*From The Pen Of Bolshevik Leader Alexandra Kollantai-"Women's Day, February 1913"

Click on title to link to the "Alexandra Kollontai Internet Archives" for the other works of 1917 Bolshevik secondary revolutionary leader Alexandra Kollantai.

Markin comment:

No revolution can succeed without men and women of Kollontai's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, is eve truer today, much truer.

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-*From The Pages Of The Communist International-"To the I.W.W.-A Special Message from the Communist International." (1920)

Click on the headline to link to the The Communist International Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.


Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Communist International Archives-Leon Trotsky's 1921 Speech To The Second World Conference Of Communist Women

Leon Trotsky
The First Five Years of the Communist International
Volume 1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Speech Delivered at the Second World
Conference of Communist Women

COMRADES! We are now convening your Conference of Communist Women and the current Congress of the Communist International – we are now convening and carrying on our work at a moment which does not seem to have that definitiveness, that clarity and those graphic fundamental features which appeared, at first sight, as the distinguishing traits of the First World Congress when it met directly following the war. Our enemies and our opponents are even saying that we have been completely and utterly mistaken in our calculations. We Communists had supposed and hoped, so say our opponents, that the world proletarian revolution would break out either during the war or immediately afterwards. But now the third year since the war is already ending, and while during this interval many revolutionary movements have taken place, it is only within one country, namely, in our own economically, politically and culturally backward Russia, that the revolutionary movement has led to the dictatorship of the proletariat – a dictatorship which has been able to maintain itself to the present day and which I hope will continue to maintain itself for a long time to come. In other countries the revolutionary movements have led only to the replacement of the Hohenzollern and Habsburg regimes by bourgeois regimes, in the form of bourgeois republics. Finally, in a whole number of countries the movement ebbed away in strikes, demonstrations and isolated uprisings which were crushed. In general, the mainstays of the capitalist regime have been preserved throughout the whole world, with the sole exception of Russia.

From this our enemies have drawn the conclusion that since capitalism hasn’t collapsed as a result of the World War in the course of the first two to three postwar years when the balance sheets were being drawn, it follows that the world proletariat has demonstrated its incapacity, while, conversely, world capitalism has demonstrated its capacity and power to retain its positions, to reestablish its equilibrium.

And at this very moment the International is discussing the question: Will the period immediately ahead, the next few years, entail the reestablishment of capitalist rule on new and higher foundations? or will it entail a mounting assault by the proletariat upon capitalism, an assault which will bring about the dictatorship of the working class? This is the fundamental question for the world proletariat and, consequently, also for its women’s section. Of course, Comrades, I can’t even attempt here to give a complete answer to this question. The time at my disposal is too brief. I shall attempt to do this, as assigned by the ECCI, at the Congress. But one thing, I believe, is completely clear to us, to Communists, to Marxists. We know that history and its movement are determined by objective causes but we also know that history is accomplished by human beings and through huthan beings. The revolution is accomplished through the working class. Essentially history thus poses the question before us in the following way: Capitalism prepared the World War; the World War erupted and destroyed millions of lives and billions of dollars’ worth of national wealth. It has shaken everything. And here on this half-ruined foundation, two basic classes are locked in struggle – the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie seeks to restore capitalist equilibrium and its class rule; the proletariat seeks to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie.

It is impossible to settle this matter with pencil in hand, like adding up a list of groceries. It is impossible to say: History has taken a turn toward the reestablishment of capitalism. It is only possible to say that if the lessons of the entire preceding development – the lessons of the war, the lessons of the Russian Revolution, the lessons of the semi-revolutions in Germany, Austria and elsewhere – if these lessons go for nought, if the working class once again agrees to keep its neck within the capitalist yoke, then, perhaps, the bourgeoisie will be able to restore its equilibrium, by destroying the civilization of Western Europe and by transferring the center of world development to America, to Japan, to Asia. Entire generations would have to be destroyed in order to create this new equilibrium. To this end the diplomats, the military men, the strategists, the economists, the brokers of the bourgeoisie are now directing all their efforts. They know that while history has its profound causes, it is nonetheless made through human beings, through their organizations and through their parties; and, consequently, our Congress and your Women’s Conference have gathered here precisely in order to introduce into this unsettled historical situation the certainty of the consciousness and the will of the revolutionary class. This is the gist of the moment through which we are living and herein is the gist of its tasks as well.

We can say that the assumption of power no longer appears so simple a matter as it did to many of us two or three years ago. On the world scale this business of conquering power is extremely difficult and complicated. One must be aware that within the proletariat itself there are diverse layers, diverse levels of historical development and even diverse temporary interests. All this inevitably makes itself felt in its own due time. Layer after proletarian layer is drawn into the revolutionary struggle, passes through its own school, burns its fingers, retreats to the rear. They are followed by another layer, in whose wake comes still another and all of them are not drawn in simultaneously but at different periods; they pass through the kindergarten, the first, the second, and other grades of revolutionary development. And to combine all this into a unity – ah, this is a colossally difficult task! The example of Germany has already shown us this. There, in Central Germany, that section of the proletariat which prior to the war was the most backward and the most devoted to the Hohenzollerns, that section has today become the most revolutionary and dynamic.

The same thing happened in our country when the most backward proletarian section – the Ural proletariat – owing to a whole number of causes became at a certain moment the most revolutionary. They underwent a major inner crisis. And on the other hand, turning back to Germany, let us take for example the advanced workers of Berlin and Saxony who entered upon the road of the revolution early, and immediately succeeded in burning their fingers; not only did they fail to take power, but they suffered a defeat and have therefore since then become much more cautious. At the same time the workers’ movement in Central Germany, a very revolutionary movement which began with such great enthusiasm – this movement failed to coincide with the movement of those workers who were much more highly developed, but who were more cautious and, in some ways, more conservative. From this example alone you can already see, Comrades, how difficult it is to combine the disparate manifestations among workers of different trades and on different levels of development and culture. In the progress of the world labor movement, women proletarians play a colossal role. I say this not because I am addressing a women’s conference but because sheer numbers indicate what an important part the woman worker plays in the mechanism of the capitalist world – in France, in Germany, in America, in Japan, in every capitalist country ... Statistics inform me that in Japan there are many more women than men workers; and consequently, if the data at my disposal is credible, in the labor movement of Japan they, the proletarian women, are destined to play the decisive role and to occupy the decisive place. And generally speaking, in the world labor movement the woman worker stands closest precisely to the section of the proletariat represented by the miners of Central Germany to whom I have just referred; that is, that section of labor which is the most backward, the most oppressed, the lowliest of the lowly. And just because of this, in the years of the colossal world revolution this section of the proletariat can and must become the most active, the most revolutionary, and the most initiative section of the working class.

Naturally, mere energy, mere readiness to attack are not enough. But at the same time history is filled with instances such as these: that during a more or less protracted epoch prior to the revolution, within the male section of the working class, especially among its more privileged layers, there accumulates excessive caution, excessive conservatism, too much opportunism and over-much adaptivity. And the reaction to their own backwardness and degradation which is evinced by women, that reaction, I repeat, can play a colossal role in the revolutionary movement as a whole. There is added reason to believe that we have at present come up against a kink in history, a temporary stoppage. Three years after the imperialist war capitalism remains in existence. This is a fact. This stoppage shows how slowly the object lessons of events and facts make their impress upon human minds, upon the psychology of the masses. Consciousness lags tardily behind the objective events. We see this before our very eyes. Nevertheless the logic of history will cut its way through to the consciousness of the woman toiler both in the capitalist world and in the Asiatic East. And once again it will be the task of our Congress not only to reaffirm anew but also to formulate factually and precisely that the awakening of the toiling masses in the East is today an integral part of the world revolution, just as much so as the rising of the proletarians in the West. And the reason for it is this: If English capitalism, the most powerful capitalism in weakened Europe, has succeeded in maintaining itself, it is precisely because it rests not alone on the scarcely revolutionary English workers, but also upon the inertia of the toiling masses of the East.

In general and on the whole, despite the fact that events are unfolding much more slowly than we had expected and wished, we can say that we have grown stronger in the interval since the First World Congress. True enough, we have shed certain illusions, but by way of compensation we have taken note of our mistakes and have learned a few things; and in place of illusions we have acquired a clearer perception. We have grown up; our organizations have become stronger. Nor have our enemies wasted this interval. All this goes to show that the struggle will be fierce and hard. This struggle sums up the significance of the work of your conference. Henceforth woman will be to a far lesser degree than ever in the past a “sister of mercy,” in the political sense of the term, that is. She will become a far more direct participant on the main revolutionary battlefront. And that is why from the bottom of my heart, even if somewhat tardily, I hail your Women’s World Conference and cry out together with you: Long Live the World Proletariat! Long Live the Women Proletarians of the World!

July 15, 1921

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-*From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 91st Anniversary Of Its Founding (March 1919) And The 90th Anniversary Of The Second World Congress (1920)-Ninth Session- On Trade Unions

Honor The 91st Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (March, 1919)- Honor The 90th Anniversary Of The Historic Second World Congress (The 21 Conditions Congress) Of The CI (July-August 1920)

Markin comment:

Some anniversaries, like those marking the publication of a book, play or poem, are worthy of remembrance every five, ten, or twenty-five years. Other more world historic events like the remembrance of the Paris Commune of 1871, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and, as here, the founding of the Communist International (also known as the Third International, Comintern, and CI) in 1919 are worthy of yearly attention. Why is that so in the case of the long departed (1943, by Stalin fiat) and, at the end unlamented, Comintern? That is what this year’s remembrance, through CI documentation and other commentary, will attempt to impart on those leftist militants who are serious about studying the lessons of our revolutionary, our communist revolutionary past.

No question that the old injunction of Marx and Engels as early as the Communist Manifesto that the workers of the world needed to unite would have been hollow, and reduced to hortatory holiday speechifying (there was enough of that, as it was) without an organization expression. And they, Marx and Engels, fitfully made their efforts with the all-encompassing pan-working class First International. Later the less all encompassing but still party of the whole class-oriented socialist Second International made important, if limited, contributions to fulfilling that slogan before the advent of world imperialism left its outlook wanting, very wanting.

The Third International thus was created, as mentioned in one of the commentaries in this series, to pick up the fallen banner of international socialism after the betrayals of the Second International. More importantly, it was the first international organization that took upon itself in its early, heroic revolutionary days, at least, the strategic question of how to make, and win, a revolution in the age of world imperialism. The Trotsky-led effort of creating a Fourth International in the 1930s, somewhat stillborn as it turned out to be, nevertheless based itself, correctly, on those early days of the Comintern. So in some of the specific details of the posts in this year’s series, highlighting the 90th anniversary of the Third World Congress this is “just” history, but right underneath, and not far underneath at that, are rich lessons for us to ponder today.
*********
Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International

Ninth Session
August 3

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zinoviev declares the session open and reads out the following telegram of greetings from the Working Group of Revolutionary Social Democrats of Austria:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To the Congress of the Communist International. The Working Group of Revolutionary Social Democrats of Austria, the majority at the last congress of workers’ councils, is fighting as the extreme left wing in the Party for the dictatorship of the workers’ councils and for affiliation to the Communist International. Closely linked to you in spirit, we hope to be with you at the next Congress. We enthusiastically greet the fighting proletariat of Soviet Russia and look forward longingly to the moment when, united, we will achieve the final victory of the world revolution. We wish all success to your conference. (Revolutionary greetings on behalf of the Working Group of Revolutionary Social Democrats of Austria: Franz Rothe, Josef Bencis, Ernst Fabri.)

[Reads out the reply:]Dear Comrades, the Congress of the Communist International is pleased to acknowledge your greetings. The parties of all countries affiliated to the Communist International have at this conference decided to realize the idea of the Soviets in every country through absolute discipline and solidarity in action. In German Austria this struggle is led by the Communist Party. If you are serious in your longing for the final victory of the world revolution, then you have the most serious and sacred duty to fulfil in German Austria: a war of extermination against that part of the social democracy of German Austria that is represented by the reformist leaders and social-traitors Renner, Bauer, Fritz Adler, Huber, Tomachik and Domes, to name only the best known; an unconditional break with the Social Democratic Party of German Austria and a struggle in the workers’ council for the realization of communist demands. Not lip-service, but ruthless revolutionary action will bring about the victory of the world revolution in a short period of time. [A vote is taken on the text of the reply proposed by the Bureau. It is adopted.]

Zinoviev: We will now proceed with the agenda, which is the trade union question. The reporter, Comrade Radek, has the floor.

Radek: Comrades, the question of the relationship between the Communist International and the trades unions is the most serious, most important question facing our movement. The trades unions are the biggest mass organisations of the working class; they play a decisive role in the economic struggles, the chief elements in the disintegration of capital, and after the victory of the revolution the trades unions will be in the forefront of those organisations called on to work at the economic construction of socialism. The very importance of the trades unions in the increasingly acute economic struggles and the construction of socialism forbids us to approach this problem other than by the most exact examination of the conditions within them, if what we want is to be guided, not by our own desires, but by an evaluation of the possibilities of objective development.

At the beginning of the war many of us thought that the trade union movement was finished. Many were of the opinion that the unions, which previously had fought capitalism in the main by using their funds, would have to collapse at the end of the war in the face of the great tasks that would be posed in front of them. No less a comrade than Rosa Luxemburg was, at the outbreak of the German Revolution, of the opinion that the trades unions were played out. It is typical that this question itself played no role in the debates at the founding conference of the KPD.

If we review the development of the unions in the most important countries for the period before and during the war and during the revolution, we obtain approximately the following figures: In Germany the trades unions were 2 1/4 million strong before the outbreak of war. During the war the graph fell considerably and the number was lower. Since the end of the war, since December 1918, when the unions had less than 2 million members, the number has risen to 8 million. In Britain they have grown from 41/2 million at the beginning of the war to 6V2 million. In France the number of organised workers has grown from 400,000 to 2 million, in Italy from 450,000 to 2 million. Even in America the trades unions have grown from about 2 million at the outbreak of the war to 4 million. One of the leaders of the KAPD, Schröder, said about these figures in his pamphlet on the factory committees that they express not a healthy process of growth but an unhealthy tumour. If it were simply a matter of rejecting on the grounds of ill health all the historical phenomena that do not suit us, then one could be satisfied with regarding the trades unions as a tumour on the corpse of capitalism. But since it is a different matter altogether we must take the following facts into account:

It is true that in the war the mass of workers saw the betrayal of the union leaders, and to a great extent they are full of bitterness against the union bureaucracy. But at the same time they learned during the war to proceed in an organised manner, in battalions, in Army Corps. Now that they are faced by the greatest economic struggles, when they are under attack from enormous price increases, all the difficulties of the housing question, and economic chaos, they seek to extend and strengthen their power in struggle. In this they have nowhere to go but the trades unions, to turn them into a great mass formation. And that is where the masses go.

It is a characteristic sign that in all those countries where we see no particular increase in the revolutionary trades unions, the masses are going directly into the big trades unions. For example, the IWW in America or the syndicalists in Germany, who have, it is true, grown in number, but only very little proportionately.

Naturally this does not solve the question of what the trades unions are and what their functions are, and in assessing our attitude towards the unions we must start from an analysis of the ways and means of communist struggle. We have to answer the question: is there any other path to the liberation of the working class than that which the trades unions are taking by the intensification of their previous methods of fighting? Rewarding this as a political formula, one could pose the question in this way: What can the tasks of revolutionary trades unions consist of?

We often hear a contrast drawn between revolutionary trades unions and trades unions in general. Let us ask ourselves: what does the decay of capitalism consist of, what are the means of struggle of the working class and what can the trades unions accomplish if they want to carry out this fight? First of all we know that the trade union bureaucracy, in line with its counter-revolutionary outlook, always seeks to do away with any economic struggle at all, as a way out of the situation. After the victory of the revolution, the German trades unions began extending the Working Parties, that is to say organisations for lasting agreements with the capitalists in which, of course, the working class is the subordinate part. In Britain the Whitley Councils grew into the joint Industrial Councils, which thoroughly correspond to the idea of the Working Party – the attempt to create a permanent agreement between workers and capitalists as an organisation for the purpose of settling disputes.

These tactics of the trade union leaders are tactics of demolishing the class struggle, and I need not dwell on this any longer, since we can have nothing in common with it, but must be in the sharpest struggle against these attempts. But this fight does not need to be carried out under the slogan of a new trade union tactic, for on the contrary what is new here is on the side of the trade union leaders. As far as new trade union tactics and the possibility of the existence of specifically revolutionary trade union tactics are concerned, we have the following to say: The process of capitalist decay consists in the disruption of the continuity of the economic process. Anglo-Saxon capital attempts to exclude one half of the European continent from the economic process, at the same time throwing the greatest mass of industrial products onto the world market. Turning these countries into its slaves, it leads to an interruption of the process of the division of labour of the whole world economy. This is an undertaking that can have no other end result than the collapse of the capitalist system in America and Britain too. The disruption of production and high unemployment leave us in no doubt that these countries are in a big economic crisis.

In America there are now studies, like Sparge’s book, which present Russia as the ‘American affair’, and which try to prove that America is faced with a crisis. This interruption of the economic process on a world scale is accompanied by a quite insane increase in prices. We have experienced the colossal growth of all prices on the world market, which is made more acute by the difference between the exchange rates of the defeated and ‘victor’ nations. Now we are beginning to experience the fall in prices, and while the growth in prices meant on the one hand a kind of false boom and on the other hand the squeezing dry of the Central Powers, the fall in prices now means a new crisis in production.

The general condition of the working class is such that any thought of reformist tactics, of a gradual increase in the real wages of the working class, in their standard of living, is a completely opportunist illusion. The possibility of a gradual improvement in the condition Of the working class is a reactionary Utopia. If one looks at Kuczynski’s statistical data, he comes to the conclusion that a family of four in Germany, to achieve the absolute minimum standard of living, lower than before the war, needs 16,000 marks a year. At the same time he calculates that only about 10 per cent of the population earn such wages. If, on the other hand, you take the figures for America – on the one hand, therefore, taking the most highly developed of the defeated capitalist nations, and on the other the victor in the war then this statement is absolutely confirmed.

In an article carried by the Washington Nation (of June 19, 1920) entitled ‘The High Cost of Labour’, the following figures are quoted: According to the statistical tables for the year 1919 the minimum level of subsistence for a family of husband, wife and three children was $2,500 per annum, and it is noted that this is not the American standard of living, but a level ‘below which the family is considered to be in danger of physical and moral degeneration’. Other statistics quoted in the article arrive at a figure of $2,180, and the paper then calculates the wages for 103 occupations and comes to the conclusion that a daily wage of between $6.50 and $8.50, which would correspond to this annual budget, is being drawn by only 10 per cent of all metal workers. So according at least to the calculations of the Nation, 90 per cent live under conditions which, according to American statisticians, expose them to the danger of physical and moral degeneration.

This bourgeois newspaper goes on to say that a quarter of the working class is already suffering from actual malnutrition and lack of adequate clothing. That was the situation in America before the crisis began. It is clear in this situation that the tactics of the trades unions, the objectives of communist struggle, cannot consist in repairing the capitalist edifice, but in working consciously for the overthrow of capital. In what way can we lead this struggle? This is where we so often meet, on our ‘left’ wing, the following conception: Since it is impossible to improve the condition of the working class by increasing wages, it is useless to fight for this. Economic struggles are futile, we must wait until resentment has piled up so much that the working class will finish off capitalism in one blow. On the other hand we hear the propaganda for sabotage (of labour, of industry) as the way that will lead to the speedy collapse of capital.

One conception is as false as the other. Even though the working class is not able to save itself by means of improving wages, there are still valid reasons why it must not remain indifferent to the struggle to improve wages. Thus there is no doubt that if, for example, the Berlin metal workers are not able to improve their wages in line with price increases, they will be worse off in March than they are in January. So even if increasing wages is not a means to solve the question, it is a means of maintaining the fighting fitness of the workers. Moreover, an immediate collapse of capitalism is as inconceivable, for mechanical reasons, as the immediate collapse of a house whose foundations have been removed. Capitalism could survive the greatest poverty in the world for years if its decay did not release forces opposed to it. The working class can only be convinced that the capitalist situation is beyond hope when, driven by necessity, they enter into struggle and convince themselves in the course of this struggle that there is no salvation for them on the basis of capitalism. Wages struggles, whose results are only momentary, have great importance in mobilizing the great masses of workers for revolutionary struggle.

On the other hand the slogan of sabotage, so far as the sabotage of technical resources is concerned, is a downright counter-revolutionary slogan. We will inherit little enough as it is, since civil war brings in its wake the destruction of the values and means of production. So it is the task of the working class only to destroy these technical resources in the case of absolute necessity. Sabotage is no slogan in the fight. There is of course no doubt that it is not our duty to tell the worker to exert himself particularly for the capitalist, but passive resistance is not a method that can lead to the collapse of capital. The methods of struggle of the working class, are active methods: the extension of the fighting front by enlisting millions of fighting workers, the sharpening and prolonging of the fight and the unification of the fighting masses.

The problem is this: partial struggles will finally lead the masses of workers to a general onslaught on capitalism. There is no ‘new method’ in this struggle. If we wipe out the counter-revolutionary tendencies of the bureaucracy in the great mass formations, the trades unions, if we depose them, then these mass organisations of the working class are the organs best able to lead the struggle of the working class on a broad front.

Now we come to the question of the practical possibility of transforming the reactionary trades unions into institutions of the revolution. In our Theses submitted to the Congress we issue the following slogan as a general rule for Communists: join the trades unions and struggle in the big trades unions to win them. But if we lay down this general rule we should not close our eyes to the difficulties that became clear to us particularly in the long deliberations on our Commission. The difficulties arise from the fact that in drawing up the Theses we perhaps had the Russian and German experience too much in mind. The German unions with their 8 million organised workers encompass the great mass of German workers, a good half of the German proletariat, and for this reason they are no longer simply organs of the labour aristocracy. We have over 600,000 agricultural workers in the trades unions, and the very fact that the great masses belong to the trades unions opens up the best perspectives.

But when we take into account that in America we have only four million workers organised into trades unions and that they are split into craft associations, then we have to face the fact that in America firstly the organised labour movement represents the labour aristocracy, secondly it is cut off from the great mass of the workers, and thirdly this labour aristocracy is dispersed among a large number of small organisations of the old type. In America and Britain there are trade union organisations where the trade union bureaucracy is elected for life. So while preserving the general line of our Theses we must call on the Communists in America and Britain to take into account the possibility and necessity of the formation of new trades unions in all the great organisations of America. In this we have a wide field open to us in those occupations where the aristocracy of labour has voluntarily renounced the role of organiser, that is the many occupations of the unskilled, undeveloped workers. Where in our Theses we only gave one example of the oppression of members of an organisation by the trade union bureaucracy, we have to say clearly to the Communists in relation to America: you have the duty to take upon yourselves the foundation of new organisations. We have there in the IWW an organisation which is setting to work on this task. Not for nothing is it the most persecuted organisation, which has borne the brunt of all the attacks of American capitalism. So we do not wish to take offence at the revolutionary romanticism of the IWW, but we say to our comrades, you should support these organisations with all your might in order to organise the masses. The only possibility of unified tactics is to harmonize our endeavours for the organisation of the broad masses of unskilled workers with those of the IWW.

In the interests of the British and American labour movement, we must avoid the isolation of the revolutionary trades unions. We must not only attack capitalism through the new organisations, we must also go into the Federation of Labor. The American comrades answer that they have been trying to transform the AF of L for decades; but this argument is scarcely convincing. As far as the AF of L is concerned people went into the trades unions with the good intention of taking up arms immediately; but not only revolutionary elements were involved here, and we must not forget that all these efforts were made during a period of peaceful development. Now the AF of L is itself in a process of change. I have reliable witnesses for this, such as the London Times, which writes in its jubilee Issue of last year:

During the war, and presumably as its result, unionism greatly increased, strikes became far more numerous than in normal times, and dissatisfaction with Mr. Gompers, if not formally and publicly expressed, was at least loudly proclaimed in private.... The existence of a strong socialist group in the Federation has manifested itself for a considerable period, and has found expression in repeated efforts to replace Mr. Gompers as president. Furthermore it is the opinion of expert observers that this group is far stronger than the acts of the Conventions, its resolutions and the votes for president and Executive Council would indicate. Furthermore, there have occurred a number of instances of able and experienced presidents of craft unions being defeated for re-election and their places filled with men of the extreme Socialist type.

This was written on July 4 last year. I have a report of the last Congress of the AF of L which took place in January of this year. In this report, which appeared in Sidney Webb’s organ New Statesman, it is said that a proposal was carried by 29,000 votes to 8,000 calling not only for the nationalization of the American railways but also for them to be placed under the control of a mixed commission, a proposal of revolutionary significance, which, however reformist it is in itself, represents a breakthrough in the American trade union movement. The New Statesman writes about the outcome of the discussion as follows: ‘Mr. Gompers was elected President for a further period. For the first time in his career he expressed the wish to lay down the sceptre. He feels that his throne is shaking and that his day is past. The radicals departed rejoicing. They had gained their first decisive victory at a conference of the AF of L and, as a delegate remarked, have shown “how to throw a spanner in the works”.'

I by no means wish to identify myself with this optimistic verdict. It is quite possible that development will take a different course, but in any case these things show that the AF of L is no longer a uniform block. There are cracks in it, and it is the duty of the American communists to widen them. When the American communists ask me by what means it will be possible to transform the bureaucracy in the AF of L or to render it harmless, I reply that if the communists go into the AF of L from the very start with the slogan of destroying it, they will destroy their own work. However, if it emerges from their struggle that it is necessary to destroy the AF of L they should do so. But there is no tactical interest that requires us to be obstinate and refuse to go into the AF of L. The task is to work there and to operate as the factor that unifies all those forces that operate from outside, with the forces of the American workers who are organised in the AF of L and whose aristocratic arrogance will be broken by all the suffering that the collapse of capitalism will bring to them too in America.

We are therefore laying down the fight to conquer the trades unions as a general rule. The other problem that faces us is the question of the spontaneous organisations that begin to form in the process of the struggle both during the war and now. They come from various origins, but, as new phenomena, they require the greatest attention on our part. These are organisations like the shop stewards and the factory committees in Britain and in Germany. In their first stages they represented chaos as far as their composition was concerned, but a chaos from which new life arises, and one would have to be the most wooden-headed German trade unionist not to see new life in this movement. We saw how the shop stewards arose when the trade union bureaucracy renounced even the strike weapon during the war. The workers themselves formed the committees that led the strikes.

We further saw how after the war these shop committees became the centre of the most active part of the British working class which once more gets on with the organisation of strikes without the help of the tilde union bureaucracy, and how it now sets itself the task of working consciously to make the trade union bureaucracy harmless and to drive them back, so that in this way the shop stewards are an organisation for renewing British trade union life.

The more the struggle develops and this movement becomes a consciously revolutionary one, the more the shop stewards see themselves as leaders of political revolutionary activity too. They become the centre of direct action in Britain. If we move to Germany, we see that the rise of the factory committees is to be ascribed in the main to disappointment with the unions. While new, unorganised masses are streaming into the trades unions, we see how the main body of thinking workers feels that the unions are not enough because they are dominated by a counter-revolutionary bureaucracy, because they are craft organisations, because they cut up and divide the masses. In many cases this recognition leads the workers to turn away completely from these trades unions. We see how, under the yoke of capitalism, under the rule of Noske, the factory committee movement tries to create the foundations of the future socialist economic order.

We are now faced with the principled question of how to judge and evaluate the possibilities of work in the trades unions in the capitalist countries. We do not need to emphasise particularly that we are obliged to support every emergent factory organisation of the proletariat which has the purpose of breaking the omnipotence of the trade union bureaucracy, not only in Britain but also in Germany and France and in every other country. When we consider the question of the relationship of the factory committees to the trades unions in Germany, and when we see that not only the Legiens, but also right-wing Independents like Dissmann etc., try to box these organisations up in the trade union apparatus and justify this by the economy of the revolution – ‘we must lead the struggles in a more unified way’ – then we know these twisters too well not to see through their plans. If it really was the case that the Legiens and the Dissmanns were going to be the leaders of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, we would tell the factory committees to join their ranks. But that is not the case. The Legiens are the leaders of the German counter-revolution, and if one considers the practice of the right-wing Independents, if one takes a look at Dissmann’s policies in the Metal Workers’ Union, one cannot find the slightest valid difference between his policies and those of the Legiens.

Under these conditions the attempt to incorporate the factory committees in the trade union apparatus means an attempt to destroy these revolutionary organisations which can, at the moment of the struggle, emerge as organs of the revolution. As to the endeavour to make a systematic organisation out of these factory committees which would be able to facilitate the transition to socialism – and the endeavour belongs to a transitional period – it was an illusion; I think that the comrades who worked for this must also see that. It is impossible under the lash of capitalism and of the state of emergency to build an organisation capable of representing the apparatus of the future socialist economic order. The thing is that the movement is growing, and for a variety of reasons. It embraces the most active sections of the proletariat, it fights against the lead weight of the trade union bureaucracy, and the further it goes the more it will become the organisation of struggle and of control over production.

As the process of the decay of the capitalist mode of production proceeds, not only the conscious workers, but every last worker in the factory will be faced with the question: Where are coal, raw materials, etc., to be obtained? From all these surmises a fight develops which grows into the factory and which is carried out by the masses. The trades unions alone cannot carry it out; they do not embrace the whole mass of workers in the plant, they are still craft organisations. Here a revolutionary organisation is necessary that emerges as a revolutionary force, which, in such a question, makes it the main task to set the masses in motion, to lead them into struggle.

If we said that it is the task of the communists to march at the head of the trades unions, not to be satisfied with communist propaganda, but to try to be the leading section of the movement, then it goes without saying that, on the question of the factory committees and the shop stewards, the initiative falls to the communists. When the question is posed as to whether new organisations should be created alongside the trades unions, and what their mutual relations should be, we reply that as long as the unions are dominated by the bureaucracy these new organisations are our bases of support against the trade union bureaucracy. But when communists have become the leaders of the movement, the time has come to let the two streams flow together and to turn the factory committees into trade union organs.

Every attempt to hand the Committees over to the trades unions now, however, is reactionary.

There is one more question on which we must take up a position, and that is the question of industrialism and industrial unions. When we hear how the question of industrialism is propagated on various sides, we feel that what we are dealing with is a new fetish. It is claimed that the old craft unions can no longer serve the revolution, that industrial unions are the highest and most perfect thing. That is a completely metaphysical position. It has already been proved in practice that reactionary industrialism is possible. If the workers organise themselves in industrial unions in order to reach agreements with the capitalists, then there is nothing revolutionary in that, while it is on the other hand possible that trade union organisations that are even more backward than the craft trades unions will unite in revolutionary struggles if they are filled by revolutionary spirit.

The ideology of these industrial unions can really be reduced to one quite simple fact, that is to say that it is better to organise workers by industry than by trade. Our attitude towards industrial unions is progressive. We want to support them, but we cannot make a shibboleth out of them, for otherwise we would not be preventing splits, but we would be setting up, alongside 20 craft unions, the 21st industrial union, which in its turn would box up one hundredth of the mass. The path to industrial unionism should be followed through our fight in the trades unions. Should we carry out a split in the trades unions in order to found a union, the result would not at all be what we desired. We can see that in the example of America, after the rise of the workers’ industrial unions, which were supposed to unite all workers, the trades unions remained exactly as split as they had been previously. The question of industrialism is connected with the question of syndicalism. If many of our comrades are constantly talking about it, I see in this a tendency to try to lean towards a syndicalist movement that is opposed to the proletarian state and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The fight against this current is very difficult in the Anglo-Saxon countries where the workers have neither had a really revolutionary party nor seen a revolutionary struggle. We should not make it even more difficult for them by adopting the syndicalist ideology.

The attitude of the Communist International towards the syndicalist currents is shown by the decision of the Congress admitting syndicalist organisations into the Communist International. By this the Communist International has shown that it is a complete stranger to the spirit of the old social democracy. Because we see in syndicalism a transitional disease of the revolutionary workers’ movement, we try to come close to the syndicalists, in order to form a bloc with them and to fight shoulder to shoulder with them whenever possible. But at the same time we must show them all that is confused about the road as they see it. Remember that the great mass of workers in the trade union movement are not in the camp of syndicalism. We must take that into account and our organisational efforts must be aimed at getting close to the masses.

We are coming to the end. The task of communism in relation to the trades unions is very difficult and very thankless. Here in the trades unions we see the flowing together of millions of workers who are called upon by history to become the main army of the revolution. They come with all their prejudices, all their ponderousness, all their changing moods. Nevertheless, it is these masses that will carry out the decisive struggle, and for this reason the task of the communists is not only to look at the Legiens in the leadership but also to keep the masses themselves in mind, and to work in the trades unions for as long as is necessary. Comrades say: ‘Yes, if we only had time to work in the unions for a few years we could win these organisations.’ Nobody can determine how long it will take until the social revolution places its victorious foot on the neck of capitalism; to win the masses for the idea of communism takes no less time than is needed for the winning of the trades unions.

One thing is necessary: not to flinch from any difficulties and to go into the organisations and carry out the fight. I say to my German Party comrades: to this day you have not even founded a weekly trade union paper that can lead the fight systematically. Where are there united factions of Communists and Independents in the unions? Where has the attempt been made to breach the organisations of the trades union bureaucracy from below? We are only at the beginning of our systematic struggle, and have no right to complain at the small results. As far as conditions in the Anglo-Saxon countries are concerned we must say that less despair and more communist optimism would be of service to you.

The USPD press, finally, took up the same position towards the trade union bureaucracy as we now adopt. Here we come to the final question on the trade union movement, which is, of course, the question of Communism. The abyss that lies between us and the theory and practice of the USPD on this question is not so much one of form as of deeds. It is not simply a question of whether we go into the trades unions or not, but of what we do in these trades unions. The USPD’s entry into the trades unions merely meant Schlicke being replaced by Dissmann. It is not a question of going into the trades unions, but, at the risk of a split, which we do not fear if it comes as the result of a fight, of taking up a fight against the old trade union bureaucracy and its spirit.. If the USPD people rest content with the victory at the metal-workers’ congress and immediately weigh themselves down with a lead weigh t by leaving the old bureaucracy in the leadership, if as members of the Allgemeine Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund, they are in practice tied to the Arbeitergmeinschaft, if they always look over their shoulders at every step, then that is of course not winning over the trades unions. It means nothing other than taking the place of the Legiens in the trades unions, and carrying on Legien’s policies.

[The Allgemeine Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund was the German trade union federation; the Arbeitsgemeinschaft was the corporatist, class-collaboration body linking this federation with the employers’ organisations and the state.]

We are in favour of going into parliament; the Independents too are in favour of it. We, however, go into parliament in order to carry out revolutionary agitation and propaganda there, to bring about confrontations. If it comes to that, we will even go into the parliamentary committees, since that is the best place to gather information. The Independents, however, act differently. I can give you an example. During the war Comrade Haase was on the foreign affairs committee. But he avoided revealing this committee’s secrets in parliament even when they were directed against the German people. For him the protection of government secrets was very important. I think that if our members join the committees they will arrange their behaviour very differently. It is the same question with the trades unions. We go into the trades unions in order to overthrow the bureaucracy there and, if necessary, to split the trades unions. We go into the trades unions in order to turn them into a fighting instrument. The outcome of the work of the USPD in the first few years in the trades unions was to try and bring the factory committees, the revolutionary organisations of the proletariat, under the rod of the trade union bureaucracy. The difference is a difference of spirit, of the will to act and to fight, the will to make the trades unions into an instrument of the revolution.

The Communist Party bases its policies on the elements that are left out by bourgeois society. We will attempt to transform the trades unions into fighting organisations. Should the resistance of the bureaucracy prove to be stronger than we assume, we shall not be afraid to smash it, for we know that what is important is not the form, but the workers’ ability to organise and their will to organise the revolutionary struggle. We shall go into the trades unions and attempt to win them with all our strength, without tying ourselves to them. We shall not permit ourselves to be beaten down by the trade union bureaucracy, and where they struggle to limit the possibility of our revolutionary fight, we shall, at the head of the masses, drive them out of these trades unions. We go into the unions, not to preserve them, but to create cohesion among the workers, on which alone the great industrial unions of the social revolution can be formed. The most important thing is to unite two things: to be with the masses and go with the masses, but also not to fall behind the masses. That is the line of communist policy in the trades unions. In the factory committees it sees the spontaneous organisation of the proletariat, and as long as the trades unions fail, as long as the trade union bureaucracy is a wall against the revolution, we want to preserve the independence of the committees, help them, in order, together with them, to lead the masses in struggle. That is what I have to say.

Just a couple more formal things. The Commission that was elected by the Congress had big difficulties to overcome. They lay precisely in the fact that the resolutions had been conceived too narrowly. Our Theses did not take conditions in Britain and America sufficiently into account, and I admit that for a long time I found it very difficult to discover what the comrades wanted. We finally managed to see that there were no differences in principle between our positions. All were agreed that they had the duty of working in the trades unions. Only one American comrade proposed in his Theses that the Communists should remain outside the AF of L. Then came the question of establishing in what cases they must work outside the trades unions. One case was already mentioned in our Theses, that is to say if revolutionary agitation was suppressed by the trade union bureaucracy. We established the second case when we discovered that 80 per cent of the workers in America are not organised and that the AF of L consciously abandons the organisation of big masses by demanding high membership subscriptions. Here it is clear that the Communists have the task of organising these masses.

The final difficulty, which we could not resolve in the Commission, consisted in this, that the American comrades claim that a whole number of trade union statutes make it impossible for them to work in the trades unions, that the bureaucracy there was unassailable, that congresses are not convened for years on end, etc. We accept the possibility of such cases theoretically, but I told the comrades openly that I feel they have a tendency to make it too easy for themselves and to run away from the trades unions. So I take no responsibility for this motion. The American comrades should specify this case here.

Should conditions really be as comrades report them, then we cannot deny that in such cases they should form separate trades unions.

The other question concerned the factory committees. The resolution shows the factory committees in their last phase , when they go into the fight on the task of the control of production. This passage gives the impression of a perspective that has yet to come. Therefore we agreed also to take the previous stages in the development of the factory committees into account in the resolution.

The last point refers to the question of the international organisation of the trades unions. We have two versions. The Russian trade union Commission proposed one version in which it takes its starting point from the declaration of the British, Italian, Russian and Bulgarian trades unions, who have called a conference. The Russian resolution points out that the trades unions must become a part of the Communist International. The American comrades are opposed to the appeal of the Italian, Russian and British trades unions. They have raised a great number of objections to it. The comrades will put forward these difficulties themselves here, and we will leave it to the Congress to decide on them.

I shall not read out the individual amendments for the simple reason that they must first be edited in the Commission. I shall therefore merely repeat that they deal with the cases where separate organisations are to be built, that is to say the cases where the revolutionary organisation of the trades unions is suppressed. Then they state the necessity of supporting the shop stewards and the factory committees as fighting organisations which must remain independent as long as the counter-revolutionary trade union bureaucracy dominates the trades unions, and, finally, of concerning themselves with the still undecided question of the trade union international.

Fraina: After our discussion in the trade union Commission it turned out that we are in agreement beyond all expectation. The questions that are still at issue relate to the importance of the individual points and how to carry them out, but not to principles.

The differences first emerged in the declaration on the calling of a conference for the organisation of revolutionary workers’ unions. Some of the most essential stipulations of this declaration were completely unacceptable to us. For example the condemnation of revolutionaries who left the unions was worded in such a form that the formation of a new workers’ organisation would have been excluded, which would have paralysed the American movements, for in our country, where 80 per cent of the workers are not organised, and the trades unions are dominated by the labour aristocracy, a new revolutionary workers’ movement absolutely must be created. Further, the participation of individual separate industrial unions in the conference is made dependent on the agreement of the central workers’ organisation of the country in question. And furthermore we find no stipulation there on the admission of one representative each of the Organising Committees of the IWW and of the shop stewards, two organisations that are of exceptional importance for the revolutionary mass struggle.

Our objections to Comrade Radek’s Theses, some of which have been settled by the acceptance of several of our amendments, concern above all his conception of the nature of unions. Radek deals with the problem exclusively from the standpoint that the masses in the unions must be won for Communism. It goes without saying that this must be the main point. But it is just as important to consider the unions as organs for our task of the revolutionary struggle and as factors in the economic construction of society after the conquest of political power. The conditions, too, under which new workers’ unions can be formed are conceived of all too narrowly and artificially by Radek. Finally, one could draw the conclusion from Radek’s Theses that what we have to do is capture the trade union bureaucracy. We do not find there any indication or instructions on the formation of special organisations (for example trade committees, shop stewards, etc.) as instruments in the struggle against the bureaucracy and to mobilise the masses for action.

In the United States, revolutionary ideas were spread by the revolutionary trade union movement. These ideas were the necessity of extra-parliamentary action for the purpose of conquering political power, and the necessity of destroying the bourgeois state machine and the organisation of the proletarian state, not on a geographical basis, but on the basis of the industrial factory organisation. These demands made it easy for us to understand the fundamental tactic of the Russian Revolution. At the same time, however, we were obliged to wage a sharp theoretical fight against the conception of the IWW, who were of the opinion that it is possible to fight capitalism merely through the industrial unions without soviets and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Communist Party of America has fulfilled a great task by bringing the old revolutionary conceptions of industrial unionism into harmony with the new conceptions of Bolshevism. It is a necessary part of our work to secure the revolutionary functions of the workers’ unions.

The IWW in the United States was a really revolutionary force, not because they agitated for industrial unionism, nor because they tried to boycott and destroy the AF of L – they had no great success in either of these things – but the IWW was an enormous force because in it was expressed the growth of class consciousness and the strength to act of the unorganised and unskilled workers excluded from the AF of L. None of the movements that fought the AF of L by leaving the old unions had any success. During the war, when the old unions went into partnership with the government, the members of the IWW were forced to unite with the old unions, and the members of the IWW developed a mighty revolutionary movement through their agitation within these unions. The necessity of work (in a revolutionary sense) within the old unions is therefore emphasised by experiences in America. But these experiences also confirm the necessity of forming new unions (in correspondence with the objective conditions) in order to combine revolutionary work in the old unions with work from outside.

There is no division of opinion between us on the necessity of work in the unions. We all agree on that. If the American communist movement rejected work in the old unions and adopted the slogan ‘destroy the AF of L’, it would be the communist movement that would thus be destroyed, and not the old, reactionary labour unions.

Our objections refer to the methods and aims of work in the old unions. We are of the opinion that it is not the tying-down of the bureaucracy that must be emphasised but the liberation of the masses to proceed independently of the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is practically unassailable in the old unions. It is based on the masses and is an obstacle to all action. In the United States the bureaucracy uses, apart from constitutional means, long terms of office, parliamentary tricks and armed soldiers to break resistance in the unions. I do not quote this as an argument against work in the unions but as an argument against the idea of tying down the bureaucracy. We must fight this bureaucracy in the unions; it will only be possible to tie them down or finish them off during the revolution or after it.

Really revolutionary activity in the trades unions pursues the following important aims:

1. The organisation of communist groups (which must be present in every workers’ organisation).

2. The formation of special trade union organisations (shop stewards, shop committees, etc.). That is to say the workers’ organisations inside the unions, which express the demands of the direct economic struggle of the workers and also take up the struggle against the bureaucracy and against the limitations of the trades unions’ organisational form. If we form these special union organisations, it does not mean that the workers should leave the old unions. On the contrary, the workers remain in the unions, but they organise their opposition in a different way. These special union organisations operate inside and outside the unions, and if they cannot move the union to act in a crisis, these special union organisations proceed independently of the union and the bureaucracy. They are the most appropriate organs for developing revolutionary activity and for mobilising the masses for the fight against capitalism. In Britain and the United States these special union organisations grew from the practice itself, from the experience of the workers in struggle. The communists have become the leaders in the immediate economic struggle of the working class through the creation of these special union organisations.

We do not demand withdrawal from the old unions, but the organisation of an energetic and decisive struggle within the unions against the bureaucracy.

It is just as necessary to continue the fight outside the old unions. That is made possible by the organisation of new, independent unions. It is absolutely necessary for the organisation of such unions and continued work in the old unions to be based on objective conditions and to express the mass struggle itself. But it is just as necessary not to be afraid of these new organisations. It is just as harmful to be opposed in general to splits and new unions as it is to insist on splits and new unions as theoretical demands. A split is, after all, a decisive offensive act that means more revolutionary agitation than years of peaceful work in the unions. But if we unify the industrial unions we will win a force that will work from outside and inside and which, influenced and led by the communists, will form a mighty factor in mobilising the masses for action. We live in an epoch of revolution, and our basic task consists of liberating the masses for action. We cannot be dependent on the peaceful, protracted process of taking the bureaucracy prisoner.

Besides this problem of the special union organisations there is the problem of the industrial unions as an obstacle to the guild form of trades associations. This problem has a three-fold form.

1. Industrial unionism is the organisational expression of the unorganised, unskilled workers who form the majority of the industrial proletariat in the United States. The formation of new unions usually means adaptation to industrial unionism. Industrial unionism is the basis of revolutionary unionism.

2. Agitation for industrial unionism is a necessary part of our work in the old unions. These unions, which in the main are based on the old guilds, are incapable, under the pressure of concentrated industry, of really uniting the workers in the unions and continuing the offensive fight. The workers in the old unions oppose the limitations of the craft forms and also the instructions of the unions, and we must bring them to accept the organisational form of industrial unions – an inevitable phase in our fight to transform and revolutionise the old unions.

3. After the conquest of political power, the unions will become organs for the administration of industry of the proletarian state. Craft organisations are not in a position to do this because of their organisational form. Industrial unions are necessary, as the Russian experience proves. The greater the industrial unions are, and the greater is the understanding of industrial unionism, the easier will be the task of economic construction after the revolutionary conquest of power.

That is the conception of. unionism developed and formulated by the American movement, and we are convinced that this unionism is an inevitable phase in communist tactics.

Tanner: After Comrade Radek’s speech it is quite clear that there can be no question of differences on principle. The main thing is to establish the relations between the Communists and the Shop Stewards and the newly-arising revolutionary organisations. It has been mentioned that there must be relations between the Communists and all revolutionary organisations. During the war, after the rise of the shop stewards, many people claimed that their role would be played out at the end of the war. But that does not correspond to the truth. They are called upon to play a revolutionary role now, too. As far as the aims of all such organisations are concerned, one of their most difficult tasks is to fight the terrible bureaucratism in the trades unions. Although this is very difficult, one must strive to make progress in this respect.

What, then, is the attitude of the shop stewards to the question raised here? The structure of the trades unions is not democratic, and yet we are very far from saying that one cannot, under any circumstances belong to them. Comrades, you are in favour of the point of ‘view that one should withdraw from them. But you understand that this position must be decided in every individual case. We place the main emphasis on the revolutionary class struggle which must also be waged against the bureaucracy of the old trades unions. It has been said that we should emphasise once more our position and tactics towards the soviet movement. The aim of our fight is to overcome capitalism and exterminate the wages system. In view of the fact that the revolution can only be realised by the mass action of the workers, I must emphasise that the attitude of the shop stewards towards the already existing organisations is not hostile; but one can say that the shop steward and factory committee movement wishes to transform the trades unions in a revolutionary manner and change their form of organisation. The realisation of this revolutionary aim can only be brought about if forceful propaganda is carried on within the old trades unions, and through much livelier participation in the inner life of these organisations.

What I mean by this is that the shop stewards by no means adopt the position that one absolutely cannot work in the trades unions. But they are opposed to participating in the Red Trade Union International. The attitude expressed in the appeal in question is unacceptable to the shop stewards, since it is established there that one may not leave the old trades unions. The shop stewards cannot accept the proposal under these conditions. The fact that such a passage has been adopted proves that no account has been taken of the conditions in the individual countries. I am of the view that this appeal must be subjected to criticism by the Congress and handed over to the Commission. The comrades who have worked in the Commission have proved that they do not share the point of view of this appeal.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

End of the session.

*HONOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY-A WORKER'S HOLIDAY

HONOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY-A WORKER'S HOLIDAY




Click on title to link to " A History Of International Women's Day In Words And Pictures".

COMMENTARY

MARCH IS WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH-MARCH 8TH IS INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

MARCH 2017 (WESTERN DATES)MARKS THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FEBRUARY 1917 REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA STARTED ON INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY BY WOMEN TEXTILE WORKERS AND OTHER WOMEN DEMANDING BREAD AND PEACE, AMONG OTHER ISSUES DURING THE HEIGHT OF WORLD WAR I.

This is an edited version of an article that appeared in the journal Women and Revolution in 1975

"Under the lead of the Third International, the day of the working women shall become a real fighting day; it shall take the form of practical measures which either solidify the conquests of Communism ...or prepare the way for the dictatorship of the working class."

Alexandra Kollontai (early Bolshevik leader)

Bourgeois feminists may celebrate it, but March 8 —International Women's Day—is a workers' holiday. Originating in 1908 among the female needle trades workers in Manhattan's Lower East Side, who marched under the slogans "for an eight hour day," "for the end of child labor" and "equal suffrage for women," it was officially adopted by the Second International in 1911.

International Women's Day was first celebrated in Russia in 1913 where it was widely publicized in the pages of the Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda, and popularized by speeches in numerous clubs and societies controlled by Bolshevik organizations which presented a Marxist analysis of women's oppression and the program for emancipation.

The following year the Bolsheviks not only agitated for International Women's Day in the pages of Pravda (then publishing under the name Put' Pravdy), but also made preparations to publish a special journal dealing with questions of women's liberation in Russia and internationally. It was called Rabotnitsa (The Working Woman), and its first issue was scheduled to appear on International Women's Day, 1914.

Preparations for the holiday were made under the most hazardous conditions. Shortly before the long-awaited day the entire editorial board of Rabotnitsa— with one exception—as well as other Bolsheviks who had agitated for International Women's Day in St. Petersburg factories, were arrested by the Tsarist police. Despite these arrests, however, the Bolsheviks pushed ahead with their preparations. Anna Elizarova —Lenin's sister and the one member of the editorial board to escape arrest—single-handedly brought out the first issue of Rabotnitsa on March 8 (or, according to the old Russian calendar, February 23) as scheduled. Clara Zetkin, a leading figure in the Ger¬man Social Democratic Party and in the international working women's movement, wrote:

"Greetings to you on your courageous decision to organize Women's Day, congratulations to you for not losing courage and not wanting to sit by with your hands folded. We are with you, heart and soul. You and your movement will be remembered at numerous meetings organized for Women's Day in Germany, Austria, Hungary and America."

—Quoted in A. Artiukhina, "Proidennyi Put',"
Zhenshehina v revoliutsii

By far the most important celebration ever of International Women's Day took place in Petrograd on 8 March 1917 when the women textile workers of that city led a strike of over 90,000 workers—a strike which signaled the end of the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty and the beginning of the Russian Revolution. One week afterward, Pravda commented:

"The first day of the revolution—that is the Women's Day, the day of the Women Workers' International. All honor to the International! The women were the first to tread the streets of Petrograd on their day."


As the position of Soviet women degenerated under Stalin and his successors, as part of the degeneration of the entire Soviet workers state, International Women's Day was transformed from a day of international proletarian solidarity into an empty ritual which, like Mother's Day in the United States, glorifies the traditional role of women within the family.

But International Women's Day is a celebration neither of motherhood nor sisterhood; to ignore this fact is to ignore the most significant aspects of its history and purpose, which was to strengthen the ranks of the revolutionary proletariat. Unlike the pre-war Mensheviks who wanted to conciliate the feminists of their day by limiting the celebration of International Women's Day to women only, the Bolsheviks insisted that it be a holiday of working women and working men in struggle together. As Nadezhda Krupskaya (Lenin’s wife and life-long political companion) wrote in the lead article of the first issue of Rabotnitsa:

"That which unites working women with working men is stronger than that which divides them. They are united by their common lack of rights, their common needs, their common condition, which is struggle and their common goal.... Solidarity between working men and working women, common activity, a common goal, a common path to this goal—such is the solution of the 'woman' question among workers."

We look forward to celebrating future International Women's Days not only through the dissemination of propaganda, but also through the initiation of the full range of activities traditionally associated with this proletarian holiday—general strikes, insurrections, revolution!

From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-The Revolutionary Heritage Of Rosa Luxemburg- The Rose Of The Revolution

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for Rosa Luxemburg-the "Rose Of The Revolution".

March Is Women's History Month

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Sprong 1982 issue of "Women and Revolution" that has some historical interest- for old "new leftists", perhaps. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during this Women's History Month.

*******

The Revolutionary Heritage of Rosa Luxemburg

The present situation in Poland cries out for a revolutionary proletarian leadership to cut through the disastrous polarization between a particularly vile and utterly discredited Stalinist bureaucracy and the counterrevolutionary nationalist/clericalist Solidarity "trade union" which lines up with U.S. imperial¬ism's bloodthirsty drive to "roll back Communism" throughout the world. The Trotskyist vanguard which must be forged to defend and extend socialized property in Poland will build on the strong traditions of Polish socialism—the party Proletariat, the SDKPiL, the early Polish Communist Party, ruthlessly purged and finally dissolved by Stalin, and above all the revolutionary heritage of Rosa Luxemburg.

It is striking that all sides in the Polish crisis are united in their silence on Rosa Luxemburg, the greatest proletarian revolutionist in Polish history. Certainly the Stalinist usurpers cannot claim Luxemburg; they have had to obscure and slander her revolutionary example for decades.

Still less will Luxemburg, a woman, a Jew and a communist, find defenders among the fans of Solidarity, a "movement" which embraces virulent anti-Semites and ultra-reactionaries. Solidarity program is openly counterrevolutionary—for private ownership of the land, a bourgeois parliament, a dominant role for the Catholic church in government, for turning the nationalized Polish economy over to the International Monetary Fund, the bankers cartel that starves the Chilean masses. That Solidarity', which openly spurns even the word "socialist," disdains Luxemburg and all she stands for, is fully appropriate.

The social-democratic "left" outside Poland embraces Solidarity and wants therefore to separate itself from Luxemburg. At a February 7 forum in Boston, a Socialist Workers Party (SWP) spokesman solidarized wfth Polish "dissident" Marta Petrusewicz when the latter stated, "The problem with Rosa Luxemburg in Polish minds was that Rosa Luxemburg considered... that the existence of the Polish national being was not an important problem for Polish workers."

It is true that Luxemburg incorrectly opposed the right of Poland to national self-determination, for which Lenin took her to task, pointing out that socialists must support this basic democratic right in order to take it off the agenda and expose the underlying class conflicts which national oppression masks. Her error in his eyes lay in not taking the national question sufficiently into account, thereby rendering more difficult the exposure of nationalism as a mortal enemy of the proletariat. Needless to say it is the height of hypocrisy for the SWP and kindred anti-communists to manipulate Lenin's criticisms of Luxemburg in order to make common cause with the deadly enemies of Leninism, the Pilsudskiite reactionaries who hate everything that Lenin and Luxemburg stood for.

Despite errors on the national question (and other questions), Luxemburg was a communist and in Lenin's phrase "an eagle." Leon Trotsky summed up her historic role with these words:

"We can, with full justification, place our work for the Fourth International under the sign of the'three L's,'that is, not only under the sign of Lenin, but also of Luxemburg and Liebknecht."

—"Luxemburg and the Fourth International," New International, August 1935

The Polish proletariat must recover its revolutionary heritage, the socialist heritage of Rosa Luxemburg, hated by the counterrevolutionaries (and feared by the Stalinists) as a revolutionary leader and martyr. We are reprinting below excerpts from some of Luxemburg's works, which with every word breathe a spirit of militant proletarian internationalism. The first selection, from "The Crisis of Social Democracy" (better known as the "Junius Pamphlet," from her penname), written in prison and published in 1916, indeed "saved the honor of the German proletariat" by condemning the German Social Democratic Party's (SPD) historic betrayal in supporting its "own" bourgeoisie in the first imperialist World War. We reprint also an excerpt from Luxemburg's "Socialism and the Churches" (first published in Cracow in 1905 under the penname "Jozef Chmura") because of its almost eerily appropriate condemnation of attempts by the Catholic church to mislead the workers.

We include the last part of her final work, "Order Reigns in Berlin," written when she and Liebknecht were already in hiding during the bloody of the 1919 Spartakus uprising by the Social Democratic hangmen of the German revolution, Scheidemann and Noske. Luxemburg had opposed the uprising as premature; nonetheless she and Liebknecht took their place in the struggle alongside the best of the German proletariat. Finally, we include as well Karl Liebknecht's final rallying cry, "Trotz Alledem" (In Spite of All). The latter two items are taken from J.P. Nettl's biography Rosa Luxemburg, the former two from Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, Pathfinder Press, 1970.

-from the Junius Pamphlet" (1916)

In refuting the existence of the class struggle, the social democracy has denied the very basis of its own existence. What is the very breath of its body, if not the class struggle? What role could it expect to play in the war, once having sacrificed the class struggle, the fundamental principle of its existence? The social democracy has destroyed its mission Its only mission now is to play the role of the gendarme over the working class under a state of military rule… The leaders of the social democracy are convinced that democratic liberties for the working class will come as a reward for its allegiance to the fatherland. But never in the history of the world has an oppressed class received political rights as a reward for service rendered to the ruling classes....

The war has smashed the Second International. Its inadequacy has been demonstrated by its incapacity to place an effective obstacle in the way of the segmentation of its forces behind national boundaries in time of war, and to carry through a common tactic and action by the proletariat in all countries.

In view of the betrayal, by the official representatives of the socialist parties in the principal countries, of the aims and interests of the working class; in view of their passage from the camp of the working-class International to the political camp of the imperialist bourgeoisie; it is vitally necessary for socialism to build a new workers' International, which will take into its own hands the leadership and coordination of the revolutionary class struggle against world imperialism.

To accomplish its historic mission, socialism must be guided by the following principles:

The class struggle against the ruling classes within the boundaries of the bourgeois states, and international solidarity of the workers of all countries, are the two rules of life, inherent in the working class in struggle and of world-historic importance to it for its emancipation. There is no socialism without international proletarian solidarity, and there is no socialism without class struggle. The renunciation by the socialist proletariat, in time of peace as in time of war, of the class struggle and of international solidarity, is equivalent to suicide....

The immediate mission of socialism is the spiritual liberation of the proletariat from the tutelage of the bourgeoisie, which expresses itself through the influence of nationalist ideology. The national sections must agitate in the parliaments and the press, denouncing the empty wordiness of nationalism as an instrument of bourgeois domination. The sole defense of all real national independence is at present the revolutionary class struggle against imperialism. The workers' fatherland, to the defense of which all else must be subordinated, is the socialist International.

— from "Socialism and the Churches" (1905)

The clergy has at its disposal two means to fight social democracy. Where the working-class movement is beginning to win recognition, as is the case in our country (Poland), where the possessing classes still hope to crush it, the clergy fights the socialists by threatening sermons, slandering them and condemning the "covetousness" of the workers. But in the countries where political liberties are established and the workers' party is powerful, as for example in Germany, France, and Holland, there the clergy seeks other means. It hides its real purpose and does not face the workers any more as an open enemy, but as a false friend. Thus you will see the priests organizing the workers and founding "Christian" trade unions. In this way they try to catch the fish in their net, to attract the workers into the trap of these false trade unions, where they teach humility, unlike the organizations of the social democracy which have in view struggle and defense against maltreatment.

When the czarist government finally falls under the blows of the revolutionary proletariat of Poland and Russia, and when political liberty exists in our country, then we shall see the same Archbishop Popiel and the same ecclesiastics who today thunder against the militants, suddenly beginning to organize the workers into "Christian" and "national" associations in order to mislead them. Already we are at the beginning of this underground activity of the "national democracy" which assures the future collaboration with the priests and today helps them to slander the social democrats.

The workers must, therefore, be warned of the danger so that they will not let themselves be taken in, on the morrow of the victory of the revolution, by the honeyed words of those who today from the height of the pulpit, dare to defend the czarist government, which kills the workers, and the repressive apparatus of capital, which is the principal cause of the poverty of the proletariat.

In order to defend themselves against the antagonism of the clergy at the present time, during the revolution, and against their false friendship tomorrow, after the revolution, it is necessary for the workers to organize themselves in the Social Democratic Party.

And here is the answer to all the attacks of the clergy: The social democracy in no way fights against religious beliefs. On the contrary, it demands complete freedom of conscience for every individual and the widest possible toleration for every faith and every opinion. But, from the moment when the priests use the pulpit as a means of political struggle against the working class, the workers must fight against the enemies of their rights and their liberation. For he who defends the exploiters and who helps to prolong this present regime of misery is the mortal enemy of the proletariat, whether he be in a cassock or in the uniform of the police.
*****
— from "Order Reigns in Berlin" (1919)

It was a matter of honour for the revolution to ward off this attack with all its energy, if the counterrevolution was not to be encouraged to further efforts— The revolutions so far have brought us nothing but defeat, but these inevitable defeats are themselves one stepping-stone on top of another to the final victory....

But the leadership has failed. None the less, the leadership can and must be rebuilt by the masses out of the masses… The masses were up to the mark, they have forged this defeat into the chain of those historical battles which are themselves the strength and pride of international Socialism. And that is why a future victory will blossom from this "defeat."

"Order rules in Berlin." You stupid lackeys! Your "order" is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will rear ahead once more and announce to your horror amid the brass of trumpets: be!"

—from Karl Liebknecht's "Trotz Alledem" (1919)

Hold hard. We have not fled. We are not beaten ... for Spartakus—that means fire and spirit, heart and soul, will and deed of the proletarian revolution. For Spartakus—that stands for all the longing for achievement, all the embattled resolution of the class-conscious proletariat... whether or not we shall survive when all is achieved, our programme will live; it will dominate the world of liberated peoples. In spite of all.

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Bolshevik And Russian Left Oppositionist Kote Tsintsadze

Click on the title to link to an "American Left History" blog entry reviewing Leon Trotsky's "Portraits-Political and Personal", which contains an appreciation of his fellow Russian Left Oppositionist, the fallen Kote Tsintsadze.

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

Markin comment:

Below is the piece on Kote that is mentioned in the linked article.

Kote Tsintsadze- Leon Trotsky's Appreciation From His Book "Portraits-Political and Personal"

Alipi (Kote) M. Tsintsadze, born in Georgia in 1887, joined the Bolsheviks in 1903, doing party work in several Transcaucasian cities when he was not in tsarist prisons or exile. In the period of the 1905 revolution he organized, according to his own statement, "a fighting detachment of Bolsheviks for the purpose of robbing state treasuries." His closest co-worker in this activity was the legendary Kamo.
During the civil war he was chairman of first the Georgian and then the All-Caucasus Cheka, at a time when only the most incorruptible people were chosen for such posts. He was also a member of the Georgian Communist Party's Central Committee and the Georgian Soviet's Central Executive Committee, and one of the Communists in those committees who resisted Stalin's trampling on the national rights of the Georgian republic in 1922; in that dispute Lenin was on Tsintsadze's side and against Stalin's. Tsintsadze became a Left Oppositionist in 1923, was expelled from the Communist Party in 1927, was sent into exile despite his bad health in 1928, and died in 1930 an unrepentant enemy of Stalinism. Tsintsadze's Memoirs were printed in a Georgian periodical in 1923-24 but have not been translated into English.

******

The translation of Trotsky's article, dated January 7, 1931, was first published, under the title "At the Fresh Grave of Kote Tsintsadze," in The Militant, February 15, 1931. It has been revised here by George Saunders.

******

It took quite exceptional conditions—tsarism, the underground, prison and Siberian exile, the long years of struggle against Menshevism, and especially, the experience of three revolutions—to produce fighters like Kote Tsintsadze. His life was entirely bound up with the history of the revolutionary move¬ment for more than a quarter of a century. He took part in all the stages of the proletarian insurgency—from the first propa¬ganda circles to the barricades and seizure of power. For many years he carried on the painstaking work of the underground organizer, in which the revolutionists constantly tied threads together and the police constantly untied them. Later he stood at the head of the Transcaucasian Cheka, that is, at the very center of power, during the most heroic period of the proletarian dictatorship.

When the reaction against October had changed the composition and the character of the party apparatus and its policies, Kote Tsintsadze was one of the first to begin a struggle against these new tendencies hostile to the spirit of Bolshevism. The first conflict occurred during Lenin's illness. Stalin and Ordzhonikidze, with the help of Dzerzhinsky, had carried out their coup in Georgia, replacing the core of Old Bolsheviks with careerist functionaries of the type of Eliava, Orakhelashvili, and the like. It was precisely on this issue that Lenin prepared to launch an implacable battle against the Stalin faction and the apparatus at the Twelfth Congress of the party. On March 6, 1923, Lenin wrote to the Georgian group of Old Bolsheviks, of which Kote Tsintsadze was one of the founders: "I am following your case with all my heart. I am indignant over Ordzhonikidze's rudeness and the connivance of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. I am preparing for you notes and a speech" [Collected Works, volume 45].

The subsequent course of events is sufficiently well known. The Stalin faction crushed the Lenin faction in the Caucasus. This was the initial victory for reaction in the party and opened up the second chapter of the revolution. Tsintsadze, suffering from tuberculosis, bearing the weight of decades of revolutionary work, persecuted by the apparatus at every step, did not desert his post of struggle for a moment. In 1928 he was deported to Bakhchisaray, where the wind and dust did their disastrous work on the remnants of his lungs. Later he was transferred to Alushta, where the chill and rainy winter completed the destruction.

Some friends tried to get Kote admitted to the Gulripshi Sanatorium at Sukhum, where Tsintsadze had succeeded in saving his life several times before during especially acute sieges of his illness. Of course, Ordzhonikidze "promised"; Ordzhonikidze "promises" a great deal to everyone. But the cowardliness of his character—rudeness does not exclude cowardice—always made him a blind instrument in the hands of Stalin. While Tsintsadze was literally struggling against death, Stalin fought all attempts to save the old militant. Send him to Gulripshi on the coast of the Black Sea? And if he recovers? Connections might be established between Batum and Constantinople. No, impossible!

With the death of Tsintsadze, one of the most attractive figures of early Bolshevism has disappeared. This fighter, who more than once risked his life and knew very well how to chastise the enemy, was a man of exceptional mildness in his personal relations. A good-natured sarcasm and a sly sense of humor were combined in this tempered terrorist with a gentleness one might almost call feminine.

The serious illness from which he was not free for a mo¬ment could neither break his moral resistance nor even succeed in overcoming his good spirits and gently attentive attitude toward people.

Kote was not a theoretician. But his clear thinking, his revolutionary passion, and his immense political experience—the living experience of three revolutions—armed him better, more seriously and firmly, than does the doctrine formally digested by those of less fortitude and perseverance. Just as Shakespeare's Lear was "every inch a king," Tsintsadze was every inch a revolutionary. His character revealed itself perhaps even more strik¬ingly during the last eight years—years of uninterrupted struggle against the advent and entrenchment of the unprincipled bureaucracy.

Tsintsadze instinctively fought against anything resembling treachery, capitulation, or disloyalty. He understood the significance of the bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev. But morally he could not tolerate this group. His letters testify to the full force of his revulsion—there is no other word for it—against those Oppositionists who, in their eagerness to insure their for¬mal membership in the party, betray it by renouncing their ideas.

Number 11 of the Biulleten Oppozitsii published a letter from Tsintsadze to Okudzhava. It is an excellent document— of tenacity, clarity of thought, and conviction. Tsintsadze, as we said, was not a theoretician, and he willingly let others formulate the tasks of the revolution, the party, and the Opposition. But any time he detected a false note, he took pen in hand, and no "authority" could prevent him from expressing his suspicions and from making his replies. His letter written on May 2 last year and published in number 12-13 of the Biulleten testifies best to this. This practical man and organizer safeguarded the purity of doctrine more reliably and attentively than do many theoreticians.

We often encounter the following phrases in Kote's letters: "a bad 'institution/ these waverings"; "woe to the people who can't wait"; or, "in solitude weak people easily become subject to all kinds of contagion." Tsintsadze's unshakable courage buoyed up his dwindling physical energy. He even viewed his illness as a revolutionary duel. In one of his letters several months before he died he wrote that in his battle against death he was pursuing the question: "Who will conquer?" "In the meantime, the advantage remains on my side," he added, with the optimism that never abandoned him.

In the summer of 1928, referring indirectly to himself and his illness, Kote wrote to me from Bakhchisaray:"... for many, many of our comrades and friends the thankless fate lies in store of ending their lives somewhere in prison or deportation. Yet in the final analysis this will be an enrichment of revolutionary history, from which a new generation will learn. The proletarian youth, when they come to know about the struggle of the Bolshevik Opposition against the opportunist wing of the party, will understand on whose side was the truth."

Tsintsadze could write these simple yet superb lines only in an intimate letter to a friend. Now that he is no longer alive, these lines may and must be published. They summarize the life and morality of a revolutionist of the highest caliber. They must be made public precisely so that the youth can learn not only from theoretical formulas but also from this personal example of revolutionary tenacity.

The Communist parties in the West have not yet brought up fighters of Tsintsadze's type. This is their besetting weakness, determined by historical reasons but nonetheless a weakness. The Left Opposition in the Western countries is not an exception in this respect and it must well take note of it.

Especially for the Opposition youth, the example of Tsintsadze can and should serve as a lesson. Tsintsadze was the living negation and condemnation of any kind of political careerism, that is, the inclination to sacrifice principles, ideas, and tasks of the cause for personal ends. This does not in the least rule out justified revolutionary ambition. No, political ambition plays a very important part in the struggle. But the revolutionary begins where personal ambition is fully and wholly subordinated to the service of a great idea, voluntarily submitting to and merging with it. Flirtation with ideas, dilettante dabbling with revolutionary formulations, changing one's views out of personal career considerations—these things Tsintsadze pitilessly condemned through his life and his death. His was the ambition of unshakable revolutionary loyalty. This is what the proletarian youth should learn from him.