HAT DO _YOU THINK? ~~

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e P.A. after my
aad run. out. but
cat I could drop in
le in Vancouver.
couple years sub-
0) as I consider
best in the west
ook forward to

respectfully,
WK T NIELSEN

Confusion

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| t the delay in
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ae

In Retrospect ~
Editor,. P.A.:

As this year draws to a close
and we prepare to celebrate
Christmas, it would do well for
progressive people to look back
over the past years of war and

~ conflict and rededicate them-

selves to the fight for peace
and progress.

Throughout the years of war,
organized labor and the peo-
ple have learned many hard
lessons. We have learned that
the rosy view is not enough,
that the people must always
extract the kernels of truth
from the rosy-hued promises of
the bosses and politicians. We
have learned that to trust those
who are the apologists of cap-
italism and who would delude
the workers with pie-in-the-sky
talk of progress under capital-
ism is to invite disaster. We
have learned that only through
sustained struggle will the
working class achieve that state
of existence where man no long-
er exploits man and the world
is united in a happy community
of socialist progress.

: The years that face us are
in many ways more important,
more full of dangers to the work.
ing class than the years past.
We developed ideas of coopera-
tion and mutual effort with the
employers during the war that
were essential to victory, but
which, if retained, can mean only

~ disaster to the working class in

the .reconversion and postwar
periods. We evolved ideas which
demanded the utmost in Marxist
surveillance to protect against
deviations and Tevision of our
basie Marxists concepts. We en-

* gaged in a period of “peaceful”

struggle, which must be aband-
oned now that the new struggles,
epen and without quarter, are
developing.

Labor can feel proud of its
achievements through the past

- ACK BOYD six years. Labor has enshrined
Paere - - - With Luzny
fe ——

—

Fred, don’t worry,
Army, didn’t they?”

Ss — 4s L
they let you join the

ADVOCATE — PAGE 5

4

itself in the pages’ of history
for the momentous task of
heroic production which made
the victories over oppression
possible. But labor must not
rest on its laurels.

Labor must rededicate itself
to the struggle, and prepare for
new conflicts. Each person is
charged with historic responsi-
bilities. Each person, at the
close of this year, must deter-
mine to fulfill those responsi-
bilities and continue the strug-
gle against those who would
enslave us, with new fervor,
with new strength.

MARTIN BURBANT.

Labor’s Task
Editor, P.A.:

The jutst-completed civic elec-
tions have resulted in the re-
turn to power of the Non-Par-
tisan Association civic ma-
chine, One labor spokesman has
been elected to the city hall.

Mr. R. K. Gervin is faced
with grave responsibilities in
his capacity as labor spokes-
man, and obligated by his pro-
mise to.fulfill labor’s program
to the best of his ability.

. There are a number of long-

needed reforms which must be
introduced into the city hall,
and which Mr. Gervin is
pledged to support. The first
and most important is. the fight
for a broadened civic franchise.
The second, the return to the
ward system. The third, devel-
opment of the civie center in
the site chosen by high-priced
experts. The fourth, tax reform
to place the burden where it
correctly belongs, on the backs
of the big businesses and cor-
porations of Vancouver. There
are many others.

It is undoubted that Mr. Ger-
vin will come under sharp fire
from the Non-Partisans in the

* city hall if he pushes too hard

for these much-needed reforms.
In the past the Non-Partisans
have had things pretty much
their own way in the council
chambers, and they will- be
quick to object to any infringe-
ment on their “right” to gov-
ern Vancouver as they see fit.

But Mr. Gervin, in the city
hall, as labor’s spokesman, will
have the solid backing of every
member of the organized labor
movement in Vancouver in any
fight he takes on to press for
those things he pledged to sup-
port prior to election. Granted
that he was also supported by
the Non-Partisans, but he him-
self emphasized that while he
wasn’t prepared to kick endor-
sations in the face, he made it
clear that he represented labor,
and labor alone.

The chips are down now. Mr.
Gervin is in the city hall as a
labor man. The organized labor
movement of Vancouver looks
to him to spearhead the fight
for those developments which
are so badly needed, to expose
the narrow, self-seeking’ and
penny-pinching tactics of the
NPA, and pave the way for
new victories for labor in the
next election.

JOHN SWERINGEN.

Short Jabs by Ol’ Bill

SSORDESCECUOESSObererEsrestsespesDoDspesroesseeesEE

Science—Progressive Or Reactionary?

TODAY science is playing a greater part in the affairs of man than
at any period in history, one might almost say, a leading part. The
marshalling of the scientists, the calls upon their theories, as well as
the practice of them, during the war which is alleged to have ended
with the collapse of Japan, has impressed the non-scientist with the
valuable contributions that science is making, and ean further make, te
human welfare. ;

Unfortunately the discoveries resulting from scientific research
are not always directed into channels that will lead to social better-
ment. On the contrary, they tend to become terrible monsters, modern
Frankensteins, that will destroy not only their makers, but everything
else on this world with them.

One lesson of the war is the indisputable fact that the destructive,
reactionary application of scientific knowledge has a great balance in
its favor over the constructive, progressive uses to which it is put.

The salvaging of human life through the development of the use
of blood plasma, improvements in
the elimination of deadly and debilitating diseases like malaria, the
perfection of prime movers so that planes can now travel at @ speed of
600 miles per hour, seeing for miles into the air through fog and clouds

contributions, have worked wonders. But they are small potatoes when
compared to the deadly killing effect of the atomic bomb or the speed
of rocket missiles and V-bombs. soe

Many scientists have expressed themselves as opposed to tthe use
of such weapons. One research worker of high standing in England
is reputed to have said of the splitting of the atom, “The scientists would
not have put it to such a use.” But it was the scientists who devised
the atomic bomb, not duds like OVBiH who would not know an atom
from a molecule if he met it in his mush. It was the scientists who de-—
vised the rocket bombs and the V-bombs and in fact all the other kinds
of mbs.

So, it appears that science is like everything else. The péople who
engage in scientifie work are of two types. There are those who want
science to work for progress and those who are willing to place it in the
service of reaction, for that is the best we ean say of the scientist who
as an individual or®as one of a group, invents a deadly weapon Hke the
atomic bomb and places it in the hands of reactionary politicians, who
will always use it for antisocial purposes.

Today science is at a cross-roads, as it was ence before in history.

‘when the clash of interests between feudalism and developing capital-

ism came to a head in the Middle Ages, the progressive elements among
the scientists, “rebelled against the Church,” as Engels puts it.

Science of Progress

The Church was the center of feudal reaction, naturally, for it was
the largest feudal landlord in Europe. From its own ranks came many ~
of the individual scientists who led that rebellion, Bacon, Galileo, Coper-
nieus, Vesalius, among them. “

They spoke, though the Church tried to bur some of.them at the
stake, in the interest of a new class aiming at state power; of a class
which must have a wide and accurate knowledge of astronomy, of phy-
sics, of chemistry, of anatomy, because their sailors must be able to
navigate their ships across the waste of waters without losing their
cargoes; their manufacturers must have a thorough knowledge of the
sciences of physics and chemistry which enter into their production
processes and their surgeons must be able to keep in some kind of
shape the bodies of the workers who were to be exploited by them.

That science that rebelled against the Church was the science of
the progressive individuals. They placed themselves under the banner
of the bourgeoisie, the capitalists. The discoveries they made helped the
bourgeoisie who were the progressives of the time. .

Science was then taking a leading part in the building of a new world
and in the destruction of an effete, worn-out social system which acted

as a brake on human progress.

But the system that the scientists of the centuries : before the
19th helped to build, has outlived its usefulness also. It in its turn has
become a drag on progress, because it too was a class society, Science
is again called upon. It is hampered by the restrictions of capitalism and
to free itself it must assist in the destruction of that system and help to
build the world anew, a world in which this time, there will be no classes
and no hampering of science.

Already one scientists, the mightiest of them all, Kar Marx, has
applied the cream of former scientific knowledge to society and showed
that it too is the product of the same processes before referred to.

Society equips the scientist with his education and special tech-
nical ability just as it provides the logger and the miner with the degree
of education necessary for their work. But capitalism enables a parasite
class to appropriate the wealth produced by the scientists as well as that

of the logger and the miner.

What the scentist is, he owes to society, not to capitalist society,
but society as a whole, without qualification. So he must pay society
back by taking his place with the working elass to which he properly
belongs, in the task of ridding society of the capitalist fetters and build-
ing the new, better world.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1945