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100.years of Marxism

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Friday, March 5, 1948
The oil trusts fight Palestine policy |

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Report oh the Middle East................:Page 6

Music of the people

Report on Soviet criticism --..........-.---
Saanich points the lesson

By Bruce Mickleburgh _..... ieee
Environment shapes your heredity

By Dyson Carter -.

ANSE TEE

.

Chiang on verge of collapse

(CHIANG Kai-shek’s Kuomin-

tang regime is now on the
verge of economic collapse. This
is the motive behind the U. S.
state department’s 570,000,000 for
China.

The commodity price index in
Kuomintang - controlled China
today is 191,688 times that of the
index for 1936 (the last pre-war
year.)

The Kuomintang dollar, which
stood at 3,500 for one U.S. dollar
in January, 1947, fell to ‘220,000
for one U.S. dollar in 1948. Ana
the trend of prices for every
essential commodity continues to
rise.

Kuomintang government ex-

- penditure for 1947 was 40,000,000-

000,000 Kuomintang dollars, or
four times the estimated amount

of the budget. Income was 17,-
400,000,000,000 dollars.

The primary cause of Chiang’s
difficulties is the civil war, pro-
secution of which forms the
basis of his policy and consumes
80 per cent of his budget. And
his steady retreat in face of in-
tensifying Communist military
pressure has deprived him of the
taxes and resources from nearly
170,000,000 people, If the insur-
gent peasant areas are added to
this, he has already lost more
than one-third of the total pop-
ulation of the country.

by Al RICHMOND

I the time it might have
have seemed audacious
to the point of foolhardi-
ness. Karl Marx was 239,

Frederick Engels only 27.
The organization which commis-
sioned the two young men to
write a draft program was just
emerging from the narrow and
restricted existence of a conspira-
torial sect, romantically named
the League of the Just. The
circumstances hardly seemed
auspicioas for the writing. .of a
document that was to help shape
the history of man for the cen-
tury to come. eer.

But that’s what happened.
Marx and Engels wrote the Com-
munist Manifesto. The day the
Manifesto appeared, one hund-
red years ago this month, mark-
ed the inauguration of the Com-
munist movement that today
claims millions of adherents the
world over.

A police agent in one of Kur-
ope’s capitals, whose business it
was to keep an eye on revolu-
tionary activities in February,
1848, might have smiled at the
boldness of the two young men
who wrote: “Let the ruling
classes tremble at a Communist
revolution.” But his smile,
while seeming very reasonable
to his contemporaries, would only
have proved that he understood
history far less well than did
Marx and Engels.

It was not the bravado of
youth that inspired the bold,
challenging words of the Mani-
festo. It was the most profound
understanding of history attained
by men until that time. The vast
Communist movement that has
since arisen is itself the most
visible testimonial to the scien-
tific wisdom of the Manifesto,
a wisdom that progressed from
@ profound understanding of
man’s past to a conscious shap-
ing of his future.

+. _
DAY, a century later, the
Tuling classes have long
since accepted the invitation to
tremble. Today the specter of
communism has Iong since ceas-
ed to be a specter. It has taken
on the tangible reality of mil-
Nons of human beings, of a land

-sprawled over one sixth of the

earth’s surface and operating on
Marxist principles, of powerful
political parties that in country
after country are the leaders of
their peoples.

All this has come to pass in
the span of 100 years, despite
terror and suppression, despite
scorn and ridicule and learned —
refutation. Sadists in the police
torture chambers of the most op-
pressive regimes the world has
ever known tried to stem the
tide. Learned professors have
spun arguments to enmesh this
movement in the web of false
wisdom. Generals and statesmen
newspaper publishers and finan-
ciers, cheap spies and expensive
traitors—cheered by the rulers
of society and emboldened by
tradition, each in his own way
has cried “Halt.” Inexorably the
movement has swept on.

Those who denounce as “un-
American” or “un-Canadian”
every progressive movement of
the people, raising the cry of
“Russian control,” find little so-
lace in the circumstances sur-
rounding the birth and existence
of the International Working-
men’s Association—the First In-
ternational. The organization
was formed on September 28,
1864. That was fuly 53 years

(Conthraed on page 9)