LENIN AND A GROUP OF COMRADESLenin is seen above with a group of delegates to the IXth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (1920).

Sernashkc (Commissar of Public Health); Schmidt (Commissar of Labor); Zorin (the famous propagandist). Middle row, in the center, Lenin; to the left, Stalin; to theright, Kalinin. Top row, above Stalin, Tomski; above Lenin, Joffe (the Soviet diplomat); above Kalinin, Riazano - -

Among the comrades are: Lower row, left to right:lie row, in the center, Lenin; to(the famous Marxian scholar).

148THE W O R K E R S M C) N T H L Y

of food. Can there be anything more hypocriticalthan such accusations from people who greeted andsupported the imperialistic war and made commoncause with Kerensky when he continued the war?Is not this imperialistic war the cause of all ourmisfortune? The revolution that was born by thewar must necessarily go on through the terribledifficulties and sufferings that war created, throughthis heritage of destruction and reactionary massmurder. To accuse us of "destruction" of indus-tries and "terror" is hypocrisy or clumsy pedantry,and shows an incapability of understanding themost elemental fundamentals of the raging dy-namic farce of the class struggle called revolution.

In words ouraccusers "recog-nize" this kind ofclass struggle, indeeds they revertagain and againt o t h e middle-class Utopia of"class-harmony"and the mutual"inter de pen d-ence" of classesupon o n e an-other. In realitythe class strug-gle in revolution-ary times has al-ways inevitablytaken on theform of civil war,and civil war isu n t h i n k ablewithout t e r r o rand limitations ofthe form of de-mocracy in theinterests of thewar. One mustbe a sickly senti-mentalist not tobe able to see, tounderstand andappreciate thisnecessity. Onlythe Chekov typeof the lifeless"Man in the Box"can denounce therevolution f o rthis reason in-stead of throw-ing himself intothe fight with thewhole vehemenceand decision ofhis soul at a mo-ment when his-t o r y demandsthat the highestLENIN AND STALIN.

problems of humanity be solved by struggle andwar.

The best representatives of the American pro-letariat—those representatives wrho have repeated-ly given expression of their full solidarity with us,the Bolsheviki—are the expression of this revolu-tionary tradition in the life of the American people.This tradition originated in the war of liberationagainst the English in the Eighteenth and the civilwar in the Nineteenth Century. Industry and com-merce in 1870 were in a much worse position thanin 1860. But where can you find an American sopedantic, so absolutely idiotic as to deny the revolu-tionary and progressive significance of the Ameri-

can civil war of1860-1865?

The represent-atives o f thebourgeoisie un-derstand v e r yw e 11 that theoverthrow o fslavery was wellworth the threeyears of civilwar, the depthof destruction,devastation andterror that werei t s accompani-ment. But thesesame gentlemenand the reformsocialists whoh a v e allowedthemselves to bec o w e d by thebourgeoisie andtremble at thethought of a rev-olution, cannot,nay, will not, seethe necessity andrighteousness ofa civil war inRussia, though itis facing a fargreater task, thework of abolish -i n g capitalistwage-slavery andoverthrowing therule of the bour-geoisie.

The Americanworking -classwill n o t followthe lead of itsbourgeoisie. 11will go with usagainst the bour-geoisie. T h ewhole history of

K 10 H H I * A R V , 1 !) 2 (\;

but it is to be found behind the fine-sounding phrases of the president'smessage to congress.

The Farmer.For the farmer, the capitalist pro-

gram contains one proposal—that is,that he shall continue to submit tothe unbearable conditions whichhave existed in the agricultural fieldfor some years back. Th president'smessage indicates that the capital-ists are aware of the danger for themwhich exists in the agricultural situ-ation of this country, but; are unwill-ing to make any sacrifices to meetit, "Agriculture is a very complexindustry," boasts the president in themessage, but all that the presidenthas to offer to solve the complexproblems of this industry are fairwords.

The fundamental problems of agri-culture, that is the backwardness,mechanically and technically, of the agriculturalproduction as compared with the highly developedmachine production in other fields does not comewithin the scope of the capitalists' program for theUnited States. Nor does the program even go so faras willingness to make some sacrifices in the ex-ploitation of the farmer thru the banks, railroads,grain elevators, and implement production corpor-ations.

The capitalist program for the farmer is tocontinue to take from him for the benefit of thecapitalists all that he wdll give up without actuallyrevolting.

This analysis of the capitalist program as pres-ented by President Coolidge shows how completely

LOCARNO.

the American government is the agency for thecapitalist class of the United States. It is the bestevidence that government under the capitalist sys-tem exists in order to exert the state power in sup-port of the ruling economic class and that "govern-ment for the people" is an illusion fostered by Am-erican capitalism to hide the real rule of the cap-italists.

What the president has presented to congressis a program for the strengthening of the Americancapitalist class in the struggle against other na-tional groups of capitalists and also for thestrengthening of the American capitalist class inthe struggle against the workers and farmerswhom this class exploits.

The Song of the Daily BreadTranslated from the German of Bruno Schonlank

by A. Ainsworth.

This is the song of daily bread,Those who bake—-scarcely fed,Those who weave—without dress,Those wrho build—homeless.

This is the song of a past generation,For rulers, land—a servile nation.The hewers of coal—without hearth,The makers of wealth—without worth.

This is the song of hellish fame,For the rich, bread—for the poor, shame.For the poor, night and bitter stress,For wealth, light and gluttoness mess.

This is the song when the fury breaks,When past disgrace leaves now no aches.This is the song when none is spared,For action! Starvelings! be prepared!

THE WORKERS MONTHLYMAX BEDACHT, Editor.

Official OrganThe Workers Communist

Party

Published byThe Daily Worker Society

1113 W. Washington Blvd.Chicago, III.

25 Cents a Copy$2.00 a Year—$1.25 Six Months

Business Manager,Moritz J. Loeb

161

another link of the eapitlaisi chain had to break.That the chain broke at its weakest link wassurprising to—those who has not learned the les-sons of Marxian analysis.

The war had proceeded only six months whenthe inadequacy of tsarist Russia to conduct thestruggle began to be apparent. The inadequacyof Russia's factory system to keep 12,000,000 sol-diers supplied with the modern equipment of warwas shown by many things, as, for instance, thesending of hundreds of thousands of soldiers to thefront unarmed, where they were expected to drillwith sticks of wood until enough of the armed sol-diers were killed off to enable them to arm them-selves with the dead comrades' weapons. Thebureaucratic government and military machinerywas notoriously corrupt—with army officers ped-dling the plans of battle in advance to the Germanstaff. Defeat piled upon defeat. Morale sank tothe lowest ebb.

The first series of defeats of the army causedthe Russian bourgeoisie to make frantic efforts topatch up the deficiencies. The millionaire indus-trialist Ryabushinsky spoke for his class in raisingthe slogan "Every wrorkshop, every factory must beused to break the enemy's force!" Rapidly themobilization of all class elements to wrin the wrarwas attempted. It could not be successfully ac-complished. On the one hand the landlord-bureau-cracy was not of the stuff that was needed. Thecentral government did not have the direct repre-sentative relation to the capitalist system necessaryfor its function as the head of a modern capitalist-imperialist war. Autocratic power in the hands ofa weak-witted tsar, with his court the scene, notof the quickly executed commands of captains ofindustry (as was, for instance, the American whitehouse), nor a place for the automatic rubber-stamp-ing by a nominal monarch of the plans of an astutebourgeoisie (as wras the "royal" institution of GreatBritain). In the palace of the tsar, where supremeauthority was placed, the influence of a hystericalw^oman of the lowest degeneracy—her imperialmajesty, the tsarina—could outweigh the shrewdestadvice of an industrial king; the influence of acrazy priest turned into dust the slogans for themobilization of industry for the production of riflesand munitions.

The Russian Proletariat and Its Party.

The lack of a long-established control of so-ciety by the capitalist class meant the lack of thatsocial machinery for the control of the labor move-ment by the bourgeoisie, relatively speaking. Notthat the Russian bourgeoisie did not have its agentsamong the working class. Plekhanov and otherex-Marxian leaders, representing the corruption ofMarxian theory and practice, did their best to holdthe working class under the control of the bour-geoisie. But the corruption of the working classby the bourgeoisie did not have the deep social rootssuch as it has in this country as the result of

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Lenin, Leader of the Workers, Peasants andOppressed Colonial Peoples!

long decades of bourgeois rule, of the stamping ofa wrhole society with bourgeois ideology, and of a"labor aristocracy" of the highest skilled workersfirmly implanted as the first rank of the labor move-ment and enjoying a relatively high standard ofliving. The jealously guarded rule of the landlordsand nobles had given the capitalist class an oppor-tunity to establish this condition only to a compara-tively slight degree.

On the contrary, Russia had a very small, butat the same time ideologically the most highly de-veloped revolutionary working class. The Russianworkers had been disillusioned and hardened by theexperience of 1905. Russia wras but poorly de-veloped industrially-—it is true—but much of theexisting industry was concentrated in enormousestablishments under the stimulation of foreigncapital. This concentration of large groups of in-dustrial \vorkers tended to balance against the factof general lack of modern capitalist developmentthroughout Russia as a whole.

Russia had been presented by history with theconditions for the building of the best revolutionaryworking class party in the world, and under theleadership of Lenin such a party—the BolshevikParty—had been hammered together in twentyyears of struggle against tsarism and opportunism.

And this revolutionary party of the workers,this Bolshevik Party, was firmly implanted in the

168\ () R K E R S

altogether. With the political death of the intel-lectual youth began the political life of the prole-tarian youth,

"The revolutionary student with whom Lenmhad dealt in the first stages of the revolutionarymovement represented to him an offspring of a for-eign class, a temporary ally it is true, but whosetime was up. The proletarian youth-—this was thereai MAKER OF HISTORY, a fellow-worker in theTea! history of mankind'/' (Kamenev).

Lenin and the Proletarian Youth.

Lenin's attitude to the proletarian youth as afactor in the revolutionary movement is worthy ofthe closest study of every revolutionist, young andold. It was to the proletarian youth that Leninlooked to take up the struggle against the dee])corruption of Marxism and the open degenerationof the European social-democracy thru the poisonof opportunism. It was to the youth that Leninlooked to smash the rotten social reformism andraise aloft the banner of revolutionary Marxism.

The Role of the Proletarian Youth as the Fightersfor the Line of Marxism.

Lenin did not place such an estimation on theproletarian youth out of sentiment or for love ofthe youth. This was the precise opposite of Lenin'sprocedure. For Lenin had analyzed and exposedthe sources of the growing opportunist plague inthe working class movement and had seen that th^youth was largely untouched by it. Opportunismand social reformism he discovered as the by-prod-uct of imperialism—as the reflex in the workingclass movement of the corruption of sections of theworking class-—the "aristocracy of labor"—thru asmall share of the super-profits of imperialist fi-nance-capital But the unskilled proletarian youthforms no part of the aristocracy of labor, the youthis least of all affected by imperialist corruption.Reformism, therefore, cannot in the very nature ofthings find lodgement in the proletarian youth.Nor must we forget in this connection that thevoteless youth is not so easy a prey to the parlia-mentary illusions as the adult workers.

Secondly, it is the youth that in every countryof the world forms the most bitterly exploited, themost oppressed section of the toiling masses. It isthe youth, too, it must not be forgotten in the thirdplace, that bears the brunt of capitalist militarism,that is the first and most severe sufferer in the im-perialist maneuvers of modern finance-capital. Normust, finally, the psychologic1 peculiarities of theyouth be lost from sight. The rousing spirit andflaming enthusiasm of youth as yet uncrushed bythe brutalities of capitalism more than once drewLenin's sincere admiration.

Lenin saw all this and based his calculationsthereon. Upon the proletarian youth he looked asone of the main factors in the struggle for the lineof orthodox Marxism against the reformists. "Upon

LENIN SPEAKS!

the socialist youth organizations," Lenin wrote inI'M6, "falls the gigantic and grateful, but thereforedifficult task of struggling for revolutionary inter-nationalism, for true socialism, and against thedominant opportunism that has gone over to theside of the imperialist bourgeoisie." (Der Sozial-d^mo-krat. No. 2, Dec. 2, 1926),

Lenin and the Mistakes of the Youth.

Of course, the passionate struggle of the pro-letarian youth for the line of true Marxism did notpi-event its youth and inexperience from leading itinto many errors, some quite serious. The attitudeof Lenin to these errors—Lenin, the orthodox Marx-ist, Lenin the "dogmatist," Lenin, the uncompro-mising theoretician—speaks volumes. Did Lenin,who went to what many considered almost "impos-sible extremes" in attacking the slightest deviationfrom the strict line of Marxism—did Lenin have anybitterness or even "strictness" for the gross errorsof the youth? Let us see! Here he is criticizingsome of the more serious errors in the first fewrissues of the "Jugend-Internationale" the organ ofthe Socialist Youth International that had refused

The Great Importance of the i. L. G. W. U.Convention.

Of the two conventions that of the I. L. G.\V. U. was by far the most important for severalreason?:

1. Size of the Union.

First, because of the size of the inroii -it is<^xc<.M-d( cl in this respect, according to A. F. of L.fijiur^s f'nr H4*.'-1, ob-y bv the Ui-iied }^bie \V-r\--vof America, the unions of Carpenters, Painters,Stroll Railwayman, Railway Carmen and Kic ctricalWorkers. It paid per capita to the A. F. of L. inthai yt ar for 91,000 members. The figures for theEKvlrical Workers and Railway Carmen arc4 paddedfor ccuvention purposes so that tne I. L. G. W. C.evin vvith the decrease in membership caused bythe Sigman policy, is actually one of the five largestunion i; in the A. F. of L.

The Fur Workers have approximately 10,000members.

2. Strength of the Left Wing.

Second, because of the numerical strength ofthe left wing and its defeat of the Sigman machinein the pre-convention struggle in New York—thelargest ('enter of the ladies' garment industry. In

ihe convent ion the left cast 110 votes reuresentingtwo-thirds of the membership against 154 for themachine.

3. Character of the I. L. G, W. LL Bureaucracy.

Third, because of the social-democratic char-;icu»r of the I. L. G. W. T. bureaucracy, its previ-ous training in the class struggle school enablingit to fight and maneuver far more skilfully againsttin* left wing than the cruder bureaucrats of theother A. F. of L. unions,

Sigmaivs Maneuvers in the Gitlow Case,

As an instance of this let us take the action ofthe Sigman bureaucracy in the case of BenjaminGit low.

On the first clay of the convention a machinedelegate moved that a protest against the imprison-ment of Gitlow be sent to the authorities. The mo-tion was carried unanimously. Then the "impart-;al. chairman" of the governor's commission forregulating wages and working conditions in theladies' garment industry in New York proceeded toAlbany, where he conferred with Governor Smith.By long distance telephone he informed PresidentSigman that Gitlow's pardon had been obtained.

Sigman, who hates Gitlow and the Communist

LENIN AT WORK.

180T H E W O R K E R S 1\ O N T H L V

2. The boll weevil plague in the cotton plant-ations.

3. The general agrarian crisis which forcedthe tenants in the South, as well as in the northernstates, to look for work in the cities.

4. The deepgoing dissatisfaction among theNegroes in the South, especially after the worldwar.

5. The intense development of industry in thenorthern states, as a consequence of the world war,coupled with the immigration ban, as a result ofwhich the demand for unskilled labor power grewtremendously.

1. Living and Working Conditions of theSouthern Negroes.

Most of the labor power in cotton productionin the South has been Negro. In the period from1880-1920, the percentage of plantation owners inthe cotton belt sank from 62% to 49.8%. Seventyto ninety per cent of the cultivated land in the cot-ton districts of Georgia, South Carolina and Mis-sissippi are rented by Negro tenants. In Mississippi60% of all cotton farms are worked by Negroes,of whom 85% are tenants.

The tenants have not the slightest prospect ofever acquiring the possession of the land on whichthey work—a prospect that is still in the realms ofpossibility for the white farmer in the northeasternstates, altho even here such prospects are now un-der ever growing difficuties. For the Negroes, the

LYWA GieSOH.

SHARE-CROPPERS

status of tenant is unchangeable. Leading a miser-able existence, the Negro tenant is in the rarestcases able to provide his children with an element-ary education. Thus, in 1923 in the state of Geor-gia, the appropriations for the schools for Negroeswho at that time composed 45% of the populationreached the total of $15,000 as opposed to the ap-propriation of $735,000 for the whites. We mustadd to this the usurious credit system which stillmore diminishes the scanty earnings of the tenant.The prices of the commodities bought by Negrotenants on credit are on the average seventy per-cent higher but in Texas it is 81% and in Arkansas

As a rule, the Negro tenant has a claim to onlya half of the product of the labor of his relativesor others whose help he can obtain. Of this, theowners are legally empowered to deduct for sup-posed allowances and services by the land baronsfor means of life, clothing, medical help, etc. Manylandowners are at the same time also merchants.Since written agreements are entirely unusual, theNegro is thus further uniformly swindled in themost shameless way.

The Negro masses are exploited so intenselythat they are often more miserable than underchattel slavery. The status of the Negroes, theirworking conditions, and their sufferings, are illus-trated in the following quotation from a report ofthe National Association of Manufacturers, of Oc-tober 7, 1920: "The bad economic exploitation inthese cases indicates a slavery many times worsethan the former real slavery. Thousands of Negroeswho have been working all their lives uninterrupt-edly are not able to show the value of ten dollars,and are not able to buy the most necessary cloth-ing at the close of the season. They live in themost wretched condition . . . and are lucky to gethold of a worn out pair of boots or some old cloth-ing ..."

Judge S. O. Bratton who w^as able to obtainin Little Rock, Arkansas, an accurate picture ofthe relations between the whites and the blacks,writes as follows: "The conditions today are worsethan before the American Civil War . . . The sys-tem of exploitation is carried to such a point thatmost Negroes can hardly keep themselves alive up-on their earnings. The plantation owners maintainso-called 'commission businesses' in which theprices of commodities are fixed at the order of theplantation inspectors. The Negroes are preventedin every possible way from keeping an account ofthe wares taken by them."

Another big source of misery is to be found inthe "lynch law" and the terror of the Ku KluxKlan. In the January 1924 issue of the NorthAmerican Review^ we have an illuminating reportof Howard Snyder who spent many years in theplantation districts of Mississippi. Mr. Snyder says:". . . If we add the cruel lynch law which is respons-

F E B R U A R Y . 1 9 2 « 181

ible for the murder of many Negroes burned alive,of whom WQ never hear in our great newspapers,and if we keep in mind that the Negroes workingon the plantations are helpless and defenselessbeings who are thrown into panic at the very men-tion of the Ku Klux Klan, then we will be able tounderstand the other causes of the mass migration.Nowhere in the world is there among the civilizedpeoples a human being so cruelly persecuted as theNegro in the South. Almost every day we readthat some Negro was baited to death with dogs orwrhipped to death, or burned alive amidst the howlsof huge crowds. How they could ever cherish thehope in the South that these people would sufferall this without protest wrhen twenty dollars, theprice of a railway ticket, can be sufficient to freethem from this hell, passes my understanding."

2. The Boll Weevil Plague and the AgriculturalCrisis.

The boll weevil plague which recently visitedthe cotton plantations, has been a tremendous fac-tor in changing the South. According to the ap-proximate evaluation, the damages wrought by thispest in the years 1917-22 amounted from $1,600.-000,000 to $1,900,000,000. As a consequence ofthis, cotton-cultivated land grew markedly smaller.Thus many black workers and tenants were forcedto go to the North.

3. The World War and the Negro.This wretched system existed prior to the

world war. The Negroes were dissatisfied even be-fore the world war. Yet it was the world warwith its consequent fundamental economic changesand the Negro migration as a result of the rapidindustrialization in the North and East that gavespecial impetus and created favorable opportunitiesfor a wave of intense dissatisfaction among theNegro tenants and agricultural workers.

We must not underestimate the deep goingchange in the ideology of the Negro masses calledforth by the world war. Whole generations were,so to speak, tied down like slaves to the soil. Tothem, their village was the world. And now, sud-denly, hundreds of thousands of them (376,710)were drawn into military service. Over 200,000were sent across and returned with new concepts,with new hopes, with a newr belief in their people.Their political and social sphere of ideas broadened.Their former hesitancy and lack of decision wasnow leaving them. The Negroes were stirred enmasse and set out to carry thru their aspirations,left their miserable shacks and went to look forbetter working and living conditions.

Simultaneously, the immigration of Europeanworkers into America was practically ended by theworld war. In the post-war period, strict legalmeasures were taken for the same end. In thisway, one of the best sources of the stream of un-skilled labor was dried up. Thru the world war,however, the development of American industry

LYDIA 6I0SON.

NEW-COMERS

made mighty steps forward and with this the de-mand for labor power rose. The industrial reservearmy had to be filled up and the bourgeoisie of theNorth turned to the Southern states. In the Negromasses they saw a fitting reservoir to supply theirgigantic factories of the northern and easternstates.

To illustrate how the capitalists looked uponthe Negro problem in this phase of development, wehave the following quotations of Blanton Portsonin a recent number of the Forum: "Disregardinghis low stage of development, the undesirable im-migrant is characterized by all those traits whichare foreign to the Negro. He is permeated withBolshevism. He understands neither the Americanlanguage nor the American employers, contractsmarriage with American women, multiplies veryfast, so that finally, if the door is not closed to thestream of people of his kind, the real native work-ers will be suppressed by them.

"In normal times, there always exists in theindustrial centers a demand for unskilled labor.Where can the North find this? To import unskil-led workers from eastern and southern Europemeans to increase the number of inferior peoplein America (To this apologist of capitalism, the'people permeated with Bolshevism' are inferior.J. Li.) If, however, we make use of the Negroes forthis purpose, then we will simply redistribute thepeople of a lower race already existing in the UnitedStates and not increase them; in fact, diminishthem."

186T H E W O R K E R S M O N T H L V

does it follow from this that the Bolsheviks werewrong? No. The Bolsheviks had set no exact date,although they did believe, it must be admitted, thatmatters would progress very much more rapidly, nordid they foresee that a whole decade would pass byuntil the triumph of the working class. But, as youknow, in the matter of setting a time all have erred,even Marx, who more than once predicted that theworld revolution was near. It is quite understand-able, that every sincere revolutionist inclines towardfixing the date rather earlier than later. At any rate,our prognosis was in general correct: the revolutionwas not at an end, its fundamental demands had not-been objectively fulfilled, the proletariat and the peas-antry had not been satisfied, a new struggle was in-evitable, and for us there could be no question of fol-lowing a Prussian path, but only a Russian, whichwould lead us to a great social overturn. These predic-tions of ours were proved to be correct. All this becameclear—and fairly soon, too.

The Stockholm Congress fell at the same time asthe amazing victory of the Cadets—the party of theliberal bourgeoisie—in the elections for the firstDuma. They gained a large number of seats in theDuma, and, together with these, political leadershipin the first Russian parliament, getting in the cele-brated Moronzev as chairman. The Cadet party occu-pied the leading position in the Duma, and its leaders,Nabokov and others, were the principal parliamentaryorators. In the final analysis, the First Duma repre-sented a great victory for the Russian bourgeois-lib-eral party, which called itself the Constitutional-Democratic Party. (C. D.—whence the name "Cadets").The latter constituted a very serious political factor,confronting the workers' party with the problem of\vhat attitude to adopt toward it.

The Responsible (Cadet) Ministry.

The Menshevik Central Committee, which was atthat time directing the party, was in transports ofdelight over the victory of the Cadets. It believed thata new era had opened in Russia and that the victoryof the Constitutional-Democratic Party which sub-scribed to its own views, would help the country to apeaceful solution of the agrarian and many other basicproblems. And in this connection the Mensheviks ad-vanced the slogan: a Cadet, or—as it was expressedat the time—responsible ministry, i. e., a ministrywhich should be responsible not to the czar, but to theDuma. This, in general, is the classical formula of allbourgeois parliaments. In reality, however, the min-istry that is meant to be responsible to the parliament,is, in actual fact, responsible to a handful of bankers.Hardly had Menshevist social-democracy put forwardthe above slogan, than its supporters began a frenziedagitation in the workers' quarters for the support ofthe idea of the "responsible ministry." As you cansee, the behaviour of the Mensheviks was logical andran true to form. Here too, they sought a suitableformula for the support of their beloved bourgeoise.

LENIN POINTS THE WAY!

But at this point matters began to go awry: this slo-gan of theirs spelt ruin for the Mensheviks, and aidedus in winning a majority in Petersburg. I rememberthat the Viborg district, where there were many fac-tories, was hundred per cent Menshevik. To us, erringBolsheviks, the workers of that section would scarcelylisten. But as soon as the slogan was brought for-ward,—for a responsible Cadet ministry—and it be-came plain as the palm of your hand that the Menshe-vik tactics were leading to support of the bourgeoisministry, the picture began to change. From this mo-ment on the Mensheviks began to lose one factory afteranother in the Viborg section. Next the Petersburg-City Conference also took its stand against the Men-shevik slogan. This conference was held in Finland,which was at that time comparatively free. I remem-ber how, on a Saturday, under fire of the glances ofa whole band of spies in the Finland Station we tookour seats in the train for Terioki. The conferencelasted all Sunday, and at times it almost came toblows between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Fin-ally despite the pressure exercised by the MenshevikCentral Committee, we succeeded for a time in gainingthe majority first in Petersburg, and then in a wholeseries of other cities. This was already half a victoryon the all-Russiau general staff, since Petersburg wasthe political center of the country. The MenshevikCentral Committee was powerless in the face of theBolshevik Petersburg Committee, and the bourgeois

F K B R IT A R Y , 1 9 2 6

french1 Cabinet

LfleryoneftThe "Economic Foundations." Two Ch's That

Are Stable! Two F's That Are Toppling!

TOSS w;!s fond of making the joke that the little Bol-

shevik (major i ty ) Petersburg!! Committee had beatenthe. big Menshevik (minority) Central Committee.

The Dissolution of the First Duma.

In view of the fact that the Cadets held politicalleadership in it, the First Duma had to pay tribute tothe revolutionary, and especially to the peasant move-ment, which was continually broadening out, and wascompelled to place the land question on the order ofthe day, albeit in a sufficiently hesitant fashion. Onthis ground a conflict between the Duma and the ezar-ist government arose. The First Duma was dissolved.The Cadet party in the heat of the moment hastenedto Finland, to an illegal conferfence of its own, andtliere issued the famous Viborg Manifesto, which atthe time was dubbed the "Viborg Cake," This docu-ment called to the population to refuse to pay theirtaxes, and was in reality only a repetition of thatgesture which the moderate liberals indulged in dur-ing the revolution of 1848, when they shook their lists-—in secret—at the monarchy. They did not reallymean to seriously support the revolutionary struggle,and knew beforehand that none would pay any atten-t ion to their call not to pay taxes. The czarist mon-archy of course did not take "the Viborg Cake-' ser-iously, and condemned its bakers to only three monthsin prison,—a trifling enough sentence.

The dissolution of the First Duma was only alitt le falling out of czarism with the liberal bour-geoisie. It was speedily forgotten and in the SecondDuma a nice neighborly relation existed between thetwo sides, a part of the liberal bourgeois openly sing-ing the praises of Stolypin,

Reviews

A Revolutionary EpicA EEVIEW BY JOSEPH FREEMAN.

CHAINS: By Henri Barbusse. Translated fromthe French by Stephen Haden Guest. Two volumes.589 pp. New York: International Publishers, $4.

A THOUSAND YEARS passed before Europe be-gan to mould an art based on the concepts of Chris-tianity. When those concepts had sunk into the bloodand bones of the western world so that people nolonger thought them, but felt them deep in their un-conscious, the madonna, the holy infant, and thesaints became universal subjects for painters andpoets.

It is only seventy-five years since Marx discoveredthe law which has revolutionized the modern w^orld.A comparatively small section of humanity has been,for this brief period, familiar with the concept of theclass-struggle. A newr fundamental concept shapesideas and action first, imagination only afterward.Thus thousands of economic and historical books,

pamplilets.artieles, and speeches have sprung directlyout of Marx's concept; the life of one-sixth of theglobe is directed under its guiding light; but the artshave only recently begun to grope toward its expres-sion in aesthetic form.

Henri Barbusse—turned inside out and recreatedby the war, finding intellectual salvation within Com-munist ranks, and dedicating his gifted pen to theworkers7 cause—has just attempted to write an epicaround the class struggle. That is the central, hencethe greatest theme of our time. The Communist Mani-festo will be, in a way, for many new writers what theBible was for so many writers of a dead day, Miltonand a thousand others sang of "man's first disobedi-ence and the fruit '7; Barbusse and a thousand withhim and after him will sing; of the oppression of themany by the few, the curse of slavery, the glory ofrevolt.

These platitudes are invoked in recognition of thegreatness of Barbusse's attempt in Chains. He hastried "to attack directly the wrhole tremendous drama