The Economic Onslaught of the Counterrevolution and the Unions

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Declaration of the Delegates Representing the International Left Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists)

to the Congress Against Fascism

All modern history is evidence of the fact that the proletariat is nothing without its class organizations. At the same time, experience shows that the workers' organizations often become a brake on the revolutionary struggle. Many a time has the proletarian movement smashed over this contradiction. The most tragic example is the German catastrophe in which the leading organizations, each in its own way, paralyzed the proletariat from above and handed it over, disarmed, to fascism.

The Communist party sets as its aim to lead the proletariat to power. It can carry out its revolutionary mission only by winning over the majority of the proletariat and thereby its mass organizations, primarily the trade unions.

The party's struggle to win influence over the trade unions must be carried out in such a way as not to put a brake on the current tasks of mass organization, not to split it, and not to create in the workers the idea that the Communists disorganize the class movement. The principles of this kind of struggle were already traced out in The Communist Manifesto, were developed by the later theory and practice of the workers' movement, and found their highest expression in the work of Bolshevism.

The party signifies the flower of the class, its revolutionary selection. The trade union embraces broad masses of workers, at different levels. The broader these masses, the closer is the trade union to accomplishing its task. But what the organization gains in breadth it inevitably loses in depth. Opportunist, nationalist, religious tendencies in the trade unions and their leadership express the fact that the trade unions embrace not only the vanguard but also heavy reserves. The weak side of the unions thus comes from their strong side. The struggle against opportunism in the trade-union organizations means, basically, persistent and patient work in order to join the reserves to the vanguard.

Those who detach the revolutionary workers from the trade unions, who build alongside the mass organizations revolutionary, "pure" — to use Lenin's ironic term — but tiny, and therefore puny trade unions, do not solve the historic task but abandon its solution; worse still, they create direct obstacles in the struggle to influence the working class.

The initiators of the present congress are organizations of the oppositional Red International of Labor Unions (RILU). The history of these organizations is a history of criminal violation of the fundamental principles of Marxist policy in the sphere of trade unions. The RILU is nothing more than a Communist party, or part of a Communist party, only under another name. This organization does not bind the party to the unions; on the contrary, it separates the party from the unions. Being, because of their small numbers, absolutely incapable of replacing the trade unions in the sphere of mass action, the RILU is at the same time incapable of influencing them from outside because it is hostilely opposed to them as rival organizations.

To justify the policy of the RILU, as to justify the theory of social fascism, the Stalinist bureaucracy now appeals to the fact that the heads of the German trade unions have shown their readiness to be lackeys of Hitler as they had been, in the past, lackeys of the Hohenzollerns. Pointing a finger at the abject role of Leipart and Co., the French Stalinists come out against a fusion of the two union organizations in France. They agree to accept unity only on one condition: if at the head of the joint unions there would be revolutionary fighters, not traitors.

By this the Stalinists once more demonstrate that like the Bourbons of France they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. They demand that they be given ready-made mass organizations with a revolutionary leadership. In such unions they condescend to agree to take part In other words, they are waiting for someone else to carry out the historic task which should constitute the fundamental content of their own work.

The leaders of the German trade unions, like those of the British and American trade unions and of the reformist French unions, are "the greatest scoundrels in the world" — Rosa Luxemburg said it many years ago. The most important task since the founding of the Comintern has been to drive out these scoundrels from the mass unions. But on each occasion, in carrying out this task, the Stalinist bureaucracy betrayed complete bankruptcy.

That the RGO did not go over to Hitler in Germany is a purely negative merit which, in general, it is improper to flaunt in revolutionary ranks. But the impotence of the RGO, the impotence of the KPD, the impotence of the Comintern, lies in this — that the scoundrels like Leipart and Co. still remain even today the bosses of the mass unions. As for the RGO, even before the great events it showed itself to be a castle of playing cards.

The place of Communists is in the mass trade unions. Communists must go into them, with banners furled or flying, to work there openly or under cover, according to the political and police conditions of the country. But work they must, not fold their arms.

Concerning their participation in the trade-union movement, Communists, in general, cannot lay down any conditions to the working class or to the reformist bureaucracy. If the working class understood in advance the advantages of Communist policy they would not tolerate reformist traitors at the head of their organizations. As for the reformist bureaucracy, it is consistently interested in having the Communists stay outside the trade unions, and so it refuses any conditions which could possibly facilitate the work of the Communists. The proletarian revolutionary does not make up arrogant but absurd ultimatums to serve as his justification for deserting the union; he penetrates the union in spite of all obstacles and barriers. It is not from the hands of the trade-union bureaucrats that the Communist gets conditions favorable to his work; he acquires them gradually, to the extent that he acquires influence inside the trade union.

The circumstance that the present congress, calling for preparation of resistance to the onslaught of capital and fascism, has been convoked by organizations which are sectarian by their very own principles — the organizations of the RILU in Germany, Poland, and Italy — this circumstance compels us to call with redoubled force on all genuine Communists for a struggle against the fatal methods of the Stalinist bureaucracy which isolate the proletarian vanguard and bar its way to victory.

Comrade-Communists, conscious workers! Establish in their full force the Marxist principles in trade-union policy formulated in the first four congresses of the Comintern. Shake off from your shoes the dust of Stalinism. Back to the road of Marx and Lenin. Only this road leads forward!