Swedish Labor and Peasants Join for Socialist Program
Swedish Labor and Peasants Join for Socialist Program Socialist Government Win* Support of Peasant Party and Has Clear Majority for Its Plans—Joblessness Reduced, Democracy Safeguarded. "1?HE...
...This we keep discussing and mulling over between holes and bum scores...
...With this definition in mind, it will be much easier then for my worthy critics to grasp the cryptic meanings of my demagogic diatribes against old age...
...I utterly disagree with their program, their ideology, their tactics, their proletarian code of ethics, and their subservience to Moscovian dictatorship...
...T U B C H A T T E R B OX Our Columnist Museth Upon Weighty Matters F.ven as He Ciolfef-li By S. A. DeWitt T H E weather has been entirely too enticing...
...Or just as you're nearing the 18th green with a score that threatens par, you poke a soft chip shot into that calm shell sand trap, and while you're bickering with yourself on the left-right muddle in the furriers' union, it takes exactly eleven strokes to blast the nasty pill out of the ravenous sand pit...
...The world was a trifle darker after he left us...
...Just as you're getting a snap at the line the situation in which your German comrades now And themselves would loom up snd you'd let the pole lag, slacken the line and snag your big bass baby in the reeds...
...One can be a Ypsel and a fogy mentally...
...Durnitall, the stuff inside of you that has kept you being a Socialist would just work all the harder and make your circulation of blood and bile a veritable cataract...
...Not Sister Comrade to the left, your place is with us If you really want to help build a genuine party for Socialism in America...
...I have always admired these qualities in them...
...Let us have a definition in blflck and white on what 1 mean by "old...
...Suppose I were to do that . . . suppose I grabbed the tennis racket, the golf clubs, soma books, a few pounds of tobacco, a Ashing reel and a twenty-dollar flivver . . . and scooted it out into the hills where men are men and women wilder . . . then what...
...1?HE position of the Socialist ministry in Sweden, headed by P. A. Hansson, which came into office after the general election last September but which for some time this spring was threatened with a parliamentary deadlock, if not a defeat, seems now to have become secure...
...I'm just too far gone, and nothing save a job in some prosperous Socialist Institution can save me...
...The second largest party is that of the Conservatives, with 78 members...
...And somehow or other the sentiment so expressed has wormed itself into my marrow . . . and gallant or playful days or nights, party business comes Arst...
...This will reduce the army of the unemployed to a point at which those who remain without jobs can be decently maintained under the unemployment insurance law...
...By the way, I want to apologize to Murray for having called him "Nat Cohen" in last week's column...
...And here I mean to end all reference to internal controversy...
...And many a time on Sunday mornings, when Herm Vogel and I play bourgeois at the Clcarview golf course, we msnnge to ease he irk of a dubbed shot or a missed putt by wishing between us that some chance "the giftie gie us" of grabbing up' the whole Communist movement in America, cleansing them of their lies, their malignity, their abject adherence to Soviet mandates, and then read their Ana energy, their selfless devotion, their vigor and their disciI pline into the Socialist Party...
...The peasants will thus be assured s sale for goods they produce a' prices much above what they have been receiving, without any increase in the cost of living for the urban population...
...ASK VOICE IN POST OFFICE MANAGEMENT The British union of post office I workers proposes that control of the post office be vested in a board composed of an equal number of government nominees and of nominees of the trade union or | unions, the Postmaster-General to preside and have the deciding vote...
...And at such a price, I prefer remaining beyond salvation...
...To ask me to join in with them is almost a complete debacle...
...The danger of a parliamentary crisis has now been averted by an agreement between the Social Democrats and the Peasant party to, put through a joint program in which the interests of the wage workers and those of the cultivators of the soil, who in Sweden are mostly small proprietors, are both j taken into account...
...Regional and local boards would be constituted on the lines of the central board and subordinate to it, and would be responsible in their areas for administration in accordance with the policy of the central board...
...It would be such a simple matter to tell Jim that the eoluma would have to wait a montb or so of Saturdays, m i g n from the entertainment and executive committee of the branch, give all the Queens branches notice that they would have to get another speaker on sundry (and sultry) nighta, forget politics inside and outside of the movement, and just ge away . . . oh, ao far away that never again in this sweet world would it seem that the class struggle was ever more than a dream of faintest mist and perception...
...Furthermore, the handling and marketing of milk, butter, eggs, fresh meat, and other farm products is to be organized in auch a way as to minimize waste and middlemen's profits...
...The additional purchasing power thus given to the industrial population will largely absorb the present surpiuaage of agricultural produce...
...Because the thought comes to me that a Communist sympathizer who visited Camp Eden when I read my paper on old age, etc., asked me the other day why I didn't join the Communist Party, where I would And youthful and energetic comrades to work with, . . . and all that, . . . Well, there was a time once when the Communists walked about with chip on shoulders and wouldn't admit or invite anyone who wasn't 100 per cent proletarian Into their ranks...
...Sanial died in his nineties...
...I like their willingness to Aght for their ideals, their fearlessness when vested authority swoops down upon them, their eternal persistence toward accomplishment...
...Peasant democracy and industrial democracy, now standing shoulder on shoulder for a common cause, need not fear the assaults of rea'ction in Fascist or any other form...
...And that hi 1 what makes being an active Socialist a real job...
...The governments's program includes public works and social services that will give employment to 185,000 wage workers...
...One ran be, as old as Lucien Sanial, before that sunny smiled comrade passed from our midst, and yet Ight up the world with the lucent rays of real youth...
...Their latterday approaches for united fronts and invitations to the "rank and Ale of the S. P." reveal less rheatlness...
...And so you see, a Socialist works even while he playa...
...Deputy Lindstrom, who represents the Swedish party in the executive of the Labor and Socialist International, speaks very hopefully of the situation in an interview recently given out at Stockholm...
...I have made hard protest against old leaders and comrades and the effect they have had upon our progress...
...The Swedish peasantry, says Lindstrom, has behind it a history of five hundred years of democratic struggle, formerly against the aristocracy and in more recent times against capitalist exploiters...
...This gives the ministry the support of 140 deputies, as against a maximum strength of 90 for the opposition...
...At seventy-one his mind danced rings around Circle 8 Bronx, with Murray Nathan's Symphony Orchestra thrown in...
...Wages for those put to work are to be equal to normal wages in private employment— a striking contrast to Presi| dent Roosevelt's dollar-a-day reforestation camps...
...This board would have power to decide broad issues of administration and direction involving collective decisions...
...The swellest thing G. B. Shaw has aaid through hia latterday garrulous wise-cracking la this . . . "whenever I had the choice between attending a party meeting or spending a' gallant evening, I chose the party's work...
...then comes the Peasant party, with 36—as against 27 in the former parliament—while the Liberals had but four seats, before and after the election...
...What has been effected, he says, is not a mere political "deal," but a firm alliance between 'the representatives of two classes whose economic interests, though not identical at every point, are capable of being harmonised so that each shall benefit without inj u r y to the other...
...Energy—And What...
...This proposal is a substitute for that proposing a form of Guild Socialism and recognizes the idea of joint management...
...And how about 'Gene Debs...
...These projects are to be financed 1 partly by increased taxation of 1 large properties and inheritances, ' partly by loans, which are to be 1 floated among the Swedish people, 1 not through international banking syndicates, and for whose amortization due provision is being made...
...And by gum, I'd rather be Instrumental In bringing this dream into fulfillment than wear the crowa of Tilden or own the medals and cups of a Bobby Jones...
...Old and Young l l / I I K ' I I brings me to remarks that I have made at Camp " Eden, and how utterly, or purposefully, they have been misunderstood...
...The Communists re tained the eight seats which they already h e l d. E v e n if the Communist deputies could be relied upon to support the ministry a g a i n s t a n y combined attack by the other parties—which was by no means certain—there was still the possibility of an adverse vote of 118 against 1x2...
...TMIK Communists as individuals have all the requisites for * energy, direction, and self-discipline that a Socialist movement requires for progress...
...Capitalism increases itself out of the produce of the people until they are too poor to buy what they produce.—George D. Hcrron...
...The September election gave the Social Democratic Party 104 seats in the Riksdag, or lower house of parliament, out of a total of 280 — a g a i n of fourteen...
Vol. 16 • July 1933 • No. 1
