Manager’s Column

From Fourth International, vol.4 No.4, April 1943, p.130.
Transcribed, marked up & formatted by Ted Crawford & David Walters in 2008 for ETOL.

In order to encourage our friends and subscribers to send in their opinions or their agreement or disagreement with articles appearing in our magazine, we should like to convert this column into a Reader’s Forum. If you have been mulling over some idea you think would improve the contents or circulation of the magazine, won’t you write it up for the consideration of the editor and our readers?

Some of our friends and subscribers have been doing this already. We print below some of their welcome letters.

Editor:

More regular articles, news items and editorials could well be devoted to the idea of many militant unions that “First we’ve got to win the war and then we can deal properly with the boss” – and have to answer it about every day in one form or another. The magazine could help us a lot with a wide variety of convincing arguments. For example: While that policy is leading the union backwards, Negroes are actually making some progress only because they refuse to wait until after the war. Or: How can bosses, who want to do to us what fascism has done to Europe, be expected to win a war against fascism?

You need the best possible examples as proof – examples out of current events. What’s Hitler got that the National Association of Manufacturers doesn’t envy? If the workers want to win against fascism, they’ll have to take over.

J.F., Flint, Michigan

****

Editor:

I am sending you another contribution ($10.00) which I am afraid will be my last on account of receiving my notice to report for induction. In case I am financially able after that time you can count on me.

P.K., California

****

Editor:

The articles on the Soviet Union and on the German question also on prices, were especially interesting and instructive. However, I would like to see two analytical articles: One on the role of Lewis, Murray, Green and the bureaucrats showing the differences between them and their basic agreement on policies; and an article on women in industry, seniority, wages, hours, etc

J.A., Youngstown Ohio

****

Editor:

I’m all steamed up about the Labor Party question. I think, now that Congress is certainly laying the basis for class battles in this country, that now is the time to agitate for labor party clubs in the unions.

H.S., Kansas

****

Manager:

Increase the Fourth International bundle to 100. We have suffered by having cut it to 80 ...

Agent, Los Angeles

P.S. Everyone here thought highly of C. Charles’ article, Wallace’s Post-War Utopia. (February issue.)

****

Editor:

As you know, Fourth International is sold on many newsstands in metropolitan New York, especially in the midtown section, 14th Street, 23rd Street, the garment area, and 42nd Street.

As one of those who cover these newsstands, I am in a position to watch the sales from month to month. It is very interesting to note that since the January issue sales have increased by one-third and each week when I take The Militant around to the stands, the dealers continually ask me to bring them additional copies of the Fourth International.

L.C.

****

The rigid limitations of space forced us to publish only the first half of Trotsky’s 1926 speech, Europe and America, in this issue. The second half is even more interesting in its detailed analysis of Washington’s “peacetime” intervention in Europe. It will be published next month.

Terence Phelan’s next article will show how the anti-Bolshevik preoccupation of the “democracies” directly fostered the establishment of reactionary regimes in Poland and Hungary, supported the most reactionary forces in Germany and Austria and the Balkans and, in short, laid the groundwork of World War II.

Last month we promised a second article to follow The Class Meaning of the Soviet Victories by Felix Morrow, but have had to delay It for a forthcoming issue. Meanwhile readers of the Fourth International in the New York area are invited to attend Morrow’s lectures on The Soviet Union and the Capitalist World – 1917-1943. Every Wednesday evening at 8 p.m. during April and May, at 116 University place, under the auspices of the New York School of Social Science.

Top of page

Main FI Index | Main Newspaper Index

Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive

This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Trotskism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.

Last updated on 26.8.2008