Montana labor news., 1938-09-01


Richard Lake people is men
aced by these things NOW. 1t is
menaced by the capitalist system
that is riding it to destruction.
The great tasks of popular educa-
ton, as I have said before, are to
point out tirelessly the instances of
these general truths. Such books as
you Can't Do That" which empha-
size these matters, are important
contributions to the struggle as a
whole. They serve as arsenals of
facts for the writers and speakers
who r carrying the fight against
Fascism into the broad fields of
American life. They are also bull
warks at home, keeping the record
straight, utilizing the passion Of
people generally for the authority of
the printed word.
Seldes's book hits hard and
straight. 1t is a hurried book, writ
ten out of the shift and heave of
contemporary events, and therefore
repetitious and garrulous to a de-
gree, but there is no mistaking the
impact Of its message. One of
Americas foremost newspapermen,
Seldes believes ~fervently that a free
press is the bulwark of our civil
liberties. And when he has to turn
in the report that the bulwark is
faulty, corrupt, and crumbling, he
turns in one that leaves no smallest
comforting loophole Of doubt. He
has hope to offer concerning our
free" press; that hope is the con
tinuing growth Of the Newspaper
Guild, which has made newspaper
men conscious of their social role as
workers and Of the tremendous re-
sponsibility they bear in presenting
news.
The general outline of the story
that Seldes has to tell is familiar to
a good many readers. It is the story
of denial of Observation-Disclosures
teed civil rights and liberties to
minority groups and parties and ia
the working class in general by the
capitalist owners and controllers OF
the United States. It is the story OF
violence fostered exclusively by en-
ployers and exploiters and then
blamed on working class leaders in
various red-baiting ways. 1t is the
story of strikebreaking, lynching
murder, terror, and intimidation en-
gineered by employers through the
American Legion, the Chamber Of
Commerce, the National Guard, and
vigilante groups. It is the story Of
class warfare openly declared and
class hatred actively inflamed,
Seldes does an excellent, stimu-
lating job of buttressing this gen
eral outline with relevant instances
He gives careful consideration to the
Wall Street Fascist plot that tried
to involve General Smedley Butler
as a dictator on a white horse in
1884. This plot, you may remember
was laughed out of the press, per
haps a lot too conveniently SeldeS
suggests, and gives SOLDERING reasons
When he comes to specific recon-
mendations for the fight against this
menace of Fascism, Seldes unfortu-
nately fumbles and scrambles and
lapses into the specious posing of the
issue, Fascism versus Democracy
This mans keen intelligence ano
courageous unearthing of facts
should have resulted in a sharper
s%ynthesizing of his findings. Of first
Importance, he says, is the defense
and maintenance of a free press
though how this is to be done short
of socialism he has little to say
Third on his list is a point, men
toned nowhere else in the book, that
deserves much fuller elaboration and
a position of greater importance on
the agenda. That is adherence to
cooperative and similar movements
for economic liberation in the
knowledge that without economic
liberty we will never enjoy civil
liberty" This might well be elab-
GRATED into a separate volume. Ger
tainly without the development OF
the cooperative movement, the Popu-
lar Front on which Seldes pins SO
much hope can never attain suffi-
cient strength to stop Fascism in its
tracks.
Because Mr.. Seldes has done such
excellent work as far as he has gone,
it is hard to criticize him harshlyi
but it is a fact that he has closed
his eyes at the last. He has failed
to see that the problem of stopping
Fascism is really the problem OF
stopping capitalism, and he has gone
unreflectively on to divide the world
into Fascist versus Democratic ma
tons, forgetting that the Demo
cratic nations are capitalistic ma
tons too, and that the difference in