Page:William Zebulon Foster - Strike Strategy (1926).pdf/5



HE reactionary officialdom of the trade unions travels constantly to the right. In following out its policy of "co-operation" with the employers, through the B. & O. plan, trade union capitalism, etc. it is rapidly casting aside even the last semblances of struggle against the employers. It rejects and condemns the strike as a weapon. Consequently, the masses of workers, abandoned and betrayed by their old leadership, are being compelled to turn more and more to the left wing in the unions for leadership in their inevitable fight for better conditions.

A whole series of strikes (Passaic, Furriers, I. L. G, W. U., etc.,) and of opposition movements in the unions (Machinists, Miners, etc.) indicates this tendency. As a result, the left wing has an urgent need to acquaint itself with the principles and practices of strike strategy, of the science of effective struggle by the trade unions.

The general question of strike strategy has received very little concentrated attention until within the last few years, that is, since the formation of the Red International of Labor Unions. Prior to that time the reformist trade union leaders, whose attention was fastened, not on making an effective fight against the employers, but on coming to agreement with them, gave very little thought to the development of a scientific strike strategy. In fact, the first real discussion ever held on the matter in an international labor gathering took place in the 1924 congress of the R. I. L. U.

In the United States the principal phase of strike strategy emphasized by the left wing for many years was the superiority of the industrial union and industrial strike over the craft union and craft strike. The many other