The Threat to the Labor Movement/Section 31
Labor Agents of Imperialism.
NOR is this an accidental occurrence. The policy of worker-employer cooperation, of a definite increase in the amount of work for an increase in wages, is the policy of both American imperialism and the trade union bureaucracy. Those elements of the working class that have not been whipped or bribed into line must be crushed.
This is what the struggle in the trade unions centers around.
The unity of capitalists, trade union officialdom and socialist party bureaucracy in this struggle is explained by the facts of imperialism and their effects upon the working class.
Lenin, in his "Imperialism," after mentioning the enormous super-profits from foreign investments in the pre-war imperialist period (American imperialism now has $13,000,000,000 invested abroad) shows the use to which a portion of them are put:
It is easy to perceive, that from such a large additional profit (for it is received in addition to the profit which the capitalists extract from 'their own' country) labor leaders and the upper strata of the workers' aristocracy CAN BE BRIBED. So the capitalists of the "progressive" countries bribe them by a thousand means, direct and indirect, open and secret. (Emphasis in the translation.)
Some details of the manner in which the trade union officialdom shares in the loot of American imperialism, and how their status has become that of the lower and central section of the middle class, will make clear the wide gap which separates them from the workers upon whom, in company with the bosses and the socialist bureaucracy, they are making war in the trade unions.
If we listen to the typical American labor leader we discover that he harps long and loud upon his services to the movement. Rarely, if ever, does he mention the matter of reward. As a matter of fact, it is considered bad taste in official labor circles to speak of salaries and expense accounts except in those moments of confidence when, liberally supplied with pre-war liquor, American labor leaders gather around the poker table and "kid" one another about the uncomplaining manner in which the rank and file foots their bills.