Our President Promises To Save Us From Great Calamity
Feigenbaum, William M.
By William M. Feigenbaum Our President Promises To Save Us From Great Calamity We'll Never Have Too Much Again, if He Can Help It— Roo evelt Discovers Some Socialist Economics, But He's a Little...
...All the dictatorships are brothers under the skin, and where immediate commercial interest coincides with political interest, their alliance see .s practically certain...
...It even calk itseif Marxist...
...But what's the explanation of this Left-Right confusion...
...To Hardie there was the work ing class, and its struggle for a better and nobler life...
...And it is only in the democracies on the northern and western edge of the continent, and in England, that the Socialist parties are able to function at all...
...Speaking for the unemployed in the House of Commons, the Lone Socialist, he was interrupted by laughing, jeering young Tories streaming in from their dinner at their' fashionable clubs...
...Social^ IfEIR HARDIE looked like a lion, with his great, untamed, shaggy head...
...and in i all his causes r three...
...Ladies and gentlemen of radioland, Herbert Hoover will now address you from Detroit...
...And so there was little of the conciliator about him...
...What's to lie done about it...
...he ¦~iato every kitain as a vital jte see the tri-Mrage...
...But the time came when the miners were organized and the better conditions were won...
...But these are in every case reactionary Fascist dictatorships, and what chance is there that they will remain the allies of their former business partner in a war of Dictatorship versus Democracy ? Capitalism is'forcing the final conflict, and this is »¦ 'Ing the form of Fascist Dictatorship attempting to crush the bourgeois Democracy, which it despises, in order at the same time to stamp out once and for all the Social Democratic parties...
...In Copenhagen the Social-Democratic Party gained 10,599 votes with a total poll of 126,940 and has in all 61.6 per cent of the total number of votes, but has the same number of Councillors (35...
...That was the Old Guard Socialism we once had, that we will have again, a Socialism that enabled us to take our stand against the World War...
...The Communist vote is of particular interest in view of the fact that the first Communists were elected to the Danish Diet in the November elections...
...But can they depend upon any help from without...
...The English people—and this applies especially to the labor movement Itself—are so imbued with pacifist s liment, it seems incredible they should ever again go to fight in France: according to their own oft-repeated . resolutions they will sever again fight even to defend England on English soil against a foreign invasion...
...The farm relief bill seeks by the use of several methods, alone or together, to bring about an increased return to farmers for their major farm products, seeking at the same time to prevent in the days to come ftisastroiis overproduction...
...In the real sense, not this compound of Left-Right which is a hybrid due to lack of that knowledge I have just mentioned," Bill replied...
...It was not very parliamentary, but it was from the heart...
...The French peasants and workers are too intelligent, too realistic in their attitude toward life, and too much devoted to their mother country to dodge behind any lofty pacifist ideals if a Fascist army were to Invade France...
...Debs was the soul of proletarian honor and ethics...
...Yes, even back to Karl Marx...
...taw great gains • legislation...
...Starving amidst plenty...
...Their little democratic neighbors will be forced by their own defenseless state to maintain strict neutrality...
...i *ked Joe...
...I have known miners, molders, printers and many other proletarians who had more knowledge of Socialist philosophy in their little finger than such Left-Rights...
...The English people—and this applies especially to the labor movement Itself—are so imbued with pacifist s liment, it seems incredible they should ever again go to fight in France: according to their own oft-repeated . resolutions they will sever again fight even to defend England on English soil against a foreign invasion...
...I consider myself a Left Socialist, but in these days Left ia so terribly Bight that the term has lost its meaning...
...And what kind of an answer w ;uld the American people give us if we Socialists asked them to go into another European war (this time with us) to make the world safe for democracy a second time...
...No, just a little probing," Bill .eplied...
...and they deprived him of his seat in the Trades Union Congress, and they sought to gag him and to paralyze mittee ess then there British Ufa not seen ¦ All hi* B causes, est causes trim driven bid folk, ridica his lifetim triumph, M those thra since his di He saw righting la gains for the line...
...Sure, and that is why Left no longer has any intelligible meaning in these days," Bill replied...
...Joe asked...
...One night after a meeting Keir Hardie gathered a few comrades about him and we sat at a fireside and sang the songs of Bobbie Burns...
...W. M. F. lay will be but W can make it •tnge— a war to M self-esteem r*hm and na-11* hi the grip R*f which the ¦je snd anti-" h only the H the psy-|P* surging ¦he* from the "Mersey itself, We act of inEiti later inch more than any-lite "11 the Joists to a PJ*en the last fif*8 to make PBocracy, and W threatens to ? The essential ¦?World War ¦Wort markets l»»tions of all Pfhe war now P «»ore purely ¦pad will be |g which the *a»an dictator ¦Pfctatorshlp force, into the democratic countries of the West The outlook is made more menacing by the fact that Russia, with its vast natural resources and man-power, lies adjacent to the dictatorships on the East...
...and to refuse to eat at the table of a President of the United States who had sent the soldiery against workingmen on strike and whose legal department had sent 'Gene Debs to jail...
...Keir Hardie had pride anil courage enough to decline to lie the guest of a king...
...And he said: "In each and every rase these enormous overproductions, far beyond consumption even in boom times, have crashed into the immutable laws of supply and demand and brought inevitable collapse in prices, and with it a train of bankruptcies, and destruction of buying power for American goods...
...and it is only too obvious that the rearmament a first stt so—to si repair Ik of Gens lionalisn.' of a mas* present I Marxist 1 first visihl chosis is 1 up of he German I it will go sanity t» manifests' violent S thing itH Now j attention great war thst the worU the war'' break oW different* was a stfl between < polities!« threaten'" political I in f»* • block «*] ships as s I ^ Erof il e s f Hardie Eg was denned I* labor repre-^Bt- But out later party, and Kpoltttion in Like nation had gTfcy...
...As a mere boy he labored in the Scottish coalpits...
...The fact is, they have not yet left their bourgeois shells...
...starving because of plenty I And what have the Socialists been telling you for a long time— oh...
...I'm thinking of another type that exists only here...
...But these are in every case reactionary Fascist dictatorships, and what chance is there that they will remain the allies of their former business partner in a war of Dictatorship versus Democracy ? Capitalism is'forcing the final conflict, and this is »¦ 'Ing the form of Fascist Dictatorship attempting to crush the bourgeois Democracy, which it despises, in order at the same time to stamp out once and for all the Social Democratic parties...
...There he came down the station platform...
...Like the Moscow bombasts it establishes a united front with the enemy and manages to maintain a ..eft-Right position, Dut it is never right and its united front with the enemy is always wrong...
...No human being would think of him using a capitalist organ to attack even Bill Haywood, with whom he parted company when Haywood turned anarcho-syndicalist...
...J And those who had battled with him in England tell us that wherever good old Keir went he sat with the miners and the farmers and the workers in their humble cottages and drank their tea and smoked his pipe with them and chatted and sang songs with them, and so he helped fashion a great, human brotherhood of those who strive for a better world...
...overproduction of zinc in Australia, overproduction of oil from new discoveries in the United States, Sumatra end Venezuela...
...and that] was all there was...
...Righto," Bill replied, "and the whole working class movement all over the world is facing a new orientation because we live in a period of marked decay of capitalist production and exchange, but the Left-Right will contribute nothing to the solution of the problems' thik brings...
...I believe our International If facing its most serious crisis...
...but when Sir Thomas Lipton offered carloads of food from his stores for starving miners' children he gratefully accepted it...
...Their little democratic neighbors will be forced by their own defenseless state to maintain strict neutrality...
...Every day was a battle...
...I was on the party's reception committee to meet him at the railway station...
...So you are Left after all," said Joe...
...Well ha' nae damn'd Hardies about," said the smug, well-fed politicians of the British Labor movement when Hardie sought to organize them into a labor party...
...He saw party bass he saw t) party...
...And it is tragically significant that in this only remaining large democracy the Socialists should have considered it .necessary last week to break an old party law and vote the military budget...
...Is that one of your parables...
...You said a mouthful," said Joe with intense earnestness...
...Well ha' nae damn'd Hardies about," said the workers when Hardie sought to win them from their long association with the Liberal party...
...He would not compromise himself and his class and his ideals...
...Can it be that Franklin Delano has been attending Socialist lectures and reading Socialist literature without quite understanding them ? Or maybe he has been reading some of the speeches of the late Herbert Hoover during the late Presidential campaign...
...Most of the leaoers of that grouo mund shelter under the banner of Woodrow Wilson during the World War...
...And, "We'll ha' nae damn'd Hardies about," the leaders of that Labor movement said...
...Imagine Marx running to the capitalist press for aid when he disagreed with the German party regarding ti.e'r platform...
...Or will you persist in waiting until calamity overwhelms you, and then take your economics second-hand and ill-digested and too late—as you are doing now...
...They hover between two worlds, the bourgeois and the proletarian...
...Keir Hardie lived a bitter life...
...Poor and ignorant and brutalized though they were, the salvation of the world was in their hands...
...Ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience, President Franklin Delano Koosevelt: "Further legislation has been taken up which goes much more fundamentally into our economic problems...
...Get right or you may be left," »*id Bill...
...Take that revolutionary statf in the Kremlin s an example...
...Hardie, said Bernard Shaw, was the biggest damned aristocrat t" England...
...r Hardie led lost pfe he taw those | his life he was tied by his ain odiated...
...Alphonse Roosevelt is charged with attributing it to Gaston Hoover, who, however, ciieks his heels, bows from the wa.-t and says: "The Democratic leaders apparently have never heard that there has been gigantic overproduction of rubber in thrn Indies, of sugar in Cuba, of coffee in Brazil, of cocoa in Ecuador, of copper in the Congo, of i<ad in Burma...
...And so because of Keir Hardie's work the working class occupies a place in | the scheme of things that makes it the decisive factor in *he future...
...The French people as a whole realize that the bellicose and reckless Hitler leaders intend to scrap all treaties and re-arm...
...erect, his noble head held high, looking like a lion...
...The French peasants and workers are too intelligent, too realistic in their attitude toward life, and too much devoted to their mother country to dodge behind any lofty pacifist ideals if a Fascist army were to Invade France...
...Now you are talking like a mystic using parables.' said Joe...
...The returns from the municipal councils on the countryside are not yet complete, but as far as they are available it would seem that Social-Democracy has gained since 1929 from .32.1 per cent to 33.3 per cent...
...The subject under discussion, is the so-called depression, i>nd the good Herbert is troubling Ms dear little head over who is entitled to credit for having brought it about...
...I can never forget the first time I saw him...
...We found ourselves with more facilities to transport goods and crops than there were goods and crops to be transported...
...They have tfee largest cargo of bombast in the world...
...But the time came when there was a Socialist party under Hardie's leadership, and he drove forward into the Trades Union-Congress to get them to go into politics too...
...A Needled Philosophy "/>0 Left in the real sense of the word," Bill replied...
...This type rushes to organs of the capitalist class to air its views and to attack the Socialist Party...
...And he said: "I do not want the people to believe thst because of unjustified optimism we can resume the ruinous practice of increasing our crop output and our factory output in the hope that a kind Providence will find buyers at high prices...
...The government that could tell oil to the Japanese navy for "war on republican China can with an equally clear Communist conscience sell oil to the German army for war on republican France...
...Well ha' nae damn'd Hardies about," snarled a mine owner when Keir and his brother came to them as a committee to negotiate for better conditions of life and labor...
...It is an excellent example of the crumbling material basis of society registering upon the human mind...
...I'm thinking of one period when the party member drifted toward Anarchism and called himself a Left H« was full of revolutionary bombast but short on knowledge Then came the Syndicalist in our ranks, a half-brotbei of the Anarchist, who declared that sabotage was the toad to social revolution...
...And what kind of an answer w ;uld the American people give us if we Socialists asked them to go into another European war (this time with us) to make the world safe for democracy a second time...
...The decay and confusion and conflict below are mirrored in the chaotic thought above...
...I SOCIALISTS CONTINUE TO GAIN IN DENMARK COPENHAGEN.—The municipal elections held recently resulted In Social-Democratic Party winning the majority in 35 municipal councils as against 28 after the March, 1929, elections, with 528 Councillors as against 499 in 1929 and 50.1 per cent of the electorate as against 49.0...
...Now will you listen to us when we talk economics...
...Saturate ourselves with proletarian philosophy, with Marxian economies and history, with a working class view of life, and we are not likely to go wrong...
...The Left in this period is often the Right wearing a mask...
...I believe our International If facing its most serious crisis...
...Roosevelt...
...But can they depend upon any help from without...
...This vote, proclaimed as an act of "treason" by -all enemies and critics of the Socialist movement on the left, and hailed with glee by all our opponents of tho right, was no act ot treason at all...
...All his life he Labored in and for the working class...
...and to decline a life annuity of $10,000...
...Against the United Front of the dictatorships will stand the great democratic republic, defended, I have little doubt, by every native son, save the few and discredited Communists...
...and likewise the effect of the introduction into the world of gigantic areas of new wheatlands in the Argentine and in Canada: new cotton lands in Egypt...
...And we will never forget it—the warm, human heart, the inspired face, the nobility of soul of one of the great men of our time...
...he flung at them...
...And there was a tingling up and down my spine, as my comrades on the reception committee said—There is a Man...
...well win through yet...
...That is the highest type of Left-Right bombast and the capitalist class of the bourgeois nations get it without paying a cent for it...
...Add emotional » bombast to the mask and you have the modern Left Right...
...If you do you'll never run to organs of the capitalist class for that in s turn to the Right forbidden by the ethics el genuine Leftism," said Bill as they parted...
...The Origin of Confusion •"PHE whole capitalist world is in upheaval and we can* not expect to be immune from its impact upon our own thought and philosophy," said Bill...
...Looks like a case of two extrimes meeting for common purposes," said Joe...
...In all middle Europe only three little demo-cratic republics remain, surrounded by the iron wall of their Fascist enemies...
...And he did not live to see the triumph of Socialism...
...They sign united front pacts with bourgeois governments, promising to engage in no propaganda within their nations, and then carry on a systematic propaganda within those nations to divide their workers before those bourgeois governments...
...By William M. Feigenbaum Our President Promises To Save Us From Great Calamity We'll Never Have Too Much Again, if He Can Help It— Roo evelt Discovers Some Socialist Economics, But He's a Little Late...
...With all of its revolutionary bombast the Communist movement also reflects this intellectual chaos in its numerous schisms...
...But just as surely as all hia other causes triumphed, so will tha great, final cause win out...
...All Socialists in France had' just seen with amazement and alarm how the Hitler party had at one blow stalled the Social Democratic Party with its eight million followers, the Communist Party with its five millions, and the strongly organized labor movement with its defense corps of four hundred thousand men, which had been held up to the French workers for years as a shining example of how it should be done...
...On every hand Democracy—and with it, of course, all hope of Social Democracy—is being threatened by the great drive of the Fascist dictatorships...
...With three or four groups pulling each other's hair I'd say that is no parable," observed Joe...
...All the dictatorships are brothers under the skin, and where immediate commercial interest coincides with political interest, their alliance see .s practically certain...
...As a lad of eight life was so bitter to him that he seriously contemplated suicide...
...Debs was an ideal representative of that Old Guard Socialism...
...And he evolved a philosophy of rising with his class and only with his class...
...There are other varieties," said Bill...
...as far back as Bellamy, when he wrote "The Parable of the Water Tank...
...Aa a child of six he earned his living as an errand boy in Glasgow...
...and he • the repudiation i at chauvinism and war by the broad masses of the Labor Party...
...The Socialists who voted the budget only did what they felt sure their peasant and labor constituencies wanted them to do...
...The government that could tell oil to the Japanese navy for "war on republican China can with an equally clear Communist conscience sell oil to the German army for war on republican France...
...And he said: "We have found our factories able to 'urn out more goods than we could possibly consume...
...And he ens a lion in his magnificent courage, in his dignity and in his self-respect...
...That would be unthinkable," said Joe...
...There are also countries like Jugoslavia and Rumania in middle Europe to whom the past French governments have made vast gifts of guns and munitions of war, in the hope of bribing them as allies...
...This is particularly interesting as in the constituencies which it has been possible to review, Social-Democracy did not gain between the 1929 and the 1932 General Elections...
...lay will be but W can make it •tnge— a war to M self-esteem r*hm and na-11* hi the grip R*f which the ¦je snd anti-" h only the H the psy-|P* surging ¦he* from the "Mersey itself, We act of inEiti later inch more than any-lite "11 the Joists to a PJ*en the last fif*8 to make PBocracy, and W threatens to ? The essential ¦?World War ¦Wort markets l»»tions of all Pfhe war now P «»ore purely ¦pad will be |g which the *a»an dictator ¦Pfctatorshlp force, into the democratic countries of the West The outlook is made more menacing by the fact that Russia, with its vast natural resources and man-power, lies adjacent to the dictatorships on the East...
...In Copenhagen they have achieved one Councillor and a rise in their vote from 1,118 to 4,957, a rise from 0.6 to 2,5 per cent, as compared with 1029...
...It was simply a proof that the majority of Socialist deputies now consider a strong army necessary as a defence against Fascist invasion...
...and t< laugh at a proffered bribe of half a million dollars in the United States...
...I'd like to get right with the Left," said Joe...
...For Hardie had the tenderest of hearts and to him there was nothing more sacred than little children...
...Herbert Hoover is attacking Mr...
...Hardie spurned it...
...K President speaks over the radio...
...There are also countries like Jugoslavia and Rumania in middle Europe to whom the past French governments have made vast gifts of guns and munitions of war, in the hope of bribing them as allies...
...Andrew Carnegie, admiring a Scot who had made his mark, offered him an annuity of $10,000 for life, a gift that both William H. Taft and David Lloyd George were glad" enough to accept...
...of the Labor great growth in Parliament i turned to it...
...Bill and Joe Consider Lett-Right And Conclude We Right to Go Left If You Get Started Right By Autolycus "| FEEL like shifting to the Left," said Joe with s trace * of enthusiasm as he met Bill in the Sand School rendezvous...
...And so he lived his great life for you and me...
...Against the United Front of the dictatorships will stand the great democratic republic, defended, I have little doubt, by every native son, save the few and discredited Communists...
...I get your meaning," said Joe...
...In the towns outside Copenhagen a rise in per cent from 0.8 » 0.7...
...Left-Right Bombast "YES- but something more," Bill replied...
...Keir Hardie was a fighter...
...Well-fed .beasts...
...Of all these western democracies of the continent the only one that csn be classed as a great power is France...
...The Left, you see, was really the extreme Right and was always wrong...
...And he said:* "We cannot ballyhoo ourselves hark into prosperity...
...Aa he lay dying in Cumnock, a bitterly unhappy man, he said to Ramsey MacDonald, "Stick to it, laddie...
...He had faith in his class, and pride in his class...
...But the time came when the Scottish Labor party was formed, and they were in politics...
...And of ive triumphed i dopment of a Kment, winning iters all along I of a Socialist working class...
...He had pride enough to fling back into the faces of wealthy poli-1 ticians in England the offer of a "safe" seat in Parliament and a substantia) subsidy for life...
...And he said: "We have found ourselves taced with more agricultural pioducts than tee could possibly consume ourselves and surpluses which other nations did not have 'he cash to buy from us, except at prices ruinously low...
...he had pride it himstlf, pride in his class pride in his Cause...
...They believe, probably with reason, that the final victory of Socialism in France will depend on the defeat of Fascism in a war that is to be expected soon, and which, if it cannot be prevented now, will soon—in all probability —blaze up' on the old Western Front...
...he of that Li as the hi as their i for thai saw Labi section « political He did umph of" did not li Social Democracy in C this article was written by an American Socialist now residing in Berlin, T"HE Socialist International is v facing a crisis...
...Well, anyway, Herbert covered a lot more territory than Franklin...
...And that is why the British Labor Party is so great...
...This measure provides wide ]xiwirs for emergencies...
Vol. 15 • May 1933 • No. 19
