The task of the revolutionary elements in the trade unions does not consist in wresting from the unions the best and most class conscious workers in order to create small independent organizations. Their task should be to revolutionize the unions, to transform them into a weapon of social revolution by means of the everyday struggle in favor of all the revolutionary demands put forth by the workers within the old trade unions … To conquer the unions means to conquer the masses, and these can only be conquered by a systematic campaign of work, setting against the policy of class collaboration that of our steady line of revolutionary action. The slogan, "Out of the Trade Unions" prevents us from conquering the masses for our cause and retards the advance of the social revolution.
The R. I. L. U. program for America says:
The question of creating revolutionary cells and groups within the American Federation of Labor and the independent unions is of vital importance. There is no other way by which one could gain the working mass in America, than to lead a systematic struggle in the trade unions.
This categoric condemnation of dual unionism by both branches of the Communist International, political and industrial, produced a profound effect in America. The left-wing elements who for so many years had accepted industrial dualism as a self-evident necessity, in fact, almost as a religion, were literally shocked into a re-valuation of it. Their eyes were opened all of a sudden to its disastrous consequences. Then they repudiated it and began their present great drive back to the old trade unions. To the Third International, and particularly to the Russians at the head of it, is due the credit for breaking the deadly grip of dual unionism in the American labor movement.
Old Viewpoints Discarded
With the repudiation of dual unionism, the militants have also cast aside many of the theories they once held regarding the unions and have adopted new and different conceptions. In the past, blinded by the glittering dual union utopia and embittered by organization chauvinism, they developed many bizarre notions about the trade unions in order to justify the dualist policy. In the tight of recent events these theories seem ridiculous. The real meaning of the labor movement escaped the dual unionists altogether. Besides ascribing the most extravagant virtues to their utopian dual organizations, they lashed the old trade unions with criticisms which, for wildness and vitriolic sharpness, have never been equalled in any other country.
