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Sidney Hook

Hook Answers Broun Attack on John Dewey

Asks Pointed Questions in Reply to Columnist’s Slanderous Article

(January 1938)

From Socialist Appeal, Vol. II No. 9, 26 February 1938, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).

The following letter was sent by Sidney Hook, well-known Marxist scholar, to the New Republic, which published only a small portion of it.

The Editors, New Republic.

In his attack upon Professor John Dewey in the columns of the New Republic (Jan. 12, 1938), Heywood Broun not only exceeded the limits of Narrenfreiheit but was guilty of irresponsible misstatement of Professor Dewey’s position.

Anyone who has examined the context of Professor Dewey’s remarks in the Washington Post – which Broun admittedly has not done – will see that they bore upon the implications of the Trotsky Commission report for America. They were illustrated by a direct reference to the use which the Communist Party and press were making of the Corcoran case in Minneapolis.
 

Dewey’s Warning

Professor Dewey did not say that Communist Party members should be barred from the C.I.O. or any other labor union because of their views. He warned against factionalism and against the familiar Moscow tactics of frame-up and slander as deadly to the unity of the labor movement.

In asserting that the Stalinists are striving whole-heartedly for the unity of labor, Heywood Broun shows that it is he who is behind in his homework, not Professor Dewey. Part of the public oath which all members of the Communist Party are required to take is “to drive the Lovestoneites out of the labor movement” and “to drive the Trotskyites out of the labor movement.”
 

Stalinists’ Real Aim

Since in effect anybody who opposes the Communist Party on important measures is labelled a Trotskyite, this means that every independent-thinking union member or leader is slated for railroading as soon as the Stalinists feel strong enough to get away with it.

It requires considerable cheek for Heywood Broun to ask whether Professor Dewey “seriously means to contend that certain workers should be barred from union membership because of their political or economic views.” This is precisely the view of the Communist Party, as the above-cited slogans prove.

Before Heywood Broun undertakes to whitewash the role of the Stalinists in the labor movement, let him explain the following:
 

Explain All This

1. The attempt of the Daily Worker to smear Minneapolis trade unionists of Local 544 by practically charging them with complicity in the assassination of Patrick Corcoran, on the ground of their alleged Trotskyist sympathies.
    
2. The use of phony affidavits by West Coast Stalinists in the C.I.O. to prove that Meyer Lewis, A.F. of L. representative, had hired R.J. Bell to kill Harry Bridges, despite the wire sent them by George Cole, regional director of the C.I.O., warning that Bell was “unreliable and no good.”
    
3. The resolution of the Sailors Union of the Pacific, condemning the Western Worker and the Communist Party for libelous assertions of gangsterism against its leaders and authorizing legal action for criminal libel against the Western Worker.
    
4. The resolution of the Central Labor Council of San Francisco, condemning the Stalinists for attempted frame-up tactics.
    
5. The Communist Party campaign against Homer Martin and the “Lovestoneites” in the Auto Workers Union.

These are only some of the more outstanding incidents. I, for me, am in favor of Broun’s suggestion that a neutral group of investigators be called together to consider how the Communist Party works for unity in the labor movement. Things have come to such a pass that it is impossible to expose the nefarious tactics of the Communist Party without Broun, its unofficial trouble-shooter, crying “red-baiting.”

If the Stalinists are red, then Roosevelt it a Trotskyist. If Heywood Broun sees fit to join the hue and cry of the Communist Party against Homer Martin, a C.I.O. leader, why is it forbidden to criticize, on the basis of authentic evidence, the machinations of those Stalinists in the C.I.O. whose first loyalty is to the Communist Party and not to labor ?