STRIKE STRATEGY
teurs who systematically terrorize strikers. But their great reliance is on the state.
The state is the strong right arm of the capitalist class, the great guardian of their class interests. They control and dominate it from top to bottom. It is ever at their service, with its hostile anti-labor legislation, its injunction breeding courts, its army, its state police, its deputy sheriffs, etc. The degree to which the employers use this great instrument of legalized violence against the workers depends upon the urgency of their need.
If the strike is a small one they may confine their violence to the thuggery of their private plug-uglies and local police. If the strike is more important they will call in the courts, with their train of injunctions, jails, and the rest of it. And if the strike is a great one of far-reaching political significance they will use the troops if need be to crush it. Ever and always when they need it they use the state against the workers. Their use of its armed force is limited only by the extent of their necessity.
The question of fully stopping the use of the state power by the capitalists against the workers in strikes and other labor struggles raises the central problem of the whole labor movement, the problem of the overthrow of the capitalist system. So long as the capitalists control the state just that long will they use its forces militantly against the workers in defense of their profit-making system. Hence, the workers, to finally solve the problem, must break the grip of the capitalist class and set up their own state. This will inevitably involve a bitter struggle for power between the two classes. But a fundamental discussion of this basic problem lies beyond the scope of this booklet, which is to elaborate a system of strike strategy applicable under present conditions.[1]
- ↑ Worker students, to learn the role of the state in the class struggle, should read "The State and Revolution," by N. Lenin.
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