World Labor Unity/Chapter 14
XIV. Unity Sentiment Grows
During the past five or six years two barriers have stood in the way of World Labor Unity. The first was the localism and sectionalism of the Labor Movement. The second was the Russian Revolution.
At any period in economic and social development the Labor Movement will probably be as sectional and as local in character as the community in which it exists—perhaps a little more so, since the masses are likely to lag behind the march of economic and social forces. Great distances, differences in race, and customs, differences in trade and industry, and differences in nationality all serve to keep workers apart.
Summing up this world disorganization of labor, Edo Fimmen writes: "Lack of energy, lack of time, and also Jack of funds—these are the main reasons for the failure, down to the present time, to get into direct touch with the trade unions of America, Australia and Asia."[1] Fimmen might have added that the different stages in development of the various countries make it difficult for the workers in one country to realize the particular difficulties confronting the workers in a distant land.
Workers of the world have also been kept apart, in some degree, during the past nine years, by the Russian Revolution. A decade ago, there were no Trade Unions reported from Russia. Today Soviet Trade Unions number more than seven and a half million members. These millions of men and women work for their living. They are an organic part of the World Labor Movement. Thus far, however, they have not been absorbed into it.
The reason for this lies in the Revolution. The workers of Russia have passed out of the capitalist stage of economic development into a socialist stage. To a more complete degree than in any other part of the world the Russian workers are the masters of their own economic destiny. In order to gain this freedom the Russian workers were compelled to destroy landlordism and capitalism.
Consequently, throughout the world, landlords and capitalists have done everything in their power to defame and cripple the Soviet Republic. Since landlords and capitalists are in control of the press, the schools, and the other channels of public opinion throughout the world, they have been able to tell the masses of workers daily lies about the Soviet Republic.
The burden of these lying stories was that the Soviet workers were starving and enslaved, that their women and children were nationalized, that the whole experiment was a savage plot of a few butchers to destroy civilization, and that it would fail anyway in a short time. But years passed, and in spite of ostracism and opposition, the Soviet government did not fail, but grew stronger and stronger. Then the workers in other countries began to stir themselves. They had been relying for the facts about Russia upon their economic masters, or else upon Communist propagandists. They would see for themselves.
During the past two years, from all parts of the world, delegations of workers have travelled through the Soviet Union. The elaborate and circumstantial report of the British Delegation of 1924 has probably done more than any single document to open the eyes of the European workers on the situation existing in Russia. During 1925 a delegation of about 200 workers went to Russia from Sweden. A delegation of British working women visited Russia in May, 1925, and a month later 60 German delegates, elected from the shops in many cases, visited the Soviet Union. At least 40 of these Germans were Social Democrats, and therefore politically opposed to the Communist Movement. Other delegations went from Belgium, France, Austria, Norway, and Australia.
These delegations, returning home, have revolutionized the attitude in their own countries toward Russia. The British women issued a careful report, amazingly favorable to the Soviet Union, in those fields of woman and child protection which the delegation went to study. The other delegations have issued official statements, which, in every case, have been favorable to the Soviet regime.
Meanwhile the developments in China and Morocco, the unemployment in Britain, the continued stagnation in world trade, the cutting of wages, and the war of the masters on the Labor Movement have acted as additional stimuli to the workers. Their own impotence and dis-unity in the face of the growing solidarity of the capitalists are forcing the issue upon the masses.
Rank and file meetings all over Europe are acclaiming World Labor Unity. Resolutions are being passed and circulated.[2] The responsible leaders of the working class in many countries are speaking in no uncertain terms in favor of action.
At the labor conference held in Paris July 4–5, 1925, Liebaers, Secretary of the Belgian Garment Workers Union, said to the 2,470 delegates: "Workers of France! You are faced with this alternative from which there is no escape. You will either pay dearly for the error of your divided forces, and will allow still heavier chains to be loaded upon you. Or else, by Trade Union Unity, you will be able first to stop the criminal war in Morocco, and then to forge the weapon which the workers need for their final emancipation."[3]
Speaking to 630 delegates at a conference at Battersea, London, on January 80, 1925, A. J. Cook, Secretary of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, said: "Comrades, we are at the crossroads. Either we have to re-organize our trade unions into real live fighting organizations on behalf of the down-trodden working classes, or be content to allow them to be simply a medium for co-operating with and stabilizing capitalism, with the resulting enslavement of the working classes.
"The steps to be taken to obtain a united working-class front are:—
(1) Organization by industry;
(2) Every industry to be linked up nationally and internationally; and
(8) Every struggle, either offensive or defensive, to be fought nationally or internationally."[4]
Purcell, President of the British Trades Union Congress during 1924, head of the British Delegation to Russia, and President of the I.F.T.U., declares, in an article on "The Burning Question of International Unity": "Unorganized coolie labor abroad will force us, is now forcing us, to coolie labor at home. …
"One way there is, and one only, by which improvements can be achieved. That is, by everywhere building up a strong trade union movement and by fighting for trade union conditions throughout the world.
"By what means can we achieve this object? By the creation of a single fighting Trade Union International. … It must be able to carry out a militant policy for the emancipation of the working class in all countries."[5]
Following on the British Trades Union Congress the Anglo-Russian Joint Advisory Council held a meeting and issued a report reviewing the whole situation. After commenting on "the growth of economic reaction"; the return of "reactionary groups of capitalists" to power in various parts of Europe; the new wars in Morocco, Syria and China, and the alliance under the Locarno Pact "directed against the U. S. S. R." (Soviet Russia), the report concludes: "The establishment of an all-inclusive worldwide Trade Union International has therefore become more necessary than ever. … The Joint Advisory Council … appeals to the workers of every country to their organisations and leaders, to join their efforts with the British and Russian trade union movements, in order to secure the removal of all obstacles and difficulties in the way of national and international working class unity, and to help them bring into existence one all-inclusive world-wide federation of trade unions."[6]
Labor sentiment is gradually crystallizing about the unity issue. The masses of workers all over Europe feel its need. The leaders are beginning to speak out the demand for its consummation in unmistakably clear language.