The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-06-20

FOR A FEMINIST LINE IN
AGRICULTURE

from Lenin" in the Draft Program, he would
have found page III, Feb. Communist) Lell-
ms statement as follows: "The small farmer
under capitalism, whether he likes it or not,
whether he is aware of it or not-becomes a
commodity producer" But Comrade Moral, we
regret, appears too lofty to read Lenin, even
criticizing Lenin's term Small farmer"
But the serious thing about this view, which
Comrade Moral reveals by his evident anxiety
about this mythical process of going back to
feudaism-"th through the Farm Board trying
to put into practice the very slogan advocated
by the W.P.F., i.e., that farmers should quit
producing for the market and only produce
enough for themselves"-is that it is wholly
reactlonary, anti-class struggle idea. In its
mildest form I is put forth by social-democra-
tic demagogues as the possibility of building up
the middle class, of restoring the petty bourgeo-
Isle, of Bernsteins revision of Marx, of estab-
fishing on an economically sound basis the
idyllic Small rural proprietor" ..-
We regret Comrade Morals confusion but If
he proceeds to his next step on this path an
alliance between the revolutionary proetariat
and farmers who, heaven forfend, are imbued
with the idea of Comrade Moral on the posi-
bllity OF such deUoIutton he enters the door of
yielding everything in the struggle against big
capital to the petty bourgeois agrarian; because
if the farmer sees this as his goal, he will
fight for this and not for socialism, and if we
have an alliance with him we must go along
Left and Right Meet
But when Comrade Moral comes to the state
ment in the Draft that-"If the city proletariat
by struggle can compel the employing class to
pay higher wages, this would help to absorb
the surplus" he carefully separates this from
all that went before and after, thus mutilating
the meaning of the context and breaks into
he daft e+v
rade Bert DAILY Worker, May 24).
Only Comrade Moral, who wants to give US a
scientific revolutionary program in place Of
the Draft, is fearful of attempting, as Conlrade
Bert logically and consistently tried to do, to
establish theoretical base for his 'cleftism,"
and falls back on his own uncertainty by ask
ing questions. ez.
"Do we assume" he asks from his own doubts,
that production would not increase propor-
tionately?" No, Comrade Moral we do not
assume anything of the sort. We know, as
Communists should, that production would in
crease more than the proportion absorbed by
the increased consumption But what of it?
Again he asks: Would not the spectators
in food increase their profits on the strength
OF higher wages to the workers ?" Very likely,
Comrade Moral, since spectators, rascals that
they are, have been known to do such things if
they get monopoly But why advance such
childish argument against struggle of the
workers for higher wages? At least, why ad-
vance it in the name of Scientific revolu-
tionary" objection to asking the poor farmers
to help the proletariat in its wage struggles?
Somewhat ponderously Comrade Moral OBJ
Jects to Point (g) para. two because it fails,
he claims, "to point out the inpossibility of
restoring sovency to agriculture" even if the
farm masses are pauperized If Comrade Moral
had read the Draft Program carefully at all,
he would have found page 1855, April Com
munst) whole page where the impossiblity
of organized capitalism" in farming is clearly
explained.
Such proposals Comrade Moral suggests in
his article, when they do not merely repeat
those already found in the programmatic con-
illusions of the Draft, are mostly grave oppor-
tunistic errors, some openly so, some "Ieftist."
Hence we feel that he has acted hastily in wav-
ing aside the Draft Program. And we trust
that he will benefit from his present surround
lngs to improve his feminist knowledge. with
which we trust he will be of great aid in carry
ing on our Party's long neglected work among
the farmers.