TIME FOR THUNDER ON THE LEFT

Rubin, Morris H.

Time For Thunder On The Left By MORRIS H. RUBIN (Editor of The Progressive) THE approach of the 1944 political campaign has heightened the intolerance of those who embrace the doctrine of...

...Certainly their sharp criticism would indicate that the indictment of Mr...
...We could go on with quotations like these indefinitely, but one more ought to hail down our point...
...Kelly's doorstep abutted on an alley that was certainly not more than 10 feet wide and into which the sun could certainly not penetrate very long in any day," according to the Times editorial...
...Discussing the Baruch Plan and the Liberty League appointments the President made under it, Stone wrote recently: "These appointments and the Baruch-Hancock report present a crucial victory for monopoly capital, and make a farce of the repeated promises of 'full employment after the war.'" These comments, all of which attack Mr...
...Roosevelt appears to have been trying to strengthen the Administration politically, not by concerning himself with the deepest fears and aspirations of the people, but by yielding to the lobbyists of special interests...
...We are glad its complacent editors were shocked out of their boots...
...It was Bob La Follette who fought his heart out for the Farm Security Administration, for the National Youth Administration, for the Tennessee Valley Authority, and for the surplus commodities program, to mention only a few, when some of the Administration's own lieutenants were looking the other way...
...A generation ago, facing a somewhat similar situation and similar attacks, the late Sen...
...Time For Thunder On The Left By MORRIS H. RUBIN (Editor of The Progressive) THE approach of the 1944 political campaign has heightened the intolerance of those who embrace the doctrine of "Presidential infallibility...
...Wrote Mr...
...A Different Roosevelt NOW, Bob La Follette has supported Roosevelt for President three times...
...The position of Bob La Follette, and the position of The Progressive, has been to support the President when we thought he was right and to oppose him when we thought he was wrong...
...Wisconsin Progressives not only carried the state for Mr...
...He is an astute politician...
...This editor listed nine legislative achievements of the New Deal (every one of which, by the way, had had the support of Progressives) to prove that Roosevelt is a progressive...
...Roosevelt, who now favors the conscription of labor, who endorses the Baruch Plan surrender to monopoly capital, who appoints an ex-Liberty Leaguer (Will Clayton) to the most important reconversion office, and who acquiesces in the abandonment of anti-monopoly prosecutions—certainly this man is not the man who sought and received the unstinted aid of Progressives when he vowed to drive the money-changers from the temple of government...
...A progressive movement must be virile and dynamic if it is to go forward and if it is to be strong enough to stand up to the powerful blows of special interests...
...Roosevelt's domestic achievements, but they are today fighting a rearguard action to save those under attack in Congress, and fighting often without much help from the White House...
...I shall support the President in the measures he proposes when I believe them to be right...
...As long as the pressure comes from the right, he will yield to the right...
...Then there's Mr...
...Bruce Bliven, the pro-Roosevelt editor of the pro-Roosevelt New Republic...
...I shall oppose measures proposed by the President when I believe them wrong...
...One need only examine the comments of some of Mr...
...Roosevelt's Administration on fundamentals, as Bob La Follette did, come without exception from liberals generally regarded as supporters of the President's regime...
...Roosevelt three times—the Wisconsin Democratic Party has won the state elections only once in 50 years—but provided the Roosevelt Administration, during its progressive phase, with some of its most successful ideas and many of its ablest administrators...
...Irene Kelly of Pittsburgh, mother of Sgt...
...moreover, much of his liberalism has always been an impromptu and ad-hoc product, the result of someone's coming along with a good liberal idea at just the right moment...
...Pressure From The Right THE point we are trying to make was made best for us by a "Roosevelt-right-or-wrong" editor in Wisconsin who screamed "rank ingratitude" at Bob La Follette's speech...
...Certainly one can be properly grateful for . some of these 1933-1936 achievements without blinding oneself to the more recent surrender to reaction...
...An Old Deal' Let's start with Mr...
...It is time for thunder on the left...
...This housing produced Sgt...
...It was a picture of Mrs...
...Every thoughtful observer agrees that the reconversion of American productive capacity to peacetime pursuits will be a major, if not actually the decisive factor in shaping the course of America's postwar economy...
...But will anyone dare say that it is good enough for the Kellys...
...The political collaboration between the New Deal in Washington and the Progressives of Wisconsin was helpful to both...
...It produced six other Kelly boys, all now in the service...
...The liberal movement is being blamed for the Government's failure to function properly in wartime, but actually there are not enough liberals left in the Administration to man the main stations of government...
...Significantly, though, every one of those nine was passed before 1937...
...He spoke in the finest tradition of the Progressive movement...
...Every sincere effort to expose the Roosevelt Administration's abandonment of progressive principles and to check its swing to the right is now lumped by the "Roosevelt-can-do-no-wrong" crowd with the Tory outbursts of the Hearst-Mc-Cormick clan, which is engaged in the ridiculous effort to portray the President as a "radical...
...Bliven: "The President has never been more of a liberal than he could afford to be at any given moment...
...And we note further that some of these agencies are so inefficient, bungling, and overlapping in their functions as to hurt the public interest and retard the prosecution of the war...
...Kelly with a better doorstep, more sunlight, and something better to look at than a gray wall 10 feet away...
...We hope they will never forget the story told by that photograph and that from now on the Times will disregard the clamor of the realtors and other special interests and do its part in the battle to give every American family "a better doorstep," not only in Pittsburgh, but in New York, Washington, and other cities where slums exist...
...The photograph showed Mrs...
...there isn't a single piece of legislation listed for the years after 1936...
...Charles Edward Kelly, the first of our "boys" to win the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Italian area...
...Roosevelt's capitulation to reactionary forces has been both more vehement and more widespread than is generally supposed...
...Kelly, who must be healthy, as well as brave...
...The fact that the matter which the President submits for consideration is of the greatest importance is only an additional reason why we should be sure that we are right and not be swerved from that conviction or intimidated in its expression by any influence or power whatsoever...
...In a rare moment of candor Mr...
...Progressives are grateful for many of Mr...
...A Better Doorstep' For All (From Labor, organ of the Railroad Brotherhoods) ASOCIAL problem must be "tough" indeed to shock the editorial writers of the New York Times but they were shocked good and hard by something which appeared in their own paper...
...The actual fact is, of course, that it was Mr...
...Today, the men who come along at the right moment are hard-boiled generals, admirals, and big business executives with billion-dollar contracts...
...Roosevelt's best friends and warmest supporters to confirm the truth of this statement...
...Certainly Mr...
...In the Senate, Bob La Follette was a harder fighter and a more tireless champion of the Administration— when it was progressive—than most of the Democrats...
...I. F. Stone, the ubiquitous Washington correspondent for two of the country's most fervent Roosevelt publications, PM and the Nation, found it necessary to inform his readers that Mr...
...Bliven went farther than The Progressive ever has by intimating that the President's liberalism may have been a phony all along...
...Philip Murray, president of the CIO, who was one of the first to climb the fourth term bandwagon...
...Roosevelt had "surrendered" to reactionary interests on this vital front...
...Yielding To Special Privilege It was only last month that this same friend of the Administration reaffirmed his previous conclusion by writing: "Mr...
...It was Bob La Follette whose civil liberties investigation provided a bulwark against further raids on la-tor and exposed the dangers of corporate agriculture...
...It was Bob La Follette who took the floor to fight for the Administration's National Resources Planning Board when many who call themselves "liberal Democrats" were silent...
...La Follette was "dividing the liberals...
...Said Mr...
...Certainly there is a field right there, in that part of Pittsburgh, for some housing—subsidized by the Federal, state or city government if necessary—that will provide Mrs...
...Roosevelt might have been awakened to the danger of the course he took in surrendering to reaction...
...Patton in a recent statement: ''The Roosevelt Administration started out as a New Deal, but now has taken on all the aspects of an old deal canned up in a different way...
...Kelly seated on the doorstep of her home, telling her neighbors the good news that Charles Edward would soon be home on a furlough...
...We are glad the Times printed that photograph...
...Thus, when Bob La Follette dared to criticize the Administration's surrender to reaction, in his notable speech before the Progressive Party convention in Milwaukee a fortnight ago, apologists for the President burst into print with cries of "rank ingratitude" and howls that Sen...
...It cannot live on a diet of memories or grow strong on a bale of clippings...
...This did not prevent him from stating bluntly that labor "notes with regret that some of the wartime agencies created under this Administration have a pronounced anti-labor bias...
...Said the late senior La Follette in 1917: "For myself, I have never subscribed to that doctrine and never shall...
...Robert M. La Follette, Sr., struck at the doctrine of "standing back of the President without inquiring whether the President is right or wrong...
...Or take Mr...
...But Mrs...
...Roosevelt who precipitated the division by turning his back on liberal legislation and progressive principles...
...James Patton, the able president of the pro-New Deal National Farmers' Union and a likely backer of a fourth term...
...We of The Progressive believe that if there had been more progressives, independents, and liberals pursuing such a policy, instead of slavishly "standing back of the President" when he was wrong as well as when he was right, that Mr...
...By its very nature progressivism must go forward or die, and it is dying in Washington today...
...That is why Bob La Follette stood up in Milwaukee and dared to tell the truth to his fellow Progressives—dared to tell them that "the high hopes which the Democratic Party held in 1933 for many sincere Democrats and liberals have been dimmed...

Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 21


 
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