By All Means, Let's Plan Ahead But It Must Be For Socialism
Douty, H. M.
By All Means, Let's Plan Ahead But It Must Be For Socialism _________ Swope Plan, Chase Plan or What Have You? Leave Capitalism Undisturbed — No Future Without Socialism b Worth Working...
...In a word, these plans propose to patch capitalist, not to transform it They insure the maintenance of the profit system, but with an even higher degree of capitalist concentration and control than at present...
...Politically, the proposals for capitalist economic planning lead to fascism...
...He has taken his art seriously, painted his poems as he felt them, and walked a steady gait onward, and unobtrusively upward...
...To Gain Power 1. Power...
...Production will be carried out for the use of the members of society, and not for the profit of a grasping ruling class...
...I sm especially grateful to Comrade Bill Flchandler and his good wife Edith Weller for travelling through the storm all the way from the West Side of Manhattan to Rockaway Park In ordes to furnish his fine talent at the piano...
...The precise method needed to accomplish this end will depend upon the course of historical events...
...Stuff of the moon and stars, and the all-illumining sun, poetry and poets will always be to me, and the times that come for weariness with work in this space would be many indeed, if no poems or poets showed themselves through the impersonal mail...
...Immediately, upon reading what was readily discernible as a truly "big league" work I resolved to turn my space over for several weeks in succession so that the entire poem might be given in even Installments to the readers of this journal...
...Even today the subject is of more than academic importance...
...And to Comrade Harges for tho songs he composed in my honor...
...He has never hob-nobbed with the nabobs, he has never catered to publicity puddlers...
...They revel in the dawn, And when the haughty bluebird sings They stretch across the lawn: But how the little vagrants run Before the golden spears of sun...
...Surely I do not expect the professional critics to betray their studious neglect of minor poets by suddenly making a discovery of a major planet in the minor orbits they have refused to scan...
...They do not seriously disturb the basic arrangements of the capitalist system...
...Sullivan has been a contributor who has honored this column a number of times with splendid work...
...His "Christmas Up to Date" I shall grace this column with in the next issue, and on New Years you will hsve "Epoch's End" for something to remember plessurably, against all that yon are striving so earnestly to forget...
...Before we can have genuine Socialist economic planning, the worker* and farmers must gain control of the factories, mines, railroads—of the vast productive apparatus of present-day United States...
...They bend and twist askew...
...But genuine humility impelled my handing the poem over to Jim OdasJ for his use us a feature...
...1 held the trim blue volume tremblingly in hand, touched by the promise of a fine adventure...
...Of first importance now is the organization of the Socialist Party, together with militant unions on the industrial front...
...This is an example of the way in which capitalism takes the shadow but not the substance of Socialist ideas...
...At dusk the leave the choir stalls And fly across cathedral walls...
...II/E read with genuine interest " in the official club-house organ of Tammany Hall that at a recent meeting of the National Democratic Club William H. Hickin was unanimously re-elected President...
...Leave Capitalism Undisturbed — No Future Without Socialism b Worth Working for...
...Although the immediate struggle is for bread, the great, revolutionary aims of Socialism should be kept ever to the front...
...Only Socialist planning can build a world without poverty and want, a world in which the gigantic technical achievements of society will be placed at the disposal of all who labor...
...The chief objective of economic planning under Socialism will be to afford all workers of hand and brain a minimum standard of living, a standard advancing vith the advance of technical knowledge and physic...
...We haven't published anything as significant and certain of historic placo in literature In our nine long years of endeavor...
...SHADOWS ARB BLACK Shadows are such knavish things...
...Ah, Yes...
...In all the years that it has been a joy to watch and see Sullivan rise to heights as a poet I quietly predicted to myself that genuine greatness would come to him...
...With the deepening of the eco-^ nomlc crisis in the United States the embattled liberals and nome of the "enlightem d" capitalists have advanced the planning idea...
...Planning by whom...
...Production will be geared to use and not to profit...
...They flit about on ebon wings While angels wear them white...
...The Swope Plan The Swope Plan, for example, would integrate industry through the medium of trade associations, and in this way regulate producticn and price...
...These differ considerably in detail, but they have one fundamental point in common...
...workers, technicians, and consumers...
...THE idea of economic planning has always been part of Socialist theory...
...Nor have they lovely colorings Like woodland flowers . . . even you Who wear the rainbow on your back Must have a shadow that Is black...
...divided between the...
...Let us plan," cry these competitive spirits of yesterday...
...Now that the emotional stage Is gone, the surprise snd the shock, let me thank all the Rockaway comrades for their teaparty of last Sunday, at which I was tho unwitting guest of honor...
...As we recall the name, was not Mister Hickin* in some way connected with rather interesting practices revealed before the Seabury committee...
...Here was a thing that a man had made in full communion with eternal things...
...Thus, trained statisticians, economists, sociologists, and engineers will play a large part in the pli ining process...
...Bill Feigenbaum got a case of enthusiastic fever together with Jim, and they in turn infected McGeehan, the artist, who passed the inspirational fervor onto his stylus, and the result will appear as a poetic and artistic masterpiece in the New Year's edition of The New Leader...
...Recently a matter only for theoretical discussion, it has been carried by the drama of the Russian Five-Year Plat, to the plane of practical experience...
...Exploitation, poverty, and unemployment, the evils inextricably bound up with capitalism, will be eliminated...
...I am saddened, however, sine* I now realise I am grow* ing old definitely...
...Briefly, these are the bare fundamentals of Socialist planning...
...And his book, "Elbows of the Wind," is a definite record of all that 1 have felt for a long, long time, and which I am happy to reveal in those inadequate paragraphs...
...I equipment...
...Here was something good enough to neutralize into tolerable taste all the mean experiences of a business day, all the heartaches over human stupidity, all the weeks of sorrow over the destitution and Injustice surrounding me, and In which I could do so little to assuage or help...
...Let us plan," cry the capitalists—for capitalism...
...Shadows are not holy things, But fragments of the night...
...Per* haps the log-rolling Anglo-Saxon maniacs who have festered around the now moribund Robinson and made garrulous ado about "Lancelot" and "Tristram" will hardly turn an ear or lift an eyebrow at this assertion of mine...
...2. Objective...
...No Place for Exploiters There will be no place in the planning system for private property owners...
...Industry will be socialized...
...The workers cannot afTord to be deceived by capitalist proposals for economic planning...
...Planned Socialist production and distribution will depend upon an accurate knowledge of the raw materials, the physical equipment, the available labor, and the needs of society...
...It is the reverse side of the Socialist criticism of the anarchy of capitalist production and distribution...
...When I delved through the drawer containing letters and controversial matter tonight in search of a ] oem to head this column 1 came upon A. M. Sullivan's "Elbows of the Wind," a new Look of poems issued by the Kingsley Press of New York City...
...There will undoubtedly be a national planning board to correlate the diverse industrial activities of the nation, and separate boards for each industrial group...
...Waa he not the lawyer who had to be seen in connection with Important pier leases before certain German ships could find docking space, and did he not get rather substantial fees for his "legal" services T And while we are on the subject, wo note with pleasure the re-election to the Board of Governors for a three-year term of one James John Joseph Walker—elected In absentia...
...Sullivan will not receive the acclaim due him for some time to come...
...The ownership of industry must be taken from the capitalist class and vest >d in society...
...Several months ago he sent in a long poem "Epoch's End," and my pleasure was unbounded at the distinct honor he showed The New Leader and me with his tribute...
...And when there is talk of economic planning, the workers should ask: "Planning for whom...
...Mister Hick in...
...On these boards representation will be...
...This is the great prerequisite for Socialist economic planning, and only an organized class conscious movement of the workers can insure its realization...
...And so Stuart Chase, Charles A. Beard, Gerard Swope and others hatch economic plans...
...And certainly to Bella and Jack Friedman and tho other good comrades who prepared tha delightful function...
...Allow me to give just a hint of what lyric beauty lies between the skyey covers of the book...
...Who was it that would never forget and could never learn T And what happened after a while to tho Bourbons t jj HUl CTATTl-UsOA Really Great Poem h In Store for Reader* of This Journal in Two Week* 1 By S. A. DeWitt I A BOVE the traffic and its raucous din, above the milling *"* on the walks and the scenes of misery and suffering on every hand the aky spreads an unperturbed blue...
...Among other officers elected waa James A. Farley, Democratic State and National Chairman, Governor Roosevelt's campaign manager and slated for Postmaster General, who won the high honor of Second Vice-President to serve under Mister Hickin...
...Only the workers, organized under the banner of Socialism, can build an economic system in which genuine planning for the needs of the members of a classless society is possible...
...What are the ear-marks of Socialist <. _'onomic planning...
...8. Organization...
...The grievous contrast between a man-made world and nature records Itself with brutal hurt on a poet's Inner being...
...Shadows are quite awkward things...
...By day the sun goes through his radiant round, and at night the stars do their glittering ballet around the silver dais of the moon...
Vol. 14 • December 1932 • No. 25
