The Fight for American Labor Party
Counts, George S.
The Fight for American Labor Party lfc.ll the CeniMtJih be permitted fo captor* toe A.L.P. la Now York Sfofo? The unholy olliaaco fcetwecu HiltoMM OMl tor "Left Wiatj" constitutes a threat fo...
...Lenin once said that it was always necessary to "watch what any given ideology leads to...
...The main job, however, is to prepare effectively for active participation in the 1944 presidential csmpsign...
...The Communists support the Hillman plan because it would enable them, with Hillman's support, to capten the party...
...An admission which for a multiplicity of political reasons the masters of the Kremlin are not yet ready to make...
...We accept the challenge of the Hillman-Communist coalition...
...We will fight to keep the American Labor Party a truly liberal and progressive force dedicated to a new New Deal in the state, in the nation, and in the world...
...But in Russia the fine houses and automobiles, though used by the Communist office-holders, ere the "property of the working people...
...Aside from this detail, the Soviet regime has realized the underdog's dream about the removal of the differences in the distribution of the good things of life...
...But we deny that they have the right to any place in the councils of the American Labor Party...
...e Soviet scientific institutions often "adopt" agricultural establishments for whose spiritual welfare they become responsible...
...Just as there are forty thousand members in the Communist Party of Greater Moscow...
...For, to the wise, that identification of Plato's aristocratic communism with Fascism implicity suggested the identification of the authoritarian Communist "vanguard" with the Fascist "elite...
...But even for the coming yesr Mr...
...He is jeopardizing the very life of the psrty whose 460,000 votes might be the bslance of power in 1944 and thus carry New York Stste for s liberal national administration...
...We are going to become a fuller democracy, we are going to bring to substantial realisation the Second Bill of Rights recently outlined by President Roosevelt, or we are going to experience a priod ef stark reaction—reaction so black that the fine slogans of this war will appear in the perspectives of history a bitter mockery...
...Well, his led to the assassination of Alter and Erlich...
...And they are rejected now even though Mr...
...From a Skeptic's Notebook By Max Nomad "If you want to live you must serve...
...They are prepared at any time to sacrifice the interests of American workers and American democracy to the interests of that governwent...
...Final authority would still reside in the trade union superstructure...
...As Alex Rose, Stste Secretary of the Party, has stated: "We are apposed to a political closed shop...
...I challenge anyone to cite another group with a comparable record of disruption and destruction of liberal and labor movement...
...We are interested in the long future of the American Labor Psrty...
...Which mskes a lot of difference—says the Communist officeholder...
...Yesrs ago they used to say that while the Spanish monks prayed for the future salvation of the American Indians, the Indians worked for the present comforts of their saviors...
...The most profound political struggles in American history lie immediately ahead...
...During Wendell Willkie's presidential campaign the waiters who served him would sometimes get the candidate's autograph in lieu of s mere tip...
...The American Labor Party can play a mighty role in this critical epoch...
...By gambling with the good name and the fortunes of the only political party capable of uniting liberal and labor forces, he is playing directly into the hands of resction...
...Unfortunately, the American Communist Party has penetrated and sought to control the New York Stste American Labor Party...
...For this reason, as well.as becsuse the Comma nists are a national nuisance, the present struggle in the American Labor Party of New York State has national significance...
...We are determined to fight to maintain the integrity snd independence of the psrty...
...It would destroy its usefulness in the 1944 presidentisl elections snd do irreparable harm to the labor movement...
...Indeed, these struggles are already upon us...
...Hence Communism suppressed political liberty, democratic elections and independent organizations in the name of the democratic principle of proletarian emancipation, while Fascism and Nazism did the ssme thing in the name of the aristocratic principle of the elite...
...This conception of a party is completely foreign to the trad it inns of our nation, and would be harmful to the labor movement...
...if you want to be free you must die...
...Honest liberals cannot join with those who make politirsi somersaults whenever expediency requires it, who screem for revolution one year and endorse free enterprise the next, who are ready to knife their best friends or -abandon their loudly professed principles at s nod from s foreign master...
...The Bolshevik Revolution tipped the "victorious proletariat" with "the ownership of the nation's industries...
...Also it must have a record of loyalty to the interests of America that cannot be doubted...
...But no labor party or political action committee can play such a role if its hsnds sre not clean...
...Hillman, of course, is no Communist, nor even a fellow-traveler...
...Speaking to the masses during the Revolution snd the Civil War, the Father of Bolshevism launched the slogan that "every cook" would soon be able to attend to the affairs of the State A new generation of rooks has grown up since, but they keep on cooking for the commissars...
...They hope their recent change in name ¦ad their endorsement of free enterprise snd the two*»rty system will facilitate their penetration into and control of just such organisations as the American Ubor Party...
...Bolshevism is merely a method for preserving power in the hsnds of . . . the Bolsheviks...
...Ia these dsys, more than ever before, labor needs allies, and we mast unite with sll liberal-thinking people, no matter to whst eee¦emic group they belong...
...In modern Russia government officials and experts get salaries ranking from five to a hundred times as much as the wages paid a laborer...
...Already the Communists have taken over the party apparatus in several counties...
...The Hillman plan ignores the New York State election laws for the democratic composition of all political parties...
...Moreover, unity with the Communists means unity under their leadership...
...We cannot unite with those whose entire record proves thst they hsve nothing in common with us...
...The Fascists concluded from the easy victory of the Bolshevik minority that the masses were servile and ready to accept any new ariatocrscy which displaces the old...
...An innocent professor who propounded that thesis in Moscow was immediately liquidated...
...Hillman is playing s dangerous game...
...Aside from this feature that city was a model democratic community...
...They are now engaged in a desperate attempt to capture the state committee...
...This simple definition, written by a Menshevik critic on the fifth anniversary of the Revolution contains more truth en ths subject than all the four score volumes of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin...
...It would deny s voice in party affairs to those numerous middleclass liberals who have voted the party ticket and who have worked with devoted enthusiasm for our candidates and our program...
...It ssust go before the public with an honest progressive progrsm dedicsted to both democratic methods snd democratic purpose*, and represented by candidates and leaders who are known to subscribe without reservation to such a program...
...The indisputable fact i* that the Communists owe blind obedience to the will or the assumed will of a foreign government...
...The Berlin and Moscow disciples of Hegel have given this originally harmless sentence of the great thinker a somewhat too literal interpretation...
...It gives to s few trade union leaders control of the party and recognizes the right of Communists to participate in the party councils...
...Hillman does not look beyond the 1944 campaign...
...The Communist Party, in its relatively brief career, has left behind itself a wreckage of organizations and of persons unparalleled in American history...
...The Fascists and the Communists in power see to it that their subjects do not forsake those dreams...
...Plato's- "Communism" was compatible with the maintenance of a well-organised master class...
...The most beautiful dreams of liberty are dreamt in prison," wrote Schiller nearly a century and a half ago...
...The need fqr political action on the part of labor is assuming diverse forms as events unfold in locality, state, gad nation...
...All of this is the most elementary common sense...
...This would discredit the American Labor Party as an agency for liberalism and progress...
...The call of Mr...
...In exchange the collective farm in question supplies its foster parent with milk, eggs and butter—a touching barter as it were, of ideology for cslories snd vitamins...
...In this quotation "they" are not the Bolshevik conquerors of ' Russia...
...An American tourist might give him a good pair of shoes in exchange...
...Criticism haa led Mr...
...He has had occasion in the past to fight Communist disruption within his own union...
...At the outset of their career the Bolsheviks believed, or pretended to believe, that the crowd was democratic at heart...
...By George S. Counts fliw York Stmt* Chmirmmn, American Labor Party THE "battle ef the primaries" now being waged in the American Leber Party of New York State hai certain elements of national interest...
...Certain big business interests, supported by the trestcr part of the daily press and a powerful block ef reactionary Republicans and Bourbon Democrats in Congress, have launched an unprincipled campaign against organised labor and all New Deal policies...
...For Stalin ia an enlightened modern ruler who does not believe in such superstitions as praying for the deed...
...In ancient Athens there was an average of ten slaves to one free citizen...
...There csn be na unity between political groups traveling in different directions...
...Hillmag has endorsed them...
...No such lists of executed "purge" victims hsve been officially compiled or published in Soviet Russia...
...The tenets of cunning an8 brutality imputed to the Jews in the spurious "Protocols of the Riders of Zions" have been found to be the only "principle" guiding Hitler's policies...
...If a group of demagogues, fanatics and ruffians sets up a dictatorship in the joint interests of sn upstsrt bureaucracy and the temporarily tolerated capitalists, it is Fascism If they do it for the new office-holders alone, it is Communism...
...In the long run an alliance with them can only bring dissster...
...Tie Hi/lmoa Communist Coalition APPARENTLY the Communists have a kind of unholy alliance with Sidney Hillman, President of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and chairman of the CIO Political Action Committee...
...We recognize also their right to have their own party...
...Before his death Ivan the Terrible had his scribes prepare a list of, and had prsyers said for, three thousand of the most Outstanding of his subjects whose execution he hsd ordered...
...see "In a very few years they had risen from obscure journslists, labor agitators, soldiers, students, political and social nobodies to the heeds of the Stste...
...Professor Herbert Schneider who wrote these words in his "Making ths Fascist State," had in mind the followers of Mussolini...
...These Prepossls were always rejected...
...The Communists employ, apparently by preference, devious and conspiratorial methods Whatever their labyrinthine changes of "tine," they always pursue the policy of "rule or rain...
...In s word it must refuse to have any dealings whatsoever with any totalitarian group, faction, or party...
...In both cases the,select enjoy grester comforts than the rest of the population...
...The unholy olliaaco fcetwecu HiltoMM OMl tor "Left Wiatj" constitutes a threat fo democracy, proaressivistn and liberalItja, flwd how riireJitieifi for the entire notion...
...No l/arty Wife Communists TJJE recognise the right of Communists to belong to trade unions...
...Judging by what has become of Russia's experiment with Utopia, Stalin seems to have taken his inspiration from all the writers who saw in socialism nothing but the "coming slavery...
...That's why libertarian thinkers prefer to classify the author of The Republic with the precursors of Fascism...
...All over America trgsmzeii labor, faced with the threat of reaction, is awakening mere and more to the necessity of political action...
...Moreover, there is s shortage of paper...
...Indeed, through the CIO Political Action Committe, they are operating on a nation-wide basis and are endeavoring to influence or capture the entire movement for labor political action...
...There are forty thousand persons in the social register of Greater New York...
...Yet with singular lack of political perspective snd wisdom, he has proposed a plan for the American Labor Party which, if successful, would place the Communists in effective control of the party...
...But why call this plan the "Hillman plan?'' The •¦•called "right wing" (which is actually the progressive wing) of the American Labor Party had been •Pproached on several occasions prior to last August *left wingers," I. e. Communists and their fellowtravelers, with similar proposals for "unity...
...Our county snd district organizations would be dummy organisations, shorn of the rights given to them by the New York Hertion laws...
...HiHman and the Communists' far "unity" is s trick...
...The average Russian worker would prefer Stalin's autograph...
...Hillman to agree to make a place in his scheme for non-union groups, but only ss window-dressing...
Vol. 27 • February 1944 • No. 6
