Page:William Zebulon Foster - Strike Strategy (1926).pdf/60

 Can they pit their pennies against the capitalists' dollars and defeat them? The right wing leaders' policy constitutes practically an affirmative answer to this. They place great reliance on huge strike funds and large strike benefits. The ultra-leftists, typified by the I. W. W., give a negative answer. They scorn the power of the workers to finance their own strikes. They will have nothing to do with strike funds or regular benefits.

Both of these policies are wrong. Ample experience teaches us that by depending on money alone we cannot win, except in the case of a few highly skilled and thoroly organized trades, especially in these days of an enormously enriched and strengthened capitalism. It is altogether impossible to win through strike funds when great masses of the unorganized are on strike. Take for example, the strike of 400,000 steel workers. What chance was there to pay benefits in such a situation? Millions would have had to be poured into the strike weekly. Or, consider a national strike of coal miners or railroad workers. Manifestly such strikes, for winning must depend chiefly upon their shattering effects on the industrial system and upon their profound political consequences. Nevertheless, the ultra-leftist I. W. W.'s, by rejecting the strike benefit system altogether and by generally minimizing the importance of money in the fight, make a mistake in the other extreme from the right wingers who depend too much upon money.

The issue is not money (as the right wing proposes) versus militancy (as the ultra-leftists advocate). The solution of the problem comes from a correct combination of the two, militancy and money. Extra high dues, such as exist in many unions of skilled workers, and great strike and other funds prevent amalgamation, check the organization of the unorganized, and spread a general spirit of conservatism through the unions. Besides, they are no