Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/17

 centre, to work out a uniform type of organisation, to indicate the general plan of work and to determine a uniform economic policy. The Conference only partly carried out its task, not only because the Russian trade union movement was still too young, but chiefly because the right wing of the socialist parties had the preponderance at the conference. This section led the trade union movement along the same path into which they were directing the general policy of the Russian Republic. Two blocks were competing at the Conference, the left—(the Bolsheviks and Internationalists), and the right—the Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bund. The right block had 15 to 20 more votes than the left. Three questions particularly agitated the working class of Russia—the war, coalition with the bourgeoisie and the control of industry. None of these radical questions of the Russian Revolution were decided at this Conference and in so far as it gave any reply at all to them, that reply was anti-revolutionary. The left block proposed "to condemn every attempt to narrow down and subject the trade union movement to the interest of the ruling classes," to proclaim that the unions "remain foreign to every idea of class conciliation, of any possibility of co-operation with the bourgeoisie of its country," and to declare, in the name of the Conference, that the trade unions will only support that socialist party which will take action for the speediest liquidation of the war by means of a mass revolutionary struggle against the ruling class of its country. All these resolutions of the left block were rejected by the Conference as well as a resolution proposing to commence an energetic campaign for workers' control. Workers' control was understood as a strict subordination of the employers to organs of state regulation in which the majority is guaranteed to the labour organisations, and the granting to the factory committees the right of appointing controlling commissions to check and stop decisions and measures of the factory administration. Why did the Conference reject the proposals of the left block? Because the majority of the Conference held the view that it was the duty of the working class to seek agreement with the advanced sections of the bourgeoisie and, in order to secure this agreement, the greatest caution was necessary in handling questions affecting fundamental capitalist relations. The Conference declared for increased taxation of the profit-making class, tor the standardisation of prices of important articles, for control of industry, for direct State control in the most important branches of industry, for the strict control of banks, for compulsory State centralisation of industry, for the reorganisation of government regulating bodies and for securing in these a predominance of representatives of revolutionary democracy. But the Conference found it necessary to emphasise the fact that "the process of this control is too difficult and complicated for the proletariat to undertake the entire or even the greater part of this control." From this it follows that "the proletariat must not take upon itself alone the responsibility for the progress and outcome of the struggle with the economic disorganisation of the country, and that it is necessary to do everything possible to attract all the productive classes of the population to the solution of the economic problems confronting the country." These vague formul sufficiently show the desire of the majority