COMMUNISM.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 101, 31 March 1937, Page 3

COMMUNISM.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —With regard to the leading article of your journal of yesterday s date, the metaphysical meandering of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Inge fails to impress me. I hope you will remember that a few years ago. the Press items concerning statements made by this reverend gentleman generally referred to hint as the “gloomy dean.” However, it would he impossible to deal with every statement made in this article as your space is somewhat limited and there!ore 1 will only review the career and condemnation of those “Old Guard Communists,” Radek, Tomsky, Zinovieff, Kameneff, Trotsky and others. Of these you quote the Dean, “We need not feel any pity for the victims who only reap what they have sown. The four beautiful daughters of the Tsar and their invalid brother rise against them. The mills ol God grind slowly but they grind exceedingly, small.” My reply is that I have faith in the working class of the Soviet Union, and in its judgment. Now these elements under discussion were never “Old Guard” Communists. True they have had long association with the party of Lenin and Stalin, l7ut in every case these persons were guilty of grave misdemeanours and showed themselves to be unreliable and were expelled from the Communist Party on more than one occasion, and then, after expressing a reformation of themselves, were readmitted to the party. “But it is impossible to believe,” say the doubters and sceptics, ‘"‘how it is possible for old revolutionaries, ‘for former Socialist leaders,’ to ally themselves in this way with the enemies of Socialism, with Fascism, and work for the destruction of Socialism.”

The history of the working class movement is littered with the examples of individual degeneration and transition to the capitalist camp, and not only to the capitalist camp, but to the camp of the most reactionary sections of capitalism and to persecutors of Socialism. Was not Mussolini originally a leader of the Left Wing of the Italian Socialist Party p And did he not pass over to exercise, hi the pay of his capitalist masters, terrorism and butchery against his former comrades? And what about Messrs MacDonald, Snowden, Thomas and Citrine? What is their relationship to the working class movement to-day? Have not these men become, through the National Government, not only the allies of reaction against Labour and Socialism but, through the foreign policy of the National Government, the allies of Hitler?

And 1914 showed how a whole stratum of former Socialist leadership could pass over to Imperialism and become the butchers of the working class. In every case the causes of this corruption can be traced in underlying social forces and in the previous careel's of the leaders concerned. So with the Trotskyist Group. The legend of the “Old Guard” is a lying legend that has long been exposed. The seeds of their weakness, which was to become final complete corruption, wero from the outset in every issue exposed and fought by the party, by Lenin, by Stalin. But they were given every chance even to the last. Each time they recognised their errors (with shameful deceit as since revealed) they were given a new opportunity to work honourably and responsibly in the party and in the building of Socialism. Just this they refused. They preferred to maintain their opposition even when history had refuted them by the victory of Socialism, and destroyed any social basis for opposition. They betrayed the trust of the working class. Thercforo the work on which they had embarked led them inevitably to the final and ultimate corruption. For they could find no other social basis. Once they had abandoned and openly fought against the basis of Socialism in unity with the party, they could find no other final basis, save in Fascism. Trotsky stands condemned in his open writings of 1933 which, for reasons of space 1 will not quote, and in the light of this I will close by saying that Trotsky’s denials are only fit for fools or diipes—more, only for those who wish to be deceived. —Yours, etc., A COMMUNIST. March 30, 1937.