Editor's Corner (Review of and Comment on Events Here and Abroad, Critical and Otherwise
Editor's Corner Review of and Comment on Events Here and Abroad, Critical and Otherwise With a Feather Duster A BOUT the most delightful piece of literature we have seen is a four-page printed...
...It "is also a good warning to any possible...
...Alfred is so naive that he is charming...
...The fact that four lawyers tell us that this is not something we face settles nothing...
...The judges of the ruling classes will interpret our statements, not our own lawyers, and these judges have again and again, in acute periods of labor struggle and during the World War, thrown whole sections of the Bill of Rights into the ash cdn...
...this occurred one year before...
...With history out of the way, Alfred swings to tho "left"—with a feather duster...
...If we deliberately adopt any statements that will not permit the party to function in some states, we choose to abandon political action in these states...
...this really occurred in 1022...
...It does not occur to him that one basic reason why millions of workers have been defeated in Europe is thai the army remained faithful to the ruling classes...
...But Europe is a region of gloom...
...Recent strikes arc transformed into "mass action" and farmers' resistance to foreclosures seems to him a revolutionary trend, although this was typical of the Populism of the nineties...
...The fact is that we are facing a revival of Rlanquism in the party...
...It is true that legalism is not our main concern under all circumstances, but it is our concern under normal conditions...
...Jack is on the skids and we will have to take Alfred's word for it...
...He has the Russian army revolting in 1918...
...It is a broadside in support of the Detroit Declaration...
...To Alfred it seems to be due to pure cussedness, inertia, indifference and sheer stupidity that millions of "these workers lost...
...Now we have a Declaration that protects us from a similar fate...
...This can only lead to a repetition of what has happened abroad, not avert it...
...you who bravely talk of illegality and then assure us of legality...
...Unarmed workers and even those who had arms, as In Austria, are no match for these vast powers of destruction...
...Editor's Corner Review of and Comment on Events Here and Abroad, Critical and Otherwise With a Feather Duster A BOUT the most delightful piece of literature we have seen is a four-page printed circular by our old friend, Alfred Baker Lewis of Boston...
...The New York resolution takes this position but it does not cultivate the dangerous illusions Alfred does...
...He has Mussolini suppressing Italian trade unions in 1024...
...it occurred In March, 1020...
...Can we possibly fail with such pilots when thunder roars and lightning flushes...
...It is curious that Alfred turns to official legal interpretation to support his view and he quotes Latin— "exprestio unius exclusio altcrius...
...We will surrender political agitation and action to the exclusive use of the capitalist parties in such states...
...History played a shabby trick oil him...
...Hut he stumbles over ojne important fact and cites it without understanding its significance or its bearing upon his whole argument...
...We are intoxicated with our prospects, for it is evident that the tempo of the revolution is rising...
...If he had only been there instead of here how everything would have been changed...
...Powerful working class movements abroad have been conquered by fascism...
...This is not to say that we should not, in the event of building a powerful movement, be prepared to risk all rather than go under the heels of fascist bandits...
...He places the Kapp putsch in Germany in 1023...
...The Detroit Declaration and any other declaration that we may adopt will not alter this fundamental fact...
...army still on the side of reaction...
...Even the clergy have taken a swing to the left," says Alfred...
...Intelligent Thinking Required •TMIAT is why an intelligent party of the workers will * not by its own stupidity cultivate the illusion that it can overcome this vast power by tome mysterious "massed action...
...A Vital Post-War Lesion 117KLI,, we will let bygones be bygones, but we are not " going to let this happen here...
...He has Jack Altman removed from the Labor Committee of Local New York...
...That settles It, Alfred, you shock us...
...Alfred has really stumbled over a vital lesson of postwar history and then goes on to ignore it...
...Let us rejoice that both Scripture und catechism are being mobilized for the revolution...
...He will show 'em the Declaration, they will read it carefully, and, no doubt, they will say: "This is more serious than we thought...
...He is arguing against Communist urging of physical conflict, hut seems to think that the Detroit Declaration insures success with the...
...We had better think it over before we start anything...
...The armed powers controlled by bourgeois governments are gigantic...
...The one success obtained by physical conflict was in Russia, where the "army made the revolution...
...This is especially true of the history he cites...
...American Mannerhe i in, Mussolini, Hitler or Dollfuss that he will have no easy road to victory," says Alfred...
...You leave us utterly crushed...
Vol. 17 • August 1934 • No. 33
