The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-02-18
AnalyzeGraftin
Trade Unions

pected. William z. Fosters new
book, "Misleaders of Labor" will in
crease greatly this knowledge and
turn the suspicion into certainty.
The bureaucrats themselves and
their most skilful apologists like Ben
jamin Stolberg have been the first to
recognize that "Misleaders of Labor"
is the work of an expert. Stolberg,
in his review in the New Leader, pays
the book the highest compliment pos
sible by tacitly admitting his inability
to find errors in fact and to make
any defense of the crimes against the
working class there set forth with
lavish wealth of detail.
Under the circumstances Stolberg
does what for him is the only thing
possible-he says the left wing lead
ers of the labor movement are just
as bad as the reactionaries. With
this statement we will not deal here
except to say that if it were true the
Greens, VOLS and Lewises long ago
would have made Stolberg rich if he
could have given Incidents, names,
daCeS ana places.
Foster, equipped by his years of
experience in the labor movement for
what for him must have been labor
of love, an organizer Of workers in
the great capitalist fortresses of the
lumber, food packing, railway and
steel industries of such skill and cour-
age that even the bureaucrats them
selves are forced to admit it, ap-
preaching the role Of the bureaucracy
from the vantage point of Leninism,
has taken a scalpel and ripped loose
the soft, pink skin of labor official
dom and shown the fostering corrup-
ton underneath.
1t is not pleasant sight and the
(smell is as horrible as the spectacle.
But many painful surgical operations
will have to be performed upon the
American labor movement, much
gangrene cauterised and much putrid
ity cut away, before the clean red
flesh and blood of new and healthy
labor movement can take its place.
Foster is more than diagnostician
to continue the medical analogy. He
is Communist and he cuts not only
to expose infection but to cure it. He
does not stop after discovering the
disease but proceeds to find it's cause
and to isolate the germ.
, With Lenin as his guide he finds
, the underlying cause of the corrup-
ton in official labor circles in the
fact that the bureaucracy is the col
lective agent of imperialist govern
ment in the labor movement-"Wall
Street governments outposts in the
ranks of the working Glass;" I said
one time. Bribed in dozens of dew
ious ways, many of which Foster de-
. scribes in detail with painstaking
Recommendation, labor officialdom fol-
lows slavishly the domestic and for
, eign policies of imperialist govern
, ment. Their share of the tribute
which the imperialist rulers exact
from oppressed peoples in almost
i, every quarter of the globe flows to
, the bureaucrats thru many channels
| and is the price Of their betrayals of
the masses.
, All this Foster makes clear In such
an exhaustive yet interesting manner
hat the book could well have been
entitled "The Militant's Guide to the
Judases of Labor" No crook of any
t Importance escapes. The disastrous
results of the continued corruption
} and the long series of betrayals are
; wildly portrayed. The connection
between the present crisis in the la
Dor movement and the corruption Of
the official leadership is made clear.
No better moment could have been
chosen for such work to appear, but
it is not by accident that it appears at
time when desertion of the working
class by labor officialdom and the
open surrender to the imperialist
rulers is arousing big sections of the
masses to the realization of the
danger. The industrial depression,
he growing unemployment, the vici-
Gus drive on the United Mine Work
ers, the beginning of wave of at
tempted wage-cuts, the increasing
imminence of the imperialist war
menace, give Fosters book an appli-
cation to the daily lives of the work
ing class of the most practical char
acter.
) 1t will be read by thousands Of
workers now who year or two ago
would have dismissed it with con-
temptuous Gust another red getting
something off his chest"
"Misleaders of Labor" Is q book
a written with definite purpose. That
purpose is to expose the upholders Of
5 reaction in the labor movement,
arouse workers against them, give
: American workers correct estimate
1 of the social forces at work, organ
r ize masses to defeat reaction and
l those who personify it, and to re-
E cruit working class fighters for the
! Communist propram