The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-09-08
Many Hardships

IA returned after nearly two years in
the Soviet Union, where he put up
rock crushing plants. He worked in
the depths of the Urals and in the
Ukraine, all through the sections
where the capitalist liars are report
ing cannibalism.
There was great hardship. The ku-
laks have done immense damage in
some places, and have tried their
hardest to bring on a famine. My
brother was being paid in rublss, and
had no special privileges. He lived
as the Russian workers did, but says
it wasn't much worse than the usual
construction job in the west. When
he left America he had an I.W.W.-
syndicalist hangover; he couldn't be-
lieve that workers actually ruled in
the U.S.SR. But he came back a
Udarnik and Communist.
The instincts of any honest worker
or intellectual will help him under
stand what is going on over there.
Many things have happened to the
Soviet Union; mistakes, calamities,
but it is workers land, and they
AA0 Ob4lNAll16 OOOldllDll4. ILLS WIS
IN 1917; it was true during the Nep
retreat; it is true today.
Theodore Dresser
THEODORE DRESSER has come out
4 with statement of his CONVEX
sion to Mira, on the grounds that the
New Deal comes to us direct from
Moscow. Many other liberals are try
ing to discover the first beginnings
of American Socialism in Mira. But
the most cursory examination ought
TO dispel this fantasy. Mira is only
a kind of housekeeping by capital
ism. 1t is no fundamental change.
Tt is the cooperative state of Mus
solim and Hitler which Mira inaugu-
rates, not Socialism.
The acid test, always, is ownership;
who will own the land, mines, fac
tories under Mira or Fascism? Who
owns them in the Soviet Union?
No. Mr.. Dresser, you have made a
serious mistake, and will some day
realize it, perhaps with anguish of
soul.
The ownership Of America will re-
main with the same small clique who
own it now; but they will have g.
rehabilitated state power in their
hands, new ruthless weapons. They
won't have to worry about trade
unions; they will eliminate political
turmoil, government will be cheaper
In cost, more firmly in their hands,
no Congress to bride, etc, etc.
We are moving, through Mira, to-
ward that martial law by Capitalism
which is called Fascism. Theodore
Dresser may well be one of its first
victims when the velvet glove is taken
on the iron hand.
Who owns the land and the fac
tories? That is the test. Hitler made
the chief point in his recent speech:
the idea that Fascism represented the
battle of private property against the
rise of Soviet Socialism.
In the Soviet Union there Is no
private ownership; the wealth of the
nation belongs to the nation, TO the
workers of the nation. Mira does not
propose to abolish rent, interest," and
profit; ask General johnson or the
Duponts and MELONS; they know
But there is no private rent, interest
or profit In the U.S.S.R.
August BebeI on the Liberals
IN the memoirs of August Bebel,
written In 1910, find the follow.
ing paragraph, as true today as yes
terday:
Liberalism is always hopeful, 30
long as the semblance Of q liberal
government is in sight, no matter
how many disappointments have be-
fallen them in the course of decades.
Because bourgeois liberalism itself
lacks the courage and the energy for
strong deeds, and because it breads
every real movement of the people.
It always rests its hopes in the rulers,
who seemingly or actually make small
concessions to it. BY means Of the
enthusiasm and the blind confidence
which it shows for such personalities,
II hopes to make them subservient to
It's ends. In the present case, the