Page:Resolutions of the Congress of Geneva, 1866, and the Congress of Brussels, 1868 - International Working Men's Association.djvu/15



Resolved—1. That strikes are not a means to the complete emancipation of the working classes, but are frequently a necessity in the actual situation of the struggle between labour and capital.

2. That it is requisite to subject them to certain rules of organization, opportunity, and legitimacy.

3. In such trades where no unions and benefit societies exist as yet, it is necessary to create them. The unions of all trades and countries must combine. In each local federation of trade societies a fund destined to support strikes ought to be established. In one word, the work undertaken by the International Working Men's Association is to be continued so as to make the working men enter the association en masse.

4. It is necessary to appoint in each locality a committee consisting of delegates of the various societies, who shall act as umpires, deciding eventually upon the advisability and legitimacy of strikes. For the rest the different sections will, of course, in the mode of appointing these councils, follow the particular manners, habits, and laws of their respective places.

Considering that on the one side machinery has proved a most powerful instrument of despotism and extortion in the hands of the capitalist class, that on the other side the development of machinery creates the material conditions necessary for the