Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/98

 94 gress for mutual representation between the Comintern and the Profintern. In this mutual representation the anarcho-syndicalists saw a tendency of the Profintern and Comintern to violate every law of God and man, and a plain attempt to ignore the principle of independence of the trade union movement.

Thus, the struggle within the Profintern began around the question of the relations between the two Internationals. I have mentioned our point of view of the relations between the trade union and the party. From that it is clear what relations in our estimation should exist between the Profintern and the Comintern. However, as long as the anarcho-syndicalists are of the opinion that the trade unions are the exclusive organizations for leadership over the whole labor movement, so long, naturally, the anarcho-syndicalists not only questioned the mutual representation, but came out actively in opposition to it.

We will not dwell here on all those documents which appeared as a result of this inner struggle. It is necessary only to remark that within the Profintern, for the period of its first year of existence, the struggle around the form of mutual representation between the Profintern and Comintern was a very sharp one. And it ended at the Second Congress of the Profintern, which struck out the Eleventh paragraph of the Constitution, that had authorized such representation. By that exclusion a bloc was arranged between the Communists and the healthy part of the international syndicalists.

We had to reply to another question which arose before the international trade union movement; the question of uniting the workers along vertical lines. Another question was that of tactics: If we created our International, should we also create such internationals according to industry? We came to the conclusion that industrial internationals should not be created. At the same time, it is necessary to create international propaganda committees according to industry, whose purpose shall be to unite all the workers of the given industry into their proper international.

In this question there seems to be a contradiction: On one hand we have two parallel, competing internationals, the Amsterdam and Profintern; and, on the other, we are issuing a slogan to all revolutionary unions to join their proper industrial international. Is it logical? What was the aim of creating our Profintern? It was for the purpose of penetrating more deeply in all labor organizations. If we created our center of the world's trade union movement, it was not because we considered the parallel existence of the two International a virtue, but because there was no other means to centralize the struggle of all the revolutionary workers. Our aim was also to see that all the separate