International Socialist Review (1900) Vol 17

746 LABOR AND THE WAR
tent only by fear of a revolt on the part of
the Trade Unionists. The concessions
given by the Government in return for Labor's
sacrifices have been nugatory. They
have, .in the main, taken the form of promises
to return to a "status quo," which can
never be regained, and Labor's sacrifices
have tied its hands and weakened its power
to frame a policy to meet the new conditions.
The reward to Labor for Surrendering
its right to strike, its right to leave its
employment, if dissatisfied, its right to express
its opinions on matters of public pol-
icy, its right, in short, to oppose the hostile
policies of the employers, and the malicious
activities of reactionary politicians—all
these have been ceded in return for prom-
ises that can never be fulfilled, or, what is
even worse, for seats on Commissions of
Enquiry, seats in the Cabinet ($15,000 p. a.)
and all the other corollaries of a complete
subjugation to the aims of the imperialists
and capitalists.
It is easy to see where and why Labor
has failed not only to secure advancement,
but even- to hold its own, during the war.
It has failed thru having no united policy,
by failing to use its brains and draw a distinction
between patriotism and support of
capitalistic dodges, and by allowing its leaders
to get out of hand. Labor has never
realized the danger that lay in the servile
legislation described above. Against its doctrines
of class differentiation, with the
workers occupying the inferior status, it
should have set its ideal of the emancipation
of the proletariat by economic weapons.
What was needed was that Labor should
have realized the possibilities of success for
a strong policy of "direct action." For
every right that Labor yielded in the interest
of efficient war waging, a concession
should have been wrung from the capitalist.
Not a vague promise of return to an irrecoverable
"status quo," but an immediate
share in control over the conditions of production.
This should have been the demand,
and it could have been gained, had
Labor realized the full import of the economic
power which, already, it posseses.
Labor could have made the war an opportunity
for moving forward on the road of
real freedom.
Such, in general terms, is the policy we
suggest that Labor should have adopted.
How, in practice, would such a course have
worked out? The primary object of La-
'
bor's activities is clearly the abolition of
the wage system and the substitution in
its place of a co-operative commonwealth
in which the conduct of industry shall be
in the hands of independent producing associations,
responsible in the last analysis only
to a joint committee representing both producers
and consumers. In such an ideal
state of society there will be no such thing
as the separate ownership and "reward" of
capital in the hands of persons other than
those who use it, and there is thus no sort
of compatibility between the aims of Labor
in the state of today and those of the present
owners of capital. It follows from this
that all schemes of co-partnership and joint
responsibility for the conduct of industry
within the limits of the existing industrial
organization are utterly opposed to the interests
of Labor, and proposals for "industrial
reconstruction," which contain such
schemes, must be repudiated. The fact of
the class war must never be forgotten, and
specious appeals for increased economic
production in the interests of national advancement
after the war should be taken at
their proper value as capitalistic poppycock.
These merely negative cautions may be
supplemented by the following propositions
for a Labor policy in the conditions set up
by the war
(a) Having in view the fact that Labor's
everlasting battle with capital must
be intensified after the war, and the struggle
for the expropriation of the capitalist
a supreme climax in that war, it is Labor's
first and constant duty to perfect its industrial
weapons. The means to this end
are familiar enough to all industrial unionists.
The reorganization of the Trade
Unions on industrial lines, with representation
of craft and other sectional interests,
is a reform that has been advocated for
many years, but so far with too little result.
Trade Unions must centralize and
consolidate their forces to meet the ever
growing power of employers' organization,
while the particular needs of sectional
groups must be respected and allowed for.
(b) Side by side with this reform, Labor
may well direct its highly critical attention
to such proposals for a development of
conciliation boards and other joint committees
as may offer some prospect of developing
capacities in the Unions for industrial
self-government and the management of
the economic machine. Such schemes are
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