TaEREW

A MONTHLY ORGAN OF REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM Barcelona and France By Felix Morrow W.P.A. and Armaments By The Editors • Le.on Trotsky on Diego Rivera on Karl Kautsky Haya de la Torre • The Paradox of Australian Capitalism By Stan Bollard Zionism and the Arab Struggle

TWENTY CENTS • FEBRUARY 1939 4. EVERYBODY! ! At Home TI-IE NEW INTERNATIONAL Party and Y.P.S.L. Units: Or­ ganize subscription campaigns. It A MONTHLY ORGAN OF REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM is easy to obtain subscriptions for THE January issue of the NEW the NEW INTERNATIONAL if only INTERNATIONAL has stirred up, as Volume V February 1989 Number 2 (Whole No. 29) the Party and Youth comrades expected, considerable discussion Published monthly by the New International Publishing Company, 116 University will proceed systematically to call and controversy, to the mutual Place, New York, N. Y. Telephone: ALgonquin 4-8547. Subscription rates: upon and talk to contacts, sym­ benefit, we hope, of all concerned $2.00 per year; bundles: Hc for 5 copies and up. Canada and Foreign: $2.50 pathizers of our movement, and and involved. Certainly it helped per year; bundles 16c for 5 copies and up. Single copy: 2Oc. Entered as second­ class matter December 9, 1937, at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the readers of the magazine who today NEW INTERNATIONAL sales. Anti­ act of March 3, 1879. just purchase their copy each cipating extra orders, 5,000 copies Editorial Boa.rd: JAMES BURNHAM. MAX SHACHTMAN, month. GET SUBSCRIPTIONS! were printed, and indications are that the entire issue will be dis­ MAURICE SPECTOR. Business Manager: MARTIN ABERN Readers 0/ th~ NEW INTERNA­ posed of-the best results to date. TION AL: SUBSCRIBE! And get I t is now up to the magazine TABLE OF CONTENTS your friends to read and sub­ agents and friends of the NEW The Editor's Comments ...... 35 scribe! Proceed to carry out the fore­ INTERNATIONAL to do their ut­ Barcelona and France's Future, by Felix Morrow ...... 38 most to keep as many as possible going requests, and the Manage­ of the new readers as regular Zionism and the Arab Struggle, from The Spark ...... 41 ment and Editorial Board promise the continuatioh of an acknowl­ readers. This can be done, or ac­ Haya de la Torre and Democracy, by Diego Rit1era...... 45 complished better, if the comrades edged magazine of quality, and, we and sympathizers will keep in The German Left and Bolshevism, by IValter Held ...... 46 hope and aim, a bigger one. touch steadily with those readers Behind the Farmers' Vote, by David CowleJ...... 49 who obtained the magazine the * * * NEW ORDERS first time with the January num­ Karl Kautsky, by Leon Trotsky ...... 50 ber. Is Austria a Nation? by Charles Crompton ...... 5~ Jersey City, N. J., Mike G., agent, five copirs. Johannesburg, * * * A Letter and Some Notes, by Victof Serge and The Editors 53 South Africa, J. M., agent, 24 This column has often indicated copies. (Three agents in Johannes­ the great prestige the NEW IN­ Reading from Left to Right, by Dwight Macdonald ...... 55 burg-J. M., M. S., and L. S. now TERNATINAL has in all foreign Chronicle of the French General Strike, by C. M ...... 57 dispose of 90 copies among them.) countries, as well as in the United The Paradox of Australian Capitalism, by Stan. Bollard ...... 58 Paterson, N. J., Eddie C., agent, States. This is reflected in the 5 copies. New Brunswick, N. J., constantly increasing circulation of Correspondence ...... 60 5 copies. the publication in foreign coun­ Will India Accept Federation? by S. Stanley...... 61 tries. Nearly one thousand (1,000) INCREASES IN BUNDLES copies are now sent abroad to Inside Front Cover: At Home the European countries, particu­ Detroit, Mich., E. Panicali, larly England, Scotland, South agent, from 40 to 50· copies: a promise and an achievement made Africa, Australia, Palestine, China, logical clarification and develop­ foreign countries, represents a very good on schedule. "N. I. is selling India, the South and Central ment, and in their own struggle he,avy postage cost to t~e mag­ better and better each month." American countries, Canada, and against social-democratic, Stalinist, azine, many times higher than the others. This is more than grati­ capitalist, fascist movements? In­ cost of mailing the magazines San Francisco, Cal., from 50 to fying and demonstrates, too, the credible, unthinkable, of course, throughout the United States. 60 copies. Relations between Local San Francisco and the NEW IN­ ever more solid basis and growth on our part. The magazines are This is because in this country TERNATIONAL now straightened of the Fourth International or­ sent, wherever agents place bundle the magazine is sent at second­ out. New Literature Com. con­ ganization, in which the NEW orders. The NEW INTERNATIONAL class rates, whereas publications sisting of A.S., Glen Trimble and INTERNATIONAL plays a big and bundle rate is reduced in those are sent abroad at the much E. B. Expect to go places! Fresno, important part. However, prob­ cases to meet, so far as possible, higher third-class rate of postage. Cal., new agent, Eugene Mc., lems and difficulties also arise the economic position of the for­ But, hence, our readers are now from to 10 copies. is good. therefrom for the magazine. eign agents and comrades. For in­ more clearly aware that several 5 "N.I. Keep it up," Fresno writes. O.K. stance: in Scotland, Palestine, hundred copies of the review are 1. The NEW I~TERNATIONAL is -You keep on increasing too. dependent for a good part of its India, and other countries. These sent abroad which can be said to Toledo, Ohio, Doris Cooper, Tevenue upon the foreign agents. bundles are sent at a very heavy represent a subsidy or contribu­ agent, from to copies. To­ loss to the NEW INTERNATIONAL. tion of the NEW INTERNATIONAL 10 15 With unstable economic and polit­ ledo now in better shape than at But they must and will be sent, so to the revolutionary movements ical conditions prevailing partic­ any previous period. Houston, ularly in the foreign countries, long as we are able to do so. (But, abroad. This has meant a heavy Texas, K.H., agent, from 4 to 8 these revenues can be cut off at a hark, we now begin to need the financial drain on the magazine, copies; placing magazine also on single moment. The magazine assistance of the magazine readers though borne willingly; but now newsstands. New Haven, Conn., would be affected quite possibly to in the United States.) we feel it is our right and duty Morris Gandelman, agent, took the point actual suspension. Al­ to call upon our readers to give us 0/ 3. Furthermore, for identical additional 10 copies of December ready some foreign agents and aid in order that we can continue reasons given for sending bundles issue; permanent increase not yet comrades write us that legal dif­ to give aid abroad in the manner at heavily reduced rates to several decided upon. Cape Town, South ficulties are arising. In one im­ outlined above, and even to in­ foreign countries, the review is Africa, Paul Koston, agent, from portant instance even now, the crease our assistance. YOU, S.W.P. sent free to two hundred (200) 45 to 55 copies. H.M. van G., magazine has to find its way into branches Y.P.S.L. units, indivi­ individuals in the Latin-American Cape Town also disposes of 12 the country despite barriers. But dual comrades, sympathizers and countries (particularly Argentine, copies. B. Palley, Sydney, Austra­ in such circumstances, results are readers, CAN HELP NOW AND Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, lia, from 20 to 30 copies. uncertain, generally meager, and REGULARLY. HOW? Panama, Porto Rico, Cuba); Chi­ In good standing: San Diego, revenue virtually ceases. na, India, Japan, Holland, Bel­ 1. Part, and Y.P.S.L. Units: Cal., Portland, Ore. : came 2. To have 1,000 English-read­ gium, etc., and especially to Hold entertainments, affairs, for through on schedule and agents ing foreign readers of the NEW France and Belgium, where there the benefit of the NEW INTER­ H.A.B. and H.M. expect steady INTERNATIONAL is, we repeat, in­ are large numbers of foreign NATIONAL Sustaining Fund. forward movement. Reading, Pa., deed gratifying and important. revol u tionaryruUgres (Germans, 2. Readers and Sympathizers: also in good standing now; agent, But again, in several instances, Italians, Czechs, Austrians and SEND ADONATION and make V. Pettinato, has been ill; says at economic circumstances-incred­ others) who read English and a regular PLEDGE to the NEW least small bundle will be reg­ ibly low wages, acute mass unem­ literally implore us to be sure to INTERNATIONAL SUSTAINING ularly disposed of. BUT: Some ployment,etc.-make it utterly im­ send the NEW INTERNATIONAL to FUND. DO THIS TODAY! large cities are definitely in danger possible for foreign readers to pay them since they must have it for of having their bundl~s cut off the American price of 20 cents per their own knowledge, information 3. Party and Y.P.S.L. Units: unless payments are forthcoming copy. What shall we do? Refuse and work. Pay for your bundle orders by the time this issue goes .to p~s. to send the NEW INTERNATIONAL All the foregoing speaks for it­ promptly. Bundle payments and We withhold names thIS time, abroad because of their inability to self, and we know that our com­ subscriptions represent almost the awaiting and meanwhile expecting pay 20 cents, and thus deprive our rades and readers endorse these entire revenue of the magazine at results-i.e., payments. comrades and readers aboard of actions of ours. But, too, sending present. DO NOT DELAY an important instrument of ideo- such quantities of magazines to BUNDLE ORDER PAYMENTS. THE MANAGER. THE NEW JIINTE RNATlllONAL A MONTHLY ORGAN OF REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM

VOLUME V FEBRUARY 1939 NUMBER 2 The Editor's COllllllent TIlE DRIVE AGAINST THE UNEMPLOYED IS BEGUN BY ROOSEVELT THE WEEK AFTER THE ELECfIONS - HOW ROOSEVELT TRICKS THE MASSES INTO purrING THE BLAME SOLELY ON CONGRESS - WHAT THE NEW RELIEF PROGRAM MEANS - THE BUDGET PROPOSES A BILLION MORE FOR WAR AND A BILLION LESS FOR RELIEF - BROWDER LEADS IN THE APPLAUSE

SYQ-IOLOGISTS HAVE explained to us how the old tracting administrative and material costs leaves an average W.P.A. P explanation for sleight-of-hand, that "the quickness of the wage of no more than $52.50 per month, and probably less. Thls hand deceives the eye", is in error. What actually happens is is the princely sum out of which the unemployed worker and his that through misleading words, gestures and act10ns the magician family are expected to provide for themselves rent, fuel, food,

office, nor that the gap between word and deed had become a is, for the main enemy of the Latin American masses. This is permanent feature of Stalinism. altogether literally the fact. To cite a single example, from the In those years we were not believed. Today, however, the Daily Worker report of the convention of the Communist party truly astounding response of the Communist Party to Roosevelt's of Cuba: war message comes as so natural a sequence of its course during the past years that it passes by hardly noticed. Nevertheless, this After mentioning the sorrowful experiences of Cuba in the past with the "Dollar Diplomacy" of American imperialism, Roca [a leader response is a new stage in the bottomless degeneration of American of the C. P. C.] declared that this policy is no longer followed by the Stalinism, and should be marked accordingly. Roosevelt Administration. Until this month, the support given by Browder and his "The Roosevelt Administration represents to a great extent the gang to Roosevelt's coming war has always been larded with one growing democratic and progressive movement and the forward march particular element of hypocrisy which is now outworn, and of the awakening millions of workers who suffered in the past [our dropped. Browder has always allowed his advocacy of "collective italics] from imperialist oppression as did the Cuban workers," Roca security" to be given an ambiguous interpretation: when pressed said•.•. as to how collective security would be "implemented", Browder CfThe struggle for liberation cannot be anti-United States." [Daily has replied that this should be done by "concerted economic actions W o,ker's emphasis.] of the democratic powers" -trade and financial boycotts of "ag­ There is a necessary consistency here. Supporting American im­ gressors", economic aid to the persecuted nations. The interpreta­ perialism and its war program at home means supporting it also tion was, of course, always a sham; but it served the purpose of externally. Stalinism in the United States is, thus, openly devel­ enabling the implicit doctrine behind collective security to worm oping into a wing of American imperialism, which has as its main its way into the minds of pacifists, and gave Stalinist speakers an purpose the selling of the war program to the American wor~ers out when they were accused of war-mongering. . and the Latin American peoples. Today, in the tightening crisis, that particular ambiguity is The social basis of Stalinism, here as elsewhere, is the Soviet too much of a luxury. It has to be discarded here, as it was two bureaucracy. From the point of view of the Soviet bureaucracy, years ago in France. Two weeks after Roosevelt's message, Browder American Stalinism can function as a wing of American imperial­ participated in a radio debate on the Town Hall of the Air ism only on the gamble that in. the war the United States and program. His speech, printed in the Daily Worker of January the Soviet Union will be allied and that the interests of the two 20th, concluded as follows: in the war will coincide. But, even if allied temporarily in the When foreign f~scist powers cease to menace their neighbors with war, their interests will not in fact coincide, since their interest's aggression, when our native fascists cease to undermine all democratic flow from diametrically opposed socio-economic foundations. Thus faith and pledge themselves to democracy, then we can say of fascist today's policy of American Stalinism tries to patch together two propaganda that it is no more a menace. But until that happens the American public will recognize the typical fascist foreign propaganda forces which are actually in conflict, and which at any momalt that r('alty menace'! America by one sign: it is always excited about may come into direct and open opposition. The advances of a mythical menace of communism and denies those dangers which American Stalinism along the road of support of American im­ are forcing our country, for the first time with such unanimous perialism in reality signify a shifting of balance in the specific popular support that even includes the communists, [our italics) to weights of Moscow and Washington in determining the nature unprecedented armaments for defense. of American Stalinism. Washington, which was at first approached Gone, then, is the last trace of tommyrot about "purely eco­ only as a manreuvre, is now starting to exercize an independent nomic actions". Collective security, when it has to get down to pull of its own upon the Stalinist movement, and the strength of business, shows itself for what it is and has always been: support this pull can only increase in the months ahead. Smirking for the armaments and the war of American imperialism. By this patriotism "for the sake of the Soviet Union" is beginning to be open advocacy of armaments, the act at which in 1914 Lenin split transformed into the plain, stinking, ordinary, bloody kind of from the Second International and proclaimed the Third, Stalin­ patriotism. The Kremlin bureaucracy, which has already proved ism in this country enters a new maturity of social-chauvinism. in practise that it cannot defend the revolution outside of the When we connect up this declaration with the new Stalinist Soviet Union, which the whole world knows cannot defend the policy in Latin America, even more is indicated. During the past Soviet Union from its imperialist enemies, shows clearly now that year, Stalinism in the Latin American nations has become the it cannot even defend itself. It has dug what is turning out to be chief spokesman among the masses for Yankee imperialism, that its own grave. Barcelona and France's Future HE SIEGE OF BARCELONA did not last a day. Premier the slogan, "All arms to the front." T Negrin had of course plastered the city with tr N 0 pasaran" In concealing its plan to abandon the city without a fight signs, had issued a proclamation swearing to the peop~e that the the Loyalist government naturally could not give warning in time government would not desert the city, and had imposed martial to thousands of worker-militants who are marked down in Franco's law ostensibly to facilitate military defense. But simultaneously, files for execution. Ominous too is the fate of thousands Of it develops, Negrin had been renting a little villa in Le Perthus imprisoned rank-and-file socialists and anarchists, Poumists and which, quite conveniently, has its front door in Spain and its back Trotskyists; it is all too likely that they were left in Loyalist door in France. dungeons, to come out only to face Franco's firing squads. Workers everywhere in the city were still busily engaged in The Popular Front ends, "not with a bang but a whimper". rearing barricades for street-to-street· defense when ... they lifted This, we were told, was the way to fight fascism. We were told their heads to find the fascist advance guards rolling unresisted this by the socialists after the revolution of April 14, 1931, when down the principal avenues. The workers themselves had no anns they entered a Popular Front government-the name had not yet with which to resist: the arms which they had torn from the been invented then by the Stalinists, it was still called by the old­ fascists on July 19, 1936 had been wrested from them, first by fashioned name of "coalition cabinet". When "the lelt.wtng the Caballero government and then by the Negrin cabinet, under bourgeoisie" in that government shot down peasants and broke February ,1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Page 39 strikes by force, we were told that it was the fault of communist Stalinists. Daladier's "betrayal" is imputed to him personally, to provocation. Two years of that coalition paved the way for· two Chamberlain, etc.-to anyone and anything except the class inter­ years of black reaction under Gil Robles. When reaction had to ests of the "progressive bourgeoisie". Tomorrow, if it serves the retreat, it was given time, opportunity and resources to prepare purpose of the French bourgeoisie, another Radical leader, prob­ anew, by its successor, the Popular Front government, which took ably Herriot (who wickedly rejected the Popular Front in 1935) office February, 1936. No one could now talk of communist will reach out to the Stalinists and socialists, and they will fawn­ provocation, for the Stalinists were in the Popular Front; nor ingly greet him as they did Daladier: "The man of the hour." could the anarchists provide an alibi, for they had shamefacedly The Blums and Thorezes learn nothing and cannot learn anything. sent their forces to the polls for the Popular Front. But the new Not only must the French workers link arms with the "liberal" coalition repeated the crimes of that of 1931-1933. It could not bourgeoisie, but they are also told that to complete their salvation do otherwise. they must then link arms with the governments of the "great democracies", England and America. The Plot of Reaction To push the French workers in this direction, they are being told-as are the American workers being told by the Browders and It was known that the monarchists, landowners and capital­ Abe Cahans and James Oneals-that Loyalist Spain is being ists were preparing for a return to power by force. The general defeated because no arms were forthcoming from the "great staff, the whole officer corps of the army was of course with them democracies" and that, if only real Popular Front governments In April 1936, Colonel Julio Mangada published a documented reigned in these countries, anti-fascist Spain would be victorious. pamphlet which not only exposed the fascist plot but proved con­ clusively that President Azaiia was fully informed of the plot Even Blum has the effrontery to demand that. Daladier do what when, on March 18, 1936, upon the demand of the general staff, Blum would not do. his government had indignantly repudiated "unjust attacks to To push the French workers further in this direction, they which the officers of the army have been subjected". A fawning are being told that the war in Spain is a war for national inde­ description of the generals as "remote from all political struggle, pendence, waged by the fascist powers on the one hand against faithful servitors of the constituted power and guarantors of "the people" on the other hand, and that after Spain it will be obedience to the popular will" was coupled with a threat to the plight of the French people to wage a similar war for inde­ imprison any who continued attacks on the officers corps. pendence. Supporting the government, the socialists, communists and A little truth and a great deal of falsity are so cleverly mixed anarchists could not, by that very fact, conduct a systematic cam­ in this socialist-Stalinist propaganda, that it is no wonder that, paign for the disintegration of discipline in the army. The gov­ backed by enormous funds and armies of functionaries, they are ernment had forbidden it and they supported the government. able even today, after seven years of the Spanish events, after 1Dat meant that the officer corps was enabled, when the uprising five years of the French crisis to delude the majority of the French came, to carry with them the peasants' sons who constituted the workers. Yet the French workers are doomed, unless they free army and who had never been taught to question the authority of themselves from these illusions. the officer corps. Under capitalism democracy is a luxury permissible, if at Lessons of Spain Must Be Learned aU, only in the mother country. One cannot rule colonial slaves The stark lessons of Spain must become a manual for the by democratic methods. Being worldly-wise men who understood French workers-and for the American workers. The tragedy of this, the socialist, communist and trade-union leaders supporting Barcelona is an epic which the class-conscious workers must read the Popular Front government put no obstacles in its way of and re-read tirelessly. As officers are trained in military schools, continuing rule over Spanish Morocco by the Foreign Legion. going over in the minutest detail the story of past military cam­ The Spanish labor press was forbidden distribution in the Moroc­ paigns, so the proletarian cadres must go to school to the Spanish can barracks and cities. The labor leadership did 110t reply by civil war. Let them but listen, and the martyred spirits of five raising the slogan of "Freedom for Morocco". That was not in hundred thousand Spanish workers and peasants will teach them the Popular Front program and one must not go beyond the how to fight the coming civil war in France! agreement with "the left wing of the bourgeoisie". In the dis­ That the fascists are preparing for war against the French creet atmosphere surrounding the military dictatorship in Morocco, masses is an indisputable fact. But when the Stalinists and social­ Generals Goded and Franco prepared the uprising at leisure; the ists interpret this fact to mean only that it is Mussolini and Hitler Moorish peasants who had not been called brothers by the Spanish and their French agents who will be launching a war against the working-class movement were glad to wreak vengeance on the French "people", they spread a lie which, if believed, can prevent Spanish mainland for all past humiliation and suffering. the masses from adequately preparing for the struggle. The ways in which the Popular Front government paved the The fascists who are preparing for war against the French road for the fascist uprising and for its success could be elaborated masses are the French fascists and those they serve, the capitalist at great length. Elsewhere I have sought to do so. * What is class of France. The main enemy is within the gate. Faced by necessary now, however, is to indicate the meaning for the French ever-increasing demands from Hitler and Mussolini, the French working class of the events in Spain during the last seven years. imperialists prepare for the moment when they will try to cease Since 1935 the socialists and Stalinists have joined in chorus further concessions and take back previous concessions and more. to tell the French workers that their salvation is to be sought in As an integral part of its preparations for imperialist war for the joining with the "progressive" bourgeoisie in a Popular Front re-division of the world, the French capitalist class wants class which would crush reaction within and without-above all with­ peace at home. To the eternal glory of the French proletariat, out: Hitler and Mussolini. The fact that the fourth cabinet of the socialist and Stalinist lackeys have proved impotent to provide the Popular Front, that of Premier Daladier-and Daladier was their capitalist masters with that peace; the workers will not and the Radical leader who was mainly responsible for bringing the cannot submit to the wiping out of their past social gains. Driven bourgeoisie into the Popular Front at its inception-had ended by the needs of the situation, the French capitalists are moving by coming to terms with Hitler at Munich and breaking the towards a fascist dictatorship. Oaladier's turn to the right is only general strike at home, has not changed the chorus of socialists and part of this process. His smashing of the general strike, ending of the forty-hour week, jailing of trade union militants, are not '* The Cioil War in Spain, St"pt. 1936, Pioneer Publishers. Rcvn/ution and Counter­ RevolutWn in Spain, May 1938, Pioneer Publishers. enough. The French capitalist class must be on equal terms of THE NEW INTERNATIONAL February 1939 competition with Hitler and Mussolini; i.e., it must have no trade reservoir for French fascism. The native masses have today DO unions, labor political parties, free press, mass meetings, or any feeling of brotherhood for the French workers. That is precluded other democratic rights, to act as obstacles in its preparations by the conduct of the Populal Front government since June 1936, for war and prosecution of war against its rival imperialists. which has naturally been identified, in the minds of the native It must have fascism in order the better to fight the fascist masses, with the French workers whose organizations backed the powtts of Hitler and Mussolini. government If the French fascist coup d'etat proves ineffective, and The natives have not been able to appreciate the blessings instead of crushing the masses with swift blows, the workers of Popular Frontism, as conveyed to them by Albert Sarraut, successfully resist and seize control of the chief cities, there will "COOrdinator" for the colonies. The bombing planes and motor­ of course be found "liberar' bourgeois elements who will offer ized infantry which suppressed the Kurds in Syria (August 1937), to control the workers in their war against the fascists. They will the innumerable native meetings routed by the sabres of Mobile say, as Azaiia, Martinez Barrio, Companys said in July, 1936: Guards, the mass arrests and imprisonments, the displays of force "This is not a war of class against class but a war of the whole designed to overawe the natives (such as the Bight of eighty first· people against a small clique backed by outside powers." And if line planes over North Africa in October 1937), the forable the French workers subordinate themselves to such control, these suppressions of nationalist movements in Meknes, Fez, Casablanca, bourgeois "anti-fascists" will play the same treacherous role as in Khemisset, Rabat, Port Lyautey, etc., elc.-this is what the Popular Spain. Front has meant to the colonies. The very suppressions have paved Not merely did these "liberals" pave the way for the fascists the way for fascism, for while the Socialists and Stalinists would by the various means we have already indicated. When the fascist not support freedom for the colonies, the fascists demagogically coup d'itat actually began, these democrats tried to !1I"ender the promise the natives anything. Their anti -Semitic agitahon ha~ powet' 10 Franco's forces. Enough to recall here that the Popular caught nre, and as early as 1935, de la Rocque was able to hold Front governments in Madrid and Barcelona, when the fascists an impressive military review near Algiers. The analogy with marched, refused to arm the workers. The governments took no Spanish Morocco is complete to the last detail: in the honeymoon steps of their own to organize resistance. On the contrary, Azana of the Popular Front government (November 1937), the Stalio­ opened negotiations with Franco to come to terms. ists were constrained to complain that their press was banned from And, indeed, could it be otherwise? The camp of Franco Morocco, while the fascist Action Francaise came out in a Moroccan was saying: We, the serious masters of capital, the real spokesmen edition, calling for the assassination of the government members. of bourgeois society, tell you that democracy must be finishe~ if If the natives of North Africa are not to play in Prance the capitalism is to live. Choose, Azaiia, between democracy and role of Franco's Moors, the French working class must, now, make capitalism. Which was deeper in Azaiia and the liberal bour­ clear to the natives that it identifies its cause with theirs. 1Dat geoisie? Their democracy or their capitalism? They gave their can only be done by unconditional support of freedom of th.e answer by bowing their heads before the onward-marching ranks colonies from French domination. of fascism. In spite of the Azaiias, the workers of Barcelona stopped the In the name of the nght against fascism, the Spanish workers fascists. Almost barehanded, with only the arms they could seize and peasants acceded to the Popular Front governmenes advice: by raids on sporting-goods stores, with dynamite from construction we must not free Morocco, because that would be bitterly opposed jobs and some guns found in fascist homes, the workers conquered by France and England, whose colonies would be inflamed by the the revolting garrisons. Only when the workers were masters of example of Morocco. The result was that the Moors wreaked Catalonia, the decisive industrial sector of Spain, only then did vengeance on the Spanish mainland ... under Franco·s officers. the government at Madrid declare it would arm the people-ooly, Having thwarted the fascist coup in Barcelona, Madrid, that is, when it was no longer master of the decision. Valencia and, indeed, in the major part of the country, the workers As part of the deliberate propaganda to delude the French prepared to fight fascism by the most efficacious means possible: workers into linking their fate to an alliance with their "own" by their own strength, by their own organization of military and bourgeoisie, the Stalinists and socialists have connived with the economic means and by distributing land to the land-hungry Spanish bourgeoisie in concealing the fact that it refused to arm peasantry, in order to rouse the countryside against Franco. The the workers. A particularly foul example of this propaganda is workers seized and ran the factories and transportation, the peas­ at hand: Andre Malraux's "novel", Man's Hope. The third sen· ants took the land. Overnight a network of workers' and peasants' tence of the book reads: "At one o'clock in the morning the committees sprang up everywhere to organize the civil war and Government had decided to arm the people, and from three o'clock carry on production. The Catalonian and Madrid Popular Front the production of a union-card gave every member the right to governments had no power: the basis of their power, the army, bear anns." That first page is about Madrid. The "liberties" of had gone over to Franco, and DOW the armed masses were the the novelist here cover up a political falsification. The nrst fight only other power. There remained only to centralize these com­ with the fascists took place in Barcelona on July 19, and was mittees into a national council which would create a Workers' decisively won by the workers before the following day when the and Peasants' Government. Madrid government "agreed" to arm the workers "at one o'clock At this point, however, the Spanish Blums and Thorezes in the morning". came forward and said, as they are now saying in France: UWe No coalition with the bourgeoisie, left or right! No political need help and we can get it from the great democrades, and to support to a Popular Front government! Arming of the workers get it we must do nothing to frighten them. Besides, the left hefm'e the outbreak of civil war; arming of the workers inde-. bourgeoisie is also fighting with us against the fascists. We must pendently of the government and in spite of the government! therefore coalesce with the bourgeoisie in a government of all the These are the elementary lessons of the outbreak of the Spanish people against the fascists. This is not a civil war but a war for civil war. national independence against Hitler and Mussolini." But these lessons alone .are not sufficient for victory. Unfortunately the Spanish workers and peasants listened to them. It is not to be wondered at, when one reBects that not only the socialists and Stalinists talked this way, but also the France and Its Colonies anarchists and the left wing P.O.U.M. The tiny handful of reVO­ As Morocco was the military base for the Spanish civil war, lutionists was scarcely to be heard. The Azaiias, Companys & Co. so North Africa generally will in all likelihood act as a military were permitted to remain at the helm. February 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Page 41 Preparing the Capitulation been willing to betray the Spanish revolution. To repeat this false road in France would be absolutely fatal Slowly at first, then more and more quickly, the "liberal" for the French workers. Accept the help of the "middle classes"? bourgeoisie, immeasurably aided by the workers' leaders, rebuilt Of course! Fraternity with all who will take arms in hand against the shattered bourgeois state. Rebuilt, to take the place of the the fascists. Give the French peasantry a real stake in the struggle army which Franco now had, a "unified, disciplined" army sub­ by wiping out their indebtedness to the banks, the corporations ordinated to an officers corps recruited from the bourgeoisie and and the usurers, and by dividing among them the great estates­ the Stalinists, primarily. And with this coercive apparatus, they it is a myth that all French soil is tilled by small owners. Give took back the factories and the land, reestablished private property the small storekeeper and the white collar worker in the cities a and all that it implies. To what end, we have seen: capitulation vision of a future in a socialist world, in stirring contrast to the to Franco. Blows to the left, conciliation to the right, meant that capitalist world of hunger, penury and humiliation in which he while revolutionary workers were executed and imprisoned, pro­ now lives. These are the ways to the "middle classes". fascist officers were able to betray city after city, front after front: And take the power! Above all, take the power, and do not Malaga (where the Stalinist commandant, Bolivar, went over to surrender it to the "liberal" traitors, the French Azaiias. Put the the fascists), Bilbao, Gi jon, Santander (thanks to the suppression power in the firm hands of workers who will remain loyal to their of the CN.T. and the hegemony of the Basque bourgeoisie); own flesh and blood. Keep the power in the hands of those who the Aragon front of January 1938-thanks to General (comrade stand to lose everything by fascism. to the Stalinists) Sebastian Pozas; one could go on for pages. That, above all, is the lesson of Spain. Had the workers and Not to complete the revolution-this the workers acceded to peasants taken the power into their own hands, there would have originally because it would bring arms from the "great democra­ been no Bilbaos and no Barcelonas surrendered intact to the cies". But neither "comrade" Blum (Premier from June 5, 1936 fascists. There would have been no crawling pleas to the Blums to June 21, 1937), nor the succeeding Popular Front governments, and Chamberlains for arms, but instead a clarion call to the masses nor President Roosevelt, nor Anthony Eden, was moved by this everywhere to organize the shipment of arms and in the process renunciation sufficiently to provide effective arms against" Franco. to take the power in their own countries into their own hands, in The capitalist democracies-i.e., their governing classes, and their France first of all. The wave of revolutions inspired by the Rus­ lackeys-understood quite well that the day that Franco was driven sian Revolution of October, 1917 would have risen again, enriched into the sea would be the last day of Spanish capitalism. Why by all the intervening lessons. should the peasants and workers at that point permit Azaiia and Fight or die !-these are the only alternatives. Nothing is Companys to rule them? Precisely for this reason, the capitalists impossible for the working class when it follows a revolutionary of the world, no matter how democratic, preferred a Franco victory course! Boycotted by the whole world, fighting the whole world, to an anti-fascist victory inevitably followed by a workers' and the Russian workers and peasants threw back the White armies ,peuants' government. and the Allied armies on twenty-two fronts. The Barcelona of To help keep the Azaiias in power long enough to prevent July 19, 1936 is the Barcelona that we shall remember--iUld also too speedy a victory, which would have aided their rivals, Italy the Barcelona of January 25, 1939. Had the Barcelona proletariat and Germany, an occasional dribble of arms was permitted by the continued to follow in the footsteps of the Petrograd proletariat democratic imperialists. They graciously permitted Stalin to send of October 1917, it would not now be under the heel of Franco. some. He, for his part, determined to prove his usefulness to We have spoken of the lessons for the French working class. the great imperialist powers, did for them what they could not do Those lessons are also for us, here in America. Soon enough, the as well for themselves: his agents strangled the revolutionary same issues will face us. The tragedy of Barcelona will not be forces in Spain by every method which the G.P.U. has developed. fruitless, if we learn from it that it is the only alternative to the In the end, of course, neither the Spanish labor leaders nor Stalin road of the Petrograd workers in October 1917. got the alliance from the "great democracies" for which they had Felix MORROW Zionism and the Arab Struggle

OR OVER lWO AND A HALF years there has been war lished a national government responsible to a representative Legis­ F in Palestine, a war waged by an imperialist oppressor against lative Assembly. a colonial people. All the devastating measures employed by Brit­ And yet for more than two and a half years British imperial­ ism waged war against the whole people, refusing to extend to ish imperialism, the aerial bombardments, the razing of villages them the principle of self-determination. This is the very prin­ to the ground, the imposition of fines, the taking of hostages, the ciple which Britain the other day so joyfully proclaimed for -enactment of martial law, the establishment of concentration Czechoslovakia (imperialism has different standards for "colonial" camps, along with the old-time methods of bribery, intrigue, cor­ countries) and, what is more, so readily promised to the Arabs in ruption, all these failed to break the determined will of a united 1915. Two years ago British imperialism tried to frustrate the national aspirations of the Arabs by the partition scheme of the people to attain national liberation. After two and a half years of Peel Commission--a most ingenious and deceitful scheme. But it this oppression imperialism finds the Arab people more united did not succeed, and now another Commission has come to the and more determined in the fight than ever before. And all the conclusion that the ac~eptance of partition by British imperialism indications go to show that this time British imperialism will have and the Zionist leaders is not enough, that the scheme will not to give in to the Arab demands, will have to agree to a compro­ work because of its indignant rejection and condemnation by the mise. It should be kept in mind that the. demands of the Arab whole Arab population. In spite of the fact that British imperial­ bourgeoisie were very modest. They did not even ask for complete ism would greatly like to have in Palestine a strong outpost in the national and political inUependence. All they asked was: ( a) that form of a Jewish State and has done everything possible to facili­ immigration should be stopped; (b) that further sale of Arab tate it during the twenty years of the "Mandate,It nevertheless the land should be prohibited; and (c) that there should be estab- present war and the determination of the Arabs to fight it to a Page 42 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL February 1939 finish, the support the Arab cause is receiving from all ~e Near gressive, we have to support it, while at the same time warning East, the unwillingness of British imperialism to antagonlze ~ese the Arab workers of their treacherous bourgeosie. Arabian countries in view of the present precarious world sItua­ The struggle of two years has not been in vain. It has tion, all these considerations have forced British imperialism to weakened British imperialism, it has weakened the imperialist drop the old partition plan and through the recommendations of grip upon Palestine. It has also shown to the Orient and to a new Commission (the Woodhead Commission) to arrange a the colonial people that British imperialism is not so all-powerful compromise. as they thought. The fact that after twenty years of rule in From the short summary of the Woodhead Commission Palestine British imperialism has to re-conquer the country is of Report and from the vague declaration of the new British policy great importance. This vulnerability and weakness must give in Palestine and the press comments thereon, it seems that this tremendous encouragement to all the colonial people. Of special compromise will not give the Arabs national and political inde­ importance is this lesson of Palestine to the national liberation pendence, but will retain for British imperialism the military, movement in India, showing that the way is not in Gandhism political and economic grip on the country. It will, however, meet and passive resistance, but in active revolutionary mass struggle. the Arab demands concerning immigration and land. It seems that This lesson will not be in vain. Britain has definitely had to give up the cherished idea of a Jewish .11=* National Home as her safest outpost. The Mandate will be "modi­ It was the precarious position of the Jewish masses, the petty fied" and the Balfour Declaration will receive a "new interpre­ bourgeois, the handicraftsmen, the declassed elements, in Bastern tation." Europe during the second half of last century that drove the This incidentally puts an end to the Zionist dream of a Jewish Jewish intelligentsia to all kinds of Utopias and fantastic schemes. State in Palestine. Zionism stands or falls by these two conditions: Except for the small section that turned to socialism and Marxism, (a) unrestricted Jewish immigration leading to an eventual Jewish the favorite dream of the majority was territorialism. Later this majority, and (b) unrestricted Jewish land buying. No duping of found expression in the colonial schemes ()f Baron Hirsch and of the Jewish petty bourgeois masses all over the world, no collection Baron Rothschild, in the Angola and Uganda projects. Zionism of tribute from them and maintenance of a huge world-wide para­ eventually amalgamated all the various territoriaIist tendencies in sitic bureaucracy would be possible if these two conditions disap­ one political movement. peared. And those who have put their faith in the imperialist It was by no means a coincidence that· the Zionist movement "solution" of the Jewish question would be bitterly disillusioned should appear on the scene at the time when Africa, Polynesia to see this part of the Versailles system disappear together with the and the Near East were being carved up among the Great Powers rest. That the reformists, who have always supported the colonial and the world was divided into spheres of influence among tfK' policy of imperialism and who have now become the most ardent great monopoly trusts. Zioism was a direct product of imperial­ champions of the Versailles Treaty, should use all the arguments ism and logically became a playball in the hands of imperialism. of the Zionists against the Arabs, need not surpriSe us. That Sir The end of the World War, the redistribution of the colonial Stafford Cripps should employ the imperialistic pleas of the Jewish world at Versailles gave the opportunity for Zionism to step in fascist Jabotinsky is not at all astonishing. But it is very regrettable and demand its promised share. British imperialism, which had that some confusion has also crept into the ranks of Marxists. made the promise for financial and military service rendered dur­ From their casual remarks and even from their articles in the revo­ ing the war, would not hesitate a moment to forget this promise, lutionary press it is evident that the. authors have been swept off as it forgot so many others, if the fulfilment did not suit her own their feet by the widespread anti-Semitic wave and have fallen interests and schemes. British imperialism realized the great victims to nationalism. A clear, unambiguous stand in support of strategic value of Palestine for the Empire, beside its economic the colonial people in their struggle against imperialism is the value for trade and investments. It came in most conveniently nrst duty of revolutionary socialism. We must not be parties to for Britain to acquire a strong outpost in the Near East in the imperialist machinations, to Versailles, to mandates. We must form of the Jewish National Home. Such a community or State strongly demarcate ourselves from the Stalinists, who have be­ would always serve as a policeman for British interests, simply trayed the colonial people for the sake of People's Fronts, for the because, surrounded by a hostile Arab world, it would always have sake of placating imperialism in France and Britain. Let them, if to look to Britain for protection. British imperialism took up they will, throw spanners into the wheels of the Arab revolt and the Zionist cause and Zionism became a servant of British advocate moderation and a compromise that would leave British imperialism. imperialism and Zionism masters of Palestine. To blame British imperialism now for the present state of So far as we are concerned, we have made quite clear our affairs in Palestine (as comrade Rock has done in a recent article position in regard to the struggle in Palestine. (See Spark,. Nos. in THE NEW INTERNATIONAL), to accuse the British of sinister 16, 33, 41). Nothing will blind us or distract us from the funda­ machinations and of the international sowing of hostility between mental issue, namely, the progressive revolutionary struggle of a Arab and Jew, is both futile and incorrect. Firstly, because one colonial people against imperialism. We had and we have no does not blame the shark for having the characteristics of a shark. illusions concerning this struggle, whatever the outcome of the To expect British imperialism to act as a peacemaker, bringing present political manreuvres in Palestine. may be. Whether British the two peoples together and laying the foundation of cooperation imperialism will succeed by its new move for a round-table con­ and peace and mutual respect for each other's rights, is more than ference in breaking the Arab united front (as it succeeded before simple foolishness. It is a complete misunderstanding of imperial­ by a similar move in India) and by corruption succeed in side­ ism, as well as of the Zionist aim-a Jewish State in Palestine. tr~cking the national movement, or whether the present struggle And, secondly, it is incorrect. For British imperialism did eYery­ wIll go on, we are under no illusions, we have no doubt that, so thing it could to bring about a Jewish State. The fact that, in long as the national movement is led and dominated by the Arab spite of Arab opposition, protest, revolts, Britain fostered and national bourgeoisie and clergy, the struggle for liberation cannot encouraged Jewish immigration, the fact that there are already be crowned with success. It will terminate in a foul compromise today 400,000 Jews in Palestine, goes to prove that Britain was ~een the national bourgeoisie and imperialism. Time and again just as interested in a Jewish State as Zionism was, even if thIS has been proved by history. But, so long as the fight is pro- Britain's interest was for the furtherance of her own ends. From the day of the Zionist rejoicing over San Remo, the * Tla. S.Park is the off~ organ of the Workers Party of South Africa (Fourth IDternational), from which we take this article. day of proclamation of a Jewish National Home, revolutionary February 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Page 43

socialists all over the world have declared open hostility towards were not original; they were only imitating the bourgeoisie in this scheme as an imperialist venture. We have warned the other parts of the world. Jewish workers against the great Zionist bluff of the solution of Yet this is quite natural and logical. But the whole hideous­ the Jewish problem, against their unity with capitalism and im­ ness and real harm of Zionism . is revealed when we hear the perialism, and have warned them of the bitter disillusionment that arguments, claims and apologies of the Socialist-Zionists in and is in store for them. From the beginning it was clear to us that out of Palestine. The Poale-Zion (at one time the main Zionist­ Zionism meant not a National Home in Palestine, not a place of Socialist party) were going to build socialism in Palestine, "in refuge, not an outlet for emigration on a small scale, not the spite of British imperialism and Jewish capitalism". "We," they building up of some agricultural communes, but that it meant a said, "are going to build a socialist core in this capitalist shell. Jewish capitalist State as a part of British imperialism. It was The main thing is the Kvutzah, the agricultural communes, the dear to us that any such scheme mllst be at the expense of the k.olhozes. This is the real thing." With this idea of building naJive Arab population. For there are no empty spaces in the communism in Palestine they seduced and misled thousands upon world today, and any colonial development under imperialism thousands of boys and girls. This was the mainspring of the means the enslavement, oppression and exploitation of the native Halutzim movement, the pioneers for Palestine. With the sweat population. No camouflage, no ingenious device on the part of and bones of these young idealists the agricultural colonization the Jewish bourgeoisie and their chauvinistic petty bourgeois has been accomplished-for capitalism, to be sure, not for com­ supporters .can suppress this basic fact. The imperialist invaders munism. The cemeteries of Palestine are filled with these everywhere find hundreds of good excuses for plunder and rob­ Halutzim, these pioneers. But where are the communist colonies, bery and then cover up this with the most "noble" ideals and the socialist core of Palestine? They have shared the fate of all motives imaginable. The Jewish bourgeoisie moreover was not the other schemes for building socialism on islands or on chosen slow to find such ideals and motives. spots in South America-all the Utopian schemes of the last hundred years, beginning with Robert Owen. But even if some We need not waste time and space in refuting the common­ K vutzahs had been nurtured and preserved like a plant in a place. argument of the historic "right" of the Jews to Palestine by conservatory, how could this be today a factor in the life of reference to the similar "historic" right of the Roman Empire Palestine? So much for the empty talk of the Poale-Zion outside to the British Isles. We tum rather to the "moral" right of the Palestine. 'suffering Jews to a State. This has been one of the main planks Within Palestine all the Jewish labor and trade union organi­ of Zionist' propaganda all along, but since Hitler has let loose zations accepted the political programme of Zionism, that is, his bestial, sadistic persecution of the Jews in Germany and Palestine as the Jewish National Home and eventually a Jewish Mussolini has followed suit, this a~gument has taken the dominant State relying on British imperialism with its bayonets and power, place. Zionism is trying to cash in on the sufferings of the perse­ uncompromising hostility to the national aspiration of the Arabs aited Jews in Europe. Zionism is endeavouring to exploit the and their struggle for national independence. Also in the eco­ natural and world-wide sympathy of every decent man for the nomic sphere an out-and-out imperialist and chauvinistic policy. oppressed German and Italian Jews, in order to further its own Laws providing for the eviction of Arab tenants from their land­ predatory aims in Palestine. But these two things have no con­ holdings, and then the barring of these landless peasants from nection whatsoever. Sympathy for an oppressed minority has the labor-market in the towns in accordance with the policy of nothing to do with the cravings of a bourgeoisie for a State "100% Jewish labor in Jewish enterprises". The speeches of wherein they themselves shall be able to exploit their own workers these labor and trade union leaders of the Histadrul, of the and still more the Arabs, the cheap native labour and the land. Hashomir Hazoir, etc., the speeches of Ben-Gurion and Burgin, The sufferings of oppressed and exploited Jewish minorities stand make the most shameless reading even in the annals of <;hauvinis­ no connection with the Jewish bourgeoisie, with Zionism in in tic labor parties. Their actions correspond with their speeches. Palestine, with the oppressors, exploiters, plunderers. During the present ruthless war waged by British imperialism Zionist writers and journilists, apologists for imperialism, during two and a half years, in the course of which innocent have been telling the world for the last twenty-five years that a people are bombed, villages are razed to the ground, families are Jewish State will be something different, that it will be a model left destitute and homeless, not a word of protest has been forth­ to the world. No classes, all for the welfare of the community, coming from these labor and "socialist" organizations. Just the for the "Jewish" ideal of righteousness and justice. What Jewish opposite: Support and spurring on of the imperialist oppressors petty-bourgeois heart did not throb before this picture of "hope by word and action. Open scabbing and strike-breaking in every and beauty?" Now for eighteen years these fools have had the political strike declared by the Arabs in protest against British chance of seeing this hope and beauty at work. Indeed, the paws brutality, martial law, cruel humiliations. This is the record of and claws of the Jewish bourgeoisie were not in any way inferior the Jewish labor and trade unions, the Histadrut, who barred to the same weapons wielded by any greedy bourgeoisie. There Arabs from membership. was the same policy of grabbing, of squeezing out the native And then the apologetic critics of Zionism from the "left," population from the land, and so the production of a landless so-called socialists and communists, who are fond of talking about peasantry as a reservoir of cheap labor. The same speculation in 'Marx and dialectics, but whose socialism goes no deeper than la.nd, the same over-capitalization, polarization of wealth and their skin, are shocked that the wrath of the Arabs is directed not poverty, pauperization. The same greed for more territory­ only against British imperialism, but also against the Jews in Transjordania. The same chauvinism in language and persecution Palestine. These liberals are unable to understand why, on meet­ of the language of the bulk of the Jewish workers-Yiddish. ing with a united Zionist front of bourgeoisie and labor, a hostile And the same arguments: The Arabs are inherently lazy; the united front, siding with their enemy, British imperialism, and Arabs can go somewhere else; the Arabs are on a lower level of supporting it, the Arabs should come to the conclusion that all civilization. The same arrogance on the part of the invaders: We Jews in Palestine are Zionists and therefore their enemies. This have brought you culture, social services; we, of a higher civiliza­ conclusion is, to be sure, a wrong one, but where are the signs tion, have made the waste land fertile; we must have a higher that would make this clear to the Arabs? standard of living. And even the same white, civilized labor The other argument employed by these apologetic critics of policy as in South Africa! Oh, no! The Jewish bourgeoisie has Zionism is that the Arabs make use of weapons supplied by not produced anything different from what any other bourgeoisie fascist countries. The "moral feelings" of socialists like Sir produces. Even in producing a Jewish fascism in Palestine they Stafford Cripps are shocked by the Arab disregard for their Page 44 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL February 1939 democratic sensibilities and therefore they cannot support the this, the better. For the continuation of the old Zionist-imperiaWi: Arab cause. These philistines would like to prescribe special laws course will drive deeper the wedge of hatred and chauvinism, will and special weapons by means of which the slaves might break widen the gulf between Arab and Jew, and will foster perpetual their chains! Trotsky has answered these philisttnes in his article, strife and civil war, endangering the very existence of the Jewish "Learn to Think" (NEW INTERNATIONAL, July 1938). community. And in saying this, it is not the Zionists we have But their main and most dangerous argument is that the in mind. We mean the great mass of the Jewish workers and Jewish immigration into Palestine is in the interests of the Arabs small peasants. They can solve the Jewish problem of Palestine and therefore should be supported. Such a Marxist writes: "If very easily. What is needed is solidarity and cooperation of many Jews have benefited from Zionism, a large number of Jewish and Arab workers and peasants, and a united struggle for Arabs have benefited equally and at no expense to themselves. an independent free Palestine of workers and peasants, liberated Such momentum as the Jewish revival of Palestine has given from the shackles of imperialism-capitalism. But for this they renaissance of its Arab population must inevitably continue to must first break with their chauvinistic leaders, who have chained re-vitalize and repopulate this section of the community." (The them to the chariot of Zionism-imperialism. It will then be easier Intelligent Man's Guide to Jew-Baiting, p. 103), and further: for the Arab workers to free themselves from the· influence aod "Palestine has served to absorb refugees from countries unable to leadership of the equally chauvinistic effendis and mullahs. Once absorb them. It will continue to do so, and in this it has justilied class unity is achieved, the solution of both the Jewish and the itself." (Ibid., p. 115.) Here the usual argument of imperialism Arab question is assured. cOncerning its beneficent work, an argument used by imperialism * * * in China, India, South Africa and any colonial or semi-colonial The same confusion that exists regarding the Jewish problem country, is cleverly connected with the immigration question. in Palestine is also evident in connection with the general Jewish Unfortunately the same sort of argument is used by comrade Rode question. The anti-Semitic wave and bestial persecution, which in his article in THE NEW INTERNATIONAL (Oct. 1938), where is today stronger· and more universal than at any other time in he says: "From all this it is evident that the liritish know full modern history, makes the problem more acute and urgent. But well how to exploit the elementary needs of the Jewish workers, its solution cannot be found in any panacea. The solution of the namely, immigration and colonization, neither of which contra­ Jewish problem lies in socialism. Lenin saw thIS thirty-live years dicts the real necessities of the Arab masses." Indeed! Mr. W eitz­ ago, and history since then has proved it conclusively. The man could not say better. It is the immigration question which national problem in Russia found its solution through the October is the main cause of the Arab struggle. This point requires care­ Revolution of 1917. If the Thermidorian period has brought ful examination. retrogression in this sphere, as in any other, ~'Uch retrogression International socialists, beginning with Marx and Engels, does not in the least invalidate the fundamental proof of Lenin­ were always for free, unrestricted immigration and for complete ism tested in practical life during the years 1917-1924. At the freedom of movement as a part of our democratic rights. It was same time the various solutions offered by the bourgeoisie and the reformist labor leaders and the trade union bureaucrats who petty bourgeoisie, including that of Austro-Marxism and that of opposed the rights of free immigration for the sake of their the Jewish Bund, proved their bankruptcy under test. Since Ver­ narrow craft interests and to the detriment of the interests of sailles, Wilson's self-determination, the minority status of the the working class as a whole. Now it is capitalism in decay that League of Nations, efc., etc., the position of the national minori­ is doing away with all the democratic rights that it formerly pro­ ties has become intolerable and is going from bad to worse. claimed and fought for. In the post-war period all countries, one Scattered throughout the world there are from sixteen to after another, have closed their doors to immigration. The work­ eighteen million Jews. Everywhere they are a national minority. ing class in retreat after the defeats was not in a position to resist Everywhere, except for the three million in the Soviet Union, the this abolition of its democratic rights. And it is precisely for this bulk of them are suffering from oppression and persecution. As a reason that the light for democratic rights, as the urgent task of result of the universal cancer of anti-Semitism, fostered by the today, stands in the forefront of the program of international ruling classes, their suffering is greater than that of any other revolutionary socialism (Fourth International). It would there­ national minority. Since Hitler's coming to power and the growth fore be ridiculous to assert that we are against free immigration. of fascism in every country, their sufferings and anxieties have But the Jewish immigration into Palestine is something en­ enormously increased. For fascism, crushing the working class tirely different. It is an immigration with the avowed aim of wherever it advances, destroying the workers' organizations, trampling upon and destroying the rights of the native population crushes the Jews at the same time. This proves again Lenin's in that country. It is an invasion under the protection of imperial­ truism, that the fate of the Jews in every country is intrinsically ism and for the strengthening of imperialism. Zionism-and by bound up with the fate of the working class. Even in the Soviet this we mean all the Zionist parties, from the Revisionists to the Union their fate is bound up with the victory or defeat of social­ so-called socialists-has openly proclaimed that the aim of this ism. Restoration of private ownership of the means of production immigration is to attain a majority in Palestine and reduce the as a result of external defeat in war, which would mean of course Arabs to a minority in a then Jewish State. Against this aim to a fascist regime, would bring in its wake massacres of Jews by defeat them politically and economically the Arab people, the the "White" bandits. natives in Palestine, have waged this war for two and a half years. As has been proved by the latest events in Gennany and The immigration question was and still is the pivotal point in Italy, capitalism in decay has become cannibalistic. In any case, their struggle. Not to support the Arabs in this just, defensive there is no longer any place for liberalism and bourgeois democ­ demand means to side with British imperialism and its tool, racy, to which the Jewish petty bourgeoisie along with reformism Zionism, against a native oppressed people. might look for salvation. The sole form of rule for decaying Palestine as a solution of the Jewish question was never even capitalism is fascism. Just as there is no special remedy to bring a Utopia. It was a big Zionist bluff. Palestine, as a Jewish capi­ about the deliverance of the working class from under the iron talist State and outpost of British imperialism, was a product of heel of fascism, except the road of revolution, so for the Jews Versailles, and it failed together with the rest of Versailles. In so there is no special remedy except the advance in union with the far as Zionism, against the express wish of the n4tive population, working class along the revolutionary road. Only the emancipa­ fostered this imperialist venture, relying on the force of British tion of the working class from the yoke of capital, only socialism, bayonets, Zionists took the risk and must blame themselves for can bring emancipation to the Jews. the failure. The sooner the Jewish people in Palestine realize CAPETOWN, Nov. 1938. The SPARK l=ebrtlary 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Page 45 Haya de 1a Torre and Democracy

A PROGRAM OF A MILITANT STRUGGLE OR OF ADAPTATION TO AMERICAN IMPERIALISM

HE AUGUST 1938 number of the Argentine review Clari­ Strange as it may seem, some of the A.P.R.A. leaders declare T dad, publi.shes a letter on the Peruvian situation by Haya de that an alliance of the A.P.R.A. and, in general, of the latin-Amer­ la Torre. * We won't apply either a Marxian or socialist criterion to ican national revolutionary parties with the revolutionary proletariat this document; Haya de la Torre wrote the letter as a democrat and of the United States and other imperialist countries hasn't any prac­ we shall consider it from that angle, primarily from the democratic tical meaning because the workers of those countries would not be point of view. A good democrat is better than a bad socialist, but interested in the condition of the colonial and semi-colonial coun­ precisely from this point of view, the letter of Haya de la Torre has tries. We consider this point of view suicidal in the full sense of great limitations. the word. While imperialism endures, the colonial peoples will not be able to liberate themselves and the oppressed peoples will be able It seems that Ha,a de la Torre limits the dangers which to defeat the imperialist bourgeoisie only by allying themselves with threaten Latin America only to Italy, German and Japan. He does the international proletariat. One cannot but fail to see that on this not consider imperialism in general but only one of its varieties, fundamental question, the position of the most opportunist leaders fascism. He declares categorically: "In case of aggression, we all of the A.P.R.A. is corroborated by Haya de la Torre's letter. It is certainly think that the United States-the guardian of our liberty self-evident that he who considers the North-American imperialist -will defend us." Could it be irony? Of course not. Speaking of bourgeosie the "guardian"" of the colonial peoples' liberty cannot the possibility of intervention against the Latin-American continent seek an alliance with the North-American workers. The underesti~ by the fascist "aggressors", the author declares: "While the United mation of the rc5le of the international proletariat on the colonial States is strong and alert, those dangers are not immediate but . . . question arises inevitably out of the effort not to frighten the they are dangers:" It is not possible to speak with greater clarity. "democratic" imperialist bourgeoisie, above all, the bourgeoisie of 'The A.P.R.A. leader searches for a powerful protector. the United States. It is very clear that he who hopes to find an ally The United States only exists as a "guardian of liberty" for in Roosevelt, cannot become an ally of the international proletarian Haya de la Torre; we see in that country the most immediate dan­ vanguard. This is the fundamental line of demarcation between the ger and, in a historical· sense, the most threatening. With this we policy of revolutionary struggle and the unprincipled policy of don"t wish to say that the governments of the Latin-American coun­ adaptation. ries should not utili%e the antagonisms between the different coun­ ties and imperialist groups in order to defend themselves. But the Haya de la Torre considers the unification of the latin-Ameri­ tadkal utilization of such antagonisms on certain occasions, accord­ can countries necessary and finishes his letter with this formula­ ing to the concrete circumstances, is one thing; to base a strategical "We, the representatives of the United Provinces of South .Amer~ calculation upon the idea that the United States is a permanent de­ ica,'" In itself this idea is absolutely correct. The struggle for the fender, is something else. We consider this opportunist position not United States of Latin America is inseparable from the struggle for only erroneous but also profoundly dangerous because it creates a the national independence of each one of the Latin~American coun­ false perspective and hinders what is the real task, the revolutionary tries. However, it is necessary to respond clearly and precisely to education of the people. this question: Which roads can lead to unification? One can con­ clude from the extremely vague formuhe of Haya de la Torre that In what sense can one qualify the United States as "the guar­ he hopes to convince the present governments of Latin America dian of the liberty" of those very peoples it exploits? But every such that they should unite voluntarily ... under the "guardianship" of act of "defense" would imply the complete reduction to slavery of the United States? In reality, only through the revolutionary move­ the country "defended" by the United States. The example of Brazil ment of the popular masses against imperialism is it possible to demonstrates that the higher "guardians" are not at all interested in attain that great end. It is a difficult road, we admit, but there isn't "liberty". The relations between Washington and Rio de Janeiro any other. have not become worse, but indeed have improved after the· coup d' el4l in Brazil. The reason is that Washington considers the Vargas We note, moreover, that this letter of a programatic character dictatorship a more docile and sure tool of American imperialist in­ does not say a single word about the Soviet Union. Does Haya de ]a terests than revolutionary democracy. This is, basically, the position Torre consider the U.S.S.R. the defender of colonial and semi· of the White House in regard to the whole southern continent. colonial countries, their friend and ally, or does he agree with us Can it be that Haya de la Torre starts out with the premise that under the present regime, the Soviet Union represents the that the imperialist domination of the United States is a "lesser greatest danger for the weak and backward peoples whose inde~ evil"? But one must say openly in this case: democratic policy de­ pendence is far from being complete. The silence of Haya de Ja mands clarity. Moreover, until when will this evil be the lesser? To Torre is also determined in this case by openly opportunist con­ ignore this problem is to risk too much on chance. The United siderations. It appears that de la Torre wants to hold the U.S.S.R. States is ruled by the same historical laws dominating the European in "reserve'" in case the United States will not support him. But he capitalist centers. The "democracy" of the United States at the who desires many friends will lose the few he has. present time is nothing more than one expression of its imperialism. These are the ·ideas that come to our mind after reading the Due to the frightful decay of North American capitalism, democ­ A.P.R.A. leader's letter; although we limit ourselves to purely racy will not hinder the "guardians" of liberty from displaying in democratic criteria. Are our conclusions erroneous? We shall listen the near future an extremely aggressive imperialist policy, directed with pleasure to the answers of the A.P.R.A. representatives. We especially against the countries of Latin America. This must be only want their replies to be more precise, more concrete and less pointed out clearly, precisely and firmly and this perspective must evasive and diplomatic than Haya de la Torre"s letter. be placed at the base of the revolutionary program. MEXICO 01Y, D6(. 1938 * ~ya de ~ Torre is the leader 01 the Peruvian A.P.R.A. (Po~ Anleriean Revo­ [Tnmalated by Bernard Ross.] lutionary • ~lb,!-nce ) a ~erful. pett)'-bourgeoia, reformht and anti-imP-erialiat move­ DIRt w.bicb m the 1936 preddeDtiaI eIeCtioua received over 80% of the popular vote. Diego RIVERA Page 46 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL February 1939 The German Left and Bolshevism I NTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE Soviet Union throughout the International Significance of Lenin rule of the epigones has consisted exclusively of the struggle against "Trotskyism", to the point where it finally perished on this In defense of Luxemburg's "anti-Bolshevism" comrade diet and all that is wafted to us today from Stalin's realm is the Shachtman correctly points out that even Lenin erred in the esti­ icy air of the grave. The struggle against Trotsky, which was mation of the factions of the German social democracy. Lenin's conducted under the sign of canonizing Lenin and Bolshevism great mistake consisted in this, that he applied his organizational. as Stalin understood them, also collided with the disturbing shade literary, strategical and tactical plan only to Russia, and pursued of Rosa Luxemburg. And upon the ukase of the ruffian and it to its final consequences only within the Russian movement; illiterate to whom not very deferential history, by one of its odd that, indeed, he regarded Bolshevism as the representation of the dialectical capers, confided the heritage of one of the most gifted tendency of Bebel and Kautsky on Russian soil. So great was scientific minds of all times, a pack of yelping curs flung them­ Lenin's confidence in Kautskf that he paid no attention to the selves upon the corpse of the great revolutionist that was thrown difference that arose in 1910 between Kautsky and the Ge11JWl before them. At that time it was the self-evident duty of every left, and thus missed a highly favorable opportunity to create a Marxian publicist who takes his. task seriously, to come forward firm support for Bolshevism in Germany, to extend the Bolshevik in defense of the memory of the great proletarian leader and to plan internationally. And in the last analysis, this mistake, this underscore as they deserved to be her progressive sides, her im­ failure, this exclusively national application of the essentially mortal merits. In contrast to Stalin's kept young rogues, Rosa international Bolshevik plan, is the deepest reason for the isola­ Luxemburg had to an outstanding degree those qualities which tion of the Russian Revolution and, therefore, for the Stalinist distinguish a true revolutionary leader: scientific seriousness in Thermidor and impending fall of the Soviet Union. Or in other the treatment of every question, unselfish absorption in the cause, words: The gifted Leninist works, What to Do? and One S'*P self-discipline and exemplary courage. Forward, Two Steps Backward of the first yean of this century If, however, the question is once more put today of the are in no wise of specifically Russian-as comrade Shachtman content of the differences between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg­ also seems to assume-but of international significance. The ideas and it must be put again, in so far as this question relates to the developed in these books on the relationship of spontaneity to solution of present tasks--we cannot content ourselves with a conscious plan, on the role, organizational structure and tasks of simple obeisance to the memory of Rosa Luxemburg. Besides, it the revolutionary party and their relationship to the proletariat would mean today to profane instead of honor Rosa's memory if and the other classes of society, the relationship of Marxian science we were to allow the discussion on this theme to be influenced and the labor movement-all these ideas have nothing specifically in the slightest by the Stalinist publications. Shafts from this side Russian in them. cannot touch Rosa Luxemburg. As an ideological current Stalin­ In his work which appeared three years after the victory of ism is dead. It does not stand before history as accuser, but as the October Revolution, The Infantile SicknesJ of Communis"" accused. Lenin then tried to make the Bolshevik conception of 1903 On the other hand, there are today numerous currents which accessible and understandable to the West European workers. counterpose to the Bolshevik conception, so to speak, a Luxem­ The question why this attempt failed should be treated anew in burgian conception. These gentlemen see in Stalin's total police connection with the hapless March adventure of the German dictatorship and the Moscow Trials the direct result of Lenin's Communist party, and we reserve this for a later article. Here it "centralism" and deduce that Rosa Luxemburg has remained is a question only of the following: whoever studies attentively correct in her polemic against Lenin's alleged overestimation of the Infantile SickneJJ and compares it with the early writin8S of centralized leadership. This at first blush fascinating argument Lenin, will find again the same ideas and the same conceptio~ overlooks, nevertheless, the fact that if Lenin is to be made even if in highly popularized form. That, however, would refute responsible for Stalin, it is no less justified to load Rosa Luxem­ the view that Lenin did not consider his ideas ot 1903 as "export burg with the responsibility for the rule ... of Hitler. And commodities". In 1903, Lenin did not think of any exporting actually there is in both assertions a kernel, only a kernel of truth, only because he imagined that he was importing into "backward" but it is just this kernel that must be discovered. Russia the ideas of Bebel and Kautsky which had long ago become Comrade Max Shachtman, in an exceptionally interesting unavowed truisms in "progressive" Germany, in order to have article on this theme ("Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg," THE NEW them prevail over the revisionist, opportunistic and centrist cur­ INTERNATIONAL, May 1938), endeavored to explain the differ­ rents of Martinov and Martov; whereas in reality it shoUld have ences between Lenin and Luxemburg by the historic diversity of been a question of counterposing the Bolshevik conception, the Russian and German conditions. Now such an investigation of program of What to Do?, to the whole theory and practise of the the objective background of the divergences is naturally entirely Second International, the Bernsteinian as well as the Kautskyan necessary for an understanding of them. But the investigation and Luxemburgian tendencies. cannot and should not stop there; otherwise we run the risk of It would, however, be wrong to ignore the enormous qua1i. falling into Austro-Marxism, that is, a Marxism which confines tative difference in the historical mistakes of Lenin and Rosa itself to demonstrating, with the aid of the Marxian method ( a Luxemburg. While Lenin succeeded in creating the first truly caricature of the Marxian method), that everything happened as Marxian party, which led the Russian proletariat to the summits it had to happen, and which thus eliminates from history the of power and thereby gave the world proletariat a tremendous responsibility of the subjective factor. In reality, however, we all impulsion and a vast mass of new points of View, experiences know that the revolutionarr labor movement up to now foundered and lessons; while Lenin's conception of 1903 found its highest not on the objective situation as such but on its subjective subju­ confirmation in the pianfully directed October uprising; Rosa's gation. Then if we are to overcome the crisis of the labor move­ cQnception suffered a terrible shipwreck in January 1919, and the ment, we must pitilessly lay bare the ultimate causes of this sub­ German left presented us, besides a series of remarkable characters jective failure and make the balance-sheet of this dearly paid-for and martyrs to the cause, only the bitter lesson of a new defeat. historical experience part of the inalienable theoretical capital of At bottom, the disastrous mistake of Rosa Luxemburg was the Fourth International. concentrated in the question of the role of the party, i~ the February 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Page 47

definition of the social democracy "as the self-movement of the mores.' But if the masses will correct the mistakes of the party working class", which she counterposed to the brilliant Leninist out of their own initiative, why then the demand for Bernstein's definition of "the revolutionary social democrats as Jacobins bound expulsion in 1899? In 1910, Rosa saw throtlgh the pedantic up with the working class". "The social demoaacy as the self­ officialdom of Kautsky and attacked him sharply in a series of movement of the working class" can never be anything but trade articles. Yet again she does not draw the final consequence of unionism transferred to the political sphere. Such a social democ­ her judgment. Although she stops her Sunday visits to Kautsky racy will never shake bourgeois society to its foundations. It will and thus gives new evidence of her spotless and exemplary char­ either run its head vainly against the solid walls of the bourgeois acter, she is nevertheless lacking politically in the same measure state or voluntarily submit to the latter as it stands. The prole­ of resoluteness. If the party was ravaged by Bernsteinism and arian class as a whole is, under the conditions of capitalism, not in even the "Marxian center" of the Neue Zeit had come to a stand­ a position to raise itself to such a level of conscIOusness as to be still in the routine of the "tactic that stood the test for forty able to confront the bourgeoisie in a superior manner in all fields, years", then it was absolutely necessary to uniurl the Marxian to destroy bOurgeois authority and to replace it with proletarian banner anew and in the eyes of all, with the formal question authority. Capitalism would not be suppression, exploitation and whether to constitute a new party immediately or to remain for a slavery if that were not the case. That is just 'Why the problem while inside the social democracy as a firmly-disciplined factio~ is to create out the specialists closely bound up with the working playing a minor role. In any case, however, it was necessary to class a firmly disciplined organization which, with the aid of come out against the reformism and centrism of the social democ­ Marxian armor, destroys bourgeois authority first in theory and racy in every single question and permanently, to drive it out of then in practical reality, and leads the "self-mavement" of the reality instead of letting oneself be driven out by it. The German working class beyond the limits set for it. left never raised this question clearly, much less did it have a firm plan for resolving it. Two Mistakes Now Rosa Luxemburg had the advantage over Lenin of Luxemburg's illusions observing the German party at closer range. That is why she It is known that Lenin first regarded as a HohenzoJlern for­ recognized its conservative character as early as 1904. She sees gery the number of the V orwiirts which brought the report of that the party is stuck in the mud of tradition, refuses to raise the vote of the German social democracy in the Reichstag. This up new problems, limps behind the masses. And what conclu­ is not to be wondered at and is in accord with his previous atti­ sions does she draw from this? "The conscious initiative of the tude, i.e., with his illusions relative to Kautsky and the German party leadership in the shaping of tactics plays only a slight role." center. But Rosa, who had seen through the opportunistic char­ "The fighting tactic of the social democracy is the result of a acter of the German party ten years earlier, who experienced the continuous series of great creative acts of the experimental, often worst disillusionment above all at the Jena congress of 1913- elementary class struggle." "The unconscious precedes the con­ what was her attitude? She gave way to convulsive sobbing in scious, the logic of the obj ective historic process precedes the the V orwiirts editorial board, thought she was going mad, yes, subjective logic of its bearers." "The only subject upon whom even the thought of suicide came to her mind. Again a reaction the role of guide now devolves, is the mass-I of the working which wrings from us the greatest human sympathy and respect class." In short, in her despair over the conservative inertia of for this singular woman, but which nevertheless also clearly dis­ the social-democratic apparatus in Germany, Rosa Luxemburg closes the main political weakness of the German lefts. She had created what Lenin characterized with full justice as the "not-to­ seen through the Bernsteinians and the Scheidemanns, the Legiens be-taken-seriously nonsense of organization and tactics as a and even the Kautskys and Hilferdings, and in spite of it she was process", although, to be sure, he overlooked the fact, as we have steeped in illusions about the social democracy, in spite of it she already emphasized, that Rosa was completely in the right in her believed that this Bernstein-Kautskyan social democracy would characterization of the German party. But even here Rosa com­ pass a great historical test. In reality, if the German left had mitted the grosser mistake. She separated form from content, she drawn the final consequence from its criticism of the official social combatted centralism as such, instead of counterposing the central­ democracy-and whoever does not draw the final consequence in ism of the revolutionary Marxists to that of the opportunists. In politics, lands unfailingly under the wheels-it would have been this way, Rosa, in spite of the fact that she agreed with Bolshe­ prepared for the 4th of August, foretold it and warned against vism in most political questions at the international congresses, it. It is clear that in this case the catastrophe of the 4th of August was driven to the same position to which Menshevism fled in the would not have taken on anything like its scope, the reorganiza­ face of Lenin's intransigence. And history prepared the same ion of the vanguard would have proceeded much more easily and fate for both of them, deciding each time in its own manner for; the revolutionary maturing accelerated much differently, and the "centralism": while the Bolsheviks drive the Mensheviks out of German revolution in general would have taken on a different the Soviets, Noske succeeds in flinging Spartacus out of the course. Thus even Liebknecht allowed himself to be taken by chamber of the German revolution and shutting the door be­ surprise by the decision of the Reichstag fraction and it took hind it. months for a tiny handful to assemble again: Rosa Luxemburg, The lack of final consistency accompanied Rosa throughout Franz Mehring, Klara Zetkin, Karl Liebknecht, Leo Jogsches, her political life, whereas Lenin, precisely because of the relent­ Paul Levi. The profounder reason for the illusions of the German lessness with which he carried out a once recognized necessity, left with regard to the whole social democracy was founded, in was in a position to accomplish his historic mission. turn, in its main error, in the disastrous ignoring of the reciprocal In her work written in 1899, Social Reform or Social Revolu­ relation between party and masses. Rosa Luxemburg and her tion, which will forever remain a pearl in Marxian polemical friends consoled themselves with this, that in the great historical literature, Rosa Luxemburg rightfully deman,..;cd the expulsion crtsis the masses would correct the party and sweep it along. Now of the Bernsteinians from the party. In the second edition of this they had to witness the fact that there was nothing for the masses work, which appeared in 1908, she omitted all the corresponding to do in this situation except to follow-even if perhaps while passages. Bernsteinism had eaten its way into the flesh of the gritting their teeth-the instructions of the party. German party like a fungus; the flesh was decomposing. But Yet, while Lenin immediately draws the last consequence what new consequence did Rosa draw? Non6 at all. She threat­ from the 4th of August with his customary keenness: "The Sec­ ened the petrified leadership: the masses will teach you new ond International is dead, long live the Third!" and now seeks Page 48 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL February 1939 to develop, also in the International, all the elements to a Bolshe­ National Assembly after the victory, that is, possessing power they vik conception of things (see, for example, hh criticism of the exercized the dictatorship-Rosa suffered the misfortune of becom­ Junius brochure), the German left continues to remain steeped in ing the prisoner of a party which renounces the National Assembly its fundamental mistake. The same erroneous conceptions on the before the victory, which, as a small minority, undertakes the hope­ role and task of the party which Rosa Luxemburg defended in less attempt of imposing its ultimatum on the vast majority.. Al­ 1904, recur in an article which she published on March 31, 1917 though she herself spoke for participation in the elections and in the Duisburg organ of the U.S.P.D., Der Kampf. "The Sparta­ lamented the "immaturity" of the congress, she did not recognize cus League tendency," it says, "does not counterpose another pro­ that her own disorganizing organizational prindples had suffered gram and a fundamentally quite different tactIc to the Independent shipwreck here, that in her own way she had created a Utopian­ social democracy, which supply at every moment and as a perma­ radical instead of a Marxian party. No surgeon can operate w1th a nent structure the basis of a separated party existence [that's just dull knife, no Marxist can act with an undisciplined, Utopian party. what the problem was! W.H.], rather it is only [!] another his­ And still Rosa does not dare to carry out the break with this torical tendency of the whole movement of the proletariat, from Utopian element, she herself becomes the victim of. the organiza­ which follows, to be sure, a different attitude in almost every tional fetishism with which she wrongly reproached Lenin, and she question of tactics and organization. The opinion, however, that goes to the operating table of history with a dull instrument. Pos­ from this follows the necessity or even only the objective possibility sibly it is only because she has still not yet grasped the fact that the of now jamming the' workers into different, carefully separated success or the failure of the revolution depends upon her own self, party cages corresponding to the two tendencies of the opposition. upon her own policy. And thus we also find once more in the is based upon a conventicle-conception of the party." Spartacus program, adopted, characteristically, unanimously by the From the "not-to-be-taken-seriously nonsense" of the organi­ same congress which decided on abstention from the elections, the zation as a process, runs a straight line to this no less curious old mistakes. Just read the following passages: "In tenacious strug­ philosophy of an organization which, although it does not counter­ gle with capital, breast to breast in every factory, by direct pressare pose to the opportunistic tendency any independent program and of the masses, by strikes, by creating their permanent organs of any fundamentally quite different tactic, nevertheless does embody representation, the workers can achieve control over production and "another historical tendency". With such light ideological baggage finally the actual direction." "The Spartacus League is not a party did Spartacus march in the German revolution. The catastrophic which seeks to reach dominion over the working masses or through effect was not to be averted. the working masses. The Spartacus League is only [1] the most conscious part of the proletariat, which, at every step of the whole broad mass of the working class points out its historical tasks." It The Gennan Catastrophe follows clearly that Rosa Luxemburg had an entirely inadequate pic­ ture of the course of the proletarian revolution. She conceived of Came November 9, the "spontaneous people's revolution", the proletarian revolution as a sort of new November revolution, as which the S.P.D. resisted to the very last minute, but for which a chain of strikes and uprisings which finally merge into a general neither the Independent S.P.D. nor Spartacus had taken the initia­ strike or even a popular uprising. With her the role of the tive. The November revolution in Germany could overturn the solid patty was confined to summoning the masses to action, until finally the structure of capitalism just as little as could the February revolution power will fall into the lap of the party as a ripe fruit, something in Russia; in both cases they were only able to eltminate the mon­ archistic embellishment. The real work first began after November. like the social democracy reaped the fruits of the first revolution. It is of course to the honor of Spartacus that it recognized this and She did not recognize that it is the task of the party to assemble the masses and to discipline them like troops for a battle, and that refused to be party to the general round of fraternization which the leadership of the party, like a gifted Field Commander or General always followed every popular uprising organized "from below" Staff, must have the strategic plan of battle in its head and eotrf'fIl"t and victorious at the first shot and into which such "Bolsheviks" as it into a reality. Stalin also fell in February 1917. StilI, Spartacus committed the re­ verse mistake and adopted an ultimatist attitude towards the masses. . It was the ignoring of this task of the party that misled Sper­ The same Rosa Luxemburg who in her criticism of the Russian tacus to the worst mistake that a revolutionary party can ever com­ revolution had reproached the Bolsheviks for the lack of democracy mit, namely, to play with the insurrection. For the Spartacus irutur­ and the suppression of the Soviet minority, refused to be elected rection of January 1919 was nothing but a completely planless, into the Executive Council of the Berlin Workers' and Soldiers' positively inconceivably naive playing with the fire of insurrection. Councils together with the social democrats of the Ebert tendency. The narrow-minded counter-revolutionists, Hohenzollern sergeaIt­ The masses did not accept this ultimatum of the Spartacus League, majors, stupid fanatics of Order and bloodhounds of the bourgeois­ and the result was an Executive Council without Spartacus. The fur­ ie, Noske and Ebert, set a trap for Spartacus and Spartacus fel11nto ther result was that Spartacus did not get the slightest influence the trap with covered eyes. And thus did also Liebknecht, Luxem­ upon the elections to the first German Council Congress and re­ burg and Jogisches suffer the typical fate of all German rerohrtlon­ mained without representation in it. Liebknecht had to confine him­ ists, which the exceptionally talented poet Oskar Panizza, who tarr self to impotent attempts to conquer the Congress "from without". went mad, epitomized in the unsentimental phrase: "Until now the These events ought now to have sufficed to show Spartacus what its Germans have unfortunately known only the passive fonn of be­ task was: namely, Lenin's program of April 1917. Patiently explain, heading: being beheaded.;' While on the contrary, the RusSMm un­ restrain the small revolutionary minority from ill-considered steps, der the leadership of the Bolsheviks proceeded to the realization of penetrate into the mass organizations and all the classes of the popu­ the prediction made as far back as 1896 by the same Panizza~ "Rus­ lation, expose and polemically annihilate the retormists and cen­ sia, that lurking brain, will some day burst out frightfully and the trists, in order finally, at the historically ripe moment, to proceed to people of the Bakunins and Dostoievskys will gain its freedom by the insurrection. a fallen head." Between beheading and being beheaded, however, The founding congtess of the communist party, which finally between active and passive, between Lenin and Luxemburg, ~ is no compromise. takes place at the end of December, decides however to drive the line of abstentionism to the point of absurdity, to boycott the elec­ Nov. 10, 1938 Walter HHLD tions to the National Assembly; there is even a discussion on with­ drawing from the mass trade unions. And Rosa, who had just ac­ [Max Shachtman will comm~t on thia article in an early iwue cused the Bolsheviks because they renounced the institution of the of the review. ED.] February 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Page 49 Behind the Fartners' Vote HE ELECTIONS DEALT a powerful blow at the Roose­ and refrained from voting the Democrats into office by the great­ T velt administration and Democratic control of the national est landslide in the history of American politics. government. 1be Democratic majority in the Senate, which If their curtailing crops were the basic reason for defeating had been 57 before the elections, was reduced to 41 after the the Democrats, then conversely the Democrats would have been election returns. That a more severe defeat would have been voted into office overwhelmingly in 1938. For wheat production, certain if all Senators were up for election instead of the one­ which was so low in 1934, had risen to 874 million bushels in third provided by the Constitution is proved by what ~appe~ed. in 1937. This was 250 million bushels more than 1936 and 200 the House of Representatives. There the DemocratIC maJorIty, million more bushels than could be consumed in the United 233 before the elections was slashed almost two-thirds and re­ States at the current rate of consumption. Cotton production, duced to 88. which had fallen so low in 1934, rose to an all-time high in Not only were the elections a blow at the reformist wing 1937 of 18.7 million bales. Corn harvested as grain, which had of finance capital, represented by the New Deal Democrats, but dropped to 1,253.8 million bushels in 1936, returned almost it was also accompanied by the virtual decimation of the Pro­ to normal in 1937 with an output estimated at 2,343.6 million gressives and the Farmer-Laborites. Before the. elections the~e bushels. These hard facts shatter to smithereens the myth that were five Farmer-Laborites and seven Progressives--twelve 10 they had limited production. Had the fate of the Democrats all. Only four survived the election returns. The middle ground risen and fallen with the production of crops, they would have upon which all these reformists were trying to stabiliz~ capital­ been voted into office with far greater acclaim today than in 1934 ism was crumbling beneath their feet. As usual, the tight-rope and 1936. walkers and the unconnected "friends of labor" were the ones The fact is, the farmers did not defeat the Democrats be­ to feel most sharply the political impact of the crisis. cause the latter curtailed the crops. The plain facts show that they did not. And that is precisely why the farmers tossed the TIle most important reason for the Democratic defeat was Democrats out of office--because they did not curtail the produc­ the revolt of the middle class and the farmers. The farmers were especially important, defeating the Democratic candidates tion of crops. For this reason it would be disastrous to interpret the vote with monotonous regularity throughout the middle and far against the Democratic party as a vote against the New Deal west. The farmers will become politically more and more im· aims in agriculture. On the contrary, it is a defeat for the Demo­ portant with the passing years. It would be wise to see why crats because they did not carry out in practise the aims of the they turned against the Democratic Party. New Deal. The clue to what these aims are is given by the one One reason given is that the farmers were hostile to the cur­ word "adjustment"--adjustment of prices upward in order to tailment of crops imposed upon them by the New Deal. The increase profits for the farmers; adjustment of production down­ implication is that the farmers like to produce big crops, that the wards in order to make it equal domestic demand and in this enforced curtailment of production ran against the farmers' way ensure a more stable and higher price; adjustment of pur­ "instinct of workmanship" and that they considered the New chasing power of the farmers, through control of production and deal economy of scarcity immoral, unnatural, and ungodly. For prices on the one hand and through government subsidies on the these and similar reasons they turned upon the Democrats and other, in order to make it equal the one they had during 1909- cast them forth from office. 1914, the golden age of the farmers. Such an explanation has much in its favor. It has been The farmers defeated the Democrats because they did not widely publicized by the Republicans. It can be easily accepted, fulfill the first aim of the New Deal: the adjustment of prices Since it is current coin. Moreover, no one can question the truth -upward. Prices averaged considerably lower during the period of that the farmers are hostile to the Democrats--witness the elec­ Roosevelt regulation. This becomes crystal clear when we com­ tions-and the Democrats are friendly to curtailment of crops. pare the average prices for wheat, corn, and cotton, the three Therefore, and the logic seems so obvious, the farmers are also great crops around which the whole agricultural program is hostile to curtailment of crops. Many a muddle-headed re­ built, and see how they fared during the five years preceding formist has repeated this logic and it is beginning to seep into the New Deal and the five years of regulation. The price of our own ranks. wheat during 1928-1932, the five years preceding the New 1£ this were true, the N&w Deal should have been over­ Deal, averaged 69 cents a bushel on the farm. In the years 1933- whelmingly defeated in 1934. By that year the crop-curtailment 1937, which were five years of regulation, the price had fallen to policy of the Roosevelt Administration was in full swing. The 50 cents, a drop of almost thirty per cent. In cotton, too, the production of wheat was curtailed to 526 millions of bushels, Democrats failed to fulfill the aims of the New Deal, since the and one had to hark back to 1896 to find a wheat crop that was price here also fell about thirty percent, being cut from 11.28 so small. Corn was down to 1,478 million bushels for the cents to less than 8 cents a pound on the farm; and in corn, the United States, and even the year 1880 had a greater growth. 57 cents a bushel received on the farm during Democratic regula­ Cotton was down to 9.5 million running bales, the smallest tion was one half what they got before. The farmers wanted crop produced in the twelve years preceding. If this explanation higher prices.-Here is the cause of the farm revolt. The New were true, and the crop-curtailment policy of the New Deal is Deal promise was higher prices. The Democratic betrayed their the reason why the farmers voted the Democrats out of office, promise and the farmers. The farmers kicked them out of office. then they should have voted them out much more quickly in 1934. Nor, for that matter, did the Democrats succeed in adjusting Perhaps the proverbial backwardness of the farmer may be in­ production to equal domestic consumption by curtailing crops. voked. Then certainly the farmers would have awakened by 1936 This second aim of the New Deal had to be fulfilled if prices were to be stabilized at a high level. As has been shown before, * The editors find themselves in disagreement with a number of the points ra.laed in this article and in particular with the apparent failure of the writer to the Democrats succeeded at the beginning in curtailing produc­ undentand the rOle' of agriculture as a whole in the economy of monopoly .2pitaBsm or to differentiate in his analysis among the various strata of the tion. The farmers elected them then. They failed to curtail crops agricultural poPlllation. They nevertheless believe the material presented to be of in 1937. The over-supply in relation to the domestic demand, in sufficient interest to merit publication. The columns of the magazine wiII be OpeD ., comment and di5(".us.~ion of the problems herein raised.-ED. addition to the general recession, drove farm prices down pre- Page 50 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL February 1939 cipitately during the latter half of 1937 and the first half of sinking submarine, the capitalist groups are grasping for the same 1938. life-giving oxygen-profits. The destruction of the prices and This double failure-failure to keep up prices and keep profits of the farming class is essential to keeping up the prices down production-shattered the vision encouraged by the New and profits of industrial and finance capital. Deal-purchasing power parity. Not that the Democrats did Their anomalous position makes the farmers an easy ad­ nothing to aid the achievement of this vision. They contributed herent of fascism. Mulcted by industrial and finance capital, enough to give the hopes a foundation in reality. "Cash income betrayed by the Republican and Democratic parties, tortured by from the sale of farm products and from government payments in economic decline, the farmers cannot rest. The fascists, whose 1937 totaled $8,521,000,000 (according to the estimates of the grandiose promises and aggressive actions that seem to indicate Bureau of Agricultural Economics) or 7.6 percent more than the a desire for fulfilling their promises, are certain to attract them. $7,920,000,000 received during 1936 and about double the The only alternative for the revolutionary party is to put $4,328,000,000 from marketings in 1932," says the Survey of forward and carry into action a concrete program directed to Current Business of March 1938. But this was far short of the driving a wedge between the most oppressed strata ,of the agri­ 11 to 12 billion dollars that the farmers averaged between 1923 cultural population and the well-to-do farmers, putting the op­ and 1929. And while the purchasing power of the farmers went pressed of the farm areas in motion behind the revolutionary up much faster than their income, because of government aid, leadership of the city workers. This will break: them off from the recession that swooped down struck them even harder. 1937 ideological and political submission to capitalism. But we can marked a turning point in their onward march to purchasing free them from their ideological submission only if we free power parity. "The year began with the purchasing power of ourselves first. To ensure this, never subordinate ourselves to farm products at the highest level since November 1925; but, prevailing "sentiment" and the capitalist propaganda organs with prices received declining sharply in the course of the year which dominate it. We must ourselves decide perspectives after and prices paid showing relatively little change, the ratio dropped analysis of economic trends, class needs and the level of the class from 101 in January to 81 in December," continues the same struggle instead of following the "sentiment" of the moment. issue. This 20% slash in the purchasing power of the farmer continued and grew in 1938, and showed the Democrats unable DAVID COWLES and unwilling to achieve the aims of the New Deal for agri­ culture. That the farmers should defeat the Democrats was to be ex­ pected. Sentiment played quite a subordinate part in the elections. Karl Kautsky The Democrats had not delivered the bacon-higher prices and purchasing power parity. The farmers were willing to do any­ HE DEATH OF Karl Kautsky has passed unnoticed. To thing-restrict the bounty of nature, destroy the plenty inherent T the young generation this name says comparatively little. in mechanized agriculture, mutilate their "instinct of workman­ Yet there was a time when Kautsky was in the true sense of the ship", submit to the reactionary aims of the New Deal and forget word the teacher who instructed the international proletarian the myth of individualism to take farm relief-so long as prices vanguard. To be sure, his influence in the Anglo-Saxon countries, and purchasing power could be restored. Farmers in only two especially also in France, was less considerable; but that is ex­ communities of the 140 surveyed by the thorough Rural Trends plained by the feeble influence of Marxism in general in these in Depression Years were quoted as saying, when they received countries. On the other hand, in Germany, in Austria, in Russia the subsidies, "We don't believe it's right but if Uncle Sam in­ and in the other Slavic countries, Kautsky became an indisputable sists on giving away money we might as well get ours." And Marxian authority. The attempts of the present historiography of even here the feeling of righteousness was harnessed safely to­ the Comintern to present things as if Lenin, almost in his youth, profits. had seen in Kautsky an opportunist and had declared war against However, the farmers' swing from the Democrats to the him, are radically false. Almost up to the time of the World Republicans was the agitated action of men whose day is ending War, Lenin considered Kautsky as the genuine continuator of the and whose doom is sealed. For neither Republicans, laFollette cause of Marx and Engels. Progressives, nor any other capitalist party can save them. The This aberration was explained by the character of the epoch, cause of their doom is this: The farmers as a class have become which was an era of capitalist ascension, of democracy, of adapta­ antagonistic to the needs of society and to the requirements of tion of the proletariat. The revolutionary side of Marxism had the dominating forces of modern capitalism. changed into an indefinite, in any case, a distant perspectil'e. The The antagonism today between the farming class and the struggle for reforms and propaganda was on the order of the day. needs of society is basic. Society requires an increasing output in Kautsky occupied himself with commenting upon and justifying order to raise constantly the per capita consumption of the great the policy of reform from the point of view of the revolutionary majority, and in order to increase constantly the standard of living. perspective. It was taken for granted that with the change of the But the farmers strangle the productive forces and restrict the objective conditions, Kautsky would know how to arm the party bounty inherent in modern agriculture. Based as they are upon with other methods. That was not the case. The appearance of capitalist property-relationships the farmers, as a class, must an epoch of great crises and of great shocks revealed the funda­ reduce acreage and output in order the better to boost up declining mentally reformist character of the social democracy and of its prices and profits. This economic struggle between profits and theoretician Kautsky. Lenin broke resolutely with Kautsky at the plenty is the basis for the fundamental conflict between the needs beginning of the war. After the October revolution he published of society, and the needs of the farmers. a merciless book on the "renegade Kautsky". As for Marxism, The farmers as a class come into conflict not only with the Kautsky, from the beginning of the war, behaved incontestably like needs of society but also with the requirements of the dominating a renegade. But as for himself, he was only half a renegade from forces of modern capitalism. High prices for farm goods have his past, so to speak: when the problems of the class struggle were a depressing effect upon the prices of manufactured goods sold posed in all their acuteness, Kautsky found himself constrained to in the cities. Higher profits for the farmers mean lower profits draw the final conclusions of his organic opportunism. for industrial and finance capital. Agriculture, whose profitable Kautsky undoubtedly leaves behind numerous works of l'alue expansion was at one time indispensable to the expansion of in the field of Marxian theory,which he applied successfully in the industry and finance, is now a drag upon both. Like men in a most variegated domains. His analytical thought was distinguished February 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Page 51

by an exceptional force. But it was not the universal creative and political decline. intelligence of Marx, of Engels, or of Lenin: all his life Kautsky The foundering of the German and Austrian social democ­ was, at bottom, a talented commentator. His character, like his racy was also the foundering of all the reformist conceptions of thought, lacked audacity and sweep, without which revolutionary Kautsky. To be sure, he still continued to affirm to the last that politics is impossible. From the very first cannon-shot, he occupied he had hopes of a "better future", of a "regeneration" of de­ an ill-defined pacifist position; then he became one of the leaders mocracy, etc.; this passive optimism was only the inertia of a of the Independent Social-Democratic party which tried to create laborious and in its way honest long life, but it contained. no a 2¥2 International; then, with the debris of the Independent independent perspective. We remember Kautsky as our former party he returned under the wing of the social democracy. Kautsky teacher to whom we once owed a good deal, but who separated understood nothing of the October revolution, showed the petty­ himself from the proletarian revolution and from whom, conse­ bourgeois savant's fright before it and devoted to it not. a few quently, we had to separate ourselves. works imbued with a spirit of fierce hostility. His works in the Leon TROTSKY last quarter of a century are characterized by a complete theoretical COYOACAN, D. F., Nov. 8, 1938. Is Austria a Nation? THE NATIONAL QUESTION FOR THE AUSTRIANS IN LIGHT OF THE PERMANENT REVOLUTION

.. FTER AUSTRIA'S annexation by Germany, the Stalinists consciousness-of the most advanced and representative strata J-\l\ issued a call to the "People of Austria" in which they said: and not backward or declassed cretins! But we leave it to the ... Defend yourself, resist the foreign invaders ... Catholics and social­ Austro-Marxists to refute the Stalinist nonsense with scientific ists •.• join together .•. into a front of all Austrians ... All party dis­ thoroughness and therewith to expound some commonplaces. We tinctions retreat into the background before the sacred task today con­ refer below to an Austro-Marxian article devoted to this purpose fronting the Ausuian people ..• to drive Hitler's soldateska out of Austria on the question: Is there an Austrian nation?We consider a debate ..• Make a reality out of the slogan: "Rot-'wew-rot bis in den Tod!"l The Austrian people has been ravished but ... by its own strength and with this article to be far more fruitful. Some information on a with the aid of the world-front of peace, a free, independent Austria few facts which are perhaps unknown to the reader appears, how­ will rise again . . . ever, to be indicated. In August 1938, the Central Committee of the Communist The Stalinists did indeed attempt to defile the labor move­ Party of Austria declared in a manifesto: ment by solicitations to the Schuschnigg gangs.2 The absurd The Austrian people has accomplished its state, economic and cultural theory of an Austrian nation was propagated in the past only by evolution ... under other conditions than in the [Gennan] Reich. By a few monarchists, a few snobbish intellectuals and-the Christian vir'tueof its independent history, of its will to independence, the Austrian Social party. The latter was founded towards the end of the people was and became ... an independent whole, a people - in the last century by Dr. LUger as the party of the little man, of the family of Central European peoples-capable of living by its own strength, no different than the German-speaking Swiss. decaying middle class, and was equipped with a Catholic-social­ anti-Semitic, demagogic doctrine. It was a nest of corruption, At . the beginning of August 1938, the Central Committee survived the war, and continued to rot along with the petty of the C.P.A. adopted a resolution in wbich it regrets having bourgeoisie. Dollfuss-Schuschnigg took over from it a rather "underestimated the possibility of a union of the labor move­ extremely narrow mass basis and something like an ideology­ ment with sections of the Schuschnigg camp and of the Father­ primarily "Austriandom". It was this dictatorship that glorified land Front." the "Austrian nation", something like a community interested in Furthermore, the existence of the Austrian nation, violated folk lore which carefully nurtures the barbaric dialect of a village by Germany and hence under nationally alien dominance, is again idiot. The ideological level of this dictatorship and its "Austrian­ emphasized. It says literally: dom" is positively unimaginable. It lost its scanty support almost A special weakness of the [communist] party lay in the fact that it did entirely to the Nazis. Nobody ever took the "Austrian nation" not, punctually and decisively enough, put clearly before the popular seriously, hardly even &huschnigg. That was reserved for the lDasses the fact that the Austrians had developed historically into a nation fY/ their own and are not a part of the German nation ••• (All italics Stalinists. mine.- C. C.) In Nos. 9 and 10 of the Austro-Marxian Soziaiistische Kampf, These are only a few juicy examples from the flood of a spokesman named F. Valentin refutes the Stalinist standpoint official and semi-official Stalinist enunciations of the same content: with considerable diligence. He quotes Otto Bauer, who defined Long live the People's Front with the &huschnigg gangs, long the "nation" as a community of character resulting from com­ live the independent Austrian nation! That is, back to Versailles! munity of destiny, and Kautsky, who missed in this definition the It is not easy to demonstrate exactly to a non· Austrian the community of language. Valentin takes delight in refuting the unbelievable idiocy of the Stalinist discovery of the "Austrian C.P.A. by-Stalin, and qUQtes his work, Marxism and the National s nation". Nations have arisen time and again through the fusion Question. In it the criteria of the nation are enumerated as: of different peoples but also through the splitting apart of origin­ community of language, territory and economy and a psychical ally identical peoples. Centrifugal and centripetal forces have singularity revealed in a community of culture. On one page always been at work at the same time. In the long run, the after another, Valentin shows that none of these criteria is appli­ political-social processes culminate in psychological acts: in the cable to the so-called Austrian nation. The "different economic formation of a new national consciousness. In principle, there­ and political conditions of life" of the Austria9-s as compared with fore, the rise of an Austrian nation would by no means be ex­ other Germans, as adduced by the Stalinists, are no argument: cluded. The Stalinist idiocy lies, however, in the most primitive most nations and national states arose in the struggle against these confounding of the worst provincialism of the most retrograde I Without success. The Vienna workers, summoned for help by the creatures strata with a new national culture, that is, with a new national of the murderous Schuschnigg regime on the very eve of the ,AJlSchlws, demoD­ Itrated under the slogan: "Down with the Nub-not for Schuschniggl" 1 Red-white-red to the very death I-the slopn or the Schuschnigg gangs :I This is ,h, theoretical work of Stalin before the war which is inceIsaDtly (Hcimwehr) . quoted at proof of his fertility. Page 52 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL February 1939

"different conditions", in wars and revolutions, as was especially An instructive glance backward at the theory and practise the case with Italy or Poland. Austrians and the other Germans of the Austro-Marxists is in place here: Otto Bauer's well-known undoubtedly speak the same language; they have a common terri­ book on the national question proposed a rigid fixation of the tory to the extent that it was divided only by political (dynastic spiritual properties of the nations inside of Old-Austria and and then Versailles) frontiers. Geography does not represent the thus satisfied neither the "legitimate" claims of the bourgeois slightest hindrance. revolution nor the dynamically progressive character of the loos­ Historically too there is a direct connection reaching from ening, fusion and shifting of the historically national complex the Middle Ages to 1866, the Peace of Nikolsburg, in which begun by the industrial proletariat. And so the Austro-Marxists Bismarck's Prussia forced its rival, Habsburg-Austria, to quit the fought "on the basis of facts" for fossilized Austria instead of German League. The political-economic raggedness of the Aus­ propagating its destruction. Valentin emphasizes the former trian Gennans was distinguished in no respect, until 1871, when struggle of his party comrades against the nationalist degeneration the Hohenzollern empire was founded, from that of the other of the Slavic socialists in Old-Austria. Against the same degenera­ Germans. The progressive forces of the young German bour­ tion of his own part-which is grounded in accomplished facts geoisie rebelled in Austria, just as in the other countries populated -he has no objections. by Germans, against the dynasties and the economic and political It was not the revolution that smashed Austria, but rather dismemberment: the revolution of 1848, despite the dilletante victorious imperialism of the West! But the latter immediately contrary contentions of the Stalinists, was not different in Gennan­ accomplished facts upon whose basis the Austro-Marxists Austria than in the other German territories--an unsuccessful promptly took their stand. These facts were the so-called na­ struggle for national unification against the political boundaries tional states of Central and Eastern Europe (torture chambers which the media:val dynastic powers had drawn across the body of the nations as well as of the productive forces), along with a of the people. Even the peasant wars at the beginning of modern crippled Austria condemned to independence and bunger. times, raised to an especially Austrian tradition by the Stalinists, Although Renner, Bauer and Co. declared Austria to be a part were of course only a part of the German peasant wars. Valentin of Germany in 1918--the Entente forbade the Ans(hluss! Valentin proves by Marx, Engels and Lenin that there was never any doubt is wrong on that score too! The Sudeten-Germans were turned over about the Austrian Germans belonging to the German nation. to the Czechs and then to the Nazis by no means "because of He instructs the Stalinists that the development of the nations is the fascist imperialism" of Germany .but as a result of the recog­ a bourgeois-democratic affair and in no caSe that of a revolutionary nition of the accomplished facts of Versailles on the part of Valei)­ proletarian party. He recalls that the German-Austrian "indepen­ tin's party comra.Ies in Vienna, Berlin and Prague. (The Sudeten­ dence" since 1918 was in no way the product of will but rather German branch of the Austro-Marxists hurried into the Prague of compulsion and that, moreover, even the Stalinists did not dare government!) And what did the Austro·MArxists learn from dispute the fact that the Sudeten-Germans, alloted to Czechoslo­ their glorious history? The continued recognition of accompJiJheJ valda by the treaties of Versailles-St. Germain, belong to the facts: the decisio.n that the arena of the social revolution is fixed German nation. He is against the dismemberment of Czechoslo­ by the boundaries drawn by Hitler! Thai is the meaning of Ihe vakia because "in view of the fascist imperialism" of Germany, slogan of the "All-German revolution". proletarian interests take precedence over the right of national The nation as an essential historical category exists approx­ self-determination of the fascist majority among the Sudeten­ imately since the French Revolution. The productive forces of Germans. young capitalism revolted successfully at that time against tile We cannot dwell here upon the individual distortions of the historic feudal districts. They found in the language communities Marxian standpoint as Valentin counterposes it to the Stalinists. that had arisen for the most part under the old regime the more We develop below the standpoint of Marxism. But what policy or less adequate room for their most favorable unfolding. The does Valentin propose for Austria? The one formulated by the process of the rise of the nations is as contradictory as the forces Austro-Marxists about six months ago at a conference in Brussels: that created them. The existing degree of development, historical "In view of the accomplished fact" they declared that the libera­ residues, geography and other factors constituted centripetal ami tion of the Austrian people from Nazism is possible only "by an centrifugal cu"ents. Thus, by splitting off from their less pro­ All-German revolution ..." Tearfully, Valentin records that gressive ancestral kin, nations arose out of the Hollanders and first the Habsburgs and then the treaties of Versailles-St. Germain the Flemings. The Provencals became French, but the Catalans prohibited the AnschluJJ of the Austrian-Germans to Germany­ (and Portuguese) did not become Spaniards. Italians, Poles and which manifestly made it impossible. others became nations despite the political-economic boundaries, We know that history is not at all made by the ominous while Czechs, Hungarians and Slovaks remained in common with "historical process" alone, but to an appreciable degree by men other peoples. The inhabitants of the U.S.A. and of Latin America (that is, not by Austro-Marxists). In the complaint about the became independent nations despite their language community "forbidden" Anschluss lies the whole Austro-Marxist soul. A with the mother country. The attempt to fix within a definition fawning respect for the power of others--called "accomplished the "nation" which is constantly in a process of change, does not facts" -is the obverse side of the habitual impotence to accom­ appear to be very meaningful. plish any facts on one's own, and the historical mission of always Evolution is not even. The bourgeoisie-not even in Europe demonstrating scientifically how and why the proletariat can do --did not everywhere resolve its national task! Thus, in partic­ nothing right now. But history does not brook being joked with. ular, the result of the defeat of the democratic revolution of What must happen, happens. When it does not happen , 1848 was the uneffected union of the Gennans. History punished through the forces of progress-then it happens anyway, but them for it by a half-union under-the Hohenzollerns, and there­ through the forces of reaction with a reversed sign! Since the with bestowed upon them all the burdens of capitalism and only proletariat, hampered by its treacherous leadership, did not a modest share of those cultural streams of young nationalism liberate the productive forces in time from the fetters of private which at one time so richly fertilized the victorious democracies, property by means of planned socialist economy, there followed especially France. It can be said-with exaggeration, to be sure, -their strangulation through fascist economy! Since the Soviet but for the purpose of bluntness: the Germans never became a United States of Europe was not created by the proletarian revolu­ nation! (For while the nation creates the national state, it creates tion, there arose-the League of Nations! Instead of the libera­ and develops, in its turn, the nation.) Then couldn't it be said tion of the nations by the world revolution, there followed­ that Hitler is progressive at least in a (ertain sense? Hasn"t he "national unffication" by fascism! united the Gennans, like a sort of belated Cavour, created the Feb ..... ry 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Page 53

German nation, even if under the fascist knout, and thereby forces from the national fetters and thus eliminates the very enforced what the Versailles victors had forbidden? Wasn't the premise of .the democratic postulate of national freedom at the An.ubluSJ legitimate in this sense? Our Austro-Marxist, with his moment when it is fulfilled. For· lack of any need, the "nation" "All-German revolution" would have to reply in the affirmative and with it national freedom proves to be as superfluous as Ie­ in order to be consistent! ligidn under socialism. Yet the AnJehllis wa.r historically as illegitimate as co"ld be! Hitler's "Anschlllsl' is therefore historically just as illegit­ For the past 150 years the productive forces have developed imate as the Austro-Mamst "All-German revolution". Hitler enormously. The national boundaries are now the same strait­ freed a nation which continues to exist (if it does exist) only jacket as were once the feudal. The "nation" is a category because the reaction and the Austro-Marxists have prevented the of the bourg~is-d~ocra.tic epoch. In the youth of capitalism, it appearance of the truth-only latent because oi the gruesome was progressive, which IS not at all the case in the twentieth coerdon-that it is long since the "nation" has ceased to be. The century. In Germany, a progressive postulate ha.r become reaction­ German nation was never born, it rotted inside the womb of ~, be/Me i~ was filifilledl The "nation" has long ago lost its history! Hitler did not bring a child into the world-but a ncb ~ono~lc and cul~ral functions and continues to appear stinking corpse. only 1n a Slngle-negattve-function: as national oppression! And the Austro-Marxists? They take the corpse as a "given National emancipation, the creation of the nation must never­ fact" and think of settling down in it after the famous "All­ theless-apparently paradoxically-be carried through. But, so German revolution". But this will not prevent the proletariat from to say, only.for a moment. The productive forces no longer pennit fulfilling victoriously its historic mission, th(J social revoilltion Ofl ~ co~plet1on of the bourgeois revolution, for their field of oper­ a wMJd scale, and from dropping the Austro-Marxists upon that ~ 1~ ~nd the ethnographic frontiers. Hence, also, cap­ particular dust-heap which history long ago prepared especially italism IS lOe~orably imperialistic, and it can no longer carry out for them. any democratIc postulates. Only the victorious proletariat cart. But by means of its victory it liberates precisely the productive &WI, November, 1938. Charles CROMPTON~ A Letter and Sotne Notes D EAR COMRADES: tute. This way of acting seems to me incorrect and vexatious, even if it happens that its defenders say things which are, in themselves, Here are a few pages of discussion on Kronstadt 1921 in which quite right. . . . I reply simultaneously to L. D. Trotsky and to A. Ciliga. I should PARIS, Oct. 31, 1938 Victor SERGE, like to see THE NEW INTERNATIONAL, where our comrade Trotsky * * • has several times criticized my views on this important subject. Reply to Trotsky In publishing in your August number a letter which I sent to you, you followed it with commentaries which did not come to my BY A NOTE published in America at the end of July, Leon attention, as I did not receive that number. I am sorry. I am told Trotsky finally specified his responsibilities in the episode of Kron­ that you raised the question of my attitude towards the P.O.U.M. stadt. The political responsibilities, as he has always declared, are I would not have failed to answer you fundamentally. Since I am those of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist party not acquainted with your text, I confine myself today to two re­ which took the decision to "suppress the rebellion by military force marks: if the fortress could not be induced to surrender first by peace nego­ tiations and then through an ultimatum". Trotsky adds: "I haVe" 1. Our comrade L. D. Trotsky wrote recently that "it is neces­ never touched on this question. Not because I had anything to con­ sary to learn to think.... " On this point (as on many others) I am ceal but, on the contrary, precisely because I had nothing to say .... entirely of his opinion. It is even necessary, I think, to learn to dis­ 1 personally did not participate in the suppression of the rebellion' cuss and that means not to mix up with historical subjects subjects nor in the repressions following the suppression . .•." of present-day policy; not to inject into the discussion of a question concerning the Russian revolution in 1921 the polemics concerning Trotsky recalls the differences which separated him at the the Spanish revolution in 1936-1938. The Marxian method is more time from Zinoviev, chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. "1 st(Jppea serious and more concrete; or if one wishes to discuss, for the pur­ a.ride," he w.r.:ites, "completely and demonstratively from this af­ pose of broad syntheses, all the great questions at once, it is well fair." charitably to notify the reader and the interlocutor of the fact; for It will be well to remember this after certain personal attacks mr part I would excuse myself.... directed against Trotsky out of bad faith, ignorance and sectarian spirit. For there is room, after all, in history for distinguishing be­ 2. On the P.O.U.M., however. This heroic and persecuted tween the general political responsibilities and the immediate per­ workers' party alone represented revolutionary Marxism in the ranks sonal responsibilities.t o~ the Spanish revolution. It gave proof of clairvoyance and a mag­ ruficent courage. It was all the more up against it by the fact that "Whether there were any needless victims," continues even in the best days the uncomprehending and brutal attitude of Trotsky, "I do not know. On this score I trust Dzerzmnsky more the. Third International towards anarchists and syndicalists had than his belated critics.... Victor Serge's conclusions on this made Marxism unpopular in the labor movement of Spain. Never­ score-from third hand-have no value in my eyes ....tt Dzer­ theless, it was not infallible, far from it. And I do not dream of zhinsky's conclusions, however, are from seventh or ninth hand, ~epro~ching it for that, for I know of nobody, really, of nobody, for the head of the Cheka did not come to Petrograd at that time mfalhble down there. On the other hand, nothing is easier than for and was himself informed only by a hierarchical path on which a a dozen comrades to meet, and then announce that they possess the lot could be said (and Trotsky knows it better than anybody). As monopoly of the full truth, the only correct theory, the infallible 2 As certain of th~ attacks to which I allude have come from the anarchist preIS, left theme ask to Ij)eClfy here my thoug!J.t by ~ean. of a recent example: T~e comrades recipe on how to make the revolution succeed--and thenceforth to ~ • P.9.U.M. anc! of the C.N.T. havlDlt been penecuted and aSS&SSluted with ~pUDlty ID t!te Spanish republic while the C.N.T. (lIlfticipated in various capacities denounce as traitors, opportunists and incompetents the militants JD • ~.leou governm~t, the C.N.T. obviously bears its share of the Political !'esponSlbility f~r these crunes against the labor movement, though it would be un­ who are at grips with that reality which events and masses consti- Just to render Its leaders fJersofUllly respoosible for them. Page 54 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL February 1m

for myself, residing in Petrograd, I lived among the heads of the conflict of the bureaucracy and the revolutionary workers, it is the city. I know what the repression was from eye-witnesses. I visited conflict of the organization of the revolutionists-and the back­ anarchist comrades in the Shpalernaya prison, imprisoned more­ ward ones, the laggards, the least conscious elements of the toil­ over in defiance of all common sense, who saw the vanquished of ing masses. Under cover of this conflict and of the danger, the Kronstadt leave every day for the ordnance yard. The repression, bureaucracy fortifies itself, no doubt. But the healthy resistances I repeat, was atrocious. According to the Soviet historians, mu­ that it encounters-I mean those not based upon demoralization tinous Kronstadt had some 16,000 combattants at its disposal. or the spirit of reaction-come from within the party and the other Several thousand succeeded in reaching Finland over the ice. The revolutionary groups. It is within the Bolshevik party that a COQ­ others, by hundreds and more likely by thousands, were massacred flict arises. in 1920, not between the rank and file-'-which ;1 il1tNt at the end of the battle or executed afterward. Where are Dzer­ already very backward~ut between the cadres of the active mili­ zhinsky's statistics-and what are they worth if they exist? The tants and the bureaucratic leadership of the Central Committee. In single fact that a Trotsky, at the pinnacle of power, did not feel 1921, everybody who aspires to socialism is inside the party; what the need of informing himself precisely on this repression of an remains outside isn't worth much for the social transformatioa. insurrectional movement of workers, the single fact that a Trotsky Eloquence of chronology: it is the non-party workers of this epoch, did not know what all the rank and file communists knew: that joining the party to the number of 2,000,000 in 1924, upon the out of inhwnanity a needleJI crime had just been committed death of Lenin, who assure the victory of its bureaucracy. I assure against the proletariat and the peasants-this single fact, I say, is you, Gliga, that these people never thought of the Third Inter­ gravely significant. It is indeed in the field of repression that the national. Many of the insurgents of Kronstadt did think of it; Central Committee of the Bolshevik party committed the most seri­ but they constituted an undeniable elite and, duped by their ow. ous mistakes from the beginning of the revolution, mistakes which passion, they opened in spite of themselves the doors to a fright­ were to contribute most dangerously, on the one hand, to bureau­ ful counter-revolution. The firmness of the Bolshevik party, on the cratizing the party and the state, and on the other, to disarming other hand, sick as it was, delayed Thermidor by five to ten years. the masses and more particularly the revolutionists. It is high time Let us recall that several analogous movements occurred at this was acknowledged. the same time. Makhno held the countryside. Red Siberia was in * * * a fennent throughout. In the Tambov region, the peasant army of Reply to Ciliga Antonov numbered more than 50,000 men, with an excellent or­ ganization. Led by right-wing Social Revolutionists, it too demand­ WHAT greater injustice can be imagined towards the Russian ed the end of the regime of repressions and the "dictatorshlp of the revolution than to judge it in the light of Stalinism alone? Of tommissars"; it proclaimed the Constituent Assembly. It was the Stalinism which emerged from it, it is true, only to kill it, but in peasant counter-revolution of the plainest kind. Tukhachevsky sub­ the course of thirteen or fifteen years of struggles, by favor of the dued it with difficulty in the summer of 1921. To try to conceiT(! defeat of socialism in Europe and in Asia! It is often said that what would have been the consequences of a defaulting of the "the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning". Bolshevik party at the time of Kronstadt, it is well to have in mind Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many the spectacle of vast famished Russia, in which transportation and other germs, a mass of other genns and those who lived through industry were succumbing, while almost everywhere there rose, un­ the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious socialist der variegated forms, not the Third Revolution but a rural V end~. revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the Victor SERGE death germs which the autopsy reveals in a corpse-and which he may have carried in him since his birth-is that very sensible? Reply to Victor Serge " ... All that was still socialistic and revolutionary in this 1. WHAT IS SAID so appropriately by Victor Serge in replying Russia of 1921, was contained in the rank and file," writes Ciliga to the superficial elucubrations of A. Ciliga is well worth calliag in the Revolution Pro/etarienne of Nov. 10. "In standing up to the attention of our readers, especially in light of the widespread against them, Lenin and Trotsky, in agreement with Stalin, with attempts by all sorts of liberal muddleheads, social democrats, Zinoviev, Kaganovich and other, responded to the desires and anarchists and renegades from Marxism to cover their crimes by served the interests of the bureaucratic cadres. The workers were condemning, as the twin of its antithesis Stalinism, the party that then fighting for the socialism whose liquidation the bureaucracy organized and defended the Russian revolution. It is also worth was already pursuing."2 One can see, Ciliga, that you did not calling to the attention of Victor Serge, for the realities of 18-19 know the Russia of those days; thence the enormity of your years ago which he describes, are in conflict with his own after­ mistake. thoughts on the early period of the Russian revolution---after­ In reality, a little direct contact with the people was enough thoughts, we must repeat, that are 1101 unrelated to his position in to get an idea of the drama which, in the revolution, separated the Spain. communist party (and with it the dust of the other revolutionary 2. Victor Serge finds that a factor which contributed heavily groups) from the masses. At no time did the revolutionary work­ to the victory of Stalinism was "the most serious mistakes from ers form more than a trifling percentage of the masses themselves. the beginning of the revolution" committed by the Bolshevik In 1920-1921, all that was energetic, militant, ever-so-little social­ leaders in the repression of other groups. We cannot subscribe to istic in the labor population and among the advanced elements of this repetition, however guarded, of the hoary reformist analysis the countryside had already been drained by the communist party, of the Bolsheviks' repressions and their role in the subsequent which did not, for four years of civil war, stop its constant mo­ development of the Russian revolution. It is unhistorical; it is bilization of the willing-down to the most vacillating. Such thoroughly one-sided-and therefore thoroughly false-because things came to pass: a factory nwnbering a thousand workers, giv­ it says nothing of how and why the repressions were directed at ing as much as half its personnel to the various mobilizations of Mensheviks, Social Revolutionists and anarchists. That can be the party and ending by working only at low capacity with the learned not from Victor Serge's reflections of recent date, but from five hundred left behind for the social battle, one hundred of them that excellent history, L' Al1 I de la Revolution Russe (The Year former shopkeepers. . . . And since, in order to continue the revo­ I of the Russian Revolution). l'or instance: lution, it is necessary to continue the sacrifices, it comes about that The anarchists put the Bolsheviks under the obligation for the the party enters into conflict with that rank and file. It is not the first time to subdue by force a minority of dissidents of the revolutioa. Sentimental revolutionists would have resisted. But what would have a Kaganovich scarcely existed in 1921. Stalin stayed in the background. I do not like happened? Either the [anarchist] Black Guards would have finally to see, under the pen of so honest a writer as Ciliga, this bunching together of names belonging to different phases of history. risen in arms, Moscow would have gone through days of infinitely February 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Page 55 perilous tumult (remember the want and the lurking counter-revolu­ its manner and its matter place it among the great state papers tion, already strongly organized) ; or they would have been dissolved of our history. Glowingly eloquent, it was a long way from with time, after numerous incidents difficult to settle. A revolution that did not subdue its dissidents when, armed, they form the. embryo mere rhetoric. Its essential appeal was to the intelligence, and as of a State within the State, would offer itself divided to the blows of such (.ric] it formed a striking contrast to the frenzied demagogy its enemies. (P. 259.) of the dictators ... To suggest that the President, in urging The leaders of the counter-revolutionary parties-S.R.s, Menshe­ definite American resistance to aggression, was whipping up a viks and Kadets-had just contributed, in March [1918], a common jingo spirit is grossly unjust." I don't want to be grossly unjust, organization, the League of the Renaissance (Soyuz Vozrozhdenya). especially to anyone with as many headaches as F.D.R. has at "The League," writes one of the heads of the S. R. party, "entered into regular relations with the representatives of the Allied missions at the moment, but I admit I detected a certain martial strain in his Moscow and Vologda, principally through the organ of M. Noulens." bugle call. . • • The League of the Renaissance was the large clandestine organiza­ But for all their enthusiasm, the editors of the Nation pru­ u"n of the "socialist" petty bourgeoisie and the liberals determined to dently kept their fingers crossed. As is their custom these con­ overthrow the Soviet power by force. . . . The cham of the counter­ fusing days, they took back in the fourth paragraph most of what revolutionary organizations thus went without interruption from the they had stated in the first. Calling on the President to raise the most "advanced" socialists to the blackest reaction. (P. 276.) embargo on shipments of munitions to Spain, they wrote: "Hesita­ We commend these quotations, and a hundred others which tion will reduce a magnificent speech to mere wind. We look to him give a complete and accurate picture of how the anti-Bolshevik to act and act now:' Since a good two weeks have gone by since "working-class" groups brought down upon themselves the repres­ this was written, and the President has shown no, signs of acting, sions of the Soviet power, to the attention of the book's author, I take it that his "great state paper" has now been automatically Victor Serge. They need re-reading, not re-writing. Or, if a new reduced to "mere wind". But what is one to think of political edition is needed, would it not be more in place, in view of the commentators who have to wait two weeks to find out the most realities of the labor movement today, to add a few pages showing elementary Facts of Life? that the Menshevik and anarchist "weapon of criticism" nowadays The Nation adjures the President in pathetic tones to raise directed at Bolshevism is in no way superior to their "criticism the embargo. The New Leader headlines, "TORIES KEEP FOOD, of weapons" directed at Bolshevism two decades ago? GUNS FROM LOYALISTS". But who applied the Neutrality Act to 3. Victor Serge's latest contribution to the story of the sup­ Spain in the first place? Who clapped on this embargo on arms pression of Kronstadt, which does not describe the alleged excesses for the struggling Spanish people? Who but that Paladin of of the Bolsheviks in the most restrained manner, in our opinion Liberty, that plumed knight of Democracy, Franklin D. Roosevelt! adds nothing fundamental to the discussion. Having already When he found that, under the Neutrality Act, he could not given a good deal of space to Kronstadt, allowing the presenta­ prevent the shipment of munitions to Loyalist Spain, the Presi­ tion of contending opinions and stating our own views, we are dent forced through Congress a special resolution forbidding now terminating, at least for the time being, the discussion of this such shipments. Now that it looks as though Franco is winning, question in the review. now that the republic has its back to the wall, and above all now The EDITORS that fascism has suddenly been discovered to be The Enemy, everyone from Secretary Ickes to "Wrong Horse Harry" Stimson, Hoover's Secretary of State, wants to raise the embargo. Un­ READING FROM LEFT TO RIGHT questionably, the President would like to do so. But I think it doubtful that he will, since he is neither a paladin nor a plumed By Dwight Macdonald knight, except in the fevered imagination of Nation editors, but rather an extremely skillful bourgeois politician who knows that HE NATION SLIPS EVER more swiftly into the worn old the' Catholic vote is formidable--and that, within twenty-four T grooves of the War To Make the World Safe for Democracy. hours after a recent pronouncement by the Catholic hierarchy, more Thomas Mann continues to extol bourgeois democracy, at than 100,000 telegrams were delivered to Congessmen demanding good fees, before large and enthusiastic audiences'. The Transcon­ the embargo be retained. tinental & Western Air Line changes its subtitle from "The Lind· bergh Line" to "The Sunny Santa Fe Trail." Random House adver­ "Janus" sends in his monthly• quota of smart remarks: There tizes its new Pageant of the States: "Will inculcate a great love is no room in Russia for the German refugees, we hear, because of country. An ideal gift book, particularly for youngsters." the jails are full already ... "NO COSTER CASE POSSIBLE Even Hollywood has dared at last, in spite of the Hays office IN SOVIET UNION" headlined the Daily W O1'ker. and the Catholic censorship, to exploit the rising tide of anti­ After all, the Russian Coster is installed in the Kremlin. fascist sentiment. Walter Wanger, who produced Blockade, has . . . Although it now accepts a wide variety of advertisements joined Senator Capper, Frederick March, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, in its drive towards democracy and war, the Daily Worker Henry Pratt Fairchild, Marc Connelly, and, of course, Thomas draws the line at patent medicine ads. It· is satisfied with cor­ Mann in founding "Films for Democracy," while the Warner ruption of the mind ... Chiang Kai-shek was a great disappoint­ Brothers have announced no less than four anti-Nazi films for ment to Stalin. Briining was a great disappointment to Stalin. this Spring. The tragic thing is that this universal detestation Schuschnigg was a great disappointment to Stalin. Chamberlain of fascism is, in itself, a credit to human nature. It is only was a great disappointment to Stalin. Daladier was a great dis­ when linked up, as it must be under capitalism, with the armed appointment to Stalin. Roosevelt - - -? defense of the bourgeois status quo, that it turns sour. The next world slaughter, like the last, will be staged for the highest Clare Sheridan was a good-looking• young Englishwoman, ethical reasons. a cousin of Winston Churchill, who went to Russia in 1920 to • make portrait heads of the great ones of the revolution: Lenin, Blow, Bugle, Blow! The strongest note in the chauvinist Trotsky, Dzerzhinsky, Krassin, Kamenev, Zinoviev. (She doesn't symphony was sounded by the President. The Nation-which seem to have heard of Stalin.) When she retUrned to England, one remembers, with difficulty, as having been once a respectable she wrote a littl~ book about her experiences which, despite a liberal weekly-ran a lead editorial: "The President" s opening certain gushiness, still makes good reading. Her account of message to Congress rang out like a bugle across the world to Kamenev, under whose zgis she made the trip, is particularly in­ rally the dispirited and retreating democtacies to a stand. Both teresting-and, in 1938, moving. She tells of a big labor meeting Page 56 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL February 1939

in Trafalgar Square they attended together: "Some one recognized being unique". Just what these "indications" are, they ®n"t Kamenev, and the whisper went round and spread like wildfire, specify ... The wits of Wall Street have had a field day with The men on either side of him asked if they might announce he the scandal. It has been suggested that Coster might be termed was there, to which he answered a most emphatic 'No: When a "hypothecary", and that he committed suicide because "he Lansbury had finished speaking, there was an appeal for money couldn't face the Musica". And a rhyme is being circulated: for the 'Cause.' It was interesting to watch the steady rain of Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard coins, and very touching to see how the poor gave their pennies. To get her poor dog a bone; Lansbury buried his face in his hat to shield himself from the When she got there, the cupboard was bare metallic rain. After that we went away, and a gangway was -And what a surprise that was to Price, Waterhouse & Co. made for us, and all along the whisper went of 'Kamenev,' and the faces that looked at us were radiant as though they beheld No·Comment Department:• "Senator Glass, when asked fur a savior." an opinion, remarked with some vigor: 'Whatever is asked lor Later on, she describes her parting, in Moscow, from Kam· relief will be three times too much'," (N. Y. Times, Jan. 4.) enev: "He would not listen to any words of appreciation. He smiled in his genial, kindly way: 'Of course we were glad to • receive you, une femme artiste-what did it matter to us, your Rosa Luxemburg wrote her celebrated "Junius Pamphlet" nationality, or your relations There is only one thing que nOlls from a German prison cell during the last war, but most of it ne pouvons pas supporter'-and for the first time in all the is tragically applicable to the situation today. One passage out months I have known him a hard look passed over his face and of many is worth recalling: he set his teeth: 'The only thing we cannot stand, ('est ['espio­ Our party press was filled with moral indignation over the fact nage,' and the way he said it gave me a shiver down my spine." that Germany's foes should drive black men and b&rbarians, Negroes, Sikhs, and Maoris into the war. Yet these peoples playa role in this war that is approximately identical with that played by the Anyone who has ever followed• trade papers knows that socialist proletariat in the European states. If the Maoris of New Zealand were eager to risk their skulls for the English kinS. they business men talk quite differently among themselves than for showed as much understanding of their own interests as the German public consumption. Such publications call spades by their right social·democratic group that traded the existence, the freedom and name, since their readers want information, not propaganda. the civilization of the German people for the existence of the Hapiburg Thus in a recent issue of one of those "confidential" news· letters monarchy, for Turkey and for the vaults- of the DeutlChe BaDk. that are sent out from Washington to a business clientele, there One difference there is between the two. A generation 810, Maori Negroes were still cannibals and not students of Marxian is a story about the New Deal's latest plans for increasing con· philosophy. sumption. "Idea is to find ways of enabling more people to eat When one reads a passage like that, one understands wby more food," the letter begins, and continues bluntly: "It appears the Kremlin has recently let loose a campaign of slander and cal­ to be a fact that ~~ of our people, perhaps even Vz, don't get umny against the memory of Luxemburg. enough to eat . . . So-step up consumption, eat up surpluses, thus aid farmers. That's the basic idea. How? One way might There have been some objections• to my note on the be by socialism or communism." Thus casualIy, between them· Sto:.l Workers Organizing Committee last month, especially to the selves, do business men concede that communism would give sentence: "And even if Little Steel signs up with the S.W.O.c., people more to eat. it will mean only that its workers will be organized under one • capitalist flag rather than another." I must admit this fonnula­ To round out John Masefield's quatrain on Chamberlain, tion is rather too sharp. However distorted and crippled by printed in this department recently, Earle Birney of The Canadian bureaucratic control, the S.W.O.c. is nonetheless a genuine uman, Forum sends this stanza of his own composition: and hence responsive to the pressure and the needs of the worlrcrs And as Achilles dragged old Priam's son as the company unions of Little Steel by their very nature cannot Three times round Troy, and then returned the dead be. And the more workers flock into the S.W.O.C., the greater So Adolf tossed you from the war now sped will be the rank·and·file pressure for a mQre democratic type of The gritty corpse of peace not yet begun. organization. • The Coster Case (continued).• At least two movies are being Note on Reformism: The Securities Act of 1933 forbade rushed to completion on the Coster case, and no doubt the full banks which accepted deposits to engage in the underwriting of story will soon appear in book form. Meanwhile, there are several securities. A great victory for the forces of righteousness f The interesting items that may have escaped your attention. . . To wickedest monster of them all, J. P. Morgan & Co., was acn.Uy break a C.I.O. strike of warehousemen, the late Coster·Musica forced to give up its vast underwriting business! And SO ODe signed one of William Green's famous "fink contracts," which of the third generation Morgans went off and founded the bouse had the usual sections setting minimum hours and maximum pay of Morgan, Stanley & Co., which was completely independent of (instead of vice versa, as one might expect in a union contract), 23 Wall Street except that Morgan money financed it and MOtlJlll and pledging the A.F. of L. to function as strikebreaker in case customers somehow found their way thither. Latest news on the of any "trouble" with the C.I.O. . . . When one of the Musica progress of this great reform move is supplied by a recent S. B. C sisters married a gardner, her brothers were annoyed because she release on securities issued between January 1 and September 30, had "married into the working c1ass"-which didn't prevent 1938. Morgan, Stanley is far in the lead, with $365,100,.000 them, later on, from borrowing $1,000 from her .... It turns out worth of securities. Halsey, Stuart & Co., was a poor secoad that Coster's biography in Who's Who was almost 100% fictitious, with $144,300,000 and Boilbright an even worse third with including two mythical college degrees and an impressive roster $78,000,000. of clubs to which he did not belong. The editors of Who' s Who • have stated that it is their policy to offer "without question" a list· Cat.out-of·Bag.Department: "To obtain full cooperatioo in ing to such pillars of bourgeois society as "heads of the established such a broad and coordinated national defense program, im~ institutions of learning . . . bishops and chief ecclesiastics . . . relations between Government and business are necessary and presidents of the larger businesses." They feel that, among their will doubtless be sought by the Administration:' (From a marbt 77,000 listings, "the Coster·Musica fraud has every indication of letter recently issued by Delafield & Delafield, of 14 Wall Stlftt.) FebnNtrt 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Page 57 Chronicle of the French General Strike A COMPILATION MADE FROM TIlE DISPATCHES TO THE N. Y. TIMES DURING THE STRUGGLE (compiled from the N. Y. Times) venting the locomotives from getting up in mines. N. Y. Times reports that only steam. 191 of 10,842 Paris transport workers re­ NOV. 15. Decree laws go into effect. On this day, the Executive committee of fuse work. Press reports railroads running. No". 17. The first violence occurs. A the e.G.T. issued a call for a general strike United Press estimates 2,000,000 out. Communist party demonstration against the on No. 30, five days later. Paris suburbs working - except Renault. decree laws and the embargo on Spain was Nov. 26. The "day of protest" called by United Press reports communication serv­ held. Demonstrators repeatedly crashed po­ the e.G.T. Three major meetings in Paris ices normal except in Marseilles and Bou· lice Hnes in order to get into the plaza -about 50 in the provinces. Most orators logne where street cars and buses were on where the demonstration was held. A C.P. "labored hard to persuade their listeners that strike. In afternoon Marseilles streetcarmen Municipal Councillor was arrested. Many this is not a political strike." Radical So­ returned to work. factory workers took part. 'cialist civil servants refuse to join strike. Telegraph, telephone, postal are normal. NOli. 21. First sit-down strikes occur, in­ Workers occupy two chemical factories in e.G.T. claims that workers came to work stigated by C. P. (Third International) and LiUe. Ejected by police. Government per­ in nationalized industries but did not work. the S.P. (Second International) members mits mass meetings in Valenciennes, but United Press finds it significant that e.G.T. in factories. Hutchinson rubber factory in warns that those who "speak too violently" refuses detailed figures on strike to news­ Paris suburbs, also Kuhlman chemical plant will be arrested. papermen, using as excuse "since there are (180 workers). In Denain at an arms fac­ Jail sentences of Renault auto workers­ hardly any newspapers it is not necessary to tory, 467 of 600 workers refused to work ten days to six months. Daladier requisi­ make such statements. 00 extra time or negotiate with factory heads. tions the railroads, 506 Anzin workers to be Disorder during day. Several hundred 1bey were supported by a mass meeting of tried by military court. 400 fired. break police lines at auto factory; sing 111- 20,000 metal workers. Daladier calls workers in Valenciennes ternationale. NOli. 23. At Denain in the North (De­ district to colors. Four hours later union Textile workers of Dijon strike. partment de Nord), 5,000 metal workers heads order strikers to return to work. 150 occupy Rennes arsenal in sit-in. strike in sympathy with 4,000 sit-in strikers Factories and mines are cleared. 2,000 foundry. ,workers strike, return in of Cail anns factory. At Valenciennes in Nov. 27. Adminstrative Council of postal afternoon. the . same district the metal workers union employees refused to strike--but ranIC: and It is significant that the miners and metal calls a strike of 17,000 for Nov. 24. file spokesmen later issue a statement say­ workers who had been striking spontane­ Nov. 25. Press reports large strike move­ ing they will be in the forefront of battle. ously for a week did poorly on day of gen· ment now exists in Paris and Department National Confederation of War Veterans eral strike. de Nord. condemns the strike. Dec. 1. Government estimates 70,000 In Paris 12,000 occupy Renault auto fac­ Day reported calm except at Denain. fired. S. P. estimates 1,500,000 fired or toq. Police and Mobile Guards attack with Workers catch strikebreaker in mine, force locked out (100,000 textile workers in tear gas, along previously arranged plans. him to carry red flag, sing InternationaJe. North, 25,000 school teachers, 20,000 met­ Workers fight back, hurling auto parts, ma­ Metal Workers Union at Valenciennes re­ al, 4,000 miners, 4,000 mine railway chinery.. Many arrests-50 police and Mo­ verses decision of yesterday ordering strik­ workers). bile Guards hurt. ers to return to work, now orders them to 2,500 locked out at shoe factory, riot, In Denain, workers seize metal plant­ continue striking indefinitely. break way in. fierce battle with Mobile Guards. Workers At Loos, 1,000 workers occupy Kuhl· Longshoremen still on strike. are ejected, march out singing the Inter­ man chemical plant Metal workers in St. Nazaire shipyards tMlionaJe. Several thousand miners join the Union of railway supervisors (foremen, strike because of discharge of other workers metal trades strikers. chiefs of service) reject strike. Association for striking. Small group of railway workers demon­ Dec. 2. Continued strikes and riots strate in Paris-

substantial concessions for the workers. but, on the contrary, are those same life-and­ 509,661 Ibs., as against London holdings of These concessions have given the Australian death issues which confront the workers of 543,412,302 Ibs. and New York holdings of worker a standard of living which is only the United States and of the advanced west­ 44,949,861 lbs. It is necessary to point out surpassed by that of the American worker. ern European ~ountries. to those who hold that Australian capitalism By 1913 Australia was the most highly Australian capitalism has been amazingly is now totally independent that this progress Wlionized. country in the world, but even precocious in its development. Although has been achieved only by sometimes limit­ then the great majority of the unions were Australian capitalism is still dependent on ing the amount of capital available for in­ conservative in outlook; they frowned on di­ the "primary" industries to maintain the dustrial flotations. rect action and advocated recourse to the purchasing power and the national overseas It now becomes necessary to examine the compulsory arbitration courts set up for the income, yet, as we have seen from the cen­ relations of expanding Australian capitalism making of awards, minimum wage stand­ sus figures, the great majority of the workers with British imperialism. There are some ards, and for the mediation of disputes be­ derive their livelihood from "secondary" in­ who claim that the Australian capitalists are tween the workers and the bosses. dustry-thus following the European and now preparing a movement of national These compulsory arbitration courts American models. Their problems are not liberation, but while it must be admitted which were mainly established by Labor predominantly agrarian but, on the contrary, that many signs do point in that direction, governments have become an integral part immediately social and industrial. The 1938 it is still necessary to state quite definitely of the industrial system. This is exemplified census revealed that the number of workers that such is not the case. If we study all the in the fact that one of the largest unions, the employed in "secondary" industry exceeded classical national revolutions of Europe, we Australian Workers Union, openly boasts the number employed in all other industries find that the national bourgeoisie headed a that it has never sponsored an "official" by 209,000. Right from the Thirties of the liberation movement which was based on a strike of the whole organisation. Neverthe­ last century the majority of emigrants pre­ centuries-old racial question. For instance, less, the trade union bureaucrats amongst ferred to remain in secondary industries in let us take the Italian, Hungarian and Polish whom can be found many minor counter­ the rapidly developing cities, rather tha~ ac­ national revolutions. These nationalities parts of William Green and John L. Lewis, cept the 10/- weekly wage which was of­ were even refused the right to retain their do not always succeed in heading the work­ fered to them by the pastoralists. The im­ own languages and culture. Such powerful ers into the dead end of compulsory arbitra­ portance of manufacturing does not loom incentives to a national revolution do not tion: the press is constantly full of reports very largely in the export figures, but if we exist in Australia. As a matter of fact the of strikes in a wide range of industries. have recourse to the total volume of internal limited amount of anti-British hostility To sum up the results of fifty years of production we find that industrial produc­ which sometimes manifests itself in Australia reformism in this country, it might be said tion exceeds in volume the output from the merely serves to bring this fact into bolder that the workers have gained much in the pastoral, agricultural and mineral industries relief. While an Australian national revolu­ way of wages and conditions, old age pen­ -that is, if they are considered in their tion cannot be ruled out as a perspective for sions, etc.; the powerful Labor parties have separate categories. We here note that while the future, it can be definitely ruled out in also enabled many militant struggles to be the output from the pastoral and agricultural the present epoch. Although. the local manu­ waged in an atmosphere of legality. One industries exceeds that of secondary indus­ facturers, it is true, often display hostility to such struggle was the great conscription bat­ try, nevertheless the fact that most of the their British competitors and occasionally tle of 1916-1917 when the mass movement Australian people labor in secondary pro­ flirt with the Labor party, yet they prefer to forced a referendum on conscription for cesses proves conclusively the all· important struggle against British competition by using overseas service. This referendum resulted in role that secondary industries play in the the weapon of high tariff walls rather than a defeat for the militarists' plan of con­ social edifice. resort to the desperate expedient of a nation­ scripting Australian man-power for the With the growth of industrial capital al revolution. When the Lang Labor govern­ European holocaust. there have concurrently developed many ment of New South Wales launched its re­ Slowly but surely, however, reformism is manifestations of the existence of finance pudiation movement, which was probably coming to the end of its tether. The world capital. This process, following European the nearest approach to a national liberation economic crisis dealt it a deadly blow from experience, received a great impetus during movement in Australia, that did not prevent which it can never entirely recover. Second­ the crisis, which forced industry to become the local manufacturers from placing anti­ ary industry sheltered behind high tariff more dependent than ever on the banks, Lang slogans in the pay envelopes of their walls can only hope to expand for a few with the result that the necessary prerequi­ employees-in spite of their link with the more years at the most, and then a severe site of finance capital, i.e., the fusion of Labor party by virtue of their mutual inter­ internal crisis will develop. The life-blood banking and industrial capital, became an est in high tariffs. So much for the manu­ of capitalist economy in this country is the accomplished fact. If we take the case of facturers' enthusiasm for a national revolu­ returns from export of primary products the greatest Australian trading bank, the tion. such as wool, wheat, butter, metals, etc., Bank of New South Wales, we find that its Australian capitalism today is faced with which are steadily declining. More and more directors sit on the boards of a multitude of this problem: it wisely realizes that if it every day the workers are being confronted industrial companies which are financially breaks with Britain it will fall into the lap with problems which only admit of revolu­ dependent on the bank, thus providing us of some rapacious imperialism, which will tionary solutions. There is a hard core of with an outstanding example of the system not give it the same favorable treatment as unemployment which can never be solved of interlocking directorates by which finance accorded by Britain. It is forced to pay a under existing capitalist economy. Thus the capital operates. high insurance premium to Britain, but it working class will eventually be forced along The rapid development of Australian cap­ receives in exchange the right to exploit its the road of militant class struggle which italism has occasioned another significant own workers. It is also necessary to bear in should facilitate the building of a strong change in governmental finance. At the be­ mind that Australia is one of the most para­ Fourth Internationalist movement in this ginning of the crisis the London money doxical semi-independent countries in the classic land of labor reformism. market definitely declined to finance any world; it acts as a junior partner of British It here becomes apparent that an individ­ more Australian loans. This of course gave imperialism, for which it could be said to ual analysis of the nature of Australian capi­ the Australian capitalists a chance which manage a branch office; that is, Britain per­ talism is an absolute essential. Let us glance they seized with both hands. What a strik­ mits the Australian bourgeoisie to possess at the industrial structure as a whole. One ing testimony this aHords us as to the pro­ and exploit the mandated territory of New does not need the overwhelming confirma­ gress of Australian capitalism. Since 1929 Guinea and also Papua. The fact that Aus­ tion which is to be fQund in the pages of the all governmental programs have been met tralia possesses colonies leads one school of Government statistician to realize that the by successful internal loans. By the end of thought into a grave error, by causing them problems of the Australian workers are not June, 1937, the holdings of the local ,.,nli,fJ to proceed to the other extreme and. pro­ those of the classical semi-colonial countries; in government loans had increased to 674,- claim that Australian capitalism is totally in- Page 60 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL February 1939 dependent. This. is, of course, an erroneous of a European war Australia should refuse To return to the mainland, we have seen belief. The very fact that Australia is not yet any European entanglements and merely demonstrated how it has proved profitable independent in the political sense is in itself guard its own territory. The Stalinists bitter­ during the last half century for the ruling proof that it is not independent in the eco­ ly attack this policy as being a rejection of classes to permit reformist concessions, but nomic sense. Let us take an example; prior the precious doctrine of "collective security." faced with the tragic decline of the world to 1905 Norway enjoyed an autonomous sta­ Only the small group of Fourth Internation­ market, the bourgeoisie will be forced to at­ tus which was conceded by its sovereign alist takes up a true international position tack the greatest gain of the Australian power, Sweden. This status was very similar on the war question. worker, his standard of living. This stand­ ard was only possible because of the rich to that Britain concedes to Australia. Yet as The greatest danger inherent in the policy new field of exploitation which a virgin con­ Lenin points out in his Teachings of Marx of Australian imperialism lies in its posses­ tinent offered. According to the celebrated and Engels (p. 150), while Norway owed sion of New Guinea. It apears that this estimate of national wealth made in 1914 political allegiance to Sweden, the Swedish question may lead to some friction between by the British economist, Sir Josiah Stamp, capitalists possessed an advantage over Nor­ Chamberlain and the Australian bourgeoisie. the per-capita wealth of Australia equalled wegian capitalism. To quote Lenin's exact If Chamberlain, having regard to the exi­ Britain's, standing at 318 lbs per head, and phrase: ". . . the autonomous nation does gencies of British imperialis!D, wishes to was exceeded only by the United States with not possess equal rights with the ruling na­ come to an agreement with Hitler by ceding 424 lbs, and the Argentine with 340 lbs. tion-and therefore, it becomes necessary him New Guinea as a part of a general These same proportions were preserved dur­ for the autonomous nation to declare its colonial arrangement, the Australian govern­ ing the early post-war years, but an end to complete independence." Only in the event ment will probably use its influence in the this constant upsurge in Australian economy of a successful national revolution could we councils of British imperialism to urge re­ claim Australia to be a completely indepen­ can be anticipated within a few years. sistance to this claim. W. M. Hughes, Aus­ dent capitalism. Thus an intensification of the class con­ tralian Minister of External Affairs, has re­ flict is inevitable, and so the Fourth Interna­ To sum up the important aspects arising cently declared that "all hell will not shift tionalists must build an organisation which from a consideration of the ~tatus of Aus­ us from New Guinea" and this declaration is strong enough to take advantage of this tralian capitalism, we must arrive at the fol­ has been subsequently approved by the gov­ opportunity when the time comes. The Aus­ lowing conclusions: a national revolution is ernment in an official statement. extremely unlikely in this epoch; if the tralian worker possesses a great historical bourgeoisie did launch it it would be the It will be observed from this that the tradition. He is highly unionized, and given duty of Marxists to support it as a progres­ Australian revolutionists have the task of ex­ correct leadership will assure9ly contribute sive move; in this period "national libera­ posing the embryo-imperialism of their own some epic chapters to the great and progres­ tion" is a false slogan for a revolutionary government. The revolutionists must and sive fight for world working class eman­ workers' party to adopt. The Australian will point out that while they are not in cipation. revolution will be both social and national favor of handing Australia's ex-German col­ SYDNEY, No'v. 23, 1938 Stan. BOLLARD in content. Just as the bourgeoisie of Russia onies back to Hitler, neither do they favor failed to carry out the democratic revolution their exploitation by Australian finance capi­ -so in this epoch will the bourgeoisie fail tal. It should here become apparent to all to carry out the national revolution of Aus­ sincere militants how necessary it is to build C'ORRESPONDENCE a strong Fourth International which can tralia. Therefore, the Australian workers TO THE EDITORS, liberate the colonial peoples not only of must carry out a dual revolution which will Sirs: New Guinea but of the whole world. It be­ be primarily social, but will also carry out One of the distinguishing characteristics the tasks of the national revolution. The comes even more apparent that the urgent of the Trotskyist press has been its scru'pu­ only possible slogan for the working class national problems of the Australian workers lous avoidance of character assassinatIOn, is: Forward to the Social Revolution! continually blend with the international personal vilification or libel in its disputes In conclusion let us glance at the Aus­ problems of the world working class. In with serious political opponents. Unlike the tralian scene today. The position is that la­ short, the Australian workers can only find Stalinist pubfications, THE NEW INTBaNA­ bor governments are in office in three of the emancipation in the stem struggles on the TIONAL and the Socialist Appeal have, in the six states, namely, Queensland, Tasmania world arena, by an iron alliance with their past, always attempted to conduct their po­ and Western Australia, while Tory adminis­ proletarian brothers in all countries. lemics on the plane of intellectual decency. tration controls N. S. W., South Australia, The mandated territory of New Guinea Unhappily, this is no longer true. Victoria and the Federal parliament. In and Papua (an outright possession of Aus­ In your January issue, Professor James Queensland where Labor has been in office tralia) have become fertile fields of exploit­ Burnham and Max Shachtman in their ar­ with only one break since 1915, the admin­ ation for the bourgeoisie. In 1935-1936 the ticle "Intellectuals in Retreat" (to which I istration reflects and defends the interests of New Guinea territory imported from Aus­ shall reply elsewhere) have been guilty of a the powerful sugar combine which controls tralia 675,652 lbs worth of goods, and ex­ dis~raceful and libellous personal character­ izabon to myself. In this article your authors the whole! industry. This phenomenon can ported to Australia goods valued at 950,- declare: "We understand that Harrison·s be noted throughout the labor movement, 240 lbs. While Papua imported from Aus­ ringing break with Marxism [sit I] in the that is, the Labor parties in the various tralia goods valued at 145,534 lbs, and ex­ states show considerable differences in view­ New Leader followed negotiations for a ported to Australia goods valued at 254,132. well deserved al'pointment in the Federal point; for instance, the N. S. W. party led It is necessary to hear in mind that the by J. T. lang is considerably to the left of Housing Admirustration:' The method of balance of trade in favor of the colonies is presentation employed in this gratuitous re­ the Queensland party. deceptive as a large proportion of their ex­ mark is obviously evasive and cowardly, typ­ The great issue which agitates all workers ports to Australia are processed and reex­ ical of the sort of under-handed innuendo in all countries today is the war question and ported overseas, this applies particularly to which freouently appears in the Dail, Worj­ Australia is no exception to this rule. The products such as gold, and copra. In addi­ er. Standing by itself it is doubtful if this Federal Government which is dominated by tion, practically all the share capital invested statement is actionable. However, elsewhere the United Australia party, the party of the in companies operating in these two terri­ in their article your authors continue on the middle class and also of big business, tories is held by Australian investors. Here same tack: "But then, it [my disassociation has launched a 43,000,00 lb rearmament we see clearly revealed the fundamental con­ from the Trotskyist movement] had to be scheme as an integral part of the war plans siderations, apart from the strategic ones, delivered openly if the unemployment crisis of British imperialism. The federal labor which make the Australian bourgeoisie so in the United States was to be solved, at least party is an ardent advocate of rearmament, reluctant to relinquish New Guinea. It af­ so far as Mr. Harrison is concerned:- No in­ but at the same time poses an untenable iso­ fords us a neat if miniature study of im­ telligent reader (and your readers are intelli- lation policy. It contends that in the event perialism. (Ctt.,i,nud on iruiu baeA: e~) February 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Page 61 Will India Accept Federation? "One can only speculate regarding aPfointed Governor-General with dictato­ people will continue to be as rampant as the future, but one possibility is that even rla powers. He can veto or approve any they have ever been ...." in our own lifetime we shall see this bill; prohibit discussion or amendment of No trade restrictions against England great creation-the British Empire­ any bill; suspend the Constitution; summon are permitted; any preferences granted to crumble and fall to pieces." or prorogue the Legislature; appoint or Indians must likewise be granted to the * * * dismiss any Minister; make police rules; is­ British; the boards governing the Indian THE RETURN of Lord Linlithgow, vice­ sue decrees; utilize the armed forces, etc. Reserve Bank and railways are to be ap­ roy of India, from the council rooms of The cynical British-fearing they may have pointed by the Governor-General. These Chamberlain has made it clear that the missed up somewhere-have added in 32 and a host of other measures will assure the masters of India are prepared to shortly sections powers which this Governor-Gen­ economy of Federated India remaining in put into effect their Federation scheme. The eral may exercize in his individual judg­ the hands of its despoilers. Time! of India, organ of English imperial­ ment, without even consulting his self-ap­ To summarize: Federation means the ism, bluntly states that all but minor prep­ pointed ministers! "The Federal Govern­ forging of an alliance between the British arations have been made to enforce this ment will thus be in reality a one-man rule, imperialists and the native rulers, land­ new device by means of which the British unsurpassed in many respects by oriental owners, bankers and industrialists--all raj is to be strengthened and furthered. Re­ despotisms or modern dictatorships." (Ibid.) having as their aim the exploitation of ports indicate that the Princes of India's 2) Section 5 of the Government of India India's mass population. It means the crush­ feudal states, whose consent to Federation Act (1935) provides for a Federation com­ ing of the national liberation and revolu­ is needed, have about completed their secret po<;ed of the British provinces and acced­ tionary movements. Federation means a one­ negotiations with the British and have ac­ ing native states. Accession of the states is man military dictatorship presided over by cepted. The Maharajas of Hyderabad, Ba­ voluntary; that of the provinces compulsory. an English FUhrer. This is a constitution of roda, Travancore and Kashmir (most im­ The states are granted superior positions. slavery and bondage, seeking relentlessly portant of the native states) conferred Although possessing only 25% of India's to reinforce the entire system of imperialist among themselves last November and drew population, they receive in the two-house exploitation. up concrete demands as their price for ac­ legislature provided by the act 33% of the * * * ceptance. These crafty and absolute dictators seats in the lower house (Federal Assembly) The Indian Nationalist Congress is on feel they can drive a hard bargain with em­ and 40% in the upper house (Council of record as opposed in principle to Federa­ battled, post-Munich Britain. Above all, State). In addition, the Princes may ap­ tion. This opposition~ however, is purely they demand suppression of the Indian Na­ point their entire quota of representatives verbal. The I.N.C. today more than ever is tionalist Congress in the British provinces, to the legislature, thus forcing the 81 mil­ dominated by the Gandhi-right wing group plus greater support in crushing their own lion States people living under their abso­ of native bourgeois whose interest in "inde­ People's State Congress movement. lute domain to be without any representa­ pendence" consists in their desire to create Federation is the burning question of tion. This is part of the basic constitutional an India wherein their own brand of cap. India today. It is absolutely synonymous provision by means of which the Indian italist exploitation may be "freely" em­ with the question of India's liberation. Ev­ States can retain their present governmental ployed. ery struggle of the Indian masses in the past systems of feudal despotism without having The All-India Congress met during the five years-from a strike to mass harta/­ to introduce any reforms. crucial days of Munich. The outcome of this will assume its ultimate meaning as meas­ 3) The voting system provided for is a meeting clearly displayed the I.N.C.'s desire ured against the approaching Federation throwback to British imperialism's most re­ to compromise the Federation issue. The war. Successful imposItion of their plan by actionary methods. In the Native States nationalist leaders refuse to attack Federa­ Britain and its native allies would push back there will be no voting whatsoever. In the tion in its vital spots. Their program is the possibilities of a free India perhaps for Provinces, property requirements limit the expressed by Sardar Patel, leaaing bour­ decades. It. is important, therefore, for us total vote to 150,000 people. 150,000 may geois nationalist and the Jim Farley of to know the provlsions of Federation. vote out of a total population of 365 mil­ India. Patel demands of the British an over­ Federation "reflects in its content . lions! hauling of the Constitution with an eye to merely the determination of British impe­ Legislature seats are divided along com­ granting more representation to the prov­ rialism to beat back the rising tide of mass munal lines. There are special seats for com­ inces before the I.N.C. will talk com­ revolt in India by tightening its octopus munal minorities in addition to general promise. He will accept any agreement that hold over the country with the help of a seats. Moslems, Sikhs, Scheduled Castes, grants a freer hand to the native capitalists. new constitutional machinery." It is a de­ Christians, etc., all have separate elections. Gone is any idea of unconditional opposi­ tailed plan for welding the feudal and Each territorial constituency is split up into tion and mass satyagraha (civil disobedi­ land-owning interests together as a bloc and communal groupings when voting takes ence) to Federation. These Congress leaders for preparing India for participation in Eng­ place. This harmonizes with best British are unquestionably carrying on secret nego­ land's coming wars. " ... it organizes at "divide and rule" traditions. Its proposal is tiations with the British authorities. the top all the anti -democratic and un pro­ final proof of the abysmal failure of Gan­ The A.I.C.C. met for five days. All it did gressive vested interests under the duect dhi's civil-disobedience movement of 1931- was to launch a fierce drive against the Con­ control of imperialist bureaucracy." "Brit­ 1933 which was directed primarily against gress left wing! A resolution charging the ish imperialism is attempting to cement all separate electorates. "lefts" with preaching violence and class­ its reactionary alliances, to forge stronger 4) Federal Finances: Over 80% of the struggle was adopted. The left wing was instruments for repression and to tighten Federal budget is non-votable and outside threatened with exclusion. Although war its girdle for a fresh and more powerful of­ Legislative control. 90% of Federal rev­ was so close that the British had begun to fensive against the freedom movement of enue will be drained from the British pro­ mobilize native troops and were prepared the country." (Quotations from: The In­ vinces; only 10% from the states. The rev­ to outlaw the Congress, no resolution on dian Federation by Z. A. Ahmad.) enue flow provided for will be directed to­ the subject was adopted. For five days these Federation tips the balance overwhelm­ ward the central government and will leave pathetic "leaders" sat around praying that in$ly in favor of feudal, land-owning (za­ the provinces responsible for the upkeep of the war danger would pass over. The right mtndari), banking and finance interests and the various public services. The effect of wing was fully prepared to participate in thus turns the administration of India over this will be that these public services the war as England's loyal ally. Gandhi to the most reactionary forces. The proposed (health, education, medicine, etc.) will "re­ conveniently forgot his "non-violence" to Federal Constitution will work as follows: main as of old-stunted and undeveloped, justify a war against Hitler. With the ex­ 1) The high command will be a British- and the illiteracy, disease and poverty o( the ception of the communist party, the left- Page 62 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL February 1939 wing leaned towards pacifism. The Stal­ The Congress directly sabotages the The reaction of the Socialist party to the inists bleated about the danger from Jap­ struggles of the States' people against their offensive launched against it by the Congress enese im~erialism and extolled the virtues of feudal lords. The A.I.Ce. adopted a reso­ right wing was to beat a hasty retreat-al­ the EnglIsh brand. All in all, the Congress lution re-affirming its official position of most a rout! At the A.I.C.e. meeting they leadership showed itself as spineless and in­ "non-interference" in States' affairs. As late had no independent plan of action against capable of action. Had war broken out, as December 1938 the Congress Working war and Federation. Pacifist phraseology was there is no doubt that an unwilling India Comittee (top leadership) again stated this their contribution. When Gandhi threatened would have been forced to participate as hands-off position. Thus the Indian nation to split the Congress, Masani, acting secre­ Britain's ally and 1914 would have been is divided-by the British and Congress­ tary of the party offered to have anyone ex­ repeated. into two camps. Meanwhile, one can say pelled from his party who was caught advo­ So stifling was the atmosphere of this that the most significant event of the past cating "class struggle or violence" I Masa.ni, A.LCe. meeting that the left wing mem­ year has been the mass uprising of the "extreme" left-winger, author of fine articles bers staged a demonstrative walk-out. Gan­ States' people against their rulers. In Rajkot on the Moscow Trials and the war question, dhi, servile tool of the British and native state a violent battle has been proceeding blossomed forth as a Gandhist policeman! mill-owners, then delivered an ultimatum to against the local Maharajah. Gandhi de­ In this age of centrism the cleavage between the left wing in his weekly paper, Harijan. manded withdrawal of charges against this words and deeds assumes Hamlet-like pro­ He is more than ever wrapped up in his Prince so that he could negotiate a peaceful portions in men like Masani. Behind the credo of non-violence and passive resistance. settlement. The masses refused and continue ancient cry of · 'Don't split the Congress~" The Mahatma has by no means finished their fight. Another example is Travan­ the e.S.P. indulges in endless capitulation his career of sabotaging India's liberation core-long upheld as a model Indian state. to the High Command. struggles! Lately, he has condemned peace­ Here the fight against the ruler has been The Bombay general strike of Nov. 7 ful picketing by strikers because it may led by a State congress-the praia mandala measured the merit of each left wing or­ lead to violence. He even frowns upon his Thousands have been jailed, hundreds ganization. This strike arose from an at­ own technique of mass satyagraha.' To him, wounded in street fights, and 40 killed to tempt of the Congress ministry to adopt a the slogan of non-violence is an efficacious date. Gandhi demanded suspension of this reactionary labor bill demanding class corollary in his defense of imperialist vio­ struggle and met the same refusal. Due to peace and approaching forced arbitration of lence. The fact that this life-long traitor the Congress' hostile attitude toward them, strikes. The bill encouraged company union­ is still the leading figure in India's nation­ the States' people look upon Congress as an ism and challenged elementary labor rights. alist movement is sufficient indication of the enemy organization and appear determined The All-India Trade Union Congress coo­ state of affairs. Gandhi is still Britain's finest to carry on independently. demned the bill. The Bombay unions pre­ pared for mass opposition. But the Congress policeman in India. The LN.C.'s raI;jd shift toward reaction­ What of the Congress ministries today Socialists brought everlasting discredit to ary policies has succeeded in dragging the their organization by accepting, "with reser­ ruling 8 out of 11 British provinces? Par­ Congress left-wing along with it. This is ticularly of late have their actions earned vations" this bill. They proposed amend­ especially true of the Congress Socialist ments. When the unions decided to have the hatred of the peasant and working Party, and its unofficial leaders, Nehru and masses. Let us cite a few examples: a general strike, the Bombay CS.P. refused Subhas Chandra Bose. Nehru, just returned support and insolently withdrew from the 1) Madras Congress Ministry - Sup­ from a lengthy tour of Europe and Eng­ entire struggle. They were with Congress, pressed various newspapers, including Con­ land, arrived amid paens of praise from the gress and nationalist organs. Has likewise right or wrong. Aside from completely dis­ Communist Party of India for whom he has crediting themselves in the eyes of the Bom­ suppressed many civil liberties of the peo­ apparently become a front. The language bay proletariat-the most advanced of aU ple. of Stalinism-supplied at first hand by his India-the e.S.P. turned over strike lead· 2) Behar Congress Ministry-Arrest and private secretary whose membership in the ership to the Stalinists and the notorious Dr. gagging of numerous khan leaders. Con­ CP. is well known-fits the Pandit well. Ambedkar, demagogic head of a reaction­ certed drive to crush peasant organizations. "The only possible policy, if Britain be­ ary communal movement. Dr. Ambedkar, 3 ) North-West Frontier Congress Min­ lieves in democracy [?], is to shed imperi­ istry-Beating, jailings and murdering of posing as the leader of a militant workers' alism utterly and rapidly and replace it by party seems to have gained the mOBt. The Congressmen, Congress Socialists and, above free democratic institutions in these [co­ tragedy of the entire matter is that this all, kisan satyagrahis. This ministry is par­ lonial] countries, which instead of weak­ former British stooge has now become the ticularly distinguished for its ferocity ening it will then be powerful allies." unquestioned leader of Bombay's Hindu against the peasantry. (Nehru, The Congress Socialist, Nov. 20, "untouchable" workers. 4) Bombay Con$'ess Ministry-Adop­ 1938.) In other words, for a mess of con­ The strike failed to prevent adoption of tion of a Labor DIsputes Bill, called by stitutional reforms Nehru will become Brit­ the Black Bill. But it did demonstrate an workers the Black Bill. Ordered police to ain's loyal ally. He also proposes a real enthusiasm for battle on the part of Bom­ "collective security." Henceforth Nehru fire on strikers three times during Novem­ bay's workers. An estimated l.~O,OOO to ber 7th general strike in Bombay. Leads takes his place in the list of Stalinist fronts, 20,000 participated in a 24-hour strike de­ ministries in justifying violence against to be cynically tossed aside after serving spite police firings and repression. But its his purpose. Let him remember the fate of "disorderly" workers and peasants. Stalinist, communal leadership had DO aim 5) United Province Congress Ministry­ a Largo Caballero! beyond that of winning a temporary, dema­ O~en support to terror organized by za­ Nor does Subhas Bose, Congress Presi­ gogic influence over the masses. After the mmdari. Thousands of tenants have been dent, offer a more revolutionary appear­ strike, the C.S.P. issued a smug statement dispossessed. The slogan of this ministry is ance. This pitiful "leader" wallows in the claiming events had justified their boycott. "relief to the zamindars.''' wake of the Congress right wing, invariably It will pay dearly for its withdrawal from In broader outline, the Congress minis­ "compromising" the uncompromisible by and condemnation of this proletarian ac­ tries have done the bidding of the British; accepting the High Command's dictate. He tivity. A so-called "revolutionary socialist" supported the employers as against the un­ is silent on the many crimes committed by party that refused to lead anxious worket's ions; the landlords as against the peasants. Congress against workers and peasants. On may find itself in rapid decline unless it They have moved steadily to the right by the Federation issue he says, "If Federation makes a sharp re-evaluation. As for the ignoring the Election manifesto and have is im~osed, we shall have to resist it by Stalinists--threatened with exclusion !>r the alienated the peasant and toiling masses. Of­ non-VIolence and if necessary [!] by a Bombay Congress-they are already abjectly fice acceptance-originally explained as a civil-disobedience movement." This petty­ apologizing. Bombay's militant proletariat move to win liberation from "within"-has bourgeois democrat understands nothing of is leaderless and victimized. decidedly strengthened the British rai. Gandhi's failure and is fully prepared to The course of this strike is a significant Moreover, it has provided the governmental again break the neck of the liberation move­ example of two major tendencies-both staff and apparatus necessary to administer ment. These men are simply leaders with­ equally soothing to Britain's fears of losing the coming Federation. out program. India-that account for present Indian February 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Page 63 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL) would be vast­ A Reply Correspondence ly amused at the suCt,g'estion that I would be offered a housing position in payment for an Charles Yale Harrison, (Continued from page 60) attack on an obscure political party. Public Relations Counsel, gent) in the light of these remarks and the 2) Messers Burnham and Shachtman for United States Housing Authority, general frame of reference to myself years have Deen aware of my official stand­ Washington, D. C. throughout the entire article can fail to ar­ ing in housing. On more than one occasion rive at the following conclusions. First, that Mr. Shachtman has called upon me for per­ Sir: because I was unemployed or threatened sonal advice on the question. On several oc­ We are glad to print your letter in ac­ with unemployment I wrote the New Leader casions durinp the past three years I have cordance with ollr tradition of granting all articles in the hope that as a result I would lectured on the subject at New York Uni­ the necessary space for reply to all oppo­ secure a position with the Federal Govern­ versity, where Professor Burnham teaches. nents against whom we polemize and not ment; second, that the United States Hous­ On the basis of this it is evident that both in accordance with the rather more widely ing Authority negotiated to bribe me as pay­ your authors were aware that I have long practiced tradition to which you appeal­ ment for these articles; third, that the opin­ been engaged in this field and that, conse­ that of calling the cops in the attempt to ions set forth in these articles do not repre­ quently, no political writing of any sort is silence revolutionists. sent my honest opinions and convictions and required for me to secure a position in the professional field in which I specialize. We imagine that some of our readers may that con'iequently I am an author whose po­ be interested in these selected details from litical and social opinions are for sale to the 3) I was in no danger of unemployment your financial autobiography. More of them, highest bidder and hence without value. at the time that the New Leader articles were we feel, would have wished to read your 1be remarks of your authors referred to written, as a matter of fact I had received an replies to the not unimportant historical and above are deliberate and wilful lies, utterly offer to go with the United States Housing political questions raised in our article. without basis in fact and were inserted in Authority almost immediately after its in­ ception in November 1937. As a matter of Like you, we regret your temporary wage­ their article for the apparent purpose of dis­ cut, but take cheer. Experience in these crediting me with my readers. And because fact I served as a special consultant to it on more than one occasion during the summer matters has shown that your present em­ it is imperative to my reputation as a writer ployers, like their prototypes everywhere, that these wilfully damaging remarks be cor­ of 1938. My work is well known and favor­ ably received by the heads of the U.S.H.A. know how to reward renegades. We feel rected. I offer the following facts concerning sure that your achievements in ballyhooing my c.1.rccr in low-rent public housing. Employees of this agency are either Gvil Service or chosen for their achievements in the phoney Roosevelt housing program in 1) For nearly five years I have partici­ this highly technical and specialized field. order to grease the ways for the war policy pated in the low-rent housing movement in The assertion that the United States Housing of the Fouth New Deal, will not go un­ America in an official capacity. From the be­ Authority would make a deal with one of its noticed. ginning of 1934 until the end of 1938 I was employees or future employees callinR for an You write that you are "the author of director of public relations for the New attack upon Trotskyism is not only libellous brochures on this subject [housing] which York City Housing Authority. I am the au­ but absurd. The staff of the U.S.H.A. in­ are considered as authoritative" . It is a thor of brochures on this subject which are cludes persons of all politiCal shadings and pity that you did not provide our readers considered as authoritative and are used as even includes two Trotskyists. with a flllt bibliography. They would have supplementary text material in many univer­ been interested in a number of your pre­ sities' and colleges throughout the country. I 4) I resigned from the New York City Housing Authority on a question involving viously-expressed opinions of the social am so well known in this field and my ser­ role of housing programs under capitalism, vices as a writer and .lecturer on the subject procedure. My acceptance of the U.S.H.A. offer actually involved a loss in income of especially of the New Deal program in this are so much in demand that my colleagues country. in housing (who, unfortunately, do not read nearly $2,000 per year; this hardly can be construed as "payment" for services ren­ You naturally believe that in your attack dered. on revolutionary Marxism you would get Will India Accept Information re$!arding appointments and further in a courtroom than in the columns salaries of Government employees are pub­ of the labor press. We on our lart prefer Federation? lic property and are available even to writers the latter but would not fin ourselves (Con,i"rle/I) of THE NEW INTERNATIONAL; if Burnham at all dismayed at the need of inquiring and Shachtman were interested in the truth into these matters further under juridical politics. On the one hand, the I.N.C. has the information above could easilv have been auspices. adopted. a direct anti-working class and verified. Instead, however, thev preferred to James BURNHAM anti-peasant policy as part of its real aim of publish a malicious and libellous statement. Max SHACHTMAN compromising Federation. On the other In view of the foregoing I have no other al­ hand,. the so-called "left wing" perpares the ternative but to make the following demands masses for passive acceptance of the ap­ upon you. These demands, of course, are • proaching Slave Federation by failing to made without prejudice to future action on offer a program of action, a goal or leader­ my part. They are as follows: (a) that this Notice To All Agents ship worthy of the name. One must frankly letter be published in full in the February, state that unless drastic changes take place, 1939, issue of THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Subscription copies and bundle orders of a terrible catastrophe will befall India's and that it be as prominently displayed as THE NEW INTERNATIONAL are always workers and peasants-namely. imposition the offending article containing the state­ mailed at the same time. Either subscription of Federation. ments referred to above, and, (b) that the copies or bundles of the magazine therefore editors publish a full and complete retrac­ arrive in a given city simultaneously, since the The masses of enslaved Indians have long magazines are placed in aU. S. Mail Sack outgrown Gandhism. For decades they have tion, and, (c) that Professor Burnham and specifically designated as to place of destina­ been ready to push ahead to decisive com­ Mr. Shachtman, in the same issue publish a tion. When NEW INTERNATIONAL agents bats with the British raj. A signal to launch public apology. Unless this is done, and un­ become aware of a new issue through the pres­ a mass attack on Federation would be only less I receive a satisfactory reply to this letter ence of subscription copies by subscribers, they too welcome. Will India accept Federation? from you within one week from today, I should immediately inquire from their Postman Or will a war against Federation be the shall be compelled to take legal action. or at the Post Office regarding the bundle, so that delivery thereof is not unduly delayed. stArt of a direct struggle for independence, Very truly yours, If said bundle is not on hand at the Post. developing into a colonial workers and peas­ Charles Yale HARRISON Office, please notify THE NEW INTERNAL ants socialist revolution? TIONAL immediately so that a check may 11\'. S. STANLEY WASHINGTON, D. c., Jan, 18, 1939 made at once. Off the Press I Bound Volumes Daniel Guerin: of Fascism and The New International for 1938 Big Business • With a Special Introduc­ All twelve issues of The New Intem~tional for the year 1938-384 pages­ tory Essay to the are now available in a bound volume, stoutly and neatly united within hard American Edition covers, with the name of the review and the year stamped on the back. A thorough index, dividing all the contents by subjects and by author, has on been included in the volume for handy reference. "Fascism and the The printed index is available separately at 15 cents per copy. The bound American Scene" volume costs little more than the annual subscription to the magazine­ $3.00. Only a limited number of indexes and bound volumes are for sale. By Dwight MacDonald Send in your order immediately by addressing it, together with remittance, to • Publication Price: $2.00 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Order from 116 UNIVERSITY PLACE NEW YORK, N. Y. PIONEER PUBLISHERS 116 University Place, New York

Our Answer to War and Fascism! WHY NOT BegiMtng February I, 1939 The SOCIALIST APPEAL INSURE WILL BE PUBLISHED TWICE EACH WEEK The voice of revolutionary socialism responds to the great needs of the hour by doubling its frequency of publication. YOURSELF? In addition to our regular articles covering world events and the struggles of American labor, we are in­ The only way of making certain to receive The New augurating a host of fascinating features. Movie and theatre reviews; book reviews; column on workers' health. etc. The International regularly, every month. delivered to your Appeal will be more popular than ever! door by the Post Offt<:e, is by sending in is subscription. SUBSCRIBE NOW 1 From one of the scores of letters received, we quote: $1.00 - 6 months Sub Rat~s same as Formerly $2.00 - 1 year Twice as many copies. "Every member of the working class ... should for his SOCIALIST APPEAL own eniightenment subscribe to and help support The (Official Organ of the Socialist Workers Party) New International." 116 University Place New Yon City

Take out a one-year's insurance policy for yourself by sending $2.00 for the next 12 issues of the magazine. UNSER WORT

• The organ of the German Section of ~e Fourth InterMtiooal, No. 88-89, containing the "Balance of the Philosophies and PoHdcs of· the German Emigration", is now available. Also bnportant THE NEW INTERNATIONAL articles by Leon Trotsky. Published monthly; $.60 per year. Order through Labor Book Shop, 28 East 12th Street, New York 116 UNIVERSITY PLACE, NEW YORK CITY City, or through: L. de Lee, Postbus 296, ADtwerp, BeJcium.