Hence they will strive
for the "recognition" of the union by the employer or the associated
employers as an acknowledged part of the government of the shop and the
trade. It is essential to note that in struggling for recognition, labor
is struggling not for something absolute, as would be a struggle for a
complete dispossession of the employer, but for the sort of an end that
admits of relative differences and gradations. Industrial control may be
divided in varying proportions,[101] reflecting at any one time the
relative ratio of bargaining power of the contesting sides. It is
labor's aim to continue increasing its bargaining power and with it its
share of industrial control, just as it is the employer's aim to
maintain a _status quo_ or better. Although this presupposes a
continuous struggle, it is not a revolutionary but an "opportunist"
struggle.
Once we accept the view that a broadly conceived aim to control
competitive menaces is the key to the conduct of organized labor in
America, light is thrown on the causes of the American industrial class
struggles. In place of looking for these causes, with the Marxians, in
the domain of technique and production, we shall look for them on the
market, where all developments which affect labor as a bargainer and
competitor, of which technical change is one, are sooner or later bound
to register themselves.
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