A Socialist View of the Week
A Socialist View of the Week Hoover Urges Policy of Shifting Taxes to Working Masses and Cutting Wages While He Sings Glories of Private Enterprise to the Starving CINGING bis iwan song...
...Before the death of Lincoln, capitalist reaction was in control of the party and some of its leaders threatened to fight him...
...The whole system of exchange and distribution is in rebellion against the system of production...
...The Persian Government has also recently announced the annulment of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company concession...
...A salary reduction of 11 per cent for a clerk drawing $l ,200 a year, for example, is a hardship, whHe the same percent reduction for the person receiving $10,000 a year is not...
...In fact, quite a number of Hitlerites believe that they are helping "true Socialism...
...To meet these problems be recommends seduction of government salaries above $7,000 and the "spread work" plan which is a hypocritical method of wage-cutting...
...He dusts off his individualist philosophy which has been covered the debris of capitalism's collapse...
...Should a weak nation resist this extension of alien sovereignty, it may lead to war and in that case workers are called from the shops and farms in defense of the exported capital...
...History NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER'S cry for a "liberal" Republican Party is echoed by Governor Pinchot of Pennsylvania, who declares that his party is "badly aaphyxiated by the poison gas of concentrated wealth...
...When that occurs, the workers do the fighting and the survivors return home to pay the billsBack of most diplomatic duels will be found some cause like this...
...Hoover's finance corporation la of no assistance to (hem and big concerns are accumulating property which they cannot market, In the same way vast acres of land are being absorbed by the banks bnt the land cannot be marketed...
...The business is in a bad way and he wants to cut expenses...
...Banks and loan companies are calling in mortgages by the thousand...
...They have...
...Pinchot Confused On G.O.P...
...Curiously enough, this is a revival of the labor exchange store which Josiah Warren, known as the first American anarchist, established in Cincinnati In the early 'thirties...
...It is an Indictment of capitalism that it is compelling many workers in sheer desperation to resort to this method to keep alive...
...Hoover is the most bourgeois of presidents we have ever had except Coolidge, but he also comes close to endowing capitalism with that religious sanctity which Coolidge was the first to stress in the House of the Presidents...
...The congress of trade unions in Cincinnati last week moved definitely in the direction at a social philosophy after waiting patiently for years for Hooverism blessings...
...But this philosophy is onesided...
...One represents the upper heaven of those who want to preserve their decaying social system...
...The antagonism between the two prevents that "free play of social and economic forces" and has even paralyzed it...
...In one Ohio town a labor exchange store has been established and the barter is effected through labor exchange scrip...
...He is sure that "we should allow the free ,lay of social and economic forces so far as will not limit equality of opportunity" and so long as it will "stimulate the initiative and enterprise of our people...
...Supplementing this recommendation is one for the extension of special manufacturers excise taxes "to cover practically all manufactures at a uniform rate, except necessary food and possibly some grades of clothing...
...Lincoln was murdered and Johnson attempted to carry out his policy and the reaction came within one vote of removing Johnson from office...
...In the most terrible industrial depression in all history Hoover recommends the same system...
...He solemnly asserts that our government and social system have a "unique history and background...
...We have even received copies of Long's speeches from readers who stated that Long is a Socialist...
...The British Government objected and the Shah warns that, if a new concession on better terms is not agreed to and Britain moves a single soldier into Persia,' a shell might be dropped in a refinery and send millions of barrels up in smoke...
...Labor Exchanges A PHASE of the depression is the tendency of jobless workers in the West to resort to a form of barter known as the "labor exchange...
...As an intermediate layer between the bourgeois class and the working class, the middle classes find in fascism a hope of avoiding extinction...
...This antagonism between production and distribution has also paralyzed the "initiative and enterprise of our people...
...What has happened is that the Democracy has gone into the same business and it has won the contract for governing as for the same groups...
...The idea is to exchange service for service and value for value...
...Outside his own enterprise his capitalist friends also have enterprises that are in a bad way...
...Stocks went up in Wall Street from 1 to 6 points...
...The Civil War came with its hates and hysteria and the idea was forgotten till the 'nineties when the depression years revived it...
...We do not have anything like this cohesion of such elements yet in the United States, but if it appears its leaders will be more like Senator Huey Long of Louisiana...
...It is such consumption taxes levied in a number of the European countries in the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth that helped to bring many workers into the Socialist movement Excise taxes in Pennsylvania in Washington's and John Adams' administration also brought two revolts of farmers...
...The philosophy is that ancient "rugged Individualism" that lies buried in the wreckage of the capitalist system...
...Supporting these recommendations, Hoover becomes sentimental...
...The railroad unions have also moved in the same direction which has gone to the extent of supporting a.bill for the extension of loans to the jobless, which is an answer to Hoover's idea of financing the capitalist and financial kings...
...He springs from the poor whites of the South and has an inveterate hate for our ruling classes...
...If the recommendation was for a reduction of salaries above ?S#00 and- increasing as the tax ascends into the higher salaries one could approve it...
...There is an interesting contrast with this clinging to a capitalist individualism that warns the workers not to use the government for their interests while Hooverism uses government for the service of capitalist enterprise...
...There is more of this...
...He reminds us of a man who craws out of a wrecked building that has collapsed because of faulty 'construction and assures distressed relatives of the injured and the dead that the design and execution of plans require no alteration...
...It comes not from the upper rating classes who certainly have never had more free reign than in this country, hot from desperate middle clasu groups allied with workers, who do not know their own best interests, college students, and a following of slum and criminal elements...
...Ah an expedient in a terrific disaster it may be of some help to workers, but its danger is that ft may accustom ninny to an extremely low standard of living...
...To the extent that capital is invested overseas, it carries with it the sovereignty of its borne government and limits the sovertignty of the nation where it is invested...
...It received a text book by G. B. DeRernardi and about eighty exchanges were reported in 1896...
...As a rule, it is applied by powerful capitalist governments to weaker governments but not to each other...
...His idea was to exchange value for value and as the exchange developed throughout the nation, the workers, aa self-producers and exchangers, would eventually absorb all industries...
...The two trends are in conflict...
...Capitalism has reached' the absurdity where In the robbery of the masses the leecers are enable to realise on their fleecings...
...The small home owner is the chief victim...
...Fascism and Its Various Elements WTK have heard warnings about a " coming fascism In the United States, but many of them have not been based on an undertsanding of fascism...
...The Spanish Government has seriously considered the seizure of the telephone system which is chiefly owned by an American corporation...
...the other represents the masses who are groping their way to a social philosophy that cannot be reconciled with this system...
...Its leaders must throw a radical sop to workers and at the same time arouse their rage against the ruling classes...
...This means that the capitalist class engaged in manufacturing will slap on the increased taxes and the suffering masses will pay the bill...
...To attract these lower groups, fascism generally stresses a vague labor radicalism...
...The American Government also objected to the Spanish seizure of telephones and this appears to have been dropped...
...Two Incidents of "mperialist Power TWO items of foreign news this week * are Impressive...
...Here is imperialist philosophy...
...So here are thousands of workers in many cities of the West, many of them native Americana, who have turned to an old anarchist expedient and the Daughters of the American Revolution have not been disturbed 1 If the ancient ladiea understood It and also knew that ita author waa a descendant of the General Warren who fell at Bunker Hill, many of them would faint...
...We would like to see our rating classes laugh that of—If they can...
...It is the tame contemptible theory of "equality of sacriftflae" that Premier MacDonald glorified when he deserted the Labor Party...
...If the Senator's demand for decentralization of wealth has that effect on some folks, we may be sure that Huey meets the requirements of the demagogue that is essential to fascism...
...It is the big stick shaken by the great powers in support of their big investors...
...The system has collapsed on an average of once each twelve years since 1837, but Hoover vests it with a halo of "the invi' ble sanctity of the individual human spirit...
...Stephen Pearl Andrews, successor of Warren, popularized and expanded the views of Warren into a philosophy of society in the 'fifties...
...If that sentence was written by a convert to some mystic oriental religious cult we would laugh, but sent to the legislature of the nation we cannot express our opinion in language that would pass the censor...
...He blandly ignores the fact that the present plight of capitalism and of the millions depending upon it for a living gives the answer to him...
...The initiative of millions now is to beg because "enterprise" is a barren waste of smokeless chimneys and rusting machinery and his own recommendations will, if enacted into legislation, increase the number of those who are compelled to beg...
...Thus many who, in the chieken-in-the-pot era, put their savings Into a home and assumed a mortgage of $5,000 or more find it impossible to finance their way...
...It is understood that the Homo Loan Bank will loan only 30 to 40 per cent on properties re-appraised to meet present market conditions...
...Far from the Morgans, Mellons, Insulls and Atterhurys being in conflict with those principles, they admirably express them...
...The program means a shift of some big burdens of the Federal Government to the millions or jobless and destitute workers and an increase in the eost of living...
...The main elements of such movements consist of the middle classes who hate the ruling capitalists and financiers, but also fear a class conscious working class...
...The New York Times stated that the trend was due to Hoover's recommendation of a sales tax...
...A survey in the New York "Times" last Sunday shows that the foreclosures of mortgages thin year will involve properties at close to a billion dollar*, about double those of the year before...
...The man who claims some political intelligence and who does not know that the Mellons and ethers he mentions are the legitimate heirs of Mark Hanna and his type has reached a green, old age...
...However, this gathrring-in of small properties at a deflated value means the accumulation of values for which there are no buyers...
...Mussolini did this and Hitler does it now...
...A Socialist View of the Week Hoover Urges Policy of Shifting Taxes to Working Masses and Cutting Wages While He Sings Glories of Private Enterprise to the Starving CINGING bis iwan song before be retires from office, President Hoover on Tuesday urged a program and expounded a philosophy...
...Pinchot draws a distinction between "historic Republican principles" and the leaders like the Mellons, Morgans, Instills and Atter bury a. We cannot see the distinction and for Pinchot to claim to have discovered one places him in the suspect class...
...Several of the larger building institutions and hanks," reads the 'Times" story, "are credited with having hundreds of parcels on their hands which are a burden to carry and a frozen asset that cannot be moved or improved because there is no sale market and no mortgage money obtainable to refinance holdings...
...Hoover approaches the problem of government finances like the capitalist owner of a big industrial enterprise...
...With the ascension of Grant the capitalist class and its financial allies came into complete control of the party and from that day to this "historic Republican principles" have been the will of these groups translated into legislation, enforced by executive power and Judicial interpretation...
...Fleecers Deflated E*RE a decade pasxes away, some one will tell *-* the story of the enormous expropriation of small property and home owners and the concentration of their holdings in the grip of the big banks...
Vol. 14 • December 1932 • No. 24
