THE THREAT TO THE LABOR MOVEMENT
Thomas continues:
It is with joy that one turns to Passaic. There the heroic struggle is resulting in victory. The settlements in the Botany Mills and a number of smaller organizations are all that could reasonably be expected from a local strike in the textile industry.
It is a matter of public knowledge that Communists and left wingers organized and led the Passaic strike, built up the relief machinery, fed the strikers, and that left wing union organizers and members still are the backbone of the struggle. But how does Thomas explain that the same Matthew Woll, who denounced the Communists to President Coolidge last November for their activity in the Passaic strike, is now lionized by the socialist party press as a savior of the labor movement?
But these are minor inconsistencies of a socialist policy which is consistent as a whole and which brings them in organizations other than the trade unions into conflict with the class interests of the workers.
In the words of Norman Thomas, the socialist bureaucracy is "making love to reaction." It is a neat phrase, delightfully descriptive and perfectly appropriate.
I am indebted to Norman Thomas for this apt characterization and shall use it hereafter in referring to the socialist leaders, of course giving Thomas credit for it.
Pure Reaction Is Official S. P. Policy.
THE present position of the socialist party bureaucracy is the inevitable result of its inability and unwillingness to draw the correct conclusions relative to imperialism—the final stage of capitalism; of their denial of the role of a revolutionary party, of the necessity for the dictatorship of the working class, of their failure to understand the role of the trade unions as the rallying centers of the whole working class, of their failure to understand the methods and reasons for the struggle for immediate demands in the period of imperialism, and of their endeavor to draw a line between the masses of the Soviet Union and the proletarian state power of the Soviet Union.
The socialist bureaucracy becomes the ally of the trade union bureaucracy and, not so openly because of their better understanding of the means of fooling the masses, but just as consciously, the ally of imperialism itself.
For the struggle between right and left in the trade unions is essentially a struggle between those working class elements who feel the pressure of imperialism and those who benefit from it to some extent.
The socialist party bureaucracy has the ambition to become the intellectual expression of the trade union bureaucracy. It dreams of leading a labor party, of becoming His Majesty Morgan's loyal opposition. It will not lead workers to struggle because it thus comes into conflict with trade union officialdom and the ruling class and jeopardizes its chances of "sane and constructive leadership."
Lest some reader think the above is an exaggeration of the policy of the socialist party bureaucracy and
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