very “difficult,” but every other way of tackling the problem is not serious enough to even discuss.
Trade Unions marked a gigantic step forward of the working class at the beginning of capitalist development, as a transition from the disintegration and helplessness of the workers to the beginnings of class organizations. When the proletarian revolutionary party (which does not deserve the name until it learns to connect leaders-class-masses into one single indissoluble whole), when this last, highest, form of proletarian class-organization began to grow up, the Trade Unions unavoidably revealed some reactionary traits, a certain craft limitation, a certain tendency to non-political action, a certain conservatism, etc., etc. But the development of the proletariat did not and could not, anywhere in the world, proceed by any other road than that of Trade Unions, with their mutual activity with the working-class party. The seizing of political power by the proletariat, as a class, is a gigantic step forward; and it is incumbent upon the party to educate the Trade Unions in a new manner, distinct from the old one, to guide them, not forgetting meanwhile that they remain and will remain for a long time a necessary “school of Communism,” a preparatory school for the training of the proletariat to realize its dictatorship, an indispensable union of the workers for the permanent transference of the management of the country’s economic life into their hands as a class (and not to single trades), to be given later into the hands of all the laboring masses.
A certain conservatism of the Trade Unions, in the sense mentioned, is unavoidable under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not to understand this means completely to fail to understand the fundamental conditions of the transition from capitalism to Socialism. To fear this reactionary tendency, to try to avoid it, to jump over it, is as foolish as it can possibly be; it indicates lack of confidence in the role of the proletarian vanguard to train, educate and enlighten, to infuse with new life, the most backward groups and masses of the working class and the peasantry. On the other hand, to postpone the realization of the proletarian dictatorship until such a time as there is not left a single professionally narrow-minded work-
