STALINISM IN 'SOCIALIST' CLOTHING

...Corliss Lamont, former chairman of the National Council of Soviet-American Friendship (officially designated as "subversive") and a regular contributor to Soviet Russia Today, Science and Society and the defunct New Mattes, gets down to cases with praise of the Soviet Union as "a concrete example of what socialism and socialist planning can do...

...MR'8 special verbal gimmick is what it likes to call "independent socialism...

...In other words, the United States is waging a "cold war of aggression against the Soviet Union...

...on the basis of the needs of all the members of the producing community...

...Any Soviet woman has a status far superior to Miss Bergman's...

...A TIP-OFF on the Sweezy-Huberman brand of socialism was provided in a lead editorial by the editors in the first issue of Monthly Review...

...The Soviet Union, conversely, is waging a cold war of defense...

...Tho reason: "Tho Vatican wants to protect tho films about tho Catholic Church, which Rossolllnl has agreed to make...

...America's objectives in the cold war are "control of all Germany" and "control of eastern Europe up to the borders of the Soviet Union...

...to treat [Communists] as conspirators and foreign agents...

...The leaders of American labor, gloomed Leo Huberman in an article, "give only feeble resistance to the economic dictatorship of the monopoly capitalists at home, and actually foster their expansionist and anti-socialist policy abroad...

...There is no reason to suppose...

...Thus, an MR article whitewashes the establishment of Communist police states behind the Iron Curtain under the disingenuous title: 'Transition to Socialism in Eastern Europe...

...danger of economic and social reprisals...

...In an article, "Why Socialism?," Einstein praised the "planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community . . . and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child," with only a per-» functory reference at the end to the possibility of "enslavement of the individual" under certain kinds of "socialism...

...and Paul M. Sweezy, a contributing editor of the pro-Stalinist "Marxian quarterly," Science and Society, and member of the Wallace party platform committee at the 1948 convention...

...Unlike "communism," it is highly effective, when applied to the harsh realities of contemporary Stalinism, in avoiding connotations of concentration camps, rigid party discipline or intellectual regimentation...

...That's the position taken by the) Daily Worker, commenting for the) Communist party on tho year's big romance...

...And, here in the United Stater, we are told, honest men are hounded from their jobs amid cold-war hysteria for no graver crime than preaching "socialism...

...Wa find completely unrealistic lha view of those who call themselves socialists, yet imagine that socialism can be built on an international scale by fighting it when it already exists.'* The substitution of "socialism" for "communism" wherever possible is the key to the Review's approach to politics...

...Such semantic legerdemain is especially handy at times like the present, when the chief task of the Kremlin's American outpost is to hold together the disintegrating remnants of the Progressive party and still keep political innocents from learning by whom and in whose interests the guiding strings are held...

...Then they use these loaded terms with lethal effect in obscuring unpleasant facts, blurring lines of distinction and battering their dupes into intellectual submission...

...F. Hastings Smythe (a contributor to Science and Society and another Waldorf sponsor) announces that "religiously motivated people must now join hands with scientific socialists [read communists] for the replacement of our competitive,' self-seeking economy...

...e a a SPACE IN the Monthly Review is about evenly divided between mellow, academic discussion of "socialism" in theory and party-line apologetics for "Socialism" as practiced in Eastern Europe...

...Tho only kind of a settlement which would really solve the Gorman problem...

...is 'brotherly behavior' made socially constitutional...

...and . . . revived the old hope of a piece-meal socialist penetration of the Austrian state...

...writes Sweesy, "would bo unification of the country coupled with...

...is the real enemy...

...19, "has not boon able to free herself completely from the oppressed position in which capitalism placos woman...

...the kind of structural reforms which have already been instituted in lho Soviet sono...

...On every conceivable issue, MR makes plain that its inspiration is Moscow rather than the democratic Socialist movement of the world...

...ON THE DOMESTIC FRONT, as well as abroad, MR exhibits a nice sense of discrimination in distinguishing "socialists" from Socialists...

...Ultimately, he prophesies wistfully, the influence of "the new socialist countries bordering on A us- ¥'> tria" will break "the unique hold which the right-wing socialists now exercise over the Austrian working class . . . and Austria will enter a new»and brighter period of her checkered history...

...Miss Bergman," writes tho Worker on Fob...

...ho Continues, in what must certainly qualify as the Understatement of tho Year, "that the Russians, would not \ welcome such a settlement...

...He then bestows fulsome praise on Erwin Scharf, Austria's would-be Fierlinger, who has succeeded in leading a tiny fragment of "left-wing Socialists" into close alliance with the Communists...

...How cheerfully it could waive those same sacred rights, however, should they stand in the way of the "socialist" march to power, was evidenced with abundant clearness in another connection: i "Intellectual freedom and personal security guaranteed by law . . . have been virtually unknown to the peoples who are now blazing the trail to socialism...

...As for Roberto Rossolllnl, the Worker claims, "no onus was placed" on him...

...We've all had the experience at some time or other," one Huberman piece starts out in typically cozy fashion, "of walking through a department store and being amazed at the many different articles we see there...

...The editors, thus buttressed by authority, pontificated: "This verdict will help the American ruling class to fasten on [the people] a regime of thought-control, fear, and regimentation...

...One article refers to "the stubborn, heroic struggle of the Greek guerillas [sic] against the fascist government in Athens...

...cial organization...

...When they do, it is for purposes of invidious comparison with the "real socialists" in Eastern Europe...

...Whereupon this victim of the Attlee terror-regime proceeds to lament in his article that "the Labor Parly . . . would rather maintain parliamentary democracy than establish socialism if it were driven to make a choice...

...But] capitalism Is surely doomed, and . . . the only hope of mankind lies in completing the journey to socialism with maximum speed and minimum violence...

...A first-rate exemplar of the Communist art of ideological double-talk is the Monthly Review, a new Stalinoid periodical which has been peddling its wares at 35 cents a throw since last May...

...Thus the Monthly Review's loud protestations when it fancied it saw an infringement of the civil rights of a group of its favorite "socialists...

...Henry Pratt Fairchild (a contributor to Soviet Russia Today and Waldorf sponsor), in an article in MR's "Why I Believe in Socialism" series, unburdens himself of a few platitudes like "cooperation is a better basic principle for organizing social life than . competition," and then waxes rhapsodic on his "recent two-months visit to the countries of eastern Europe, where socialism is experiencing a thrilling practical demonstration...

...No one can say whether they will survive the period of tension and strife through which we are now passing, or whether they will have to be rediscovered and recaptured in a mora rational world of the future...

...For a hatchet job on the British Labor Government, MR enlists the services of "a British socialist," whose name, the editors announce with high drama, must be withheld because of "the...

...CAPITALISM and the Vatican are at the) root of the Ingrid Bergman affair...

...For the first number, the editors were fortunate enough to get a testimonal by Albert Einstein—whose political thinking often betrays something less than mathematical precision (he was a sponsor of the WaldorfAstoria "cultural" orgy last March)— to the "important public service" rendered by MR in encouraging "free and unhindered discussion" of "socialism...

...It] is absurd...

...President Truman's Point Four program, one learns, is "a program of imperialism which would have made Cecil Rhodes turn green with envy...

...Taking another tack, and without voicing even these faint misgivings, the Rev...

...Smythe...

...A scholarly disquisition on "Recent Trends in American Capitalism" by Editor Sweezy manages to get in a passing swipe at "the Marshall Plan and other so-called 'aid' programs which are primarily motivated by strategic and imperialist considerations...

...in the advanced countries, they are seriously jeopardized by the fierce onslaughts of reaction and counter-revolution...

...a CHARACTERISTIC of the "independent socialist" Monthly Review is the striking fact that genuine democratic upper-case Socialists, as distinct from Stalinists in lower-case "socialist" clothing, rarely receive mention in its pages...

...The Bolshevik Revolution, it appears, launched Russia "on the path to socialism...

...it is based on a rational and humane theory of nature and society...

...Editor-publishers of this "independent socialist" magazine are two veteran partyliners — Leo Huberman, former labor editor of PM and educalional director of the National Maritime Union until given the boot in Joe Curran's Red purge...

...The verdict in the Communist trial is a clear warning signal...

...It provides a convenient catch-all term with which Karl , Marx, Eugene V. Debs and the Brook Farm experimenters can all be brought into a cozy, comradely relationship...

...Similarly, MR greeted the Communist trial convictions in the standard manner of the Stalinist press, trotting out the hoary old Lincoln quotation on the right of the "people" to "rise up and shake off the existing government...

...When the CIO inaugurated the long-delayed Communist housecleaning at its Cleveland convention recently, the editors joined the eleven Moscow-run unions in shedding bitter tears over Philip Murray's assault on "the principle of autonomy, [which] . . . has always been sacred in the American trade union movement...

...Spelled with a lower-case S, "socialism" is a nice, inoffensive word, agreeably suggestive, qf a rather abstract, humanitarian philosophy of soLouls Jay Herman is a frequent contributor to The New Lender and other periodicals...

...Not communism but a slow, creeping form of fascism...

...All her wealth was not onough to shield her from tho official capitalist Ideology of malo superiority...

...if The purpose of the Atlantic Pact, aver the editors, is to lay "the groundwork for a grandiose military coalition to wage an eventual anti-Soviet war...

...Socialism," they wrote, "became a reality with the introduction of the first Five Year Plan in Soviet Russia in 1929...

...A series of articles by Editor Huberman introduces the reader to "fundamental principles of socialism" like surplus value and the class struggle— all presented in a simple, unpretentious style with lots of homely examples and no big words...

...And no such thing could hay* occurred in the Soviet Union, the People's Democracies or China...

...The controversy over the Communists' right to teach evoked an indignant comment: "Communism is a world-wide movement with literally hundreds of millions of followers...

...In like manner, "an Austrian socialist" chides the Austrian Socialist party for having "condemned the use of force as anti-democratic conduct...

...Socialism {read commuism]," says the Rev...

...The comrades' technique is to charge certain key words in their polemical vocabulary — like "fascist," "reactionary," "progressive," "democratic," "peaceloving" — with a high emotional content of good or evil, until the words themselves take on attributes independent of their actual meanings...