Page:Resolutions and Decisions of the Third Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions (1924).pdf/41

 b. Common action of the trade unions and the co-operatives.

It is up to every trade union organization to participate as actively as possible in the co-operative movement in order to build up good Mutual relationships on a proletarian basis, and in order to be able to support one another in the struggles.

After the trade unions the co-operatives are the greatest congregating centers of the proletarian masses. The co-operatives, which are under reformist leadership, exercise a more pernicious and confusing influence on the ideology of the workers than even the reformist trade unions themselves; more especially is this so with regard to the vacillating elements and the great mass of working class housewives. To bring revolutionary enlightenment and class war propaganda into the co-operatives is, therefore, a most eminent political task.

For decades the reformist leaders of the co-operatives systematically worked to make the co-operatives mere tools in their policy of collaboration with the bourgeoisie; they have made them strongholds of social treason and instruments for use against the class war. In order to transform the co-operatives into class organs of the proletariat, we must conduct a struggle against the policy of betraying the working class which is practiced by the bureaucrats of the co-operatives; this struggle to consist in untiring enlightenment work, in strengthening the class consciousness of the toiling masses, in building up a genuine democracy inside the mass of co-operative members. Instead of the nonsensical slogan of "political neutrality" which is in reality nothing but collaboration with the enemies of the working class, we must have a clear proletarian policy and a closer solidarity with all class conscious proletarian organizations. In order to strengthen the organizational apparatus of the fighting proletariat through the co-operatives, it is necessary to draw them into the struggle against the high cost of living, into all trade union battles and into the political struggles waged by the class conscious proletariat for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Among the land workers and small farmers co-operative work must be carried on more intensively. The factory committees and trade unions should endeavor to link up the producing co-operative associations of the small peasants with the consuming co-operative associations of the city workers for the purpose of a direct exchange of goods and the elimination of private trade. The producing co-operative associations of the small peasants should supply the proletarian town co-operatives with foodstuffs, while the town co-operatives must deliver articles necessary for the rural workers and small peasants.

These connections can not only be used for supporting industrial workers in their wage struggles, but it is of decisive importance for victory in the civil war and the proletarian revolution.

It is the proletarian duty of the co-operatives materially to support the most active manner the victims of class justice, military dictatorship, white terror and Fascism, to give material aid to the revolutionary press, and especially to render solidarity aid to the unemployed, the locked-out and the striking workers. For the purpose of this active support, the co-operatives should create special permanent aid funds. The revolutionary co-operators and trade unions must in common see to it