STRIKE STRATEGY
time;" that is against the employers and the right wing simultaneously. Hence, when they fight the employers they refuse to struggle against the reactionary bureaucracy, and vice versa.
These workers make the serious mistake of not realizing that the employers and the right wing constitute pretty much one front against the rebellious masses of workers and the organized left wing. If there are two fronts, they are two fronts of the employers’ forces. In the needle trades, for example, when the left wing gets into a violent clash with the reactionary officialdom the latter never fails to call the employers to their support in blacklisting militant workers.
The bureaucracy in the Miners, Machinists, and many other unions use the same tactics. And by the same token, when strikes take place, the employers may always depend upon the active support of the right wing bureaucrats against the "unreasonable" demands of the masses. Indeed, it is during strikes that the right wing is most dangerous in its treachery and it is exactly then that it has o be fought most skillfully and resolutely. The treason of Thomas and others in the British general strike demonstrates this fact. Failure to fight the right wing during strikes amounts to giving the reactionaries a free hand to betray the workers.
The left wing must always carefully and skillfully expose the machinations of the right wing in strikes. This is strikingly necessary in the present strike of the New York Cloakmakers, when the right wing hag carried out the hypocritical policy of going to the masses with revolutionary phrases and more radical demands than the left wing controlling the strike, while at the same time privately knifing the strike and working for a treacherous settlement. The "cannot fight on two fronts" theory is a danous illusion which has no place in a militant strike strategy.
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