STRIKE STRATEGY
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.
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