Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/33

 the proletariat, whose interests coincide with the development of the social revolution—the only class that can bring about the socialisation of the means of production and exchange. If that is so, what revolution have we in Russia, a bourgeois or a socialist revolution? If it is a socialist revolution then, how can there be room for strike funds, strikes and other weapons and methods of the class struggle which the proletariat employed against its class enemies? Against whom will the proletarian trade union conduct the class struggle? Against their own proletarian government, against themselves?

We see, therefore, that the theory of independence is based wholly upon the old capitalist relations and that it arose out of a failure to understand the epoch through which we are at present living, and reflects in the minds of certain categories of workers the contradictions of the present epoch in which the new social relations are still surrounded by capitalist forms. The expiring capitalism still clings to certain categories of workers who more than any others were intellectually subjected to its influence.

The theory of independence is not a narrow trade union theory, but a complete political philosophy. It this is a bourgeois revolution, consequently, one must adopt a different economic policy towards the bourgeoisie and the peasantry, it is. necessary to establish all bourgeois "liberties," the Constituent Assembly, in a word, all the "democratic" forms for the maximum development of bourgeois democratic society and a "healthy regulated" capitalism. As the revolution developed, the theory of independence lost its pure and consistent form and at the Third Congress of Trade Unions appeared in a new form: the mensheviks, recognising that a socialist revolution was proceeding, supported the argument for independence in view of the slow development of the world and, particularly, the Russian revolution. They said that the socialist revolution is developing very slowly, particularly in Russia, where there is a numerous peasantry and it is therefore necessary that the proletarian trade unions should be independent of the Soviet State which, while socialistic, is nevertheless giving way to the influence of the middle classes.

What is the role and the strength of this tendency in Russia? First of all it is necessary to point out that even the Clerks' Union, which at one time supported the independents, is gradually freeing itself from their influence. At the last congress of this union the independents numbered only 32 per cent. of the delegates. Their position is just as deplorable even among the printers. At the last National Congress of Printers, which took place in July, 1919, the majority of delegates were communists.

The general decline of the influence of the mensheviks and therefore of the independents in the Russian trade union movement can be seen from the following table: