By PROF. G. D. H. COLE

Socialist poses three questions
on united action for Communists

e a recent article in the New
Statesman and Nation. I wrote
that in my opinion, though there
is still no chance of bringing the
Socialist and Communist parties
of East and West together for an
attempt to reunite socialists for
common action on a world-wide
basis, the time has come for
individual Socialists and Com-
munists who do feel the need
for such action to begin talking
one with another about the basic
principles of socialism and the
means of bringing it about.

The editor of the London
Daily Worker thereupon asked
me to say what questions I
would wish to put to a Com-
munist in the course of such a
discussion.

I do not find it any too easy
to respond to his request; for
my purpose in any such contact
would be much more to find a
basis for agreement than to put
awkward questions in the hope
of scoring a point.

I should not wish to discuss
anyone’s, or any party’s, past
misdeeds except in relation to
their bearing on the future; my
concern would be to find out
whether there is now a real
prospect for discussion leading
to agreed action, not between
myself as an individual and
those who follow the Communist
party; line — which would be
relatively easy in certain fields
— but between such persons and
the main bodies of non-Com-
munist members of Labor or
Social-Democratic parties, and
of trade unions which follow in
the main their line. .

*

One thing I should want to
know is whether Communists
still regard those who can be
fairly called “right - wing”
Socialists and trade unionists as
“social traitors,” whose influence
is to be fought by every avail-
able means, and who are to be
regarded as, shall we say, “lack-
€ys of the bourgeoisie ?”

May I take, to illustrate what
I mean, two actual examples:
from the past — Arthur Hen-
derson and Ernest Bevin —
with both of whom I worked
closely for some time a long
while ago. :

Henderson was a “right-
winger,” with whose views I
disagreed profoundly; but he
was also one of the most honest
and selfless devotees of the
Labor cause I have ever known.

Bevin is less easy to sum up
because, after starting well on
the trade union left, he moved
more and more rightwards, end-
ing up as a quite disastrous
foreign secretary after 1945, and
also because, as a person, he
was vain, egoistic and suspicious

and, though able in many re-
spects and fundamentally hon-
est, lacked Henderson’s incor-
ruptible singleness of mind.

It seems to me altogether
wrong to denounce either of
these men — even Bevin in his
last years — as a “social traitor”

-i- a phrase which implies that
‘they were acting consciously
against the interests of the class
they purported to represent.

' JI think their policies — es-
pecially Bevin’s — were often
badly wrong, and I often opposed
them on this ground.

But I hold them to have been
both honest men, devoted in
their several ways to the cause
of the workers; and I hold it
always illegitimate to make

honest disagreements a_ basis
for moral blame, or for personal
abuse that implies such blame.

Henderson and Bevin are
dead; but there are today in all
the countries of the West, Social-
ist and trade union leaders who
resemble them; and I want to
know whether Communists are
now prepared to treat such men
as honest holders of their right
wing views, to argue with them
without resorting to abuse, and
in their relations with them to
observe the principles of honor-
able and even-up to a point
comradely dealing.

Unless they are prepared to
do this, there is no sense in
talking about working class
unity, which involves bringing
such men into comradely associ-
ation with persons who have
hitherto thought no epithet too
strong to be applied to them.

*

Secondly, I want’ to know
whether Communists, in the
countries in which they hold
the» power, are prepared to go
the whole way in undoing, as
far as possible, the wrongs that
have been done by means of
trumped-up allegations against
deviators from the party line, or
through the treating of devia-
tionists as criminals on account
of their opinions: and also
whether, in future, the expres-
sion of dissident opinions, both
inside the Communist parties
and outside of them, is to be
allowed without danger of pun-
ishment falling on the dissidents
simply because their views are
regarded as mistaken, or even
as wrong. =

Personally, I believe freedom
of speech and freedom to form
croups for the advocacy of vary-
ing views to be of fundamental
importance for socialism.

I do not say there should be
no restrictions on these free-
doms: some are unavoidable in
any organised society, but they

* should be kept down to the bare

minimum that the situation re-
quires and should always be re-
moved or relaxed as soon as the
conditions allow.

Freedom should always be the

norm and restriction the rare
exception. Do Communists now
admit this and are they ready
to act in this spirit ?

*

Thirdly, I want to know how
far the argument that socialism
can, under some circumstances,
be won without violent revolu-
tion really goes, and what the
implications are, especially in
relation to colonial countries.

Is it implied that in some
countries, including Britain,
Communists are prepared to
work on non-revolutionary lines
and, if so, what does this in-
volve?

Again, in colonies where real
advances are being made toward
self-government and self-deter-
rmination, are Communists pre-
pared to support the parties
which stand for such policies,
and refrain from stirring up
trouble against them even if they
wish to remain attached to the
Commonwealth ?

I am not, of course, referring .

to such areas as Kenya, in which
no socialist should do anything
short of taking a strong line
against every form of racial
discrimination.

There are three questions.
Naturally, if I were writing to
right wingers, I should have
plenty of questions to put to
them about the reality of their
wish to create a socialist society,

about their attitude to Com-

munists, and so on.
This article, however, is not
the place for such questions: it is

simply a short answer to the’

question put to me on behalf of
the London Daily Worker.

It is meant to indicate the
spirit in which I hope ‘the new
International Society of Social-
ist Studies, of which I have been
chosen as president, will ap-
proach its task of establishing
closer and better relations
among those, in all countries,
who are working for improved
mutual understanding and for
a rethinking and restatement of
socialist principles in terms re-
lated to the practical problems
of the present time.

‘

“IF WE'RE GOING TO BECOME MORE

, CIVILISED WHAT DO WE DO WITH THIS 2”

lo

poy

4

~%.
Lae

The $64 thousand million question.

REPLY TO GAITSKELL

‘But I’m free,’ writes
‘imprisoned’ Socialist

PROMINENT Rumanian
Socialist, alleged in a recent
list to be under arrest, has writ-
ten to Hugh Gaitskell, leader of
the British Labor party, saying
he is “alive and free and well.”

The writer, Traian Cercega,
whose letter was published by
the Rumanian news agency
Agerpress, denied “tendentious
and fantastic allegations” that he
had been imprisoned, tortured
or starved. He said:

“T am told that you, the leader
of the Labor party, together
with some of your colleagues,
have alleged that I and.some
others like me are under arrest
and have been deported, and that
you expressed anxiety as far as
my life and health are concerned.

“A number of newspapers in.

Britain and other countries are
making the fantastic and ob-
viously tendentious allegation
that I am in Butyrka Jail in
Moscow, in cell No. 287, and

that a mysterious German or.

Austrian prisoner spoke to me
from cell No. 289 on November
4 or 5, 1955, by knocking at the
wall or through a glass. sk
“First of all I should like to
reassure and gladden you: I am
alive, free and healthy, and I
am in my own country, my ad-
dress is: Piata Republicei 36,
Reshitza, Rumania People’s Re-
public, and here I live in free-

Allen answers:

that.

“Dewline is one of the greatest feats of
engineering and lobistics in all history, a monu-
ment to the ingenuity and hardihood of the
North American human being. Unhappily, it
may prove to be far more and far less than

“Tt is the charter under which a tenth of
Canada may very well become the world’s
’ most northerly banana republic. For the sum
of money that has been officially estimated at
$400 million we have at least temporarily

Fas

“We've thrust away our sovereignty”

~» ‘
HE FOLLOWING questioNs are from an
article in the May 26 issue of Maclean’s

Magazine by editor Ralph Allen. The article is
headed: “Have We Lost Our North to the U.S.?”

traded off our whole northern frontier.

“Tn. law we still own this northern fron-
tier. In fact we do not. We have not merely
allowed our military allies, the people of the
United States, to possess it; we have insisted
that they possess it. We have done nothing
so passive as simply giving up our sovereignty
in the Canadian north; we have thrust it away
from us ..3."

In the same article, Allen tells this story:

“The most experienced and responsible
Canadian I met in the north was a man I’d
rather not identify more closely than that. I
asked him bluntly: ‘Do you and your friends
resent the presence of Americans here-?” ‘No,"
he said sadly, ‘it’s the other way around. They
resent our presence here.’ ”

dom together with my family.

“Tn order not to be too lengthy
I wish to tell you during the
days I was allegedly imprisoned
in Moscow, I was actually tak-
ing part, together with all the
workers of Reshitza, in the cele-
bration of the 38th anniversary
of the October revolution.

“In fact I have never been in
Moscow. I live at Reshitza,
where I work in my trade as
moulder and far from rotting in
prison, as has been alleged about
me, I got married on April 11,
1953. The date is registered at
the Reshitza People’s Council.

“And in case some journalists,
fond of sensational news, tell
you that maybe the marriage
certificate is a forgery, let me
add that in February 1954 my
son Nicolae, who resembles me,
was born. I could not have
acquired him through knocking
at the wall of cell No. 287 in
Moscow.

“Beyond the political aspect
of the matter there is a personal
one, which is insulting to me,
namely, the allegation that I

_ was tortured in order to give a

written statement repudiating

my past. I have never been

asked to make such a statement.
% m bea

“In 1930 I started working as

an apprentice at the Reshitza_

works where I am working now. *

At the age of 16 I.entered the
ranks
movement and engaged in vari-
cus trade union activities.

“During the fascist regime I
was arrested and tried, together
with another 32 Reshitza people.

“After the liberation of our
country I took part in the re-.
establishment and unification
of the trade unions.

“IT was elected a member of
the central committee of the
Social Democratic party at the
1947 congress which empowered
the party central committee to
negotiate with the Communist
party with a view to unity.

“In order to convince yourself
of the truth of all I have said
about my condition, you only
have to send a Labor party rep-
resentative to Reshitza. All
kinds of delegates are visiting
us; so let a Labor party leader
come as well, if he wants to.

“And if he would care to be
my guest at dinner, I promise to
observe the rules of good man-—
ners and hospitality and not to
try in any way to disturb the

- raeal, which he will take under

my roof; and so much the less
to do harm to the friendship be-
tween the Rumanian and British
workers. — ; \ ,

“With wishes for success of
the cause of socialism and the
cause of peace.

“IT remain, yours truly,

“Traian Cercega”’

May 25, 1956 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 4

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of the socialist youth —