Page:Theses Presented to the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920).pdf/23

 class as much sweat as possible in order that the more abundantly might the blood of the proletariat flow in the interests of capitalist profits. Containing chiefly the skilled workmen, the better paid, limited by their professional narrowmindedness, fettered by a bureaucratic apparatus, which had removed itself from the masses, demoralised by their opportunist leaders, the labour unions betrayed not only the cause of the Social Revolution, but even also the struggle for the improvement of the conditions of life of the workmen organized by them. They set aside the point of view of the industrial struggle against the employers, and replaced it by the program of an amicable arrangement with the capitalists, at any cost whatever. This policy was carried on not only by the independent unions of England and America, not only by the would-be "Socialist" free industrial unions in Germany and Austria, but by the Syndicalist unions in France as well.

2. The economic consequences of the war, the complete disorganisation of world economy, the insane prices, the unlimited application of the labour of women and children, the aggravation of the dwelling conditions, all these are forcing the large masses of the proletariat into the struggle against capitalism. This struggle is revolutionary warfare, by its proportions and the character that it is assuming more and more every day; a warfare destroying objec-