The Threat to the Labor Movement/Section 33
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.