'1 1 I I ! I ! The New------------- 'i , I I i i I I ! NTERNATIONAL I AUGUST • 1946 Notes of the Month LABOR'S POLITICS AFTER THE RAILROAD STRIKE ELECTIONS SHIFT FRANCE TO RIGHT INDIA: DISSOLUTION OF EMPIRE JAMES T. FARRELL: The Problem of Public Sensibility A Review of the Film. The Open City ROBERT STILER: The Politics of Psychoanalysis The Political Implications of Freudian Theory A. Rudzienski: THE PROBLEMS OF THE POLISH REVOLUTION Leon Shiflds and Albert Gates: SELF·DETERMINATION IN PALESTINE An Exchange of Views SINGLE COpy 25c ONE YEAR 52.00 ATTENTION, SUBSCRIBERS: THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Difficulties beyond our control have A Monthly Organ of Revolutionary Marxism again made it necessary to skip publication of the June and July issues of our magazine. The circumstances un­ Vol. XII No.6, No. 108 der which it is necessary to publish have not improved Published monthly, except June and July, by the New International sufficiently over last year to permit us to resume the pub­ Publishing Co., 114 West 14.th Street, New York 11, N. Y. Telephone: lication of twelve issues a year, as we had hoped. CHelsea 2-9681. Subscription rates: $2.00 per year; bundles, 15c for Although our registry with the Post Office lists us as five copies and up. Canada and foreign $2.25 per year; bundles, 20c appearing every month "except June and July" (carried for five and up. Re-entered as second class matter August 25,1945, at in our editorial box since August, 1945), we will honor the post office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. all yearly subscriptions for twelve issues. The September issue will be devoted primarily to articles on the works and significance of Leon Trotsky. EDITORIAL BOARD Stalin with be reviewed by Max Shachtman, Five Years ERNEST ERBER ALBERT GATES ALBERT GOLDMAN of the Communist International by Albert Gates, The J. R. JOHNSON MAX SHACHTMAN New Course by Irving Howe. "The Trotsky Heritage and Managing Editor: ERNEST ERBER the Workers Party" will be an evaluation of the contri­ butions of Trotsky to the program of the WP. Daniel Logan will contribute an article tracing the development of Trotsky's view on the Russian question. TABLE OF CONTENTS This issue will be an important theoretical contribu­ tion to the relationship of Trotsky's ideas and the pro­ grammatic views of the Workers Party as developed over :EDITORIALS ................................................................ 163 the last six years. Every reader of THE NEW INTERNA­ TIONAL will want this issue as a real addition to the ar­ THE GERMANIES, II senal of Marxism. By Henry Judd ........................................................ 168 James Barrett, a regular contributor, has informed us that he intends to continue the controversy on how to PROBLEMS OF THE POLISH REVOLUTION fight fascism. His health has, unfortunately, not per­ By A. Rudzienski .................................................... 172 mitted literary work in the past months. THE POLITICS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS CORRECTION By Robert Stiler ...................................................... 176 In our May issue an omission was made from the letter of A. Arlins in reply to Ruth Phillips. A quotation from Max Shacht­ FOR SELF-DETERMINATION IN PALESTINE man given by Comrade Arlins in its original English text was not recopied by the translator and was overlooked by the editors. The By Leon Shields ...................................................... 180 quotation and the preceding sentence follow the sentence that be­ gins a paragraph in the left-hand column of page 159 with the THE MEANING OF SELF-DETERMINATION words, "And so, the 'Editorial Note' of December ..." and ends with "community of interest." The omitted material reads: By Albert Gates ...................................................... 181 "However, a whole month before my article was published in THE NEW INTERNATIONAL, Max Shachtman wrote as follows on the THE PROBLEM OF PUBLIC SENSIBILITY Fourth International: "'During the war, the Fourth International simply ceased to By James T. Farrell ................................................ 183 exist as any (!) kind of real movement. It is amazing, but a fact, that for five or six years the International had nothing (!) to say THE VATICAN'S NEW LINE (or was prevented from saying anything) on a dozen of the most important problems of world politics. There was no (!) interna­ By Joseph Leonard 188 tional leadership; and that which arrogated this role to itself was far worse than bad (!): it was arrogantly bureaucratic (!), theo­ BOOK REVIEWS 189 retically sterile (!) or psittacotic (!), politically a thousand times ( !) wrong or impotent (!). In a word: the International failed completely (!) during the war, failed in every (!) respect, failed in­ CORRESPONDENCE .................................................. 191 excusably (!). If we do not (!) start by establishing this fact, we will not (!) make the progress that must be made .... ) It is possible, we think, to overcome the terrible (th~oretical confusion (! ) and political disorientation (!) of the various sections, provided the problem is tackled correctly.' (Myexclam-ations.-A. A.)" ~"i=':" • •• _JY'i: 0fYIi .... THE NEW INTERNATIONAL A Monthly Organ of Revolutionary Marxism VOLUME XII AUGUST. 1946 NUMBER 6 NOTES OF THE MONTH The Railroad Strike: Turning Point in Labor's Politics - The Indian Negotiations: Empire in Dissolufion­ France Shifts to Right The note of grim determination would have been different only in tempo. For Truman has struck by the undistinguished~appearing little man who faced fallen heir to a vast, incongruous political coalition which was the battery of microphones to hurl threats and denunciation already in process of disintegration when headed by the mas­ upon the nation's "enemies," the atmosphere of historic deci­ ter political opportunist himself, who in addition had the tre­ sion that pervaded the proceedings, the tenseness that bespoke mendous advantage of the unifying effect of war upon the na­ suppressed hysteria on the part of the assembled lawmakers, tion. all combined to make the joint session of Congress that heard What Truman Inherited Truman's message dealing with the nation-wide rail tie-up strikingly reminiscent of the session that heard the late Presi­ The mass base of the administration is greatly reduced dent Roosevelt read his war message two days after Pearl from the imposing forces Roosevelt mobilized in 1936~38 when Harbor. he united sections of monopoly capital, the AFL, the CIO, the Though the surrender of the rail union chiefs, announced unemployed, the urban petty bourgeoisie, the Middle Western in the very midst of the President's speech, made of the latter farmers, the solid South and the northern Negroes. Truman the climax rather than the prelude to hostilities, history will has the unhappy task of steering a course in this crucial elec­ reveal that the dramatic setting in the House on that after­ tion year of 1946 that will prove satisfactory to what remains noon was fully warranted by the importance of the occasion. of this coalition. The basic contradiction, even more basic in Truman's message marked the irrevocable turning point in its fundamentals than the attempt to gain the votes of both the relations between labor and government that have pre­ Bilbo-Rankin and the National Association for the Advance­ vailed since 1933. ment of Colored People, is, of course, the need of the admin­ No matter what the course of Hillman's PAC during the istration to continue the Roosevelt myth of being a pro-labor elections of this year, no matter how irresolute and apparently administration while complying with the demands of cap1tal contradictory will be labor's policy in relation to the admin­ that "labor be put in its place." istration, the railroad strike closed a chapter in the political Truman came near to foundering on this rock in the very history of the American working class which can be reread but beginning of the strike wave when he plunged into the Gen­ not relived. The twelve-year-Iong spectacle of the total de­ eral Motors strike with his infamous proposals for "fact-find­ pendence of American labor upon the political fortunes of a ing" and a thirty-day "cooling-off period." The breach be­ government which has revealed itself to be the most calculat­ tween the administration and labor that followed was not rec­ ing and far-seeing representative of monopoly capitalism in onciled despite the efforts of Truman to retreat and placate American history could not continue indefinitely. All the con­ the trade unions. If his conciliatory conduct created the illu­ tradic,tions inherent in this relationship were driven to their sion in the ranks of labor that perhaps he had made a bad ultimate degree by the rail strike. error and would not repeat it, the rail crisis proved that both But the rail strike did not burst upon happy administra­ Truman and the labor bureaucracy were trying to reconcile tion-labor relations as from a clear sky. The careful observer the irreconcilable. was able to chart the steady deterioration of Roosevelt's hold Had Truman been free to choose his spot for declaring war over the labor movement beginning in 1940. This process was upon organized labor, he could hardly have chosen a less op­ slowed down and virtually dammed up by the pressure of the portune one than the rail controversy. The obvious logic of war upon the labor bureaucracy, but only to move at a swifter the demands put forth by the rail unions, the tremendous good pace when the sluice~gates were opened with V-J Day. The re­ will toward railroad personnel on the part of the public, the placement of the adroit Roosevelt, with his tremendous pres­ "neutral" position of the independent brotherhoods in regard tige, by the inept and incompetent Truman, with a record to the AFL-CIO controversy, the accepted conservatism of the that added up to zero, only hastened the process.