; aa, popular checks would run hog-wild and bon have the whole

a worse mess that it

Of course, Comrade does not want any uation, but Lenin has ce taught us that the

results of political sbear no necessary rela- fhe subjective desires of etiators.

the practical effects of Browder’s revisionist e to facilitate the poli- American imperialism jd question. Let me

is by indicating briefly

r imperialistic implica-

pen Comrade Browder s; that the United States ystwar period should set zild up a $40,000,000,000 sxxport trade, as he did Sook Teheran: Our Path pand Peace, he is in fact Bupon American imper- i> make a drive virtually Sopolize the markets of pid.

Hien Browder says (page this book Teheran: Our

willing to help the free sers foreign market that is fi entirely and com- by their own chosen es.’ he is tailing the : after the bourgeoisie rendering the American into the hands of the lists!

then Browder proposes e great capitalists of the States have a free hand -y through a postwar m -of ‘“industrialization

yed areas of the world,” n fact proposing Ameri- ynomic and political world ony.

Then Browder says that in and the United States closed the books finally fyrever upon their old ex- ton that the Soviet Union ing to disappear some ne is blinding the people s and other countries to ingerous machinations of can and British imper- against the USSR—“a nmation devoutly to be i” by these sharks.

Yhen Browder fails to sig- the danger of American ialism (and he denies, in- vle though it may seem, shere is any such imperial- enace), he is hiding from ‘merican people the great- danger to future world and progress. The im- lists could hardly ask for sing more convenient to

» schemes of exploitation iomination. When Browder’ fights

pst the American people ‘ng the monopolies, as he : actually he is freeing from aint the worst enemies of racy, the generators of omic chaos, imperialist ag- sion, fascism and war.

/ When Browder spreads il- ns among the workers to effect that there will be a -period of class peace after iwar during which they can ‘iy bind themselves with a trike pledge, and that the floyers. will voluntarily rad- '¥ Improve the workers’ real es, he is tending to para-

the working class in the .

: of the provocative attacks ‘big capitalists upon the fe unions and the workers’ og standards.

7IC ADVOCATE—PAGE li

bf his major proposals.

|. War and Peace), “I am .

realize the $40,--

the devastated and un- -

On The Question Of Revisionism

8. When Browder (Daily Worker, April 8, 1944) haiis=the Labor - Management Charter without a word of criticism and deplores ‘only that it is “un- fortunate” the NAM is not a partner to the Charter, and when (Daily Worker, April 14, 1944), he proposes that the in- centive wage be adopted gen- erally in American industry in the postwar period, he is open. ing wide the doors for the speeding up ‘and more intensi- fied eploitation of the workers of this country. |

9. When Browder’ dissolves the CP into the CPA, he is weakening the most dynamic foree that the workers possess to counteract the reactionary activities of the great trusts at. home and abroad.

One would have to be blind politically not to recognize that all these revisionist theories and proposals of Browder’s dovetail with the interests of the great capitalists and that they are, in fact, a reflection of the aggres- sive program of American im- perialism. Contrary to Browd- ers faith in the big bourgeosie, the democratic forces of the~ country and the world will have to use all their united political strength to achieve complete victory, to establish a demo~ cratic peace, to win full em- ployment and a better life gen- erally.

EDAZZLED by the United States’ great power in this war, by its enormous industrial expansion and output, by its gigantic political prestige, by the many concessions the capitalists made ~ (under compulsion) to the workers dur- ing the Roosevelt regime — Comrade Browder in his pres- ent writings and policies leaps to the revisionist conclusion, especially, after the Teheran agreement, that American Capi- talism and its capitalist class, including reactionary, fimance capital, has in some mysterious way become progressive.

Upon this false basis, Com- rade Browder proceeds to build up a capitalist utopia in his book, Teheran: Our Path in War and Peace, in which he sees the “enlightened” great capi- talists of this country, acting in “their true class interest,” leading our country and the world into an era of unprece- dented democracy, industrial expansion and mass well-being. With this rosy picture in mind, he calls upon the workers to join hands harmoniously with the capitalist class in realizing

it. He tries to stretch postwar _

national unity to include reac- tionary finance capital. All of which fantasy, of course, would boil down in reality to the work- ers in this country subordinat- ing themselves to a more in- tensified exploitation at home, to the world being soon drag- ged into a fresh growth of fas- cism and a new world war.

Comrade Browder’s revision- ist ideas violate the most funda- mental principle of Marxism— Lenininism. They are more akin to the bourgeois notions of Eric Johnston than to the scientific principles of Marx and Lenin As I said in. my letter

of January 20, 1944, to the Na- tional Committee, “In this (Browder’s) é picture, American imperialism virtually disap- pears, there remains hardly a trace of the class struggle, and Socialism plays practically no role whatever.” Browder’s re- visionism, while it goes in .the general Social-Demoecratic di- rection of subordinating the workers to capitalist domina- tion, is actually not Social- Democratic, but bourgeois lib- eral.

Browder attempts to liqui- date the struggle by preaching an illusory harmony of interest between the work- ers and their class enemies, the big capitalists, in the postwar period. For, if what Browder says were true, that the ecapi- talists would, of their own voli- radically improve the

cfass

tion,

-workers’ real wages, there will

remain little or no basis for the class struggle. Browder’s idea, too, that the American big capi- talists, in their “true class int- erests” virtually must make them not only raise the work- ers’ living standards, but live in friendly harmony with the USSR, has nothing in common with the Marxist conception of classes and their roles. There is no Marxian principle which holds that social classes must follow “their true class inter- ests.”?- Indeed, history. is-replete with examples of classes which, under immediate economic, po- litical or ideological pressures, have violated their ‘‘true class interests,” with disastrous con- sequences to themselves. A striking case in point was the way in which the British ruling class tended to follow the policy of appeasing Hitler to the point where its world position would have been irretrievably shat- tered had not the USSR be- come involved in the war. To appease the big capitalists and

thus to make sure that they, would follow their “true class

interests,’ Comrade Browder not only dissolved the Com- munist Party, but he was also prepared, if he could do so, to liquidate the Communist Po- litical Association and to give up even our Communist ideol- ogy.

Browder also tries to by-pass American imperialism . theoret- ically. In fact, his book, Teher- an: Our Path in War and Peace, is an attempt to prove that the epoch of imperialism has passed and that we are now in a period of inevitable friendly collabor- ation between the capitalist and socialist sectors of the world; a collaboration, which Browder would not base upon the strength of the USSR, the colonial countries, the new war- born democracies, and the la- bor movement of the world (as it must be if it is to exist), but upon the good will of the great capitalists, particularly the Americans, whose “‘enlighten- ment,” “high moral sense” and “true class interests” will dic- tate to them this collaboration- ist course. Browder, indeed, un- dertakes to wipe out American imperialism regarding its re- lations with the USSR, and he also draws idyllic pictures of

how American big capital will, .

Continued

Government’s aus- inaugurate paigns of industrialization and democratization throughout the world. . According to him, our capitalists would make the rest of the world free and prosper-

under our

pices, great cam-

* ous whether it wanted to be so For, says Browder (ion

or not. page 79):

“There is not a government in the capitalist or colonial world that would dare refuse or withdraw from such a part- nership, once the United States made ‘clear the benefits. that would accrue to all concerned.”

seeks to do away with Lenin’s theory of the decay- of capitalism in the im- perialist stage, and therewith, he would even shelve the whole Marxian concept of the neces- sity for socialism. There can be no other conclusions from his argumentation; for if it is

Browder also

possible. for -world capitalism under the leadership of the United States and especially

under the tutelage of “enlight- ened” American finance capital to overcome its general crisis and to embark upon a new per- iod of exuberant and long con- tinued economic expansion, then there would be no possibility to establish socialism in any think- able perspective. Thus, Marx and Lenin. would-be wreng and Browder right. There is seri- ous reason to conclude that when Comrade Browder cast aside the slogan of socialism (as an educational issue) in January, 1944, he did not mer- ely put it in mothballs, to be taken out again when its advo- cacy would be more convenient, but very probably -he thought he was done with it for good. In his theory of a capitalist system capable of overcoming its basic contradictions there is “no room for socialism, even in the most remote sense.”

®

That Comrade Browder was attempting to have our party discard basic principles of Marxism-Leninism and to adopt a bourgeois-liberal program is incontestable. In his Bridge- port speech 18 months ago, he gave a clear indication of this when he said: “Old formulas and old prejudices are going to be of no use whatever to us as guides to find our way in the new world.” What are the “old formulas and old prejudices” that Browder warns us are use- jess? These are none other than our Marxist-Leninist an- alysis of the class struggle, of imperialism, of socialism. Ali these Browder himself had. al- ready abandoned, and he was trying to get our party to do likewise.

GOMEADE BROWDER especi- jally began to develop his opportunistic ideas shortly aft- er his return from Atlanta, (al- though roots of them can be found earlier.) At that time the party had a sound war pol- icy, worked out during his in- earceration; including all-out support of the war, support of the Roosevelt Administration with criticism, national unity of

all pro-war elements, including pro-Roosevelt capitalists, the achievements of maximum war production, the labor no-strike pledge, and an active defense of the masses’. economic and pe- litical rights as a war necessity. - Browder almost immediately started to project his oppor- tunism into this essentially cor- rect wartime policy. One of the first signs of this was his uto- pian handling of the question of a centralized war economy. He developed his opportunistic po- sition further in his book, ‘’Vic- tory and After.” And his re- visionistic point of view finally eame to full expression in his “Peheran: Our Path in War and Peace.”

The revisionistic ideas con- tained in these works and in Comrade Browder’s other writ- ings and policies, not only intro- duced confusion into our. politi-

_cal thinking, but also hindered

our practical work in support of the war. In my article in the Daily Worker of June 10, r listed a number of the more im- portant of our shortcomings and mistakes during the war, bred of Browder’s opportunism, a list which, besides those noted above, included, inadequate eri- ticism of the Roosevelt -Admin- istration; failure to demand a coalition government with’ la- bor as a full partner; rejection of the demand that internation- al labor should be represented jn all wartime conferences of the great powers; proposals for a-joint. Republican-Democratic _ ticket in the national elections, which, if adopted, would have eliminated Roosevelt as a can- didate, etc. To this list could be added many others, in al- most all branches of our party work. Such, for example, as the tendency, in the _ earlier stages of the war, to neglect to press militantly for Negro rights; the underestimation, for a time, of the necessity for in- creased wage rates for the workers in. our eagerness to have the incentive wage estab- lished; and the failure to make a major issue in the ranks of labor and among the public gen- erally of the vital matter of

the Government and the trade union movement giving our armed forces a thoroughly democratic education regarding the causes and purposes of the war.

Through all of Comrade Browder’s theoretical and prac- tical errors runs the ever-pres- ent thread of a tendency to rely upon the big bourgeoisie for national leadership, to appease reactionary finance capital, to underestimate the independent, democratic role of labor and other democratic forces, and especially of our party, in the national anti-fascist front. It is true that the Communists stood second to none in their war effort and made a record of which the party may well be proud. But we must admit that in the light of the existing op- portunities and the responsibil- ities we fell short in: many re- spects precisely because of these opportunist errors.

(Continued on next page) SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1945.