Page:William Z. Foster - The Revolutionary Crisis of 1918-1921 (1921).djvu/13

 carried out in definite agreement with the capitalist class. This agreement took place in broad daylight, right in the heat of the revolutionary outbreak. It expressed itself in a trade union contract, the most important and far-reaching document of the kind in the world's labor history. It will pay us to examine in some detail this very remarkable contract, the circumstances leading up to its formulation, and the consequences flowing from it.

For a month before it actually happened, the fall of the Kaiser was manifestly inevitable. The wide-awake employers, foreseeing the approaching revolutionary storm, realized that if they were to escape its terrific force, they would have to make substantial concessions to the workers. They were exceedingly anxious for a "settlement" that would save them their economic rulership. And the workers' political and industrial leaders, nearly all bred-in-the-bone Majority Socialist reformers, were equally anxious to avert the breakdown of capitalism. Although they propagated radical phrases, they did not believe in the revolution. They had no faith that the workers were capable of running society even if they could seize control of it. Their position was that Socialism had to come by evolution, not by revolution. They saw in the vast upheaval merely a good opportunity to wrest important reforms from the employers.

With the employers and the dominant workers' leaders all standing upon the common ground of the necessity to shield capitalism from the menacing danger of revolution, an agreement between the two interests was not difficult of achievement. This agreement was brought about, naturally enough, on the industrial field, the two groups reasoning rightly that if the organized capitalist class and the organized working class could come to an understanding in