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Socialist Organizer To Speak at Forum
Bv Lee Stone
An 80-year-old socialist will speak here tomorrow as a guest of the SUA Minority Opinions Forum. He is John P. Quinn, national organizer of the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), the oldest Marxist party in the U.S.
The Minority Opinions Forum for Quinn will be held in the Big Eight and Regionalist rooms of the Kansas Union at 4:30 p.m. Quinn will speak on "The Causes of Unemployment and the Socialist Solution."
"QUINN HAS BEEN national organizer for the SLP since 1927," Laird Wilcox, Lawrence freshman and chairman of the Minority Opinions Forum, said.
According to V. O. Key Jr., the writer of a textbook on party politics, small and persistent parties like the SLP, "have only the gentlest impact on the course of events."
Standard research materials have little to say about Quinn. However, there are many references to Quinn's party and its policies.
"Yet, their members derive profound satisfaction from participation in (party) activities . . ."
During the 1960 presidential election, the SLP polled 47,000 votes in 18 states; during the 1956 election it polled 30,267 votes, Key says.
D. D. EGBERT AND Stow Pearson, editors of a fat, two-volume study of American socialism which was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, show the importance the SLP has had in influencing American style socialism.
The arguments which led to the splitting up of the SLP are the same ones which have confronted socialists since Marx's day, Egbert and Pearson say. They include the question of whether the Marxist revolution must be violent, or gradual, or be achieved by parliamentary means. Also, the socialists have wondered what their relationship to labor unions and international communism should be, Egbert and Pearson say.
KEY GIVES clues as to how the SLP, the generic American socialist
party, has decided these issues. "It regards itself as a revolutionary party which can by some way or another liquidate the capitalist system peacefully," Key said.
The SLP, according to Key, regards Stalinism as false Marxism. "The only difference is that instead of being exploited by a capitalist class (as American workers are) the Russian workers are exploited by the State, and for the benefit of a privileged bureaucratic caste," Key says.
THE SLP DEFINES its relationship to the Socialist Party in biting terms. The Socialist Party "is a fraud, a swindle perpetrated on the American worker, an organization that is up to its ears in capitalist politics," Key says.
Since the SLP dates its beginning to the 1890's, and Quinn has been its organizer for 37 of its 84 years of existence, it is reasonable to assume that Quinn has had some influence on the development of Marxist philosophy in this country.
The SLP also included the "internal Vatican organization" among its antagonists, the political scientist said.
In a recent issue of the SLP's party organ, "The Weekly People," is a request for $200,000 in contributions to finance SLP participation in the coming national elections.
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Thursday, April 23,1964 University Daily Kansan
Ex-Athlete to Give Talk on Religion
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A former pro-football star will speak at College Life at 9 p.m. Thursday in the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity house.
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Bill Krisher, who was captain for the Dallas Texans. Football Club and All-Pro Offensive Guard in the American Football League in 1960, is now Associate director of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
Krisher, who was also one of the starters for the college all-stars in 1958 against the National Football League champion Detroit Lions, will speak on how his belief in Jesus Christ has formed his life.
Dance Fraternity Has Election of Officers
Tau Sigma, honorary dance fraternity, has elected officers for the 1964-65 year, Ann Bueker, Lawrence senior and out-going president of the fraternity, said.
The new president is Mary Messenheimer, Minneapolis, Minn., sophomore. Others who were elected are: Marybeth Weekes, Beatrice, Neb., sophomore and vice-president; Pat Postlethwaite, Kansas City, Mo., junior and recording secretary, and Ronnie Eickmeyer, Prairie Village junior and treasurer.
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