Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/70

 66 apply to the League of Nations, an International unable to call for a demonstration in connection with the occupation of the Ruhr, and you will understand the disillusionment which began in the masses connected with the Amsterdam International and the despair among the German workers created by this weakness in the political activity of this international.

This bankruptcy of the Amsterdam International was a shock for the masses which showed them the necessity for seeking something new. And what could they find? One could go along the lines of the reformists continuing to flirt with the bourgeois pacifists, or could join in a United Front with the Communists. There is no third way out of it.

The occupation of the Ruhr has so clearly illustrated the inner division of the Amsterdam International itself, has thrown a bright light upon the inner national-imperialist contradictions which were tearing apart this so-called International, that a desire for a United Front began spontaneously among the masses, a desire to create at any cost a United Front with those who are willing to fight. And who were fighting at that time? Who were making any real proposals to fight against the advancing bourgeoisie? Only the followers of the Profintern and Comintern. There was nothing else on the political horizon. There was a saying: "All roads lead to Rome." Now it has been changed to: "All roads lead to Moscow." And every time when the working class gets into a trap and can find no escape through methods of the reformists, at such moments it begins to seek the road to "Moscow," that is, a road of common struggle with Communists against the bourgeoisie.

Already at the Frankfort Conference we had followers in the representatives of the Factory Committees, we even had a Social-Democratic group which came out with the statement demanding from its leaders the creation of a United Front with the Communists. The latter events in Germany have proven the absolute necessity of such a front. The United Front was being created by the workers themselves, without and in spite of the reformist and Social-Democratic leaders.

The Amsterdam International sharply and clearly refused a United Front. But not all industrial internationals could refuse a United Front. The first break that was made in the ranks of the Amsterdam International was in the International Federation of Transport Workers. You read, of course, about the international conference of transport workers held in Berlin at the end of May 1923. What brought about this conference? How could a part of the Amsterdam Inter-