Pre-convention discussion

Education-in the party clubs

Editor’s Note: By arrangement with the national office of the Labor-Progressive Party, the Pacific
Tribune is devoting its columns to a discussion of t he Draft Resolution prepared by the national execu-
tive of the LPP for the 3rd Convention which takes place January 21—25 in Toronto,

All LPP clubs and members 2re invited to send in their comments, criticism and proposals. All
such communications should be addressed to William Kashtan, I.PP national office, 73 Adelaide St ot

West, Toronto.

By HAL PROCTOR

HE Dub Teens of the Draft Resolution gives the Party clubs and committee a much-
neaded weapon to tackle the job of club education in a more decisive way than ever

before.. It will, if properly used, be the basis for the widest discussion of Party policies, a
level of our clubs and finally a means of giving the mass work

means of raising the political
of the Party a,new spurt forward.
»As the Resolution points out, “The
quality and impact of our work
must be improved ... as part of |
the struggle to raise the level: and
increase the effectiveness of all
our mass work we must strength-
€n and continuously improve our
Struggle on the _ ideological
fronich a

In this is summed up the basic
concept that should govern all of
our educational work and above all
our club education. If the centre of
Party work is in the club then one
center of our struggle on the
ideological front must be in the
club, in the club educational, By
Placing the question of the ideolo-
8ical struggle as an integral part
of mass work, the Resolution in-
troduces a correct conception of
the role of education, which has
been all too lacking, It is in fact
Orme of the root causes for our
Weaknesses in solving the problem
of club education. é

The first aim of club education
Should be to provide club meetings
and members with a political com-
Pass and purpose. Whilst. every
Member comes to the Party in his
Or her own way, the basic reason
for joining is to give to their daily
struggles the real meaning of so-
Cialism. If the club education is
either a routine of business, or ed-
Ucationals are separated from real
life, then club meetings can _be-
come a chore. ;

On the other hand if the com-
Yade leaves the meeting ‘with
“Gee, that was an_ interesting
Meeting, I learned something, I've
really got to get going,’ then the
educational has done a good job.
If, in addition he says, “Tom would
enjoy our meetings. I’ve got to ask
him to the next one,” then he
Would really say that club educa-
tion is fulfilling the role that it
Should.

The key, as the Resolution indi-
Cates, is to abolish the artificial
Separation between our education-
al work and our mass work. Our’
Meetings must always reflect the
aim of mobilizing the masses into
action on immediate needs, helv-
ing them to draw the political les-
eh aah 4

sons from their struggles and
winning them for the Socialist so-
lution to their problems.

That means club _ education
should be removed from the cate-
gory of “luxuries,” or abstract lec-
tures right in the center of mass
activities and work.

What this means in real life is
that every committee and club ex-
ecutive should gear their educa-
tional work to the mass campaigns
of the Party; to regard the club
meetings as an integral whole, and
to be planned as such. Thus in the
current peace campaign, club ex-
ecutives should plan the education-
al on peace or war, on imperialism
and the relation of this to the
-battle for socialism.

This needs not be in any way
abstract but in direct relation to
the issues of day, as for example
the Berlin crisis. The same is true
of municipal campaigns—a discus-
sion of the role of elected mem-
bers as tribunes of the people.

In Toronto we have only begun
this task, but it is already bearing
some fruit. The peace campaign
was opened by a series of notes to
all clubs and an outline for club
discussion. In the pre-convention
discussion we are arranging a spe-
cial conferencé of all club Organ-
izers, speakers and _ educational
directors, the issuance of outlines
and the organization of a thorough
going campaign in every club.

Such a perspective also demands
that our educationals have time-
liness—direct and speedy reaction
to events as they occur. This can-
snot. be-done by directives or notes
from the top but must rest on the
initiative of club educational di-
rectors, using the materials at
hand, namely, the Tribune and the
National] ‘Affairs Monthly. The col-
umns of Charles Sims, J. B. Sals-
berg, Tim Buck, Leslie Morris or
the various articles can easily form
the basis for any club educational.
They have the added advantage
that they are directly connected
with the mass campaigns of the
Party. : ;

Does this mean that we will onlv

take up the questions of theory at.

classes and schools? Of course not.
It only means that club  educa-
tionals should not attempt to be
study-circles. Thus the question of
peace cannot be discussed without
an analysis of imperialism, the role
of the U.S.S.R. as a Socialist state
—or the wage question without a
discussion of value, price and pro-
)fit, What it does mean is that club
educationals will be directly related
to mass activity.

While all of this is true for ter-
ritorial clubs it is doubly true for
industrial clubs. Here the problems
of the unions and the shop must
find active reflection in the work
of the club and in“club education.
Without such an approach fhese
clubs will not flourish and we will
not be able to carry out concentra-
tion tasks. Our industrial clubs
have the major job of carrying the
line of the Party to the workers,
of winning them for Marxist pol-
icies. -

All of the foregoing will only be

tives and committees make the
selection of a proper educational
director a major political problem.
The educational director is regard-
ed as being only second to that of
club organizer, a person actively
connected with mass work. Club
executives who seek the solutions
of mass work, attendance at meet-
ings and recruiting, will make edu-
cational work a, No. 1 point on their
agenda, fighting for the concept of
a unified club meeting. Education
is the business of the executive.

We have the opportunity and the
e .
necessity in this period of pre-con-
vention discussion of turning the
light of criticism on all our work.
One of the first places must be on
our club education—of raising the
political level of our clubs. It will
be the best guarantee that the pre-
convention discussion itself will be
a thoroughgoing review of our past
work and the preparation for the
struggles ahead. They fight for
“Party consciousness, for Commun-
ist morale and militancy” is the
fight to transform our clubs into

political discussion.

empty phrases unless club execu--

centres of mass work and lively |

Smoking out the rats

preview).

A dramatic scene from the Soviet film “Fall of Berlin”

which .

opens at tite State Theater, Sunday, November 21 (midnight

the Beaver Brigade, that the

defence appropriation spent for
peace instead of for war.

The announcement was made
during a public report of Brigade
members on their return from
Europe.

“In Europe they are working
night and day to strengthen peace
by strengthening their countries. A
Polish student told me, ‘You know
that with our 6,000,000 dead we
don’t want war.’

“But here the army is becoming
the answer to the growing lack of
jobs for youth, to lack of a recrea-
tion and health program.

“We have run into intimidation
in Canada in trying to tell our
story, but we are not afraid be-
cause as we tell our message more
and more people will support us.

“Already the anger of the stud-

ent body has compelled McGill-

University to. re-admit six Brigade
‘members whom a Dean with no-

: The LPP column

@

[7S a three-hour drive, north

and east, from Calgary to
Drumheller. After crossing miles
Of prairie, the road turns and
dips suddenly into a deep - cut
valely, with steep grey sand-
stone walls; the Drumheller
Valley, through which winds the
Course of the Red Deer.

Along the river banks, set in
the stone slopes that have been
Carved and rounded by centur-
ies of moving water and wind
and ice, stand the pitheads of
the mines. A mile or so out of
town, across the bridge and
along the road that parallels the
river, you reach the Hy-Grade

, the hoist, the coal is coming up,
and then gushing with a roar
into the waiting railway cars.
The men at the seam are in un-

four miles away.

As I walk back to town in the
Warm noon sun (I’m early; the
Meeting’s not till the evening)
'—a hearse speeds past, and I

“The Valle y

mine, and then the Brilliant. At ©

der the hill, anywhere up to

wonder for a moment. ... Later

that night, I learn what had :

happened. A comrade of ours
from nearby Newcastle had been
killed in the mine, crushed in-
stantly by a fall of rock. The
Party meeting, all miners save
one or two, will take note, in
simple words, of the loss of Com-
rade Takacs; another victim of
the coal operators’ greed. —

\

Hand in hand with the op- —
daughter at the piano, he and

erators, the bosses’ stooges in
the ranks of labor work against
the miners. John Brown, ecre-
tary of the Brilliant lofal, is
threatened with expulsion from
the Miners’ Union, on _ the
charge that he stated at the
CCL Convention that he’s a
Communist and proud of it. The
miners of Drumheller and East
Coulee and Newcastle, gather-
ing for the meeting, are out-
spoken in anger—and derision
—at the company puppets who
think they can kill militancy
with a threat. This issue, of a
certainty, won't be let pass

‘

without a pretty sturdy fight

_ from the men of the Valley.

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Supper that night at the Rob-
erts’—a heart-warming visit
with Comrade Art, his wife, bro-
ther, and family. Welsh-Canadi-
an miners, who speak and sing
with the lilt and gusto of the
men of “the Valley” in. old
Wales—and fight with the spirit
and staunchness of Communists

‘ everywhere.

After supper, with Art’s small

Dave sung the “Peatbog Sol-
diers” as I haven’t heard it sung
before—with plenty of fight in
it, and no dirge at all.

They have a letter from a
Comrade whom I remember
well from last year’s Provincial
School: a young Joe Ivady, of
East Coulee. Let me quote you
part of it: :

“Art, now I know more what
a Communist has to fight for be-
cause I’m living in it. Here we
are building our country. The
Hungarian people and our great

By STANLEY RYERSON

_ at last, as they over-fulfill the

leaders are on their feet, build-
ing a Socialist country, out o:
@ war-torn country. .. . ‘

“Pm working here as a miner
... Where I work we miners re-
ceive free housing and these
houses are all modern, with an
upstairs, equipped with flush toi-
lets, water, electric light, and
they also give us stoves, coal
and wood free of charge. You
can see that the people in a
country where the workers elest
their own government, have rea-
sons to fight for it and defend it
against such a plan as the Mar-
shall Plan, which make our
country and others just an Am-
erican market. ...

The day will come, too, in the
Valley, when the mines belong
to the miners and all who la-
bor, in common; in place of the
miners’ shacks there’ll be com-
fortable homes; and the miners,
while remembering their fallen,
will sing of the future that’s won

Plan. <

in Prague,

a

1948 commander of

National Federation of Labor

Youth will campaign to have the present $280,000,000 nattonal

torious pro-Nazi sympathies had
tried to bar from registration.

“In Czechoslovakia we won the

title of shock brigade by fulfilling
120 percent of our quota in the
work of rebuilding Liddice, the town
the Nazis swore would never exist
again. Little as our work was, it
was a token of friendship to th
youth of Czechoslovakia. ;

“Everywhere we went in Poland
we were met with singing. At the

International Conference of Work. _
ing Youth delegates from countries *

under attack by Wall Street’s

Quislings appealed to us to bring ©
the message to Canadians to stop —

the sending of arms to Greece,

China, Indonesia, Viet-Nam, France |

and Spain.

“We stayed at a castle formerly
owned by Hungary’s biggest land-
owner. It belongs now to the
youth, with whom we worked build-
ing a canal.

Dick Allan, Student Christian
Movement delegate, related in-
stances of the transformation of
the education systems in the new
democracies. “It costs 50 cents a
day to stay at student residences
and the government
supplies all books. Apprentices at-

tend schools three hours out of _

eight with full pay.

“Polish workers
union schools for three months
with full pay, or can get two years

on half pay for university, | :
Throughout eastern Europe there _

attend trade

World youth ask no |
more arms shipments _

A packed meeting in’ Vancouver greeted with cheers an
announcement by Norman Neremberg,

are night schools, schools at peo-

ple’s resorts. every conceivable
means of educating the people.”

_Gerry Kennedy, WIUC delegate, >
said the workers would have starv-

ed to death if they had waited for i.
free enterprise to reconstruct their _

industries. “The trade unions are

doing the job and lead in shaping _

the economic and political plans of
the country. To me it seemed a

great thing for the workers to be |

their own bosses,”

“Nationalization has boosted pro--
duction 50 percent in Czechoslo- —

vakia and similar results are being _ é

chalked up in Poland and Hun-

gary,’ stated Mine-Mill delegate
Robin Denton. “The people know
that the harder they work the more

benefits they get. Wages are rising —

and prices are tumbling. Living
costs fell visibly while we were in

Hungary,

“Workers there seldom spend _

more than 10 percent of their in--

come on rent.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 19, 1948 — PAGE 7

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