Alinsky (indirectly) quotes John L. Lewis, a C.I.O. labor organizer of the 1930s, as saying:
[L]abor and capital may be partners in theory, but they are enemies in fact.
There are a lot of destructive notions afoot in the world, but this one — all too alive today — is one of the worst. The reality is that the making of anything requires both labor and capital. While there will always be a tug-of-war over the question of how the things that are made are divided up between labor and capital (actually: between everyone with any hand in making the things) this does not negate the fact that the making of the things is a partnership. If you have only labor to offer, you need to make a deal with someone who has capital in order for you both to profit.
To conceive of capital as the “enemy” of labor is to, in effect, argue that labor should seek to destroy capital. (That’s how enemies treat each other, after all.) This would be self-destructive in the extreme; even a bad job is better than having no possibilities for employment whatsoever, and the latter case is the end result of the destruction of capital. None of this is to say that everyone shouldn’t try to get the best possible deal for himself, but simply that it’s important to remember that negotiating with a partner is not the same thing as trying to destroy an enemy.
