SAYS HIGHER WAGES AREN'T IN INTEREST OF WORKERS
Levy, Jerome
Says Higher Wages Aren't In, Interest of Workers From JEROME LEVY MESSRS. WEINBERG AND GITLOW in recent articles have ignored the following basic economic facts. (1) The purchasing power of any...
...Bolshevism must be fought with books as well as with rifles...
...There is an unfortunate tendency in all universities the world over to forget that students must be taught to make up their minds and not merely to analyze carefully both sides of each question...
...I CAN BEST EXPLAIN this in terms of my own predicament...
...Furthermore, if industry paid out the same percentage of its operating profits (now $50 instead of $25), the relative purchasing power of its investors would rise proportionally...
...SOME CONTEND that industry, in order to maintain monopolies, has not expanded its equipment sufficiently to meet the demands of the country and everyone agrees that more houses are needed...
...New York, N. Y. (Vladimir Zensinov...
...Y. Dear Editor: Books Can Fight Bolshevism, Russian Leader Declares From VLADIMIR ZENZINOV AFEW DAYS AGO I received the following communication from a DP in Germany: "I remember you as far back as Petrograd, 1917----Three months ago I obtained a copy of the New York Russian newspaper Novoye Russkoe Slot*b, which contained your extensive review of David Shub's 'Lenin: A Biography.' "Your article made a great impression here...
...Weinberg contends that industry's high profits permit it to pay higher wages...
...If there are no other sources of consumers' income, the consumers' industries cannot sell their total product for more than $190...
...I THOROUGHLY AGREE with your insistence on the necessity of publishing David Shub's 'Lenin' in Russian...
...I, for one, have alwavs wished for a professed Communist in the next classroom whose opinions I could tear to pieces...
...For the information of my correspondent and of New Leader readers, I may say that Shub's book will soon appear in French, Italian, German, Japanese and Swedish...
...I trust that the whole problem of making essential political literature available in the Russian language for the...
...Whether or not profits are too high, higher wages will increase profits proportionately...
...For they know, and we should know, that revolution begins in the mind of man...
...You have excellently stated one argument for this position: "The greater the variety of opinion sampled by a young person, the better his chance for developing his own ability to select and combine...
...I personally experienced all the delights of the Soviet paradise until 1943...
...The demand for it would be tremendous...
...In the same period wages and salaries rose from $60,907,000,000 to $120,091,000,000, an advance of about 98...
...But if we disregarded all these reasons, it would still be a tremendous mistake to ban the Communists from our faculties, bcoiusc it would make it more difficult to Tight Communism...
...They are hungry for the truth...
...They must live...
...A Catholic historian is not free to question the infallibility of the Councils of the Church...
...Of course, an increase given to One group of workers will increase its purchasing power, but this raise will bo at the expense of other workers and not the investing class...
...The purchasing power of the investing class is measured by the interest, dividends, and proprietors income paid out of operating profits and not by these profits...
...I'll do for The Ne'w Leader the sort of thing I know I'd like to have our friends do for Freedom & Union...
...It is obvious from this that the present decline in workers' purchasing power (if any) has been due to the greatly increased expenditures for producers' goods...
...Dividends rose from $4,465,000,000 to $6,880,000,000 in 1947, an increase of about 54...
...Calif...
...Some Fan Mail From JOHN BADGER OORRY I CAN'T afford more...
...In view of the foregoing, there should be no complaints about a lowered standard of living that has been brought about by the need for adding to industrial equipment and for building homes...
...Washington, D. C. 'Allow Communists to Teach, Fight Communism Better From CARL LANDAUER 1CANNOT .AGREE with your opinion, expressed in the editorial "Communists as Educators" in thy issue of February 5, that universities are justified in eliminating Communists from their faculties for the reason that Communist Party members "are not free to approach problems openly and critically...
...You can see from this how heartfelt is my hope that your financial appeal should be the great success you deserve — and why I can't be of much more than moral cheer to you...
...Montreal, Canada...
...hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens now living in Europe as displaced persons will be faced and met...
...ANOTHER ARGUMENT might be added: although a Communist, a Catholic or another,dogmatist has accepted limitations of which one would prefer an academic toucher to be free, he has at least made up his mind about something...
...If the wage expenditures of the producers', industries had been $50 instead of $25, the average worker would be able to buy 100 150 (.667) units of consumers goods...
...In conversations, many of them 'still contend that if Lenin were alive, things would not have come to their present pass...
...As the author of the letter rightly remarked, 'The History of the Communist Part of the Soviet Union" is hunded down as the Gospel of the younger generation...
...According to Department of Commerce data, the corporate investors' share of the consumers goods available relative to that of the working class is hardly excessive and has declined since 1941...
...Aimed with proper literature, these hundreds of thousands could mean an audience of millions of Russian readers...
...In other words, an increase in wages will not affect the relative purchasing power of the working class as a unit...
...But long before Lenin, universities have been forced to deal with faculty members having an implicit faith in the decisions of an outside power...
...If a ban is laid on some or all dogmas, administrations may not clearly distinguish between commitments to authorities and commitments to causes, and the mental vice of false objectivity will afflict our faculties in an even worse manner than it does today...
...That book has been translated into almost every language and published by- Moscow in millions of copies...
...I happen to teach a course on social reform movements, and for years I have tried to show my students why Communism is a betrayal of the humanitarian spirit that permeated Socialism even in its Marxian form...
...There are, however, other sources oi consumers' purchasing power, the basic one being the wage expenditures of the producers' industries...
...I wonder if the Voice of America beamed it to Russia, so that the Russian people could hear the truth about their own past...
...It would be a potent antidote to 'The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,' that new Gospel on which millions of people in Russia, and other millions in Europe and Asia, are reared...
...If these wages are doubled, we will have total wages of $250 and the average worker will be able to buy, as before, 200 250 (.8) units of consumers' goods, the same percentage as before the 100% rise in wages...
...The decline caused by this increase may have been more or less offset by greater out - put due to the use of more modern equipment, etc...
...Now, since it has become dangerous for a professor to be in favor of Communism, tit least some of my students will probably suspect me of protecting my bread and butter when I criticize the Communists...
...Were Not Alone In Miracle Dep't From CLARENCE STRELT Editor, Freedom & Union If PUBLISHING The New Leader is a weekly miracle, maybe we had better change the name of Freedom & Untoti to The Monthly Miracle...
...THE BOL8HEVIKS have sought, by their Propaganda of the Lie, to warp the minds of the Russian people for thirty years...
...The book on which David Shub worked 27 years should be translated Into Russian, French, Italian, German and other languages...
...IF WE USE the sum of income from wages and salaries and from dividends as the basis for comparing the relative purchasing powers of workers and investors, the workers share of this total was 93% in 1941 and 95% in 1947...
...author of "The Road lo Oblivion," is one of the out standing leaders of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party...
...This danger alone seems to me far more important that any harm that the presence of a Communist professor of English or of economics on the faculty can possibly cause...
...Now, as a DP in Germany, I often meet young people from the USSR...
...If these industries expend $25 as wages, .there would be a total consumers' purchasing power of $125 and the consumers' industries would secure an operating profit of $25...
...Good luck...
...In most cases, such presence will do no harm at all...
...We cannot have producers' goods unless part of the consumers' goods are made available to the workers producing the former...
...Berkeley...
...The question of whether such individuals should be permitted to teach in institutions of higher learning has been threshed out in innumerable controversies over the position of Catholic professors...
...The investors' shares were 7% and 5% respectively, a decrease of almost 30% in their relative purchasing power...
...He played a prominent role in the founding of the Petrograd Soviet and the All-Russian Constituent Assembly...
...The Bolsheviks seek to inculcate and indoctrinate it into the minds of the young...
...3) A change in the average wage will cause a proportionate change in industry's profits...
...on issues of great significance they let the leadership of their party do the thinking for them...
...New York.*N...
...We must furnish them with the weapons...
...2) The sources of profits...
...Your recent improvements in type and layout help considerably toward a more forceful and popular presentation...
...But its appearance in these languages, as my correspondent in Germany correctly indicates, does not solve the main problem, namely, its publication in Russian for the people who need it most...
...Although the role which Catholicism plays in our intellectual, spiritual and social life is of course entirely different in almost every other respect from the role of Communism, the two organizations are alike in this one point: the insistence on implicit faith on the part of the believers...
...If the consumers' industries in producing 100 units of goods expend $100 as wages, they will create $100 consumers' purchasing power...
...Yet today very few educators would like to see their Catholic colleagijes^ ejected from the universities...
...1) The purchasing power of any individual is determined by the amount of consumers' goods that his income will buy...
...From here it would beat a sure path to the USSR through the Soviet zones of Germany and Austria...
...But perish the thought that The New Leader should perish...
...We previously assumed that the consumers' industries paid $100 and the producers' industries $25 as wages...
...True enough, their freedom is limited in some important respects...
...If my teaching was at all effective, it was so because my students had the impression that I believed what I said...
...In this case the average worker is able to buy one unit of consumers' goods, all that he produced...
...At the same tnme, it appears that never was there such a receptive-eu^Hience as those hundreds of thousands of Soviet people of all nationalities -vho, as a result of the war, are now in Germany, Austria, France, the Low Countries, and Italy...
...If there were no other sources of consumers' purchasing power and all the consumers' goods were sold, the average worker would be able to buy 100/125 (.8) units of goods...
Vol. 32 • April 1949 • No. 14
