N.E.C. Hits Isolation as Aid To Growing World Fascism
N.E.C. Hits Isolation as Aid To Growing World Fascism TVECLARING that American isolationists bear " a heavy responsibility for the recent European crisis due to the clash between German...
...Always there will at the suspicion that they are hedging again, acting again as devil'i advocates for reaction under fancy labels...
...THE WAR IN THE AIR *J"HE Rome and Berlin terrorists having extended their yawping over the radio to Latin-American nations, the United States will now counter by broadcasts to those nations...
...Why not McNutt and Burke for their loyal services to capitalist reaction...
...The latter, too, claim isolation from any and all proposals intended to bring peaceful international relations to a distracted and disordered world...
...Through this back door it appears that the bombastic terrorists' of Berlin and Rome hope to build a fascist fire against democracy throughout the Western Hemisphere...
...A new intellectual genera* tion is growing up in.America, in colleges and out of them, is factories and offices...
...BECAUSE The New Leader has in many ways approximate^ such a press, it deserves the most fulsome congratulations -» the pages of this anniversary issue...
...A press that dares to question sanctified revolutionary texts aad attitudes and does not treat differences of opinions as heresies nor resort to excommunications in dealing with criticism...
...That fact is the need for an honest, unafraid and uninhibhai'j press in this period of totalitarian blinders, witch-hunts in thvf name of Karl Marx, revolutionism a la Machiavelli, and streamlined materialist religions...
...The obscenity of their progressive pretensions...
...others have been unable to follow parties and movements that have become frozen in their faith...
...Hits Isolation as Aid To Growing World Fascism TVECLARING that American isolationists bear " a heavy responsibility for the recent European crisis due to the clash between German and Austrian fascism, the National Executive Committee of the Social Democratic Federation this week, in a public statement, added that our "isolation impossibilists" had declined every opportunity to help rebuild what we helped to destroy in the World War...
...They are helpless...
...believe that active cooperation with the " world's democracies will restrain the policy' of international provocation and blackmail pursued by reckless dictators, help to preserve the peace, confine the dictatorships within their own frontiers until they collapse from their own internal contradictions, and be a tremendous service in preventing the outbreak of another terrible war...
...What a contrast with the present 1 All of the current economic trends support the interpretation to be found in the literature of democratic Socialism...
...Where is that guidance to come from...
...declares with reference to China and Spain...
...gENATQR BURKE of Nebraska wants a coalition of "progressive conservatives" in the two leading parties to preserve "free enterprise" and to gut the National Labor Relations Act of its beat pro-labor sections...
...The Social Democratic Federation is opposed to war and hopes that humanity will be able to avert the bloody catastrophe which the provocations of dictators invite, but while we work for peace we also insist that it is folly for the United States to think it can live in an international vacuum or that it can be immune from a world conflict once the ties of international relationships are severed by a general conflict...
...I venture to attest, therefore, the simple iaM implicit and explicit in the many brilliant articles in the pages of this issue, and to add such emphasis as I may...
...Instead of pretending that the test never happened, intellectual honesty demands a study of the facts, wherever they may lead: a rededieation to ideals, a clarification of these ideals, not in panicky reiteration of noble optimisms but in clear-headed understanding...
...contributors, and supporters for a publication that wffl make American intellectual history...
...But it is thoroughly accepting answers that make a nice pattern even if they make no sense...
...Equal treatment of unequals is the most unfair form of inequality because it tips the scales against the...
...The revolution stijl devours its own children...
...And the liberal press has abdicated...
...The conclusion is that of the cautious and conservative United States News...
...That's too easy, too tempting...
...A press that has the daring of its -decent impulses, and is net scared to err on the side of too much justice...
...Some of them have had the doors of the formerly liberal magazines banged in their faces...
...However inadequately, the first laboratory test of Marxism has been made...
...The Social Democratic Federation urges the Labor Movement to heal the ugly wound caused by the unhappy split m its ranks and prepare to serve in the greater task ahead...
...About twenty million human beings are dependent upon WPA, upon local relief, old-age assistance, aid to dependent children, CCC camps, aad upon rural rehabilitation...
...It is not enough to blame Russia or the Bolsheviks...
...The press that we need must in this sense be iconoclastic Not...
...When we add to all this the fact that the government has ventured into the power business on a large scale through the TV A, that it is extending its control in" the bituminous coal industry...
...I have spoken of the budding minds...
...Whatever one may think of the conclusions of Max Eastman fat his remarkable article in the March number of Harper's Magazine, there can be no doubt, it seems to me, of the importance of hit underlying thesis...
...A press that regards human beings and their happiness, their essential dignity and moral integrity, as the most important elements in any social movement...
...It moves timorously to avoid stepping oa some subscribers' toes, or overstepping some fashionable party line...
...It is a tragedy that vast sums are appropriated for increased armament when the funds are so desperately needed to care for the unemployed...
...A press, in short, for honest discussion, not divinely inspired edicts...
...They are in the clutch of economic laws that are undermining the functions alleged to be theirs...
...There is also a vast number of Americans who are undergoing a sort of political convalescence...
...It urges all friends of peace and opponents of war to oppose the fatalistic policies of isolation and neutrality and to join us in the advocacy of friendly cooperation with the democracies of the world in resisting all dictatorships no matter what flag they fly...
...The Socialist press—and this includes The New Leader—has become largely parochial, in that it does not and cannot reach cat beyond its own followers...
...the New Republic has struck out against the war-maker* in an atavistic flash of free thought...
...It is a generation more alive to social problems than any that this country has known, thanks to the economic and political dislocations of the last ten years...
...A press that regards its function as an endless searching rather than a comfortable journey's end...
...The democratic peoples of the world, especially the democratic Labor and Socialist parties and the trade unions of the free nations, look to us with anxiety and with the hope that we will share with them the responsibility of keeping the free nations free of the brutal and hateful regime of terror and dictatorship which is now a threat to humanity everywhere...
...The arrogance of Mussolini and Hitler is without limit, but the patience of those not yet under their heels is not...
...WHERE THE NEWS ENDS By EUGENE LYONS BEING conveniently located in the last column on the last pajfiS I can arrogate onto myself the function of a few ctoshtjjf1 remarks in this eloquent anniversary number of The New Loadesji It is in the nature of perorations to repeat and summarise what has gone before...
...The old theory of capitalist- business was that it provides jobs...
...The Nation actually allowed Edmund Wilson and a few others to express unorthodox opinions...
...CROZEN in their faith, I repeat the phrase...
...Nothing short of the resignation of all the editors of those journals can save those magazines, which once upon a time did a worthy job for American enlightenment, from the morass ef their multiple timidities...
...There was no secret balloting...
...It should be in a format, under editorship, and under promotional direction, that will reach out for the minds, young and old*, now being polluted by the New Masses and other terrorist sheets serving their brand of "democracy" between blood purges...
...13L/E...
...and revision of cherished theories when necessary...
...In making the announcement, DeWitt M. Emoty, president of the National Small Business Men's Association, Inc., declares that the deliberations will be marked by "none of the monkey business" of the Washington confab...
...i —-ANOTHER BOLSHEVIK 'TRIAL" TWENTY-ONE mpre former Soviet leaders are facing a "trial" in Moscow, including Rykoff, former Premier...
...Even as this is being written I learn that a number of editor...
...T*HE need for a courageous and thoroughly honest press en the * Left to which I refer boils down, as a practical proposition, to the publication of a journal of libertarian opinion...
...It was like taking a "free" vote in Hitler's hell to determine whether the voters love the Fuehrer...
...AND these are not pious abstract wishes...
...Economic forces dictate to the "captains of industry" and also compel politicians of the old school fo do what they do not like to do...
...It provides an excuse for greater expenditures for armament and it encourages the provocations of the fascist powers...
...It is being offered today only by the new authoritarian religions of Fascism and Stalinism...
...mind you, perversely agnostic, but inquiring...
...All trends are away from individualism and toward collectivism, not because of any conscious will but because the old ideas of "let us alone" would bring chaos and complete collapse...
...The statement continues: It is interesting to note that our American isolationists really follow a policy adopted by the dictatorships...
...Considering the savage effectiveness of the Cheka and later the GPU, one wonders why the dreaded secret police did not learn of the alleged deeds of this "fascist dog" long ago...
...The Russian Revolution, in the Socialist sense, has failed dismally...
...RAH FOR McNUTT AND BURKE...
...However, the fascist powers do not adopt a hypocritical policy of neutrality...
...The Soules and Kirchways prefer to wait until the new batch of revolutionary leaders are safely shot before deciding what to believe in this matter of elementary justice...
...A press that does not stand transfixed in ecstasy before some petrified Truth, but looks upon truth as a dynamic, evolving j concept: a living principle, daily tested anew, rather than a dead catechism...
...every voter had to say "yes" or "no"*and thus be "spotted" by* government, agents...
...Already arrogant because of American failure to aid in world stabilization, German and Italian fascism are active in Latin-American countries through their special agents, oral and radio propaganda, and press services...
...for facing realities, not saving face...
...Even in the columns of a Sfecial Democratic Party organ I venture to suggest thai long-held beliefs must be re-valuated at this time in the light of the world's experiences since 1917...
...NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA...
...v That is to say, the owners of the means of production and distribution are abdicating functions which their economic soothsayers and politicians have asserted are "natural" to capitalists...
...Bukharin, a leading Communist theoretician and editor of Izveatia, and Rakovsky, former Ambassador to France...
...As former Governor of Indiana McNutt -maintained martial law for three years against union miners and established military rule in Terre Haute in one important strike...
...A press that has the courage of its doubts—anyone can b* brave about his certainties...
...Many of them—I know them, I could mention names—are hoping against despair to find an intellectual home that is free, decently clean, without authoritarian locks on it...
...Their logic is like that of Hitler who demands autonomy for German minorities in other countries while he crushes the Jewish minority at home...
...A TWO-FOLD result follows the ¦ continuance of ** the American policy of isolation...
...They are sickened with hopelessness...
...To reverse these trends is a job that is giving Washington a headache...
...For the most part it steert shy of bold opinions...
...There are enough talented men and women among them, earnest men and women rich in knowledge and experience, to provide editors...
...The News Added: "The result is that government —for one reason or another—has its hand at the controls in the very heart of the once free-operating competitive system of private capitalism...
...of The Nation and the New Republic, having been asked to add their names' to a telegram sent to Ambassador Troyanovsky hi connection with the Rykov-Bukharin trial, refused—just scared of interfering with the executioners...
...Neither Marxism nor Leninism can be treated any longer at religious systems handed down from Mt...
...Bukharin is even accused of plotting to kill Lenin and several others nearly twenty years ago...
...If isolation has not isolated us from world wars, neutrality has not made us neutral," says the N.E.C...
...CAROL GETS A MAJORITY |?ING CAROL of Rumania gets a "popular" vote of over 98 percent in favor of his personal dictatorship...
...Are the owners doing this of their own free will...
...DRIFT TO COLLECTIVISM A SPECTACULAR rise in the number of people dependent upon the government for a living and an equally spectacular decline in the number of persons employed by private industry are two-fold aspects of the new depression...
...Both The Nation and the New Republic have recently eshibited symptoms of independent thought...
...for stimulating thought, not strait jacketing minds...
...At best thinkers of the past can be expected to give us a working hypothesis any system of thought that makes infallible prophets of its pioneer* has ceased to be a living method and congealed into a religion* The human hunger for faith, at bottom an aspect of fear, makes religions easier to take than free thought...
...Whatever the theory, the practice now is that the government must not paly provide for at least half the total population but nurse business itself I When we consider the sources of relief mentioned above and include the new national controls over agricultural production, marketing and prices, the number of those who work for the government, and the veterans who draw pensions, "then more than half of the nation's total population is found looking to government rather than to private business to help them meet their problems...
...They have abandoned the mental barracks ef Stalinism because of the nasty stench of blood and rotting bodies...
...But there is too much innocent blood on their editorial pages for them ever to recover fully the respect of mentally honest Americans...
...Now then, read some of the old speeches of Herbert Hoover, consult the text books of the droll professors of political economy, turn the files of our leading dailies and read editorials written in the days before capitalism entered the hospital...
...I believe there is enough vitality left in the American radical movement to rescue its thinking from the bog of know-nothing totalitarianism...
...Sinai...
...Senator Burke will not have to go outside the Democratic Party for a ticket...
...They cooperate with each other to the extent —as in the case of Hitler and Mussolini—of sending arms and armies to Spain in support of a treacherous clique of army officers who plan a despotic regime for the unhappy people of that country...
...Burke is a Democrat and so is Paul V. McNutt, High Commissioner to the Philippines...
...weaker power," the N.E.C...
...A policy of cooperation with the world's democracies would immediately weaken the pleas of the isolationists for more armament, strengthen the world's democracies and check the spread of the fascist contagion to the Western Hemisphere...
...And a truly free journal of the Left, with a deliberate mass appeal, is one of the essential instruments in thii job of salvaging...
...They express a real and immediate and practical need...
...It reiterates ideas for readers who have long ago accepted those ideas, accepted them so completely that they have become a set of basic precepts without the resiliency of living thought...
...But can he keep simians out...
...that it is becoming a part proprietor in housing and is even expected to move into the railroad industry, we have some idea of how extensively social controls are invading capitalism and to what extent capitalism itself is yielding the held to the government...
...MONKEYSHINES ARE BARRED RESPITE its hilarious performance in Washington early in February little business will hold a national convention in the Midwest next June...
...Benito and Adolf will object...
...The telegram merely urges' that the trial be postponed long enough to permit a number of men of undoubted integrity from the outside world to attend the proceedings...
...Therefore, government should let it alone...
Vol. 21 • March 1938 • No. 10
