Page:William Z. Foster -Organize the Unorganized.djvu/16

 This whole dual union tendency must be relentlessly combatted and the policy pursued of coming more closely into co-operation and affiliation with the old unions. The T. U. E. L., militants must also guard against the opposite tendency of making affiliation with the old unions a fetishism, or develop a "unity-at-any-price" program. Such a policy is wrong and might easily do big damage by resulting in a surrender off-hand of the leadership of strikes, organizing campaigns, and new-formed unions to ultra reactionary leaders who would destroy them.

Often these leaders will propose such terms of affiliation as to make their acceptance tantamount to the sacrifice of the interests of the workers. We must fight for affiliation to the A. F. of L. unions, but we also must fight for honest and militant leadership, and mass industrial organization. Our growing left wing leaders must be provided a place to function in the unions, and above all, at this stage, we must retain the initiative in carrying on the great work of organizing the unorganized.

In working out propositions of affiliation, or operating within the trade unions, these ends must not be lost sight of. One of our most delicate tactical problems will be to judge when we can best further these ends by affiliation to the existing unions, and when it will be necessary to form or maintain independent organizations.

But again I emphasize, the greatest danger that the left wing confronts in such situations is the persistent dual union tendency to pull away from the old unions and to establish new and independent organization which isolate our forces from the main body of organized workers.

Under the general head of left wing relationship to the old unions, must be considered the problem presented by the jurisdictional claims of these organizations. First, the question of open jurisdictional fights. In many cases left wingers, taking the points of view of their respective craft unions, become deeply immersed in the jurisdictional quarrels of their organizations, with the result that their arguments and programs are almost indistinguishable from those of the ordinary craft unionist. This is fundamentally wrong. We must rise above such petty, short