Page:Left-Wing Communism.djvu/10

 "Reactionary Trade Unions." If the Bolsheviki could work with the conservative Trade Unions in Russia it is more than correct that we can and must work with them here. There were more reasons for the organization of "new, spick and span 'Workers' Unions,' guiltless of bourgeois-democratic prejudices, guiltless of craft feeling and narrow professionalism" in Russia than there is, for doing the same thing in the United States at this time. When the Bolsheviki became a factor in Russia the Trade Union movement was a negligible quantity. In fact as late as the Third Trade Union Conference in 1917 only 1,475,249 workers were represented. This organization, in itself, could not have been much of an obstacle to the organization of "pure" unions by the Bolsheviki. If this movement of less than a million and a half workers was considered to be the mass movement of a country of one hundred and eighty-five million population, how much more so is it true that the mass movement of America is made up of an organization of four million workers in the American Federation of Labor? Upon the face of it, it would appear that this principle of working within reactionary unions would apply to America and unless we have evidence that it is unsound in its application to conditions here, one is justified in assuming that it does. This, of course, will be hard for some elements in America to swallow and considerable discussion and controversy will occur in the movement in the United States before this is finally settled. We have to admit that Lenin is correct when he says: "There can be no doubt that Messrs. Gompers, Jouhaux, Henderson, Legien, etc., are very grateful to such 'Left' revolutionaries who, like the German 'Opposition-in-principle' Party (Heaven, preserve us from such 'principles') or like revolutionaries in the American 'Industrial Workers of the World,' preach the necessity of quitting reactionary Trade Unions and of refusing to work in them."

Lenin's position upon participation in Bourgeois Parliaments is even more decided and apparently more directly applicable to American conditions. He demonstrates that the parliament was not outworn in Germany upon the basis that it was still able to attract the workers to its support. He asks: