The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 6, 1926, Page 11

By WM. Z. FOSTER. OM time to time the overlords of the American trade union move ment, in their employer-inspired prop- aganda against the Russian Soviet system in general, take sneering flings at the Russian trade unions. They never tire of scattering slanders against these organizations, Typi- cally, a resolution adopted at the re cent convention of the A, F. of L. re ferred to the “so-called trade union movement of Soviet Russia.” Yet even the most cursory glance at the Russian unions shows that they are miles ahead of the reactionary A. F. of L, unions in every essential re- spect, Let us make a brief compari- son of the Russian and American unions. And in this comparison the odium rests chiefly upon the trade union bureaucrats, They are ultra reactionary and color thé whole move- f ment with their reactionary spirit,|2malgamation as synonimous with They maintain their positions of con- | Bolshevism. In this cduntry we have trel mostly by force against a rank |the unparalleled spectacle of 20 unions and file which wants to bring the |in the railroad industry, 25 in the unions to a higher state of develop- |™etal industry, 20 im the building ment, : _{trades, ete. It*is a brand of unionism Social Point of View. of the vintage of 1890. In the matter of their analysis of The Russian unions, on the con- society and their estimation of the | tary, are structurally the most per- goal of the workers, the Russian |fect of any in the world. They con- unions completely outdistance the | Sist of 23 industrial unions, based not American. They have long since |¥POn the absolete local union of the broken entirely with capitalism and |AMerican pattern, but upon the shop capitalist conceptions. Their goal is | Committee. , the building of a new society con-| I the matter of size, the Russian trolled by the workers. They aim at | Unions dwarf the trade unions of this the destruction of imperialism and the |?0UDtry. They contain over 8,000,000 establishment of world rulership of |™embers, comprising 95 per cent of the world proletariat. They are revo- | ‘he Russian working class. They have lutionary thru and thru. grown 3,000,000 in the past three On the other hand, the American |¥°@ts. Whereas the American unions trade unions are still wedded to the |C°@tain only 3,500,000 out of an organ- capitalist system. They are per- izable total of workers of 26,000,000. meated with the. capitalist ideology. | Tey comprise chiefly only the skilled They are nationalistic, imperialistic, trades and do not touch the masses in and the most reactionary unions in the basic and key industries. In spite the world. Their foreign policy is al- of. unparalleled industrial activity, most identical with that of the capi-|t2ey are decreasing in membership talistyelass.. They do not.aim to abol- ish the*capitalist, system, but to sub- ordinate themselves to it. Their of- ficial programs hardly rise even to what might be called reformism, Their aim is collaboration with the employ- ers and the sacrifice of the workers’ interests, The new forms of class col-, laboration developing in the Ameri- can labor movement, such as the B. & O. plan, trade union capitalism, etc., are @ menace not only to the workers of this country, but to those of the whole world, Leadership. A comparison of the Russian and American trade union leaders is very much to-the latter’s detriment. In no country is there such a low grade of trade union leadership as in the United States. The upper strata of leaders are capitalistic, not only in ideology but often in the fact of their owning substantial fortunes. Many of them are grafters, and the overwhelm- ing mass of them are totally unac- quainted with the first rudiments of a working class understanding. There is a steady procession of them into the ranks of the employers, the case of Farrington being typical. Berry, the striké-breaker leader of the pressmen, is @ hero among. the . bureaucrats. Their fabulous salaries are a disgrace and menace to the movement, Compare this body of materialistic ” gelf-seekers to the Russian trade union leadership. AH of the latter are Marx- ian revolutionists and veterans of in- numerable struggles. Most of them have long jail records won their fights against the exploiters, Tomsky ig a real proletarian leader; Green is a petty bourgeois follower of capital- ism, And the comparison of the whole body of the Russian leadership with that of the American unions amounts to’about the same, ~ : | Union Structure and Size. The American trade unions, notwith- standing the fact that they have to fight the best organized, richest, and most militant system of cagitalism in the world, are, from the standpoint of their structure, as well as im many other rspeets; the most backward of _ any to be found in any great indus- trial Country. They still cling tena- ciously to the antiquated craft union umaaiy iene ohh before the attacks of employ and are yielding to 66mpgay nisin, both from within and without their ranks, Control of Industry. The Russian unions have a real voice in industry. Their members get the full product of their labor, minus the funds necessary for the upkeep of the government and the development of industry. They have to deal with a workisg class improving its wages, hours, working and living conditions at an unprecedented rate. Go to a Russian trade union congress and you will hear the leading governmental in- dustrial leaders making their reports to the, organized workers. All the boards and committees operating and directing the industries contain repre- sentatives of the unions. Their role By KARL REEVE, sun hung low over the far reaching steppes. The black sofl ground, planting with a wooden point or a plow, sowing his shrivelled grain broadcast, by hand. He had been a impoverished by the ezar’s taxes. In the middle of a slightly rolling game, While the precious hours of seeding time slip by, he "has taken the |tractor apart, put it together again, cranked and cranked, but the engine remains dead. A look of perplexity is stamped upon the peasant’s face. “Do so and so to the clutch before starting,” ‘the directions read, “the carburetor must be placed so and so,” But the peasant cannot read the Wng- lish directions, His .big square fin- gers slip heavily over the spark plugs, cleaning and re-cleaning. He takes out the battery, looks at it, and re- system, altho this hag been repudiated | places it‘again. Still the tractor will in every other country. They consider not gov oo. ~ ‘ ' $nyi The Palace of Labor which is the headquarters of the Central Committees of all Russian Unions FE and influence. TheERe TS the retreat: of ‘the Northern Caucasus is, rich in: prey to vicissitudes of droght and BRP D Russian and American Trade Unions i in production is far-reaching and reo ognized. Compare this decisive role of the Russian unions in industry with that of the American unions, First of all, our trade unions can influence the standards of only a small percentage of the workers, thé great mass being almost entirely at the mercy of their rapacious employers. And the unions’ influence for good over even this small percentage is a diminishing quantity. The time was when they made a bit of a fight to wring real concessions from the employers. But now their whole tendency is away from this. With the B. & O. plan, the Monroe Doctrine of labor, the “new wage polity” of the A. F, of L., and other similar projects, they are repudiating all idea of strug- gle and are degenerating the trade unions into mere appendages of the capitalist production mechanism. The ultimate result of their policy is to assist the capitalists to still further exploit the workers. The greatest bunkum of the. international labor movement is the claim of the A. F. ‘af GL. “that®it 1k Yespegaible for the h ae a workers. Thane tes he Phsnse de- velopment of American industry and to the growth of American imperial- ism, f Control of Government. The weakness of the American trade unions in the governmental machinery is notorious the world over. There is no real workers’ representation in the national congress, and very little in the respective legislatures. Even the city councils in the big industria] cen- ters are almost entirely in the hands of the employers. In no industrial country is the working class so devoid of representation in governmental bod- ies as in the United States. This is because of the criminally stupid polit- ical policy of the trade union bureau- ¢rats. They have not yet broken their ~ The Tractor The peasant belongs to a collective with six others. All are poor peas fy gEee & Hf i ERE 3 if on “My three months th tractor school were not enough to get me through this situation,” he thinks. But finally the repair man arrives. from the service station at the Ok- grug (district) headquarters. The re- pairman is overworked and spare parts are scarce, but the trouble is found at last, a part is replaced and the tractor again rolls over the plain, leaving in its wake a deep double (Concluded on Page 8.) ea ‘ ee ieee 5 -L allegiance to’the two capitalist par- ies, and taken the. fundamentally nec- essary step of building a masg politt- cal party ~? the workers. They are lined up sueek by jowl with all the crooked oliticians in the country. The disastrous results speak for them- * selves, Cempare the Russian situagon with this political debaclé. The govern- mat is in the hands of the workers. They dong ‘ate the whole political and. industrial situation. The workers hevp ddver own party, the Russian ‘Commurist Party, and it is the master ¢f the vituation. In the United States the capitalists are ip complete con- trol, ghd in the Soviet Union the work- 9@s afe in control. Yet the American trade union ,bireaucrats venture to sncer at ihe Russian’ workers. Workers’ Education, Withim the past few years the A, F. of %4 wesons have made a faint ges ture t& de direction of workers’ edu- cattem. But this, as expressed thru . the Workers’ Education Bureau and various other organizations, only em- phasizes the weakness and capitalistic ' eharacter of this education. Ameri- can trade union journalism is a calam- ity 49 our labor movement. Many of the papers are indistinguishable al most from those of the company unions. This is to say nothing of the dozeng of grafting sheets im various industrial centers, which brazenly take bribes from the employers to fight everything progressive in the la bor mevement. One can read miles of printed matter in American trade union journals and never run across an idea of importance in the solution of the workers’ problems, By-and large, no impertant labor movement has sch a pitifully weak educational system as the trade uniong of this country, On the other hand, the Russian } unions are absolutely supreme in this respect of education. Jt is safe-to sag og | they are carrying on mdrévedueatiobayds | (not to speak of its inconpparablyobat? by | ter quality) than all the rest of the world’s labor movement put together. Their splendid workers’ clubs and various other educational systems are carrying on an enormous work of en- lightening the workers everywhere. Their system of trade union journals are beyond compare. A splendid ex- ample is the daily paper of the rail- road workers, The Gudok. This paper has about 300,000 circulation, and is of 42 eamous influence in the life of the railroad workers. Compared to the Russians, the American trade umion leaders have not learned the first A, B, C’s of workers’ education. Ugaroff’s Question. .» When in Leningrad recently our party met with Ugaroff, the secretary of the local Central Labor Council. As we were about to leave he said: “Well, we have shown you our unions and how they are carrying on their work in the factories. You come from @ great industrial country where the uni¢zs are much older than ours. Now you tell us what your unions have to teach ug In the way of labor organiza- tiom. What have they that is better than ours? We. will be only too glad to learn from them if we can.” — We were stumped. It was such an’ unexpected question, We cudgeled our brains, trying to conjuré up’ a © single feature of the American unions’ that the Russian unions could profit- ably patterm-after, But in vain. We ‘could think of nothing, and we said so, In their structure, leadership, manner : of conducting business—in every re- spect, the Russian unions are a thou- sand imiles ahead of the American unions, cursed as the latter are with reactionary and faker leaders, anti- quated craft structure, B, & O. plan clasa collaboration conceptions, etc. All the way batk to Moscow, in fact, all the way- back to the United States, we pondered over Ugaroff’s leading qdestion, And our final conclusion Is that our qaewor to him was absolutely correct, Whe American trade unions have noti¢ng whatever to teach the Russian workers, except how no} to build a la*er movement; whereas the Russian workers have innumerable lessow}) (a? the American workers on the ~*> ¢) construct a real labor or- gant | liom ‘ Ce a