THE THREAT TO THE LABOR MOVEMENT
trend of the official trade union policy and has become the semi-official spokesman of A. F. of L. officialdom, says in his book, "American Labor and American Democracy," favorably reviewed in all the official labor sheets:
The American labor movement always has been and doubtless will remain, fundamentally economic in character.
We have seen the pronouncements of President Green of the A. F. of L. and other official spokesmen relative to the role of trade unions as production organs in close connection with management and we have likewise seen that the New York Times and other mouthpieces of capitalism share the same opinion.
All of these forces are united against the section of the organized workers and of the unorganized, as in Passaic, who are "disturbing" the "peaceful" development of American imperialism.
The dogma that strikes are unnecessary and "wasteful" has been put forward and an attempt clearly is made, as in the New York needle trades, to show that workers, by accepting the principle of slightly higher pay for much more work, can better their conditions substantially WITHOUT strikes.
The struggle in the labor movement now between right and left is a struggle for the right to strike. But it is something more than that—it is also a new kind of a struggle, a struggle for the abolition of trade unions as weapons of the working class which is being conducted INSIDE of the union by agents of the capitalists. The left wing workers fight to STAY in the unions and forge them into real weapons of all the workers.
"Uninterrupted and Increased Production"—Slogan of
American Imperialism.
IT is noticeable that only where highly exploited workers revolt, as in the textile industry recently, or only in militant strikes with some political consciousness, like those of the furriers and cloakmakers, does the capitalist class conduct a direct offensive and heap columns of abuse upon them in its press.
Wage demands of large and decisive groups of workers, as in the railroad industry, do not evoke such open hatred and abuse, when the capitalist class knows that they will be compromised thru the compulsory arbitration machinery, as do relatively small and unimportant strikes in less decisive industries.
"Uninterrupted and increased production" is the slogan of American imperialism and it is echoed by the trade union bureaucracy. The present labor leadership, as has been stated an the introduction to this pamphlet, has no policy beyond that of securing a small share of the enormous wealth produced for the workers by means of "cooperation" agreements providing for increases in output per worker—piece work in a wholesale scale for the working class. When the inevitable period of crisis comes, the labor leadership is helpless. Still worse, as it has done in the past, it becomes the open ally
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