THE THREAT TO THE LABOR MOVEMENT
ning as unions of sweated workers, have rapidly developed an aristocracy which differs little, except in social-democratic cleverness, from the typical A. F. of L. bureaucracy.
There has also developed in other unions of Jewish workers an aristocracy which shares its plunder in some small degree at least with the socialist party leadership.
With their economic status far superior to that of the masses of workers, the elements listed above, with the aid of the bosses and the government, make war upon the section of the membership which insists that union officials should belong to the working class.
It must not be thought that these elements do not have some mass support. They do. It consists of workers who, for one reason or another, enjoy better wages and working conditions than the majority of the working class, who are more backward politically for historical reasons than the rest of the union membership.
Lenin's Views on Official Corruption.
SAID Lenin:
This upper strata of workers or "workers' aristocracy," which is wholly petty bourgeois with regard to their manner of living and the size of their earnings, as well as in regard to their entire world viewpoint, constitutes one of the main props of the Second International, and at present the main peace-time SOCIAL PROP FOR THE BOURGEOISIE. For the truest AGENTS OF THE BOURGEOISIE IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT are the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class, who are the truest apostles of reformism and chauvinism. (Emphasis in translation.)
We have here the explanation for the united front of socialist bureaucracy and trade union officialdom. They live the same way, they are joint participants in the distribution of the enormous surplus which American imperialism accumulates from all quarters of the globe, and their task is to crush out all tendencies towards militant struggle for economic demands and development of mass political consciousness as workers and trade unionists.
Proof of Guilt from Official Statements.
FROM our survey of the forces organized against the left wing, their public statements, the statements of the capitalist press in support of the right wing, the twin-like character of the capitalist program for the unions and the program of officialdom-worker-employer co-operation, the joint demand of labor officialdom and capitalist spokesmen for definite increase in production in return for slight wage increases, the assertions of both trade union officialdom and socialist party leaders that the unions are and must remain only economic organizations, from the fact
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