THE· NEW INTERNATIONAL (With which is merged Labor Action) A BI-MONTRLY ORGAN OF REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM OFFICIAL TI1EORET-lCAL ORGAN OF THE WORKERS PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES Published bi-monthly by the New International Publishing Company, 55 East Eleventh Street, New York, N. Y. Subscription rates':· $I.50 per year; $I.OO for seven months. Canada and Abroad: $I.75 per year. Entered as Second Class -matter January 26, I935, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, I 879. VOLUME III Editors: NO. 1 (Whole No. 13) MAX SHACHTMAN FEBRUARY I936 JOHN IWEST TABLE OF CONTENTS Does the A. F. of L. Face a Split? by Arne Swabecl~ . ... BOOKS: Just Wars in th~ Light of Marxism, by Erich Wollenberg 2 Levy on Marxism, by Reuben Grote. .. 29 Once Again; The LL.P. An Interview with Leon Trotsky S Prize Novel, by J. W............................... 30 The Stakhanovist Movement, by N. M arl~in. .. 9 Twiligh~ of Capitalism, by Joseph Carter ............ 30 The Spirit of the U. S. Conseittdon, by Felix Morrow .. I3 Rebel Students, by M. Garrett ...................... 31 The Qu~stion or Orgaplc Unity, by John West ... , , .... I7 The Tottering Order, by Frieda F. Rothe . ........... 31 An AppraIsal of LeD Tolstoy, by N. Lenin. .. 22 American Intellectuals 'and the Crisis, by George Novack 23 THE PRESS: Notes of a Journalist, by 4lfa . ........... , ., ........ , 27 The Seven Hour Day in the U.S.S.R. ................ 32 VictiDlS of Stalinist Repressioll Bud Terror! THE WALLS of Stalinism are begin­ shevik-Leninists have escaped trom Si­ th~ trade unions as representattv.eg·.()f the ning to crack in the strongest fortress­ beria and made their way abroad. workers' interests, andp9W he is engaged the Sovet Union. in the physical extermination of irre­ For the first time the truth of condi-, proachable revolutionists. Comrade Trotsky writes: tions in the concentration camps, peniten­ tiaries and solitary confinement cells has Yes, Stalin is destroying the Russian II "The let' ers and locuments recently come to us from the mouths of the vic­ revolution, even as he has destroyed the published by comrades Tarov and Ciliga tims themselves. Comintern as an instrument of proleta­ have served to stimulate highly the inter­ rian revolution. For without revolution­ est in the repressions of the Soviet bu­ And what a terrifying tale! Hun­ ists there can be no revolution. Lackeys, reaucracy against the revolutionary fight­ dreds, thousands of the best -Bolsheviks, yes-men and courtiers have never made ers. Eighteen years after the October whose names are inseparable from the 'nor carried through a revolution. They revolution, at a time when, in accordance Russian revolution, co-workers of Lenin, will flee to their holes at the first shots of with the official doctrine, Socialism has heroes of the civil war and the struggle the class enemy. Men whose interests in conquered 'finally and irrevocably' in the against foreign intervention, cast into the Soviet state is the fleshpot will cringe U.S.S.R., revolutionists who are unwaver­ prison, tortured in a manner that would and betray when their skins are at stake. ingly devoted to the cause of communism make the Inquisition blush for shan~e, but who do not recognize th~ dogma of exiled to barren Siberian territories, cut But ideas cannot be killed by dungeons, the infallibility of the Stalinist clique, are off from family, friends and the move­ torture and exile. The very intensity of clapped into jail for years; incarcerated ment, their sentences interminably and the repressions and the bestiality of the in concentration camps; compelled to do indefinitely prolonged, many of them as­ treatment meted out to the Bolsheviks is force9 labor; subjected, if they attempt sassinated in cold blood. a great testimony that the principles 0 f to resist, to physical torture; shot in the And not Russian Bolshevik-Leninis's Marx and Lenin are thriving in Russia. event of real or fictitious attempt to es­ alone. The dragnet of the G.P.U. and its Their forces are growing, numbering cape; or deliberately driven to suicide. supple agent, the C.L, reaches out into probably in the tens of thousands. When hundreds of the prisoners, in pro­ foreign countries where revolutionary Let the forces of the Fourth Interna­ test against the intolerable hounding, re­ critics are inticed to the Soviet Union tional take heart. Even as larger sections sort to the terrible means of a hunger ostensibly to "iron out differences", of the working claSS are finding their strike, they are subjected to forced. feed­ thrown into jail with no means of re­ way against the social-patriotism of Stal­ ing, only in order to be placed later under lease-prisoners for life. inism into the camp of revolutionary even worse conditions. When individual Stalit! has transformed the Soviet Un­ struggle against war, so too in the Soviet revolutionists, finding no other means of ion from a haven of refuge for revolu­ Union a vast proletarian movement is protest, cut their veins, the G.P.U. agents, tionists persecuted by capitalist reaction arising to fight the Stalinist bureaucracy i.e., the agents of Stalin, 'save' the sui­ into a land where a rebel may enter only in its most entrenched stronghold. cides only in order then to demonstrate at peril of his life: (or this alone he will Their power is invincible. Their vic­ with redoubled bestiality that there is no go down into history as the worst enemy real salvation for them.;' tory inevitable. Let us aid them for their of the international working class. cause is ours. Together we will build the For the first time since mass expul­ Stalin and his clique hav~ destroyed mighty international which will carry to sions, imprisonment and exile of opposi­ the party of Lenin, crushed the Soviets triumph the great banner of Marx, Lenin . tionists began under Stalin in 1927, Bol- as organs for nn~'s expression, buried and Trotsky! THE NEW INTERNATIONAL A BI-MONTHLY ORGAN OF REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM VOLUME III FEBRUARY 1936 NUMBER I (Whole No. 13) Does the A. F. of L. Face a Split~ s THE American Federation of Labor facing a split? Prior to labor as can be obtained through parliamentary elections, by "re­ I the Atlantic City convention, the posing of this question would warding labor's friends and punishing labor's enemies". The class have seemed ludicrous. After this memorable meeting there could struggle was given no recognition. However, the reality of the­ be no doubt that the Federation of Gompers was shaken to its very pursuit of these aims turned out to be different from the pious.; foundation. Now, since the regular quarterly Executive Council's intentions.. To politically conscious workers it has a1ready hecome­ sessions, held at Miami, Florida, this question has moved into the a well-established fact that this political policy resulted in a partner­ reabn of practical possibility. In this brief history is reflected a ship betwen the bureaucratic craft unon leaders and the capitalist growing conflict,pubHcly identified by two powerful sections of politicians in control of govenmental administrations. The purely leading trade union officials, but expresed in terms of the living and distinctly craft union organization, on the other hand, was dynamics of the movement, it has ramifications that not only unable to penetrate the great industrial plants and the stubborn embrace every local union in the country but affect most vitally insistence on paper jurisdictional claims rendered these unions ~be working class as a whole. In this brief history we find also utterly ineffective as weapons of struggle in any serious onslaught expressed a series of events that have moved forward with a made by the big monopoly concerns. With the recent advances of nl, American speed. modern industry, wi~ the deep going changes in the national I'lldustrial unionism vs. craft unionism is the immediate issue economic structure, particulary as the result of the crisis, and the in dispute. But the conflict in its real nature, as will be amply subsequent changes in class relations, the purely craft form of borne out by future events, reaches much deeper. However, this organhation has become one of the weakest links in the chain in the question of organization form is the focus of attention in the trade union movement. It is, therefore, at this point that the higher councils and it is becoming the axis of active struggle pressure for a change is now the greatest. Of course, this pressure throughout the ranks of the organization. grows wholly out of the needs of the masses and it receives its At the Miami Executive Council meeting, the elders who make dynamic impetus from the visibly changed moods of the masses. lip its overwhelming majority, lashed out savagely against the The present trade union officialdom, even in its higher strata, Committee for Industrial Organization, headed by John L. Lewis. is not homogeneous. Where any doubt about this fact may have They manifested their fear of the dynamic forces that the industriaL existed before it should be dispelled by taking a. look at the move­ union issue may set into motion and at the outset they considered ment today. Some of these officials are now responding more this committee a rival movement in embryo form. Its dissolution readily to this pressure of the masses than others. They are was demaded. Voices were raised in favor of suspension of the compelled to set out for new aims. To the extent that they gauge unions whose representatives make up this committee. " ...There more accurately the present leftward developments among the is a growing conviction," declared the Council's statement in terms rank and file workers and draw the necessary conclusion by ad­ even too moderate to suit the most conscious reactionaries, "that vocating a progressive position, this is all to their credit.