6e E in America today are

nearer to the final triumph-

over poverty than ever before in
the history of any land. The poor-
house is vanishing from among
us. We have not yet reached the
goal, but, given a chance to go
forward with the policies of the
last eight years, we shall soon,
with the help of God, be in sight
of the day when poverty will be
banished from this nation. There
is no’ guarantee against poverty
equal to a job for every man...”

So spoke Herbert Hoover, can-
didate for the US. presidency, in
September, 1928. “A car in every
garage and a chicken in every
pot!” “Four more years of pros-
perity!” So went his campaign
slogans. The U.S. was sitting on
_top of the world. Henry Ford
had discovered the secret of
avoiding crisis. Labor leaders
were preaching cooperation with
the boss. In Canada, after five
years of relative prosperity, the
capitalist propaganda had sunk
deep. t

While Herbert Hoover. was

opening his campaign the sixth:

_ congress of the Communist In-
_ ternational warned that “relative
capitalist stabilization” was com-
ing to an end. It urged the work-
ers of the world not to believe
the capitalist prosperity myth,
but to struggle for jobs and
bread and peace.

_ In Canada, inside the Commun-_

ist party, a fight over Policy was
going on. Capitalist prosperity
myths had penetrated the leader-
ship of Jack MacDonald, then

_ Seneral secretary. A “theory” had ~

grown up around the MacDonald
‘group that North American cap-
italism was “exceptional,” that
the big trusts had built up a
“super-capitalism” which could
_ avoid crises, and that the path
to socialism in America would

not follow the world pattern laid

_ @own by Marxism-Leninism but

rooted in an acceptance of cap-
italism, under cover of fine
phrases about socialism. It: was
the appearance in Canada of the
Poison which had wrecked the
western European labor move-
ment and against which Lenin
had fought in Russia in the per-
son of the Mensheviks.

In 1929, a minority of the Can-

TIM BUCK

Twenty years
of Communist
leadership

adian Communist leadership op-
posed these right-wing “theor-
ies”. Tim Buck was the leader
of this Marxist-Leninist group.
In the course of a fresh and
vigorous study and re-study of
the Marxist-Leninist classics,
steeled by a firm working class
spirit and fighting capacities,
Tim Buck and his colleagues
wrote and spoke for the point
of view that North American
capitalism was no exception; that
it would inevitably bring econ-
omic crisis; that signs already
were apparent that Canadian
capitalism owas  over-expanded
and that it would not be long
before the prosperity illusions
would crack under the blows of
economic reality.

The struggle of two opposing
opinions went on through 1928
and 1929. In July, 1929, at the
sixth convention of the Commun-
ist Party of Canada, matters
came to a head and the conven-
tion split on the basic issues of
policy—for the opportunist right
wing path, or for the path of

_ Marxism-Leninism and struggle.

Out of the convention, Jack Mac-

Donald, who by this time had
- wing opportunism which was .

made common cause with the
Trotskyists under Maurice Spec-
tor, emerged with a majority of
the central committee. But it was
not for long.

On October 24, 1929, the great
crash of the New York stock
market announced the most dis-
astrous economic crisis ever to
overtake capitalism. Millions of
smal] investors were wiped out
along with as many illusions.

Fae
j answered them

Your favorite flower:

_ Your favorite color: Maroon,

ee eee ee. a

: Tim's “favorites

= | ya daughter of Karl Marx, used to have a bit
ok with her father by asking him some lively personal questions.

: ve been included in some of the books containing Marx’s

: : .
Perhaps it wasn’t quite fair to ask Tim Buck the same ques-

but after all, Harry Pollitt, British Communist leader,
ered: a few years ago and the questions do reveal a
few things about Tim perhaps not previously known,

At any rate, here they are, question first, Tim Buck’s answer

of fun

only inter-
The point, however, is to

a”

By LESLIE MORRIS

The famous Bull Market, which
had forced stocks to dizzy spec-
ulative heights, fell about the
ears of the brokers. U.S. Steel
had that day opened at 205%
and fell to 19314; General Elec-
tric had been selling at 400 and
hit a low of 283; radio dropped
from 68% to 4414. All this in two
short hours of the morning of
October 24.

Out of the panic and suicides,
J. P. Morgan and company cash-
ed in. In the afternoon of the
Same day, Thos. W. Lamont and
a group of bankers bought in
stock at the new record low
prices. The big Bull Market was
over. Millions were ruined. Un-
employment zoomed. The masses
were plunged into destitution,
e

Under the pressure of develop-
ing economic crisis MacDonald
deserted — left the party. Tim
Buck became the general secret-
ary of the Communist party. The
right wing was routed. The Com-
munist leadership of Tim Buck
entered upon years of work and
growth, to culminate today in 20
years of his occupancy of the
chief post in the party.

Tim Buck has described why
the right wing in the party was
defeated: . -

“Through all of. these struggles
our party was able to come fot-
ward as the only party which,
against opposition within its own

ranks, was able to prognosticate ~

the coming of a cyclical crisis
which struck this country in the
fall of 1929 ... Our party was
able. to overcome and defeat,

these deviations which would

have led the party astray, but we
were able to do it only on the
basis of a struggle for the funda-
mental positions of our Marxist-
Leninist world outlook. We won
out as a party because these
Struggles .were .the .Canadian
counterpart of struggle going on
all over the world and we were
able to profit by the lessons of
Struggles and correct Marxist
leadership in other countries ...
We must realize that Marxism is
not something that you accept

‘4,

so long as everybody agrees

_ with it’ It isn’t something still
being tested out, Marxism has

been proved, and proved equally
in Canada as in the Soviet Union
and every
world.”

On the basis of Marxist-Lenin-
ist study it is possible to foresee
‘the probable development of
events. It was the great quality
of the leadership of Tim Buck in
the late twenties that he foresaw
the oncoming of the economic
crisis; to be forewarned was to
be forearmed.

\ Consequently, because the pol-

‘icies of Tim Buck triumphed
over the right wing MacDonald
leadership, the Canadian workers
did not go into the Hungry Thir-
ties leaderless. When social de-
mocracy and the right wing

trade union burocracy failed the

/

other country in the

workers — as they always do —
Masses of Canadian workers
turned to the Communist party
for leadership and Suidance,

The reformist labor leaders
said that in times of unemploy-
ment you could not organize
unions and win wage increases.
The Workers’ Unity League prov-
ed that you could.

The opportunists anq_ faint-
hearts said that you could not
organize the unemployed and win
relief. The mighty battles of the
jobless of the thirties, culminat-
ing in the Great Trek of 1935,
and the slogan “Work and
Wages” which resounded
throughout the lan d, proved
them wrong.

The opportunists retreated be-
fore the attacks of the state upon
the workers, But the Communist
leadership under
fought the political reactionaries
and fascists, and inside and out
of prison, in the courts and in a
thousand _ demonstrations, won
the fight for free speech and as-
sembly. The Canadian Labor De-
fense League—“shield of the la-

bor movement”—was the fighting

civil liberties movement of the
thirties.
@ .
The leadership of Tim Buck in
the fight against the crisis, for
bread, work, relief, wages, wage
increases, for the organization of
the unorganized workers, brought
down upon the party the full
force of the state. Section 98, en-
acted in 40 minutes at the time
of the 1919 Winnipeg general
Strike, was used to “deliver com-
munism a death blow”. Tim Buck
and his comrades went to prison
in 1932; the same year a foul
attempt “was made to murder
Tim in his Kingston penitentiary
cell,

But the. policy of fighting back,

which organized the sweeping

mass movement for the release
of “the Hight” and the repeal of
Section 98, not only liberated
Tim and brought legality back
to the party—combined with the
1985 Trek, this unprecedented
Mass movement brought about
the defeat of the Bennett govern-
ment in 1935.

Tim Buck’s leadership proved
by this that, given the ‘correct
leadership, the Canadian working

Class is capable of achieving en-

ormous political successes. The
defeat of Bennett in 1935 was the
biggest single political achieve-
ment of the Communist move-
ment to that time.

Tim Buck showed at each
Stage how the immediate strug-
gle for jobs and for pay, must
be forged into an instrument for
the political advance of the
workers as a class, ee
e ?

The. labor movement owes a
debt of gratitude to Tim Buck.
Alone of all present party lead-
ers in Canada, his record stands

the test of truth and practice.

He has the longest leadership

Tim Buck -

again foresees

record of any Canadian political
party leader. His position as the
leading Canadian communist an-
tedates the formation of the
CCF. He is in truth the con-
science and strength of all that
is progressive in the labor move-
ment. His work will flourish
when all the Woodsworths, Cold-
wells and Lewises will be record-
ed for all to see as the mislead-
ers of their times,

Tim Buck, the machinist, who
received his first training in the
trade unions, became the out-
standing Marxist-Leninist theor-
etician of the Canadian labor
movement. His is an example of
how workers must advance from
the trade union outlook to the
Marxist-Leninist position. He has
reared a generation of trade
union workers who have enlarg-
ed their outlook from the factory
or industry, to the class,

Tim Buck has exchanged the
machinist’s calipers. for the pen.
He is the most prolific and the
deepest commentator and writer
on both current affairs and the
larger political movements and
trends,.He is an example of how
to write as you fight—something
which all too few accomplish.

In 1929 it was Tim Buck’s re-
volutionary insight which en-
abled him to keep his perspec-
tive, not to fail to see the wood
for the trees. As a Marxist he
Saw capitalism not as something
static and did not mistake some
of the features of monopoly cap-
italism in North America, for
qualities which could or would
deny the approaching crisis. On
the contrary, he looked behind
appearances and saw at work
the “inner laws of motion” of
capitalism which doom it to de-
struction. In other words, he pos-
sessed the quality of “new ways
of thinking” which only Marxism
can give,

e

Today when the party is cele-
brating 20 years of his inspired
Communist leadership, Tim Buck
future develop-
ments and sees in them a Call to
action—for peace, against the
economic crisis, for democracy,
at a time when the world is
moving rapidly towards Social-
ism. As in 1929, he charts the
path ahead and again emphasizes

. the complete and utter necessity

for the party, for the vanguard,
without whose theory and prac-
tice the working class of our
country will flounder and suffer
needlessly. But in contrast to
1929, the fifties will See the move-
ment extend on a plane im-
measurably higher than in the
twenties,

Tim Buck is the highest pro-
Guct of the 30 years of commun-
ist activity in Canada. He is the
founder of the Communist party
in this country. For him the
party has the task of maintain-
ing its political purity not in
Some monkish way, achieved by
withdrawal from a wicked world,
but by plunging into the dust
and heat of the making of hist-
ory, yet able to see beyond the
immediate moment to the new
moment now being born out of
that which is passing.

The party led by Tim Buck.
must take to heart the conviction
which motivates its leader—-the
realization that mankind now
has in Marxism-Leninism a meth-
Od of thought and a guide to

_ action which brings human ac-

tivity into harmony with natural
and social laws, and which will
enable the Canadian working”
people to reach the high plateau
of a classless society in order to
eliminate all human violence, un-.
employment and war from the

lives of the people.

It is for this ideal that Tim
Buck has worked all these years
and for which he deserves the

. thanks of all fighters for social- -

ism. :

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 10, 1950—PAGE 4

X