placed Fer-dinand's predecessor on the first throne of the twoDanubian Princedoms, Moldavia and Wallachia, calledRoumania after their independence from the rule of theSublime Ports had heen granted by the powers follow-ing a long war between Russia and Turkey. They are'banks of great power. In the last government, one ofthe brothers was premier, the other finance minister,the third the leader of the majority in the (parliament.With the Allied victory in the world war, Roumaniafound itself doubled (in size. The Bratianu brothers start-ed out to build their financial hegemony over the coun-try on the basis of the closed shop. They wanted Rou-manian profits for Roumanians, that is, for the hig three.With the discovery of rich deposits of oil this de'sire

grew and they passed legislation to assure Bratianu con-trol of the new found source of wealth.

But however good their intentions, they couldn't maketheir grandiose self-contained scheme work. The neces-sity of a preponderant military machine to keep the un-derpaid workers, exploited peasants and suppressed na-tional minorities from breaking loose cost more moneythan the budget made provision for. The imperial as-pirations of a "Greater Roumania" gave rise, not with-out some encouragement from certain Western Powers,to a large military machine for external warfare as well.Roumania's exports began to show a tendency to departsharply from a balance with her increased import's. In-flation of money was resorted to—the lei now standsat 200 to the dollar—and the Bratianu brothers soonfound themselves knocking at the doors of London andParis banks.

Then there is Bessarabia. It was snatched by Rou-manian troops out of the hands of the workers and peas-ants who, following the lead of the revolutionary pro-letariat of Leningrad and Moscow, began their strugglefor independence from their Russian landlords. Thisthey won only to have their country seized by Rouman-ian landlords who proved to be even more bloodthirstythan their czarist predecessors. No less than fifteenthousand Bessarabian peasants paid with their lives forthe Roumanian occupation in 1917 and 1918. The Sov-iet Union has never acknowledged Roumania's right toBessarabia and neither have the Bessarabian masses.Upon the pretext of "protecting" Bessarabia from theSoviets, Roumania met with some success in gettingloans from France and England to build up an over-sized military and naval force.

The more loans Roumania got, the more she needed.In 1923, the financiers and capitalists of London andParis found it to their profit to resume relations withthe Soviet Union. When, in 1924, Queen Marie andKing Ferdinand went to both Paris and London for thesole purpose of lending their royal prestige to the re-quest for further credit, London and Paris were coldto their pleas. Queen Marie brought into play all hercharms, the king wore himself out making speeches.They over-stayed their visit in London until they werefinally barred from important state functions. The queenflirted in Paris until she became the talk of the emto-bassies. The^ Bolshevik bogey no longer worked. Rou-mania went without her loans.

In that very year, Queen Marie expressed a desire tocome to the United States. She would have come, ifthe Roumanian diplomats in this country had not advisedher government that all thought of raising a loan inWall Street was futile so long as the Bratianu "closedshop" policy persisted. So the queen went home.

But this year there was a change of government.General Averescu, leader of the military party and withthe support of a powerful section of the land owners,came to power. There is reason to believe that the Bra-tianu brothers themselves saw the hopelessness of theirpolicy. In any case, Averescu Is for the "open shop."Roumania showed itself ready to submit, as Hungary,Austria, Latvia and many other small countries have

done, to mortgage at the hands of the internationalbankers.

The center of international banking just now happensto be Wall Street. It is' by no means a coincidence thatQueen Marie comes to Wall Street's door step at themoment that Roumania suffered her change of heart.The charmer of Roumania has fulfilled the desire sheexpressed in 1924 and for exactly the same reason. Isit any wonder that reporters were excluded from theBankers' €lub? It wouldn't really be good form to havea queen put in the position of going around the worldoffering her country for sale.

There is the added attraction that the United Stateshas not yet recognized the Soviet Union. The pleasthat fell upon deaf ears in Paris and London may get ahearing in a country not on speaking terms with Rou-mania's avowed enemy. Marie's was a somewhat hur-ried trip, as you may have noticed. There was hardlytime for a preliminary (publicity barrage before the royallady was upon us. Why? Recall that the past severalmonths have brought rumblings of a change of fronttowards Russian recognition. There are not unimpor-tant groups in Wall Street openly declaring for a re-sumption of trade. 'M;ay not the queen's government alsohave in mind to send its fair emissary to do her littlebit towards making this more difficult? Roumania ismaking military preparations and setting up militaryalliances with her neighbors for the undisguised purposeof making war upon the Soviet Union. It would be rath-er unseemly, wouldn't it, to ask the United States tomake loans for such a purpose with this country in theact of resuming relations with the Soviet Union?

So comes the royal flirt to Wall Street.After the Queen left New York on her babbitt-baiting

tour of the west under the tutelage of a social-aspiringretired railroad president, Vienna dispatches told of anofficial statement by the Roumanian Home Minister thatAmerican bankers had agreed upon a 120,000,000 loan.A drop in the bucket, true. But there is more where thatcame from.

One day after the great demonstration of Chicagoworkers against the Roumanian terror that set the cur-ious citizenry agog when the queen arrived in the cityof the Haymarket Martyrs on Nov. 13, reports fromBucharest told of the granting of a hundred million dol-lar loan by New York financiers. It was far from acci-dental, that on that same day, the queen's aids announcedthat her stay in the United States would be cut shortby two weeks. Why stay on? The big job was done.

A big Wall Street loan to Roumania is not as unim-portant as it appears at first glance. It will do twothings: It will make available more funds for Rou-mania's war-like preparations against the 'Soviet Union,and, through a process of Dawesification of Roumania,strengthen the ruling oligarchy at the same time it spellsincreased exploitation, increased misery iand the inten-sification of the White Terror for the working-classes ofRoumania.

The Roumanian terror is one of the blackest spotson the none-too-clean escutcheon of European capital-ism. It is a terror, that, as in the equally murderousregimes of Poland and Bulgaria combines the brutali-

646 W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6 647

ties of a feudal hang-over with the ruthlessness of anascent and greedy capitalism.

Perhaps the full story of the gruesome mass brutalitythat has characterized Roumania and its acquired prov-inces since the war will never be known. There willnever be a record of the silent murders in the torturechambers of the Siguranza. It is impossible to knowhow many workers and peasants, taken as political pris-oners have been "legally" exterminated by the armedmercenaries of the Boyars under the law which permitsthe military to cover up murder with the phrase, "shotwhile attempting to escape." The Dniester River alonecan tell how many bodies of Bessarabian peasants areburied in its depths.

What we do know is that at this moment there axe2,500 political prisoners in the Bastilles of Queen Marie'ssunny and happy land of 17,000,000 population. We knowas the Roumanian workers know, that at the time QueenMarie was on her way to receive the bows and hand-kissing of the plutes and politicians in the land of thefree, Pavel Tkatchenko, a political prisoner in the Dof-tana jail in Bucharest was foully murdered by his jail-ers. We have seen transcripts of some of the hundredsof testimonials in the possession of Costa-Poru, one ofthe greatest attorneys in Roumania, not a radical, but aliberal in politics and president of the League for theRights of Man, describing the inhuman tortures inflict-ed in the police stations and prisons of Roumania uponNationalists of the provinces, Communists, trade union-ists and members of the Peasant Party.

We know that a party of the workers or peasantswhich expresses opposition to the Roumanian oligarchyis an impossibility. We know that workers co-opera-tives have been dissolved. We know that the entirecentral committee of the Unitarian Federation of Laborwas arrested last year and are now awaiting trial be-cause of their attempts to organize the workers intotrade unions.

We have the word of no less a person than HenriBarbusse, one of the foremost novelists of the world

who made a trip to Roumania to investigate the ex-cesses of the White Terror. The facts of 'the torturesand acts of murder in both Roumania and Bulgaria hehas put into a book, with authentic documents and photo-graphs, that speaks volumes of the mass persecutionrife in both those countries.

No. There can be no doubt about the terror in Rou-mania nor can there be any doubt that it numbers itsvictims by the thousands.

>It is to an oligarchy of landowners and capitalistsresponsible for this terror that Wall Street millions willfind ithedr way, to an oligarchy whose troops crushedthe Soviet government of the Workers and Peasantsof Hungary in 1919, which drowned th6 stolen Bessarabiain blood, which persecutes Jews wholesale, which sup-presses - the least sign of a movement for liberty inTransylvania and Banat, which declares all political andindustrial activity on the paft of the workers and peas-ants an act against the state that calls for torture, im-prisonment or assassination and which at this very mo-ment makes no secret of its intention of waging anaggressive war upon the Soviet Union.

The jewelled daughter of the Romanoffs, grand-daugh-ter of Victoria of Britain, Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,Royal Consort of Ferdinand of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringenis the emissary of this oligarchy. Queen Marie, in ad-dition to satisfying her own predilections for the spec-tacular, and her love of mass adulation, has performedHer mission, ably assisted by Roumanian diplomats. Shehas gotten the gold she came for. She has dazzled themoney barons and made the heads of their lackey poli-ticians fairly swell with thoughts of having entertaineda real queen. She has earned a new lease of life forthe Roumanian White Terror by bartering Roumanianoil and the sweat and blood of Roumanian workers forWall Street credit.

She has done her job well., She and her moron hus-band Ferdinand still sit upon their luxurious thrones.But the workers and peasants of "Greater Roumania"as the Boyar imperialists fondly call it, have yet tospeak the last word.

The Coal Stoppage in EnglandBy L. Zoobock

rpHE general strike and the lockout of the miners, last-ing more than four months, has already caused ir-

reparable damage to the industrial system of GreatBritain. Factories and mills, prices of imported coal,have greatly cut down production, due to shortage ofcoal or to the excessive railroad traffic, and turnoverhas decreased. The shipbuilding, shipping, iron andsteel, cotton, wool, and fibre industries—those industriesto which Great Britain owes her very existence as acommercial nation—are reduced to an extreme state ofinactivity. The building industry is forced to dependupon foreign steel. This implies great losses to theBritish steel industry at present, as well as great dan-gers in the future, since foreign firms insist upon agree-ments for several months. Throughout Great Britain,there is lack of fuel and lack of orders. Where orderscan be obtained, prices are generally unremunerativeand are accepted only to help pay overhead charges. Un-employment and short time employment are prevalenteverywhere. Fixed capital is depreciating, circulatingcapital, the life-blood of commerce, is being frozen bytrade stagnation. Workers are losing wages. The con-suming power of the population as a whole is being re-duced. This has its inevitable reaction on production.It is not uncommon to hear those engaged in the leadingindustries say that they can remember no time whentrade was more stagnant than at present.

Some leading economists have attempted to estimatethe losses to the country caused by the general strikeand the lockout of the miners. But all these estimatesare premature and incomplete. As great as the lossesare to the country at .present—they will be still greaterin the near future. During the present crisis, GreatBritain's competitors and particularly the United Stateshave captured some of the British markets. This can-not fail to have its effect upon the industrial system ofBritain.

Runciman, one of the leading English economists, inhis speech in Parliament on the 21st of July, stated that"no one could arrive at an accurate total of the loss tothe country caused by the stoppage." But he roughlyestimated that in the general strike the total loss to thecountry came to at least 1150,000,000. During the per-iod from May 16 to July 16, the loss owing to the coalstoppage was at least $140,000,000. The loss to the rail-ways, which had been less than most people anticipated,compared with 1925, had been about $7,000,000 in trafficand goods and $3,000,000 in passengers—$10,000,000 inall. In two big categories in the metal list, pig iron andsteel, there had been a very big, and almost sensationalfall in exports and in production for home use. The losson pig iron has been at least 1,000,000 tons, which at $25per ton, amounted to $25,000,000. In the case of steel,the loss had been at least 1,200,000 tons, which might

fairly be estimated at $50,000,000. In the textile trades,there was a drop in cotton exports of $38,500,000 duringthe same period. The fall in woolens was $8,000,000 andin other textiles, about $1,250,000. In case of the wholeor partly manufactured goods, the drop in the produc-tion of goods per .home consumption so far as any esti-mate was possible seemed to be between $65,000,000and $100,000,000, and was probably nearer the latter fig-ure. The sum lost in wages by the miners during thestoppage, the general strike and since then, was $125,-000,000. The workers of other industries no doubt lostin wages at least $50,000,000. Runciman, therefore, es-timates that the total loss to the country up to the lastweek in July approximates $740,000,000. This figuretakes no account of correlative and consequent losses,such as idle shipping and does not convey the fact thatthe losses were becoming progressively greater.*J. P. Hannon, secretary of the Tory group of industrialmagnates in the House of Commons, estimated the dailyloss to the country as a result of the mining lockout at$40,000,000. Other suggestions run as high as $50,000,000a day. But such figures are exaggerated. The nationalproduction of Great Britain, including all goods and serv-ices, may be valued at between 350 and 400 millions aweek, or say 62% million dollars per working day. Theestimate of Bell, an eminent English economist, is prob-ably the nearest to the truth. He claims that the coun-try's daily loss amounts to at least $15,000,000. This fig-ure approaches more or less the estimate of The Eco-nomist, which suggested, as a rough figure, the dailyloss 17% to 20 millions. If we even accept fifty millionas the approximate daily loss, then Britain by now haslost more than $1,800,000,000.

This figure is quite suggestive. It shows the greatdamage inflicted upon the capitalist system of GreatBritain by the heroic struggle of the miners." TheStatist of the 14th of August contains a detailed reviewof the various industries which again show "the melan-choly picture of the state of British industry and trade."

"The present position," writes the Statist, "is all themore deplorable in view of the fact that in the firstfour months of the year there were unmistakable signsof trade reanimation. This fact is substantiated by evi-dences on every side." The traffic receipts of the four"heavy" railways showed a gain of 2.6% on 1925, rep-resenting an increase of over five million dollars in grossincome. Production of steel ingots and castings showedan increase of 9.8% in the first four months of the year.The general wholesale price level showed an averagefall of 10.1% during the same period, etc.

But the general strike and particularly the coal stop-page put an end to this temporary stabilization. Thewounds inflicted upon the industrial system are so seri-ous that it is doubtful whether Britain will be able to

648 W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6 649

overcome them. Statistical matter on the various in-dustries proves this fact.

The total production of pig iron during the first half ofthe year amounted to only 2,273,000 tons, a decline ofover 32% as compared with the corresponding period oflast year. On the eve of the coal stoppage 147 blastfurnaces were in operation, but the number fell to 23by the end o£ May, by the end of June to 11 and wasstill further reduced to 8 by the end of July. The steelindustry was even more acutely affected. The follow-ing comparative figures show this in detail:

Steel ingotsPig iron & castings

tons tons1913 Average monthly production 855,000 638,6001920 " " " 699,500 755,6001921 " " " 218,000 308,6001922 " " " 463,500 490,1001923 " " " 619,900 707,4001924 " " " 609,900 685,1001925 January 574,500 605,100

March 607,900 684,700May 574,700 651,600June 510,300 585,400

1926 January 533,500 640,400March , 568,500 784,109April 539,100 661,000May 88,000 45,700June 41,800 32,800July 17,900 32,100

These figures require no explanation. They speak forthemselves. It is also important to note that prior tothe strike the exports of iron and steel tended to com-pare more and more favorably with imports. The coalstoppage reversed this tendency. Exports for the first6 months of this year, as compared with the correspond-ing period of last year, show a decline of 3.6%.

The shipbuilding and the shipping industry have suf-fered much through the coal strike. The plight of theshipbuilding industry is seen from the returns of Lloyds'Register. These show that for the first half of the yearthe tonnage launched was barely 362,400, as comparedwith 673,300 in the corresponding half of 1925, which wasitself a period o£ depression. The work on hand at theend of June—841,300 tons— was about 252,000 tons lessthan at the corresponding date last year, and 1,049 tonsbelow the average building during the last pre-war year.

"The depression in shipbuilding," writes the Statist,"may have now reached its most acute stage, but it isdifficult to find any evidence to support the expectationof an early revival."

As far as shipping is concerned, it must be remember-ed that British exports of coal which had been 80,000,000tons per annum, represented 80% of the volume of ourexports, and 10% of their value. Coal was the back-bone of the outward trade of British shipping. Thecoal strike, therefore, could not fail to have its dam-aging influence on shipping.

Even previous to the strike British coal was beingsupplanted in the world markets, notably Australia,South Africa, India and Japan, while the Atlantic is-lands were being largely supplied by the United

States. The prolonged lockout of the miners onlyhelped to strengthen the hold of the British competi-tors upon these markets.

Statistics show that the absence of outward coal car-goes has not been compensated by any considerable in-crease in homeward freights or by the demands for ton-nage to move American coal. During the first six monthsof 1926, 19 million tons of coal were exported from theUnited Kingdom as compared with 26 million tons inthe first six months of 1925 and 31 million tons in thefirst six 'months of 1924.

The idle shipping at the principal ports of Great Brit-ain and Ireland amounted to 650,200 net tons in July,1923. It fell to 470,000 net tons by July 1st, 1924, androse to 777,200 net tons on July 1st, 1925, being the high-est figure since October, 1922. The quarterly figures for1926 have been as follows:

January 1st 407,664 net tonsApril 1st 359,848 net tonsJuly 1st 859,739 net tons

The July total is more than double that for April, andis the highest for four years. "Whatever the issue ofthe coal strike," writes the Statist, "the year 1926 isbound to involve great losses to British shipping, andthe position will be a disastrous one if the stoppage isprotracted much longer."

The decreased amount of railway traffic is anotherproof of the shrinkage in the volume of business by thelockout. Prior to May 1st, there was some rise in rail-way traffic, but this was abruptly checked by the strike.Since that date the reports of the four big railway groupshave fallen oft by 66.8% as compared with the corre-sponding period of last year; this represents a loss of 95million dollars in gross income.

Finally the statistics of coal export for the first sixmonths of this year as compared with the same per-iod for last year show the paralysis of the coal indus-try. These are:

COAL EXPORTS.

Tons Value in £,January, 1925 4,366,051 4,708,978February 4,344,008 4,537,746March 4,392,258 4,557,002April 4,359,817 4,541,333May 4,652,464 4,798,756June 3,733,845 3,768,521

Total 25,848,443 26,912,336

January, 1926 4,148,042 3,821,336February 4,340,006 4,025,627March 4,702,536 4,184,079April 4,290,652 3,767,909May 1,448,368 1,392,437June 34,485 37,818

Total 18,964,089 17,229,206

The figures for May are merely belated reports forApril, while the figures for June are exports of bunkercoal. When we compare the export figures for June ofthis year with those for last year, we get a clear ideaof the paralysis of the coal industry. Britain, one of

the greatest coal exporting countries of the world, wasforced to import in June 600,600 tons of coal in order tokeep her industries running even at reduced capacity.By the first week of July the total quantity of coal im-ported had exceeded 1,200,000 tons. Since then the week-ly arrivals have varied from 521,000 tons (week endingJuly 10) to 970,000 tons (week ending August 14).

The policy of the conservative government, the execu-tive committee of the British capitalists, to break theMiners' Federation and reduce the miners to a starvationlevel has inflicted great injuries to the coal mining in-dustries. And, as Sir Alfred Mond stated: "It will takeweeks before the mines can get up to anything like nor-mal production again, and it will also be a period of longduration before markets lost are won back again. Inconsequence of the strike the price of coal is likely togo up and the export trade will 'be faced with many dif-ficulties."

The condition of the other industries of Great Britainis not any better. In brief, it can be stated that thedamages inflicted upon the capitalist system by the min-ers' lockout are far-reaching and irreparable. The coun-try is bound to lose a great many of her overseas mar-kets, not only in coal but in other industries as well.While the British miners have been holding up the es-sential work of production at home, the competitorsabroad, and especially the United States, have lost novaluable time in capturing the British markets.

Another criterion by which we can judge the effectsof the coal stoppage is the increase in unemploymentand in poor law relief. The Ministry of Labor Gazettereports that unemployment has increased during 1926from 1,237,000 in January to 1,664,000 in July.

The figures for May do not include the number ofworkers of the various industries that participated inthe general strike, and the figures for June and Julyare exclusive of the million miners who are gradually be-ing starved through the lockout by the mine owners.One can, therefore, state that in Britain there is at pres-ent an army of not less than three million unemployed.In some industries unemployment is more than 50%.

It must be mentioned here that the government stat-istics of unemployed are far from being accurate. Thegovernment employs various means to deny the workersunemployment insurance. Its aim is to show that un-employment is decreasing. By cutting workers off theregisters and by extending the waiting period, manythousands of unemployed workers are conveniently leftout of the unemployment totals. Apart from this, thereare unemployed agricultural workers who are not regis-tered at the unemployment exchanges and thousands ofunskilled workers who have never held insurance cards.

This policy of the government has thrown many able-bodied workers on poor law relief. Poor law relief isthe last resort of the destitute workers. Many workersconsider it as the greatest disgrace to depend upon poorlaw relief, but conditions have forced them to resorteven to this last means.

The table presented to .the House of Commons byKingsley Wood, parliamentary secretary to the, Ministryof Health, shows the upward tendency in Poor Lawfigures.

These figures of the Ministry of Health show theamount of destitution and poverty which is spreadingover the industrial areas of England. But even this beg-garly help, which the families of the unemployed areentitled to by law is now being denied them. The gov-ernment has sent out instructions to all local authoritiesin the mining areas encouraging them to refuse assist-ance to the families of the strikers. The purpose, ofcourse, is clear: the government wishes to break thespirit of the miners by starving their children. Here iswhat Lloyd George, who cannot be accused of being afriend of the workers, writes about poor law relief inmining areas:

"Take the areas where the Poor Law Guardiansare still distributing relief. Nothing is given to theminer or to any of his children over 14. The wife isallowed barely sufficient to buy food for herself andher smaller children. . . .

"Clothes cannot be bought, and boots can neitherbe bought nor repaired. Rent is in suspense alto-gether. But the greatest hardship comes from thefact that the housewife has to divide her owninsufficiency and that of her younger children withthe comjplete poverty of her husband and her elderchildren. In these cases they do not die of hunger;nevertheless they are hungry and half-starved."

(Manchester Guardian, August 23, 1926).

In many areas, the guardians have reduced relief tosuch small sums that emergency measures have beennecessary on the part of the Women's Committee forthe Relief of the Miners' Wives and Children to pre>vent actual starvation. Here are some of the amountsgiven in the Lichfield area: to a woman with a hus-band and some big boys, 36 cents; to other women 36cents and 6 cents for each child after the first; to awoman with 7 children, $2.00; to a woman with threechildren, 85 cents, etc.

To conclude: as a result of the heroic struggle of overa million mine workers, the industries of Britain are atpresent in a state of paralysis; many of the foreignmarkets, which prior to the strike 'Britain succeeded inregaining, are now passing into the hands of her com-petitors. Unemployment is reaching the two millionfigure. To this great army of unemployed must be add-ed over a million miners, who are fighting to maintainthe already low level of existence. On top of all this,throughout the industrial areas of Great Britain, a popu-lation of over two million are forced through poverty anddestitution to depend upon the beggarly help given byPoor Law officers.

All this gives us a picture of the economic conditionof Great Britain. Truly, the country is rapidly justifyingits description as the workhouse of the world. It is pos-sible that the government and the mine owners willsucceed in defeating the miners and even in breakingthe Miners' Federation. But this victory will have costthe capitalists too high a price.

The miners' strike has already inflicted such seriouswounds upon the capitalist system of Great Britain, thatthere is great doubt whether it will ever be able to over-come them.

650 W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

The Bournemouth Trade Union CongressBy Earl R. Browder

ABDICATION of leadership was the outstanding fact•"• of the Trade "Union 'Congress meeting at Bourne-mouth, England, September 6 to 11. One year agothe Congress at Scarborough had adopted a militant pro-gram against the capitalist offensive" and against Britishimperialism; this year the Congress retreated before thecapitalist offensive, refusing even to examine the cir-cumstances of the defeat suffered during the year, andbusied itself with discussions on technicalities, tubercu-losis cures, etc. With a million miners locked out, inthe eighteenth week of struggle, the Congress contenteditself with a resolution of good wishes on which all dis-cussion was shut off. Only one proposal for action wassubmitted to the Congress -by the General Council andthat dealt with the proposal to establish a trade unionuniversity at Easton Lodge; this single proposal of thecouncil was defeated. In all its negative attitudes, inthe prevention of debates on vital questions, the Gene-ral Council had the support of 75 per cent of the Con-gress. The result was a sterile, unreal gathering, inwhich the only relief was the constant struggle of therevolutionary elements to open up the burning issues.Confusion, cowardice, tradition, and reaction ruled theCongress. The great British labor movement was leftwithout official leadership.

This, in brief, is the immediate net balance of Bourne-mouth. It is necessary to examine the separate factorswhich went into the account to produce such results.

Churchill-MacDonald Combine to Set Stage.

Winston Churchill was undoubtedly the chief strate-gist in preparing the Congress. The incalculablefactor which menaced the program of the GeneralCouncil and the bourgeoisie was the possible effects up-on the Congress of the desperate struggle going on inthe mine fields. The government and coal owners hadjust failed in their desperate drive in Nottinghamshireand Derbyshire to break the miners' front. The minerswere retaliating toy a movement to withdraw the safetymen. Some sudden new development during the Con-gress might possibly sweep the delegates from underthe control of the reactionary leaders and bring to ex-pression the fighting spirit that still imbues the masses.The problem of how to guard against this danger to thebourgeoisie was solved by Mr. Churchill in collaborationwith Ramsay MacDonald; through the instrumentalityof the leader of the Labor Party, the miners were tiedup in negotiations with the government; Mr. Churchillmost astonishingly appeared on the stage in the cos-tume of an angel of peace and good will. The problemwas solved by creating the illusion that a settlementwas imminent, the Trade Union Congress was warnednot to do or say anything that would endanger the deli-cate negotiations, MacDonald issued daily reports of how

he was "being of service to the miners." The minerswere effectively trapped. The little comedy served itspurpose well.

The Relation of Forces in the Congress.

Sitting in the Congress hall throughout the sessions,one received the impression that a small, compactgroup of right-wing leaders who knew what they wanted,were conducting the Congress through the instrumentali-ty of a majority of muddle-heads, securely imprisonedin the right wing policy 'but hardly knowingwhat - it is all about and exceedingly fearful ofthe trade union masses. On the other side werethe definite supporters of the Minority Movement. Theminers could not be included in any of the three groups;angry, indignant, confused, tied in the trap of the agree-ment with the General Council, the miners were impo-tent and isolated in the Congress insofar as using theirpower was concerned.

The relative voting strength in the Congress of thesegroups is shown by an analysis of some of the most im-portant votes.

The revolutionary left-wing, led by the Minority Move-ment, showed its strength particularly on two ques-tions. In the matter of the condemnation of the MinorityMovement by the General Council, a motion was offeredto reject the report. The vote, with the miners abstain-ing, was:

For rejection 738,000Against 2,710,000

On the matter of international trade union unity, therevolutionary left wing increased its vote by almost halfa million. Jack Tanner, representing the AmalgamatedEng inee r ing U n i o n , presented an amendment to the unityresolution, declaring for a World Congress, including theProfintern, as the means to unity. The vote on thisamendment was:

For a World Congress 1,237,000Against 2,416,000

These two votes registered the highest and loweststrength of the revolutionary section of the Congress.

The minimum voting strength of the extreme right-wing was on the question of international unity. Theresolution was very colorless, merely reaffirming theneed for international unity and expressing regret thatit was not yet achieved. Not satisfied with defeatingthe amendment by Tanner, calling for a World Congress,the right-wing made a drive also against the resolution,with the result that the vote stood:

For the resolution 2,959,000Against 814,000

It is thus approximately accurate to say that the right-wing had about 20 per cent of the Congress, the revolu-

D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6

tionary left-wing about 20 per cent, the miners about 20per cent, while the confused mass of the delegates with-out definite orientation represented about 40 per cent.The Congress struggle was between the right and leftwings for possession of the center; in this struggle theright-wing dominated, taking the Congress as a whole,while the left-wing won thru on some of the less sharplycontroversial questions.

The Equivocal Tone of the Congress.

But if this was a right-wing Congress, still the reac-tion was forced to take its victory in a negativeform', under cover of equivocal declarations and resolu-tions. It did not demonstrate that the right wing con-trols the need of the masses but only that they still con-trol the organizational machinery. Ever since May,Thomas, MacDonald, Clynes, Gramp, and other right-wing leaders, have been energetically denouncing theGeneral Strike as a weapon for protecting the workers.But the masses of trade unionists have met this propa-ganda so coldly, the Communists and the Minority Move-ment have raised such increased support that the right-wing leaders were afraid to carry their views into theCongress at Bournemouth. In the address of Pugh, aspresident, reformist and timid though it was from be-ginning to end, he still found it necessary to say re-garding the General Strike, that under similar circum-stances "the weapon used by the unions last May willnot be left unused," while the only spark of enthusiasmbe brought into the Congress was in response to hiswords: "We do not meet in this 'Congress in any moodof penitence." But these were words designed only todivert resentment away from the actual policy of re-treat and surrender now in force; the equivocal expres-sions throughout the Congress were intended, and wereused, as justification for the surrender rather than forthe struggle. What is important about them is, thatthey show the mood of the masses is definitely in theopposite direction than that of the General Council,which is forced to screen itself behind such formula-tions, rather than such open grovellings before the bour-geoisie as those of Thomas, Cramp, and MacDonald.

The "American Orientation" of the Right Wing.

In its rapid swing to the right the General Councilis adopting ideas and slogans from the bureaucracy ofthe American Federation of Labor. As always, they arefollowing the lead of the employers in this matter; the"American orientation" was publicly initiated by the"Daily Mail" mission to America. There is now an offi-cial governmental delegation to study American meth-ods in labor relations, which includes Ernest Bevin, whois rapidly becoming the dominant figure on the GeneralCouncil. "Company unions" in the real American styleare rapidly introduced into Britain. All this had a de-finite reflection in the Congress at Bournemouth. Theeyes of the right wing are fixed firmly upon that para-dise of class collaboration—the United States.

The clearest expression of this fact is in the treat-ment of the question of wages. In this question is alsopresented one of the sharpest contrasts between theBournemouth Congress this year and the Scarborough

651

Congress in 1925. At Scarborough, Mr. A. B. Swales,then president, said on the question of wages:

"There is a limit to the concessions that the unionscan be forced to make. That limit has been reached;union policy will henceforth be to recover lost ground,to re-establish and improve our standard of wages, hoursand working conditions, and to co-ordinate and intens-ify trade union activity for the winning of a largermeasure of control in industry for the workers."

In quite a different spirit and form does Pugh dealwith the question in his opening address at Bourne-mouth. A few quotations will show how Pugh para-phrases the Gompers program contained in the Portlandmanifesto (1923) and the "new wage theory" of the A.F. of L. adopted at Atlantic City (1925):

"They (the new conditions) require from us a newconception of the use and purposes of this Congress, asan Industrial Parliament of Labor . . . for the practicalrealization of an economic democracy parallel to thepower of political democracy. . .

"The time has come for us to examine in the lightof the new theories, the whole basis and application ofthe traditional wage policy and methods of determiningwages which the Trade Unions have followed.

" . . . A scientific wage policy requires to be thoughtout in relation to some generally acceptable set of prin-ciples . . . Has not the time arrived for us to considerthe principle -of a basic wage correlated to the index ofnational production? . . . "

In the speeches of Bevin in the Congress, there wasparticularly to be heard the "American" note. "Indus-trial Democracy" was a word often and glibly on histongue; labor banking and insurance were mentioned asavailable substitutes for struggle and solidarity. Listen-ing to Bevin and some others at Bournemouth, one couldalmost believe himself suddenly transported across theAtlantic for a moment; these were echoes from the A.F. of L.

This "Americanization" policy is, of course, impossibleof establishment in the British labor movement. Theeconomic foundation is entirely lacking. Not only isBritain a land of low wages in comparison with theUnited States, but it is steadily declining industrially andpolitically, while the United States is yet on the up-ward curve of capitalism. The new policy will, however,serve the General Council well as the basis for new illu-sions for a few months or a year, while the masses arebeing sacrificed to the stabilization of British profits.

Smashing a Tradition at Bournemouth.

The new "scientific wage policy" mentioned by Mr.Pugh, which is to be "correlated to the index of pro-duction," is an obscure manner of stating what Mr. Bald-win put into blunt English when he declared that allwages must be reduced. That is the policy urged uponthe miners by the General Council. That is what Mr.Bromley published in the Locomotive Engineers' Journal,in violation of the agreement made with the miners, inJune. In order, apparently, to demonstrate their earnest-ness in this wage reduction policy, the General Councilput forth Mr. Bromley at the Congress as the officialspokesman to support a milk-and-water resolution ofsympathy for the miners. The miners had protestedpreviously against this hypocritical pretense of Brom-ley as their supporter, and urged the General Councilto name some other member rather than Bromley. Thecouncil was determined, however, that no one but Brom-

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ley could adequately represent it as a supporter of theminers. Doubtless they were correct in a way; Brom-ley embodied all the dishonesty, hypocrisy, and treach-ery with which the council had dealt with the miningsituation. Their obstinacy led to the smashing of atradition of the British Trade Union Congress.

When Bromley rose in the congress to speak, a minerdelegate also rose, and demanded that someone elsespeak instead of Bromley. Immediately the Congresswas in an uproar. It was the first opportunity lor all thesuppressed feelings against the betrayal of the GeneralStrike and the miners to come to the surface. In vaindid the gentlemanly Mr. Pugh attempt to restore order;his reading of the rules providing for expulsion of thoseguilty of disorder intensified the storm. When he or-dered the ejection of some of the demonstrating dele-gates, half the Congress arose and began to sing theRed Flag. Above the din rose the strong voice of a dele-gate, shouting: "You are letting a traitor speak to us.You are traitors, all of you; everyone on the platform."The Congress was adjourned in confusion, after the de-monstration had continued half an hour. When, later inthe day, Congress reassembled, Richardson of the min-ers made a statement, saying that the miners felt humi-liated by the action of the General Council in namingBromley to speak on the question but, having made theirprotest, they were now silent.

This occurrence was without precedent in the previous57 Congresses o£ the British trade union movement. Itprofoundly shocked the members of the General Coun-cil, and outraged every one of their instincts of bour-geois decency. Also they were [profoundly disturbed.Here was an echo from the rumblings among themasses.

International Delegates—Present and Absent.Of the expected fraternal delegations from abroad,

two were absent from the Bournemouth Congress. Thesharply contrasting reasons for the absence of eachthrows a vivid light upon the causes of the division ofthe international labor movement.

Frank Farrington, delegate from the American Fed-eration of Labor, was absent because after he had leftAmerica to go to England, it had been discovered thathe was on the payroll of the Peabody Coal Corporation,the largest coal company in America, at a salary of$25,000 per year, at the same time drawing salary fromthe union at |6,000 per year. This had proved just alittle too much even for the American labor movementto justify, so . Parrington's credentials had been can-celled. He had committed the sin" which in America isnot pardoned; Be had been discovered. Still, he was afit representative of the A. P. of L. bureaucracy.

The other absent delegation was that of the All-Rus-sian Central Council of Trade Unions. All the capitalistpapers in England united in declaring that the GeneralCouncil was secretly grateful to the government for re-fusing to allow Tomsky and Melnichansky to enter Eng-land; nevertheless the Council adopted a formal protestagainst the exclusion, altho refusing to allow delegatesto bring the question before the Congress. The crimeof the Russian delegation consisted of representing theeight million unionists who had contributed eight milliondollars to the miners in their struggle.

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The telegram from the All-Russian Central Council ofTrade Unions was distributed to the delegates on Sep-tember 9, the fourth day of the Congress. Appended toit was the reply of the General Council, which declaredthat the telegram "abused the ordinary courtesies ex-pected of fraternal delegates" and that the "GeneralCouncil has no intention of replying to this ill-instructedand presumptuous criticism." The capitalist daily presstook up the cudgels for the General Council and withgreat headlines and indignant leading editorials attempt-ed to whip up indignation in the Congress against the"intolerable interference in British trade union affairs."

On the whole, however, the Congress received thetelegram in a very thoughtful mood. The attempted out-bursts by a few delegates received little encouragementand fell flat. Everyone had the feeling, even those whosupported the General Council, that this document wasthe only one in the whole Congress which boldly dealtwith the real problems of the British working class. Themillion organized workers in the Minority Movement,whose voice had been choked off in the Congress by therule of the General Council, immediately and whole-heartedly identified themselves with the telegram. Ar-thur Cook declared the following day that he "has agreat deal sharper criticism even than Tomsky to directagainst the General Council."

Prom America arrived Mr. Hutchinson, representingthe A. P. of L. He apologized for the absence of hiscolleague, Parrington, which he could not account for.Evidently he didn't like to mention Parrington's littlematter of |25,000 per year. He waved his jeweled fin-gers about, said that "we in America realize that it isnecessary to have capitalists," wished the delegates ajolly time, accepted the gold watch from the chairman,and departed. He was almost as good a representativeof American labor leadership as Parrington.

Representing the I. P. T. U. (Amsterdam) was J. W.Brown, one of the secretaries of that body. He madeabout the same sort of a speech as that last year atScarborough, but strangely enough, while last year hefound himself to the right of the General Council andCongress, this year he seemed almost like a left-winger.He spoke of international unity; he quoted from Tomskya declaration of the necessity for a single World Inter-national, and declared that he supported that view. Hesaid that it was necessary to find immediate tasks uponwhich unity could find its beginning, laying down a listof eleven such tasks; these included, international finan-cial assistance for strikes and lockouts, and the pre-vention of international blacklegging. But he didn't sayanything about why Amsterdam refused the offer of theProfintern for joint action on these two subjects in aidof the miners' struggle in Britain, nor did he report onwhat Amsterdam had failed to do alone on these ques-tions.

And Where Was the Former "Left Wing"?Tne so-calleu left-wing in the General Council was not

eviuent in the Congress. It had no views on any-thing. HScks addressed the Congress twice; first onthe question of a certain method of curing tuberculosis,which he recommended to the entire trade union move-ment; and second, on a question concerning the buildingtrades. On this last point, other building trades dele-

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gates denounced Hicks for having split the buildingtrades federation and asked the Congress to take Hicks'resolution off the agenda because it should have beenbrought to the building workers' organization. This theCongress did, to the discomfiture of Hicks, who was notnoticed again until his name was mentioned as one ofthose re-elected to the General Council. Purcell spokeon international unity; he was against a world congress;he said the I. P. T. U. feels that the split in the worldmovement is caused by Communist propaganda; thatonly the British unions were able to overcome that feel-ing, but the revolutionaries use such bad language thatwe can get nowhere; he still thought there was a pos-sibility of changing the attitude of the I. P. T. U. andbringing the Russians into Amsterdam; but anyway aworld congress would do no good. And that was the"Left Wing" of the General Council.

The Real Left Wing—the Minority Movement.

Throughout the Congress there was one groupwhich had a militant fighting policy to offer the Brit-ish trade unions on every point that was allowed tocome before it. That was the group led by members ofthe Minority Movement. Every resolution on the agen-da which dealt with the -big problems of the movement,had a Minority Movement member as its sponsor andMinority Movement members as the supporters from thefloor of the Congress. They were mostly young men andwomen, without the long experience of Congress pro-cedure that turns trade union leaders into expert parlia-mentarians, but with plenty of courage and energy, andthe only group in Congress which talked policy in termsof struggle against capitalism instead of surrender tocapitalism.

A new line of trade union leaders are being developedfor the British labor movement in this group. It in-cluded such people as Jack Tanner, of the AmalgamatedEngineering Union; Arthur Homer, of the Miners; Els-bury, of the Garment Workers; McLauchlan, of the IronFitters; Mrs. Bradshaw, of the Textile Workers; Chan-dler, of the Railway Clerks; Loeher, of the National Un-ion of Railwaymen; Strain, of the Woodworkers; Tom-kins, of the Furnishing Trades; and others. These werethe leaders of the delegates who cast 800,000 votes forevery revolutionary proposal placed before the Congress.

It is unfortunately impossible to list A. J. Cook as oneof the left leaders at the Congress. His principal ap-pearance was for the purpose of calling upon Congressto stop discussion of the betrayal of the miners by theGeneral Council. His ill-advised pact of silence with theGeneral Council did more than anything else to reducethe Bournemouth Congress to impotence and placed theseal of official approval upon the general retreat now

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taking place—which threatens disaster to the Britishmovement. In the brilliant struggle of the miners, Cookhas rendered some great services; but he has also mademany blunders and none more serious than this shame-ful silence at Bournemouth.

Two Left Resolutions Adopted.Among the generally reactionary decisions of the

Congress, two resolutions marking progress must benoted. One of these was that calling for amalgamationsamong the existing unions along industrial lines, de-feating the confusionist "one big union" proposals. Theother was the resolution on the war danger in the East,brought forward by the Miners' Federation, which point-ed out that the aggressions of British imperialism inChina, which are connected with the preparations forwar against the Soviet Union, demand united resistancefrom the trade union movement. Both were adopted bylarge majorities.

British Unions Becoming Ripe for New Leadership.

The Congress made clear beyond question the bank-ruptcy of the General Council, including all of itsformer groupings. There is no essential differences be-tween them and all are agents or prisoners of the Brit-ish bourgeoisie, its social institutions, its ideology. Thisleadership is incapable of conducting a struggle againstcapitalism, or even for the protection of past gains.

But the masses are in a militant 'mood; they wishto fight to protect their standards of living. Alreadythey are beginning to elect to the Congress men andwomen who stand for a fighting program. The MinorityMovement has united a million of such trade unionistsalready, and other millions are being swiftly broughtto the same position.

Out of this situation a new leadership must come topower in the British unions. But this can only be real-ized out of a sharp and relentless struggle against notonly the brazen treachery of a Thomas, but also againstthe illusion of the so-called "left" that capitulates toThomas, against the illusions of the "new scientificwage theories" and the Americanized methods of classcollaboration, and against all weaknesses in its ownranks.

As the continued decline of the British capitalist econ-omy inevitably forces new struggles upon the Britishproletariat, so will the new leadership rise to power inthe British unions. It will be a difficult and painful pro-cess; only the first steps were taken at Bournemouth.These must be followed up swiftly, determinedly. Theentire revolutionary trade union movement of the worldmust study the British problems closely and carefully,and render all possible assistance to the British com-rades in their great and tremendously important task.

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Ultra Left MenshevismBy Heinz Neumann

i.The New General Offensive on the Comintern.

TN the last few weeks various sections of the Comintern•^ have seen the beginning of new provocatory attacksof the ultra-left groupings against the Comintern. Thespecial characteristic of these concentrated attacks con-sists in this, that they are not only aimed against the po-litical line of the Comintern but are connected with thebitterest disorganizatory factional activity within theindividual Communist parties and, lately, on an inter-national scale. In the Communist Party of Italy a num-ber of the leading members of the Bordiga group haveopenly declared that they refuse to recognize the deci-sions of the last Party Congress. They have refused inspite of the difficult illegal position of our Italian broth-er party—to carry out the work assigned to them bythe Central Committee, saying that they do not want totake any responsibility for the "opportunist" policy ofthe Central Committee. In Germany the expelled ultra-left parliamentarians have organized another or rathertwo more "parties" that have declared "war to the end"against the Communist Party of Germany. Katz callshis creation "Spartakushund" ("Spartacus League") andKorsch has named his "Gruppe International Kommu-nisten" ("Group of International Communists"). Thefact that both of these "parties" are carrying on a warto the knife against each other and iare accusing <each otherof opportunist compliance towards the C. P. G. does notprevent them from proclaiming as the chief immediatetask of the German revolutionary proletariat the promptand complete destruction of the Communist Party. Theplans and the deeds of these "ultra-revolutionary" mem-bers of the democratic Reichstag of the German republichave something ridiculous in them. Far more seriousand far more dangerous is the conduct of another sec-tion of the German ultra-left (Ruth Fischer, TJrbahns,Maslow) who prefer to work from within the C. P. G.to guide it in the same direction as Katz and Korschtry to do from the outside. This inner party depart-ment of the ultra-left trust continues to carry on, 'moredeterminedly than ever, its bitter disorganizatory workagainst the Comintern and its leadership, against theGerman Party and its Central Committee. Ruth Fischerbroke the decision, thrice passed unanimously by theE. C. C. I., which assigned her certain work on the Ex-ecutive; she left Moscow for Germany in order to takeover the leadership of the factional work. Urbahns hashis manifestoes against the Communist Party printed atthe same establishment as the expelled Korsch.

The. most recent manifestation of the internationalultra-left since the March Plenum of the E. C. C. I. ischaracterized by the following facts:

1. A new, particularly bitter systematic attack inalmost every section of the Comintern, particularly inItaly and Germany.

2. The first great attempt to consolidate the op-

position tendencies of the individual sections on aninternational scale, to unite all "left" groupings ofthe various countries into a systematically led andfactionally organized opposition against the Comin-tern.

3. The concentration of all the ultra-left attacksof Katz, Korsch, Maslow, Ruth Fischer, TJrbahns, Bor-diga, Domski, etc. against the Union of Socialist Sov-iet Republics, especially against the policy of theC. P. S. U. and against its leading role in the Com-intern—in association with the platform of the op-position at the XIV Party Congress of the C. P. S. U.

4. The application of the sharpest methods of dis-organization, of factional struggle, of breach of dis-cipline, of sabotage of party work, of underminingParty unity, of co-operation with the enemies of theParty.

5. '.Direct transition of a part of the ultra-lefts tothe ranks of the counter-revolution (Korsch and Katz)the rest (Ruth Fischer, Bordiga) remaining in theParty for the sake of undermining it from within;complete united front and division of labor of bothgroups in the struggle against the Party line.

6. An approach between the ultra-left groups andpart of the right wing of the Comintern with the aimof building up a bloc of oppositional groupings andleaders of all sorts, without any consideration forprinciples or past history.

These are the chief characteristics of the present ul-tra-left offensive. They refer not to the objective sig-nificance, to the general content and to the ideologicroots of this tendency but to the "practical" side of theoppositional struggle, to the tactical methods the ultra-left use against the Comintern. As to the ideologicaland political appearance of the ultra-left we will speaklater.

Before we do this, however, we must examine moreclosely the newest of their "operating" methods, the blocwith the right wing. We point to three examples thatshow very clearly the alliances of the ultra-right and theultra-left.

In Germany some time ago Schoenlank, an old repre-sentative of the right wing of the Party, came out clear-ly with a liquidatory program: the whole policy of theComintern in recent times, particularly the splitting ofthe Social-democratic parties, was wrong, the Profinternmust be liquidated, the Communist Party must give upits independent organization and must separate itselffrom the Comintern since this latter was "responsiblefor the victory of fascism in Italy."

It was a question of a program that was not merelyright-wing but was openly social-democratic. The Cen-tral Committee of the C. P. G. expelled Schoenlankfrom the Party on October 20, 1925. But a remarkablething occurred. Whereas the former right-wing groupof Comrade Meyer agreed to the expulsion, Scholem andthe "left" representatives of Ruth Fischer in the Party

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leadership voted against the expulsion of Schoenlank,who, by the way, immediately left for the social-democ-racy and showed himself to be just an ordinary rene-gade.

Perhaps this is an individual case, one might say.But much more significant is the notorious alliance, al-ready in existence for a number of years, between theBordiga faction in Italy and the expelled anti-Commu-nist right groups of Souvarine and Rosmer-Monette inthe French Party. This peculiar bloc arose for the firsttime during the discussion on Trotskyism in the C. P.S. U. At that time, Bordiga and Souvarine formed a unit-ed front with the Trotskyite opposition against the Cen-tral Committee of the Bolsheviki. When Souvarine wasexpelled from the Comintern by the Fifth Congress be-cause of his Menshevik platform, Bordiga voted against.Meanwhile the expelled French right-wingers have placedthemselves completely on the side of the bourgeoisie.Their periodicals, the "Bullet in Communiste" (?) "Com-munist Bulletin") and "Revolution (?) Proletarienne"("Proletarian Revolution") fight against the French Com-munists and against the Comintern in a united front fightwith the bourgeois and the social-democratic papers.As far as the attitude of these "right-Communists" to theclass struggle is concerned it is enough to mention thattheir attitude to the Morocco war and the independencemovement in Alsace-Lorraine is the same as that ofthe worst social patriot, that they "greet" (literally)the rise in prices and the fall of the franc, that they re-gard the struggle about taxes as "of no importance forthe proletariat." In short—the policy of these groupsdiffers very little essentially from the policy of Briandand Caillaux. Their role is that of a special agency ofthe bourgeoisie for discrediting and slandering Com-munism. In this role Souvarine and Rosmer do not hesi-tate to do the dirtiest pieces of work.

They "describe" in the following way the condition ofthe French brother Party:

"The amorality, the hypocrisy, the cynicism, themendacity, the corruption, the duplicity and the conscioususe of false facts which characterize the policy of these'Leninists' of new vintage, who have only waited for Len-in's death in order to appeal to him, must be absolutelycondemned." ("Bulletin Communiste").

They "characterize" as follows the policy of the Execu-tive of the Communist International:

"The Executive, which compromises with notoriouselements and is entangled in mean intrigues, will fallinto still greater discredit." ("Revolution Proletarienne")

They vilify our dead comrade, Lenin, and Frunze inthe most shameless way.

In their mad hatred of the proletarian revolution thesepeople have sunk to the level of the Russian WhiteGuardists of the type of Bordadyev, for whom Bolshe-vism means an "all sided Satanocracy."

Now let us return to the left, ultra-revolutionary Com-munist Bordiga. For six years Bordiga has been livingon the myth that the Comintern is going to the right.For six years Bordiga has been living on the myth thathe fights against the Social-democrats with greater de-termination than all Leninists. And the same Bordigasaid at a session of the Enlarged Executive (February23, 1926) concerning the semi-fascist group of Souvarine-Rosmer, the following:

655

"As far as concerns the right faction in France, Ido not hesitate to say that I consider it on the wholeas a healthy element and not as an expression of theintrusion of petty bourgeois elements."

Responsible for the conduct of the right faction arenot the bourgeois lackeys, Souvarine and Rosmer, but—"the general line of the International." Souvarine'sattacks (against the class struggle of the French prole-tariat, against the Soviet power, against Lenin and Len-inism. H. N.) are "partly a very useful reaction to theApolitical errors and the 'bad regime of the Party lead-ership."

An interesting spectacle! Bordiga, whom many todaystill represent as an "honest revolutionary" and as an"upright and logical left-winger," stretches out his handto the counter-revolutionary Souvarine. The next stepwill surely be for Bordiga or some one else to suggestSouvarine as editor-in-chief of the "Humanite" so thathe should be able to continue his counter-revolutionarycampaign against Bolshevism in the pages of the cen-tral organ of our French brother party.

The Soviet press has recently called attention to athird example of the political bloc of the opposition"from the left" with the most extreme right wing of thelabor movement. Comrade Medvedyev, a class collabo-rator with Comrade Shlyapnikov, has formulated in alengthy "Letter to the Baku Comrades" the most recentstandpoint of the former "Workers' Opposition" in the C.P. S. U. This standpoint extends all the way to the li-quidation of socialist construction, to the complete break-ing of the workers and peasants bloc in Soviet Russia;in place of that it puts an unconditional capitulation ofthe Soviet State before foreign finance capital "in theway of foreign and internal state loans and the allow-ance of concessions with greater losses and material sac-rifices."

The "Pravda" wrote very correctly that .these are thedemands of "chemically pure Menshevism," the slogansof Dalin, Schwarz and Abramovich.

Even more important for us is Medvedyev's policy onmatters touching the Comintern. In the appeal of thetwenty-two members of the Workers; Opposition to theE. C. C. I. in February, 1922, they presented themselvesas "class-conscious proletarian" defenders against the op-portunism of Lenin and the alleged right deviations ofthe Comintern. The E. C. C. I. replied with a unani-mous and complete rejection of the charges and with aserious warning to the opposition. Whither has this "left"super-leftism of Comrades Shlyapnikov and Medvedyevdeveloped? To the demand that there should be a stopto the "incitement and discrediting" of international Men>-shevism. To the statement that the MacDonald cabi-r?t was a real workers' government which should nothave been exposed before the masses. To the state-ment that the West European Communist parties are "ahandful of petty bourgeois lackeys," living off "Russiangold." And further? The only logical conclusion ofthese conceptions is the liquidation of the CommunistParties, their return to the organizations of the SecondInternational:

"We are for the Communist working masses remain-ing a part of the working masses organized in the tradeunions, co-operatives and in the socialist parties; we arefor rejecting decisively as an adventure that disorgan-izes the labor movement every attempt to organize some

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of these masses into separate organizations of the samekind," ("Letter to the Baku Comrades"),

Shlyapnikov and Medvedyev, the "determined lefts"of 1922, today brand the existence of separate Commu-nist parties as an adventure that disorganizes the labormovement! The. last piece of wisdom of the former "Work-ers' Opposition" is the return from international Com-munism not merely to the policy of Menshevism, but tothe parties of Noske and MacDonald. In fact this plat-form of the Russian ultra-lefts means much more than abloc with Souvarine, Balabanova, Hoglund, Bubnik,Schoenlank and the other right liquidators. It signifiesthe direct transition to propaganda and agitation for theSecond International.

These examples from Germany, Prance, Italy and theSoviet Union are expressions of the same political pro-cess. The various "left" and "right" groupings in andaround the Third International are collecting, uniting,organizing for a common general attack against the Com-intern and its Leninist leadership, the Communist Partyof the Soviet Union. There is developing a bloc ofKorsch and Katz, Medvedyev and Shlyapnikov, Ruth Fis-cher, Maslow, Urbahns, and Bordiga to Souvarine, Bala-banova and Schoenlank—a bloc without principle, agrouping without character, of a kind hitherto unheardof in the history of the revolutionary labor movement.It is indeed A pity that in this "front" there should besuch old Bolsheviks as Shlyapnikov and others along sideof such petty bourgeois politicians as Ruth Fischer andsuch counter-revolutionary agents as Souvarine. This issad—both for the Comintern and for the old Bolsheviksinvolved—but it is a fact which cannot be avoided andwhich must be recognized and analyzed.

In the rise of this right-left bloc the "crafty" innerparty tactic of the visible and invisible leaders certain-ly plays a definite role. Yet it would be a mistake to at-tempt to explain the most recent developments of thevarious anti-Leninist tendencies in the Internationalsimply on the basis of the free will and the subjectivepeculiarities of individuals. The causes of these politi-cal phenomena lie deeper. The passage of former left-radicalism to right opportunism certainly appears in theminds of its followers as primarily a "maneuver," as ameans of inner Party "strategy," as an expedient stepfor the concentration of all oppositional forces againstthe common enemy: the leadership of the Bolsheviki.But the logic of the development of the revolutionaryparty is higher than these factional "statesmen". Theultra-lefts are giving opportunism not only a finger asthey believe, but mind, heart, arms, everything, as theymust. The maneuver is transformed into a political ten-dency, the means into a political system, and the stepinto a political road—the road to Menshevism. The leftsare going to the extreme right because they are relatedto it, because they are driven there thru the objectivecontent and the spiritual foundations of their policy. Hewho deviates from Leninism in the long run without cor-recting his mistakes, he who transforms his differenceswith Leninism into a political tendency, finally ends upat the oldest, most experienced and strongest center ofthe struggle against Leninism in the labor movement.This center is not any of the left groupings but the realthing, organized Menshevism. In this development lies

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the principle of the break with Leninism, i. e., with thetheory and the tactic of the revolutionary proletariat.

We will now investigate the concrete effect of thisprinciple upon the most recent left groupings in the Com-intern.II. Imperialism, Revolution and the Radical Petty

Bourgeoisie.

rpHE ultra-left, like every other political tendency does-*- not develop out of abstract even tho left principles;it develops in time and place, under definite historicalconditions. In order to understand the true content ofthe present ultra-left attack, we must examine the chiefcharacteristics of the present period of internationalpolitics. Further we must examine the political situationin the most important countries in which these groupshave made their appearance. Finally, we must test thebasic ideas of the platform of the ultra-lefts.

The present transition period between two proletarianrevolutions coincides with a temporary .stabilization ofcapitalism. The utter relativity of this stabilization isevidenced by the outbreak of ever new conflicts amongthe capitalist states and by the continual sharpening ofthe class struggle. There can be no doubt that when allthese contradictions reach a certain level the partial sta-bilization will explode, an immediately revolutionary sit-uation will crystallize in one or a number of countries,which—given a correct policy of the proletariat and acorrect leadership of the struggle thru the Commu-nist Parties—will lead to the victory of the proletarianrevolution. But it is just as evident to anybody whoanalyzes the world situation in a sober way that thismoment has not yet made its appearance but is still rip-ening. Only he who has the opportunist idea that thepartial stabilization "obviates" the basic contradictionsof capitalist society can, at every serious sharpening ofthese contradictions, fall into "left" illusions that thestabilization is over once and for all, that the hour ofthe last decisive struggle has come. This is not the wayrevolutionary dialecticians judge, but impressionists. Inreality the new revolutionary advance of the internation-al proletariat, the new development of an immediatelyrevolutionary situation takes place not on the paperplan of any sort of "optimistic" but baseless perspec-tives but precisely on the rude basis of capitalist stabili-zation, its disturbances and increasing contradictions. Inthis development the following phenomena, among oth-ers, come to expression:

1. The antagonisms between the imperialist statesare sharpened to the extreme. The struggle for theworld market is, for the first time since the end of thewar, in full swing. In connection with the feverish pre-parations for new imperialist wars, the bourgeoisie letloose in all capitalist countries a Wave of nationalist andchauvinist sentiment.

2. The TJ. S. S. R. is the most powerful and the mostdangerous enemy of international finance-capital. There-fore, the imperialists of all countries direct their attacksagainst the Soviet Union. English imperialism is pre-paring—especially after the setting up of the Piisudskiregime in Poland—a new attack on the Soviet Unionand is attempting to mobilize for this purpose the helpof the Second International, of the public opinion of the

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whole world, particularly of the petty bourgeois and pro-letarian strata against "Russian Bolshevism."

3. On the other hand there is an uninterruptedgrowth of the revolutionary sentiments of the massesof the international proletariat; there is a process of theemancipation of these masses from reformist illusions,their breaking away from the leadership of the Social-democratic parties, their passage to the side of the pro-letarian united front, their (Sympathy for the Russianproletariat, their approach to the Communist parties.(Workers' delegations to the Soviet Union, struggle fortrade union unity, left tendencies in the English, French,Polish, German and Italian working class, political massmovements against the will of the Social-democratic lead-ers, general strike and miners' struggle in England, etc.).The revolutionization of the international proletariat de-velops unevenly, with contradictions in which the socialdifferences within the proletariat itself, the betrayals ofthe right and the hesitations of the left leaders of theSocial-democracy, and the correct or incorrect policy ofthe Communists all play a great role.

4. Within the Communist parties there is a profoundripening process taking place. They are collecting andanalyzing their experiences in the class struggle, grad-ually increasing their theoretical consciousness, strength-ening their strategy and tactics, improving their organiza-tional structure, breaking with the Social-democratictraditions and with the sectarian diseases, absorbing thefundamentals of Leninism and applying them to the con-crete conditions of their country.

5. Parallel to the war preparations of finance-capitalagainst the Soviet Union, with the beginning of the revo-lutionization of the international working class, with theripening process of the Communist parties, there devel-op various contradictory tendencies in the camp of theinternational petty bourgeoisie. A section of the smallcommodity producers, above all in the colonial and na-tionally oppressed countries, allies itself with the prole-tarian revolution. The peasantry is drawn into the classstruggle (agrarian revolutionary movements in EasternEurope, increasing political activity in the village ofWestern Europe). The urban petty bourgeoisie faceseconomic ruin in a number of capitalist countries. Its

657

economic decline, that had already begun before the warwith the rise of finance-capital and rule of the trust, isextraordinarily hastened through the consequences of theworld war and the post-war crises. The petty bour-geoisie is compelled to defend itself against extinction.Since the petty bourgeoisie has neither class conscious-ness nor political experience nor political leadership, itcontinually oscillates without any principle between thechief embattled classes: the capitalist bourgeoisie andthe revolutionary proletariat. Exhausted and desperate,without logic and without orientation, the petty bour-geoisie seeks help from all political tendencies withoutexception.

The petty bourgeoisie reflects like a mirror all thepolitical phenomena and tendencies of the present tran-sition period. Its political soul show.s like a film therestless picture of capitalist stabilization and its contra-dictions. At one moment the petty bourgeoisie is filledwith illusions and bright optimism—a moment later withdark desperation. When the price of bread falls, sta-bilization becomes perpetual; it is all over, however,when a minister falls. Today it is pacifist and tomor-row it demonstrates for war. Today it is friendly to theiSoviet Union and tomorrow it wants "to destroy theMuscovites." Today it is enthusiastic for Bolshevism—tomorrow for the white terror. The day before yesterdayit was for the Soviet Republic, yesterday for the Social-democratic government, today it wants the great coali-tion, tomorrow it will hail a Mussolini regime or a Pii-sudski coup d'etat, and the day after tomorrow it willperhaps be again for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The penetration of millions of annihilated, unorganized,urban petty bourgeoisie into active politics is one ofthose new and unique things that influence the classstruggle in all capitalist countries. This most hesitantof all elements unquestionably has its effects on definitestrata of the proletariat. It is reflected, as in all greatpolitical .phenomena, in the periphery and among certainfollowers of the Communist parties. The more carefullywe investigate the spiritual content of the ultra-left ten-dencies within the Comintern, the more clear become itstraces herein, the chief signs of petty bourgeois policy.

(Continued next month.)

658 W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

/an

I l l l l l l l imil lUlimil l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l lHIIIIIIIII l l l l lW

lyrARX'S and Engels1 letters have proved to be in-•"•*• valuable not only as a biographical source, but alsoas a means of gaining a fuller and more comprehensiveinsight into the Marxian theories in general. Thereare two reasons, however, which endow the Marx-Engelsletters with a particular attraction. In the first place,they help to throw light on our own specific problems;and secondly, they reveal to us the Marxian method ofwork. This is an aspect of Marxism which has perhapsreceived the least attention, especially in our own coun-try. And yet the dialectic method, to which both Marxand Lenin owe their great'achievements, is hardly lessimportant than dialectic materialism, its philosophicalbasis. Marx himself made this clear again and again,although he was never able to elucidate Ms method ina specific work, as he intended. And Engels, followingout a suggestion of Marx's, drew attention to this in areview of Marx's Critique of Political Economy, stating:"We consider the working-out of the method which un-derlies Marx's critique of political economy to be a re-sult which, in significance, is 'scarcely less importantthan the fundamental materialistic philosophy." Thosewho have followed Marx and Engels, as well as Lenin,not merely in their results but also in the process oftheir work have realized that the power of dialecticmaterialism lies in the correct revolutionary applicationof the dialectic method. It might be interesting, andsurely profitable, -to recall a statement by Plekhanov,which is probably unknown to most English readers.Although he confines himself to the aspect of scientificinvestigation, his statement is not necessarily limitedto that alone. "We see," Plekhanov writes, "that theMarxian concept of history, instead of being 'limited'and 'one-sided,' opens up for us an enormous field of re-search. It requires much work, much patience and agreat love of truth, if only a very small part of this fieldis to be well taken care of. But it belongs to us; theacquisition has been made; the work has been begunby the hands of incomparable masters; we need onlycontinue it. And we must do it, if we do not want totransform Marx's bri l l iant idea in our heads into some-th ing 'gray,' 'chimerical,' 'death-like.' 'When thinkingstops at the generality of ideas,' says Hegel very well,as is necessarily the case with the first philosophers(e. g., the Being of the Elastic School, the Becoming ofHeraclitus, etc.) it is rightly charged with being form-alistic; it may happen even with a developed philosophythat only the abstract principles or definitions are grasp-ed and in each particular case repeated, for example,the statement that in the absolute everything is one, theidentity of the subjective and objective. They will have

good reason to accuse us of this same formalism if inview of a given society we could only repeat: the an-atomy of this society lies in its economy. That is indis-putable, but it is not sufficient; we must know how tomake a 'scientific use of a scientific idea; we must knowhow to account for all the Me functions of this organ-ism whose anatomic structure is determined by its econ-omy; we must understand how it moves, how it nour-ishes itself, how the emotions and ideas which arise init, thanks to this anatomic structure, become what theyare; how they change with the changes that have taken'place in the structure, etc. Only under this conditionwill we advance; under this condition, however, we aresure of it."

A profound understanding and correct application ofthe dialectic method is one of the most essential char-acteristics of Lenin's activity. When Deborin calls himthe fighting materialist," he is stressing his revolution-ary application of the dialectic method. The Back-to-Marx movement which we associate with Lenin, andespecially his reconstruction of the Marxian theory ofthe state, have both revealed the extraordinary vitalityof Marx's and Engels' works and exposed the shallow-ness of the contention that Marxism does not apply toour own day.

The following letters have finally been turned to ac-count in Heinz Neumann's little study: "Marx and Eng-els on Revolution in America." Based almost exclusivelyon Mlarx's and Engels' American correspondence, an im-portant part of which was published in the Sorge col-lection a year after Engels' death, it is an excellent ex-ample of how much can still be learned from many ofthe writings of Marx and Engels. Although these let-ters do not extend beyond 1895, the year of Engels'death, the lessons they contain are as real today as theywere thirty years ago.

Not of least importance among the Sorge collectionare Engels' letters to Mrs. Florence Kelley Wischnew-etzky. Written originally in English, they were address-ed to Mrs. Wischnewetzky in connection with her trans-lation of Engels' "Condition of the Working Classes inEngland." This is the manuscript to which Engels re-fers.

Although the Sorge correspondence is easily accessible—there have been two editions since its original publica-tion—the bulk of the letters are in German. And inview of the fact that it will probably be some time be-fore the volume will be rendered into English, it willnot be out of place perhaps to reproduce some of themost important of these letters.—A Landy.

D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6

I.

Fr. Engels to Mrs. Wischnewetzky.

London, February 3, 1886.

My dear Mrs. Wischnewetzky.

Today I forwarded to you, registered, the first portionof the Ms. up to your page 70 incl. I am sorry I couldnot possibly send it sooner. But I had a job on my handswhich must be finished before I could go on with yourMs. Now T shall go on swimmingly; as I proceed I findwe get better acquainted with each other, you with mypeculiar old fashioned German, I with your American,And indeed, I learn a good deal of it. Never before didthe difference between British and American Englishstrike me so vividly as in this experimentum in propriocorpore vili.(l) What a splendid future must there be instore for a language which gets enriched and developedon two sides of an ocean, and which may expect furtheradditions from Australia and India.

I do not know whether this portion of the Ms. willarrive in time to reach Miss F. . . .(2) before hersailing, but I hope you will not be put to any particu-lar inconvenience through my delay, which was indeedunavoidable. I cannot be grateful enough to all thefriends who wish to translate both Marx's and my writ-ings into the various civilized langiiages and who showtheir confidence in me by asking me to look over theirtranslations. And I am willing enough to do it, but forme as well as for others the day has but twenty-fourhours and so I cannot possibly always arrange to pleaseeverybody and to chime in with all arrangements made.

ilf I am not too often interrupted in the evenings Ihope to be able to send you the remainder of the Ms.and possibly also the introduction in a fortnight. Thislatter may be printed either as a preface or as an ap-pendix. As to the length of it, I am utterly incapableof giving you any idea. I shall try to make it as shortas possible, especially as it will be useless for me to tryto combat arguments of the American Press with whichI aim not even superficially acquainted. Of course, ifAmerican workingmen will not read their own States'Labor Reports, but trust to politicians' extracts, nobodycan help them. But it strikes me that the presentchronic depression, which seems endless so far, will tellits tale in America as well as in England. America willsmash up England's industrial monopoly—whateverthere is left of it—4>ut America cannot herself succeedto that monopoly. And unless one country has the mon-opoly of the markets of the world at least in the decisivebranches of trade, the conditions—relatively favorable—which existed here in England from 1848 to 1870, can-not anywhere be reproduced, and even in America thecondition of the working class must gradually sink lowerand lower. For if there are three countries (say Eng-land, America and Germany) competing on comparative-ly equal terms for the possession of the Weltmarkt(World Market—A. L.), there is no chance but chronicoverproduction, one of the three being capable of sup-

(1) Now that I feel it in my own miserable body.—A. L.(2)—Mrs. Wischnewetzky's friend who took great interest

in the work. (Ace. to Sorge).—A. L.

659

plying the whole quantity required. That is the rea-son why I am watching the development of the presentcrisis with greater interest than ever and why I believeit will mark an epoch in the mental and political his-tory of the American and English working classes—the very two whose assistance is as absolutely neces-sary as it is desirable.

Yours very truly,

'II

F. Engels.

Fr. Engels to Mrs. Wischnewetzky.

London, June 3, 1886.Dear Mrs. Wischnewetzky.

I have looked over the proofs and corrected in pencila few additional mistakes.

That the get-up of the work would be anything butelegant, I foresaw as soon as I knew who had it incharge, and am therefore not much surprised; I amafraid there is no help now, so it's no use grumbling.

Whatever the mistakes and the (Borniertheit (stupid-ity) of the leaders of the movement, and partly of thenewly-awakening masses too, one thing is certain: theAmerican working class is moving and no mistake. Andafter a few false starts, they will get into the right tracksoon enough. This appearance of the Americans uponthe scene I consider one of the greatest events of theyear.

What the downbreak of Russian czarism -would befor the great military monarchists of Europe—the snap-ping of their mainstay—that is for the bourgeois of thewhole world the breaking out of class-war in America.For America after all was the ideal of all bourgeois: acountry rich, vast, expanding, with purely ibourgeois in-stitutions unleavened by feudal remnants or monarchialtraditions and without a permanent and hereditary pro-letariat. Here every one could (become, if not a capital-ist, at all events an independent man, producing or trad-ing, with his own means, on his own account. And be-cause there are not, as yet, classes with opposing in-terests, our—and your—bourgeois thought that Americastood above class antagonisms and struggles. That de-lusion has now broken down, the last Bourgeois Para-dise on earth is fast changing into a Purgatory, andcan only be prevented from becoming like Europe anInferno by the go-ahead pace at which the developmentof the newly fledged proletariat of America Will takeplace. The way in which they have made their appear-ance on the scene, is quite extraordinary—six monthsago nobody suspected anything and now they appearall of a sudden in such organized masses as to striketerror into the whole capitalist class. I only wish Marxcould have lived to see It!

I am in doubt whether to send this to Zurich or tothe address in Paris you give at foot of your letter. Butas in ca>se of mistake Zurich is safest. I forward thisand the proofs to Mr. Schluter who no doubt will forwardthem wherever it may be necessary.

Ever sincerely yours,F. Engels.

660

III.Fr. Engels to Mrs. Wischnewetzky.

London, December 28. 1886.Dear Mrs. Wischnewetzky.

Your letter of November 13th never reached me, forwhich I am very sorry; it would have suited me muchbetter to write a preface then, and moreover would haveleft me more time.

Of course, the appendix is now a little out of date,and >as I anticipated something of the kind, I proposedit should be written when the book was ready throughthe press. Now a preface will be -much wanted, and Iwill write you one; but before, I must await the return ofthe Avelings to have a full report of the state of thingsin America; and it seems to me that my preface will notbe exactly what you desire.

First you seem to me to treat New York a little asthe Paris of America, and to overrate the importance forthe country at large of the local New York movementwith its local features. No doubt it has a great impor-tance, but then the Northwest, "with its background ola numerous farming population and its independentmovement will hardly accept blindly the George theory.

Secondly, the preface of this book is hardly the placefor a thoroughgoing criticism of that theory, and doesnot even offer the necessary space for it.

Thirdly, I should have to study thoroughly H. Gr.'a vari-ous writings and speeches (most of which I have notgot) so as to render impossible all replies based on sub-terfuges and side issues.

My preface will of course turn entirely on the im-mense stride made by the American workingman in thelast ten months, and naturally also touch H. G. and hisland scheme. But it cannot pretend to deal extensivelywith it. Nor do I think the time has come for that. Itis far more important that the movement should spread,proceed harmoniously, take root and embrace as muchas possible the whole American proletariat, than thatit should start and proceed from the beginning on theo-retically perfectly correct lines. There is no better roadto theoretical clearness of comprehension than to learnby one's own mistakes, "durch Schaden klug werden."(Learn by your mistakes). And for a whole large class,there is no other road, especially for a nation so eminent-ly practical and so contemptuous of theory as the Amer-icans. The great thing is to get the working class tomove as a class; that once obtained, they will soon findthe right direction, and all who resist, H. G. or Powder-ly, will be left out in the cold with small sects of theirown. Therefore, I think also the K. of L. a most im-portant factor in the movement, which ought not to beipooh-poohed from without but to be revolutionized fromwithin, and I consider that many of the Germans thenhave made a grievous mistake when they tried in theface of a mighty and glorious movement not of theirown creation to make of their imported and not alwaysunderstood theory a kind of alleinseligmachendes (only-saving) dogma, and to keep aloof from any movement,which did not accept that dogma. Our theory is not adogma but the exposition of a process of evolution, and

(3)—Henry George.—A. F.

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

that process involves successive phases. To expect thatthe Americans will start with the full consciousness ofthe theory worked out in older industrial countries isto expect the impossible. What the Germans ought todo is to act up to their own theory—if they understandit, as we did in 1845 and 1848—to go in for any real gen-eral working class movement, accept its faktischen (ac-tual) starting point as such and work it gradually up tothe theoretical level by pointing out, how every mistakemade, every reverse suffered, was a necessary conse-quence of mistaken theoretical orders in the originalprogram: they ought, In the words of the Kommun.Manifest: in der Gegenwart der Bewegung die Zukunftder Bewegung repraesentieren. (Represent in the pres-ent of the movement its future.—A. L.). But above allgive the movement time to consolidate, do not make theinevitable confusion of the first start worse confoundedby forcing down people's throats things, which at pres-ent they cannot properly understand but which theysoon will learn. A million or two of workingmen's votesnext November for a bona fide workingmen's party isworth infinitely more at present than a hundred thou-sand votes for a doctrinally perfect platform. The veryfirst attempt—soon to be made if the movement pro-gresses—to consolidate the moving masses on a nation-al basis—will bring them all face to face, Georgites, K.of L., Trade Unionists, and all; and if our Germanfriends by that time have learned enough of the lan-guage of the country to go in for a discussion, then willbe the time for them to criticize the views of the othersand thus, by ishowing up the inconsistencies of the vari-ous standpoints, to bring them gradually to understandtheir own actual position, the position made for themby the correlation of capital and wage-labor. But any-thing that might delay or prevent that national consoli-dation of the worknigmen's party—on no matter whatplatform—I should consider a great mistake, and there-fore I do not think the time has arrived to speak outfully and exhaustively either with regard to H. G. or theK. of L.

As to the title: I cannot omit the 1844, because theomission would give an entirely false idea of what thereader has to expect. And as I, by the preface and ap-pendix, take a certain responsibility, I cannot consentto its being left out. You may add: "With preface andappendix by the author," if you think proper.

The proofs I return corrected by same mail.Yours very faithfully,

F. Engels.IV.

Fr. Engels to Mrs. Wischnewetzky.

London, January 27, 1887.Dear Mrs. Wischnewetzky.

. . . The movement in America, just at this mo-ment, is I believe best seen from across the ocean. Onthe spot personal bickerings and local disputes mustobscure much of the grandeur of it. And the only thingthat could really delay its march, would be the consoli-dation of these differences into established sects. Tosome extent that will be unavoidable, but the less of itthe better. And the Germans have most to guard againstthis. Our theory is a theory of evolution, not a dogma

D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6

to be learnt by heart and to be repeated mechanically.Je weniger sie den Amerikanern von aussen eingepauktwird und je mehr sie durch eigene Erfahrung—unterdem Beistand der Deutschen—erproben, desto tiefer gehtsie ihnen in Fleisch und Blut u'ber. (The less it is drum-med into the Americans from without and the more theytest it by their own experience—with the assistance ofthe Germans—the more deeply will it become real fleshand blood for them—A. L.). When we returned to Ger-many, in the spring of 1848, we joined the Democraticparty as the only possible means of gaining the ear ofthe working class; we were the most advanced wingof that party, but still a wing of it. When Marx found-ed the International, he drew up the General Rules insuch a way that all working class socialists of thatperiod could join it—Proudhonists, Pierre Lerousists,and even the more advanced sections of the EnglishTrade Unions; and it was only through this latitudethat the International became what it was, the meansof gradually dissolving and absorbing all these minorsects, with the exception of the Anarchists, whose sud-den appearance in various countries was but the violentbourgeois reaction after the Commune and could there-fore safely be left by us to die out of itself, as it did.Had we from 1864 to 1873 insisted on working togetheronly with those who openly adopted our platform—whereshould we be today? I think all our practice has shownthat it is possible to work along with the general move-ment of the working class at every one of its stageswithout giving up or hiding our own distinct positionand even organization, and I am afraid that if the Ger-man Americans choose a different line they will commita great mistake.

Very truly yours,F. Engels.

V.

Fr. Engels to H. Schluter.

London, March 30, 1892.. . . Your great hindrance in America seems to me

to consist in the exceptional position of the native work-ers. Up till 184S one can speak of a permanent, nativeworking class only as an exception. The few beginningsof one in the cities in the east could still hope to becomefarmers or bourgeois. Now such a class has developedand for the most part has also organized itself into tradeunions. However, it still occupies an aristocratic posi-tion and leaves, as it can well do, the ordinary, poorly-paid occupations to the immigrants, only a small part ofwhom enter the aristocratic trade unions. These im-migrants, however, are divided into nationalities whichdo not understand one another and, for the most part,do not understand the language of the country. Andyour bourgeoisie understand even better than the Aus-trian government how to play off one nationality againstanother, Jews, Italians, Bohemians, etc., against Ger-mans and Irish and one individual against another, sothat there exist in New York, I believe, differences in

(4)—Translated from the German (extract).—A. L.

661

the standard of living among the workers which can befound nowhere else. And in addition, there is the indif-ference to human life succumbing in the struggle of com-petition on the part of a society grown up on a purelycapitalistic basis without any kindly disposed feudalbackground; there will be plenty more, and more thanwe want, of these damned Dutch, Irish, Italians, Jewsand Hungarians and in the bargain John Chinamanstands in the background who surpasses them all in hiscapacity for living on dung.

In such a country ever-recurrent tides, followed byjust as certain ebbs, are Inevitable. Except that thetides grow ever more powerful and the ebbs ever lessparalyzing, and so on the whole the thing goes forward.But this I consider certain: The purely bourgeois basis,without any . . . crookedness behind it, the corre-sponding colossal energy of the development which mani-fests itself in the crazy exaggeration of the present pro-tective tariff system, will one day bring about a changewhich will astonish the entire world. Once the Ameri-cans begin, it will be with an energy and virulence inview of which we in Europe will be children.

With best regards,

VI.Your F. Engels.

Carey is the only original economist in North Amer-ica. Belonging to a country where the 'bourgeois so-ciety did not develop on the basis of feudalism, but whichbegan of itself; where it does not appear as the sur-viving result of a movement centuries old, but as thestarting point of a new movement; where the state, incontradistinction to all former national formations, wasfrom the very beginning subordinated to bourgeois so-ciety, to production, and could never make pretensionstowards being an end in itself; finally, where bourgeoissociety itself, combining the productive forces of an oldworld with the enormous natural terrain of a new one,has developed to hitherto unknown dimensions and un-known freedom of motion, far surpassing 'all efforts hith-erto to overpower the forces of nature, and where finallythe contradictions of bourgeois society themselves ap-pear only as transitory moments. That Carey considersthe productive relations in which this new enormousworld has developed so rapidly, so surprisingly and hap-pily, as the eternal normal relations of social productionand distribution, (productive relations which—A. L.) inEurope, especially England, to him really Europe, areinterfered with and hindered by the surviving barriersof the feudal period, that these relations appear to himto be reproduced and generalized by the English eco-nomics only in a distorted and falsified manner in thatthey confuse the accidental perversions of their eco-nomics with its inherent character—what more natural?

(Karl Marx: Carey und Bastiat. Ein Fragment ausdem Nachlass. Mit Vorbemerkung des Herausgebers(K. Kautsky). IN: Die Neue Zeit, 22-2 (1903-04). p. 8-9.This fragment is taken from one of Marx's notebooksdated July to iSeptember, 1857; it is one of the prepara-tory manuscripts to the Critique of Political Economy.)

662 W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

The New German ImperialismBy Max Shachtman

iHE successful entry of Germany into the League of were introduced everywhere so that German workersNations, the development of a Franco-German en- today are driven like coolies at a high pitch with theT

tente, and the initiation of the European steel trust bringto a sharp focus the developments that have taken placein Germany in the last two or three years.

The Germany o£ 1926 presents an entirely differentpicture from the Germany of 1923. The dismembermentof the empire begun <by the Versailles treaty, whichreached its culmination with the occupation of the Ruhrby Poincare in 1923, the French-subsidized Rhine "in-dependence" movement which threatened to tear awaythe industrial heart of Germany, the terrible inflationperiod and the virtual collapse of industry, the Hitler-ite movement in Bavaria, the revolutionary movementwhich collapsed so pitifully in iSaxony and Thuringiaare today, with the exception of the latter, things ofthe past. Germany, for the present period, has endedthe movement which tended to make it a colony, and isbeginning to resume its position as a world power, equalamong other European powers, with a strong imperial-ist policy.

The occupation of the Ruhr by France in 1923, foralleged failure to make reparations payments, containedthe menace of French hegemony over Europe on thebasis of a powerful economic unity between France andGermany, on the former's terms. England and the Unit-ed States stepped in just in time to prevent this, and tosave Germany from the inflation which was driving ittowards bankruptcy and revolution. The Dawes' loan of800,000,000 marks followed.

(Since the Dawes loan, Germany has succeeded to agreat degree in re-establishing its industry, and even se-curing a favorable balance of trade, but at a great cost.It is interesting to trace the methods used in the prog-ress of German capitalism towards a new lease on life.

Rationalization of Industry.

The respite gained by the Dawes loan and the evengreater private loans was utilized by the Germans foran intensified program of rationalization of industry.Rationalization was accomplished by a period of rapidtrustification in every industry in the form of the hori-zontal trust rather than the vertical (1).

In the coal, steel, potash, dyes, photographic, electri-cal, and numerous other industries an impressive seriesof virtual monopolies were organized. Side 'by side withthis went a rigid economy in production and the firmshutting down of all non-profitable plants. Organized,systematic speed-up and efficiency schemes, a la Ford,

(1) The news that the Linke-Hofmann-LauchhammerSteel and Engineering Company is to be dissolved and itsworks be made the nucleus of a new central German steeltrust is taken to mean, by German observers, the final dis-appearance of the once popular vertical trust and the tri-umph of the horizontal trust.

endless chain 'belt system and piece work, lengtheningof hours of labor and decreases In wages.

A faint inkling of the effect of this rationalization up-on the German workers is given in a Berlin dispatchwhich says that:

"Weekly earnings in twelve highly organizedgroups, which are among the best paid, show anaverage increase of 37 pep c»nt over the 1913 aver-age. The official index of cost of living, however,•hows an increase of 41 p«r cent over 1913."

And these are the conditions of the highly organizedworkers who are "among the best paid." Conditions ofothers, and of the millions of unemployed and part timeworkers are far worse.

The cheapening of the costs of production throughthe increased productivity of German labor resulted ina higher composition of capital invested in industry, and,therefore, a fall in the rate of profit.

To check this tendency towards a falling rate of profitby increasing their total profits, the German capitalistsagain went through the cycle of increasing the relativesurplus value and the absolute surplus value by increas-ing the intensity of labor and the hours of the workingday, and, by monopolistic price-maintenance throughCartels, to keep at a peak the sales price of theirproducts.

The home market is, however, extremely limited. Lowwages make it difficult for the workers to buy the high-priced commodities; the peasants are burdened by heavytaxes and high rates of interest on loans. To live andexpand it is more and more vitally essential that Germancapitalism secure a foreign market which can fully con-sume the possibilities of German production. And insuch a market Germany must be able to compete suc-cessfully, for which a constant lowering of productioncosts is a primary prerequisite.

There can be no doubt that Germany has already suc-ceeded in a measure in re-establishing its foreign mar-ket and securing a favorable balance of trade, as com-pared with 1924. Where the first nine months of 1924showed an import balance (exclusive of import andexport of gold and silver) of 3,424,000,000 marks, thefirst nine months of 1926 show an export balance of359,000,000 marks. This is indicative of the progressthat has been made, even though a good portion of theexport balance was secured by the export of coal andiron tto Great Britain during the process of the miners'strike.

In addition, Germany has exported capital in the fol-lowing countries:

For an enterprise in Dalmatia for the extraction ofbauxite.

D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6

Colonial credits amounting to 8,500,000 marks to thefirm of Mannesmann Brothers.

The purchase of iron ore beds in Spanish Galicia bythe United Steel Works.

The securing of a foothold once more in the Balkansby the acquisition of the Societe Delta in Jugo-Slaviawhose strongest client is the Jugo-Slavian governmentitself.

Securing of ore and timber concessions in Albaniaand Persia.

Formation of a company having the exclusive rightsto the exploitation of mines in Afghanistan.

The installation in Mexico of metallurgical enterprisesby the -Slemens-Schuckert electrical company.

And so forth and so on.

The Revival of Bank Capital.

It is also obvious that Germany is developing a homeloan market. In the first five months of 1926, loansamounting to 1,000,000,000 marks were made in Germany,among them being mortgage bonds, debentures of nu-merous agrarian loans, etc., etc. Sharp struggles areoccurring over German banks' share of loans made byindustry. A case in point was the 250,000,000 marks loanof the Ruhr mining trust, of which German banks finallymanaged to secure 90,000,000 marks, the United Statesgetting only 125,000,000 marks out of the total. Thebanks of Germany are recovering almost up to the pow-erful position they held in 1913 so far as the amountof capital controlled is concerned; the big banks nowcontrol a greater proportion of Germany's bank capitalthan ever before. This development, as expressed inthe growth of the seven most powerful banks in Berlin(which means in Germany) is as follows (in millions ofmarks):

Bank Ca|1924

Deutsche Bank 150Diskonto-Gesellschaft 100Dresdener Bank 78Darmstadter u Nationalbank.. 60Commerz-und Privatbank 42Berliner Handelsgesselschaft.. 22Mitteldeutsche Kreditbank .... 22

This picture is not complete, for since 1913 these bigbanks have taken control of numerous provincial banks;some have increased their capital since 1924 (DresdenerBank to 100,000,000 marks).

These banks, which in the heydey of German imperial-ism were the organizers and financiers of the great Em-pire, are striving to establish their hegemony over in-dustry and regain the dominant place they formerlyheld. Although German finance capital still rests to alarge degree upon the American dollar, it has secured ameasure of independence which it is fighting to main-tain. The Deutsche Bank, for instance, has withdrawnfrom America 40,000,000 marks of its capital. The growthof these banks forms one of the bases for the growthof the new German imperialism, for colonial mandates,and the investment opportunities which accompany them.

It is especially uipon the basis of its steel industrythat Germany has been able to rehabilitate itself, and

al Reserves91320020020025014511060

1924504722402152.2

1913112.581.361.848.522.53.59.1

663

the growth of its steel and iron exports form one of thestrongest bases for its recent development of a demandfor colonies and colonial mandates. Two years ago,Germany stood seventh among the steel exporting coun-tries. Last year it had risen to the position of fourth.In the first six months of 1926 it already occupied thestatus of first. Her exports of this product to the Unit-ed 'States have reached the highest total since the be-ginning of the century. In 1924 some 28,000 tons wereexported from Germany; while during the first half of1926 she shipped to the United States alone some 128,000tons. And it should be remembered that this exportingof steel to the United States was made possible chieflythrough the tremendous loans which have been floatedin this country for numerous steel companies of Ger-many, so that American loans are actually instrumentalin helping to organize an active competition against theAmerican -steel corporations.

A German-American commission has confirmed the re-port that Krupps, who borrowed $10,000,000 here last year,had sold to the Boston and Maine Railroad some 20,000tons of steel rails at a price said to be about $32 a ton,or §10 under the American market price, a form of un-expected competition which caused considerable un-easiness among American steel men. It is additionallysignificant that, taking transportation costs and dutyinto consideration, the American sales price made byKrupps is about 30 per cent less than the German do-mestic price. The "dumping" of German steel productsis indicative of the anxiety of Germany to secure afavorable balance of trade and to spread out into hith-erto forbidden or prohibitive markets.

Not alone that. Germany, now far more certain ofher ground than she has been at any time since the endof the war, was instrumental in organizing the now fam-ous European steel cartel which includes the steel in-dustry of Germany, France, Belgium, the Saar and Lux-embourg. England which exported 44,000,000 tons ofsteel between 1905-15 and only 30,000,000 tons between1915-24 (a decrease of more than 14,000,000 tons) un-able to stand the competition which will press upon itfrom Europe and the United States will 'be forced tojoin it as soon as the miners' strike is over; negotia-tions for Britain's entry are already under way. In ad-dition, Germany through its control of the Austrian in-dustry, also holds a dominating position in the recentlyformed Southern-European steel combine.

Only a few weeks after the organization of the Eu-ropean steel corn-bine, one of the features of which isa provision for the payment of four dollars per ton forevery ton produced over the alloted quota, the Germanindustry announced that it had already exceeded itsquota and would pay into the Cartel the required amount.

With a growing export of steel; with a growling needfor raw materials and, more, of export markets; witha growing export of capital to colonial countries and lessdeveloped industrial lands, it is to be expected that thesentiment and demand for colonies is increasing tre-mendously in Germany.

Colonialism—and the Social Democrats.Scores of organizations, journals, pamphlets and books

have recently cropped up which conduct a fervid cam-

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paign for colonies. In 1925, the Deutsche Kolonialgesell-schaft, founded in 1887, by the notorious Karl Peters,whose shameless treatment of natives caused such aninternational scandal that even Wilhelm II was obligedto recall him, was amalgamated into the KolonialenReichsarbeitsgemeinschaft (Korag). In the same yearthere was founded the Jugendausschuss der KolonialenReichsarbeitsgemeinschaft. Then an Akademischer Kol-onialbund, followed by a Kolonialkriegerdank, composedof former colonial troops and officers. At the head ofthe Korag stand former imperial colonial governors andimperial officials of the foreign and colonial office.

The patriotic gentlemen of the Social DemocraticParty of Germany are by no means opposed to the re-sumption of Germany's imperialist suppression of col-onial peoples, for as Stresemann isaid to an Italian news-paper correspondent, on the colonial problem "there isa unified opinion ia Germany and . . . on this matterthe most bitter injustice has been done to the Germanpeople." The social democratic member of the Reich-stag, Quessel, is also a member of the InterfraktionelleKoloniale Vereinigung of the Reichstag and favors "arevival of Germany's colonial activity." Noske, beforehis death, in 1924, wrote: "The Social Democratic Partywas no friend of colonial policy . . . But looking backat the forty years that have passed interest has risenwith the improvement of colonial methods . . . Theposition of the party experienced a basic transforma-tion." (2) When one bears in mind the history of Ger-man colonialism, the frightful persecution of the Hot-tentots, the cruel and systematic annihilation of theHereros (1904-5), without counting the terrible regimesof individuals like Dr. Karl Peters, Wehlan and others,it can be seen that this tender solicitude of Noske andhis comrades of the S. D. P. D. cannot be aptly char-acterized except at the risk of losing the mailing privi-leges for this magazine. (3)

Some success has been accomplished with the prob-lem of securing a colonial basis again for the new Ger-man imperialism. In Togo and Kamerun, which weredivided between England and France by the Versaillestreaty, the huge plantations of the MoliwejPflanzungs-Gesellschaft have been won back and Togo is today oncemore practically under German influence. In GermanEast Africa, the Deutsche-Ostafrika Gesellsehaft haspractically recovered its former plantations again. InNew Guinea, in Kamerun, and elsewhere in Africa thepolicy of "peaceful investment penetration" is beingsystematically followed. But the success that has at-tended the colonial policy of Germany is by far insuf-ficient.

Today, however, Germany is no longer the dog thatwas so deliberately kicked around a few years ago. Theneed for a more united debtor Europe against WallStreet, and of a capitalist Europe against the SovietUnion; and the realignments in European .politics whichhave forced France to seek a new ally in its formerenemy, have placed Germany upon an equal plane with

2. Kolonialen Rundschau, April, 1924.3. The German comrades are not alone. In the New York

Nation Philip Snowden, of the British I. L. P. makes an elo-quent appeal for the return of the colonies stripped fromGermany.

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

the other European nations. She has been admitted asa civilized nation to the League of Nations. Stresemannspeaks at Geneva with the same attention that is grant-ed Briand or Chamberlain. Wall Street is the only onethat can even pretend to call the tune to which Ger-many must dance.

So we find Stresemann after the sessions of theLeague of Nations saying at the meeting arranged forhim by the German colony in Geneva:

"The fidelity with which the native peoples haveguarded their faith in the Empire is a new proofthat Germany is perfectly capable of administratingthe colonial territories. One can say today with alltranquillity that Germany has the same rights tocolonies as the other powers."

And he added the further challenge of declaring thatthe question of the responsibility for the war had beendropped at the Geneva sessions of the league, that there-establishment of the sovereignty of the Reich overits former territories was a prerequisite to the estab-lishment of the principle of absolute equality of rightsof nations grouped in the League of Nations.

What German statesman has dared to speak out sofrankly and confidently defiant since the end of thewar.

And what French statesman has in that period daredto conduct himself with such touching amity towardsGermany as did Briand in his post-Geneva negotiationswith Stresemann at Thoiry.

After Thoiry.

At Thoiry was laid the political basis for the Franco-German entente which had already appeared in the Eu-ropean Steel Cartel. Briand bowed suavely and saidto the German foreign minister, "Between us the war isfinished." Stresemann reminded his new ally: "Theoccupation must be wiped out." And they proceeded todraw up the now famous six points of Thoiry: The pro-gressive reduction of troops of occupation on the leftbank of the Rhine. The evacuation, in the course of1927. of the second and third Rhine zones. The returnto Germany of the Saar territory, in its entirety, with-out preliminary plebiscite, within the next year. Theliquidation of the military control commission, itsfunction to be exercised 'by the League of Nations. Ne-gotiation of a portion of the German Railways (Dawes'loan) bonds as a loan to France. Non-interference byFrance in Germany's attempt to secure the return ofits territories, Eupen and Malmedy, annexed toy Bel-gium after the war.

The astounding nature of these points can be real-ized only when it is remembered that only three yearshave passed since the occupation of the Ruhr by theFrenJch, and less than that since the British evacuatedCoblenz. Only the sad condition of French financescould lead them to propose that part of the Dawes' rail-way 'bonds be floated so that a loan might be securedfrom Germany to rehabilitate the franc. And the de-sire to secure the loan from Germany was all the moreardent when it was found that no loan might be madein the United States, for at the head of France waspointed the pistol of Coolidge who made it clear through

D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6

Mr. Mellon that unless the MellonjBerenger debt agree-ment was ratified by the French chamber of deputiesand senate no loan could be raised in the United Statesto bolster up the sagging franc.

The Thoiry conversations aroused almost deliriousdreams of grandeur in Germany. Memories of a oncemighty Germany, its power reaching from Hamburgand Alsace-Lorraine to the Gulf of Persia, its fingersas far to the east as China and south to southern Africabegan to stir again the breasts of Teuton imperialists.With its former solid basis of a powerful steel industry,regained, and ranking first among steel-exporting coun-tries, the mineral wealth of Lorraine again at its com-mand, supported by its strongest enemy, France, in-stalled safely in the League of Nations, who could ig-nore the possibilities of such former allies as Austria,Hungary, Bulgaria (all of them ravished, deprived oftheir riches, industries, independence and their road tothe sea), or of such possible friends as" the Scandinaviancountries, which are constantly dissatisfied with onething or another.

But one factor was omitted from these calculations:the United States. American imperialism had no ob-jections to the shy and modest demands of Germanyfor a colonial mandate or two, since that would aid Inthe splitting up of the strength of the European powers.But to find Germany organizing a debtor Europe, to haveit replace Wall Street as the financial savior of nationswas a bit too much.

Wall Street Steps In.

Germany intended to mobilize sufficient of the Dawes'railway bonds for France to bring in 780,000,000 marks,to which was to be added- 300,000,000 marks to be de-posited by Germany for the redemption of its economicrights in the Saar. Further, Germany was to give1,500,000,000 gold francs to Belgium for the return ofEupen and Malmedy. The plan was swiftly and firmlysquelched. Wall Street made it plain that the railwaybonds would never be floated in the United States.Great Britain too, seeing the menace of a Franco-Germanaccord, made its position quite clear. In a London dis-patch to the New York Times we read:

"The British government has notified the Frenchgovernment that it strongly doubts the wisdom oftrying to market at this time or in the near futureany large part of the German railway bonds providedin the Dawes' plan. . . With the squabble inFrance over debt ratification and with that squabbledue to prolong itself, it would have been doubly un-fortunate if the news that the Thoiry plan could notbe put through had to come from Washington—orfrom New York. Wittingly or not, London has savedthe United States a disagreeable job."

Decisive steps were also taken immediately to fore-stall any attempts to permit Belgium to move away fromunder Anglo-Saxon financial control and towards Ger-many. A loan for $100,000,000 was forthwith floated asan 'International 'Stabilization Loan, of which J. P. Mor-gan and Co., the Guaranty Company of New York, anda syndicate of American bankers offered 150,000,000for purchase. Pressure was exerted upon Poincare who

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began to make public speeches in which his oppositionto Thoiry was but thinly veiled.

The failure to consummate the plan to market the rail-way bonds revealed the fact that despite all of Its prog-ress, Germany is still to a large extent under the yokeof foreign capitalists, and that her stabilization struc-ture is not based upon any too firm a foundation. Thereal test of the Dawes' Plan has not yet been made.It is true that the first two Dawes' years have seenprompt payments from Germany. But Germany has bor-rowed far more in that period than the initial Dawes'Loan. Besides the 800,000,000 marks of the Dawes' Loan,Germany has borrowed, according to the Berliner Tage-blatts, 2,358,000,000 marks between January 1, 1925 andJune 30, 1926, as follows (in millions of marks):

First six monthsLoaned by 1925 of 1926 Total

United States 1,090 650 1,740Holland 127 105 232Great Britain 142 68 210Switzerland 84 43 127Sweden 23 26 49

From this it can 'be seen that not only has Germanyborrowed more than the entire Dawes' Loan in the firstsix months of 1926 alone, but that at the rate it is go-ing now, it will have borrowed much more in 1926 thanin 1925.

The British bourgeois economist, John MaynardKeynes, estimates -that Germany has borrowed on theinternational loan market, between September 1, 1924,and June 30, 1926, a total of $844,500,000, including the$200,000,000 of the Dawes' Loan. During the same per-iod, the Transfer Committee has transferred in one wayor another some $458,000,000. If one takes the discount,the expenses of issue, the repayments of foreign in-debtednesses of previous periods from the total of $844,-000,000 borrowed, it will be found that the loans haveabout equalled the payments in the period mentioned.That is, no real money has been transferred, only book-keeping figures have been shifted from one column toanother, and there remains the interest on foreign loans,averaging 7% per cent which must be paid. The in-terest alone on debts incurred in the last two yearscomes annually to about 150,000,000. And more loansare being constantly made.

The Dilemma of the Bankers.

How long this "stabilization" structure can be main-tained cannot be foretold, since its life is not separablefrom the development of world capitalism. It is cer-tain, however, that it cannot have a very long exist-ence on the present basis. German industry has achiev-ed a measure of independence from American financialcontrol, and is even challenging American industry atcertain points; but this independence is a very tenuousone, and its strength is to a certain degree illusory.

The seriousness of the situation has been recognizedby the bankers of the world, headed by Morgan. Theyrealize that without a large favorable export balance oftrade for Germany—the stabilization of Germany is inlarge measure the key to stabilization in Europe—thetopheavy structure built by foreign loans will collapse.A favorable export balance can be secured for this per-

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iod only by the battering down of the prohibitive tariffwalls, in America as well as in Europe. It is for thisthat the bankers' manifesto called.

Germania, the organ of Chancellor Marx and the Cath-olic Centrum correctly observes:

"J. P. Morgan's interest in lowering customs, par-ticularly in America, is illuminating. He can collectinterest on the loans he has made all over the worldonly if the American markets are opened far widerthan hitherto to foreign goods."Wall Street is, however, in the dilemna of seeking to

break down tariff walls so that German industry may beput to work at full blast and its foreign market en-larged to meet its productive possibilities, and at thesame time preventing, for example, the formation of theFranco-German bloc which contains so much dynamitefor Wall Street control. Germany cannot any longer behemmed in and isolated so easily. Germany, to be ableto honor its debts, must <be rehabilitated to a muchgreater degree. To be re-established to the point of

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

ability to pay her billions in debts, Germany wants Eu-pen and Malmedy, the Saar, the return of the Polishcorridor and the port of Danzig, Germany wants per-mission to cement GermaniAustrian unity, and the re-turn from Italy of South Tyrol; Germany demands par-ticipation in the international imperialist division andlooting of the world; Germany demands the return ofher status that can come with the liquidation of theVersailles treaty; Germany wants the revision of theburdensome Dawes' Plan. German imperialism wants itsplace in the sun again. Here is the great problem ofinternational capitalism, and of Wall Street in particu-lar. If she is to pay her debts she must 'be given suchprivileges and concessions as must finally make her apower than can challenge, if not America, then at leastthe other nations of Europe, none of whicfi is in muchbetter—if at all better—condition than Germany. Forin the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is, if notking, at least possessed of the same strength as thesightless.

R E V I E W STHIS BELIEVING WORLD. A Simple Account of the

Great Religions of Mankind, by Lewis Browne, pp. 347.New York, The MacMillan Company, 1926.

THE STORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, By Cuth-bert Wright., pp. 316. New York, Albert and CharlesBoni, 1926.

RELIGION IN THE MAKING, Lowell Lectures, 1926, byAlfred North Whitehead. pp. 160. New York, TheMacMillan Company, 1926.

"QINCE the war religion is on the up-grade again," re-^ marked a well-known cleric a short time ago with

natural exultation and, to a certain extent, this claim isnot without foundation. There can be no question thatthe outbreak of the war marked a definite turning pointin the development of religion in modern society. "Thewar . . . released profound emotions among themasses . . . What are the chief types of these . . .emotions? Desperation and fear—hence the strengthen-ing of religion. The churches are again filled to over-flowing and the reactionaries are beside themselveswith joy. "Where misfortune, there religion!" remarkedthe arch-reactionary Barres—and he was right." (Denin)But "misfortune" has not ended with the war. Indeedthe war but ushered in a period of profound society de-cay and disturbance. Post-war society is society in de-cline, in collapse, and, as in decaying Rome, religionflourishes! "The great crisis of the war," says Buk-harin, "which is bringing about the collapse of capital-ism before our own eyes, shattering its entire culturalstructure to its entire foundations, is producing a ...psychology of despair . . . a lack of confidence in

one s ownticism . .

powers; this results in a return to mys-

T71XAMINING the matter from this point of view, it isfl,not very difficult to discover the essential nature of

Mr. Browne's book. It falls into the class of whichDurant's "The Story of Philosophy" is the best example.Just as the latter is psychologically calculated to pro-vide a spiritual haven for the poor petty bourgeois wan-derers whose moorings have been destroyed by the cul-tural unrest of the day, so does Mr. Browne's book onthe story of religion essay a similar role in the fieldof religion. And by this token the whole book is to bejudged.

Mr. Browne's book is certainly better than the atro-cious "Story of Philosophy"; this much we must in jus-tice declare. Mr. Browne is less "smart," less flippantand journalistic, far less superficial, and has an infinite-ly better judgment and perspective. Yet, objectively,his book is after all "The Story of Religion . . ."

The beginning promises well. The author rejects(though not explicitly) the whole supernatural basis ofreligion and traces its roots to man and nature. Evenhis formula—"In the beginning there was fear; and fearwas in the heart of man; and fear controlled man."—though neither original nor quite adequate, is a happyone. Yet our author, like an inexperienced magician,falls a victim to his own spells. He does not know howto use his own formula and so he allows it to masterhim. With a tiring regularity he repeats it mechanicallyin places where it has no meaning whatever and yetwhere it must serve as the only explanation. But this

D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6

is the price of manipulating undigested phrases, ofphrase-mongering.

TN the beginning there was indeed fear! Impotence,•̂ helplessness, fear! "The helplessness of the savagein his struggle with nature leads to a belief in gods,devils, and miracles." (Lenin) "Religion is the loveof life in the consciousness of impotence." Mr. Brownebrings this phase out quite clearly and thus really makesan attempt to probe to the depths.

But this far and no farther. With the decline of primi-tive communism and the rise of class society, an inter-nal reorganization takes place in the nature and therole of religion in society. The old impotence of man innature which is beginning to vanish gives way to thenew subjection of the masses to a few. The helplessnessand fear of the savage in the face of nature becomesthe impotence and desperation of the exploited in theface of their oppressors. Religion becomes a kind of"spiritual liquor in which the slaves . . . may drowntheir human woes, their demand for a life worthy ofman." (Lenin). Mr. Browne, being no Marxist, runsadrift here leaving his whole subsequent structure with-out any basis and is, at best, a pleasant recital of factmixed with vagary.

With the onset of class society religion takes on adouble character. For the oppressed masses it becomesan "illusory happiness," "imaginary flowers adorning thechains." (Marx). To the oppressors it is "opium for thepeople," very valuable in lulling the exploited into sub-jection, through threats of the gods, through the enervat-ing effects of ethical codes, and through the promisesof heavenly bliss for the virtuous (i. e., for the obedienthard-working slaves). This tendency to use religion tomaintain the social conditions out of which itself arosebegan early. Even in societies where private propertywas just beginning to feel its way, the cult, the tabooand other religious forms were already taking theirplace in the protection of property and the propertied.It may be a far cry from those days to the pres-ent 'but the bourgeois expert, Roger Babson, is stillmaintaining that "the security of our investments de-pends upon the strength of our churches." Throughouthistory religion has preserved its role as a form of"social control."

From the intellectual point of view religion is condi-tioned, of course, upon man's ignorance of the processesof nature and upon his lack of confidence in his ownpowers in shaping the material universe and in utiliz-ing its forces. Hence it is that material 'production, in-volving just this control and manipulation of the forcesof nature, has always been the deadly foe of religion."The practical art by which we help ourselves . . .and make instruments of what religion worships, whenthat art is carried beyond the narrowest bounds is theessence of irreligion" (Santayana). For this reasonthe development of technology means an increasing in-difference to religion on the part of those directly en-gaged in the technological processes of mastering na-ture—the engineers and the workers. "Miners, ma-chinists, and artisans are irreligious -by trade." Thisprocess has reached its climax in the modern industrialproletariat as LaFargue and Veblen have well pointed

667

out. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, largely re-moved from the actual processes of material productionand accustomed to live in the world of the personal an-thropomorphic relations of business instead of being sub-jected to the impersonal and mechanistic regime of themachine, retain their religion—even aside from theirclass interests in doing so.

To Mr. Browne all this is a book sealed with sevenseals—at least as far as this work is concerned. Neitherthe roots nor the role of the religious superstition, an-cient or modern, falls within the scope of his under-standing. And so the book necessarily becomes anapology for religion . . .

An apology it is—not for the crude old fundamental-ism but for the religion of modernism, in particular forthe religion of the modernist Jew (for Mr. Browne is aJewish reverend). For the sake of this apology he mustnegative all his concessions to naturalism by some care-fully turned skeptical phrases permitting his reader tobelieve anything, by the most extravagant claims forreligion and by the most extraordinary forms of specialpleading. But what stamps the book indelibly withthe black mark of apologetics is its utter failure to un-derstand or to expose the role of religion in the handsof the ruling classes, its socio-political role in brief. Asa sort of blind a great deal of hard words are hurled atthe priesthood. But no suggestion that religion is in-herently an enemy of the masses—even though, at cer-tain times (such as the German Peasant Wars for ex-ample) it may have served as a cloak for movements ofrevolt. Above all, no word as to the utterly reactionary,oppressive, and deliberately slave-driving role of re-ligion—even of the most modernist variety—at the pres-ent moment. Hence the whole work never passes be-yond the circle of bourgeois apologetics.

As we have mentioned the book enables the confusedpetty bourgeois to remain religious (which he must) andyet to make some pretence of facing the cold glare ofmodern science. It is therefore natural that along with"The Story of Philosophy" and a number of other worksof a similar nature, it is a best seller. It is the histori-cal apologia for modernism.

Knowing what we do of the book, the author, and hismethod, we can hardly expect that he will fulfill eventhe first demands of a scientific history of religion. Itis necessary not simply to lay bare the social andpsychological roots of religion and to show its socio-political role; it is important to analyze the content ofreligion (beliefs, cults, forms of worship, etc.) and tostudy and explain its organizational forms (churches,etc.). And this can be done only on the -basis of historicmaterialism. All of these phenomena can be under-stood only when referred back to the social organizationof mankind and to the corresponding array of classforces. Otherwise, the history of religion become nomore than a junkpile of cast-off superstition—a disgust-ing object to the intelligent reader.

rnHE story of the Catholic Church, dealt with by Mr.-*• Wright (The Story of the Catholic Church) offers anexcellent opportunity for the scientific historian of re-ligon. Christian origins, the decline of Rome, the rela-

668

tions of Jew, Christian and pagan, the 'beginnings ofchurch organization and dogma and their transformationunder the influence of social change—what a wealth ofmaterial. But Mr. Wright's book is unfortunately en-tirely worthless from every viewpoint but that of style.Mr. Wright brings forth all the usual Catholic prejudicesbut discreetly hides them beneath a thin veneer of cul-tured and urbane skepticism. Of course, "intellectual-ly," he does not believe in the "mysteries" of the Catho-lic faith. But what 'has mere belief or disbelief to dowith the question? Mr. Wright's description of CatholicRomanticism fits his own outlook excellently well:"Briefly, it may be described as religious sentiment with-out faith. It consists in comprehending, respecting, andsensuously enjoying the dogmas which, at heart, onehas ceased to believe" Op. 249). Of course, Jesus cannotbe proved to have existed—tout, after all, what does thatmatter if it is a satisfying emotional and esthetic experi-ence to believe in him? Mr. Wright may find fancynames for this attitude but to us it seems to argue sucha failure to understand the nature of scientific truth,such a profound intellectual dishonesty, as to disqualifythe author on all matters of objective fact. The bookis no more than a suave attack upon reason and historicsense, an urbane and sophisticated defence of the Catho-lic superstition.

For the worker who really wants to understand therise of Christianity and the forces that molded theCatholic Church at its early period—for anyone who isnot satisfied with the obscurantist clouds of words ofMr. Wright—the best work is unquestionably Kautsky's"Foundations of Christianity," recently published in ex-cellent English translation by the International Pub-lishers.

* * *A LFRBD NORTH WHITEHEAD is "a renowned phi-

•*"*• losopher," a real "modern thinker." It is thereforeall the more significant that he proves himself to be likeevery bourgeois philosopher—a, "diplomat lackey of thepriesthood." His book, Re l ig ion in the Making, is plain-ly speaking, an obscurantist attempt to maintain re-ligion while dropping its whole content. Frazer has wellcharacterized the strategy of these learned gentlemen.Often when an army evacuates an untenable position itleaves dummy figures in view so as to give the enemythe impression that the position is still occupied. Verymuch the same has happened to religion. The tradition-al positions of religion—even the absolutely irreducibleminimum of belief in the existence of supernatural be-ings or powers—have been evacuated one by one underthe pitiless fire of positive science. But faith must notdie—or else what would happen to "the security of ourinvestment." So lay figures are erected called "relig-ion," "God," "soul," etc. and all bourgeois society, includ-ing our learned professors, bow down before them—theprofessors, of course, with the mental reservation thatthese idols are something very different from the popu-lar belief. And so reverend gentlemen point exultantly:"See, the soldiers are still on the ramparts. Our posi-tions are being maintained. Professor So-and-so andDr. This-and-that believe in God and in religion." Toordinary people this is downright dishonesty—'but afterall it's all for the greater glory of God.

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

Professor Whitehead is just another of these erectorsof lay figures. For example, by defining religion as "asystem of general truths which have the effect of trans-forming character" (!) he is enabled to say a numberof complimentary things about "religion," at the sametime enabling the pious to exult: "See, Professor White-head believes in religion, in God, in the soul, etc., etc."We are sure the theological seminaries will appreciateProfessor Whitehead's services to the holy cause butscience will hardly prove grateful.

* * *rpHREE books—three apologies and defences of reli--1- gion, under different guises, in different forms. Andindeed it is now either for or against. The reactionarybourgeoisie and its intellectual lackeys, among whomwe must count Mr. Browne, Mr. Wright, and ProfessorWhitehead, have now definitely repudiated their scien-tific materialist past and sunk into the swamp of mystic-ism. Moreover, religion is a class weapon that mustbe preserved and kept in good shape. And so the priest-hood is given the spiritual hegemony of modern bour-geois learning and science must keep in step.

To the proletariat, however, religion is an enemy—apillar of oppression. It is significant that the cause ofthe proletariat and the cause of the advancement ofknowledge coincide and that the struggle for one is inthe interest of the other. The struggle against religionis a struggle against unreason, ignorance and supersti-tion. The struggle against religion is a struggle againstthe whole system of exploitation and oppression. "Theabolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the peo-ple is the demand for fcheir real happiness. The demandto abandon the illusion about their condition, is the de-mand to abandon a condition that which requires illu-sions." (Marx). —Apex.

THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF HUMAN SOCIETY, byFranklin Henry Giddings. *>p. 247. The Universityof North Carolina Press, 1924.

rpHE title is very descriptive—if titles, like dreams, go•*• by contraries. For the book is neither "scientific"nor is it a "study" of "human society." The chief scien-tific and sociological interest of the book is as an ex-ample of the complete bankruptcy and emptiness of bour-geois sociology as a science.

No one can read this book without being struck withthe great diligence Professor Giddings shows in his serv-ice to the masters of bourgeois society. He wears hisreins without any idea of balking. 'His profound rever-ence for big business ("well managed business corpora-tions," p. 41; "intelligently managed corporations," p.56; "big corporations managed by men of vision," p. 58;etc.) and for money ("the sin, the scandal and the hu-miliation of obtaining money under false pretences,"p. 41; etc.) is interesting merely as showing the type ofProfessor Gidding's mind; the trend and purpose of his"sociology" are betrayed in his "three generalizations"which, "if . . . true, . . . are damnatory againstall programs of communism and socialism" (p. 36). Ofcourse, these "generalizations" like his whole "sociology"—are no more than a crude combination of trite com-monplaces and unintelligible and meaningless phrases.

D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6

Witness the third "generalization" (which is supposed tobe particularly fatal to communism):

"The indefinite development of mentality is pos-sible only to human beings who are not only phys-ically detached and free (as metazoa in general are)but also are intellectually free and morally respon-sible . . ." (p. 36.)

Communism can survive such "generalizations."

Professor Giddings' sociology, in so far as it is intel-ligible, is fundamentally wrong in its viewpoint andmethod and frequently in its results. It is simply a be-wildered scanning of the surface of society, an empirictabulation of social phenomena. It gets nowhere as faras an understanding of the genesis, the development andthe rule of these phenomena are concerned. Prof. Gid-dings makes a serious error when he holds up the sta-tistical method as the method of science. The statisti-cal method is frequently very useful for illustration orevidence of fact and especially to provide hints for theconstruction of hypotheses but it can never of itself pene-trate the surface and lay bare the internal relations ofthe phenomena and their laws of motion. The historyof any science (astronomy, chemistry, physics) is suf-ficient evidence of this fact. The filling-in of impressiveand efficient-looking forms (as efficient looking as thosein use by Prof. Gidding's masters, the "intelligent busi-ness executives") may be very intriguing to youngladies and gentlemen in college and out, but it bears buta remote and indirect relation to sociology. It is simplya learned cloak thrown over to hide the utter rottennessand emptiness of a "sociology" that aspires no higherthan apologetics.

This applies not only to Prof. Giddings' system but—in varying degrees—to all bourgeois "sociology" once itattempts to enter the realm of theory and generaliza-tion. The only system of sociology that can lay anyclaim to objective conformity with the facts of socialdevelopment or to any success in eliciting the laws un-derlying it is the system whose basic features were in-dicated 'by Marx and Engels—the system of historic ma-terialism. One has but to examine it in its latest andbest formulation (Nikola i Bukharin, Historical Material-ism, A System of Sociology, New York, The InternationalPublishers, 1925) to find the life and meaning so con-spicuously absent in the hollow constructions of thelearned lackeys of the bourgeoisie. And the conspicu-ous, if only partial success that a number of non-Marxiansociologists and historians (Veblen, Beard, etc.) havehad in certain of their investigations is unquestionablyto be traced to the coincidence—again partial and -some-times not very deep—of their methods and points of viewwith the methods and viewpoints of historic materialism.

As a social document Prof. Giddings' book is valuable;it shows the depths to which bourgeois science andlearning have fallen . . . —Apex.

AN OLD MAN'S FOLLY, by Floyd Dell. Geo. H. Doran,New York.

ANN ELIZABETH is a beautiful bourgeois girl whojoins the "radical" movement, remains an enthusi-

astic worker for a couple of years, then meets her lover

669

and decides that what she really wants is a number ofbabies and a little bungalow in the country, where shecan "get along peaceably with this silly old world."Gosh!

The Socialist Party and the pacifist organizationswhich flourished before the Russian revolution were in-fested with just such people as Ann Elizabeth and herlover, Joe Ford, who looked upon the class struggle(when they recognized it at all) not as an arena inwhich to lick the boss, but as a background againstwhich they could develop their "souls." To most of thesepeople, Greenwich Village and the labor movement weresynonymous; the important thing about their activitywas the unfolding of their own personalities; and the"radical" movement was a succession of teas, enliven-ing discussions about almost anything, and an occasionalcommittee meeting in a pleasant home. Later, these"radicals" found a partner, and settled down in thepeaceful bourgeois life to which they were born, readyto laugh good-naturedly at their "youthful follies." Someof them even cashed in on their defection by the saleof memoirs to publishers. Floyd Dell's latest book isjust such a series of memoirs, disguised in the form of anovel. It is not difficult to recognize in Joe Ford, theyoung newspaperman who joins the "radicals," and thengoes back to magazine work and novel writing in acozy little bungalow, the Floyd Dell who went fromcapitalist newspaper work to "The Masses," and thenceto a peaceful little cottage at Croton-on-Hudson. Fromthis cottage have issued stories on his "reform from radi-calism" for the benefit of the readers of Hearst's Inter-national, and novels in which young girls find theirsouls in the labor movement, and having found them, re-tire with them to comfortable homes.

The fringes of the revolutionary and semi-revolution-ary movement in America are still afflicted with AnnElizabeths and Joe Fords, but their numbers ihave dim-inished since the Russian workers showed the worldthat revolution is a laborious and rather a dirty job.Of the number still with us, extremely few join theWorkers ('Communist) Party—they know that the lifeof an active party member is one of constant work, oftennot too pleasant or safe, submission to discipline, andthe subordination of one's personal desires to the goodof the movement. Such a sacrifice the middle-classRebels have no idea of making. Few of them worrymuch about their own impotence—in fact, they cheer-fully admit it. As Joe Ford says: "We're middle-classreformers, you know, not revolutionists. We don't real-ly expect to accomplish anything. The joke is thatwe shall probably be put in jail just as if we were ac-tually trying to overthrow the government."

The whole tone of the book is one of extreme individ-ualism. Never is it suggested that the workers in sucha movement might submit important questions to a re-sponsible body or that decisions as to what they aregoing to do concern anyone but themselves. When JoeFord is sentenced to a term in jail, he decides to beginserving sentence while the appeal is being made, be-cause—why do you think?—because if later on the su-preme court should decide against him, it would be badfor the progress of his love affair!

676

The explanation of why people become revolutionistsis typical. ". . . it wasn't just intellectual convic-tions that made people rebellious; it was usually somecrisis in their personal lives." 'So, for all the pressure ofthe capitalist system, for low wages, for long hours insweat shops, for unemployment, we must substitute, asan explanation of revolutionary activity—"some crisis intheir personal lives." Of the parlor radicals, Dell's ex-planation is true. But it is worthless when it is givenas an explanation of revolutionary activity in general,and especially of the revolutionary activity of the work-ers. The workers, however, received very little consi-deration as a revolutionary factor from Ann Elizabethand her organization—it is significant that their circu-lars against the war were sent out, not to members oftrade unions and workers' co-operatives, but only to mem-bers of liberal and women's clubs.

But the most complete confession of individualism isAnn Elizabeth's explanation of why it was best for herto marry Joe Ford, rather than a bourgeois suitor. "WithJoe," says Ann Elizabeth, "I can take all my revolution-ary opinions for granted, and get down to the businessof living."

So, we are given to understand, Ann Elizabeth's opin-ions are the only thing that matter! What about thestrikes, the anti-militarist work, in which Ann Elizabethmight have made herself useful? Well, such thingsdon't really count. Not that Ann Elizabeth was at allsorry for her activity—far from it. It had helped herdiscover her soul, and had found her lover, withwhom she was now nicely established in a little bunga-low. The revolution? Tut-tut! —P. H.

LOYALISM IN VIRGINIA, Chapters in the EconomicHistory of the Revolution, by I. S. Harrel, pp. 203, 1926.Duke University Press, Durham, N. C.

THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLU-TION AS SEEN IN THE ENGLISH PRESS, by F. J.Hinkhouse, pp. 216, 1926. Columbia University Press.

TTT'HATEVER may be said of the "great Sesquicenten-* * nial Exposition" at Philadelphia, the 150th anniver-

sary of the first American Revolution is proving itselfprofitable from the literary and historical viewpoint.The books noted above are only two of the interestingstudies of the American Revolution that the seasonhas given rise to. Both are worth reading and bothhave important lessons for the modern revolutionist.

Professor Barrel's book on "Loyalism in Virginia" ismade up of a series of five scholarly sketches on thealignment of class forces and the economic reasons there-for during the revolutionary and post-revolutionary pe-riod. The strange paradox that, in Virginia in contrastto the northern colonies, the land-owning aristocracysupported the revolution while the merchants made upmost of the Loyalists is certainly important enough tomerit close study and Professor Harrel uncovers theclass roots of this paradox quite adequately albeit some-what vaguely. A few quotations will show his con-clusions.

Professor Harrel addresses himself to the fundamentaleconomic problems of the colony for, as he remarks,"the political philosophy of a people is seldom unaf-

W O R K E R S M O N T H L Y

fected by the material situation." (p. 7.) The threechief economic problems he finds as—"the land problem,public finance, and private debts." (p. 7.)

"Due to wasteful methods of cultivation and the rapidincrease of population the material well-being of manyVirginians in 1775 depended upon their development ofunoccupied land." (p. 7.) "Agricultural Virginia de-pendent upon lands for a livelihood looked to the west."(p. 19.) "The royal government . . . raised a legal•barrier between coveted lands and ambitious Virginians."(p. 11.) "What the British ministry had closed fast toloyal Virginians, the Revolutionary government openedto the patriots upon the most liberal terms." (p. 22.)

Now as to public finance. "The balance of tradewas against Virginia. Usually Virginia exchange wasabout 15 per cent under par on Lotidon. . . The bullionhad gone to Europe. Public credit began to totter. Dis-content and the demand for paper money became moreemphatic. But the British government, fostering the in-terests of the merchants, was the unwavering enemyof a paper currency." (p. 25.)

"More appalling than the deplorable condition of thepublic finance wais the heavy indebtedness of the Vir-ginia planters to the British merchants. . . With theirplantations, slaves, and sometimes household furniturehypothecated, the planters were in an almost inextrica-ble position in 1775; it seemed that nothing less thanvirtual repudiation could relieve them." (p. 26.) "InOctober, 1777, when the principles of rifle democracy(emphasis ours—Apex.) were supreme, a law was passedwhich provided in part for the sequestration of thesedebts." (p. 27.) No wonder, then, that "of the seventy-two members of the Virginia Merchants Association . . .only three or four were patriots." (p. 63.) "Currentpolitical theories in the Colonies and the economic in-terests of the planters were in harmony," as ProfessorHarrel laconically remarks.

The five studies in this volume trace these threadsin considerable detail thruout the revolutionary historyof Virginia. The , last two studies show the operationof these clasis forces in the period after the war andleading up to the ratification of the 'Constitution inVirginia—"seventeen amendments were proposed to theConstitution and, after endorsing these amendments,the constitutional party was able to muster (in the Vir-ginia convention) a majority of only ten votes for rati-fication." (p. 160.) They show also one of the realbases for the growth of Republicanism and anti-Feder-alism in Virginia.

Incidentally, this book contains a number of interest-ing observations concerning the activity of "the rifledemocracy," the "committees of safety," the treatmentor' Tories, etc., that it would be profitable for the workerof today to ponder over.

Professor Hinkhouse's book, "The Prel iminaries of theAmerican Revolution as Seen in the English Press," is adecorous but interesting study of the reaction of theBritish press to the events in America before 1775.Nothing new or startling is laid bare, but the familiarmaterial is presented in an attractive and instructiveway. Professor Hinkhouse's chief conclusion is an es-sentially sound and valuable one. "This war (the Amer-ican Revolution) was in truth . . . a civil war." (p. 187.)

D E C E M B E R , 1 9 2 6

It was not merely an abstract struggle for independence.It was a class struggle, waged, with class forces essen-tially the same, tho in very different forms, in Englandas well as in America. In America it reached the stageof open civil war (armed revolution); in England thesame struggle was seen in the open sympathy and helpthat many prominent Whigs gave to the American rev-olutionists long after hostilities had broken out andthe Americans declared traitors. This conception—ofhorizontal class divisions in England and America, notsimply the vertical division between 'England and Amer-ica—is very significant and fruitful. Professor Hink-house brings it out clearly.

Professor Hinkhouse's method is also to be commendedaltho he uses it to a limited extent and in a somewhatconfused way—naturally, considering his class limita-tions. He undertakes "an analysis of sentiment amongEnglish social classes" (p. 202) and uses "this divisionof class interests" (p. 203) as an argument to proveone of his main points. Elsewhere (p. 48), he remarks:"The student of the period must pay attention to thedesires of the English merchant and manufacturer if hewould understand English action." That the investiga-tion and analysis of class interests and relations is thebasic method of history both of our books show.

We cannot close our remarks about Professor Hink-house's book without bringing forward two interestingitems for the delectation of our readers.

American revolutionists who are only too familiar withthe stories of "Bolshevik atrocities" will be pleased tohear that in the Tory press in England "the Americanswere accused of scalping and cutting off the ears ofthe wounded." (p. 185.)

But surely this one is a gem! "When some ship-wrights went out on strike in England in July, 1775, aparagraph (in the London Chronicle) reported that thetroubles 'prove to have been fomented by some AmericanAgents here, who are very busy in rendering themselvesas useful as possible to the rebels, their masters. . . '"(p. 21.) Our 100 per cent Chamber of Commerce Sonsand Daughters of the American Revolution, who attrib-ute every strike to "Russian Agents here," are certainlymaintaining the glorious tradition; they are followingright in the footsteps of—the British reactionaries andoppressors!—Apex.

FOLK BELIEFS OF THE SOUTHERN NEGRO, by New-bell Niles Puckett. pp. 644, The University of NorthCarolina, 1926.

rpHIS is an interesting and voluminous account (al--*• though the author claims that "the lore presentedhere is but a smattering of the material existent") ofwhat are generally known as the "superstitions" of theSouthern Negro.

Though Mr. Puckett's attitude is of course, the good-humored patronizing "superiority" of the white man, yeta certain sympathy and love for his material—the folk-beliefs—enable him to present the entire picture with a

large degree of objectivity and truth. The book cer-tainly promises to remain the standard on the subject.

It is when he leaves the task of recording data andventures into the field of analysis of origin, develoment,and significance of the social phenomena he records thathis step becomes less sure. The short description ofthe American Negro's African antecedants is good—inspite of certain "racialisms." So also is the discussionof the phenomena of acculturation attendent upon bring-ing the African Negro to America and placing him inthe environment of the old South. Especially com-mendable is the clear indication given as to the role of"superstition" (and religion) in the life-process of man-kind (p. 520).

But the folk-beliefs, so carefully studied, are neverexplicitly regarded as the superstructure growing outof the social conditions under which the Negroes livedand are still living (economic and class relationships)and so they are left resting in the air as it were. Weare not shown how the beliefs arose, how they develop-ed and under the influence of what factors, what theymean in the development of human ideology, and whythey are peculiar to the Southern Negro (if indeed theyare which is nowhere expressly indicated). And so thework is imperfect as a scientific study.

As a scholarly and readable compilation, analysis, andclassification of the folk-beliefs of the Southern Negroit seems to be nearly perfect. —Apex.

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