Guidance and Not Commands

A strike or lockout which involves broad masses of workers creates favorable conditions for widening the influence of the revolutionary wing of the labor movement. However, this influence can grow only if the leading elements manifest an acute sensitiveness to the desires of the masses and establish a healthy relationship between the strike committee and the striking workers.

The strike committee must be able to keep in constant touch with the masses, continually reporting to them, reinforcing itself by adding new energetic elements from among the strikers who have shown initiative, and carrying on its work in such a manner that the workers can keep control over the committee.

It is especially dangerous for the strike committee to resort to commanding the strikers; to endeavor arbitrarily to decide important questions, or to go so far as to reject certain demands or to call off the strike.

This system of commands, as well as secret diplomacy, must be ruthlessly eliminated from the procedure of the strike committees, the role and importance of which will grow only insofar as they are controlled by the masses, and together with the masses decide on all important questions of the strike.

The control of the masses over the strike committee, and the constant contact of the strike committee with the masses, naturally does not exclude the possibility of the strike committee in certain exceptional circumstances, making immediate independent decisions and reporting its action to the masses of the workers. In this regard the experiences in recent strikes should be carefully studied and in all cases where strike committees resort to giving commands, they should be subjected to the most ruthless criticism.

Next: The Relationship Between Strike Committees and the Reformist Trade Union Bureaucracy