James P. Cannon Quotes

I think we will see a united labor movement again. When workers unite they're stronger. The same goes for unions.

The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized industry.

I'm a big believer in the value of labor unions and with what collective effort gets people.

The labor movement has failed to capture the support of the public at large.

A divided labor movement hurts the prospects of union members and it makes me very angry.

Many of those who helped to lay the foundations of the trade union movement were men who had been through the experience of Socialism and found their way to sounder policies.

We back Solidarity [the Polish trade union], and bust our unions.

The history of all countries shows that, by its own efforts, the working class can develop only a trade-union consciousness—that is, the realization of the need of getting together in unions in order to fight employers and to demand from the government the passing of laws necessary for the workers.

Do not let [“Big”] Bill Hayward and the Industrial Workers of the World terrorize President, Congress, Judge and Juries.

I am a huge believer in organized labor. Period. Full stop.

The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers... It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish.

We could see the Teamsters coming in from New Jersey, the AFL-CIO from Chicago. You could see all of the people being bused in.

Trade unionism is not a discovery or a formula. It grew and evolved slowly out of the needs of human experience.

We were no experts in the field of labor organization, but we had something in common with our fellow workers -- we were all poor -- we were all overworked -- we were all victims of the 84 hour week. In fact, we were all so low down on the economic and social ladder that we had nowhere to go but up

The strongest form of fight against the capitalist class is the strike. Strikes are necessary, ever again, against the capitalists’ tendency to increase their profits by lowering wages and increase the hours or the intensity of work.

The trade union, which originated under the European system, destroys liberty.

Regardless of the degree of class consciousness of their members, the trade unions are, by their very nature, driven on to the revolutionary goal.

The strike is the weapon of the industrial jungle.

Trade unionism means the enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie.

Rather than negotiate with the teachers’ unions and the trial lawyers and the various leftist interest groups, we intend to break them.

The weapon of political action. That is going to be the main fighting weapon of all labor, international as well as national, if we are going to do those things that we are in business to do as a labor union

Power? Nine workers out of ten still unorganized, and union dues going to bribe middle class politicians. You call that power?

I shared, naturally, in that hatred of organized labor which has been the one political constant in my lifetime…. No alternative view of organized labor has ever come to us through the popular media. If labor leaders were not crooks like Jimmy Hoffa, they were in the pay of Moscow.

There is no way whereby our labor movement may be assured sustained progress in determining its policies and its plans other than sincere democratic deliberation until a unanimous decision is reached. This may seem a cumbrous, slow method to the impatient, but the impatient are more concerned for immediate triumph than for the education of constructive development.

It is for the benefit of them and to the public that laborers should unite in their common interest and for lawful purposes. If they stand together, they are often able, all of them, to command better prices for their labor than when dealing singly with rich employers …