Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/10



The Russian revolution crashed into this situation, upsetting all the old inertias and balances. The masses in the unions responded to it with the most widespread and effective forward movement yet seen. Great strike after strike shook the country. Hitherto-unorganized millions flooded into the unions. For the first time militant leadership upon a large scale was able to appear above the stifling Gompers bureaucracy, as in the steel strike, The masses in the trade unions had been profoundly stirred.

In the I. W. W. the Russian revolution had been greeted with great acclaim. With the development of civil war and the accompanying struggle against anarchist and Menshevik ideology in Russia, a division took place in the I. W. W. The anarcho-syndicalist tendency which, combined with a bastard pacifism, was in control, became definitely antagonistic to the revolution; at the same time a large number of the clearer elements definitely began to shed their anti-political dogmas and to assimilate the lessons of the Russian revolution. The development of this Communist wing in the I. W. W. was retarded by the imprisonment of many of its best leaders. This allowed some misunderstanding to occur, so that the confusionist leadership continued to dominate the organization. The result was that thousands of the best rank and file militants left the I. W. W. in disgust at its propaganda against Soviet Russia. The full effects of the favorable reaction towards the Russian revolution on the part of the I. W. W. membership thus failed to obtain expression in the organization as such.

Most profound was the effect upon the Socialist Party of the Bolshevik upheaval. The split which took place in 1919, the formation of the various Communist Parties and groups, and their later integration under the influence of the Communist International, brought a profound change into the left-wing conception of trade union strategy and tactics. At the same time this split eliminated the Socialist Party as even the shadow of an independent factor. Since 1919 the S. P. has steadily and consistently gone to the right, abandoned all pretense even of opposition to Gompersism, and today suffers silently from the insults which "the Grand Old Man" heaps upon them the while he orders them about.

Within the trade unions there had for years been a small group of revolutionists attempting to develop a revolutionary wing therein. In 1912 this group organized the Syndicalist League of North America, which expressed the general tendency of syndicalism but in flat opposition to dual organization, opposing thereto the idea of revolutionary nuclei in the mass unions. This movement after a short but active life subsided, to appear again in 1916 as the International Trade Union Educational League, which, however, soon expired in the war atmosphere of the time. In 1920 the Trade Union Educational League was