Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/83

 Rh other, an effort not to remedy it. but to "cure it to death" if we may so express it. Not an attempt to revive it, but to destroy this society, which from our point of view is too slow in its dying. It is self evident that from this starting point we make our further conclusions in the concrete field of our tactics.

What are the methods of solving the problems confronting us? The Amsterdam International is convinced that the best method of solving the problems confronting the working class, is the collaboration with the left wing of the bourgeoisie and the development of democratic forms of the state, which will give the working class opportunity of obtaining the economic organism of the nations, which should bring about the so-called "industrial democracy."

This program stands out in sharp contradiction—not only to our viewpoint—but also to history itself and the logic of developing events, which leads not to gradual betterment but to the overthrow of capitalism, not to democracy but to the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is our point of view, briefly put, as contrasted to the viewpoint of reformism. It is natural that as long as our starting points and aims are different, that long are the problems arising in the world of reality solved in different manners by the reformist and the revolutionary trade unionists.

What are the most important questions which we had to decide at the First Congress in order to form the left wing which gathered around the Provisional International Council of Revolutionary Trade Unions? The first question which arose from the development of the left-wing movement itself was the question of the neutrality and independence of the trade unions.

What is the role of the trade unions in the class struggle? Are the trade unions independent and the only organs of class struggle? And what are their relations to the Comintern? These are the questions which could not have failed to arise as long as we united different trends in the left trade union movement (Communists, syndicalists, anarchists, etc.)

First of all we will take up neutrality. What is the essence of this theory? This is the tendency which places before the trade union movement only the recognition of economic problems and which is neutral to all existing political groupings. Thus neutrality is an attempt to separate the trade union movement from its general class-political problems, to concentrate the attention of the unions exclusively on economic problems and to force them to keep away from political parties and groups.