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U.S. AGRICULTURE AND TASKS OF THE PARTY

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adopted the main policies of the Populist Party and swept the million votes over to the Democratic Party, wrecking the Populist Party.

4. Much the same role as Bryan played with the Populist movement was played by Roosevelt in 1912 with the "Progressive" movement, and La Follette in 1924, in disorganizing the Farmer-Labor movement.  As variations we note the so-called "Non-Partisan League."  But this League, which boasted of its "non-partisan" maneuvers, was decidedly partisan to capitalism.  It demanded state ownership under capitalism, made no revolutionary challenge to capitalist property relations, hence really obstructed the way to the only solution for agricultural ills, the revolutionary overthrowal of capitalism.  The mountebank leader of this reformist swindle and confusion, Townley, is still victimizing the farmers with a new quick remedy based on the Prohibition Law and turning an "honest penny" selling worthless oil stock.

5. As to the "Farm Bloc Progressives," our Party's October, 1929, thesis correctly stated:

"The deepening agrarian crisis as yet finds its main channel of political expression in the 'progressives' of the Farm Bloc (Norris, Frazier, Shipstead, Brookhart, et al), with their program of tariff protection for agricultural products and subsidized export of surplus production, measures calculated to deepen the contradictions in the agriculture and consequent class differentiation, as well as to strengthen the grip of finance capital upon the market and thence upon agricultural production.  The 'progressivism' of the Farm Bloc, with its denial of class struggle on the farm, with its subordination to the essential program of finance capital, has become one of the accepted and established agencies of the rule of Wall Street.  It is no longer an expression of the growing consciousness of the toiling agrarian mases, or even a partial and confused expression, but is one of the means of diverting and suppressing this growing consciousness and will to struggle."

The Farm Bloc gave up the McNary-Haugen Bill for the "relief" legislation that set up Hoover's Farm Board.  The McNary-Haugen Bill might have benefited the petty bourgeois agrarians at the cost of the proletariat and Hoover tried to claim credit for defending the working class against higher living costs.  But that was not the reason the McNary-Haugen Bill provisions were opposed by Hoover in favor of provisions setting up the Federal Farm Board and establishing its functions.  Finance capital and Hoover, its political spokesman, are not opposed to an attack on the standards of the proletariat, but the original McNary-Haugen Bill provided no means whereby finance capital could extend its monop-