Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/56

 52 Being scared by my formula presented to them: "If you want peace, conduct a class war," the delegates grumbled: "We came to the Congress to fight for peace, and the Russian delegates propose to us that we must conduct a class war." And this was said by the so-called leaders of the labor movement. For them there was no difference between a war and a class war. All the ideology of the leaders of the Amsterdam International plainly showed itself at this Congress; here fraternized the pacifist bourgeoisie with the right wing of the labor movement. It is clear that bourgeois pacifists invited to the Congress would not vote for a resolution against capitalist society.

The Congress had for its purpose the collection of all pacifism there was in the world's labor movement and among the more advanced bourgeoisie, and to tell to the governments of the world: "You see what power we represent! If you will dare again to fling humanity into war, we are ready, even for a strike!" Later on we found out indirectly that when the leaders of the Amsterdam {{SIC}Internation|International}} were discussing a strike, among themselves, they laughed at it. They considered it a necessary ornament: It doesn't look good to pass a resolution just about moving pictures, it was necessary to mention a strike so that the workers could see that there was a will to fight.

Thus, instead of demonstrating force, weakness was demonstrated.

When, at the Congress, we proposed to the Amsterdamers a United Front, the reporter of the Political Committee, the leader of the Holland Social-Democracy, Troelstra, said, "We will agree to a United Front with the Communists only after they pass a quarantine." But with the bourgeois pacifists they did agree on a united front without a quarantine. But which will keep the other in quarantine is to be seen.

I think that from this characterization of the attitude of the Amsterdam International to the Versailles Treaty, to the problem of disarmament, to the question of fighting against war, can already be made a logical conclusion as to what the Amsterdam International represented in itself, even if we did not know how it might conduct itself in other cases and on other questions.

I have already pointed out that the end of the war was coincident with the development of the reformist illusions. If we would try to ascertain the relations between the growth of unrest among the workers, the growth of the reformist illusions, and the compromises along reformist lines by the bourgeoisie, we will find that they are very closely related. But if we will take the last years we will see that the social-reformism almost reached the peak in about the middle of 1920. I said "almost" for, in fact, they did not reach anywhere, because we cannot consider as an attainment the creation of the International Labor Bureau, participation in the Committees, the adoption by the Washington Conference of the Labor Program, etc.