Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/34

 30 movement, if it is anti-state, is so only in that sense that it is against the bourgeois state. We consider the state from the following point of view: What kind of a state is it? Which class does it represent? Which class does it oppress? And from this concrete, historical point of view we consider the given, particular state. In other words, for the fourth type of the trade union movement, the decisive factor in its attitude toward the state is not the form of the state, but its social contents.

From this we can see that this type of the trade union movement has definite principles which differentiates it from all other types of the trade union movement. We will not dwell upon it in detail. Otherwise we would have to touch the structure of our trade unions and the work of the trade unions of Russia in the different spheres. We will take only the more important things which differentiate our trade union movement from all other forms of trade union organization.

It can be said without exaggeration, that the trade union movement of the fourth type, that is, the Russian trade union movement, has absorbed all that which makes for strength and revolutionary spirit in all other separate types of the trade union movement of different countries. Thus, for instance, we have a close similarity to the syndicalists in the sense of bringing forward the class problem, the revolutionary struggle and the direct action of one class against the other. But we also have some points which are similar to those of the reformists of Germany—in the sense of centralization, in the sense of striving for the maximum concentration of forces. We have less in common with the Trade Unionists' movement, although we do agree with them in the way they conduct their stubborn economic struggle. But the difference between us is that they are concentrating their struggle and stubborness exclusively on the everyday problem, without passing the borders of that problem, at a time when we are using these qualities for wider aims and problems.

Thus, we see that a fourth type of the trade union movement has accepted all that is really revolutionary, which could be taken from the trade union movement of the world.

The first characteristic of the post-war trade union movement, is its stormy growth. I believe there is no historical parallel of such a rapid development in the trade union movement and also in the labor organizations in general. We will take a few figures and then we will consider the reasons for such phenomenal increase. We will take the figures of 1919 ,and later those of 1920, etc.

According to official statistics of 1913, Great Britain had 4,000,000 members, in 1919, after the end of the war, there were 8,000,000 mem-