Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/88

 84 The Communist Party, later on, changed its point of view; but a part of the Party split away and organized the German Communist Labor Party, one of the main slogans of which was. "The destruction of the old trade unions." The Comintern at that time was categorically against this decision. But how did it happen that the German Communist Party adopted the slogan—not to win over but to destroy the trade unions' It happened because in all the struggles of the German proletariat after the revolution, the conservative machine which split the revolutionary movement was the trade unions, which fell upon the revolutionary movement with all its weight.

Basing themselves upon the unions, former members of the Social-Democratic Party, such as Noske, shot down thousands of workers. All this brought about pessimism and despair in the more revolutionary and impatient German workers, From that was created a whole theory: The old trade unions are rotten through and through; they are reactionary, and in order successfully to fight the bourgeoisie it is necessary to destroy them completely. If this colossal apparatus is being used against the revolution, if it is so entwined with the bourgeois state, it is necessary to destroy it before the power of labor can be established.

In reality, the trade unions, especially in the post-war period, have been closely entwined with the bourgeois state. We notice this all over Europe. We could illustrate that graphically in the form of a pyramid, the apex of which is organically attached to the bourgeois state apparatus.

In deciding upon our line of action in this regard, we followed the Comintern which was categorically opposed to the theory of destroying the unions, but was for winning them over. Why? Did we not equally estimate the reactionary character of the trade unions? Did we not recognize the fact of the interlacing of the bourgeois state with the heads of the trade unions? Did we not see their reactionary role? Certainly, we saw all that, but we are approaching the trade unions from an entirely different point of view than our German comrades then were.

What is a union? A union is an organization which unites laboring masses. And we have to consider that in Germany where the slogan of destroying the unions was proclaimed, they united nine million workers. If we come out with the slogan for the destruction of the unions what will we do? The mass will not follow us, because they came to the union in order to gain something real. With the tactics of destroying the unions we can only bring a couple of thousand workers out of these organizations. We may create a "pure" Communist little union, which will have all the Communist virtues, but which will not embrace the laboring masses. This is not Communist tactics. We must be there where the workers are. Such a seeping out of the revo-