Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Bankruptcy of the American Labor Movement (1922).djvu/53

 48 ing the trade unions, run the conceptions that the trade unions are essentially capitalistic in nature, and that they cannot develop into bona fide revolutionary organizations. But the militants of today, since their great change in opinion and tactics, no longer accept these far-fetched and unjustifiable conclusions. They see the trade unions for what they really are, primitive but genuine attempts of an ignorant working class to organize and fight the exploiters that are harassing it. If the organizations are afflicted by all sorts of capitalist ideas and notions it is because the workers as a whole suffer from them also. Timid and muddled trade unions are a logical throwoff of a timid and muddled working class. But as the workers gradually become educated, and especially as a more militant and intelligent element achieves leadership among them, the trade unions will constantly take on higher forms and a more advanced psychology, until finally they develop into scientifically constructed, class conscious weapons in the revolutionary struggle.

In the era just past the militants made much of the fact that the trade unions demanded only "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work," claiming this slogan showed conclusively that they were wedded to the perpetuation of the capitalist system. It was one of the prime reasons why the Socialists did not invade the A. F. of L., depose the Gompers regime, and change the whole face of the labor movement twenty years ago. But the militants are no longer deceived by this and similar slogans. They see that little or no attention is paid to such doctrines in real practice. The unions know no such thing as "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work." Consciously or unconsciously, they have used that device as camouflage to conceal from the capitalist enemy the aggressive character of their movement. In reality there is no set limit to their demands. Notwithstanding the hamstringing effects of their conservative bureaucracy, and of their own ignorance and weak organization, the unions constantly improve working conditions and screw up wages as much as they can. Their unwavering method is to siezeseize [sic] from the exploiter all they have the understanding and power to take. This is a distinctly revolutionary proceeding. And the modern militant knows that, so far as the industrial part of the class struggle is concerned, his task is to broaden, deepen, clarify, and hasten this natural revolutionary trade union tendency until it culminates in the final abolition of capitalism. {{dhr]}