fuera THE NATION ( ht* through struggle can the working people frust- rate the wicked plans of big business to drive us ‘to war and load their huge war expenditures on the backs of the people. Labor and the people generally must soberly re-evaluate some of their thinking and slogans which were correct under conditions that form- erly prevailed, but which can become whips against the workers and their families in the present setting. The call for price controls and a “wage freeze” today could only play into the hands of the warmongers. During 1946 when soaring prices created havoc with living standards and forced demands for wage increases, the right-wing CCF leaders counter- posed this with a cry for price con- trols. The great Steleo and other stwikes shioowed thait) they pid not fully succeed. Nevertheless, while the movement for price controls (which . at that stage if carried through in a genuine way, did not suit big business) took on a militant character, it was made full use of by the rightwing leaders to offset what would have otherwise developed into a tremen- dously powerful wage movement. : : Today it is of utmost importance that labor does not fall into the trap being set for it by both the government and the right wing. Every slogan “in the labor movement must result in the opposing of the plans of the warmongers, ndt their strengthening. The program for world war for U.S. imperialist domina- tion calls for the destruction of democratic liberties at home and placing the entire burden of cost of the war preparations on the backs of the workers and farmers. It entails in the U.S. an dareisd of some #0 billion, ely: He 1 4 iM i 411)! ~e = ty Ss @m 2 » > » Mi uee BY BECKIE BUHAY Demand for price controls suits le business’ wage freeze designs and an estimated expenditure here of over $1 billion this year. ; f The pattern is already set—enormous profits, the pres- ent price rises, a taxation program to meet all the de- sires of St. James Street and Bay Street, which seeks to soak the poor. With such plans the government and big business will not be hostile to price controls. On the contrary they will welcome them, because thr ough such a slogan, which has proved popular among the people, it would be far safer to hook on an all-round control policy, freezing wages, forcing through registration, maybe conscription, . maybe rationing. But the rich will have a free hand in gorging themselves. The “excess profits” fax is not on the cards for this year, says the Wall Street Journal. Right-wing CCF and labor leaders seize on this not only because they stand 100 percent behind the imperial- ist war program, but because it gives them a real “out” on the question of wage demands. Railroad workers have — militantly shown that they can break through both the government and the right-wing designs and put the latter in such a position where for the time being at least they have to string along on wage demands. “Sound financing of the Korean war and the big arma- ment program growing out of it—will have to mean soak~ _ ing the poor as well as the rich” the Wall Street Journal of August 10 declares, presenting some features of a “Confidential Plan” prepared by the !U.S. Federal Reserve Board that promises 18-20 percent increase in dauaieee wae taxes. . This is also the pattern of St. James Street, the pattern taking shape bogay: 2 in sling prings, Prgite and Lpepases eee taxes. R me any independent thinking whatsoever. Se cite GaAs ex date oaitd ieee a ‘ LPP COLUMN S OMEONE * will probably tell me prere's no such word in the dictionary. At the moment I’m too sore to care very much. Webster's says that,to blab is to. “chatter indiscreetly.” Then, so far as I’m concerned, to blabber is to do it chronically, incorrigibly, blithely, a sort of condition of the soul, so to peak. What’s this all about? Our opponents accuse us of carrying on our political activities in sinister conspiratorial ways. ae is one of the grounds invoked ep Fole are frame-up of the leaders ef hy Communist Party of the United aden PAS be outworn nursery tale o e “ — tre of ee which Marx and Engels refuted over a hundred years ago by “openly, in the face of the world, publishing their views, their aims” — in the Communist Manifesto. e The aclivitins: the policies and aims of the party are a matter of public record. So are those of other i workers’ organizations: trade unions, for instance. oe But that does not exempt a union from having to safeguard, from discrimination and firing, those work- ers who first sign up in a hitherto unorganized plant of a big monopol and , ae pnathe power over the workers livelihood exercised by capital, are such that elementary measures of protection are essential. All the more, ‘with the bi _ bership of a movement dedicated to ending forever the rule of the company and establishing the rule of the worker: ‘ x ve re true under conditions of “normal capitalist parliamentary rule, It is 5 poe bara the period resort to murderous fascism an pe dastardly assassinations in these last days of orerne Lahaut in Belgium and Comrade Calvo in the Aree tine are a reminder of the gangster Sapnapeors of big” me business and a warning against constitutional i usin BS The attempt on the life of Comrade Buck was oe ‘ under conditions of “parliamentary democracy,’ legislation banning the Communist party—in oe “Sectio 98” of the Criminal Code—simply gave ee cover’ and comfort to the. resort to violence ot M government-hired thugs who made the attempt s irresponsibly and despite warnings and decisions: as yy the American judges to uphold — he apparatus of company police — ‘ceedingly bad habit of politica] carelessne jalist war. The — BY STANLEY RYERSON to re-introduce, and its counter-part is the Hitler-— legislation being pressed in the U.S. Congress. In short, the safeguarding of the party organization, _ Membership and leadership is a political duty of “supreme importance to the struggle for socialism. _ Which brings me back to the matter of blabbe ne. There is need for a positive, constructive job of cl: ‘ification in our ranks on the meaning and necessity” _of workig class vigilance. The need for it is brought home with the utmost sharpness in the self-critical statement of the national executive on the McManus case—in the September issue of National Affairs Monthly. Every party club and committee is asked to study that statement with great care and seriousness. What I’m concerned with in this column is one side of the matter of vigilance: the tendency to gossip. Just recently a leading party committee made a decision which it was agreed not to publicize for a short time, for perfectly sound reasons involving the | jobs of the workers involved. The agreement on dis- cretion, was promptly violated by one or more mem- bers of the committee. It then became a general sub- ject of gossip. “Ordinarily” our attitude would probably be: Too. bad! Fortunate that no bad results aneyed, for the workers’ in the plant concerned! (Today, such amiable complacency cannot be platy ated. * What motivates the blabbering? Sometimes | it may be the more or less conscious - desire to show that one is a “know-it-all.” More often it is a monumental unawareness—in practice—of the nature of the class struggle, combined with an ex- It is time that we got such habits, and such self- satisfied stupor, out of our system. The FBI and its Canadian officeboys do tap telephones of workers organizations and workers’ homes, they do send rats into the workers’ movement to feed on gossip and : similar gifts of pglitical sloppiness. We do need to check up on ourselves. Above all do we need to realize that “gossip and sloppiness aren’t just minor offenses. — They are an expression of something periously | wrong in one’s attitude to the party and i he ‘working - class. They express ‘irresponsibility. st And sense of historic reaponsblity is one of the chief attributes of a sa dh A ti the drama, is serving a one-year senietigg in the federal — jail at Ashland, pry ie field, Mo. is in the federal prison at Danbury, Conn. of Distinetion. _ receive his prison sentence. Scott’s films include weet _ fire and Murder, My Sweet. ; ; _ before the big propaganda guns? trusts, The real America, of Jefferson and Lincoln, will this Section 98 that the St. Laurent A itches PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 8, 1950 — PAGE 9 BY LESLIE MORRIS Home repression obligato to war HE drive to war is the drive to fascism. In the United States the police sfate is rapidly crystalizing. Although the Communist party is, as usual, the main tar- get for reaction, the attack is broad and deep against U.S. SCENE “Part-time progressives”. and summer soldiers like Henry Wallace retreat in a panic before this onslaught and take as their motto Decatur’s cunning surrender, “My ‘country, may she always be in the right, but my country, right or wrong!” Irwin Shaw crawls on the Truman bandwagon and writes to the New York Times “explaining” that he has refused “permission to any group or persons here or abroad to present my play, Bury the Dead. His reason? Bury the Dead is a famous peace play but now “Communist guns are killing American soldiers.” Are Ameri- can gums and bombs slaughtering Korean women and children? But that, says Shaw, is not the point. A peace play is withdrawn for fear it might help the cause of peace! So much for this man whose views are So easily coordinated with the Far East war policy of the US. State Department. @ The cause of American democracy is in the hands of brave men. Gene Dennis, general secretary of the Com- munist party, is in a NewYork prison. The heritage of another Gene, the Debs of 1917, is there with him. The U.S. department of justice is trying to revoke the bail of the Communist leaders so as to send them to join Dennis before their Supreme Court appeals are heard. Howard Fast is in jail, and so are the Hollywood 10, for standing on their constitutional rights and refusing to answer questions of the unAmerican Committee. Dalton Trumbo once wrote a searing anti-war book, Johnny Get Your Gun.” Trumbo is in the federal prison in Ashland, Kentucky. the same prison is former” congressman Andrew May, serving a sentence for war- time graft. Albert Maltz, novelist, The Underground Stream, stirring story of the formation of the UAW), playwright and screen writer, is sifting gravel from a creek bed at — Edward Dmytryk, born in Grand Forks, nth deme of one of the honest movies, Crossfire, is sé€rving six months in the same jail. (His last movie, Give Us This Day, was made in Britain because he Pek I We Hollywood. John Howard Lawson, Broadway play author and writer of many famous films, one of the theoreticians of Herbert Biberman, ee of Gale ue director and producer, is maPAINS, out a sentence sae Texarkana, Texas. 5 Alvah Bessie, novelist, screen writer, newspaperman : and war correspondent, is his prison companion. Twenty-five years ago Haunch, Paunch and Jowl, iy Samuel Ornitz, was widely read as a satire on American life. Its author is in a federal prison a og se in bac Lester Cole, author of dozens.of Hollywood's best t fms, Ring Lardner, Jr., son a ts ginak Geis? ace a hero who fell in. the Spanish struggle, is with him. Ea ee ete a Went, Cole and Lardner, by a stroke of irony are in the same prison as former Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, one- time chairman of the unAmerican Committee, whose in- timidating questions they refused to answer, for which courageous action they are in prison. Thomas is doing time for stealing money from the U.S. treasury. Next month Adrian Scott, one “of the Hollywood 10, wil e The prains, talents and courageous gifts of ‘these American fighters for peace and, freedom, have been imprisoned. The Shaws and Wallaces are frge—at least — physically. But who are the really free men? They who stand up and fight fascism and war, sigma ee phen 4 Jails, terror and intimidation, the recantations of Shaw or Wallace, in spite of the hardship, suffering and con- fusion they bring in their wake, will not avail the U.S. win in the end.