William Z. Foster

“ IN THE STRIKE STRUGGLE (Continued) .
1—The Fight Against Hunger.
The most powerful of all the weapons employed by the capitalists in ordinary strikes is that of hunger. They seek to starve the workers, their women and their children; to shut off their supply of life necessities until their courage is broken and they come back to work upon the employers' terms, defeated. It is a cold and brutal business, but it is one of the many barbaric many the employers use to maintain their power to rob and exploit the workers. Starvation in all its forms in strikes is a morale breaker, a scab breeder. ”

“ Are not our deposits of coal and iron immeasurably greater, our mills more highly developed, our labor force more numerous and more skilled than those of any other country? Who then will venture to assert that American workingmen are not entitled to exercise all the rights and privileges enjoyed by European workingmen? If the steel workers of England, or France, or Italy, or Germany can practice collective bargaining, why not the steel workers of America? And why should the steel workers here have to work twelve hours daily when the eight hour day obtains abroad? ”

“ Our trade unions are primitive to a degree in their structure and they cling tenaciously to the antiquated craft form, discarded by workers in other countries; they are exceedingly weak in numbers, encompassing only a small body of workers, instead of the great mass, as in Germany, England and elsewhere; they have not succeeded, as compared with European unions, in winning the shorter workday and in establishing the foundations of democracy in industry; the breath of progress is not in them. The international policy of our movement is a joke, when not a tragedy. ”

“ Far more important even than legal right to work is the Russian workers' recognized right to the full product of their labor. In other countries the cream of industry's products flow into the maw of the exploiters; the benefits of invention and intensified production are absorbed by social parasites; the drones idle in luxury; while the workers drudge in poverty and deprivation. But how different in Russia: there there are no exploiters. The workers have to pay no tribute to a ruling class. ”

“ A handful of social parasites hidden away in Wall street, with no other interest in the steel industry than to exploit it, settle arbitrarily the vital questions of wages, hours and working conditions, while the enormous mass of the workers, actual producers whose very lives are involved, have no say whatsoever. No matter how bitter their grievances, when they raise their voice to ask redress, they are discharged, blacklisted, starved, beaten, jailed and even shot, until they bend the knee again and yield to the will of their industrial masters. ”

“ The greedy railroad autocracy is intolerable. It must go, and along with it the balance of the parasitic capitalist class. Private property in social necessities must be abolished root and branch. There is no other cure for our industrial troubles. Then, and only then, will war, poverty and exploitation come to an end. To do this great work is the supreme mission of the labor movement. At heart and in their daily action the trade unions are revolutionary. ”

“ In any event, even if no other countries had joined Germany and Russia in revolution, these two would have formed a great proletarian economic and social block that must have succeeded in establishing a new type of society. Germany, with its splendid industrial equipment, and Russia, with its boundless natural resources, would have made up an enormous unit that would have been able to live independently of the rest of the world. Capitalism's blockade would have been powerless against it, likewise its military attacks. ”

“ It is a drastic proof of the low level of our labor leadership.
But worse even than the plain grafters are the large body of leaders who, destitute of all idealism and real proletarian feeling, look upon the labor movement simply as a convenient means to well-paid jobs of power and influence. They kill all life and progress in the workers’ organizations. Mr. Gompers is the undisputed king of this type. He is the champion office-holder of them all. The way he has hung on for forty years is a world marvel. And the labor movement has paid dearly enough for it. ”

“ Working class strategists, including those of the most courageous type, must learn to use the general strike judiciously. The danger when conservatives head a general strike movement is that they will first choke back its development and then betray it when it occurs in spite of them. A danger in the use of the general strike weapon by left wing leaders is that they in their eagerness to fight capitalism, will call the workers out when the latter do not understand the issues at stake or are not prepared to fight to the end for them. ”

“ The Steel Trust was solidly united ; its forces worked together like a perfect machine. But not so on the side of Labor—where there should have been unity, harmony and power, there was division, disagreement and impotency. Federation failed to make good. The twenty-four unions never really combined their forces, or organized their many wills into one firm determination to win. From first to last they lacked cohesion and singleness of purpose. And under their federated form of organization not even the great stake of the organization of the steel industry could spur them to unified action. ”

“ It was the misfortune of the steel strike to occur in the midst of the post-war reaction, which still persists unabated, and which constitutes the most shameful page in American history. Ours are days when the organized employers, inspired by a horrible fear of the onward sweep of revolution in Europe and the irresistible advance of the labor movement in this country, are robbing the people overnight of their most precious rights, the fruits of a thousand years of struggle. And the people, not yet recovered from war hysteria and misled by a corrupt press, cannot perceive the outrage. ”

“ It is our calamity and discredit that one has to come to America to find the sad spectacle of a great labor movement which has not yet freed itself intellectually from the bonds of capitalism, and which is still persisting in the foolish and hopeless task of patching up the wage system. ”

“ When American railroad men embark upon the amalgamation of all their trade unions into one industrial union they will not be pioneers blazinga trail through an unknown wilderness. On the contrary, they will be setting forth on a well-travelled road, long since gone over by the railroad workers of France, Italy, England, Russia, Germany, Belgium, etc., on their way to freedom—for in all these countries all classes of railroad workers, save an occasional craft fragment here and there, are to be found in single organizations. ”

“ The Red Army is just as different from other armies as the Soviet Government is different from capitalistic governments. It is pervaded throughout with a democratic spirit totally unknown in other military organizations. Between the officers and the soldiers a feeling of brotherhood prevails; they dress just alike and call each other "comrade." The Red Army is a people's army in the true sense of the word. Its function is to defend the workers' rights.
The Red Army is an organized crusade for the revolution. It defeats its foes not only by force, but also by education. ”

“ A prime objective of ours is to clarify the aims of the present scattered, blind strikes of the workers, to raise them above purely economic ends, and to unite them all into a broad political attack against the entire capitalist system. Consequently, we must fight for a break with the old capitalist parties and utilize every strike to further the movement for the creation of a mass political party of the workers, the labor party. ”

“ And the worst of it is that in the big strike an ignorant public, miseducated by employers' propaganda sheets masquerading under the guise of newspapers, applauded them in their ruthless course. Blindly this public, setting itself up as the great arbiter of what is democratic and American, condemned as bolshevistic and ruinous the demands of almost 400,000 steel workers for simple, fundamental reforms, without which hardly a pretense of freedom is possible, and lauded as sturdy Americanism the desperate autocracy of the Steel Trust. ”

“ Gompers has never considered any movements of the workers from any other angle except what effect they will have upon his tenure of office.
Like all other labor politicians, but much more pronouncedly, Mr. Gompers shirks responsibility. No matter how burning the need for vigorous action to save some critical situation, he will initiate nothing. The labor world may tumble about his ears, but to protect his own interests, he stands pat. With him everything is all right so long as he does not have to assume responsibility that may breed him enemies. ”

“ Liberty was dead and brutal autocracy reigned supreme. Politically and industrially, the workers and peasants were destitute of right and justice. They were mercilessly abused and robbed at the whims of their heartless masters. But the day of reckoning finally came: with a mighty effort the downtrodden slaves turned against their tormentors and finished with them.
Never has human history been made so rapidly as during the tremendous Russian revolutionary drama. Great event has followed great event with bewildering speed. ”

“ So long as the unions remain autonomous bodies, each with its own set of officers, just that long will they stand first for their respective craft interests, to the detriment of the general welfare, and just that long will real unity among railroad men be impossible. This can only be had when the unions are all amalgamated into one body. Then the resultant organization, with one set of officials, one interest and one goal, will develop such tremendous power that the workers will be able to make real progress on the long, hard road to emancipation. ”

“ Instead of advocating the prevailing shameful and demoralizing nonsense about harmonizing the interests of Capital and Labor, it is firing the workers' imagination and releasing their wonderful idealism and energy by propagating the inspiring goal of the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a workers' republic. The League aggressively favors organization by industry instead of by craft. Although the craft form of union served a useful purpose in the early days of capitalism, it is now entirely out of date. ”