STRIKE STRATEGY
foresee unavoidable strikes, to force them to take place in the slack seasons. Their policy in this respect is embodied in the agreement in the bituminous coal fields, which the employers have arranged to end in April, when the demand for coal is light and when they can best stand a strike. By the same token, the employers try to force premature strikes in organizing campaigns during slack periods by terrorizing and discharging their workers.
The left wing strike strategists must know how to defeat such tactics and to make strikes occur in the busy seasons. They must learn how to speed up their organizing campaigns, by the adoption of dractic measures of stimulation, when this is necessary to catch the busy season; or to slow them down in order to avoid the struggle at an inopportune time. Often the latter policy demands the greatest courage from the leaders and the greatest sacrifices from the workers who are harrassed and victimized by the employers. But the left wing strategists must try to carry it through. They must avoid fighting at the inopportune time. In this they cannot always succeed. Often the employers, in spite of all, will force the workers into untimely struggles, when, of course, the challenge of battle must be accepted and the fight waged aggressively.
(2) The workers must know exactly with whom they are fighting. This involves a close study of the employers' organizations, including the degree of trustification, of the given industry, the relation of the various companies to each other and to outside combinations, the financial condition of the companies, etc. This study will enable the working class strike strategists to gauge the strength of the enemy, to know where and when is the best place to hit him, and to learn, in the course of a strike, whether he is being seriously weakened or not.
In organizing campaigns and strikes the workers must carry out many flank attacks against the big capitalist
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