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Perlman, Selig

"A History of Trade Unionism in the United States"


If we are right in laying the emphasis on the relative fighting will and
fighting strength of the classes struggling for power rather than on the
doctrines which they preach and the methods, fair or foul, which they
practice, then the American end of the problem, too, appears in a new
light. No longer is it in the main a matter of taking sides for or
against the desirability of a Bolshevist rule or a dictatorship by the
proletariat, but a matter of ascertaining the relative strength and
probable behavior of the classes in a given society. It is as futile to
"see red" in America because of Bolshevism in Russia as to yearn for
Bolshevism's advent in the United States. Either view misses the
all-important point that so far as social structure is concerned America
is the antipodes of Russia, where the capitalists have shown little
fighting spirit, where the tillers of the soil are only first awakening
to a conscious desire for private property and are willing to forego
their natural share in government for a gift of land, and where the
industrial proletariat is the only class ready and unafraid to fight.


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