THE WORLD REVOLUTION 25 



But in reality this era of the straggle has been left 

 behind in the main movement where the struggle 

 with capital has now begun to converge upon 

 essentials and fundamentals. 



The principal leaders of the proletariat in the 

 West have hitherto shown an extremely far-reaching 

 grasp of the conditions and the limitations in our 

 civilization of a struggle resting ultimately on 

 force and conducted on a world-wide scale. By all 

 the principles of effective war labour was bound to 

 make a most determined effort to obtain exactly 

 that same first object which the masters of military 

 force in international war had attained by universal 

 conscription. Its leaders proceeded, therefore, to 

 secure throughout the world the first tremendous 

 principle of solidarity for which labour stands. 

 They formulated the programme known as the 

 " closed shop." 



This is, in effect, nothing more or less than the 

 demand that no workman shall ultimately earn 

 his livelihood without first being a member of a 

 trade union. It is the history of the war to secure 

 this fundamental object of labour which constitutes 

 the real history of the labour movement during 

 recent times. At one end of the scale we see the 

 first phase of the struggle still represented in the 

 United States, where the effort of labour to enforce 



