Page:Resolutions and Decisions of the Third Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions (1924).pdf/9

 have them react in one form or another to the: all our united front proposals are based primarly on joint action, and if around the question of joint action by the workers of all political tendencies a vigorous campaign is developed, then all our actions will bring favorable results. In putting the question this way, the formula of "a united front only from below" loses its meaning. THE UNITED FRONT FROM ABOVE DOES UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES MEAN SECRET AGREEMENT AND NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE REFORMIST LEADERS. Everything must be done openly, in view of all the toilers, and what is particularly important, it should be accompanied by a wide campaign of agitation and propaganda among the masses; in doing all this the sharpness of our criticism and the intensity of our struggle against reformism must not be dulled for a moment. Under such conditions the united front from above will also produce favorable results for the revolutionary labor movement, and through the united front we will attract the broad unorganized masses to the struggle against capitalism.

The shop committee is the natural center round which all the organized and unorganized workers should be grouped. Even in the countries where the shop committee movement exists (Germany, Czecho-Slovakia), it is far from developed. This is due to the fact that the shop committees have had until this time no concrete militant aims. On the other hand, where no shop committees are in existence, only weak attempts at their creation are being made, and the big disputes between labor and capital, which are most favorable to the formation of the shop committees, are not being utilized at all. It is necessary to become imbued with an understanding of the great importance of the shop committees for the revolution; no opportunity for the creation of this national representation of labor should be missed. The unorganized must be gotten together and united by the shop committees. The shop committees should create special committees for the organization of the unorganized. The creation of shop committees is of particularly importance in the countries where the labor movement is split. There is no better way of creating the united front from below than through the organization of shop committees. Nor is there a better primary school for the unorganized.That is why the struggle for shop committees must become the principal aim of the R. I. L. U. adherents in the immediate future. Only the labor unions which will create true revolutionary shop committees, as a basis for the revolutionary labor union, will win over the masses, will be able to use the united front tactic to further the revolution.

Now more than ever the economic struggle is connected with the political struggle. Mighty centralized capital, supported by the entire machinery of the capitalist state, conducts a bitter struggle against the growing movement of the masses. Every economic dispute of importance involves the entire organized bourgeoisie which resorts to every sort of corruption, bribery and violence to break up the strikes and disorganize the labor masses. This organized power of capital meets with a split reformist labor movement, continuing its old habits and saturated with amateurism and the craft spirit. The idea of the international character of the struggle of the working class, the idea of the concentration of great masses for the struggle, of drawing the public utility