Page THE MILITANT Saturday, June 28 193 Aftermath of Needle Trades Convention Character of the Right Wing Unions ground for confusing them with company unions, The basic difference consists in this: The company union is a lifeless organization created by the bosses, in which no outside force is consulted and no agree.
ment is required. The reactionary labor union, on the other hand is based on an agreement of the bosses with an outside One of the chief errors of the convenBy James Cannon officers are the bosses employees, foremen, forco, namely, the unions representted by tion of the Needle Trades Workers Indusstool pigeons ctc. They have no indepen the Right wing oflicialdom. This relationtrial Union an error, like all the others, Left wing in the old unions would rob the dent life and no independent power to ship imparts to the union certain features forced upon it by the Party leadership new union of any possibilities of broad ex enforce decisions. They have no functions never seen in a company union. These are: was to regard the split in the furriers and pansion and condemn it to sectarian im except those conferred on them by the a formal indopendent life of the union or Ladies garment workers unions, and the potence.
bosses. History has never yet recorded ganization and an independent apparatus formation of the new industrial union, as The Stalinist master minds who can see a struggle of the workers conducted under not employed in the shop: a constitution the final settlemen of accounts with the only along a straight line, and that only the banner of a company union; although and formal democratic procedure business reactionary leaders within the old organas far as the end of their noses, will have there have been a few instances where they meetings, conventions, etc. without direct izations throughout the industry, including none of this complicated strategy. And served as the starting point for movements interference of the bosses; an independent those unions which were not affected by lacking reasons to justify their narrow and of revolt against the company unions, treasury for the self maintenance of the the split. This estimation of the situation sectarian policy, they invent them. One smashing through them and forming in union; the settlement of disputes by agree.
18 profoundly false. The issue is not yet of these inventions is the theory that the dependent unions of the workers. No workment with an implied reserve weapon of settled even with the unions in which the Right wing unions are company unions. er even the most ignorant ever mistook a compulsion on the part of the union. These split occurred and will not be settled as Even if this were so it would not free the company union for a real union.
are the essential features of a labor orng as these Right wing organizations revolutionaries from the necessity of work.
Class Collaboration Unions ganization, a potential instrument of the ontrol the majority of the organized work. ing within them as long as they embrace Can the Right wing unions in the needle class struggle and a natural field for rev.
Mes in these trades, And in the field of masses of workers. Foster explained this trades with all the corruption and treacholutionary work.
the other unions, where there has been no some years ago in his writings on comery of their leaders properly be classified It is quite obvious that company unions Bplit and where the new union has created pany unions, and as Lenin explained before as company unions? Certainly not, it and reactionary trade unions are entirely no base in the shops, such an assumption him in his account of the work of the boldefinitions mean anything. These are quite different kinds of organizations. And this is a sheer absurdity. policy founded on sheviks in the Czarist polico controlled different organizatons and this fundamental difference is not disposed of by the asserthis false assumption collides with facts unions in Left Wing Communism. But, difference is not abolished by the recent tion that the Right wing unions, through. which cannot be wished away.
alas, we live in the third period. and the trend of the Right wing officials toward their corrupt officials, also serve the boss.
The split and the formation of the new onetime wisdom of Foster, to say nothing closer and more open partnership with the es. This is true enough, and it must ne.
union in a section of the industry of the wisdom of Lenin is a forgotten song bosses. The Right wing organizations are ver be forgotten, but they serve the bosses must rather be regarded as a stage in of long ago. Stalinist education requires in a different way than do the officials of class collaboration unions in all the aclong drawn out and complicated struggle. that we forget today everything we learned cepted meaning and implication of that the company unions who are directly emThe first necessary stage was the forma yesterday.
term. It is quite true that the Right wing ployed by the bosses and represent no tion of the Left wing in the old unions The Company Union Argament officials have introduced a new efficiency independent power. This is what we have and its consolidation in batttle. Without The company union argument is a and a higher technique into the business of to understand before we can draw the corthat the present existence of the new union theoretical fraud invented to motivate a betraying the workers under the old theory rect inferences regarding revolutionary tacwould have been impossible. The Left false policy. There is no doubt, however of a partnership between labor and capital. tics. To characterize the old unions in wing is still confronted with this prelimin that many of the Left wing workers are But at bottom there is nothing new in printhe needle trades as company unions means ary task in the Amalgamated Clothing deluded by this schematic explanation of ciple. The Right wing unions in practice to play with catch words. Those wh. want Workers and in the Cap and Millinery the matter; and this delusion stands in the to are more or less typical examples of the think straight and revolutionaries Workers Union. It has yet to complete it way of a clear comprehension of the prob doctrine of class collaboration, above all others must do this list be In the and the Furriers Union. lems and tasks of the Left wing. This What is there about the practice of the ware of catch words. What we need is pre.
It also has the problem of uniting this circumstance justifies and necessitates Right wing unions that distinguishes them cise definitions of our problems and tasks.
activity in a comprehensive strategy with discussion of the formula which is designed Intelligent thought requires that woulds from the standard type of reactionary the task of strengthening the new Left to save thought and avoid a complicated have a definite meaning, although this eiunion and organizing the unorganized. The struggle.
American trade unions, Is it the agreement ementary truth has not yet occurred to the with the bosses to compel the workers in goal of the Left wing is to unite the magses The history of the American and Inthe shop to register in the Right union. phrase mongering leaders who try to anof needle trades workers into a single or ternational labor movement showe two swer complicated problems with care e39 Almost every American trade union for ganization of the clas struggle.
types of trade unions; those based on the years and even for decades has attempted epithets.
The goal is still some distance away, idea of the partnership of labor and capIt we compare the old unions in the to make such an agreement with the emRS the membership figures demonstrate tal Class collaboration unjont and ployers. Many of them are based on such needle trades with the standard of with merciless logic. Under what condi those based on the class struggle. Even contracts.
unions and such conservative independent The printing trades, building tiras can the Left wing move in the di between these two main types the line of bodies as the railroad brotherhoods we see trades, and many other unions have such ration of this goal. Only by demonstrat demarcation is not always clear. They agreements. The most conspicuous illusthat they all have the same characteristio bag in practice that it is able to improve frequently overlap cach other. More than For features tration is the United Mine Workers.
The differences and variations the material conditions of the workers in one revolutionary union has proved to between them are incidental and peculiar more than twenty years this organization the shops. The most revolutionary pro be conservative, even reactionary, in pracmaintained control of the organized coal to the particular situation surrounding gram will not be accepted as a substitute tice and many a militant strike has been fields, and froze out such rivals as the them. The important thing to see be.
fox this. The workers want results in conducted by unions officially committed cause it is an inescapable fact is that they, terms of bread and butter. and the One Big Union, through If the Left These to a policy of class collaboration.
the arrangement check off system an are of the same basic type. Consequently, wing union fails in this it fails in every contradictions between practice and prowhereby the mine operators collected the a policy of withdrawal from the reactionary thing The new union has the will to do gram arise from the fact that the trade unions in the needle trades, of refusing union dues by deducting them from the this, but it is blocked by the Right unions unions are not static bodies. They have miners wages.
to organize a Left wing within them on The program of the Left which have the help of the bosses and the their existence in the class struggle and wing convention cites the check off as one the ground that they are company unionspolice and, besides, have the great bulk are constantly under its pressure and inis, in reality, a decision to give up the fight of the organized workers in their ranks. fluence.
of the characteristics of company unions.
in all the reactionary unions.
This is really laughable when it is recalled Make no The existtenco of these Right wing unions The trade unions, which are the basic mistake about it. That is what the newlythat the cbeck off was one of the Left wing under the control of the reactionaries and and elementary organizations of the workbaked theory 01 demands in the miners union up till a company unionism traitors is not only a barrier to the new ers, reflect in a general way the stage of means.
short while ago; the surrender of the union in the organized shops; it is also class development of the workers in their check off by Lewis in the anthracite strike Such proposais have been made before. powerful force for sabotage and dis ranks.
In 1920 and 1921 we fought the issue out ruption of any serious organizing campaign The corrupt and reactionary bureauc.
in 1926 was bitterly attacked by the Comin bitter conflicts in the Party. The rise of munist Party.
of the new union among the unorganized. racy exerts a certain influence, of course, the Lefo wing in the needle trades and all Is It co operation of their officials The Left wing must cope with this problem. in holding back the development of the its great historic accomplishments would That is the key to its future development. union on the path of the class struggle; with the bosses and the police to fight the have been impossible if we had not defeated Attit:de to Right Wing Unions just as the Communists, at the other pole, militant workers which makes the Right the abstentionist policy at that time and The quostion of the attitude of the rev are a force for its acceleration. Between wing unions company unions? This again steered the Communist militants into the olutionaries toward the Right wing unlong these two factors of conscious pressure for is the estabished and traditional practice mass organizations controlled by the reacneeds clarification. The convention of the opposing ends the general level of class of reactionaries in the labor movement; it tionaries the same Schlesingers and Hill.
new unica under the guidance of the Par consciousness in the masses asserts itselt is such practices, among others, that stamp mans. In the early days of the Comintern ty leadership, put the question on the and determines the character of the unions them as reactionaries and agents of the a historic struggle on this question took simple tasis of either or. that is, FOR in practice regardless of their predeterbosses. Lenin speaks of this in Left Wing palce, the results of which were summed up the new Left wing union and AGAINST the mined program. revolutionization of the Communism. The traitor leaders of the at the Second World Congress of the Comold Rigt wing unions throughout the enGerman trade unions were the saviours of labor movement presupposes a revolutioniintern and the First World Congress of the tire industry. The convention program zation of the masses and has no serious capitalism and the butchers of the revolu LU. Thanks to the decisive leadership meaning without it.
states: The the the tionary workers. After that Lenin wrote On the other hand, of Lenin and Trotsky the program of deI. U, and the other so called Right wing with a real development of working class his pamphlet advising the German Com serting the old mass unions, proposed by organizations are company unions in the radicalization, all the machinations of the munists to go into these unions in order the German ultra Left Opposition and secreal sonse of the word. The company bureaucrats cannot prevent the trade to wrest the workers out of the control of tions of the British and American delegaunions cannot be reformed, they must be unions from reflecting and expressing it.
these betrayers.
tione, was rejected and the Cominern destroyed. It follows with the Gecision: The fact that this organization expresIs it, perhaps, the enforcement of pro dirocted its course toward the masses in To abandon the maintainence of the sion may and most frequently will be reduction standards on the workers and the the reactionary unions. Without this deselling of the unions as agencies of efliL groups within the company unions. alized through deep splits in the old unions ciation the expansion of the Communist And to call upon every needle trade work and the formation of new ones a process ciency that transforms them into company Parties of Europe as great organizations er, regardless of craft or occupation, to join that has begun in the needle trades does unions? This agin is nothing new. Such of the masses could not have taken place.
the new union.
not alter the fundamental proposition. The a policy is inherent in the very idea of class This is a false approach to the prob very existence of the new needle trades collaboration unionism. The slogan of lem as well as a false estimation of the Industrial union which was first crystal. traditional trade unionism, a fair day 66 old unions. What is needed is a two sided lized as a Left wing in the old unions, is wages for a fair day work. which Marx All readers of the Militant and their policy of strengthening the new union and positive proof that these unions are suspolemicized against, is the germ of all such friends, who desire to get their copy of simultaneously policies. The latter day agents of the capworking within the old ceptible to the pressure of the class struggle of Leon Trotsky, My Life. should make it ftalists in the labor movement have only unions, with a single objective: to unite and the agitation of the revolutonaries. It a point to order the book directly through extended and modernized the basic ideas the workers on a broader basis under the is proof that, despite the despicable fakers Leftt the Militant. Shipment will be made the wing banner. Simple solutions at their head, they are actual organizations and practices of the conservative unionism day the order is received, and the cost of Helther or will not work out. To liof the past.
of the workers, the natural and legitimate quidate the new unions would mean to field for revolutionary activity.
While in all essential and fundamental the book, five dollars. 00. covers the deprive the workers of the concentrated Company unionism is a different ques. features the Right wing unionis in the postage charge. Send your order, together rains of their long struggle and paralyze tion altogther. Company unions are or needle trades conform to the standani with money order or cash to their fighting power for a long time. To ganizations formed directly by the bosses type of reactionary labor organization rep.
THE MILITANT cail at the same time to build strong and directly controlled by them. Their resented by the of there is no 25 Third Avenue, New York,