Page:William Zebulon Foster - Strike Strategy (1926).pdf/33



HE most fundamental phases of our strike strategy relate to the mass of workers now unorganized. Great battles will be waged by these workers in the future, and in the process of which they will be mobilized into labor unions. This will have the most profound effects upon the trade union movement. It will proletarianize and revolutionize it. It will shift its leadership radically to the left. It will transfer the center of gravity of the movement from the skilled trades and light industries to the unskilled and semi-skilled in the key and basic industries. It will strengthen the position of the union movement by stripping the employes of their great weapon against it, the masses of unorganized workers. Hence the whole question of the organization of the unorganized is of the most vital concern in the development of our strike strategy.

The left wing must consciously and aggressively take up the task of organizing the unorganized, which is the major work now confronting the labor movement. There is no other group in the unions other than the left wing that has the understanding and initiative to do this basic task. The right wing, which represents the interests of the skilled workers, is opposed to the organizing of the unorganized unskilled masses, and the so-called "progressives," although they do lip service to the necessity of organization, are too spineless and wavering to really do anything about it except under the general leadership and stimulus of the militant left wing.