TE

LIES

“The devil is sick, the devil
1 a saint would be. The devil
is well, the devil a saint is he!”

When the stupidities and crimes
of Hitler appeasement had almost
destroyed Western civilization,
and the Second World War was
at its most crucial stage, butter
wouldn’t melt in the mouths of
the capitalists here when it came
to praising the Soviet Union.

‘The Communists work
for chaos because chaos
is right up their alley.’

With Hitler defeated, no name
is vile enough to call the Com-
munists.

Victory for Hitler would cer-
tainly have brought chaos and to
spare. Strange that Communists
were the first fighters against fas-
cism (in Spain and China) long
before fighting Hitler was fash-
ionable. To judge from this
charge of fomenting chaos you
would think that the Commun-
ists would have welcomed the vic-
tory of Hitler.

But it was the other way
around; the very people who to-
day denounce the Communists
were those who encouraged Hit-
ler, praised him and helped him
to build his war machine in the
1930's to fight Russia.

Who really are responsible for
chaos? Those who are in power
in Canada. Who are in power?
The monopolists. If crisis comes
to Canada, it will be the product
of those in power, those who own
the economy and control the poli-
tical institutions. ®

Who was it that removed price
controls and cancelled the excess
profits tax? The Liberals and
‘Tories. Who are the most obstin-
ate fighters for the reimposition
of price controls, the curbing of
‘profits and the lifting of wages?
‘The members of the LPP.

> Is that “fomenting ‘chaos’? @

Which group warns now of eco-
nomic crisis if this country con-
tinues to bow down to Wall
Street’s policy of using Canada
as a source of cheap raw materi-
als and a market for expensive
US. finished products.

The LPP, which is proposing a
new national policy for Canada
to stimulate Canadian industry,
cut down our dependence on the
Yankee trusts, and to enable us
to trade with the world and in-
crease employment for Canadian
workers.

Are these proposals for chaos?
On the other hand, who yearns
for a “spot of unemployment”
to push down wages? Who re-

Communists.

answered by LESLIE MORRIS

If we would keep the road to progress
clear of the obstacles placed in our way by
the red-baiters and arch-reactionaries, the
Padlock Laws and LaCroix Bills and similar
anti-Communist
must be defeated.

recognized by all democratic people as a
constituent part of all progressive move-

ESLIE MORRIS, editor of the Cana-
dian Tribune, deals here with a few of

the false accusations made against the
There are many others, most

of them variations of these.

These slanders are designed for the pur-
pose of destroying the civil liberties of .
Canadians; to soften them up for war; to
weaken the workers’ movement so that
wage cuts and unemployment will be

harder to resist; to prepare the soil for
* the economic crisis and the fascist dicta-
torship which Canadian reactionary policy

is breeding.

The Communists are singled out for the
main targets because they are the most
active opponents of reactionary capitalist

policy.

_ Neither the Communists nor the labor
movement can be destroyed; but they can
be hurt by reaction and fascism, and the
road ahead for the people as a whole can

be made more difficult.

measures of

ment.

Anyone who falls into the trap of be-
lieving that you can have democracy and
progress minus the Communists is digging
a pit for himself and for democracy.

The Communist movement in Canada is
a quarter-century old; its philosophy is a
century old. It was produced by Canadian
historical development.
is proof of the fact that all attempts to
crush Communists inevitably recoil on the
heads of the would-be crushers because the
Communists voice the desires of all pro-
gressive Canadians.

repression
Communists must be

Canadian history

stricts the importation of fruit
and vegetables? Who have so little
faith in their own “free enter-
prise” system that they refuse to
plan for more hydro power and
more natural gas? Who restrict
Canadian oil production and re-
fuses to develop a steel industry
out of Canadian iron ore and coal?
The very corporations and their
agents who ‘shout “chaos” every
time a Communist opens his
mouth. :
The reason is not far to seek.
The capitalists know that their
profit system produces crisis as
inevitably as Premier Drew
spouts toryism. They want to
shift the blame for the crimes of
their system (their “way of life”)
onto the Communists, in the hope
that the people will miss the real
culprit by being sent up some
side road on a wild goose chase.
e
The more a man beats his
breast about how loyal he is,
the more you should be suspicious
of him. Like charity, true loyalty
begins at home, and is to be
judged by deeds, not words.
“Patriotism is the last resort
of a scoundrel,” said Dr. Samuel
Johnson. Nowadays it is the last
resort of the big business gang
who are in control of Canada.
They know only one loyalty—
cent per centum on every invest-
ed dollar, and they are not par-
ticular how and where it is made.
They do not hesitate to surrender

‘The Communists: are
against Canada — they

are disloyal.’

the national interest for the sake
of their profits.

For example: when Hitler was
rampaging they were ready to
risk their own country’s security
to bribe him to. attack Russia.
That’s why they betrayed Spain
and Czechoslovakia and Ethio-
pia, and why Britain and France
came close to total destruction at
Hitler’s hands. Why did they be-
tray their countries’ security?
Because of their hatred for dem-
ecracy and socialism.

Working people and farmers,
on the other hand, really love their
country. They should: they built
it with their labor. They are at-
tached to it not by chains of gold
but by the bonds of blood and toil.
And when it is threatened by an
invader, it is they who defend it,
with their bodies The peoples of
Burope and Asia showed that,
time and again, when their own
rulers betrayed them, and they
fought for the freedom of their
country.

Here in Canada the King gov-
ernment and the monopolists
have placed our country at the

disposal of the U.S. govern-
ment of Truman, Marshall,
Vandenberg, Taft, the un-Ameri-
can Committee—the enemies of
peace.

Spurning policies of economic
independence and national sov-
ereignty, they have hitched Can-
ada’s wagon to Wall Street’s
Marshall Plan, against which the
peoples of Burope and Asia are
in revolt. This Marshall Plan is
Wall Street’s plan: its aim is to
revive Germany as a war base
and to fasten Yankee control
upon the countries of Hurope
and Asia.

An official document of the
U.S. government openly states
that the motive of the Marshall
Plan is “the maintenance of the
civilization in which the Ameri-
can way of life is rooted.’ In
other words the rule of big bus-

iness. F

The Canadian monopolists are
tying this country to the Ameri-
can colussus and to the boom-
and-buSt American economy.
Their aim is not to save the
Canadian people, but to save
their own shaky capitalist sys-
tem. For the same reason, they
denounce the Soviet Union, Yu-
goslavia, Czechoslovakia; ship
war planes to the butcher Chi-
ang; turn over Canadian sover-
eign territory to the U.S. Army
as a launching platform for
bomb carriers against Russia.

Is that patriotism?

Moreover, it has nothing what-
ever to do with genuine friend-
ship for the American people,
with whom we have much in
‘common; it isa policy of subservi-
ence to Wall Street, which wants
to rule the world for profits and
power.

The big business gang are mo-
tivated, not by Canadian patriot-
ic interests—peace and econo-
mic well-being—but by greed
for profit and hatred of democ-
racy.

This chestnut sprouts all

the time. Anyone who chal-
lenges the forces of class privi-
lege is a “foreign agent.”

The founder of Canadian dem-
ocracy, William Lyon Macken-
zie, was called a “foreign agent”
of the Yankee “democrats.” Lou-
is Riel was called a “Quebec
agent” in Manitoba; Thomas
Jefferson, a “French agent’, as
was Benjamin Franklin.

‘The Communists are
foreign agents.’

Marx and Engels, the found-
ers of Socialism, were denounc-

ed as “French agents” in Ger-"

many,and “German agents’ in

Britain and France. Lénin. in
1917 was called a “German
agent.”

If socialism had been first
» built. in Britain, Premier Drew
would be calling the Commun-
ists ‘British agents’ (which
would have presented some dif-
ficulties for him).

Because the Russian workers
established the first Socialist
government in history, Commu-
nists everywhere are called
“Russian agents.”

Sccialism—common ownership
of the means of production—is
not a country; it is not a state;
it is not of any nationality.

Communism (the aim of a
complete classless society, which
does not yet exist anywhere)
is a philosophy, a world histori-
cal point of view, carried main-
ly by working people in every
country. It grew out of the con-
ditions of capitalism. Where you
have capitalism, you have Com-
munists. To get rid of Commun-
ists, the capitalists would have
to destroy the working class it-
self—whose labor is the source
of all their profits!

Whether or not. there had
been a Russian revolution in
1917 there would be Commun-
ists here. There were Socialists
prior to 1917. As a matter of
fact, scientific socialism (com-
munism) as a mighty stream of
human thought and _ action,
arose originally not in Russia at
all, but first out of the history
of France, Britain, and Ger-
many. It came to Russia long
after it grew up in the highly
developed western European
countries.

- nickel

There are good and sufficient
reasons why it first came to
power in the old Tzarist Em-
pire, but that did not make it
“Russian.”

You can’t export communism;
neither can you import it. It
arises as the answer of the
working people to the prospects
of continuous hardship and war
under capitalism.

To say Communists are “for-
eign agents” is therefore an at-
tempt to arouse hatred to pre-
serve capitalism.

Listen to what Stalin said
about this charge in 1926:

“There are no Communists in
the world who would agree to
work ‘under orders’ from out-
side, against their own convic-
tions and will.and contrary to
the requirements of the situa-
tion. Even if there were such
Communists, they would not be
worth a cent.”

If working people anywhere
take any action to defend and
preserve and extend their in-

terests, they are said by the
press and radio to be “acting
under orders from Moscow,”

whether it be in Czechoslovakia,
China, Canada, the U.S. or Brit-
ain, France and Italy. Actually,
people move to Socialism hbe-
cause of -their own experiences.

The real foreign agents in Ca-
nada are those who do the bid-
ding of international trusts and
cartels, like the one in the al-
uminum industry,
monopoly in Sudbury,
which is owned .in the U.S. To
cover up their tracks Canadian
agents of the U.S. monopolists
and cartelists yell
agent” at the Communists.

(Continued in next issue)

e

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 28, 1948—PAGE 12

or the Inco-

“foreign —