Strike Strategy

Front matter

290

No. 18

By

Foreword

Foreword

THE reactionary officialdom of the trade unions travels constantly to the right. In following out its policy of "co-operation" with the employers, through the B. & O. plan, trade union capitalism, etc. it is rapidly casting aside even the last semblances of struggle against the employers. It rejects and condemns the strike as a weapon. Consequently, the masses of workers, abandoned and betrayed by their old leadership, are being compelled to turn more and more to the left wing in the unions for leadership in their inevitable fight for better conditions.

A whole series of strikes (Passaic, Furriers, I. L. G, W. U., etc.,) and of opposition movements in the unions (Machinists, Miners, etc.) indicates this tendency. As a result, the left wing has an urgent need to acquaint itself with the principles and practices of strike strategy, of the science of effective struggle by the trade unions.

The general question of strike strategy has received very little concentrated attention until within the last few years, that is, since the formation of the Red International of Labor Unions. Prior to that time the reformist trade union leaders, whose attention was fastened, not on making an effective fight against the employers, but on coming to agreement with them, gave very little thought to the development of a scientific strike strategy. In fact, the first real discussion ever held on the matter in an international labor gathering took place in the 1924 congress of the R. I. L. U.

In the United States the principal phase of strike strategy emphasized by the left wing for many years was the superiority of the industrial union and industrial strike over the craft union and craft strike. The many other aspects of the subject were practically ignored. There has been no systematization of strike experiences into a definite strike strategy.

The question is highly complex. There is very little literature upon it in this or any other country. This pamphlet, which is a companion volume to my booklet entitled, "Organize the Unorganized," is a modest beginning of such a literature in this country. It should be followed by more elaborate and detailed studies.

At the R. I. L. U. 1924 congress, Losovsky defined the three elements of policy, strategy and tactics as follows:

In the present work this distinction is not made. The three elements of the subject are covered under the general head of strike strategy. The pamphlet is somewhat comprehensive, dealing with various aspects of the left wing trade union program, but all linked up with the central question of how to wage strikes successfully.

Strike strategy varies widely from country to country and period to period. Its specific character depends upon the degree of economic development and of the sharpness of the class struggle in a given situation. The strike strategy necessary in a country in a revolutionary crisis differs very materially from that required in one with a flourishing and expanding capitalism. The strike strategy herein sketched is that best calculated to defend and advance the interests of the working class under present-day conditions in the United States.

Today, capitalism in the United States is strong and growing. It is able to furnish work for the masses; it can concede such conditions to the upper layers of the working class, the skilled workers, as to keep them pretty well contented with the present capitalistic order of society. But this is a passing phase. Just as British capitalism, which was also once powerful and able to still the demands of the skilled workers with concessions, is now on the decline, so will American capitalism, however strong it may he now, go the same way downward because of the contradictions inherent in capitalist production and distribution.

The industries will shut down, great masses of workers will become chronically unemployed, their standards of living will be reduced; the concessions won from or given by the employers in the present period will then prove illusory and be swept away. The workers will be compelled to turn against capitalism, to organize their forces to put an end to the capitalist system and to establish the new proletarian order of society.

In the bitter struggles of that inevitable era the strike strategy will have to be quite different from and will be based upon a far more militant offensive than that possible in the workers' fight today. It is not within the province of this booklet to detail the strategy of those critical times, but to lay out practical lines for the conduct of our strike struggles now.

Chicago, October 20, 1926.

Chapter I: Strikes

Strike Strategy

By Wm. Z. Foster

Chapter I.

STRIKES, even when small and weak, constitute breaks of the workers with capitalism. They are living refutations of the time-worn conservative trade union slogan that the interests of capital and labor are’ identical. They are expressions of the irreconcilable quarrel between the workers and the employers over the division of the workers' products. They are skirmishes in the great class war, foreshadowings of the final struggle which will abolish capitalism.

During strikes, workers are in an especially militant and rebellious mood. They are then highly receptive of revolutionary ideas. It is then above all that they can and must be taught the full implications of their struggle. To rouse the class consciousness of the workers and to educate them to understand the class struggle and the historic mission of the working class is always a first consideration in strike strategy.

Strikes are of many kinds and characters. Losovsky lists 13 types, as follows: Spontaneous, organized, offensive, defensive, solidarity, intermittent, local, district, industrial, general, international, economic, political. Others might be mentioned. The character of the strikes in a given country or period is determined by the state of its capitalist system.

Three broad types of strikes are to be noted in the course of development of a capitalist system. The first is the series of desperate upheavals, animated by confused objectives, typical of countries in which capitalism is just beginning to grow, such as the Chartist movement in England, the early French strikes, the strikes in modern colonial countries, etc.

The second type is the organized craft or industrial strike, typical of the period of strong capitalist growth and development (pre-war Europe and present day United States), when the workers strike for modest demands in the vain hope of permanently improving their conditions within the framework of the capitalist system.

The third type is the revolutionary mass strike, typical of a declining capitalist system, such as the post-war strikes in Germany and the British general strike, when the workers, more or less clearly, seek to destroy the capitalist system and to set up a proletarian order of society. The first period produces semi-revolutionary unions, the second period reformist unions, and the third period revolutionary unions.

1—Economic And Political Strikes.

Marx says, "Every economic struggle is a political struggle." This is profoundly true, for even the smallest strikes have their political causes and consequences. But the degree of the political character of strikes varies. Whereas strikes in the period of a declining capitalism are highly political (such as the German general strike during the Kapp Putsch), those in the present day United States, though fast taking on a political complexion, still are predominately economic.

The employers are more and more giving a political character to strikes, especially those in key industries and during crises by using all branches of their state power against the workers. Thus an imperative phase of our strike strategy must be to develop a political consciousness and activity among the workers in their struggles.

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.

This course brings us into violent conflict with the conservative trade union bureaucracy, who refuse to recognize the growing political character of strikes, and to arm the workers with the necessary consciousness and political organizations for the struggle. The policy of the right wing union leaders to keep our strikes on a purely economic basis disarms the workers and is fatal to success in the struggle.

The experience in the British General strike, where the leaders stubbornly refused to recognize the political character of the strike even when the capitalists were using the whole governmental power against the workers, sufficiently signalizes this danger and the necessity for arousing the workers to conscious political action and organization.

2—The General Strike.

The bitter experience of the British workers in their recent general strike raises sharply again the question of the part to be played in working class strike strategy by the general strike. The reactionaries, who flagrantly betrayed the British strike, are shouting in all keys that the general strike is useless, that it cannot be employed effectively in the struggle against capitalism.

But such reasoning is fallacious. These reformists, who are opposed on principle to directly attacking capital- ism, have always rejected such a drastic weapon as the general strike and are only too eager to seize the slightest pretext to discredit it. In reality, the general strike is one of the most powerful of the workers’ weapons. But it must be used judiciously and courageously.

The first necessity for its correct use is an understanding of its full revolutionary implications. When the workers of a given country in a deep crisis, as in Great Britain, declare a general strike in all the key and basic industries it constitutes a direct challenge to the ruling class and its state. Inevitably the latter will use against it all its armed forces: the army, the police, the fascist organizations, etc.

Those at the head of the general strike must realize beforehand that the capitalists will employ these violent methods to break the strike, and they must be prepared to counter such methods by mobilizing the full political power of the workers for the struggle. Especially they must seek to win over or neutralize the army.

General Strike Dangers.

Woe be to the general strike if it is headed by reformist leaders who refuse to recognize its political character, or by syndicalist visionaries who believe it can be won simply by the strikers folding their arms. In either case the capitalists will tear the strike to pieces and administer a crushing defeat to the workers, The general strike is no toy. It is a revolutionary weapon of the first order.

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.

Many examples could be cited of the latter tendency. In France, for example, during the heyday of French Syndicalism (1910–14) several general strikes were called in support of trade demands of individual unions. At first the workers struck fairly well, more as a matter of discipline than anything else, but after a few experiences of this kind they became "strike-tired" and refused to respond to the periodic general strike calls, with disastrous results to the unions. The I, W. W. has made similar mistakes in this country, by calling out the workers in support of demands which they did not understand or feel keenly interested in.

Another left wing mistake is to call indeterminate general strikes when strikes for a specified term would be the proper policy. Typical examples of this error were the Seattle general strike and the national strike to free Tom Mooney. In both these cases highly successful protest or demonstration general strikes for a certain period of time could have been carried through. But the mistake was made of calling the strikes for an indefinite period, with the result that they collapsed, the workers not being interested enough to put up such sustained struggles.

3—Craft and Industrial Strikes.

A major consideration of strike strategy is the broadening out of strikes and trade unions from the traditional craft basis to that of industry. Even as the ideological conceptions of the workers must be raised from the purely economic and opportunistic to the political and revolutionary, so must their organizations and struggles be expanded.

Craft unionism and craft strikes can no longer cope with American capitalism. The workers' fighting front must be broadened out to cover an industry or whole group of industries. Such a situation as that in the railroad shop mechanics' strike of 1922 when nine of the sixteen railroad craft unions stayed at work and helped to break the strike of the seven which struck, is a crime against the working class.

In the competitive state of industry the workers can and do use the craft strike effectively, at least so far as the skilled trades are concerned. But with the concentration of capital, the centralization of industry, and the elimination of skill, craft strikes become obsolete, even to protect the interests of the skilled workers. The question of organization by industry, which is emphasized by the growing demand of the unskilled unorganized for labor unions, becomes a burning necessity for skilled as well as unskilled. In American industry the craft strike is almost obsolete. It has been rendered doubly out of date by the tremendous enriching and strengthening of the employers through the development of American imperialism.

In the clothing trades, which are still competitive, and in localized trades such as building and printing, where the fact that all or most of the work has to be done on the spot gives the unions a special advantage, the craft strike still lingers and has some effect. But even in these industries it is fast becoming useless. In the big, highly organized industries it is almost a thing of the past.

The modern, effective type of strike is the national industrial strike. Even the conservative trade union leaders are forced to recognize this at least partially and they adopt some sort of an industrial organizational front by patching up various types of federation. Recent examples of national industrial strikes are those of the steel workers in 1919, the coal miners in 1920 and 1922, and the packing house workers in 1921. Many of the railroad strikes and wage movements show the same tendency.

Such wide struggles supersede the narrow, localized strikes which were formerly the type in these industries. The tendency is to counter the growing power of the employers in all the industries by involving greater numbers of workers of the most varied trades and callings in single actions against the employers.

The left wing organized in and around the T. U. E. L., must intensify this broadening out tendency, which is now being checked by the reactionary trade union leaders with their program of class collaboration and no fight against the employers. An important point in our strike strategy must be the elimination of the craft strike and the development of the national industrial strike.

This requires a corresponding broadening out of the workers' unions from a craft to an industrial basis and the mobilization of the unorganized millions into the trade unions. The realization of the two left wing slogans, "Amalgamation" and "Organize the Unorganized" is a vital pre-requisite for a successful strike strategy under present day conditions in the United States.

Chapter II: Problems of Solidarity

Chapter II.

A FIRST consideration in strike strategy is the development of unity and solidarity among the workers involved in a given action against the employers. Potentially the workers constitute a tremendous force. The 26,000,000 or more organizable workers, when once united, will be irresistible. They will eventually sweep away the capitalist system.

But the obstacles to this unity are many and deep-seated. It is more than a problem of simply bringing the masses into the unions and strikes. There are fundamental divisions in the ranks of the workers themselves that have to be overcome. The working class is far from being a homogeneous mass. It is divided against itself in regard to race, nationality, color, creed, age, sex, skill, etc.

The differences among the workers in these matters are of themselves great obstacles to the complete unification of the working class in its struggles against the employers. But the problem is still further complicated and rendered more difficult because the employers have learned skillfully to play upon these differences and to split up the workers disastrously on the basis of them.

Moreover, the employers are ably assisted in this policy by the reactionary trade union bureaucracy, who divide the workers' ranks by cultivating craft interests, betraying the unskilled, playing one nationality off against another, excluding from the unions Negroes, young workers, and women, etc. All these tendencies are fatal to success in strikes.

Our strike strategy must be skilled in checking and counteracting all such splitting tendencies and in uniting the workers, in spite of race, creed, color, nationality, skill, etc., into one unbreakable proletarian mass. To do this we must, briefly stated, have a three-phased policy, as follows:

(1) Education; we must carry on an intensive educational propaganda among the strikers or prospective strikers to acquaint and convince them of their common interests and to infuse them with a fighting solidarity against the employers. (2) Organization; we must insist upon a labor organization broad enough to take into its folds all the various working class elements involved in the struggle. (3) We must have a policy in the struggle which protests the interest of all these elements and which does not allow of any of them being sacrificed for the benefit of the others.

1—Skilled and Unskilled.

Employers are widely awake to the tremendous advantage to them of playing off the skilled workers against the unskilled. Especially during these days of a flourishing American Imperialism, when they are flush with super-profits wrung from exploited peoples all over the world, are they able and willing to bribe the skilled workers with a few concessions in order to have them betray the unskilled.

The reactionary labor leaders are willing tools in furthering this employer strategy. Indeed, their traditional policy is to support the interests of the skilled labor aristocracy at the expense of the great masses of unskilled. This is their program before, during, and after strikes. They refuse to organize the unskilled; they refuse to support their demands in strikes; they systematically sell them out at the settlement conference table to the advantage of the skilled workers. Such an organized system of betrayal is the very essence of craft unionism. The left wing, on the other hand, must base its main strategy upon the unskilled and semi-skilled.

This betrayal of the unskilled by the skilled (and of one group of skilled workers by another) is an ever-present and menacing danger at. all stages of a strike struggle. It must be combatted by applying the above-stated three-phased policy of education, organization, and a defense of common interests.

The skilled workers must be taught the utter folly of their short-sighted policy, for the history of the American labor movement goes to show that this policy in the long run also sacrifices the interests of the skilled workers. They must be shown their identity of interests with the unskilled. The masses of unskilled must be brought into the unions in spite of the opposition of the right wing bureaucrats. Their interests must be loyally defended.

The demands of the strikers must fit the needs of all groups, and this must be adhered to at all costs. Uniting the skilled and unskilled workers, under present conditions in American industry, into an unbreakable unit of strikers is one of the greatest tasks of our strike strategy. But it must and can be accomplished by systematic application of the foregoing principles.

2—American and Foreign-Born.

To unite the many nationalities employed in American industry, with their maze of different languages, religions, national prejudices, etc., into a solid, rebellious proletarian mass, constitutes a major problem in strike strategy. The most difficult phase of it is to unite the American-born workers with those who are foreign-born. (For practical purposes we will state the problem thus although, to be more accurate, it is to unite the Americans and the foreign-born workers of the earlier immigrations with those workers of the later immigrations).

The Americans are mostly skilled workers. They commonly hold the best jobs and are favored in many ways by the employers. They are the element most bribed by imperialism. They are hard to organize. They strike badly and they scab easily. Their role in the struggles in the basic unorganized industries has been to shamelessly betray the militant foreign-born workers. This is the history of many great strikes in the textile, rubber, steel, packing, and other industries.

The Americans rationalize their class treason by a nationalistic contempt for the foreign-born, by charges that the latter are maneuvering to get the Americans' jobs, etc. The employers do all possible to intensify this nationalistic scabbery, and the ultra-patriotic trade union bureaucrats feed its chauvinistic maw.

This grave problem is a diminishing quantity. The barriers between the foreign-born and native workers are breaking down. Immigration is practically shut off and few new foreign-born workers are coming into the industries. Those there now are learning the language and winning their way to the skilled jobs. In many cases Americans are entering the industries en masse as unskilled workers. Still more important, the children of the immigrants are growing up and going into the industries. Thoroly Americanized, they are a real bridge between the American and foreign-born workers.

But the problem is still an exceedingly difficult one. It must be boldly met and solved. Educational propaganda and a loyal defense of the economic interests of the various language groups are the foundations of a successful policy. While adopting every technical device for meeting the special needs and difficulties of the respective nationalities among the strikers, such as language speakers and publicity, nationalistic demagogy must be ruthlessly eliminated and the whole strike shot through with a true spirit of internationalism capable of shattering all national antipathies and prejudices and of uniting the strikers into an ideological whole so far as the strike aims are concerned.

The splendid international spirit of the Lawrence, Paterson, Passaic, and many other strikes conducted by the left wing show that the language and nationality difficulties can be overcome.

The strike strategist must especially understand the role of the young workers in great struggles in present-day American industry. As stated above, they are the bridges between the American and foreign-born workers. They are destined to play a continually more important role in mass strikes. In the strikes of the Passaic textile workers and the New York furriers they were the deciding factor. A successful strike strategy must include the systematic development of the youth as strike leaders.

3—Whites and Blacks.

The unification of the Negroes and white workers into common struggles against their employers is an urgent task of our strike strategy. The Negro workers are a growing factor in the industries. In the packing industry they are a decisive element, and they are fast becoming so in many other industries.

The policy of the employers is to develop the Negroes as a great reserve army of strikebreakers. They refuse to give the Negroes employment in many industries and trades unless they come in as strikebreakers. They force them to accept the lowest wages and the most terrible working conditions. They leave no stone unturned to exploit the deep race antagonism between whites and blacks in order to force the Negro to scab. And in many great strikes, such as for example the 1919 steel strike, where at least 50,000 Negroes were brought into the mills during the strike, they are only too successful.

The Negro intellectuals work hand in hand with the employers in carrying out this policy. So do the reactionary trade union leaders. Their policy of excluding Negroes from the unions, of barring their advance to better jobs in industry, and of generally feeding the race prejudices of the whites, dovetails exactly with the aim of the employers to drive the Negro worker into scabbery.

This program of the employers, the strike strategist must relentlessly combat. At all costs the Negro workers must be united with the whites to make common cause against the exploiters. But this can only be accomplished by complete suppression of race antagonism in the trade unions and by a loyal defense of the Negro workers' interests. This is easier said than done.

The whites are stubborn in their prejudices, and it is not surprising that, after innumerable betrayals by reactionary trade union leaders and in view of the oppression they suffer from the whites on all sides, the Negro workers are suspicious of even the most sincere white union leaders and slow to hearken to their words. But this is no insuperable obstacle. More and more the Negro workers are realizing the necessity for trade union organization. The formation recently of the Brotherhood of Railway Porters is only one sign of many. Negroes are splendid strikers, as has been demonstrated time and again in the Miners' and other unions where the whites have given them half a chance to function as unionists. When the white unions refuse to admit Negroes separate organizations must be built for them.

The problem of uniting them firmly with the white workers will never be accomplished until they are admitted freely to all the unions, until the organized white workers remove every bar against their securing the better grades of work, until they are whole-heartedly received by the white workers as loyal proletarian comrades in the great struggle for working class emancipation. The strike strategist must never lose sight of the problem of the Negro worker in American industry.

4—Unemployed and Employed.

The question of the unity of the unemployed with the employed, especially during periods of deep industrial depression, is a matter of the most vital consequence in the working out of a successful strike strategy. The policy of the employers in this respect is simple and brutal. They try to drive a wedge between the unemployed and the employed, to make the unemployed a hunger-driven mass ready to take the jobs of the employed when they venture to strike in defense of their standards of living.

As usual, the reactionary trade union leaders, with their traditional policy of abandoning the unemployed to their own devices, assist the employers in using them as a weapon against the employed workers. Many a strike has been lost from this cause.

A task of the strike strategist is to unite the unemployed and the employed in a common fight against the employers. But as in the case of so many problems of strike strategy, work on the solution of this task must be started long before the outbreak of a particular strike, and even before the growth of the industrial crisis produces its vast army of unemployed. It must be a settled policy in the unions to identify the interests of the employed with those of the unemployed. There must be a whole series of measures fought for, such as the shorter work-day and work-week, equal division of work, etc., which tends to eliminate the number of unemployed.

The unions must never drop the fight for state relief for the unemployed. And when the industrial crisis comes and mass unemployment develops, the unemployed must be organized to fight for relief. Their organization must be saturated with a no-scab ideology. The trade unions must stay in the closest co-operation with these organizations of the unemployed, joining in their demonstrations and fighting for their demands.

In Great Britain it has been demonstrated how, by the use of this policy, the fight of the unemployed can be linked up with that of the employed, the army of unemployed made "blackleg proof," and the employers thus robbed of this great weapon in the class struggle. American strike strategists must not neglect to learn this valuable lesson.

5—Religious Prejudices.

True to their policy of leaing no means unused to divide the workers and array them against each other, the employers make free use of the religious differences amongst their employes. They play off Catholic against Protestant, Jew against Gentile. This seldom leads to actual strike-breaking but it always weakens the workers' forces. The reactionary labor leaders actively assist the employers in these machinations. Ku Klux Klanners and Knights of Columbus, they carry their quarrels into the unions. The willingness of the trade union leaders to further the policies of the employers and the various churches is a chief reason why separate unions along religious lines have never been formed in this country.

The employers use not only the religious antagonisms among the workers to divide them, but they also use the church as a whole against them. In all serious strikes these institutions will be found fighting the strikers in some form or other. The churches are most dangerous when they take a "neutral" or even "friendly" attitude. It is then difficult to make the workers see through their schemes to assist the employers. But when the churches come out squarely against a strike, as they often do, then even the most religious immigrant workers will rebel against them. Many strikes have demonstrated this. In its strikes the left wing must learn to sound such a militant note of solidarity that the unity of the workers rises superior to all religious considerations, whether these are presented under "benevolent" or "hostile" aspects.