The Daily Worker

For United Struggle
Against Hunger

By ROBERT MINOR

In the struggle against hunger and evictions in New York
City, two things stand out:

1. The absolute need of bigger and stronger mobilization of masses to compel the Tammany-Wall Street city
government to grant real concessions to the starving families of jobless workers

Without this-nothing
will be obtained.

2. That such a mass
mobilization, or even the
simplest unity of the workers and
of several organizations for struggle against the brutal Tammany
machine for unemployment relief
-is being actively sabotaged by
various groups, mainly the leaders
of the Socialist Party.

In the arrangements for the demonstration at the City Hall on June 6,
the proposals of the Unemployed
Councils and of the Communist Party
for the united front and for one single
demonstration of all of the workers
that could be mustered together by
all organizations, were evaded. The
demonstration of June 6 was considerably weakened by leaders of the
Socialist Party and of certain renegade ex-Communist groups, who succeeded in separating the workers into
two demonstrations.

Throughout the present immediate
crisis with the Tammany threat of
shutting off all unemployment relief,
the same spirit of disunity has continued to govern the actions of the
leaders of the Socialist Party, etc.

At the same time, it is known that
great numbers of the rank and file
of the Socialist Party are sincerely
opposed to this disgraceful policy of
sabotage and would gladly help to
bring about unity of all unemployed
workers' organizations in this crisis
if they clearly understood what their
leaders are doing, and the consequences in terms of suffering of the
working class.

Last Tuesday, when the various delegations congregated in the City Hall
to demand an interview with the
Mayor, the delegation of the Unemployed Councils headed by myself
proposed to all of the other delegations that we unite for the purpose
of presenting fighting demands to the
Mayor then and there. Certain men,
Altman of the Socialist Party and
Rubinstein of the Lovestone group,
loudly and angrily rejected this proposal and insisted to the Mayor's
door keepers that they be regarded
as separate delegations.

Again on Wednesday at the public hearing by the Board of Estimate
speaking on behalf of the Unemployed
Council delegation, I declared that
the division of the ranks of the workers in the struggle for unemployment
relief, at which the Tammany politicians are sneering, is a handicap
which we will be able to overcome in
spite of those responsible for it. I
declared the Tammany government
will soon be faced with a united
struggle in which we can bring literally hundreds of thousands of workers to the City Hall in such a spirit
of militancy as can compel concessions.

It is our sincere belief that this can
really be done.

Do the workers who are members
of the Socialist Party understand
that their leaders are refusing to permit a united struggle against starvation? Do the rank and file members
of the Socialist Party know that we
can have a united struggle (and with
material successes, we believe) immediately, as soon as the sabotage of
such unity by their leaders is
smashed? The National Executive
Committee of the Socialist Party has
tried to make it appear that the Communist Party refuses to discuss the
question with the official representatives of the Socialist Party. This is
not true. The Communist Party does
not refuse to discuss the question of
unity with any representatives that
the Socialist workers select or recognize as their spokesmen.

But the Communist Party does not
propose to postpone its efforts to
unite the workers' ranks until Socialist leaders agree to united struggle.
Hunger and starvation are facing
hundreds of thousands of New York
workers. A united front of struggle
against it is a matter of life and
death. Let us reach the honest working class members of the Socialist
Party and convince them that unity
is both necessary and possible. Only
the Socialist workers will increasingly
strive for unity.

with a strong united mass movement we can accomplish wonders.