The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-09-09
and Thomas
Apologize for
Macdonald
BY HARRY CANNES.

| background, than Morris Hlluuit erstu,bi1a
legal defender of the white guards and chamnion
OF the sanctity of the capitalist law of pronertv
naSVlly Joined the Reverend Norman Thomas
! CWho feared his godly vestments might be so1ed,
with the touch of OLD in the defense of their
socialist comrades in Britain who are embar-
rassingly and inextricably tangled I'D with the
British bankers in an open attack on the work.
ing class
Here is the problem with which the American
socialists are faced. In Britain socialist gov
eminent comes to power after promising the
workers socialism in our time" increased I'M
employment insurance payments increased
wages cuts in ornaments, and so on.
After long period of decreased wages. de-
crease IN unemployment insurance payments. in
creased ornaments, and increased terror for the
colonial masses in India, China and Africa. the
socialist" government comes to an atr,1pt end
by the merging of its outstanding leadership
With the open spokesman of the inperfalists in
the Conservative and Liberal parties
And all this when the socialists throughout
the world were proclaiming the Superiority" of
socialist" government over the Soviet Union in
advancing the interest of the working class
The workers everywhere under capitalist rule
whether under the guise of a socialist coalition
Germany and England, or a Republican rule
as, in the United States, found their conditions
growing worse all the time. Wage cuts increased
unemployment was growing, and the terror of
the capitalists against the workers was widening
Now the bubble has burst. Hquit Norman
Thomas, and the "miltants" in the socialist
party, whether they under Lovestone's aegis
g Stanley's, must explain" to the workers They
must tell them why they should follow Social
lists" and not Communists since the unanswera-
BILE facts show that socialists betray the work.
erS in crisis and Communists demonstrate that
they lead in wiping out capitalism and building
the foundations Of socialism, not in words but
in deeds.
What Lee Proposed.
Algernon Lee one of the American socialist
party delegates to the last Congress of the Sec
ond International in Vienna, fearing sometime
ago that some such thing would happen adj
v1sed his comrades to lay off. Lee who believes
that, as it is, the Socialists have everywhere a
hard enough task fooling the workers. thinks
the task is made no easier when a socialist min
lister is caught kissing kings hand fervently-
if Socialists in other countries sqrawk too loudly
about it. So Lee declared:
Really we American socialists have neither
achieved so much dared and endured so
much for the that we should assume
guardianship over the socialist morality of our
In other words who is Hillquit (oiy sinner
that he Isl, Thomas (close crony of Mayor
Murphy of starvation fame in Detroit) that they
should cast stones at such sterling men as Mac
Donald, Thomas and Snowden But socialist
necessity knows no morality 1t is not SO r,lch a
guardianship over" the comrades of '',e old
World" the pressing need of fooling the work
ers at home.
How does Hillquit do it? Just as you would
expect socialist lawyer to act under the cir
cumstances. He lies outright There is hardly
an instance in the recent period of wholesale
lying of the socialist party to exceed Hillqut's
attempted defense of the Opposition in the
Labor Party in order to clear the skirts of
Socialism.
Hillqut tries to say that the program ad-
vanced by the late Labor cabinet belonged in
reality to the capitalist class and not to the
Labor government. Here is the documentary
evidence. In the August 90 issue of the New
Leader, Hillquit writes:
"The spokesman for the possessing classes
proposed to meet half of the requisite sum (of
the SSOO0G0.000 deficit) by increased taxation
and the other half by economies in expendi
lures, which include reduction of salaries and
wages of government employees and of the ben
efits paid to the unemployed"
This was not the program of the possessing
classes" 1t was the program of the Labor Party
both MacDonalds and the present Opposition"
Here is the proof of this fact printed on the
first page of the British Daily Herald on August
y, 1881, now official organ of the Opposition"
and it appears in heavy italic type so there won't
be any misunderstanding about it:
"The Conservatives are demanding that IS
per cent of the budget deficit shall be met by
economies and only rs per cent by new taxa
tion THAT, Mr. Hillquit is the program of the
possessing clasS-H. G., as against the so per
cent economies and 80 per cent taxation pro-
posed by the Labor government"
So Hillquit in his defense has the Labor gov.
eminent fighting against it's own unanimous
policy.
Norman Thomas, skilled in doping up uppal-
atable facts so that they are longer recog-
nizable does the task in his own novel way;
that is, by not mentioning the unpleasant things,
and in the socialist fashion pointing to the "pie-
in-the-sky." 1.-THE silver lining to the cloud"
breaches the Reverend Thomas-"and it is
very genuine silver lining $50 is the pie-in-the-
skyD-"is that now we can hope to have again
a more aggressive socialist party in Britain"
Did Macdonald lack aggressiveness? More
were jailed and murdered under his regime in
India than under the Conservative Churchill
Never mind, says Thomas, LEI us look to the
Messiah Henderson, he will build socialism on
Englands fair shores But Thomas forgets to
say anything about Observation-Disclosures the