Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/16

 12 of the usefulness of the gradual betterment of the conditions of labor in the interests of capital itself.

The further characterization of the trade union form of the labor movement is its organizational division (structure) and the domination of the local over the general interest. These local or craft organizations which have been built up during decades still retain their local power at the present time, notwithstanding the fact that objective conditions force the labor movement to unite the small, loose parts, to amalgamate the unions into wider organizations uniting the workers of a whole industry. As a result of the domination of the sectional interests over the interests of the whole industry, we have now the domination of the narrow economic interests over the interests of the whole class. This is pure trade unionism.

The second movement, which represents the opposite side of the trade union movement is known by the name of "anarcho-syndicalism." If trade unionism is connected with Anglo-Saxon countries, anarcho-syndicalism is connected with the Latin. The birth place of anarcho-syndicalism is France, there it had its greatest development and there also was created the theory which united numbers of workers of the Latin countries.

What are the main characteristics of anarcho-syndicalism? Trade unionism as we said, is devoted to the interests of one craft. Anarcho-syndicalism—and this is surely the progressive side of it—is devoted to the interests of the working class. It was a healthy reaction of a certain part of the proletariat against the opportunism and reformism which had existed in labor organization, trade union as well as political. The first characteristic of anarcho-syndicalism which differentiates it is that it puts first the general class interests and struggles—not for betterment within capitalism, but for the overthrow of the system.

The second characterization of the anarcho-syndicalist movement within the international labor movement is its anti-political character. Anarcho-syndicalists consider the union as the primary organ for the class struggle. They believe there are no other organizations except the trade unions which can conquer capitalism. All political parties—say the anarcho-syndicalists—beginning with the bourgeois and ending with the socialist, and at the present time with the Communist, are, from the social point of view, mixed organizations; while the trade unions represent a purely labor organization.

A party is a union of citizens, A trade union unites the producers. In the party there may be workers and also people from other classes. In a trade union—only workers. That is why the anarcho-syndicalists