By Stanley Ryerson al TCC TT TTR TTT Under this deceptive headline the Financial Post of October eT ETS TEACH Communism to Everyone in Canada.” 19 proclaims its intention of celebrating the 100th anniversary of Marxism. The Second National Convention of the Labor-Progressive Party had decided that a campaign should be conducted on this question during 1947-48. Apparently the gentlemen who own the Financial Post (and the Globe amd Mail, which reprinted the article in three instalments feel that they are somehow involved. Theyre right They are. The 100th anniversary of the publica- tion of the Communist Manifesto comes at a time when the system for which they stand is headed for trouble—of the kind most vividly described by the authors of the Manifesto. All the indi- eators of Big Business, with doleful un- animity, point to “storm.” The Wali Street Journal, discussing the prospect of a “bust,” is “worried.” The head of General Electric, on being asked to dis- cuss what's ahead for the economy, replies: “I can sum it up in one word: Trouble.” Life magazine editorializes to the effect that “the capitalist’) system, which most Americans prefer to any other, would survive another depression with the greatest difficulty.” Qne would think, if “most Americans prefer” it, there’d be little to worry about. Or could it be that the preference is wearing somewhat thin? AAR. GILBERT Jackson, author of the Financial Post article, is evidently of that opinion. He feels that public con- fidence in “free enterprise’ has sunk to such an ebb, that only desperate remedies can revive it. A super-ballyhoo campaign of anti-Communism, for in- stance.. Not the ordinary kind, but one - with a special twist. “Taking no more time to read than the comics in your Sunday paper; juss as topical as Dorothy Dix and as crisp as Dorothy Thompson; today this is one of the most interesting and import- ant books in all the world.’ Mr. Jackson is speaking of the Com- munist. Manifesto—promoting its curcu- lation, in terms he feels best calculated to waken a response among the readers of the Financial Post. “Let’s study Communism,” he coaxes ;and then launches into the most cheaply dis- honest, vicious tirade of befuddled for geries and clearly purposeful mendacity. Uner the bland pretence of “explain- ing Communism,” Mr. Jackson essays perversion. What the authors of the Manifesto revealed as the inexorable workings of the development of capitalism, as the effects ef the insatiable drive of capital for ever-expanding profits, our learned clown (excuse us—consulting ecanom- ist) “explains” as a diabolical Red plot. Does the Manifesto speak of the ruin of “the lower strata of the middle class” and explain it by the fact that “their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern industry is carried on, amd is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists” —? Then according to Mr. Jackson the Red conspiracy is proved: “To complete the social revolution, just one more thing is needed. The middle class must be destroyed, wiped out, extinguished utterly.”’ Truly, forgery must be an art. For it can’t be that Mr Gilbert Jackson is simply “dumb.” He formerly headed the Department of €ommerce and Finance at the University of Toronto (not that that altogether proves the point, but still!)—but apparently coneluded that the theory of money was less appealing than its substance ,and rose to the level of “consulting economist” for Bay St. So the plea of innocence can hardly be sustained. PACEHIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 12 Wo, our ex-professor, like his col league Kirkconnell, must be held a conscious forger. Where Marx speaks of the “bourgeoisie,” as the ruling class of capitalists, our new-found “teacher of Communism” twists again, and trans- lates it as “middle class’ and agitates the spectre of the annihilation of that Sector of society at the hands of the Bolsheviks. Psychiatry is acquainted with a phe- nomenon known as “projection”? — a tendency on the part of persons harbor-— ime feelings of hostility, to attribute them to everyone else in the surround- ings. Mr. Jackson’s mental state inter- ests us not at all; but the illustration can serve to point up the falsity of his argument, according to which the vio- lence, conflicts and calamities of Capitalism, are all the work of a Communist “plot against mankind.” e | technique is hardly new. . Indeed the main thing about this cheap carieature of the Manifesto isn’t so much the lies on which it’s based, as the purpose they are designed to serve. By presenting the wage struggles of the Canadian workers as a product of a Red conspiracy, the ground is laid for attacks, not on the Communists alone, but on the whole of labor. By presenting the doubts and ques- tioning of millions on the subject of capitalist “free enterprise” as the pro-— duct of a Red conspiracy, the ground is laid for attacks on freedom of thought and expression, for fascist body- blows against democracy. Make no mistake about it. The Big Business campaign against “Commun- ism” is a lethal smokescreen for an offensive against labor and democratic liberties in Canada. And the Jackson article is just a particularly weasel-like example of the depths of demagogy which this cam- paign is reaching. Because the Communists are an in- dispensable force in the battle for democracy, the advanced, progressive workers, farmers and middle-class folk of Canada will answer the slander- ballyhoo of Bay Street and its hired apologists, and celebrate the 100th anniversary of Marxism by spreading high point in dismal answers. Fords and Plymouths. last price rise went into effect. Sal HAST TA TL T= IAT HH TTT cet: Storm clouds gathering | pee ee proof that consumers cannot afford to buy high-priced products came in two recent front page stories in the Wall Street Journal. Latest in the series of Journal surveys of industries hit by “sales resist- ance” cover the auto and direct mail industries. : Cash responses to sales offers made by the half billion dollar direct mail industry “have slumped badly—and at a season when they should be ~ highest,’” the Journal reported. A poll of 50 important users of mail ad- vertising by Mailing Inc., on “current response to mail efforts” brought a “Worst in years,’ the majority said. A cross-country survey of auto dealers, reported in the Journal, showed an increasingly high percentage of cancelled orders for autos; with large humbers changing their orders from larger autos to lower-priced cars like fiedged buyers’ strike on our hands. think it out, and $100 is going to make a lot of difference.” the truth, the real truth about the science of working-class’ emancipation. They will throw back in the teeth of Moneybags its unconscionable lies, and vindicate these words of Lenin: “The progress of Marxism and the fact that its ideas are spreading and taking firm hold among the working elass inevitably tend to increase the frequency and intensity of these bour geois attacks on Marxism, which only becomes stronger, more hardened, and more tenacious every time it is ‘annihilated’ by offtcial science.’’ —NEW YORK. Of the big auto firms’ campaign for another $160 price increase, a Packard dealer in Chicago said: “We had cancellations of orders when the if it goes much further we'll have a full- The average citizen is beginning to oi Gar a D D (A Cr G) “< a & © A “oe oe. ACA roe eS Mi? & » we é a ee castle OO y wets SS ZZ 3. SM Hl a —" FRIDAY, NOVESIBER 15, 1946 :