The United Front
THE UNITED FRONT by Jf* /^ctA«h*<j' communist Policy of Power Worship and Throw-Back to Utopianism, Combined with Terrorist Dictatorship, Has Created Unbridgeable Gulf Making Impossible Any...
...On January 4, almost exactly s year ago, President Roosevelt sent his first message to the 74th Congress...
...All he had to do was to propose an amendment to the Constitution and he would have the working class behind him fighting the ruthless employers who wanted low wages and long hours...
...Has it not industrialized and collectivized the nation's economy and, as Bauer jays, "altered thereby not only the face of the Soviet Union but of the world, thus rendering the greatest service of our time so far as the future is concerned...
...1934, this stood at 71...
...They knew not how to help themselves...
...He dared them to make a move to repeal the lovely laws which have given protection and prosperity to farmers and workers in factory and office...
...For this reason the Communist dictatorship instills into the workers the...
...Bauer sees only the construction of plants and collectives, bnt fails to perceive the rise of a new aristocracy which control*, these new means of production and exploit* them for it* own purposes...
...Instead he will use the court decisions for an alibi...
...He says: . "Socialism permits the utilization of a terrorist dictatorship during the period of transition as a means of abolishing classes and of building a social order in which complete and enduring liberty first becomes possible...
...I could tell from the way they winced and pulled their clothes about them that the wind was blowing right through them...
...By that time other depressions will have come...
...I don't want any misunderstanding...
...These little human incidents suggest that 1986 is not an especially happy new year for the working people of this country— and they are the great majority of the population...
...Bat surely this is a feeble beginning for: the richest nation .in the world...
...That is, there were about four-fifths as many people working as in 1923, but they were receiving about two-thirds as much in total wages, Compare this with the physical volume of production, and 'you will see just what the working class faces in this glad new year...
...Marx characterized |**f works as part of the material foundations of the despotism of those regions ("Capital," Volksausgabe, page 453...
...Bauer and Souvarine . have different points of eWw on the same facts, the author approaching them from a different angle than does his critic...
...I felt like telling them that steel production and car-loadings are up and that the average stock exchange figures stand at a fouryear high...
...Our delightful constitutional machinery allows us to put a great social measure into operation, appoint commissions and levy taxes and then—a year or two later—says it was all contrary to the rules and the money must be returned...
...To achieve this measure of liberty, to promote the labor movement in every way possible was what Marx regarded as the principal practical aim of Socialists...
...feeling that they are a ruling class favored by the regime as against the peasants, while within the working class itself elements and individuals of particularly ignoble servility are treated aa pets and accorded special privileges...
...Bat as the year went on the Supreme Court proceeded to demolish the various tnrts of the President's program which were supposed to provide for these things...
...Farmers will receive a billion more for their crops than last year...
...in August, 1934, 2,608,011...
...The job of a Socialist is to look behind the ballyhoo...
...The period between 1928 to the present is dealt with only in the last one-hundred pages of Seovarineto book...
...They are all hard-working, conscientious young people, but yon would have thought they had committed some terrible crime...
...years the total Federation membership has'Increased about a half million...
...The hbmitn Caesars built not only treat amphitheatres and bathsouses but also very fine roads' connecting all parts of the great empire, water systems, etc Many persons who admire these accomplishments fail to realize that because they rested on slave labor they led ultimately to the destruction of the state, The Pharaohs of Egypt and the despots of Babylonia and India bent not only great palaces, temples, mausoleums but also huge works, dams, reservoirs and canals •ithout which agriculture could SOt endure...
...Tins is...
...But the working class felt a little bit hurt...
...The first Five-Year Plan has been characterized in Soviet circles as a form of primitive capital accumulation...
...The concluding article will mgeow next week...
...1936, it stood at 72...
...In dealing with this period, Souvarine speaks almost exclusively of the Five-Year Plan...
...Bauer's conception is a complete regression into pre-Marxian utopianism, which expected the rise of a miserable working class to a Socialist society to emanate from the activities of intellectually .lifted and highly moral individuals...
...The Five-Year Plan resulted in a horrible decline of the living standards and human dignity of the Russian workers...
...just about enough accomplishment to serve as a demonstration, a sample of what we could' have if the administration were in earnest...
...It was a blustery, bright, cold day—just the sort of day on which a man with a good dinner inside and a good coat outside enjoys a brisk walk...
...Those who wish to contradict the indictment must produce facts Bauer's irrelevant assertion that Souvarine does not devote . adequate apace to the Five-Year Plan proves nothing...
...Perhaps it would have made them feel warm and cheerful...
...Marx perceived in the class struggle the means for the emancipation of the proletariat—in the labor movement of free workers living in a state in which they had conquered for themselves the necessary elbow room for action...
...this rate of gain because of the passing of the NBA- The American trade unions, without the aid of the federal government, have held their gains and continued to make new ones...
...Those who put forward this characterization forget that Marx had pointed out that this process had always been facilitated and stimulated by the dirtiest, pettiest and ugliest passions ("Capital," Volksausgabe I, page 690...
...From money so collected the federal government will duplicate insurance paid by the states for unemployment or old age up to a limit of $16...
...Those who concentrate their eye •pen technique, not upon human beings, fall easily into the false idea that capitalism is characterized solely by its machinery...
...The privileged elements themselves are divided into various categories...
...Some one should have read her a paragraph from the President's message...
...Marx knew, however, that human beings are the decisive factor in society, whose technical instruments become a determining factor only insofar as they influence the life and substance of human beings...
...1936, it stood at 83.6...
...I It is with wages that you pay for the bread and pork and beans...
...The articles its written *» the form of a resit* of a book by Boris Soitvarine <m Stalin...
...Souvarine considers the Five-Years Plan from the point of view of its effect upon the Russian masses...
...In Sept...
...The discussion of this topic as well as that of industrial unionism and of war and fascism showed an increasing ' aliveness to great issues and an increased militancy in standing for the interests of the workers...
...What Workers Face In all justice, then, we can say of President Roosevelt that he has a better heart than ex-President Hoover, but that his accomplishment leaves the working class just where It was...
...not the President of the United States speaking...
...The Trade Uniors . The figures presented to the Atlantic City convention -in October showed a healthy sad continuous growth...
...At this station the members of the staff were called to the office one by one...
...In Sept...
...In September, 1934, the employment index of the U. S. Department of Labor stood at 76...
...He did not believe that the misery of the working class could be abolished by any one individual, millionaire or dictator, however well equipped that individual might be, materially or intellectually...
...The President spoke of provision against major risks, and on May 8th the Federal Railway Pension act was declared unconstitutional...
...My informant said: "They formed outside just as if they were going to the guillotine...
...The President did not propose a single change...
...Above this aristocracy stands the less numerous nobility of members of the Communist Party, and still higher in power is the aristocracy of the political police, holding in its power the officialdom and party members...
...Souvarine shows clearly the development of this new aristocracy of- mandarins, grandees and officials over the heads of more, than one i hundred million miserable, enslaved beings...
...People looked pinched and miserable...
...He now regards liberty,not as a prerequisite for Socialism but as its aim...
...That sounded fine...
...Now put these figures in a row and make a picture of them in your mind...
...1935, it had reached 88...
...It is just what we want...
...Nor was this mitigated by the fact that the conditions under which this primitive accumulation took place demoralized greatly also the bureaucrats and Communists—the masters of the workers and peasants...
...But this tale of continued economic depression and of legislative futility is not the whole story of the year 1935...
...The most definite thing in the whole message was a promise that there are to be no new taxes...
...Numerous companies are declaring dividends for the first time since the depression began...
...Otto Bauer regards this as the rise of a classless society...
...But- not only does Stalin permit this dedication, but woe to him we* /*•**¦ tures to criticise it in Soviet Russia, like the absolutism of mailed fist unconcerned too ranch with intellectual and morai (Restraints" is the deification of _\he fist by obedient syt»phanbsjae natural consequence of dictatorship —the policy which the Bolsheviks have pursued since theh*";'ceup d'etat of November 1917...
...This measure was not all that the administration pretended, but it did offer some support to organized labor...
...This year a very small tax is being collected on payrolls...
...Evidently the increase in Christmas buying must have been due to the purchases of some other class...
...had there is plenty -Of evidence that they may get worse...
...There is a certain gain in having a national administration in favor of it...
...In that he promised better use of national resources for life provision against the major risks and changes, better homes "and home life...
...But that is not all...
...As the year went on lower courts threw out the Wagner Labor Disputes Act and the Guffey Bill...
...For some reason the cheerful President forgot to mention those little matters in his eloquent message...
...39i» construction program carT^ji?Lunde.r Stalin's reign is by " ac weans, unprecedented...
...The idea of security is a good one...
...We don't know whether this act will be allowed to remain by the Supreme Court, and if it is allowed to remain, we have no idea how much security it will offer—except that the upper limit will be $30 a month...
...Other rulers before Stalin who commanded the services of large misses of docile, helpless labor whom they sacrificed mercilessly to' their plans were able, even in primitive times, to build huge edifices which roused astonishment, edifices the construction of which was brought about by tremendous sacrifices and expenditure of human lives, which did not, however, 'ejsea the "leader" in the least...
...There were no such strikes as those of 1934 and no such uprising of farmers as those which we saw during the sliding two years...
...Unorganized workers have nothing at all to be happy about—onless from the hard experiences of these times they learn some wisdom which will prompt them to join the army of labor and fight to make the world better...
...Many people thought the President had a campaign issue made ¦ to order...
...In a i year or two a few hundred more families will be added...
...This became a self-evident truth for all Marxists, but it seems to have been forgotten under the influence of Bolshevist thinking, as evidenced by Bauer, who believes that the results of the first FiveYear -Plan mark a turning point in the history of the world...
...Delightful Judiciary He and the members of his cabinet have made much of the Social Security Act, which went into effect on January 1. This bill, too, must run the pa untie*- ef the Supreme Court...
...The unions connected with the American Federation of Labor had in August, 1933, a membership of 2,126.796...
...They show that, though production is increasing, we are heading straight for another depression...
...in Sept...
...He raises those who please him to position of influence and power and he hurls these who displease him into oblivion...
...This is no mere accident...
...i -j .: . * He challenged the "financial and industrial groups," the big bad wolves, to propose a program...
...And there was no decrease in...
...What interests could impel them to do so...
...Not a Presidential Message By William E. Bohn QOOD e\-ening, la-dies and gentlemen...
...Its aristocracy consists entirely of servile, elements, lacking all character and independence...
...No doubt President Green expressed -the overwhelming sentiment of the membership when he declared that his organization would organize for...
...Organized workers have every reason to feel good about the growth in numbers and spirit of their own organizations, the 'trad* anions...
...Bat all of these elements ef the aristocracy, each endowed with special privileges, are subject to the rule of the highest central authority in the state, headed for the moment by Stalin...
...In September 1934, the average payroll index, figured on the same basis, stood at 68...
...They acquire the illusion that those who introduce machinery are also introducing Socialism...
...In this manner there has been set up after the destruction of the old classes a new differentiation of classes, a hierarchy headed by a Pope...
...It remained for Marx to subdue this mode of thinking...
...This means' that daring the month of September there were about 84% as many persons employed as daring the period from 1923 to 1926...
...The Roman Caesars and the Radjas of India astonished the world with similar remarkable performances by using the labor of millions of cheap slaves over whom they held Sway...
...in August, 1935, 3,045,347...
...Last night a relief worker told me about a little scene that was enacted at her station over in the Borough of Brooklyn...
...These figures contain an ominous message to the entire capitalist system...
...In speaking of better use of natural resources and of better homes and home life the President must have had in mind the use of WPA funds, the famous $4,900,000,000 for housing and such other purposes...
...Don't get impatient and turn your dial to some jazz program...
...A couple of days before Christmas I took a walk in one of our working class sections...
...Christmas buying was 10% above last year...
...While standing there in line I heard a dull sound...
...Marx expected...
...Here in New York we have 162 ! families in new apartments...
...You have heard that two thousand out of the seven thousand relief workers are being discharged because the number on relief is expected to diminish...
...To get a fair perspective, the best that we can do is to compare September of 1935 with the same month in 1934...
...a The force that has driven the Bolsheviks and those who sympathize with them to their false interpretation is not to be sought in any new scientific discoveries or the progress of Socialist thought, but in the logic of their policy of power worship, the pob'cy wtSeSi they have applied against other Socialists and the masses of the people, the policy which has brought so much evil and destruction upon the working class whereever it has made itself felt...
...He cites S mass of facts constituting a depressing indictment of the plan, its " methods, its consequences...
...The people, with two-thirds as much money as they used to have, can't buy what they need...
...Car Loadings Up It's funny...
...And that something is wages...
...Neither the brutality of the rulers nor the enslavement of the ruled is altered by these achievements...
...Evidently he thinks things are O.K...
...So in the course of time, in states which pass corresponding laws, the unemployed for short periods and the aged for longer periods, may get up to $30 a month...
...Sonvarine handles these human aspects more seriously than does Bauer...
...In 1933, when the president introduced NRA to Congress he Said Its purpose was to provide a wider and more equitable distribution of purchasing power...
...It is not technical and economic innovations but the human aspects of a society that matter...
...Stocks are higher, on the average, than they have been for four years...
...And he considered this undertaking possible only where the working class developed the necessary power and training...
...You read a newspaper and you feel as if you had had a full dinner...
...In coid figures, how much better are working people off than they were a year ago...
...A Happy New Year for the Workers...
...The expropriation of the peasants, the crowding of industrial workers in the cities subjected them to most terrible sufferings and demoralized them completely: . like the slaves of old, fellahs and coolies, etc of the Orient these workers and peasants lacked all capacity for resistance, all knowledge...
...There is the history of labor, of the trade unions A reading of__the conventional chronologies--f^Tves an impression of industrial peace...
...They tell the story of your troubles...
...This gain of about 8% looks fine...
...It is in the growth of the labor movement that we have, the only hopes for a happier new year now or ever...
...The fact that the present rulers of the Kremlin follow these examples of Asiatic despots does not signify a fundamental change in the face of the world...
...The builders of the pyramids have been eked in this connection...
...The convention met at a* time when no one expected it to take an advanced political position...
...As Souvarine remarks, quite justly, the effects of the first Five-Year Plan were akin to those of the era of primitive accumulation...
...With all this prosperity going round I still see people digging into the garbage cans on my street...
...Bauer now takes a different view...
...The good man with the friendly smile seemed to think that we are all sitting pretty, that we face the glad new.year from a ringside seat on the top' of the world...
...They.hare no reason to blow horns because they live under a pro-labor government...
...In Sept...
...The figures sent out by his own Department of Labor shows that this measure, and all other measures, have failed to accomplish this purpose...
...The old nobility obtained its land, after the system of ownership had been definitely established, neither from princes- nor from the czar, and from time to time .it ventured to exhibit discontent...
...Otto Bauer himself is compelled to admit that he is nauseated .by -the undignified demce*g»3P Stalin by bis courtiers...
...And there was no hope or joy in their faces...
...Last week right near where 1 live in Manhattan a young couple committed suicide because the bus-" band could not find a job...
...This* situation gave rise to, utopianism, which envisaged a highly gifted, powerful individual . as the instrument who alone would create - a system of production 'that would do away with misery and transform the workers into free, happy, strong human beings...
...We do not have adequate figures for later months...
...A Previous Message I want to give a report on the federal government, on the actual economic situation, and on the labor movement...
...Someone should have told them about increased automobile production...
...He gives and he takes away...
...Bauer adds: "A biography like fcuvarine's which devotes more space te the factional conflict within the Bolshevist party than ft does to the industrialization and collectivization of the Soviet Union 8*s not do justice to this historic pWhat Souvarine actually gives us is a history of Bolshevism from its beginnings nearly a half century ago...
...Indications are that these measures, too, will be ruled out by the Supreme Court...
...independent political action when the members believe...
...The rule of a minority over the great majority requires for jt» preservation not only bloody terror but the splitting up of the population, in accordance with the old principle: divide and rule...
...Marx taught that the building of Socialism could only be undertaken by the workers themselves...
...I passed hundreds of people—but not one who seemed to enjoy the fine, cold weather...
...He did not regard them as the material boms of a Socialist society...
...All through the holiday season we had evidence of prosperity jammed into our stockings...
...This alone required that he give more space to the portrayal of the ideas and struggles of the party leaders than to the Five-Year Plan, initiated by Stalin in 1928...
...f-r' According to Bauer's interpretation, Socialism is no longer to spring from the labor movement, which presupposes a certain measure of freedom of action for the workers, but from terrorist compulsion exercised upon the masse* by an all-powerful ruler through instruments entirely at his disposal, instruments such as an allpowerful police destroying all measure of self-consciousness, all capacity for independent thinking and action among the masses...
...By 1949 when the act will be in complete operation, this tax will amount to 9...
...The President made a wonderful speech last Friday night...
...We shall have grown accustomed to the steady burden of millions of unemployed...
...Socialism to come not from the human beings of capitalist heavy industry but from the workers, and not from all the workers but from those living and acting under certain conditions...
...As we enter the year 1936, then, working people in America have little reason to congratulate themselves on better times...
...Production is higher than it has been since 1930...
...An Ominous Message In September of last year physical production was nine-tenths of the old average, employment was four-fifths, and payrolls were about two-thirds...
...The working people need facts, and they need to do some thinking about facts...
...What we have here, to my- great sorrow, is a deep gulf between Otto Bauer and not only my interpretation, but also the interpretation which before the coup d'etat at November 1917 was the interpretation of all Marxists, including Lenin...
...It shows not the slightest interest in .fighting to amend the constitution so that it can save its own labor laws...
...Here again, we have a. good idea—an idea that trade unionists and Socialists have been fighting for— but so far it remains an idea— with...
...In 'a modern dictatorial state this is impossible...
...OUT has not the dictatorship ~* in Russia some real successes to its credit...
...That is, during each ot the past two...
...One of the girls had fallen te the floor in a dead faint...
...When this happens the President will quietly refuse to fight for his program...
...The i prerequisites for this, as Marx saw it, were, first, a high degree of^economic development, and secondly, a very wide measure of political freedom, for without these the labor movement cannot prosper...
...If the population of the United States had remained stationary after 1026, that would be a black enough picture— with production up and wages down...
...that "The^r interest can be better served by such action...
...The Chairman of our own Housing Authority, Langdon W. Pest, who has done everything that one good man can do to make better housing a reality, has emphasised how little has come of all the grand talk...
...On May 27 the NRA went into the discard along the Supreme Court route...
...Even the members of Congress laughed...
...Bauer b impressed by the size of new pests, by new machinery...
...Similar stories are told about Cincinnati, Chicago, and other cities...
...THE UNITED FRONT by Jf* /^ctA«h*<j' communist Policy of Power Worship and Throw-Back to Utopianism, Combined with Terrorist Dictatorship, Has Created Unbridgeable Gulf Making Impossible Any United Front with Socialists—Analysis of Communist Psychology Contrasted with Socialism I - f hit is the second of a series of articles by Karl Kautsky on Bolshevism, Socialism and the united front...
...But-for the working class there is something even more important than work...
...But there was hardly a peep out of the friendly President...
...The government has shown very little interest in them...
...They show why it is that couple down on Eighth Street committed suicide...
...Why should the dictator and his sycophants set themselves this aim at all...
...But there have been many fierce stiugglas which did not quite break into the drama of open strikes, and one MbO reads the record must acknowledge that in these struggles our trade unions have fought hard and well...
...Who is to buy the goods produced, ninetenths as many as were created ten years ago, if the great masses of the people have only two-thirds as much money as they used to have...
...On the other hand, Bauer admits that terrorist dictatorship leads inevitably to the absolutism ' off a man mediocre in moral and- intellectual character, whose coer tiers, the aristocracy of the Soviet 'state, are nothing more than a crowd -of slavish sycophants unable to understand how ridiculous they make themselves and their master through the senselessness of the deification they heap upon humThese are the elements who, according to Bauer, are to bring about through terrorist dictatorship the rise of a backward and woefully .oppressed proletariat to the highest form of social organization possible today...
...Figures are the most exciting things in the world...
...For them times are not much better...
...Nor did they confine themselves to luxury construction...
...The plain implication was that these nice new laws are just right...
...But even if this measure is allowed to stand, how much security does it offer American workers...
...But the working people are more interested in actual things than in presidential promises and performances...
Vol. 19 • January 1936 • No. 2
