The daily worker. [volume], May 30, 1924, Magazine Supplement, Image 12

About The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958

Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

                
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REFLECTION ON BUSINESS SENTIMENTALITY
By ANALYST.
POPULAR belief has it that there
is no sentiment in business.
There is at any rate plenty of
sentiment in business propaganda. It
is pretty well all sentiment, of a pe
culiarly maudlin sort. Apparently the
business mind, which has to be sober
and realistic in dealing with the solid
facts of industry and trade, functions
in another way when it steps out of'
its own proper sphere. Otherwise its
fantastic childishness in discussing
such questions for example as the
motives of Mr. Doheny in developing
oil fields is inexplicable.
C. W. Barron, publisher of the Wall
Street Journal and other financial pa
pers, has a typical business mind. He
1b hard-headed and sober enough when
analyzing economic conditions and
profit prospects. Those are the qual
ities that have won for the Wall Street
Journal “the richest circulation in the
world.” But when it comes to talking
about business ethics, Barron is lu
dicrously and idiotically sentimental.
He has been writing articles paint
ing Doheny not as a profiteer but as
a philantropist. Doheny, according to
Barron, is a pioneer of civilization. It
was in that role that he went into
Mexico. Some years ago Barron made
a trip to Mexico with Doheny to see
some of the latter’s oil properties.
When he asked Doheny what he might
say in his papers about the situation,
Doheny replied: “Nothing about me
or my properties. We can take care
of ourselves. But help the people of
j Mexico if you can.”
Barron pictures Doheny, not as a
profit monger yearning to exploit the
material resources of Mexico, but as
a humanitarian pining tc “give the
good people of Mexico right, justice,
and freedom in a modern system of
society." Barron says Doheny told
him that to accomplish this end, he
would “sink all his interest on this
coast ten thousand feet deep in this
sea.”
After this effusion one is some
Mainspring of International Communism
(Continued from page 1)
number of political and organization
al steps to achieve this end.
An important step in this direction
is the present membership-campaign,
the so-called Lenin-Drive, carried on
by the Russian Party. It was started
immediately after Lenin's death, the
t\
L. TROTZKY
party having decided to enroll 100,000
new members from among the factory
workers.
Up to April 22, new applications for
membership have been made to the
party to the number of 269,372. Os
this number only 125.815 have been
accepted thus far. All of those flhat
have applied are factory workers
actually engaged in the Russian in
dustries.
Democratization of Party Organiza
tion
The process of democratizing the
party organization, i. e., drawing the
rank and file of the party into active
participation in party and Soviet
work, is to be continued. At the same
what prepared for Barron’s remark
that when he read the stenographic
reports of Doheny’s testimony at
Washington in the oil steal investiga
tion, he could hear “his rugged sincere
voice in denial that his loan to a per
sonal friend of 30 year's standing had
anything to do with Doheny’s leasing
of the California naval reserve.” Hav
ing swallowed a camel, Barron is not
going to strain at a gnat. A man who
can believe Doheny wants to raise the
Mexican people more than he wants
Mexican oil, can believe anything.
Os course Barron may not believe
any of the nonsense he is writing
about Doheny and his laudable mo
tives. He may simply be trying to fool
others. But that is not a necessary
explanation. There is a cult, a religion
of business, which glorifies all its
processes. According to this religion,
business is the architect of civiliza
tion, the source of all material and
spiritual well being. It is the fountain
of progress and the indispensable
means of individual and social health.
Barron is a high priest of this religion.
It is conceivable that, like other
priests, he accepts the prescribed ar
ticles of faith.
There has been nothing in the Wall
Street Journal condemning the oil
steals. The only crooks that the Wall
Street Journal knows anything about
are labor leaders who foment strikes,
politicians who oppose reductions in
income surtaxes, and agrarian agita
tors who tell the farmers that their
troubles are due to something besides
the normal working of economic law.
Occasionally the paper mildly frowns
on Democratic politicians who accept
retainers from oil magnates. But brib
ing public officers to precure dishonest
alienation of public resources does
not apparently meet with its censure,
provided the alienated properties get
into the right hands. This attitude
does not, however, prove conscious
moral depfavity. It may be only a
result of excessive devotion to the
business religion.
Consider what this devotion entails.
time close attention will be paid to
the petty-bourgeois influences that are
making themselves felt in the party..
Comrade Molotov’s thesis takes
cognizance of the fact that certain
elements in the party, petty-bourgeois
in nature and psychology, are inter
preting this tendency for party-demo
cracy to mean that the proletarian
dictatorship is to be changed or modi
fied. The thesis proposes to wage a
relentless struggle against these ele
ments to the point of completely elim
inating them from the party, if this
should become necessary. Comrade
Molotov’s thesis will in all probability
be adopted by the Congress.
Conclusion
Great are the responsibilities of our
Russian Comrades, but just as great
are their opportunities for revolution
ary service. We are certain that the
Russian Party will successfully solve
its problems and will continue in the
future, as they did in the past, to
guide and promote the efforts of the
revolutionary workers the world over
to destroy the rule of capitalism and
establish the International Soviet Re
public.
V
l I 5
I. STALIN.
8
It rests on the principle that private
business is an absolute good. Conse
quently anything that promotes pri
vate business must be good, too. Get
ting valuable public resources into
private hands has this effect. It is
therefore not merely defensible bnt
praiseworthy. One who thinks it a sin
to keep oil and coal and timber where
profits cannot be got out of them is
not apt to boggle at any irregularities
that may be necessary to correct the
evil. The end justifies the means. A
devotee of the religion of business
need suffer no pangs of conscious for
not reprebating the oil steals. They
will probably yield a stream of profits
that will wash away every stain.
Barron and his sort are probably not
aware how ridiculous they look in try
ing to make business look like phil
anthropy. They have to be more or
less under the influence of their own
sentimentality in order to spread it
with an air of conviction. Moreover,
it has the advantage of fooling others
as well as themselves, and that is an
important consideration now that
great numbers of people are geting
suspicious about the truth of the
theory that Business is a beneficent
force always and everywhere. There
is consequently likely to be more
rather than less iilusioneering about
business in the future. But It is worth
while to puncture the pretty bubble
that the aggrandisement of private
business, however achieved, is neces
sarily a public benefit.
This myth springs from the assump
tion that business is synonymous with
production. Secretary of State Hughes
BURNS LOOTED D. OF J. FILES
AND DESTROYED INCRIMINATING
EVIDENCE BEFORE HE WAS BOUNCED
WASHINGTON, May 29.—Confidential Department of Justice data on
alleged Mexican border gun-running plots were removed from the depart
ment’s files by William J. Burns, former director of the bureau of investi
gation, Senator Wheeler, Montana, charged today before the senate
Daugherty committee.
Wheeler said the committee had searched for several special delivery
letters bearing on a "revolutionary plot,” and was unable to locate them in
department files.
The committee learned, he said, that the documents were removed from
the main file room and placed in the confidential files in Burns’ office but
could trace them no further.
Bonus Bolsters Patriotism.
SAN FRANCISCO.-—State Adj. Gen.
Morgan Keating, American Legion,
says, “the overruling of the presi
dent’s veto means more than the win
i ning of the rights of ex-service men —
! it marks the beginning of a revived
national warfare against bolshevism
in the United States. Confidence in
the government is now restored to the
veterans, and we can now stand up
and tell the world that this govern
' ment is going forward.”
!
W. MOLOTOFF
B- Momma.
In charge of membership campaign in
Russian Party.
has stated the assumption in its classic
form in giving his reasons for not
recognizing Russia. Private produc
tion is not enthroned in Russia; there
fore Russia is an economic vacuum, in
which no production at all is possible.
Since the facts refuted this naive as
sumption, Hughes has not repeated
it; but it lies at the root of the whole
religion of business. For the eleva
tion of business into a religion, it
must be represented as the sole ef
ficient agency of production. It Is a
fact that production is the basis of
civilization. If the Barrens and
Hugheses and other apologists of capi
talism are permitted unchallenged to
make production synonymous with
business, there is no escape from the
conclusion that business interests
should have the right of way over
everything else.
Confounding business, which is
merely one mode of production, with
production itself, enables business
leaders to claim as their work all the
results of science, invention and la
bor. It is a highly ingenious trick that
has never been sufficiently exposed.
Under certain conditions, production
is impossible except under the leader
ship of business men. But the world
now has proof that under other con
ditions, production can be carried on
without their help. This is the truth,
now historically established, tnat is
destined to shatter the whole fabric
of business sentimentality. When it is
more widely appreciated, attempts to
show looters of the public domain in
the guise of public benefactors will be
less successful.
> WORKERS <
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