TIMELY TOPICS
THOMAS, NORMAN
By Norman Thomas TIMELY TOPICS What Price Monetary Policy? MR. SPRAGUE'S resignation as financial adviser **¦ to the Treasury Department brings out in the open what will be a great and confused...
...The Nazis have not proved anything conclusive against any of the defendants except Van der Lubbe, who has confessed to the charge...
...We hid reason to rejoice in what has been gained in Spain by orderly and democratic means...
...They're Bucking Hitler TTHE interesting and encouraging feature of the * German situation is the fact that first the Catholic Church, and now an important section of the Protestant Church, have resisted the attempts of the Nazis to make the church their slave...
...A capital levy on the living and a drastic increase in inheritance taxes would go far...
...We remember the bitterness of last February and the condition of the banks and we know that the automatic recovery of capitalism in America is a delusion...
...Of course we are in a question which may affect our immediate welfare as much as the right or wrong sort of monetary policy, but we cannot too strongly insist that inflation nor deflation is charateristically Socialist Both are capitalist devices often employed...
...and it is impossible to-do anything really satisfactory about money under the profit system which reaches even to the private ownership of banks...
...But if any American boycott of Germany is to have moral weight, we must put our own house in order, which means at the moment, above all things, that the Scott sboro trial must not result either in legal or illegal lynching...
...About 3,000 German Evangelical pastors attacked the Nazi extremists who want to "paganize the church...
...We Must Study Spain MOST European elections have recently shown *™ encouraging gains for the Socialist Party...
...Hitler has made it clear that he is determined to stand by capitalism even to the extent, I am informed, of imprisoning some three hundred of the younger left wingers in his organization...
...The British Olympic Association is seriously considering doing the same thing for the same reason...
...Without any action, no one knows what stage of disintegration we should have reached...
...To issue paper money to pay for the current expenses of government is a dangerous form of inflation...
...Fight Against Nazi Regime Gathers Force in Germany •THE opposition to the Nazi re-* gime in Germany is gathering strength...
...The hopes of the "left wing Nazis" who took the party profession of radicalism seriously have been pretty well smashed by now...
...Apparently, they would like to repeal it altogether and abolish social control...
...Mc-Cormlck, owner of the Chicago Tribune, Ogden Mills, and Al Smith—at least until a recent tea party In the White House—attacked the New Deal because they do not want any of its restrictions upon the working of the capitalist system, because thay want to go backward...
...Scottsboro Balances Hitler 9^0 feature of the growing unofficial American boycott on Germany is more wholesome or likely to be more productive of good than the ban placed by the American Athletic Association on participation in the Olympic games in Berlin...
...Nazi leaders have had plenty to worry about this week...
...For instance, consider the monstrous absurdity of a system which permits Barbara Button or Doris Duke to inherit so many millions...
...These games have been a disappointment in promoting international goodwill, but a failure on the part of Americans to-participate in them is likely to reach popular consciousness in Germany, in spite of censor* ship and misrepresentation, more quickly than any other single act of which I can think...
...Roosevelt really want to inflate with proper control, he ought to look into the possibility of paying for public works, especially for self-liquidating public works, by issuing treasury notes to be retired in orderly fashion as the public works operate, instead of paying by interest-bearing bonds...
...Socialists the world over want to study the Spanish situation for the light it may shed on tactics in revolutionary situations...
...Capitalism talks about profit as an incentive to work...
...It seems that some horrid Marxist were entering the camps in disguise and "seriously endangering" the political-educational aims of the Nazis...
...It isn't the character of Doris Duke—who at 21 is called by the newspapers "the wealthiest girl"—it is the character of the system which matters...
...Neither of them in the long run has helped the working class...
...The danger is real...
...The Protestants particularly are fighting the preposterous effort to make the Christian church a revival of old Germanic culture, whatever that wa.s At the moment their activities are more open and apparently successful than the activities of labor unionists...
...Why We ''Attack" NRA IN a recent debate about the New Deal, my oppo* nent produced a letter from somebody in Washington which accused me, as well as other Socialists, of being in a sort of virtual league with William Randolph Hearst, the Republican Party, and various other capitalist opponents of the New Deal...
...SPRAGUE'S resignation as financial adviser **¦ to the Treasury Department brings out in the open what will be a great and confused fight on monetary policies...
...IF the United States were resolved to go Socialist * instead of to remain capitalist, and if it wanted to reduce a crushing burden of debt and facilitate the transfer of privately owned resources and great industries to public ownership, its main dependence should not be any blind inflationary policy, but a capital levy, scientifically assessed and scientifically applied for the reduction or elimination of the worst portions of our debt burden...
...Try a Capital Levy...
...It does, however, alarm foreign nations, threaten an irritating struggle for the control of the visible gold supply, shake confidence generally, and perhaps assist what is known as the "flight of the dollar" from America to other countries...
...Those strange political bedfellows, William Randolph Hearst, his old newspaper enemy, Col...
...The world cannot afford to see those gains dissipated by temporary clerical and conservative reaction...
...The presiding justice of the Supreme Court has refused to play into the Nazis' hands and declines to play politics...
...Recognition Belated M/E owe Russian recognition to Rooseyelt's com-" mon sense, to the hope of American corporations for more trade, and to a certain community of Russian and American interests in the Far East against Japanese imperialism...
...But I understand from a recent refugee from Germany that some Social Democrats, especially the younger of them, are doing grand underground work in unions made outwardly subordinate to the Nazis by the application of force and terror...
...The Nazis are stricken dumb with surprise...
...We owe it also undoubtedly to the fact that Stalin has been pursuing a pacifist international policy and bothering little about "world revolution...
...We should have had riots and confusion, but not constructive revo-lution...
...They tell us that if only Roosevelt had done nothing much, the capitalist system would have recovered anyhow...
...The head of the "voluntary labor service" issued an order barring from the concentration camps "all peddlers, canvassers, book agents and similar elements...
...In Spain the election showed a strong conservative reaction which Imperilled much of the recent progress in that country and may lead to violence...
...We attack it because the restrictions are not adequate and because it may in time lead to Fascism rather than to the cooperative commonwealth...
...The process would probably tend to raise prices, so that debtors would not have to pay back their debts in dollars that will purchase much more than when they incurred them...
...There is a fast spreading revolt against the regimentation of the German church...
...However, Mr...
...To issue it in carefully regulated amounts for addition to the real wealth of America without incurring the burden of interest-bearing bonds merits careful consideration...
...If a clause is written into all the codes providing that wages and salaries shall rise automatically with the increase in the cost of living, not only will labor be protected but some sort of extra control on the whole process will be set up...
...It will not mean for peace and economic wellbeing what it might have meant in any of the previous sixteen years during which the Socialist Party has been demanding it-Still wo are entitled to rejoice that even belatedly the right thing has been done...
...Un« fortunately, labor and the farmers were not or* ganized for anything of that sort...
...Yet in fact under the law of inheritance it operates to remove all incentive and to subsidize conspicuous waste...
...It is impossible to cure the evils of the profit system simply by doing something about money...
...We want to keep, protect, improve both the rights of labor under the codes and some of the machinery set up, adding social ownership to social control and making both work to bring about production for use rather than pro-duction for profit...
...Had that disintegration furthered a genuine constructive social revolution, we might have accepted it...
...By Norman Thomas TIMELY TOPICS What Price Monetary Policy...
...To build properly and rapidly is our main function...
...The German Evangelical Church plans to issue a round-robin calling for a fight against the Nazis' "neoGermanic heathendom...
...Therefore we welcome the time we have to build...
...It is making no genuine recovery under the New Deal...
...The Reichstag arson trial is fizzling out...
...The American Amateur Athletic Union has decided to boycott the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin unless the Nazis lift their ban on Jewish athletes...
...Roosevelt may decide to inflate, at the end of the chapter J. P. Morgan or his equivalents will be sitting at the top of the heap...
...Even "General" Goering has inadvertently admitted that the four other defendants will be released...
...It is not a good policy of inflation because in a country off the gold standard, where most prices are fixed in the domestic market, the mere purchase of gold doesn't make much difference...
...Recognition will mean something for peace In the Far East and possibly something for prosperity...
...Of course, nothing of the sort is true and we Socialists want to make it plain...
...Should Mr...
...The President's gold purchasing policy is extraordinarily unsatisfactory...
...In this fight, Socialist and labor folks want to keep their heads...
...Having said this, however, it is worth while to give a look at the situation...
...Sooner or later this work by Communists, and in what appears now to be a more effective way, by Socialists, will bear fruit...
Vol. 16 • November 1933 • No. 22
