Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Bankruptcy of the American Labor Movement (1922).djvu/11

 6 betray them industrially. The shocking Mulhall exposures of a few years ago gave barely an indication of the extent to which capitalist politicians have poisoned the labor movement, because its doors are open to them.

But, worst of all, American Labor's political policy directly checks the growth of class consciousness among the workers and retards the intellectual development of the labor movement. The acceptance of the capitalist parties as the political expression of the working class necessarily carries with it also the endorsement of their general capitalist point of view. Logically enough practically the whole battery of our trade union officials and labor papers express almost identically the same social conceptions as the capitalists and join hands with the latter in suppressing all activity tending to give the workers a clear understanding of the class nature of present society. Only when the workers organize politically as a class do they break with capitalist concepts and develop class consciousness.

For many years the British labor movement went along pretty much as we are doing now, a political cipher in the service of the capitalist parties. With most of its leaders preaching purely capitalistic economics, naturally class consciousness made slow headway. But when finally, as a result of the Taff-Vale Decision in 190], the movement was driven to independent political action and to organize the Labor Party, these very leaders, in the nature of things, were compelled to advocate, to a greater or lesser extent, class solidarity and class action. This broke the ice, and henceforth proletarian investigation and education found a more congenial atmosphere. The supposedly unshakably conservative British workers began to become class conscious. From that time to this they have made wonderful strides towards acquiring a revolutionary point of view. American workers will do the same once they break with the capitalist parties and set up a class party of their own. With its present policy of rewarding its "friends" and punishing its "enemies," the American labor movement is still in the political kindergarten.

In harmony with its undeveloped social viewpoint and its infantile political organization, American Labor's trade unions also are in a very backward state. Whether considered from the standpoint of numerical strength, type of structure, or general spirit of progress, they fall far behind the unions of many other countries. Even