Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/94

 90 proach this question from that point of view, because we had before us the experience of the Russian revolution, quite rich in that regard.

It would be proper to halt on another question which, again, was of interest not only to us, the revolutionary International, but which took up almost all the attention of the Amsterdam International. This was the question of organizational structure. If we take the organizational structure of the trade unions we will see that the unions, from narrow craft organizations, are turning into wider units and later into industrial unities. This process is very slow.

At the First Congress of the Profintern the trade unions were understood as organs first for the defense of the interests of the working class, later, as organs of attack on the bourgeoisie, and, finally as organs for socialist construction.

As long as the trade unions, for many years, were confronted by a very strong enemy, and as long as that enemy—the bourgeoisie—changed the forms of its organization, the working class had to do the same. Otherwise, it would lag behind the bourgeoisie organizationally.

In reality, the bourgeoisie has, besides the apparatus of the state, which is a very powerful tool for the suppression of the labor movement, its own employers' organization, united according to industry. The employer who, for instance, owns a big metal factory, cannot join two or three unions merely because he has laborers, pattern makers and others working for him. He joins only one certain union, which corresponds to the industry generally.

The employers are always perfecting their organization, adapting it to the conditions of struggle, giving it the forms which make it the most effective fighting instrument against the working class. In this respect the working class has always been lagging behind the employers. While, for instance, we have in England, all the employers' societies organized on one hand according to industry and—on the other hand—into one "British Federation of Manufacturers," the working class of England only a year and a half ago organized the whole British Federation of Trades Councils, outside of which there are yet over a million workers.

For the revolutionary International, which has to confront such a problem as the social revolution, it is necessary to create an organizational prerequisite for such revolution. It is necessary to rebuild the trade union movement on a new basis. This is why we adopted a