German Socialists
German Socialists ft Movement in Germany Comes i a Courageous and Thought-leading Party Members. ,9pon$lbl« for the ,y.» Thil inver-u in the minds ifg a desire for for liberation but fascism...
...We revolutionary Socialists," the group says, "know that the resumption of the Socialist struggle for emancipation in'the form of a mass movement is impossible without the restoration of democracy...
...The parties that have failed "have failed because they have not been Marxist enough," and by Marxism they do not rnea, the body of ideas left by Marx and Engels, but Marxian philosophy under "constant revision in the light of changing historical and economic conditions...
...Of 1,000 votes cast by the municipal employees of the street cleaning department, 700 were declared void...
...Tide of Protest Is Rising in Hitleria BERLIN.—Here are a few more results of the workers' council elections, recently held under the Nazi labor code...
...Not since the underground days of the American Communist movement has the CP, been as isolated from the great mass of the American workers, from the powerful mass organization of lal>or, from the trade union movement as it is today...
...The group contends that the huge difficulties the Communists face in economic planning in Russia also grow out of their adherence to the old Marxian "piety" and that the "Marxist experiment in the Soviet Union is ending in hunger and chaos...
...fat meehan-"OBitant com-1 "eh other to toaobiles, rails, ¦« «ocks and •id all other •nder-developed them along %. This race 9 in.polite or M called trade *t> It is really 1 *ootingi...
...He also claims to have found a great quantity of hidden arms, owned by the Social Democrats...
...The Communists base their policy of splitting the working class upon this old view...
...J tafld strong «hores-A *2*m with nation** products out of competition with home industry...
...The group then examines the views of Marx and Engels regarding the Socialist revolution and conclude that both were mistaken on one important point...
...The following figures are especially significant since they show for the first time the actual spirit of the workers in a number of internationally known industrial plants in and near Berlin...
...Ulmanis, a former instructor In an American college, was Premier seven times...
...Our industrial kings force Congress to enact high tariff laws to protect our "infant" industry...
...World capitalism, as represented in Germany by Naziism, in Italy by fascism, in Austria by the rulers of the Heimwehr, in Japan by imperialism and a war-mad manufacturing class, in England, France and America by international bankers and a great -industrial autocracy—is faced against a stone wall of PLENTY...
...The mistake of the earlier view of the Socialist revolution lies in a number of important facts...
...The whole of bourgeois society, including the proletariat, was ranged against absolutism and dragged with it a new economic structure that was functioning, although hampered, even within the old order...
...No group of rulers in any of these nations will give up their racket, their graft, their right to rob the workers...
...For years he...
...It might be well for our industrial kings to remember those words: "He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword...
...Only then will the essential preliminary con-ijitions for the construction of Socialism exist...
...Their views had emerged out of their experiences and study of the revolutions that occurred when capitalism was ascending, but these views are inadequate in a period of declining capitalism...
...Its aim la the concentration of power in the hands of a party dictatorship ever ready to crush conspiracy and counter-revolution...
...That sentence is a striking example of Bolshevik theory...
...The authors answer: "In the case of a Socialist revolution, all the circumstances are completely different, almost the exact opposite...
...If they can't sell it there, the manufacturer is compelled to shut down his factory...
...Manufacturers in all other countries are in the same predicament —hence the intense nationalistic rivalry to undercut #and undersell the rest of the nations in the world's market...
...But even the old and known facts deserve the attention of students of the labor movement for the light they shed on the true character of the Comintern aiHivitics...
...The old view had its justification in the bourgeois revolutions, but it is harmful and leads to reaction today...
...There is no way out for the exploiters except a surrender of their special privileges...
...And of him Jay Lovestone has the following sentence: "I have in mind specifically the cast' of Dr...
...Thus, while bourgeois revolution represents only a blind natural process, proletarian revolution is the conscious shutting of history towards a clearly recognized aim...
...The aim of the group is not a restoration of the Weimar Republic but establishment of "the democracy of the workers...
...Of these, 800 votes, apparently cast for the old free trade unions, were declared void...
...Raving made this its first task, the new regime must take over large-scale enterprises, postal services, railways and air transport, and key sections of the power, heavy and armament industries, large landed estates, banks, mu-nicipal services, etc...
...The new bourgeois order was in the ascendant and aided by all the progressive forces of I the period...
...We know, therefore, that our immediate political objective is the overthrow of the fascist state and its replacement by a democratic regime with the fullest possible rights for the masses...
...Germany was sweeping British trade from the seven seas—and the British manufacturing class would not stand for it...
...Considering the enormously strengthened coercive powers of the modern state compared with such powers in the mid-ninteenth century, what resources are available to the working class to prevent a reactionary coup d'etatf That is on the agenda of discussion, but no program has offered a satisfactory answer to it...
...Hence, war...
...It was the bourgeois order with these groups and classes attached to it that combined to overthrow the old absolutist states...
...Max Goldfarb, and others as the internationally prominent head of the Soviet military academy, "General" Petrovsky...
...TheWorkers Abroad An International Review of the Socialist and Labor Movement of the World By Mark Khinoy Comintern Drops Another Star li/IV sincere thanks to Jay Lovestone, former leader of "* the Communist Party of the United States...
...THAT'S WHERE WE ARE NOW, and ALL OF THE REST OF THE NATIONS are in the same economic-box and are forced to spend millions in relief or doles to keep the unemployed from starving to death...
...The system—due to inability to sell the surplus wealth—is unable to keep its workers employed...
...The Siemens-Schuckert -factories, which Hitler used as the proletarian platform for his provocative announcement of Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations, report 2,000 votes cast out of a total of 5,000 entitled to vote...
...At the famous Kir.dl Brewery, Neukoelln, half of all 700 votes cast were declared void...
...I Moreover, all the bourgeois ideas OurWay to Heaven » not underst a nil "drum, we want *planation...
...For the Communist leaders of the Soviet Union knew all the time about Goldfarb's anti-Bolshevist activities during the ¦Jirst period of the revolution...
...And the war stories now appearing on the front pages of the newspapers are the first heralds of its doom...
...that served as powerful explosives in destroying absolutism now serve to support capitalism even in its decay...
...Pages are devoted to this theme which cannot be summarized here...
...Every official biography of Bennet-Goldfarb contained this fact...
...Although, the excuse is quite a clumsy one...
...further to the right by withdrawing healthy element-: from it, playdng a sterile sectarian role as harmful as that of the Communists...
...There are other consequences of this view drawn by the underground group...
...The answer is that Marxism has not failed, that "the Socialism that is to come will be nothing if not Marxism...
...The lb" is vivid be-in the "personal «tors of large nits," and this i illusion "of a trough almighty fault and are ile for the.se illusions of the masses...
...but it is not made clear how the non-proletarian lower sections of the population are to be won to support the party dictatorship...
...Among the new facts is one deserving special attention...
...It has to do with the expulsion from the Communist International of a great and shining star, "Comrade Bennet," whom many of our readers may remember as Dr...
...Later, after the elimination of Trotzky and Zinovjev, he wag transferred to the Comintern, where he soon became one of the leading members of the inner circle of the Moscow Communist International...
...Thia immediate partial objective is possible only under "the tale domination of the Socialist Party...
...Within the womb of capitalist society no new Socialist order of society, which ha:i only to cast off the' former political superstructure foreign to its nature, can grow up to a position of dominance...
...This cock-eyed system of starving in the midst of plenty can't or won't go on much longer...
...The group is equally critical of the old Social Democratic party and the "splinter" parties, contending that the party since 1900 had avowed "unanimous interest" in defense of the "fatherland," and thut August, 1914, was not the beginning of a false course but "merely the occasion for its manifestation1...
...Not that Marx and Engels believed that the proletariat would automatically develop as a revolutionary force, but that its will to revolution would progressively develop under the conditions imposed byi the class struggle...
...Goldfarb, recently expelled from the Comintern becuuse of his military counter-revoliitinnai // activities against the Bolsheviks during the civil wur days...
...Lozovtky and American Unions I OVESTONE'S letter also contains an attempt to escape responsibility for the deliberate weakening of American lalxtr unions and their splittering by the Communist Party at the time when he, Jay Lovestone, was the uncontested 1k»ss of the CP...
...Not all of them are new...
...Radio factory, Neukoelln, gives 150 valid Nazi votes out of a total of 400 votes cast...
...9pon$lbl« for the ,y.» Thil inver-u in the minds ifg a desire for for liberation but fascism [jdictions in eco-[ abolishes them »1 sphere...
...was known as a progressive leader of the then radical farmers of Latvia...
...There certainly were other reasons why Goldfarb was unseated and expelled...
...Ac-!• Department of to nse the pri...
...First Direct News from Latvia A BOUT 100 Socialists were arrested in Riga, Lihau, *¦ Mitau and Dvinsk as a result of the peasant (fascist) coup d'etat of May 10...
...He shifts the blame on Moscow, on I/ozovsky, president of the "Red Trade Union Inter* natipnal...
...400 votes cast for the Communist trade union were also declared void...
...The "splinter parties" simply served to shift the S.D.P...
...Lenin and the Bolsheviks cling to the old view, which is the basis of their policy of splitting the working class...
...In other words, "Bourgeois revolution is, in the last analysis, a natural, social, historically-determined process, The proletarian revolution, on the other hand, is an historical alternative., the decision with regard to which is dependent in the last resort upon the historical creative power of the advanced sections of society, the historically conscious minds of the working class...
...Informing and provocative as | this booklet is, it does not deal with a problem that concerns Socialists in countries where freed6m of action continues...
...In the struggle for this aim the Socialists will cooperate with all anti-fascist groups but will also) "preserve their own theoretical political attitude in all alliances and compromises, all negotiations and cooperation," and will "pursue their ultimate goal tenaciously and un-deviatingly in whatever compromises may become necessary...
...This silly economic travesty of PLENTY is be?oming the paramount problem in all nations...
...His letter to Harry Pollitt, present leader of the same party in (iieat Britain, in the last issue of Workers' Age, contains a number of illuminating points on the inside workings of the Communist movement...
...In this singular statement only one point, is new and important—the fact that Lipetz-Goldfarb-Petrovsky-Bennet is expelled from the Communist International...
...Still others may remember him as the I>ord Mayor of Berditchew in South Russia, where he figured in 1917 as Dr...
...He writes: "Certainly, you need not be reminded of the ride played by Lozovsky in inspiring, organizing and financing the faction fight against our Central Committee, because we had refused for years to lend the slightest (I) support to Am repeated proposals for the splitting and dent ruction of the trade unions...
...But Marx and Engels did not take certain factors into account...
...We turned to the Communist edition of the Marx and Engels articles on "Revolution and Counter-Revolution" in Germany and observed in the Communist preface that if events in 1848 had gone as Marx and Engels desired them, "there would be no fascist dictatorship in Germany today, nor would ikpre have been an imperialist war of 1914-18...
...Also Dr...
...Now this same Ulmanis helped his Peasant Party to imitate the farmers ofLlthuania and Estonia, who a few weeks ago, under the pretext of escaping a Nazi dictatorship, proclaimed an autocrocy of it...
...Only 500 votes, or 10 per cent of all workers, were cast for the Nazi candidates...
...The leader of the "revolution," Ulmanls, "explains" the mass arrests and dissolution of the party and its press by the necessity of thwarting n Socialist attempt to call a general strike and lead an armed uprising as in Austria...
...Mosjt of the 21 Social-Democratic deputies were among those arrested...
...Metal Factories, Schoene-weide, report only 1,000 valid votes out of 2,000 cast...
...Thatis what had happened to England before 1914...
...Considered in connection with what is said above regarding the effect of the crisis upon democracy and its reaction upon the minds of the lower sections of the population, this new concept is of importance and will be widely discussed among Socialists...
...But the newspaper headlines make it clear that we are traveling headlong down the rood to destruction...
...We have tried to summarize this view which is presented more in detail in the book...
...Are these factors par-alled today...
...National Chairman Menders, and lender of the sport and youth organization, Bruno Kalnin...
...Li pet z. Prior to the March Revolution, from 1914 to 1917, Max Goldfarb was very active and popular In the labor and Socialist movement of New York...
...Then with the home market sewed up, they rush the surplus to foreign shores—there to sell it for half what you at home pay...
...Kalnin, Socialist speaker of the Seim...
...Later he played the same role in Great Britain...
...The authors call this view "proletarian spontaneity...
...The group does not believe that German fascism will soon be overthrown but that this will require years of sacrifice...
...Comrades, I am sure, will also read with deep interest the following lines in the Lovestone letter: "Of the 15,000 members In the American party at the time of our Sixth, National Convention (1920), at least l.'t.OOO have gonii have left our party, most of them disgusted and demoralized by the impermissablc factionalism and stifling bureaucratism, by the paralyzing sectarianism of tfie Comintern leadership and its blotters in the CP, official* dom...
...As such he secretly returned to the United States, where, under the assumed name of Bennet, he was the chief representative of the Moscow International and actual head of its American section...
...In the years 1918-1925 Goldfarb, under the name of Petrovsky, made a brilliant military career in the U.S.S.R...
...Jget 24 cents forth they pro-*e between the Wt of the ma-nterest, is the >f the industry ells the product, the worker, who osumer, can buy of his wages— of what he has ¦4 product must •okets of the •»here the ma-ti'w the people fn...
...It seems a crime against humanity that in order to get rid of this system of exploitation for the benefit ,of the few we must face another world-wide conflagration that will consume you, your son, your sister's son and your neighbor's son...
...So there is nothing ahead—except a gigantic tragedy, s° vast that it will mean the complete destruction of present capitalist society—and bring death and terror into every home...
...As a rule, the proletariat served as the vanguard in such revolutions, and this fact led to the belief that the workers, because of their class position, "would be driven into clearer and clearer revolutionary modes of thought and action...
...A structure of capitalist society developed in the old feudal or absolutist states, bringing with it new classes — capitalists, merchants, workers, etc...
...To be sure, a Socialist regime would be stupid not to use its power in such a way, especially after what has happened in Germany...
Vol. 17 • June 1934 • No. 67
