No Illusions in False “Friends of Labor”!

(Quote of the Week)

In response to the growing economic crisis, the capitalist class is intensifying its attacks on the livelihoods of America’s working people. The bureaucrats in the leadership of the trade unions have greased the skids for these assaults through giveback contracts, by pouring union resources into the capitalist Democratic Party and by pushing chauvinist protectionism, preaching the lie that American workers and capitalists share common interests. In a 1921 article, James P. Cannon, an early leader of the American Communist Party and later the founder of American Trotskyism, stressed that the labor movement must not rely on false “friends of labor,” but fight for a class-struggle program declaring war on the system of capitalist exploitation.

The impression seems to be that labor’s troubles in the present crisis are mainly due to a “misunderstanding”as to the aims of the labor movement on the part of some pious people who don’t work for a living, but who are “felt to be working for union labor.”... Civic bodies, church forums, “non-labor organizations”—the elements who go to make up such groupings are poor props for the unions to seek to lean upon. They may “feel” for organized labor, but the organized workers never feel it in the shape of substantial support in their fight.

The “open shop” campaign is one of the manifestations of a state of war that exists in society between two opposing classes: the producers and the parasites. This war cuts through the whole population like a great dividing sword; it creates two hostile camps and puts every man in his place in one or the other. Those to whom the New York unions would turn for aid are beneficiaries of the present system of labor exploitation. Their interests lie with the system and, as a general rule, people do not allow their sympathies to interfere seriously with their interests. They live in the camp of the enemy. Their material welfare is bound up with those who aim to destroy the unions....

Let the labor unions put aside their illusions; let them face the issue squarely and fight it out on the basis of the class struggle. Instead of seeking peace when there is no peace, and “understanding” with those who do not want to understand, let them declare war on the whole capitalist regime. That is the way to save the unions and to make them grow in the face of adversity and become powerful war engines for the destruction of capitalism and the reorganization of society on the foundation of working class control in industry and government.

—James P. Cannon, “Who Can Save the Unions?” (7 May 1921),
reprinted in James P. Cannon and the Early Years of American Communism
(Prometheus Research Library, 1992)