Page:George Soule - The Intellectual and the Labor Movement.djvu/24



Mr. Soule's pamphlet is confined primarily to the value of the technician in the practical work of the trade unions. Historically, the role of the intellectual or "theoretician" (as distinct from the technician) has always been to express the general social ideas of the labor movement, to formulate its political program and to discover and emphasize the common and ultimate interests of the entire working class in the everyday struggles of its.separate detachments. It is, in fact, the recognition that the class struggle of the workers inevitably leads to a higher social order that furnishes common ground for the intellectual idealists and practical trade unionists in the political and economic struggles of organized labor.

Dealing with the possible ethical contribution to the radical movement, A. J. Muste, writes: "I believe that the labor movement is fundamentally the idealistic movement of our time; in some connection or other with it is the most tolerable place for the idealist to work. Undoubtedly, intellectuals with high ethical ideals can make a contribution to the solution of the ethical problems involved in labor union activities, provided that they never preach ethical ideals to labor unionists and almost never speak of them, and provided that their ethical convictions are not petrified dogmas mechanically applied to living situations, but hypotheses fearlessly lived by so long as no better are in sight, but constantly tested by being made to meet (not evade) situations and thus enriched and corrected. On the other hand, we need a new statement of ethics in general. The philosopher, who is going to do it, will have to get much of his material from the labor movement and will in turn render a profound service to it."

There is a large field for the intellectual, so called, in the labor movement in the new economic activities being taken on by the international organizations, During the past two years at least thirteen banks have been organized by labor groups, mostly from the railway unions. The Brotherhood of