theory of industrial society, but approach the subject as bargainers,
desiring to strike the best wage bargain possible. They also have a
conception of what the bargain ought to yield them by way of real
income, measured in terms of their customary standard of living, in
terms of security for the future, and in terms of freedom in the shop or
"self-determination." What impresses them is not so much the fact that
the employer owns the employment opportunities but that he possesses a
high degree of bargaining advantage over them. Viewing the situation as
bargainers, they are forced to give their best attention to the menaces
they encounter as bargainers, namely, to the competitive menaces; for on
these the employer's own advantage as a bargainer rests. Their impulse
is therefore not to suppress the employer, but to suppress those
competitive menaces, be they convict labor, foreign labor, "green" or
untrained workers working on machines, and so forth. To do so they feel
they must organize into a union and engage in a "class struggle" against
the employer.

It is the employer's purpose to bring in ever lower and lower levels in
competition among laborers and depress wages; it is the purpose of the
union to eliminate those lower levels and to make them stay eliminated.
That brings the union men face to face with the whole matter of
industrial control. They have no assurance that the employer will not
get the best of them in bargaining unless they themselves possess enough
control over the shop and the trade to check him. 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