Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/86

 82 metaphysics, a purely mental division. We may create in our practical struggle all kinds of organizational forms to serve one or another side of the labor movement, but an attempt to substitute one organization for the other, an attempt to set them in conflict, is purely anarchistic—that is, a senseless disorganization of the labor movement.

It is natural that we cannot adopt this metaphysical point of view. The First Congress had to state its position on neutralism in very clear terms, which would not permit any misunderstanding, and give to the world revolutionary trade union movement a definite analysis, But if independence is pure metaphysics, why, then, are there in existence separate organizations, separate trade unions and separate party organizations? If economics and politics are so tightly connected, why, then, for a period of over one hundred years, has there been created separate forms of organizations: On one hand, economic ones—trade unions, on the other, political?

If we consider the development of the labor movement we will see that the working class has been creating its organizations gropingly, along the lines of least resistance. Its organizations began to appear as organizations of benefit societies, sick and death benefit associations, etc., and those organizations would not overstep the borders of their trade; would often limit themselves to one factory or shop.

All these organizations have been the type of first elementary connections, the first elementary unity among the workers, and only further along as the struggle sharpened these benefit socities turned into unions. Later, after these neuclei had been created, political movements began to appear.

Concurrently with the appearance of the idea for the organization of benefit societies, the ideology of class began to take form; the later these class ideas appeared, the later began the formation of different types of organization. Firstly, the idea of economic self defense appears in labor organization, and later on, political. Historically, the working class created three types of organization: First, for the defense of its labor power—the trade unions; the second for self defense, as a consumer on the market—the co-operatives; thirdly, for the struggle against the apparatus of bourgeois society—political organizations.

If we take the whole world's labor movement we have three different forms of relations between the parties and the trade unions. We have countries where the trade union and the parties are independent of each other and even fighting among themselves—this is mainly among the Latin countries, mostly in France and in Spain. Then we have the following type; organizationally the party and the trade unions are separate, but politically the trade unions are under the leadership of the party—this is the type of the Russian and German trade union movement; and last, we have the third type, when the trade unions are