Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/95

 Rh slogan of industrial unionism: In one industry, one union. And this slogan was carried into every country by revolutionary workers.

I will not stop to detail other organizational questions, which are very numerous. I will only point out that at the First Congress a program of action was adopted which in sixteen paragraphs formulated briefly the problems of the revolutionary trade unions.

I have mentioned that the Amsterdam International was mostly an European organization; of the non-European countries participating in the Amsterdam International are only the trade unions of Canada and part of the unions of Argentine. That is all that the Amsterdam International has outside of Europe. That is why we, without exaggeration may say that the Amsterdam International could more correctly be called a federation of European unions than a real international.

At the same time, the particular attribute of the Profintern as well as of the Comintern is precisely that the Profintern became the central point for the revolutionary trade union movement, not only of Europe but also of America, Asia and Africa. The Russian revolution awoke all the oppressed Near and Far East, and in many of the Eastern countries the organized labor movement reckons its birth from the date of the Russian revolution. The fact that the Profintern is organically connected with the Russian revolution in itself was a reason for the attraction of the sympathy of labor unions of the Near and Far East.

It is true that some of the unions of various countries which are affiliated to the Amsterdam International also made attempts to organize unions in the East. The British trade unions attempted to influence the growth of the trade unions of India by creating ideological and organizational connections with the trade union movement of the large cities.

The British trade unions never considered the problem of aiding the liberation of India from the clutch of the British Empire, but on the other hand, acting in full contact with their government, definitely helped the success of the imperialist policy of the British bourgeoisie, using the apparatus of the trade unions for that purpose.

When we confronted the problem of connection with the East, with its labor organizations, we based ourselves not only on the sympathy of the laboring masses of the oppressed East, but also on certain labor organizations which were leaning toward the Russian revolution as to a bright light. This connection with the East should be remembered in order to get a clear understanding of the particular attributes of the revolutionary trade union movement as compared with the reformist.