S.W.P. statement explaining its demand for an ‘open door’ for Jews attempting to escape Nazi barbarism and wanting, needing, to come to the United States. Hundreds of thousands applied for visas but were denied entry as the ‘progressive’ Roosevelt administration stuck to its strict immigration caps and quotas. For reasons of ‘national security’ it even forced boats of refugees back to Europe and death under fascism. A crisis was reached in November, 1938 after Kristallnacht when the response of the administration was to call an international conference to discuss the problem. It did not change course, resigning untold numbers to repression, torture, and extermination.

‘Who Opposes the Open Door?’ from Socialist Appeal. Vol. 2 No. 52. December 3, 1938. 

In order to provide a scapegoat to turn aside wrath from their own heads, and in an effort to patch up a few holes in their tottering economy, the Nazi monsters have launched their drive for the economic, social and physical annihilation of a cultural and religious minority of 700,000 persons.

The immediate problem is to save these people, the helpless victims of the Nazi persecution.

The one honest, direct and workable answer that Americans can give is: to open the doors of the United States and admit the refugees into this country. Indignation and lamentation will not aid the refugees. Passing the buck to some other nation or all other nations will not save them. The thing, and the one thing, that we can do is to demand that they be let in here.

BIG SHOTS SILENT ON OPEN DOOR

It is notoriously obvious that, so far, very few of the big shots, including the big shot leaders of the Jewish organizations, have come out with public support for the demand to open the doors of the United States to the refugees. Speeches are cheap, but the cost of action is higher.

When these people find “difficulties” in and “objections” to the plan of opening the doors of the United States, we say: this proves that their indignation is a fake; and, in the case of the Jewish leaders, we say: this is a contemptible and hypocritical cowardice whereby they hope to curry favor with the rulers of America by not “inconveniencing” them with a demand that would force the United States actually to do something instead of preaching morality to the rest of the world.

However, there are two difficulties in the proposal for asylum in the United States which, inflated by the big shots, are also causing worries and doubts in the minds of the rank and file of American workers, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. These are: (1) Would not the admission of the refugees take away jobs from those of us already here, and increase unemployment? (2) Would not the admission of the refugees have the effect of increasing anti-Semitism in this country?

WHAT THE PROBLEMS ARE

We want to face these difficulties frankly.

In the first place, we do not pretend that admitting the refugees will permanently solve the entire Jewish question. The Jewish question is not going to be solved under capitalist-imperialism; on the contrary, it is going to get steadily worse; and it is about time, after the experiences of the past twenty years, that the Jews themselves woke up to that fact and turned their energies in the only direction that has any real hope for them; to the struggle against imperialism and for world socialism.

Admitting the refugees is not the permanent answer to the Jewish question as a whole. But it is the answer and the only answer to the immediate concrete crisis, to the present persecutions in Germany. Recognizing that the workers will never achieve real security under capitalism is no argument against the struggle now to raise wages at least above the starvation point.

Secondly, we naturally recognize that the admission of all of the refugees who want to enter would not be all easy sailing. No great task can be done without effort and trouble.

HOW ABOUT JOBS?

Specifically with reference to the objection that admission of the refugees means loss of jobs:

1. This is the reverse of the argument that killing off all the unemployed would get rid of unemployment. But the truth is that unemployment is a functional disease of capitalism, caused not by the lack of any need for work to be done but by the requirements of capitalist profit. Getting rid of the unemployed would not eliminate but aggravate the problem of unemployment for the remainder, as was proved by Ireland in the last century. Similarly, the admission of the refugees would in itself have no important effect on the general problem of unemployment. In point of fact, through the introduction of a new body of consumers its indirect effect might well be an increase of general employment.

2. However, the objection loses all weight when we merely reflect that there are now in the United States about 12,000,000 or more unemployed. The problem of unemployment is not going to be solved one way or another by the addition or subtraction of half a million persons–three times that many are laid off in a single month, when the production curve drops. There are plenty of resources, factories and potential jobs in this country for twice and three times the present number of inhabitants. The real answer to the objection on the grounds of employment is for all of the unemployed, joining with all of the refugees and all of the employed workers as well, to demand that the resources and factories be used as they should be used: to provide a job and a decent living for everyone.

As to the objection that admitting the refugees will increase anti-Semitism in this country:

The truth is that fighting for and carrying through the demand to admit the refugees is today the most effective blow that could be struck against anti-Semitism. The theory that anti-Semitism is called into being by the “aggressiveness” of the Jews in pressing their demands and putting themselves forward is certainly refuted by history as thoroughly as any theory could be refuted. The Jews have indeed been as timid, fearful and passive as any living organisms could well be. And the tactic of timidity did not hinder anti-Semitism one tiny fraction in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania, or in any other country.

Anti-Semitism arises out of the needs of decaying capitalism, not from the attitude of the Jews. There is no doubt that it is making headway in this country. There is no doubt that in some quarters it becomes more open in the face of the demand to admit the refugees.

But it will not retire if the Jews try to hide in the sand. It will, as reaction always does, grow stronger at the weakness of its opponents. Anti-Semitism has to be smashed; it will not be conciliated into disappearing.

And the most crushing kick that can be given to Anti-Semitism today, as it raises its ugly head on the American horizon, is to drive firmly ahead with the demand that the refugees be admitted.

In this way, reaction, which lurks behind anti-Semitism, will be prevented from consolidating; and the ranks of the genuinely progressive forces within the country, steeled by a firm and unambiguous battle, will be better prepared for the broader struggles that lie ahead.

There have been a number of periodicals named Socialist Appeal in our history, this Socialist Appeal was edited in New York City by the “Left Wing Branches of the Socialist Party”. After the Workers Party (International Left Opposition) entered the Socialist Party in 1936, the Trotskyists did not have an independent publication. However, Albert Goldman began publishing a monthly Socialist Appeal in Chicago in February 1935 before the bulk of Trotskyist entered the SP. When there, they began publishing Socialist Appeal in August 1937 as the weekly paper of the “Left Wing Branches of the Socialist Party” but in reality edited by Cannon and other leaders. Goldman’s Chicago Socialist Appeal would fold into the New York paper and this Socialist Appeal would replace New Militant as the main voice of Fourth Internationalist in the US. After the expulsion of the Trotskyists from the the Socialist Party, Socialist Appeal became the weekly organ of the newly constituted Socialist Workers Party in early 1938. Edited by James Cannon and Max Shachtman, Felix Morrow, and Albert Goldman. In 1941 Socialist Appeal became The Militant again.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1938/v2n52-dec-03-1938-SA.pdf