Main LA Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 15, 10 April 1950, pp. 4–5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
To the Editor:
In the concluding section of my article on the Ruhr Authority and the AFL-CIO proposals dealing with the latter (Labor Action, April 3), I wrote that the German Social-Democratic Party had a program for the socialization and internationalization of the Ruhr industries far superior to the one advanced by U.S. trade-union federations. The program is undoubtedly radical and progressive; but the Social-Democrats have done nothing to bring it nearer to realization, and their record suggests no relationship between radical phraseology and an actuality in which the preservation of their bureaucratic flesh-pots is their REAL policy.
“The leaders of German labor in the Ruhr ... have seemed to display more interest in ensuring the appointment of their nominees as trustees of the Ruhr coal mines and iron and steel industries, than in opposing the virtual detachment of the Ruhr from the German economy.” Thus writes Freda Utley, a friendly critic, in her recent book The High Cost of Vengeance (which, despite its various drawbacks, deserves wide circulation). As I indicated in my article, the trusteeship associations were created under the Ruhr statute; they were, and are, composed of German representatives of management, the public and labor; they are the administrative and operational tools, weighted heavily in favor of the old German management, of the occupation powers who have retained real control over the industries. By giving the trusteeship associations a quasi-public character, the Anglo-Americans enabled the Social-Democratic trade-union leadership to send its representatives into them; for, as is well known. Like their British and French confrères, the German socialist leaders, too, hold the formalistic view that public ownership or anything resembling it already constitutes socialization. Naturally, this view also serves to perpetuate their bureaucratic functions.
From any long-range political point of view, their membership in the trusteeship organizations was and is an act of stupidity and spinelessness. The West German Stalinists, for example, vigorously protested the creation of the Ruhr Authority at the time; their leader, Max Reimann, was arrested by the British for his militancy, causing what must certainly be regarded as a national protest and increasing the prestige of the Stalinists.
The subservience of the S-D leadership to the occupation authorities is, of course, no secret (Miss Utley goes so far as to compare the role played by the S-D in the British zone to that of; the Socialist Unity Party in the Russian zone). That they have failed to take the initiative (outside of programmatic pronunciamentos) in any of the vital national concerns of the German masses may yet break their backs; it is bound to drive the German deeper, into their fateful apathy, unless the latter can develop a new and vigorous and audacious leadership.
|
|
Eugene Keller |
Main LA Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 5 February 2024