Page:Jay Fox - Amalgamation (1923).pdf/44

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AMALGAMATION

The League's Program

The Trade Union Educational League is a revolutionary organization. It holds that the capitalist system, because of the contradictions in itself, not only exploits and robs the workers but must also lead to such a collapse that it will have to be replaced by a new society in which the principle of production for use, not for profit, shall prevail. The League subscribes to the formation of a Workers' Republic. It advocates the dictatorship of the proletariat, which means that none but the hand and brain workers, industrial and agricultural, should rule society. To this end one of its chief aims is to propagate revolutionary ideals amongst the masses. Upon all occasions it seeks to point out the injustices and incompetencies of the present industrial and political system, and to indicate the only remedy, the abolition of the capitalist system and the establishment of the rule of the workers. The League gives its heartiest support to Soviet Russia, the first attempt of the world's workers to put their inspiring and scientific program into effect.

In the preparation of the working class for its inevitable role of controlling production and society generally, the League does all in its power to strengthen the various types of labor activity and organization. Above all it stresses the necessity for the most compact organization possible on the industrial field. It condemns the present primitive system of craft unionism and demands a complete reorganization of the labor movement upon an industrial basis. Its campaign in this direction is meeting with wonderful success. Amalgamation has now become, because of the League's efforts, the principal issue before the labor movement. Great numbers of organizations have endorsed its program, including 14 State Federations of Labor, 7 International Unions, scores of central labor councils, and thousands of local unions. The establishment of industrial unionism in America is a project for the very near future. As a first step, the League is advocating the consolidation of the crafts in the various industries into single unions, each of which shall cover an industry. But the evolution will not stop there. The process of amalgamation must go on unceasingly until, finally, industrial unionism has become class unionism, and the whole mass of Labor has been brought into one army under one head. With one common interest and one common goal, the whole working class