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Text originally published in 1932 under the same title.

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TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

BY

WILLIAM Z. FOSTER

SPECIAL EDITION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE FO CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

PREFACE 5

CHAPTER I—THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 6

The Present Economic Crisis 6

The Mass Impoverishment of the Toilers 8

Capitalist Fear and Confusion 12

Cyclical Crises 14

The General Crisis of Capitalism 16

The Decaying Capitalist System 19

The War Danger 23

The World-Wide Revolutionary Upsurge. 28

The Revolutionary Perspective 32

CHAPTER II—THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 36

Flourishing Bolshevik Industries 37

The Revolution in Agriculture 43

Outstripping the Capitalist Countries 45

Real Prosperity for the Toilers 47

The Cultural Revolution 51

Accomplishing the Impossible 54

Socialism and Communism 60

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat 62

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union 65

CHAPTER III—CAPITALIST ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE THE CRISIS 68

(a) Quack Capitalist Economic Remedies 68

The Rationalization of Industry 68

The American New Capitalism 69

Trusts and Cartels 72

The Movement for Capitalist Planned Economy 74

The Question of an Organized Capitalism 77

(b) Futile Efforts to Quench the Class Struggle 79

From Social Reformism to Social Fascism 80

The Fasciszation of the American Federation of Labor 81

The Fasciszation of the Socialist Party 84

The Left Social Fascists 87

The Bankruptcy of Social Fascism 90

The Futility of Fascism 92

CHAPTER IV—THE REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF THE CRISIS 95

The Conquest of Political Power 95

The Revolutionary Forces in the United States 98

The Communist Party; the Party of the Toilers 104

The Present-Day Tasks of the American Revolutionary Movement 107

The Communist Party Program of Immediate Demands 109

A Program of Class Struggle 111

The American Workers and the Revolution 114

CHAPTER V—THE UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 118

The American Soviet Government 119

The Expropriation of the Expropriators 121

The Improvement of the Toilers’ Conditions 122

The Liquidation of Capitalist Robbery and Waste 124

The Reorganization of Industry 126

The Collectivization of Agriculture 129

The Liberation of the Negro 131

The Emancipation of Woman 133

Unshackling the Youth 135

The Cultural Revolution in the United States 137

Curing Crime and Criminals 139

The Abolition of War 141

Socialist Incentive 143

Collectivism and Individualism 145

Building a New World 147

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 150

DEDICATION

TO ESTHER

PREFACE

THERE is a great and growing mass demand in this country to know just what is the Communist party and its program. The masses of toilers, suffering under the burdens of the crisis, are keenly discontented and want to find a way out of their intolerable situation. They are alarmed at the depth, length and general severity of the crisis. They begin to realize that there is something rotten in Denmark, that there are fundamental flaws in the capitalist system. Their growing realization of this is further strengthened as they see the spectacular rise of Socialism in the Soviet Union. The masses are beginning rightly to sense that Communism has an important message for the human race, and they want to know what it is.

Capitalism is deeply anxious that the masses do not get this message. Hence, from the outset it has carried on a campaign of falsification of the Russian revolution entirely without parallel in history. There has been a veritable ocean of lies in the capitalist press against the U.S.S.R. The American Federation of Labor leadership and the Socialist party, defenders of the capitalist system, have outdone even the capitalists themselves in this wholesale vilification. The effort of the capitalists and their labor lieutenants has been to set off the Communists as willful enemies and destroyers of the human race. But the masses begin to see through this misrepresentation and they want to know the truth.

The present book is an attempt to meet this mass demand by a plain statement of Communist policy, avoiding technical complexities and theoretical elaboration. It outlines simply the program, strength, strategy and perspectives of the Communist party of the United States. It undertakes to point out what is the matter with capitalism and what must be done about it. It indicates where America is heading and it makes a practical application of the lessons of the Russian revolution to the situation in this country. Its central purpose is to explain to the oppressed and exploited masses of workers and poor farmers how, under the leadership of the Communist party, they can best protect themselves now, and in due season cut their way out of the capitalist jungle to Socialism.

WM. Z. FOSTER

New York City

May 1, 1932

CHAPTER I—THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM

THE MOST striking and significant political and social fact in the world today is the glaring contrast between the industrial, political and social conditions prevailing in the capitalist countries and those obtaining in the Soviet Union. Throughout the capitalist world, without exception, the picture is one of increasing chaos and crisis. The capitalist industrial system is paralysed as never before. Tremendous masses of workers are thrown into unemployment and destitution. The standards of living of the producing masses have declined catastrophically, mass starvation existing in every capitalist country, including the United States. War is already here in Manchuria and preparations go ahead upon an unprecedented scale for future wars against the Soviet Union and among the capitalist powers themselves. To enforce their regime of hunger and intensified exploitation, the capitalists everywhere are increasingly developing their dictatorship from its masked form of bourgeois democracy into open systems of Fascist terrorism. And against all this the revolutionary upsurge of the workers and poor farmers becomes worldwide; revolutionary struggle growing acute in many countries. Capitalism is manifestly in serious crisis.

On the other hand, the Soviet Union, born in the midst of the capitalist world slaughter of 1914-18, presents a picture of growth and general social advance. The Russian industries and agriculture are expanding at an unheard-of rate, the Soviet Union being the only country in the world not prostrated by the economic crisis. The masses of producers of factory and farm are all employed; their standards of living and culture are rapidly rising. They are building a new and free proletarian democracy. In short, as capitalism goes deeper and deeper into crisis, the Soviet Union forges ahead faster and faster upon every front.

The meaning of all this, as will be developed in the course of this book, is that the capitalist system is in decline and is historically being replaced by a new social order, Socialism. Capitalism, based upon the private ownership of industry and land and the exploitation of the toiling masses, has exhausted its social role; the revolutionary forces, under the leadership of the Communist International, are gathering to sweep it away and to build in its place a social system based upon the common ownership of the means of production and the carrying on of production for social use. Out of the welter of crisis and mass misery and war, a new social system is born. We are living in the historical period of the revolutionary transition from capitalism to Socialism.

The Present Economic Crisis

LIKE a tornado the present economic crisis struck the capitalist world. It is a crisis of over-production. The first signs of this threatening over-production manifested themselves in Germany and central Europe generally in the latter part of 1928. The industrial decline began in the U. S. towards the middle of 1929, followed by the great October Wall Street crash, after which every capitalist country was swiftly drawn into the vortex. The inevitable result is the worst economic crisis, by far, in the whole history of capitalism. It is the deepest, the most far-reaching and the longest. Every branch of industry, every capitalist country is affected. Only the Soviet Union is immune. And as Stalin says, The crisis has struck deepest of all at the principal country of capitalism, its citadel, the U.S.A. The crisis is setting in motion forces that threaten the very existence of the capitalist system.

Statistics constantly pile up to indicate the entirely unparalleled severity of the economic crisis. In industry the drop in production has been catastrophic and, after 30 months of crisis, it still declines. Production in the basic industries has fallen more than 50% below 1929 levels and more than 30% below 1930. Steel has dipped to 20% of capacity and even order inquiries for tacks are seized hopefully. Building is off about 70% since 1928, notwithstanding emergency building programs, etc. In 1931 American exports declined about one-third, or $1,418,000,000. The total national income fell from 89.5 billions in 1929 to 52.4 billions in 1931, or 41%. The drop in wholesale prices, 24% between 1929 and 1931, is wholly unprecedented, the previous record being 7% in the crisis of 1873-75. New financing decreased from 6% billions in 1929 to 2% billions in 1931. The general business index, at this writing registering 60, a drop from 113 in Aug., 1929, is the lowest in American economic history, the nearest low to this being 72 in 1894.

Internationally there is a similar picture, world production levels at this time being about those of 1913. According to League of Nations’ figures, world trade has fallen off 40% from the Spring of 1929 until the end of 1931, a decline entirely with-out precedent.{1} In England production is at 65, or far below pre-war levels. In Germany, says the German Institute for Business Research, Industrial production is about as large as it was in the years 1900-03. Production in France has dropped 20% since the middle of 1930. Poland and Austria have declined 28% and 31% respectively since 1929. The Balkans are deep in crisis, Japan’s industries have been similarly paralysed.

Unemployment has developed internationally upon an unheard-of scale. In Great Britain there are 3,000,000 unemployed, in Germany 6,500,000, in France unemployment registers an all-time record, and in the United States over 12,000,000 are unemployed. There are almost as many more part-time workers. Throughout the capitalist countries there are not less than 40,000,000 unemployed and the number constantly increases.

In agriculture the crisis is no less ravaging and general. According to the Department of Agriculture bulletin of Dec. 16, 1931, the value of farm products declined from $8,765,820,000 in 1929 (which was already about 50% below 1919) to $4,122,850,000 in 1931, as against a decline of only 10% in prices of commodities that farmers must buy. The terrific fall in the prices of agricultural products is graphically illustrated by the fact that on Oct. 4, 1931 wheat reached 44% cents a bushel on the market, the lowest point since the Civil War, with farmers getting as low as 25 cents. And world agriculture in the capitalist countries is in a similar crisis, prices received by the peasants having fallen from 40% to 70% for the great staples, wheat, cotton, rice, rubber, silk, coffee, etc.

In finance the world economic crisis also manifests itself with devastating effects. Whichever way one looks there is a spreading ruin and wreck-age. The whole financial system of capitalism is tottering. Internationally, there is a great wave of bankruptcy, many of Europe’s oldest and greatest banks and industrial concerns collapsing. Great Britain, Japan and various other countries have been driven off the gold standard. Stock exchange prices in many countries have dropped 50% to 75%, the general average in France declining from 437 in 1930 to 230 at the end of 1931. Huge deficits exist in all the national government budgets. Repudiation of international debts is the order of the day, with the United States standing to lose, counting war debts and other loans now in default, from 10 to 15 billion dollars.

The United States, home of the world’s strongest capitalism, presents a similar picture of financial crisis. During 1931, 2,290 banks with deposits of $1,759,000,000 closed their doors, and 17,000 retail stores failed. In 1931, bank deposits declined by seven billion dollars. From the middle of 1929 to the end of March, 1932, the average prices of 30 leading industrial stocks on the New York Stock Exchange dropped from $381.17 to $61.98.{2} The total loss in security ‘Values’, according to B. C. Forbes, was 75 billions. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and hundreds of smaller cities are bankrupt. The Federal government faces a deficit of about two and one-half billion dollars. And, most significant of all, the Federal Reserve Bank system, a financial fortress of supposed Gibraltar strength, has manifestly proved unable to stand the strain, the Hoover two billion dollar Reconstruction Finance Corporation being an attempt to buttress up the reserve bank system by a further concentration of the State power be-hind the great bankers and by a policy of inflation. Mazur says: 1931 has witnessed a substantial debacle of both the orthodox currency basis and the established banking system of the world.{3} And the end is not yet, with the crisis deepening internationally.

The Mass Impoverishment of the Toilers

We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.—President Hoover, Aug. 11, 1928.

THROUGHOUT capitalism the policy of the ruling class is to try to find a way out of the crisis by throwing its burden upon the shoulders of the working class, the poor farmers and the lower sections of the city petty bourgeoisie. This is being done by a vast system of starving the unemployed, wage-cuts, speed-up, inflation schemes, taxes directed against the masses, etc. In consequence, with the development of the crisis, there has been an enormous increase in the impoverishment of the toiling masses.

Wholesale starvation, spreading like a plague, is the order of the day in all capitalist countries. The bourgeoisie, intent only upon its own pleasures, cynically shrugs its shoulders at the whole terrible misery, when it does not hypocritically direct the masses towards religion for consolation. Nor are there scientists lacking to justify this mass starvation. Thus Prof. E. G. Conklin of Princeton University says: Some of the weaker, according to the law of nature, will naturally die under the stress of the times. Others will not propagate their kind. The strong and hardy will survive and reproduce, and thus the human race will be strengthened.{4}

Since the onset of the present economic crisis American workers and poor farmers, through unemployment, part-time work, wage-cuts, reduced prices for agricultural products, tax increases, etc., have suffered a general decline in their living standards of at least 50%. Prof. Leiserson estimates that the total income of industrial and office workers was about 22 billion dollars less in 1931 than in 1929, and this is supported by the figures of Business Week (Feb. 10). This is by no means offset by the decline in living costs which, according to the U. S. Dept. of Labor, amounted to 11.7% from June, 1929, until June, 1931. On the farms, the Alexander Hamilton Institute says, the average income per household has dropped from $887 in 1929 (already a crisis year in agriculture) to but $367 in 1931.

By these gigantic reductions in their real income masses of toilers of field and factory have been forced down to actual starvation conditions. Even before the crisis the working masses stood at the very threshold of destitution. The average wage of industrial workers during the height of prosperity did not exceed $23.00 per week. Consequently, the vast body of American toilers existed from hand to mouth. They had very little reserves. Paul Nystrom says that 9,000,000 people in the United States lived below the subsistence level.{5} Then came the economic hurricane.

The result is real destitution, verging into actual starvation, on a broad scale in the United States. Only in countries like India and China are there today larger numbers of workers suffering from mass unemployment, hunger, semi-starvation, disease and other manifold evils of wholesale poverty than in the United States—the richest country in the world, says the Statement of the National Hunger Marchers to Congress, Dec. 7, 1931. One-third to one-half of our population is at various stages ranging from hunger to the pressing danger of losing homes and farms, says Governor LaFollette. The New York American, (Feb. 21, 1932), says: Food is lacking in 81 per cent of the New York City homes that have been stricken by unemployment, the Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee reported last night. William Hodson, executive director of the Welfare Council of New York City, informs us: Relief in New York City is now on what might be called a disaster basis...the spectre of starvation faces millions who never were out of work before. The Baltimore Post, (Mar. 11, 1932), declares; 40,000 face starvation in Baltimore. An Associated Press dispatch of Mar. 23, 1932, from Tulsa, Okla., says: Ten thousand persons have been living here since Nov. 1 on a charity ration costing six cents a day per person.

So it is all over the country. The cities are full of Hoovervilles and breadlines, where tens of thousands of homeless, hungry workers are compelled to exist in tin can shacks and to stand for hours to get a miserable bowl of soup. Workers fall famished in the streets in front of stores and warehouses that are crammed with the necessaries of life. Daily we read in the capitalist press of families actually starving to death. No longer is it news for a confused and desperate unemployed worker to blow out his brains or to do away with his family.

The workers are losing wholesale the houses, radios, furniture, etc., that they so laboriously got together during the upward swing of American capitalism; thousands of farmers are losing their farms to the usurers. The Nation, (Mar. 23, 1932), says that in Detroit alone 50,000 workers lost their life savings in the collapsed banks, and similar huge losses have been suffered all over the country. In 1931, according to the New York Journal, (Jan. 28), 198,738 workers’ families were evicted from their homes in New York City for non-payment of rent. The worker’s life has become an endless round of worry and misery. The jails are filled to overflowing, thousands preferring prison rigors to life under the Hoover regime of rugged individualism Prostitution spreads like a poison weed in every American city. Tuberculosis runs riot among the half-starved masses, and the hospitals are packed with sufferers of diseases bred of under-nourishment, etc., etc. To such a debacle has come the Hooverian pre-election promises of the abolition of poverty, a chicken in every pot and an automobile in every garage for the workers. And daily the whole maze of poverty, starvation, misery and death gets worse.

Manifestly, a fundamentally necessary measure against actual starvation among the workers is the establishment of a system of federal unemployment insurance, financed by the government and the employers. This must be of a permanent character, because what we have to deal with is not a temporary condition of unemployment, but a huge mass unemployment on a permanent basis. This, however, has not been done. The capitalists and their government have forced the workers into wholesale starvation which is now infesting the country like a plague.

The entire question of unemployment relief has been reduced to a charity basis. Although the worker has spent his life producing the wealth of the country, now when the capitalist system has broken down he is treated as a mendicant and a criminal. He is thrown a beggarly handout like a starving dog. Mr. Gifford, head of Hoover’s Emergency Employment Committee, boasted that in the 1931 Fall relief drive about $150,000,000 had been raised in the various localities. So far as the Federal government is concerned, this money (what the workers get of it after the grafters are through) has to last the unemployed for the whole year. Thus it figures out at about $1.00 per month for each of the 12,000,000 unemployed. In New York, richest city in the world, after a disgusting campaign of begging, $18,000,000 of Gifford’s fund was raised. This would give about $1.50 per month to each of New York’s 1,000,000 unemployed.

The unemployed relief program of the Hoover Government is a real hunger plan. It is the policy of the capitalist class and it has the support of both big parties and the A. F. of L. That the Progressives also agree fundamentally with it is shown by the new unemployment insurance law in Wisconsin. This law adds insult to injury. According to its beggarly provisions unemployed workers can receive only a maximum of $100 yearly. And this applies only to those now employed, for whom insurance funds will be gradually built up. As for the masses of those totally unemployed now and part-time workers, they are left out of consideration altogether.

If the capitalists have callously forced the toiling masses into starvation conditions they have, however, very carefully looked after their own interests. During the first nine months of 1930, our national industrial and business system was able to and did pay $432,000,000 more in dividends and $191,000,000 more in interest than it did in 1929; in the first nine months of 1931, the second year of the depression, it paid $347,000,000 more in dividends and $338,000,000 more in interest than it did in the first nine months of 1929.{6} The Publishers Financial Bureau, (New York American, Mar. 19, 1932), states that the industrial dividends paid in 1931 are the largest for any year previous to 1929. Anna Rochester says: In September, 1931, the New York Times reported that of 5,000 companies, 50% had continued dividend payments without reduction; 20% were paying smaller dividends; and only 30% had omitted payments entirely....For October, 1931, the total dividends plus bond interest by a large group of corporations were only 4% below the high record of October, 1930.{7} Besides, every appeal of the bankers and other capitalists to the government for assistance has met with immediate response. The two billion dollar Reconstruction Finance Corporation has been organized and the Glass-Steagall inflation bill is being prepared to absorb the worthless paper of the banks and to underwrite the dividends of industrial corporations. And in the new Federal taxes the capitalists are further