must be so organized that it can move as a unit against the exploiters.
Together with an industrialized labor movement, the League strives for a strong political organization of the workers. It advocates the class struggle and condemns the principle of class collaboration, has been forced upon the labor movement as a whole, has not only reduced the workers to a political zero in the various legislative bodies, but it has also been the means of poisoning the unions with capitalistic economies and corruption. The building up of a militant labor party is one of the most important necessities of the labor movement. In this work the League is doing yeoman service. It is carrying the fight on this issue into local and national unions everywhere and defeating the reactionaries. One of its most important propaganda feats was the taking of a referendum vote on the subject of independent working class political action, among 35,000 local unions. The further progress of Labor in this country awaits the development of a great party of the working class.
The Trade Union Educational League is bitterly opposed to the policy of national isolation set up by the reactionary labor bureaucracy in Washington. Mr, Gompers is so lily-white capitalistic that he refused to continue association even with the pale-pink Amsterdam International of Trade Unions. The latter made some mild statement which he interpreted as socialistic. That was enough. He immediately issued a manifesto denouncing it and withdrawing our affiliation. Consequently our movement stands isolated from association with the workers of Europe and the world. On the basis that capitalism is worldwide in scope and that the fight of the workers, to be successful, must therefore encompass the toilers of every nation, the Trade Union Educational League demands and is working for the affiliation of our labor movement to the fighting organization of the world's workers, the Red International of Labor Unions.
A new type of militant leadership for the labor movement is another plank in the general platform of the League. As things now stand in the trade unions, the leadership is a disgrace and a tragedy to the workers. Our present trade union officials, with few exceptions, are overbearing and tyrannical with the workers and subservient and timid towards the capitalists. They are overpaid, unimaginative, ignorant, and all too often, corrupt. They must be replaced by fighters, men
