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From Labor Action, Vol. 9 Nos. 25 & 27–30, 18 June 1945 & 2–23 July 1945.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Foster-Browder Debate and the “New Turn” in the CPA, Labor Action, Vol. 9 No. 25, 18 June 1945, pp. 1 & 4.
The new eruption now making its way through the top of the Communist Political Association (Communist Party) over the Duclos “disclosures” has come before the public in a“programmatic” statement contained in a resolution by the National Board. All of the board except Browder voted for the resolution. The majority includes such political contortionists as William Z. Foster, Robert Minor and Roy Hudson.
Public “discussion” on the questions under dispute inbeing carried on in the Daily Worker and the Sunday Worker. So far the leading protagonists of the two points of view are Browder and Foster. It seems, from surface indications, that Foster is the leader of the “opposition” while Browder remains the sole defender of the wartime line of the American Stalinists. Both have expressed their points of view in writing. Both groups are resorting to “self-criticism.”
The Foster group accuses Browder of “errors” and“revisionism.” Foster says that Browder has taken the position that “capitalism is now progressive ... Comrade Browder’s theories violated many basic principles of Marxism-Leninism. They were a complete departure from Lenin’s analysis of the present imperialist stage of capitalism.”
What were some of the “errors” and “revisionist ideas” of Browder? Support of the Second Imperialist World War?No, that was not an error. That was not a “complete departure from Lenin’s analysis of the present imperialist stage of capitalism, ” according to the Foster group.
Did Browder’s “revisionism” reside in the fact that, he advocated the support of Roosevelt? No, because “our general wartime policy of supporting the Roosevelt Administration was correct.”
Then what was the “error”? According to the new streamlined Marxism-Leninism of the Foster group it was “under Browder’s influence, of failing to criticize many errors and shortcomings of the Roosevelt government.” And what was one of these “errors” of the Roosevelt Administration? Nothing less than “our recent defense of the appointment of Stettinius, a reactionary, as Secretary of State.” Roosevelt, you see, should have appointed a “progressive” as Secretary of State, say Mayor Hague of Jersey city (who was supported by the CP)or Dan Tobin of the Teamsters Union, who last year was taken to the bosom of the Stalinists, Foster, Minor, Hudson and the others.
Was one of Browder’s “errors” the fact that he did not call upon labor to break with the Republican and Democratic Parties and with the Roosevelt Administration? Was Browder, according to Foster, a revisionist because he failed to call upon labor to resort to independent political action under its own banner and form an independent Labor Party? No, this was not Browder’s error. He erred in that he did not “demand that organized labor be admitted into the Roosevelt government on a coalition basis”;Browder did not demand that labor “be given adequate representation in the Roosevelt cabinet.”
The Foster group saw this coalition work so beautifully in the War Labor Board, in which labor had representation. They conclude that the Roosevelt cabinet was the next place to try this noble experiment.
Was Browder a “revisionist” because he did not call for the expropriation of the “Sixty Families, ” the conscription of the war industries, the nationalization of the banks, the big industrial monopolies and transportation systems? These were the demands put forward by the “Trotskyist” Workers Party during the Second Imperialist World War. But this failure was not Browder’s “error, ” according to the Foster faction in Stalin’s American party.
Browder’s “revision of Marxism-Leninism” was that he failed to “attack the trusts as such.” He was very cool to demands inside the leadership that the party should stand firm for the regulation of the big monopolies; not to “give the monopolists a free hand” and not “to leave the people at their mercy.”
Browder was only for those “regulations of monopoly practices” to which “the monopolists themselves should agree.” Foster could not agree to this. He stood firmly on the foundations of “Marxism-Leninism, ” the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal. Power Commission and the Interstate Commerce Commission. The Foster group stands solidly with the trust-busters of all the ages. None of the Browder kind of“revisionism” for them. They have their own kind.
The Foster New Order “Marxism-Leninism” discovered that Browder showed a “desire not to offend the big capitalists.” “Frankness compels the admission, ”says Foster, “that Roosevelt, Wallace, Murray and others did a better job at exposing the reactionary content of this big business slogan than Comrade Browder did.” This is the “content”of the Foster-Minor-Hudson line. Roosevelt was more “progressive”than Browder. Roosevelt exposed the reactionaries of big business. Roosevelt was for capitalism and the war and so was Browder (and Foster), but Roosevelt was there progressive in his defense of the war and capitalism. Roosevelt was for incentive pay and so was Browder (and Foster), but Roosevelt was progressive while Browder was in error. Roosevelt demanded a no-strike pledge and so did Browder(and Foster), but Browder was wrong and Roosevelt right.
Foster writes that Browder made an “attempt to exorcise imperialism out of existence.” This is the “Marxist-Leninist”Foster of the present factional dispute in the Stalinist ranks. But Foster wrote a pamphlet in 1942 entitled: Labor and the War.In this pamphlet, Foster wrote:
“This is a just war; one which the peoples of the world must support with every ounce of their strength. It is a fundamentally different type of war than that of 1914–18, when the struggle was between two rival groups of imperialist power.” (Emphasis mine. – D.C.)
And Foster talks about Browder’s attempt to “exorcise imperialism.”
This is not an imperialist war, said Foster in January 1942, it is a “great war for national liberation.”
What was Browder saying about the war and imperialism in this same year of 1942? In July 1942, Browder said in a. speech, “Victory Must Be Won”: “With full faith in the justness of the United Nations cause, as a people’s war of national liberation;with full faith that our own true national interests coincide with those of other peoples, ” etc., etc.
Browder and Foster were saying the identical things in the very same words. And Minor, who now agrees with Foster, was the chairman of the meeting at which Browder made this speech. Minor said in part:
“... It is fitting to present a great American who clearly foresaw the crisis in which our beloved country is now fighting for its life ... we welcome back to his place of active leadership a true leader of the great American people, a great American patriot.”
Also it should be remarked that up to the time of the “new turn” Minor was one of the staunchest defenders of the war as a“sacred war” and wrote theoretical articles explaining and defending “Browder’s line.”
To be sure, Foster did not always think and write as he did in1942. He held a different view in 1941. In that year he wrote in his pamphlet Socialism that “The Roosevelt Administration, despite its peace promises, has steadily pushed the United States deeper into the war.” He called the lend-lease bill the“war-dictatorship bill.” (This is the precise description of the bill used in a streamer headline by the Chicago Tribune.)Foster in 1941 goes on to say that the purpose of the bill “is to set up a military dictatorship in this country and to plunge us fully into the war.” Furthermore, “American imperialism – the great capitalist interests and the Roosevelt government, supported by renegade liberals, pro-war Social-Democrat sand reactionary trade union leaders – has no less mercenary objective than Britain and Germany in this war.”
Was Foster in disagreement with Browder in 1941? He was not. Foster’s pamphlet quoted above was written in March 1941. But in January 1941, Browder wrote a pamphlet entitled The Way Out of the Imperialist War. In this pamphlet Browder said: “President Roosevelt has submitted to Congress what is called a ‘defense budget.’ ... It is for defense only in a very special sense that it is a ‘defense’ of the ambitions of Wall street, of the Sixty Families.”
In this pamphlet Browder called Roosevelt a demagogue and added that “... America is in the imperialist war for imperialist aims despite all the chatter and prattle about ‘liberty’and ‘democracy.’” “Monopoly capital”was the “real ‘fifth column.’” And in this pamphlet Browder talks about “Roosevelt’s war dictatorship” just as Foster was to repeat two months later inSocialism.
“New Turn” of the Communists – II, Labor Action, Vol. IX No. 27, 2 July 1945, p. 4
In discussing the new ferment in the Stalinist Communist Party in the United States, which William Z. Foster calls the return to“Marxism-Leninism, ” we compared the record and writings of Foster for the past few years with those of Earl Browder. The printed record reveals no fundamental difference. On the contrary, it reveals that Foster and his friends were in full accord with Browder(and Stalin) on every important and significant question.
Foster, Minor and Hudson agreed with Browder on the Stalin-Hitler pact. They agreed with Molotov that “Hitlerism ... is a matter of taste.”
They were completely satisfied with the position of Browder in1939 that there was little difference between the government of Great Britain and the United States on one side and the government of Germany on the other.
In 1941 they agreed with Browder that the war was an “imperialist war.”
In 1942, when Browder (and Stalin) decided that it was no longer an imperialist war, but that the U.S. was fighting for national liberation, Foster rushed to the side of Browder and Minor and added that “this is a sacred war.”
But now Foster, Minor, Hudson and the rest of the “majority”discover that they were “misled” by Browder.
They reach back into 1939 and come up with a stinking Stalinist concoction which Foster has the brazenness to label“Marxism-Leninism.” Although Browder had no such intentions, in his reply to the Fosterites he objectively exposes the quality of the Foster-Minor-Hudson Marxism. Foster accuses Browder of flirting with capitalism and leading the CP into reformism. Browder quotes from an article by Foster in the June 1945 number of Political Affairs (the CP substitute for the Communist International, monthly magazine published up to. the time the GPU took the“dissolved” Third International underground), as follows:
“By far not all American capitalists favor a policy of aggressive imperialist expansion. Large numbers of them follow the general Roosevelt line. These more far-sighted elements among the capitalists, the Kaisers, Krugs, Nelsons, etc., realizing that their class interests dovetail with the nation’s interests ... are accepting the general policies laid down at Teheran and Yalta.”
Browder comments as follows on the Foster position that there are good and bad capitalists:
“The true understanding of American imperialism and American imperialist policy is that it is represented not only in Vandenberg and du Pont, but is equally represented in the Kaisers, Krugs and Nelsons.”
Browder adds that the Kaisers, Krugs and Nelsons are the true representatives of the interests of their class, ”whereas the Vandenbergs and du Ponts “fail to see the true interests of their own class.”
We are certain that every worker will be profoundly touched by this question: which group of capitalists truly represents the interests of the capitalist class? This is one of the. things Browder and his “opponent” Foster are quarreling about.
Far more important, however, is the fact that Foster, who accuses Browder of “revisionism and a departure from Marxism, ”attempts to discover good and bad capitalists.
Kaiser, according to Foster, is better for the working class than du Pont, Nelson is better than Ford, Krug is better than Vandenberg. This is Foster’s “Marxism-Leninism.”Every worker who has toiled in the mines, mills and factories knows that this is pure rubbish.
“Not all American capitalists favor a policy of aggressive imperialist expansion.” What other kind of imperialism is there except aggressive imperialism? Imperialism means to seize, to suppress and exploit colonial and small nations and their peoples for the benefit of an imperialist capitalist ruling class. The oppression and exploitation is accompanied by armies and navies with all the weapons at their command. Has Foster ever seen a pacifist, or meek, or modest imperialism? British, perhaps? Or American? Or Russian?
At what other point does Foster disagree with Browder? He and Browder disagree on the possibilities of “socialism in our country.” Foster charges Browder with the “curt dismissal of the whole question of socialism in our country, not only as an immediate political issue (in which he was correct) but also in the sense of mass education (in which he was wrong).” When did Foster find himself in disagreement on this important question? When was Foster advocating mass education in socialism?
In his pamphlet Socialism, issued in March, 1941, Foster talked about socialism.
“There is no system of society except socialism that can free humanity ... In a socialist America the people will enjoy freedom in its fullest sense and also the material well-being which must serve as its base ... To grease the chute for our final plunge into the war, the war-mongers are asserting that this is a war to save democracy ... What a familiar stench that ‘argument’has. It was a lie in 1917 ... and it is a lie now ....
“John L. Lewis was correct in charging that there are 52, 000, 000 shrunken bellies in this country ... TheRoosevelt government, the spearhead of American imperialism, is leading this work of reaction behind a mask of progressive phrases...
”Capitalist exploitation of the workers and farmers is ... the basic cause of war ...
“The New Deal Administration, obeying the dictate of Wall Street, has abandoned its makeshift’pump-priming and is going the way of all capitalism, into wholesale munitions production and war ...
“The dictatorship of the proletariat ... is therul2 of the workers and peasants ...
“Only by militant struggle can the workers and their farmer and other allies protect themselves from the ever-increasing evils of hunger, fascism and war ... They should support the right to strike by fighting against all anti-strike legislation, by repudiating in action the no-strike policies of their leaders.”
Thus wrote Foster in March 1941, Was he to the “left”of Browder? Was his pamphlet Socialism a polemic against Browder or against Browder “errors” and “revisionism”?The record is against Foster, for in January 1941 Browder wrote in his pamphlet, The Way Out of the Imperialist War, as follows:
“Today in the midst of the second imperialist war, we commemorate Lenin by applying his teachings ... The Roosevelt Administration is about to enter into military action which cannot but be directed against Ireland ... The war administration of Roosevelt arrogates to itself the right to enclose the whole hemisphere in its control ... This is not democracy. This is imperialism.”
Communist “New Turn” – III, Labor Action, Vol. IX No. 28, 9 July 1945, p. 3
As we demonstrated last week, Foster & Co. were marching arm in arm with Browder and without protest up to the time of the appearance of the Duclos article. They knew better than to protest even if they actually disagreed because they were fully aware where the position taken by Browder came from. Stalin’s GPU representative was always present to see to it that Browder and all the rest carried out the decisions of the Kremlin. This of course is what makes the feeble protestations of Foster appear so ridiculous and puerile today. Foster did not decide his “line” in1941 or 1942 and he is not deciding it day.
Right here it is necessary to inject one observation lest threader get the impression, from the above quotations, that either Foster or Browder was a revolutionist or a communist in the period between the signing of the Stalin-Hitler pact and the German invasion of Russia in June 1941. Despite the fact that the CP leadership could write so radically during that period, it was only a spurious radicalism. Its function was to harass the American capitalists and government, in the interest of the pact which Stalin had made with Hitler.
After the attack on Russia, the CP leadership threw off even this spurious radicalism and openly embraced a program of full, complete and uncritical support of capitalism, the Roosevelt government and imperialist war.
The Foster line today is in all essentials a return to the spurious radicalism of the period of the Stalin-Hitler pact. And for the identical reason: the protection of the bureaucratic and reactionary interests of the Kremlin. This will be brought out clearly when we examine the recent resolution of the Foster majority:The Present Situation and the Next Tasks.
For the moment this point can be illustrated by Foster’s comment on Browder’s stand on “socialism in our country.”Foster wrote that Browder was “correct” to take the position that socialism was not an immediate political issue. This is Foster’s position in 1945. But it was not his position in March1941, as the quotations above proved. In his pamphlet Socialism, socialism WAS an “immediate political issue.” He even went so far as to discuss the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Socialism was the only way out for the American working class. And Browder, in his writings, was in full agreement with Foster.
Roosevelt drew the country into war “by the Hitlerian tactic of concentrating upon a single step at a time ... We Communists conspire only in the open, as the sun conspires against darkness and night ... The present imperialist war will be brought to an end by ... revolution in one or more of the major countries of Europe ... The destruction of these democratic rights is an inseparable part of the Roosevelt ‘power’ bill.” (The word “power”here is really a quotation from the Chicago Tribune.)
After June 1941 (when Hitler invaded Russia) Foster changed his line. (Or better, Stalin changed HIS line.) Not only was socialism not an “immediate political issue” but even the suggestion that the working class should resort to independent political action (as proposed by the Workers Party) and form a Labor Party was viciously opposed by Browder and Foster together.
Foster writes today that Browder was wrong in his opposition to the use of mass education to teach workers the principles of socialism. But when were Foster and Browder in disagreement on this point? There is no record of such disagreement. Did Poster write his pamphlet Labor and the War in 1942 to give the working class some socialist education? “This is a just war ...” said Foster in that pamphlet. “Attempts of ... pseudo-socialists ...to condemn this war also as an imperialist war constitute help to Hitler.”
How could the worker members of the CP understand this man or their party when just the year before he had compared the Roosevelt Administration with that of Woodrow Wilson. In March 1941 he wrote:“What a deadly parallel it makes with World War today.”Roosevelt, wrote Foster, was leading us along the same “fatal path” as Wilson “with even more ghastly results in prospect.”
The record is clear and we remember it. It is in print for every worker to read, over and over. It exists in every union and in every organization where the Stalinists were permitted entry and tolerated. In their craven and debauched support of the imperialist war, in their depraved and brazen fight for the continuation of the infamous no-strike pledge, in their advocacy of piecework wages(incentive pay!), in their organized orgy for the complete subordination of the unions to the capitalist employers and the Roosevelt government, the Fosters, Browders, Minors and Hudsons and all the rest of the Stalinist leadership do not appear before the working class with clean hands. They are dripping, not with the blood of capitalism and imperialism, but with the blood of the working class!
Communist New Turn – IV, Labor Action, Vol. IX No. 29, 16 July 1945, p. 4.
In previous articles we have dealt with the question of the various positions which Foster and his group assumed in line with the demands of the Kremlin bureaucrats and murderers.
We have demonstrated, right out of the writings of Foster, that he had no fundamental differences with Browder; that he did not have any political line different from Browder; that Browder and the whole crew received the line for their politics and their trade union activities from Stalin.
All of them together cried “Me, too” when Stalin signed a pact with fascism; when Stalin said “this is an imperialist war”; or when he changed the line and said “this's a sacred war”; when he ordered the American Stalinists one year to organize strikes and the following year to support the no-strike pledge.
All of them fell into line without a murmur of dissent when Stalin was against Roosevelt. They were just as fervent in support of Roosevelt when Stalin, for his own reasons, decided to go all-out for Roosevelt.
The Workers Party has explained again and again in Labor Actionwhy this is so; that the antics of the Stalinist parties is decided by Stalin in line with the foreign policy of the Russian bureaucracy. This foreign policy is always decided by the needs of these bureaucrats in their frantic efforts to hold on to power in Russia and to keep the Russian workers suppressed and enslaved. Stalin is never concerned with the welfare of the working class or the trade union movement anywhere.
Now Foster and Browder have a falling out. The sparks are flying in the Daily Worker. They are having a “discussion, ”a period of “self-criticism.” Browder is a “revisionist”and Minor is filled with “prattle.” What we must not forget is that what we have here is the hand of Foster but the voice of Stalin. It is an Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy act.
The Foster “majority” has published a new program; The Present Situation and the Next Tasks. We are going to examine this “new program” in detail. We are going to find out what, if anything, is new. We are going to discuss this new trap the Stalinists have prepared for the working class in the United States.
The draft resolution which contains the program starts off with a lie and goes on to another and still others. “The military defeat of Nazi Germany ... has already brought forth a new anti-fascist unity of the peoples in Europe marked by the formation in a number of countries of democratic governments representative of the will of the people.”
Where has this taken place? In Italy? Poland? Greece? Rumania? Czecho-Slovakia? Hungary? France? In no country in Europe, France included, is there a government “representative of the will of the people.” Greece is under the domination of Churchill’s tanks dripping with the blood of the Greek workers in order to guarantee the payment of the interest on the 100 million pounds owed by Greece to the British imperialist Hambro Bank. Where is there any government in Italy “representative of the will” of the Italian people? Do the British and American imperialist armies represent the will of the Italian people?
The bloody sword of Stalin hangs over the Polish, Rumanian and Yugo-Slav peoples. These puppet regimes are undoubtedly what the CPA resolution has in mind when it speaks of “democratic governments.” Was the reactionary monarchist, De Gaulle, doing the will of the French people when the resistance movements were disarmed, scattered and pushed into the background as though it was they who had collaborated with the French and German fascists? Do the broken down kings, queens and other royalty who have returned or will return to Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway and Denmark, represent the “will of the people” of these countries?These are scoundrels and cowards, who deserted “my people”ran off to London and New York, and left the people to be trampled under by the fascist barbarians.
There are no governments in Europe “representative of the will of the people.” The government of Europe are regimes imposed on the people by the Anglo-American-Russian imperialist conquerors. These regimes are supported and maintained by the armed might and the espionage systems of these conquerors. The statement of the Foster (Stalin) resolution is a lie. It is a lie told to delude, mislead and drug the working class in the United States so that the workers may continue to support American imperialism.
The resolution states that a “sustained struggle” must be carried on toward the “complete destruction of fascism in Europe and throughout the world ...” Why? “... because the extremely powerful reactionary forces in the United States and England, which are centered in the trusts and cartels, are striving to reconstruct Europe on a reactionary basis ... the most aggressive circles of American imperialism are endeavoring to secure for themselves political and economic domination in the world.”
This is the new Foster-Stalin program. The reactionary forces in the United States are not centered in capitalism and imperialism as such, but only in the biggest capitalists. It is only the “most aggressive circles of American imperialism” which want to dominate the world. What is capitalism today but the trusts and cartels? What are the aggressive circles of imperialism? Is there such a thing as a non-aggressive imperialism? Passive imperialists?Good imperialists?
Does any worker think that it is the little grocer or the five-acre farmer who is out to “dominate the world?” Did Foster believe in September 1941 that the “most aggressive circles of American imperialism” were not after “domination in the world” when he wrote: “What before was an imperialist war has now become a war for the freedom and independence of all nations and peoples.” Then the imperialists, even“the most aggressive circles” were fighting not for world dominion but for national independence. That is, the U.S. did not have its national independence in 1941 and had to fight for it.
The Foster line in 1942 was for saving the cartels and trusts. If Hitler should win “the capitalists would have their power clipped, their profits slashed ... It was thus that Foster moaned for the poor cartels and trusts. But as for the workers, they too must protect themselves “by the avoidance of strikes.” Foster urged the workers “to do their share ... not to strike while the war emergency lasts ... this decision should be adhered to strictly throughout the ranks of labor.”
Communist New Turn – V, Labor Action, Vol. IX No. 30, 23 July 1945, p. 4.
Among the horrible things contemplated by “American Big Business, ’’ according to the “new turn”resolution of the Foster (Stalin) faction in the Communist Political Association, is the prevention of “a truly democratic and anti-fascist Europe in which the people will have the right to freely choose their own forms of government and social system ... Washington together with London is pursuing the dangerous policy of preventing a strong, united and democratic China; while they bolster up the reactionary, incompetent Chiang Kai-shek regime ...”
The Foster resolution says that Washington and London act in the manner they do because they are under the influence of “American Big Business.” That’s true. That’s why the war is being fought: to establish the domination of “American Big Business, ” the ruling class in the United States, over Europe and the rest of the world. Throughout the course of this Second Imperialist World War, the Workers Party pointed this out to workers, week in and week out in the columns of Labor Action.The Workers Party said that this is not a war for democracy, it is not a war against fascism – it is an imperialist war. An imperialist war between two groups of imperialist nations:Anglo-American capitalist imperialism on one side and German-Japanese fascist imperialism on the other. The Workers Party said that Russia was engaging in the war in one of the imperialist camps: the Anglo-American camp.
What was the Workers Party basing itself on when it made this analysis? The WP was basing itself on the principles of revolutionary socialism: primarily on the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin. The WP was basing itself on the teachings and writings of Leon Trotsky, co-organizer with Lenin of the October Bolshevik revolution, organizer of the real Red Army. (Not the present-day Stalinist Russian Army.) It was this Red Army under Trotsky which defeated all the Russian reactionaries as well as their supporters from the outside, led by Great Britain and the United States.
What did the Browder-Foster Communist Party say about the position of the Workers Party on the war? It is all summed up in a pamphlet by George Morris entitled: The Trotskyite 5th Column in the Labor Movement. This pamphlet was issued January 1945. What was a “5th Columnist” according to the Browder-Foster(Stalin) line of six months ago? The Trotskyites “Oppose the war ... Oppose national unity ... Oppose labor’s wartime no-strike pledge ... Concentrate fire chiefly upon President Roosevelt and the other Big Three United Nations leaders ...”The Workers Party called for “nationalization of all industry”under “workers control.” The WP said that Roosevelt was“a spokesman for ‘Wall Street’ and ‘American imperialism.’”
The Foster-Browder Stalinists disagreed with all of this. They supported the war. (After June 1941.) They acted like a vast spy agency, like secret police in support of the no-strike pledge. They supported and fought for the speed-up with their“incentive pay” program. They supported the WLB, scabbed on the Montgomery Ward strike, called for the guarantee to England that she would not lose her foreign trade, demanded that venin the post-war period labor should agree not to strike.
These are the people who are talking today about what“American Big Business” is doing and planning to do. The Foster group, just as Browder, supported big business and imperialism throughout the war. They were concerned about big business profits and England’s foreign trade. They wanted labor to guarantee this by submitting completely to Roosevelt and the big business which he represented. They have been doing everything in their power during the war to guarantee that the peoples Europe will be under the domination of “American Big Business” and the GPU of Stalin.
The Foster program pretends great concern over the fate of China. “Washington” and “London” are preventing a “united and democratic China, ” they “bolster up the reactionary ... Chiang Kai-Shek.” Is this anything new?Haven’t Washington and London always been enemies of a united and democratic China? Did not Foster know this when he was going into one tail-spin after the other about support of the war? Of course he did.
Furthermore Foster evidently believes that we have very short memories or that all the written records of history have been destroyed. Who is chiefly responsible for Chiang Kai-Shek being in power in China today?
Stalin and his yes men in the Communist parties of the world. During the Chinese revolution of 1927–28 it was Stalin who ordered the Chinese Communist Party, right on the eve of the victory of the Chinese workers over their oppressors, to liquidate itself into the Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-Shek.
In the months following, Chiang Kai-Shek butchered and murdered hundreds of Chinese communists and revolutionary workers. And now Foster steps forth dripping with the blood of the Chinese working class to tell us that “London” and“Washington” support a reactionary Chiang Kai-Shek. We say that their blood is on the head of Foster because he did not oppose this monstrous policy of Stalin. He went along with it, just as did Browder and Minor and all the crowd that today is yelling for the scalp of the weasel-worded Browder.
Stalin sold out and betrayed the Chinese workers just as he sold out and betrayed the Spanish workers during the Spanish Civil War and the working class in the United States during the present war.
The Foster resolution tells us that “Reactionary forces – especially the NAM and their representatives in Congress – are planning a new open-shop drive to weaken or smash the trade unions ...” Since we are at the end of our space we will take this up next week. It is necessary to remark, however, that no mention is made of the United States Chamber of Commerce. We suppose that the C of C and its president, Mr. Eric Johnston, represent what Foster calls “the good capitalists.”
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