Socialist Slams Liberalism

"Liberalism in general today is pure, unadulterated demagogery," Myra Tanner Weiss said Tuesday in a statement to the CRIMSON. Miss Weiss, candidate for the Vice-Presidency on the Socialist Workers Party platform, attacked both Gov. Adlai Stevenson and Senator John S. Sparkman as enemies of the working class movement.

"Stevenson's course," Miss Weiss said, "will probably be like that of Truman; he now makes speeches against the Taft-Hartley law but he will probably use it to smash strikes. Stevenson said that the Taft-Hartley law was not a slave labor law, but the labor movement considers it as such."

Miss Weiss, reflecting the party's strong stand on civil liberties, attacked Sparkman on the grounds that "his record is in complete agreement with the white supremacists of the South. No fighter for Civil Rights can vote the Democratic ticket," she said, "and come out of the polls feeling clean . . . . . . or the Republican ticket either."

If the Democratic ticket is elected at the polls, Miss Weiss said little will be done for the minority classes. "The 1952 Democratic platform grants less concessions to the Negro people than the '43 platform, and that was never carried out."

The Vice-Presidential candidate quoted a magazine survey which had reported that the Socialist Workers Party is on the ballot in 20 states, but added that the figure was generous.

Making a distinction between her party and the communists, Miss Weiss said, "We have always been the worst enemies of the Communist Party in this country."

Farrell Dobbs is running for President on the ticket with Miss Weiss. She gained national prominence in 1946 for her exposure of the Fontana, California case, when a Negro family was burned to death. She ran for mayor of Los Angeles in 1945, for Congress in 1948, and for the Los Angeles Board of Education in 1950.

Miss Weiss said that her party does not depend on numbers. Since the SWP predicts a national collapse following war with Russia, she said the party is preparing itself for that eventuality.

Most of the party's support, Miss Weiss stated, comes from the laboring class of citizens. She added that labor today actually has a lower standard of living than it did in the years preceding World War II because the imperialists are operating on a forced war economy.