Smears

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By ALLEN HUTT

Eugene Delacroix’ famous picture, Liberty Leading the People.

Propaganda lies of cold war
had their counterpart in 1871

IGHTY-FOUR ‘years ago the
workers of Paris “stormed
heaven,” as Karl Marx said. For
on March 18, 1871, the working
people of the City of Light rose
and set up the first real people's
government of history, the Paris
Commune.

For over two months the Paris-
lans, arms in hand, held the fort
and blazed the trail for every
workers’ revolution that came
afterwards —~ above all the great
October Revolution in Russia in
1917. And for that those simple
artisans and humble folk of the
mother of revolutionary cities de-
serve the undying honor of all
progressive mankind.

We can truly say today that,
from the mighty triumphs of
Lenin and Stalin onward, there
has not been a fundamental work-
ing-class triumph which did not
stem from that hazy March dawn
in Paris a long lifetime ago:

I shall never forget seeing in a-

Moscow demonstration. a great
poster, showing a Paris ‘Com-
munard expiring on his barricade,
with the giant figure of an arm-
ed: Russian worker striding for-
ward under the slogan “October
—the Commune’s Revenge.”

_ Yes, the world-shaking revolu-
tions of our own day, from Mos-
cow to Peking, are in truth the

revenge of that heroic band who -

planted the Red Flag squarely on

the walls of old Paris and saw

their famous city go up in flame

and fury rather than surrender.
5° m Bes

The Commune of Paris arose
directly out of the Franco-Prus-
Sian war of 1870, the utter col-
lapse of the corrupt and degen-
erate regime of Napoleon II—a
caricatural preview of modern
fascism — and the fact that the
so-called republican “Government
of National Defense” turned out
to be a government of national
betrayal.

On March 18, the leader of that
government, Thiers — the “mon-
strous gnome” of Marx’s phrase
— sought to disarm the Parisian
workers, organised in the Na-
tional’ Guard for the defense of
the capital during the war. But
the troops sent to ‘remove. the
National Guards’ artillery from
the heights of Montmartre frater-
nised with the crowd.

The ensuing rising was the
birth of the Commune, duly for-

municipal

malised by the holding of special
elections ten days
later. -

The men of the Commune had
many illusions, made many mis-
takes;_ today that matters little.
They were the first living example
of what the old English Chartists
called the “absolute supremacy
of the working class’; or, as Fred-

erick Engels put it, “Do you want -

to know what the dictatorship of
the proletariat is like? Look at
the Paris Commune.”

These things the Commune did:

The standing army was abolish-
ed and the people in arms substi-
tuted for it.

All officials were subject to
election and recall and were paid
no more than the wage of a skill-
ed worker; -

The church was separated from
the state and religion left a mat-
ter of individual conscience;

Rents accumulated during the
siege of Paris by the Germans
were remitted;

Industry was to be taken over
and organised on a large-scale
plan of socialist nationalisation.

These were the enlightened

. Measures of the people in power.

They aroused a howl of execra-
tion from the forces of privilege
which -has hardly yet died down;
indeed, which continues today in

the Wall Street-inspired anti-
Communist hysteria..

bes % bos
Thiers and his government,

with the cynical aid of the occupy-
ing Germans, set themselves to
drown the Commune in blood;
and at thé end of May, 1871, they
finally succeeded.

And then, as today, they were
slavishly supported by the old
right - wing ‘Socialists’ who
screamed for the violent suppres-
sion of “Communism” — as men
called it—as loudly as any Napo-
leonic racketeer, pimp or tart.

When Thiers’ forces, based on
Versailles, at last burst into the
bombarded and flaming city the
massacre was one of the most
horrible ever known.

Well were those murky days to
go down to history as “The Week
of Blood.” About 30,000 men,
women and children were slaught-
ered. 3 :

For one brief and awful moment
the ruling class had seen the writ-
ing on the wall; no brutality was

too appalling, no lie too blatant,
to try to erase it.

We have the same experience
today, after all.

x x bos

If anyone is shaken by the
“cold war” propaganda of 1955
let him reflect on the fate of the
equally mountainous anti-Com-
mune propaganda of 1871. Every
lie — the wild tales of the ‘‘pet-
roleuses,’ the supposed women
incendiaries — has long since
been nailed to the counter by the
inflexible hand of history.

Every man’s hand was against

the Communards Karl Marx’s
daughter Eleanor later recalled:
“the condition of perfectly fran-
tic fury of the whole middle
class against the Commune.

“oT many of you it will seem
strange when I remind you that
it was proposed — quite serious-
ly — that the Communards who
had taken refuge in England
should be handed over to the
doctors, and the hospitals for
purposes of vivisection.”

And in‘ London, on the Com-

mune’s first anniversary, the lit-.

tle band of exiles and their Eng:
lish socialist comrades, headed by
Marx himself, could not even hold
a meeting. \

“When we got to the hall we
found it closed against us. The
landlord preferred to return the
deposit and to pay a penalty for
breach of contract.”

Yet, as Eleanor Marx added,
“immediately after this  over-
whelming defeat, these men and
women were gay with the gaiety
of perfect faith. In the darkest
hour ‘they never doubted,. they
never hesitated. They knew the
clouds would lift . . . If not for
themselves, then for their chil-
dren or their children’s children.”

Her immortal father summed
it up, while the firing squads were
still busy on the Seine, in these
words of one of his greatest
works, Civil War in France:

“Working men’s Paris, with its
Commune, will be for ever cele-
brated as the glorious harbinger

of a new society. Its martyrs
are enshrined in the great heart
of the working class. Its exter-
minators history has already
nailed to that eternal pillory
from which all the prayers of
their priests will mot avail to re-
deem them.”

Hoot Lak i

By BOB WARD

Addled by ads or
ad-justed to them?

Glorifying pink chemises,
Eulogizing smelly ‘cheeses,
Deifying rubber tires
Sanctifying plumbers’ pliers;
Accolading rubber panties,
Serenading flappers’ scanties,
Rhapsodizing bathroom fixtures,
Sermonizing on throat mixtures;
Some call them the new “town

criers,”
Others: call them “cockeyed
liars.”
% 50 $e

“ADVERTISING,” the advertis-

ing man said, “is wonderful...
Why, without advertising people
wouldn’t know about all of the
wonderful things that good, old
private enterprise has produced
just for them...”

Of
much

course, the adman says
more than this — much,
much more. To wit; to wit;
“Have you Bloo-ed your lid late-
ly? Remember Bloo—the only
Bloo that is truly white ... comes
in a red box with big, yellow let-
ters. Yessir, eleven out of ten
people who hue use Bloo. Don’t
say ‘Boo,’ say ‘Bloo.’”

Or take the fellow who adver-
tises Denteeth .. . “Just chew
Denteeth after every meal. It
will remove food particles that
even the tooth brush misses.”
What this adman omits to say is
that if one chews enough gum
after enough meals that one will
soon be chewing on them—gums
that is.

“Then there's a tooth paste
which is advertised as ‘“Destroy-
ing. bacteria with one brushing.”
On TV they show millions and
millions of squiggly, wriggly,
wiggly little bacteria — oh! are
they ever a horrible sight. Then
one swish of Blisterine, or is it
Gamble on Boxcars, and all of
the squiggly, wriggly, wiggly bac-
teria are wiped out.

And -this, the adman says, is
because “it wipes out enzymes.”
The trouble here is that “en-
zymes” according to the diction-
ary, exist in all living matter and
are very necessary. So if the ad-
man is right in what he says
about his product there might
conceivably be a danger of not
only “wiping out enzymes,’ but
also in wiping out us... .

One of the things which has
always struck us about all of the

Inca road system traced

advertising is that every advel
tiser has “the best’ product.” And
of course, every product adver
tised has “special features.” All
polishes, get the rub, require “Nn?
polishing.”

In the field of whiskers all
razors whisk whiskers whiskil¥
away with one whisk. “No rub
bing, no brushing, no lather,’ 20
effort—no face.” Our missus says
incidentally, that one admak
who advertises both a safety and
electric razor must be “two
faced.”

All beers are, brrrrrrpier, full-
bodieder, smooonooother, lowe!
caloried. “Switch to Schlitz. Re
member Schlitz the beer with the
full-bodied brrrrrp.”

Then, too, there are all of thé
products with all of the “magic”
formulas in them. “Only Lous?
has Em 54339 in it.’ And ab
though no one ever télls you
what the “formula” is, it 45
rumored that this is really the
boss’ secretary’s mother-in-laws
telephone number. ;

We read recently that adver
tising is the art of making peo
ple think that the product that
they just bought is already a2
antique by the time they get it
home. And, indeed, as one listens
to radio and TV, reads the news
papers and ads that are advertis:
ed ad infinitum it-does just maké
us ponder somewhat.

Adding the whole question uP
at last this one reader of ads feels
that it would be just as well
knowing about much of the pro
duce produced by the ever-lovilé
bosses for little old us. So leave
us all sing a verse on the subject
to the tune of “Smiles.”

tt ses am

There are ads that sell dé
tergents

There are ads that sell us soap?

There are ads that plug all kinds
of products

If we believed them we’d sure bé
dopes.

There are ads that talk of our
complexion

Say that we can !ook just like #
youth

Which proves that ads are cet
tainly ad-dicted

They just never tell the truth:

After two years’ work an expedition headed by Victor W. Von
Hagen has succeeded in tracing the ‘extensive network of roaé®

builf by the old Inca civilization in what is now, Peru.

Before the

Spanish conquest the Inca road system, cut through jungles 4”
winding over mountains, linked an area some 2000 miles long ;
500 miles wide with the capital at Cuzco, 11,000 feet above sea leve’

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MARCH 18, 1955 — PAGE 4