The motion picture projectionist (Oct 1927-Sept 1928)

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September, 1928 The Motion Picture Projectionist 19 The Tob vs. the "Movement" —A Century of Conflict THE meeting of the local union has been called to order. Routine business is transacted, and there is introduced a question of policy. An employer has violated a minor clause of the agreement. What is to be done about it? To most of the Brothers it seems a simple matter. The business representative of the local shall call upon the employer, explain the consequences of his act and seek to adjust the matter. Not so to John Galloper. He rises slowly in his seat, clears his throat, hitches up his trousers, and launches into a long oration on the need of a united front, solidarity, class consciousness and the defence of the movement. To Galloper's excited imagination, this minor point of conflict with the employer — a routine business matter — becomes a colossal incident in the class struggle. It is an occasion for heroics. It is a call to arms. It is a test of every red-blooded member's unionism. So he tests their endurance by a speech of some two hours in length, presuming upon the right of free speech. In the end the matter is settled in the only way it can be settled, by referring the matter to the business representative. John Galloper sits down in disgust. He is sure the union is going to the dogs, that the officers are all corrupt, and the entire movement is doomed. The foregoing is not an exaggerated example. Similar incidents occur in virtually every union in America, on every meeting night. They represent a real point of conflict between certain groups within the union — a conflict that has been going on within the labor movement for a century. The conflict may be described as the issue between the "intellectuals" and the "pragmatists" in the labor movement. It is not a fancied conflict. It exists. Every unionist has experienced it, and many have beheld the havoc wrought by the battles precipitated by the "intellectuals." New Light On Old Conflict New light is thrown on this century-old contest, there is intensive clarification of the issues, by a book just published by the Macmillan Company. "A Theory of the Labor Movement." This is the work of Selig Perlman, professor of economics, University of Wisconsin. Perlman is an associate of John R. Commons, who has done so much for labor history and labor research in the United States. We realize that when one is attempting to render judgment on a book soon after he has read it, he is likely to be blinded by his own enthusiasm. But, taking this fact into consideration, we can say calmly that this book, "A Theory of the Labor Movement," is an important book, perhaps a great book, mayhap an epoch-making book. It undermines the shallow philosophy that has often masked as scientific, and that has on occasion been used as a base for firing broadsides of innuendo against the union. It is in touch with fact. Called a "theory" of the labor movement, it is not so much a theory, or a philosophy, as a succinct reporting of what is now enacting on the industrial field, a clear-eyed summary of industrial conditions, and an intelligent justification of the present policies of the American unions. Labor Knows What Labor Wants Perlman draws the issue thus : "Trade unionism, which is essentially pragmatic, struggles constantly, not only against the employers for an enlarged opportunity measured in income, security and liberty in the shop and industry, but struggles also, whether consciously or unconsciously, actively or merely passively, against the intellectual who would frame its programs and shape its policies. In this struggle by 'organic' labor against dominance by the intellectuals, we perceive a clash of an ideology which holds the concrete workingmen in the center of its vision with a rival ideology which envisages labor merely as an 'abstract mass in the grip of an abstract force.' "Labor's own 'home grown' ideology is disclosed only through a study of the 'working rules' of labor's own 'institutions.' The trade unions are the institutions of labor today, but much can be learned also from labor's institutions in the past, notably the gilds." Perlman is cautions of swallowing accepted generalizations of any kind about labor. His is a first-hand study. His method is that of the investigator, not of the propagandist. He was raised as a Marxian socialist,, and it is doubly significant, therefore, that he traces the development of labor in Russia, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, a movement sharply diverging from the accepted Marxian theories. Just What Happens When "Talkies" Don't Talk When sound apparatus goes wrong it is apt to create havoc with a program. This was evidenced at a New York theatre recently when something went amiss with the sound equipment, and the program of sound subjects had to be clipped from the bill, including Movietone News. Giggles and suppressed laughter ran through the house when a sound trailer was shown in which the actor's lips moved without a sound emanating from the screen. "Even in Russia," he says, "It is an irony of fate that the same revolution which purports to enact into life the Marxian social program should belie the truth of Marx's materialistic interpretation of history, and demonstrate that history is shaped by both economic and non-economic forces." He shows that the ruling classes in Russia failed to manifest a will to power, and shows why the state is strong in Russia under the bolsheviks, simply because it was strong under the czars. Even the capitalists, when they arose, were but mere "industrial courtiers" subject to the state. And the peasant village, on the other hand, was a kind of Communism in practice even under the czars. When he passes to Germany, similar social conditions as in Russia do not show themselves. "But whereas in Russia the factor of the state was everything, in modern Germany the political factor of the monarchy was largely a screen behind which a self-reliant class of industrialists was building up its own might. This might was not in wealth alone, which in times of acute revolution may add but little to resistance power. It was in the form of a highly complex and delicately adjusted economic mechanism, on which even avowed revolutionists would shrink from laying inexperienced hands." "Doubtless," he continues, "the strangest single factor which caused the extreme divergence of paths between the Russian and the German revolutions lay in the conditions of their respective peasantries." The German peasants backed the industrialists. Theories Smashed by Farts In Germany, he again traces divergence from the ' accepted Marxian theory. There is "no tendency of the middle class to disappear, predicted by Marx." He finds in Germany, and dramatically traces, the conflict as between the intellectuals and the unionists revealing the present triumph of the trade unionists. "The German labor movement has therefore shelved, perhaps for good, its former radical anti-capitalism and is endeavoring instead through economic and political pressure to get for labor the maximum from capitalism." Again, "German trade unionism is fully aware that improvement in German labor standards depends upon a continuous solving, of these problems." In England, he views the "oldest continuous labor movement in the world." He finds there the temporary ascendancy of intellectuals largely because the trade union leaders were failing to meet the every-day, practical problems on the industrial field with aggressiveness. He finds again the accepted Marxian theories do not hold good. "If industrial (Continued on page 24)