Page:Historical Catechism of American Unionism.pdf/86

   thing, therefore, for the workers to recognize, is the industrial character of our society, and the true nature of the state.

When they do, they will direct their energies against the wage relationship and offer battle to the masters of society where these are least qualified to offer resistance—in the industries. There the workers are masters when they understand their position and realize their power. With this conception there must develop the recognition that with an instrument which will enable them to control their labor power, they can successfully resist aggression, and change their present status.

With the state the workers need not concern themselves except to recognize its class character and function. To scheme for concessions and favors from it, as an institution, is to cherish a delusion. To construct and develop an instrumentality by which the workers in the industries can assert and advance their interest as social factors against their employer is to have generated a power that will compel the state to modify its programs and conduct so as to accord with the changes which the workers will force in this relationship to the employers. As the organized proletariat advances in the control of labor power, the prestige of the capitalist class declines and the state as a repressive power is weakened correspondingly. The workers need not, and indeed should not direct their efforts against the state but against the wage relationship of which it is the guardian, custodian and defender.

'''The right to strive for shorter hours, higher wages and better conditions—modifying the class relationship—is acknowledged, even in capitalist circles, as a legitimate ambition and effort of the workers. Such readjustment as will presently lessen and ultimately eliminate unemployment is also admitted as a worthy endeavor of the workers. The social character of labor is the point that a real working class movement must stress, and the social importance of the points for which the organized workers contend, in their demands, is the logical and successful way for a union movement to make progress. This is the way of revolutionary preparation. For, as working class organization extends, its influence is felt socially. That influence is necessarily beneficial and advantageous. A genuine labor movement is constructive, and social construction, or reconstruction, is predicated upon industry and the social industrial relationship.''' 87