Sean sae eae

a cape IESE

Place for talents to grow

Boys and girls oi Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, find this

pioneer house an ideal place to pursue their hobbies.
Rudolph Schwamberger, of the plastic and graphic art

models his statue of a miner.

Here,
group,

mh

6

OUTSTANDING MARXIST JOURNAL

‘Labor Monthly’ marks 30 years

of publication under one editor

THIS MONTH marks the 30th
anniversary of the most success-
ful Marxist theoretical organ in
the English speaking world —
Labor Monthly. It is at one and
the same time the 30th anniver-
sary of the editorship of that
publication by R. Palme Dutt,
one of Britain’s most outstanding
Marxist: writers.

Few Marxist publications have
had such a continuous and suc-
cessful history under one editor.
‘There could be no greater tribute
to his work than this.

From time to time in recent
years the sensational press has
embarrassed Dutt by treating
him as a Super-mystery man,
“the only man Moscow trusts,”
the power behind the scenes in
the British Communist party.

Renegades from Communism
have been paid large sums of
money to contribute to this
legend. Yet never has a writer
done more to explain himself and
his philosophy.

. For 30 years in that unique
feature of Labor Monthly, “Notes
of the Month,” Dutt has analysed
the developing crisis of capital]-
ism and pointed the way forward
to British workers. ‘

“The value of these ‘Notes’,”
writes J. R. Campbell, editor of
the London Daily Worker, “is
that they introduced the methods
of creative Marxism—the Marx-
ism of Marx, Engels, Lenin and
Stalin — to the British workers
and the oppressed peoples of the
British Empire. ;

_ “There was Marxism in England
long before the Russian Revolu-

GUIDE TO GOOD READING

IN THE YEAR 1900 an 1l-year-
old boy was handed the script of
@ small part in a revival of Sher-
lock Holmes at the Duke of
York’s Theatre, London

Unfortunately. he could not
read — though the producer did
not know this. But the boy, an
undersized lad with huge eyes
and a melancholy face, took ‘the
script home and sat up all night
with his mother, who taught it
to him word by word.

Sixteen years later he had a
million - dollar contract as an
actor. f

The boy was Charles Chaplin,
and even at that age he had‘ been
on the stage for years—at eight
he was the veteran of the Eight
Lancashire Lads, a troupe of
child clog dancers.

These facts and a great many
Others about the screen’s greatest
comedian are given in a new bio-
graphy of him just published in
England — The Little Fellow, by
Peter Cotes and Thelma Niklas
(Elek).

* * * :

CHARLIE CHAPLIN started
his career as an entertainer in
the wake of a barrel organ with
his brother Syd. When the organ
played, Charlie would dance. Syd
would go round. with the hat and
the two would make a quick get-
away before the organ grinder
could object.

They did this in between sell-
ing newspapers at Ludgate Circus,
sleeping in parks, feeding on rot-
ten fruit discarded in the mar-
kets and odd pennyworths of
stale cake. Finally they were

rarli¢ Chaplin emer

of all from ‘The

sent to a workhouse orphanage.

But later they both found them-
selves following in the footsteps
of their parents on the music-
hall stage. In 1907 Syd intro-
duced his brother to Fred Karno,
manager of the most famous of
all music hall companies. Karno

~ reported afterwards:

"Syd brought his brother a-
long—a’ pale, puny, sullen-look-
ing youngster. I thought. he
looked much too shy to do any
good in the theatre.”

Eight years later Charlie was
offered $1,000 a week by an
American film company. ‘He ask-
ed for $1,075, explaining that he
needed the odd $75 to live on—
he would bank the remainder,

He was still thinking about his
years of poverty—and those years
are in many ways the key to
his career. ~ ’

Persecution followed fame, par-
ticularly in (1942 when (Chaplin
compaigned for opening of
second front and again, in 1947,
when he joined with Pablo Pi-
casso, the world famous artist,
to protest against deportation of
Hans Hisler, anti-fascist from the
U.S. A Republican senator na-
turally described his activities as
“almost treasonable.”

Throughout his life Chaplin has
had immense energy and versa-
tility. He has had alternating
periods of melancholy and high
‘spirits, but his development as
an artist has been steady and
unwaverng. ‘ .

* * *
OF THE MANY illuminaing

quotations given by the biogra- —

'

ges greatest
Little Fellow’

phers, two demand* reproduction.

One concerns Chaplin’s reaction
to public performances of his own
films:

“I keep one eye on the screen
and the other and two ears on
the spectators. I notice what
makes them laugh and what
does not. If, for example, at
several performances the public
does not laugh at some touch I
meant to be funny, I at once set
to work to find out what was
wrong with the idea or its ex-
ecution or perhaps with the pro-
cess of > photographing it.

-“And very often i notice a
little laugh from some gesture,
which was not studied, and then
I prick up my ears and try to
find out why this particular
point has made them qaueh es
I am like a tradesman watching
his customers . , .”

The other concerns his philos-
ophy, It is from the fina] speech
in The Great Dictator.

“We should all want to help
one another; human beings are
like that. We should Want to
live by each other’s happiness,
not by each other’s misery ., =;

“Soldiers, don’t give yourselves
to brutes, men who despise you
and enslave you, regiment your
iives, tell you what to do, what
to think ... use you as cannon
fodder . . . Soldiers, don’t fight *
for slavery, fight for liberty!”
Charlie Chaplin is a freat artist
whose childhood in poverty made
him a lifelong Sympathiser with

the Oppressed.—PHILIP BOLSO-
VER. ae (4 fli

tion and the formation of the
Communist | party. Indeed, the
Communist party was formed out
of the revolutionary Marxist par-
ties and groups: existing at the
time.

“Up till the Russian Revolution
Marxism in England tended to be
a frozen Marxism, concerning it-
self with the propaganda of ab-
stract general truths of capital-
ism and socialism, with making
socialists and not with living
leadership of the workers in the
struggle against capitalism.

“How far a Marxist ‘should par-
ticipate in the everyday struggles
of the workers, how for he should
fight for ‘palliatives’ — reforms
within the capitalist system, and
how far he should cooperate with
non-Marxist partisan groups were
themes of earnest discussion.

“The great strike wave which
began in 1911 had shown the need
for a militant fighting Marxism
and it was those who sensed that
need who come together after the
Russian Revolution to form jthe
Commuhist party.

“The ‘Notes’ devoted them-
Selves not to the analysis of the
capitalist system in general but
to the capitalist system in the
stage of imperialism, the capital-
ist system that was being chal-
lenged by the Russian Revolu-
tion, by the advance of the work-
ers in the capitalist lands and by
the struggle of the colonial peo-
ples.

“Dutt was concerned not with
‘making Communists’ by propa-
ganda, though Labor Monthly has
in fact made many Communists,
but with pushing the Commun-
ists into the mass movement of
the workers and helping them to
give it unity and direction.”

* * *

IF ANYONE today started to
write a comprehensive history of
the British working class move-
ment from 1921 onward, the
greatest single source of informa
tion as to the meaning of~the
events of this historic period
would unquestionably be Labor
Monthly. 4

Above all Labor Monthly has
striven to make British workers
conscious of imperialism, of the
fact that Britain was the centre
of a world empire exploiting hun-
dreds of millions of colonial peo-

ples, and that because the British ~

ruling class was exploiting the
colonial peoples as well as the
British workers, it was able,
when the latter became particu-
larly restive, to make them some
concessions which it would have
found it difficult to make in the
absence of empire profits.

Behind the apparent “liberal-
ism” of British capitalism, its
tolerance (within limits) of free
speech, its willingness to com-
promise, Dutt sees the suppression
of human rights in the colonies
and the hideous exploitation of
the workers in plantations and
mines. y
_The liberation of the British
workers and of the colonial peo-
ples will be helped to the extent
that they support each other in
the struggle against the British
ruling class.

The progressive forces in the
colonies soon recognised the very
Special value of Labor Monthly
in their struggles and have al-
Ways given it their keenest sup-
port. f :

The British colonial bureau-
cracy has endorsed this estimate
by banning circulation of ‘the
journal in various crown colon-
ies. It is /also banned in the

0
PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 27, 1951 — PAGE :

satellite state of Iraq and 1?
Greece.

Whenever the struggle is most ,
intense Labor Monthly is at its
best.

It was published after the
right-wing Labor betrayal of the
British’ miners in 1921 and cans
tributed greatly to the rallying
and regrouping of the forces ay
trade unionism which found mil
tant expression in the General
Strike of 1926.

It gave new life to the move
ment after the MacDo nalé
Thomas betrayal in 1931 and 1
spired the great movement ®
the British people against fa
cism,

And in the great task of pre
venting a third world war and
leading the workers through U2
ity in struggle along the road 10
socialism, Labor Monthly is play
ing and will continue to play #
tremendous role. ‘

ON THE SCREEN
Canned news--
and whitewash

A NEW CRITICISM of thé
newspaper racket, Ace In The
Hole, a Billy Wilder productio®
‘features Kirk Douglas as Chuck
Tatum, a crooked newspaper T@
porter. Although Douglas turn’
in a generally creditable perfo™
mance, his role (which becomes
quite unconvincing’ in the fin®
reel) is too often clouded with
hammy theatricalism and Dous
lasisms.

A big league reporter stranded
in a small New Mexico town 2%!
awaiting a “break”, Chuck Tatum
finds:a man trapped by cave?
in an. ancient Indian cliff dwell
ing. He engineers with a crooké
sheriff, the trapped man’s wifé
and others a method of rescv®
which will take a week insted!
of the possible 12-24 hours, }”
order that he may have time
develop a “real story”.

In the ensuing action, techy
cally well done, the importa?
truth is tacitly stated that the
commercial press can and oe
print manufactured news, ®
though it is dismissed aS

isolated practice of a few individ ©

ual reporters, to eliminate pias
the “honest” publishers and e€@*
tors are constantly struggling:

An effective subsidiary them
is developed jin the whopesal?
commercializing of the tragedy:
Admission prices to the ard
bands blaring lively music includ
ing a song written especially o
the occasion, merry-go-round®
ferris wheels, hot dog stand®

: ins
radio announcers, special trai?

and a myriad other manifest®”
tions of the greed of capitals
“culture”. In the process the V!©
tim is all but forgetten.

Although Ace In The Hole of
fers some penetrating observe
tions on the commercial Pe
the total effect is to whitewa>"
the most vicious of all monoP?
lea NE STORY...) (5

sient

ZENITH CAFE
105 E. Hastings Street .
VANCOUVER, B.C.

UNION HOUSE

———

/