from either the mistaken notion of the complete self-sufficiency of the union or lumping together the trade unions and a working class political party as identical. The first is what William Z. Foster aptly characterized as the "sterile desert of syndicalism," the second is what Marx warned against: "piling the Party and the trade unions into one heap." These two fallacies proved extremely harmful in the past stages of the labor movement, both in Europe and America.
It is important for trade unionists and Communists of a new generation to become familiar with the theoretical struggle that went on around this for several decades. (I recommend reading From Bryan to Stalin, by William Z. Foster, to learn its American aspects.) Unions are mass organizations, based on working together and on identity of economic interests, to control the conditions under which workers sell their labor power. Even the most backward worker must be a union member for his own interest. The main field of union activity is the place of employment.
However, many of the demands of our unions are political in character and a trade union must also work on the political field to win them. The C.I.O., profiting by all the past experiences of labor, does not attempt either to be a political party itself or to ignore the great importance of political action and the decisive power that trade unionists, as voting citizens can exercise. It is apparent that the economic and political interests of labor are intertwined and inseparable, we need both economic organizations and a political party interrelated but not identical.
A VANGUARD PARTY
The Communist Party is a vanguard political party of the working class, to bring together those who are ready not only to fight for day by day immediate gains, both economic and political, but who are also ready to curb and control by nationalization, and eventually to abolish through Socialism, the octopus of monopoly capitalism. As the struggles sharpen, here as elsewhere, greater numbers of militant workers are becoming Communists. Every struggle today brings them more boldly to grips with the economic and political power of the trusts and closer to the Communist program. The American work-
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