Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/202

 176 would mean abandoning revolutionary work in the trade unions, and giving up the attempt to make of them an instrument of revolutionary struggle, the attempt to organize the most exploited part of the proletariat.

Where a split between the opportunists and the revolutionary trade union movement has already taken place before, where, as in America, alongside of the opportunist trade unions there are unions with revolutionary tendencies—although not Communist ones—there the Communists are bound to support such revolutionary unions, to persuade them to abandon Syndicalist prejudices and to place themselves on the platform of Communism, which alone is economic struggle.

It is the duty of the Communists in all the phases of the economic struggle to point out to the workers that the success of the struggle is only possible if the working class conquers the capitalists in open fight, and by means of dictatorship proceeds to the organization of a Socialist order. Consequently, the Communists must strive to create as far as possible complete unity between the trade unions and the Communist Party, and to subordinate the unions to the practical leadership of the Party, as the advanced guard of the workers' revolution. For this purpose the Communists should have Communist fractions in all the trade unions and factory committees and acquire by their means an influence over the labour movement and direct it.

In a word, whether with or without a split, the aim is to subordinate. We shall now note the practical application of the Communist trade union principles, according to the method of Lenin already quoted, "We must know how to apply, at need, knavery, deceit, illegal methods, hiding truth by silence, in order to penetrate the very heart of the trade unions, to remain there and to accomplish there the Communist task."