Page:William F. Dunne - The Threat to the Labor Movement (1927).pdf/43

 that the attack on the left wing centers now in unions which have fought and won strikes after rejecting the worker-employer co-operation policy, from the extension of the fight into all broad mass movements of a militant working class character we can say that the premises laid down in the introduction to these articles have been proven. They have been proven by the statements of labor officialdom, capitalist apologists, socialist party leaders and government officials.

Against the offensive of the united front of reaction the Communists and left wing represent the interests of the masses of the workers and fight for the right to strike, the right to free expression of political opinions in the unions, the right of the rank and file to make decisions without intimidation from gangsters in the pay of the official machine.

It is not for "the preservation of the trade unions" that officialdom is contending, but for trade unionism in name only—a lifeless, impotent organization managed in the interests of the bosses and resembling trade unionism only in that it supports an officialdom which talks of trade unionism—with its tongue in its fat jowl.

HE left wing is fighting to make the unions instruments and weapons of the whole working class, to amalgamate them into powerful industrial unions, to bring ALL the workers into the trade unions, to build a labor party based on the trade unions as the mass political expression of the workers.

This fight it will win by raising those issues which are of the most immediate importance to the masses, concentrating all efforts on winning these elementary struggles, exposing the true role of the present labor leadership, organizing, teaching, fighting the battles of the workers, extending the struggle to the whole labor movement and spreading it by determination and activity to the ranks of the unorganized, drawing into the struggle every available force against the agents of capitalism in the labor movement.

As for the Communist Party, its interests, as a revolutionary party, are the same as those of the American working class. The Communists want no better guarantee of the success of the social revolution in America than a powerful trade union movement, honestly and capably led, steeled and skilled in fighting American imperialism.

As the gap between the masses of exploited workers and labor officialdom widens by reason of the open reaction of the latter, the left wing, still small and weak in numbers but mighty with potential power, will tend more and more to become THE labor movement.

The millions of workers in America whose wages have not increased in two years, who toil long hours for low wages and to whom labor officialdom pays no attention except to sabotage their struggles, are a guarantee that the left wing program will become the program of the American masses.