Volume 22 No. 6, June, 1943
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LEW J,S A ND THE DEFEATIST CONSPIRACY . EARL BROW DER W ILLIAM , Z. 1 FOSTER I • .. ' VICTORY IN AFRICA EUGENE DENNIS • ,JOHN WILLI A MSON . ' I • I • r ' T~E · CRISIS IN FASCIST UPPER CIRCLES IN ITALY . , . M. ERCOp • I / THE PROVOCATION OF THE POLISH REACTIONARIES : A • o HANs' BERG ~ R . \ • "ONE WC>RLD"-WENDElL I · WllLKlE'S· 1 ' CHALLENGJNG BOOK JOSEPH NORTH "In this great conflict againd the Axi•, there ace fundamental philosophic issues at stalce. Indeed, all our ethical values ere involved in the outcome. Dr. Sel•am's boolc is a notable contribution to the understanding, the philo sophic understanding, of both ourselves ond our allies. It is the most com plete ond careful trea'tment of socialism and ethics that has been written by anyone at any time."-CORLISS LAMONT. SOCIALISM AND ETHICS · "' By Dr. Howard Selsam 1 What is ethics? From what do men derive their judgments of right and wrong, good and evil? Is ethics concerned primarily with individual virtue or with economic, s0cial and political in stitutions? How can capitalism and socialism be morally evaluated -democracy and 1 fascism? Are there eternal moral questions? Whaf is the true relation of the individual to society? What is freedom: what i.s progress? What is the role of the working~ class in t.he determination and achievement of freedom and progress? How should one morally evaluate national unity in the war of the United Nations ~gains+ the Axis? ~ In this new book,-just published, the author of Wha,t Is Philosophy? examines capitalist society in its historical ·clevelopment and in its present form and shows how and wny Marxian socialism con forms with and embraces~ the highest moral ideals of the ages. 1 Socialism and Ethics is a fundamental contribution to Marxist- . Leninist' the or; in 'cdield long neglected. It is a book that belol)gs in every Marxist library. v 224 Pages. Price $1.90 WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS P. 0. Box 148, Station D (832 Broadway), New York, N. Y. VOL. XXII, NO. 5 JUNE, 1943 THE COMMUNIST A MAGAZINE OF THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MARXISM.LJ!:NINISM EDITOR: EARL BROFDER CONTENTS The Strike Wave Conspiracy . Earl Browder 483 The Victory in Africa . Eugene Dennis 495 The Crisis in Fascist Upper Circles in Italy M. Ercoli 505 The Provocation of the Polish Reactionaries Hans Berger 513 The Strike of the Coal Miners . William Z. Foster 527 Lessons of the Party Building Campaign and the Next Tasks . John Williamson 539 A Year of American Slav Unity A. Landy 552 On the 73rd Anniversary of Lenin's Birth L. Yudin 562 "One World"-Wendell Willkie's Challeng- ing Book . Joseph North . 564 Historic Documents 572 EmereEl. as second el4u matter NO'Vember 2, 1927, at the Post Office a.t New YOTk, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. THE COMMTJNIST is publi.thed .Mcmthly by WOTkeT's Library Publishers, Inc., at 832 Broadway, New YOTk, N. Y. (mail address, P. 0. Box 148, Station D), to whom sub scription&, palf'll\(mts and corresp<mdence should be sent. Subscription rate: $2.00 a year; $1.00 for six momhls; foreigR and Canada $2.50 a yea.r. ____oii.Bgle copies 30...._ centa. NEW AND FORTHCOMING PAMPHLETS Policy for Victory • • $.15 By Earl Browder Soviet Trade Unions and Allied Labor Unity . .05 By William Z. Foster Behind the Polish-Soviet Break • .03 By Alter Brody With an introduction by Corliss Lamont Thomas Jefferson: Selections From His Writings • .25 With an introduction by Dr. Philip Foner The Heritage of Jefferson • .I 0 by Claude G. Bowers, Earl Browder and Francis Franklin Karl Marx: His Life and Work • .15 Reminiscences by Paul Lafargue and Wilhelm Liebknecht Battle for America-1776-1861-1941 .15 By A. B. Magil Is Communism a Menace? . .I 0 Earl Browder-George Sokolsky Debate • WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS P. 0. Box 148, Station D (832 Broadway), New York, N. Y. THE STRIKE WAVE CONSPIRACY* BY EARL BROWDER HE present moment is charac aware of this and are frantically T terized by the turn in the war in trying to avert disaster by mobiliz which the ultimate defeat of the ing all their resources and calling Axis has been written in large up their reserves. Hitler has already letters for the whole world to see. mobilized all of his fighting forces The brilliant completion of the in Germany and is now combing the North African campaign with the war factories for able-bodied men, occupation of Bizerte and Tunis by replacing them with slave labor the British, American and French from the occupied countries. At the soldiers, and the rapid mopping up same time he has called upon his afterwards which netted 175,000 fifth column in the United States to Axis prisoners, are a sign of the ·go into action. The military record times. ever many months has gone steadily The North African campaign, so and inexorably against Hitler, but he well completed, and the rising tide has still been able to register sur of British and American air raids on prising strength · on the diplomatic Nazi munitions and communication and fifth-column front, especially centers, have merged with the vic in this country. tories of the Red Army on the Eastern Front--victories on a scale The Alter-Ehrlich Conspiracy unprecedented in military history The first open break in the United to create the preconditions for Nations was registered in the breaking the backbone of Hit provocations of the Polish govern lerism in 1943. The decisive phase ment-in-exile which joined Berlin's of the war has arrived; the road to propaganda against the Soviet victory lies straight ahead and Union, compelling the Soviet Gov needs only the immediate and full ernment to suspend diplomatic re development of coalition warfare, lations with the Sikorski govern unmoved by military or political diversions, to crush Hitler in the ment. A New York Herald Tribune correspondent in London cabled iron ring of a two-front war. to his paper a day or two Hitler and his associates are fully after the break in diplomatic relations the opinion expressed in * This article is based on a speech delivered at Manhattan Center, New York, May 14, 1943. conservative circles in London, that 483 484 THE STRIKE WAVE CONSPIRACY the Sikorski government would to strike Hitler this year and finish never have dared to join in Goeb him. bels' provocation about the missing These conspirators had powerful Polish officers had it not been for press organs in their hands for this the fact that they had been encou purpose. They not only had the col raged to expect United States sup laboration of a large section of the port in such a position by the suc capitalist daily press. Through the cess that had attended the campaign presence of members of this anti in the American labor movement Soviet conspiracy in strategic posi against the Soviet Union on the tions in the labor press, they were basis of the Ehrlich-Alter case. able to make powerful trade union It is true that a very small pro organs the bearers of this poisonous portion of the American labor propaganda. movement responded to this provo Thus in the months of March and cation on the Ehrlich-Alter case. April, the United Auto Workers However, I believe we have all News, the organ of the great auto made a serious error in underesti motive qnion, which happens to be mating the importance of this issue. edited by a former associate We saw it too much as an isolated of the Social-Democratic New incident which would soon be over Leader in New York, carried not and forgotten, leaving the mass of one single line to expose the crimes the workers untouched and unaf of the Nazis, but every single issue fected. We failed to see that it was has thundered against the supposed a part of the whole pattern of Nazi crimes of our ally, Soviet Russia. conquest through the division of its Another former associate of the enemies. New Leader is the editor of the It is time we put an end to that C.I.O. News ·of the State of Michi underestimation because, although gan. And there we find the same a very small section of the Ameri thing repeated: and it is no accident can working class in any way re that this concentration has been sponded to that campaign, the cam right at the heart of the war indus paign was carried out by men who try in Detroit. They have dinned it hold powerful and strategic posi into the ears of the workers that the tions in the American labor move great David Dubinsky of New :York ment and who compromised in their vouches for Alter and Ehrlich and provocation important and honest says that those two men in the So leaders who did not know what they viet Union could no more have been were being inveigled into. In this guilty of appealing to the Red Army way the conspirators transmitted to to desert to the Nazis, than David a large section of the American Dubinsky himself. But they did not population and the working class an tell the workers that David Dubin attitude of suspicion and uneasiness sky, on a public platform in New toward our Soviet ally, precisely at York only last week declared his the moment when that would do the solidarity with the sentiments ex most harm to the united war effort pressed by N. Chanin, in the maga- THE STRIKE WAVE CONSPIRACY 485 zine Friend in January, 1942, that Government would crumble under "the final shot will come from Free Hitler's assaults.