STRIKE STRATEGY
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.
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