The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-01-31
THE RIGHT DANGER AND
THE COOPERATIVES
By KARL REEVE


THE working class cooperative store move
i ment in this country has its main strength
in District Nine, centering in the stores affili-
ated to the Cooperative Central Exchange, the
wholesale cooperative, which has about seventy
retail stores affiliated to it. The Exchange
and the retail stores. which are separately in
corporated, have been workingclass coopera-
tives following the leadership of the Commu-
mist Party of U. S. A. and the Comintern. The
stores connected with the Exchange have in
all about 10000 members (shareholders).
The Exchange has been the left wing in the
Northern States Cooperative League. DR.. War
basse, millionaire is at the head of this latter
organization. Warbasse is the chief exponent
of the idea of the neutrality of the cooperatives
in the class struggle, that they should not ''mix
in politics." that they must function indepen-
IDENTIFY and themselves reform the evils of this
society sThere are all shades of bourgeois
theories" of cooperation in and outside of this
league, in addition to the workngclass coopera-
tive movement.
Capitalist Neutrality" Theory
There has for years been right wing ele-
ment within the Exchange and the tendency
developed in recent months to build up a bu-
reaucratic machine in the Exchange which con-
sisted of few highly paid officials, which
ogy, and more and more sought to divorce the
movement from the guidance of the Communist
Party and tended more and more toward War
bassess capitalist theory of neutrality in the
class struggle"
The fight against the right danger in the
working class cooperatives, at the Plenum of
District Nine on October IT, 1929, crystallized
into struggle against the renegade group led
by George Halonen, educational director of the
Cooperative Central Exchange. 1t had been
obvious for some months that Halonen had
been trying to divorce the Exchange from the
class struggle The resistance of Halonen and
Eskel Rom, (the expelled renegade who had
welcomed President Coolidge to Superior and
who is manager of the Exchange) to throw
ing the cooperatives into the August First dem
onstrations was but one indication of the right
wing line which Halonen and his clique
pursuing. The failure to build Party fractions,
the refusal to work in closer connections with
the Trade Union Unity League and the Ma
tional Miners Union, the evidences of white
chauvinism in some of the courses which was
excused by the teachers, the utter failure to
discuss anything but business at the coopera-
tive meetings except to pay scant AMI passing
lip service to the class struggle, the disregard
for the policies and decisions of the Central
Committee by these right wing Party mem
bers, made it clear that Halonen and Rom
were making ready to fight the Party on an
opportunst platform and wished to make the
Party the tail of the cooperative movement.
When the Central Committee instructed the
fraction that Halonen be removed in the middle
of October Halonen refused to resign, and
modified what support he could among the
Party members and anti-Party elements in the
cooperatives, for an open fight on the Party.
The board of directors of the Exchange sup
ported Haonen s to 8. Although Halonen and
Rom and their clique made every effort to
hide the real issues involved, they were soon
unmasked.
As the struggle against the Halonen oppor-
tunst social-fascist group progressed the fun
damental issues were forced into the open.
Halonen based this opposition to the line of
the Party in the cooperative on "the backward
ness of the Masses" on denial of the Com
intern estimate of the third period of sharpened
class battles, and in some of his speeches was
forced to bring out this anti Comintern line.
In the cooperative conferences held throughout
the district in November Halonen and Rom
urged the cooperative workers to fight the
trusts by Standardization only. Thus Halo
mems group denied Lenns teaching of the
working class cooperative. In actual practice
they ignored the role of working class coopera-
tives. They ignored the fact that the only way
in which the cooperatives can exist and COM
pete with the trusts is to function as organs of
class struggle, as part of the working class
struggle against capitalism, working in close
connection with the other working class organ
izations and especially the Communist Party,
the highest form of organization of the work
ing class.
Haonen's defiance of the decisions of the
Communist Party of which he was member,
exposed his renegade, opportunist line and
once more demonstrated that once anyone be-
gins attacking the Party of the working class,
the path to counter-revolution is begun. In
the November issue Of the Pyramid Builder"
Halonen openly embraced the bourgeois line
of the millionaire Warbasse, the famous theory
of the neutrality of the cooperatives in the
class struggle Halonen declared that the Elk
change would not take "dictation" from the