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SOCIAL-FASCISM-- "REJUVENATION" OF S.P.     319

opportunities for social-fascist repression of the workingclass that have been afforded certain of its brother-parties in Europe. Consequently we find its social-fascist tendencies less concretely expressed on the political field than in those trade unions where it has won power. But wherever the capitalist class has given it a "tryout," the S.P. has invariably made good: the "socialist" municipal governments of Milwaukee and Reading, Pa., have not shamed the tradition of Mueller and MacDonald. In Milwaukee, one of the worst open-shop cities in the country, the recent unemployed workers' demonstration was clubbed by the police and workers arrested as in other 100 per cent American cities. Reading, where the "left" socialist and Musteite, James Maurer, is a member of the City Council, is not behind Milwaukee in its devotion to socialist ideals. It cooperated excellently with the would-be executioners of the Gastonia prisoners by having its "socialist" police arrest workers who were collecting funds for the defense of the seven victims of mill owner's justice.

And is it a far cry from Zorgiebel's May Day bloodbath to an editorial that appeared in the New Leader, weekly organ of the S.P., on May 25, 1929, defending an attack by the Tammany police on a group of workers? The police, enraged by a sign: "Down with Walker's Police Brutality" that was hung outside the Communist Party headquarters on Union Square, had attacked the workers gathered outside the building, ferociously clubbing defenseless men, women and children, and arresting more than a score. The New Leader editorial, headed "A Stupid Demonstration," was as follows:

"The parade of the New York police on Saturday was the occasion for an asinine demonstration by the Communists. A huge provocative banner displayed from their building carried an inscription calculated to enrage the marching men. In the disturbance that accompanied the removal of the banner by the police, a few Communists were clubbed and some wholesale arrests were made. The Stalinite generals appeared to enjoy it ad were prepared with photographers to visualize it with pictures.

"...a sweeping attack which includes all the men in the service is absurd and unjust. There are patrolmen who have not lost their sympathy with the workers and a policy of baiting them displays a bovine intelligence... The stupid demonstration in Union Square shows that Communism is a pathological disease to be avoided." (Emphasis mine. --A.B.M.)

Here is a document of a thoroughly social-fascist character. Defense of the police against the workers, ideological justification of police savagery, a demagogic attempt to differentiate among these