Once again, in order to “adjust itself to the market,” American capitalism has found it necessary to throw workers out on the street. The latest government figures released (February 11) place the unemployed at 3,078,000, or 5% of the labor force. Even these figures are challenged as too low. Walter Reuther, president of the...
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The Western Socialist, July-August, 1953 The workers mill around in small groups. A buzz of excitement sweeps through the room and spreads rapidly. The huge steel-cutting machines lapse into silence. The conveyor lines halt as if struck dead by some unseen hand. Everything is at a standstill. A wildcat strike is being born. The workers...
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What should be the minimum requirements for membership of a Socialist Party? They should be broad enough to include all who are Socialists. There is no justification for barring Socialists from membership. They should be narrow enough to exclude all who are not Socialists. Since the criterion for membership is based on whether an applicant...
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Stalin’s Frame-Up System and the Moscow Trials. By Leon Trotsky. With a Foreword by Joseph Hansen. Pioneer Publishers, New York, 1950. (144 pp.)    This booklet, published on the tenth anniversary of Trotsky’s assassination, contains Trotsky’s closing speech at the Hearing of the Dewey Commission of Inquiry first printed by Harper & Brothers in 1937. In...
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Living With Crisis   By Fritz Sternberg In this, his latest work, subtitled “The Battle Against Depression and War,” Fritz Sternberg has written another provocative exposition of his theory of the “Progressive Left.” In doing so, he not only again throws down a challenge to revolutionary socialism he also poses the dilemma...
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Review of Stalin and German Communism. A Study in the Origins of the State Party. By Ruth Fischer, Harvard University Press, 1948, 687 pp., $80; The post-war situation with the new imperialist rivalries brought forth an American boom in anti-bolshevik literature. The latest of several big volumes, starting with Trotsky’s Stalin biography is Ruth Fischer’s...
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From The Western Socialist, January, 1948 A strange animal – man – until we get to know him. Brilliant, in a sense, he has developed systems of production, exchange, communication, and transportation that make the other animals look rather stupid. But, on the opposite side of the scale, he suffers deficiencies that enhance the prestige...
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Our study of human society leads us to the conclusion that it is composed of two classes – the working class and the capitalist class. Between the two there are groups and individuals that battle classification on a scientific basis. They are border line cases. In the ranks of each of the two classes there...
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The acknowledged aim of socialism is to take the means of production out of the hands of the capitalist class and place them into the hands of the workers. This aim is sometimes spoken of as public ownership, sometimes as common ownership of the production apparatus. There is, however, a marked and fundamental difference.   Public...
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From the Sept-Oct 1949 issue of the Western Socialist To a worker, a job is almost a matter of life and death, for he is dependent on it for his daily wants – food, clothes and a place to sleep. If he cannot find a job, or is without one for any length of time...
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From the Western Socialist (August 1947) To the Western Socialist- The workers want something NOW and you ignore this altogether. Instead of having a program dealing with the everyday problems of the workers, you retreat into an ivory tower. Actually, you...
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The Story of the German Working-Class Movement (Review) Hammer or Anvil. The Story of the German Working-Class Movement. By Evelyn Anderson (207pp.; V. Gollancz, London). This short history of the German labor movement from the time of Bismarck’s anti-socialist laws to its extinction under the Hitler regime deals with both the political and trade-union aspects...
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What should be the attitude of socialists toward trade unions? this not a mere academic question. There are well-informed Marxists who contend that unionism should regarded in much the same light as reforms, since unions, like reforms, cannot abolish the ills of capitalism. Regarding unionism, the following proposition was posed by a socialist recently “The...
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The Road to Serfdom. By Friedrich A. Hayek, University of Chicago Press, 1944 (250 pp.; $2.75). Full Employment in a Free Society. By William H. Beveridge. W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1945. (429pp; $3,75). Both these books are dedicated to the “socialists of all parties.” Hayek wants to discourage them, Beveridge tries to...
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The Economics of Control. Principles of Welfare Economics. By Abba P. Lerner. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1944 (428 pp.; $3.75); It is difficult to review Professor Lerner’s study, not because it is intricate, but because it seems so superfluous. As trying as it is to read this work it is almost inconceivable that Lerner...
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The Growth of American Thought. By Merle Curti. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1943. (848pp., $5.00) Well written, interestingly constructed and partly original in its researches, Curti’s book is nevertheless a dull affair. This is not the writer’s fault, but results from the fact that American thought has not grown in depth but has been...
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From the Western Socialist, March-April, 1942 “The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual process of life.” When Karl Marx presented this analysis to a confused world, back in 1859, he provided an explanation of cause and effect in the social world that still serves the needs...
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America, we have often been told, is the great land of “Liberty”. They boast there of their “Liberty Statue” and their “Declaration of Independence”. There is scarcely a snob in the American States who will fail to trace his ancestry to the “liberty-loving” English, or omit to recall with pride the landing on Plymouth...
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The Coming New Prosperity in America UNCOUTH indeed is the hurricane that blows nobody good! Out of the great depression, at last it looks as if a Little breeze might cool the brows of our poor capitalists here in the U.S.A. Profits have been nowhere near what they ought to be, dividends falling off, taxes...
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