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368     THE COMMUNIST

oly control over agriculture nor push rationalization forward in preparation for war, while, on the other hand, the backward technical state of agriculture in relation to industry was to be subsidized, thus placing obstacles in the way of dispossessing the poor farmers and the program of substituting large scale, highly capitalized and rationalized production in their place. The plan adopted and established under the Farm Board, while placing finance capital in a position where it can at any time benefit itself by an attack on the standards of the proletariat, allows it also to launch an extensive attack on the small producing farmers, to widen and consolidate its power over them, the realization of which means impoverishment and pauperization for the majority. Nevertheless, since the Hoover proposal was labeled as "relief," the Farm Bloc accepted it and are pushing it over among the farmers.

The antics of the Farm Bloc and their allies in Congress since November, 1929, reflected a tendency toward a new political crystallization of the petty bourgeoisie. Republican and Democrat alike not only took revenge for the pain endured by the evaporation of many a small fortune of the petty bourgeoisie in the Stock Exchange crash, but made a bid for farmer votes by their fight on the tariff, holding up the tariff increases desired by manufacturing interests on the grounds that farm products, not manufacturing commodities, should have higher tariffs. Again the possibility arises of a new political movement of the petty bourgeoisie based heavily on the farmers. In this period such can only serve the purposes of developing fascist tendencies, of demagogic seduction of petty bourgeois agrarians by a fake "fight" against finance capital, only to open the way, by repressive measures against the proletariat, for the open dictatorship of the great bourgeoisie. Needless to add, the small farmer will gain only an illusory and passing advantage from any such development, as finance capital, which will make many concessions to unite all bourgeois forces against a revolutionary advance of the proletariat, will take all it grants back again with compound interest once it feels its dictatorship is secure.

6. The so-called "farmers' organizations," such as the Farmers' Union, the National Grange, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Farmers' Equity Union, the wheat and other "pools," one and all, although advising farmers to "keep out of politics," nevertheless influence the farming masses into supporting capitalist political parties, and the leaders of these organizations participate in Hoover's "Economic Conference," a political apparatus of open fascist tendencies of the great bourgeoisie. The result shows how servile to finance capital are these "farmers' organizations," as the