On the “Reorganization” of the Trade Unions

1. Review

When the workers organized themselves into trade unions, they did so from the point of view of their class solidarity, i.e. they believed that all workers struggling under the yoke of capital could only oppose capital by joining forces and forming strong organizations. The class antagonism between capital and labor is clearly evident here. This class antagonism can be found everywhere in all professions and industries.

The first purpose of the trade unions, according to the “leading” spirits, should be to improve the material and economic situation of the workers, to protect them against excessive exploitation and, in extreme cases, to force an improvement in their class situation by entering into open struggle through strikes. - So far, so good!

The terrible social and political misery of all the countries involved in the war forces us to investigate whether the trade unions adhered to these principles and whether the workers organized within the trade unions themselves had the will and the power to act in accordance with them. Unfortunately, asking this question means answering it in the negative.

As the trade unions grew to their respectable height, they lost more and more of their fighting spirit along with their huge membership. And to the same extent that the fighting spirit was lost, an unhealthy, ossified bureaucratism grew, encouraged by the members' own guilt, alongside an ostentatious leadership, both of which became the greatest harm to the labor movement over the years. The thoroughly schoolmasterly treatment of the organized workers by the officials employed for life, where apart from a few praiseworthy exceptions there was no longer any sense of class feeling and collegiality, was ultimately driven to the point where the members were completely disenfranchised. The only “advantage” for the members consisted in the various support options, which were expanded more and more eagerly in all trade unions, for which purpose huge sums of money flowed into the coffers and which required the employment of an army of civil servants to cope with the bureaucratic work. Take a closer look at the statutes of any trade union, examine them for their real value, and you will be shocked to see the unexpected way in which the bureaucracy strengthened its power, in contrast to the disastrous decline in the members' right to self-determination. This process developed very gradually. At the individual association meetings, some statutes were alternately “discussed” anew and “improved” in the opinion of the bureaucracy; in reality, the members were deprived of their rights step by step. The existing opposition, which in itself was quite lame in the trade unions, was easily pushed to the wall, representation at the decisive meetings was deliberately influenced in the interests of the all-powerful leadership, so that in the last few years before the war, no influential meeting passed without fully satisfying the lust for power of the “leading colleagues”. No wonder, then, that over time the trade unions, which were originally intended as fighting organizations to help the proletariat to rise, sank to the level of dull, watered-down insurance companies, lost their clout against the increasingly powerful growth of capital and saw their main task as filling their coffers and superficially attracting members.

The performance of the trade unions then also corresponded completely to the trends that had been flying for years. The small successes in raising wages and reducing working hours were so minimal that they were easily offset by the year-on-year increase in inflation. The trade unions therefore did not achieve any significant improvement in the depressed class situation of the proletariat. This could not have been otherwise, because they deliberately avoided major confrontations with big business and mostly limited themselves to smaller partial strikes, which was nothing more than a fragmentation of forces. The last major confrontation between labor and business was the miners' strike, which was also limited to the Ruhr area.

Under the famous “leadership” of the big trade unions in question, organized labour in the large iron and steel industry was never able to rise up to a necessary test of struggle in its entirety. The black devil of financial bankruptcy was always painted on the workers' walls in fear and terror, a bandwagon that always dutifully chased the paying members into the box horn.

The other smaller organizations were unable to wage revolutionary struggles simply because they were faced with a significantly weaker business community. The general “successes” were therefore limited to a small wage increase or an insignificant reduction in working hours. Only a vanishingly small section of the proletariat had the eight-hour day in addition to reasonably decent wages. This thin upper class formed to a certain extent the aristocracy of the working class, although I do not want to claim that the general education and socialist way of thinking in these better-paid categories was up to date with the more advantageous economic situation. On the contrary, one could very often detect a strong influence of bourgeois ideology here - often paired with a broad contempt for their worse-off classmates.

So we see that even the purely economic and material successes of the trade unions are completely disproportionate to the sacrifices made by their members, that they have to pay as much as possible but generally keep their mouths shut. This situation persisted until the outbreak of war. From now on, a new “trade union activity” begins.

2. The Trade Unions during the War

To put it mildly, it was demagoguery to try to persuade the workers before the war that the trade unions had nothing to do with the party. It is an outright falsehood to continue to claim that no policy was pursued within the trade unions. On the contrary, I say with all certainty that a great deal of politics - too much - was carried into the trade unions by the authoritative bodies, a politics, however, that made the collapse on August 4, 1914 that grotesque disgrace and shame of the proletariat. If, however, those members who had realized long before the war where the journey was heading raised objections to these activities of harmony, they were called to order with emphasis by the morale-sapping “leaders”, portrayed as pests of the workers' movement and, if the influence of these gentlemen was sufficient, put out of action or simply excluded.

A glance at the occupied Reichstag seats is enough to show who the real masterminds of capital's grace were.

At the same time, the workers also know today that the burden of all the past years, their complacency and indifference allowed that unheard-of trade union autocracy to mature over time. August 4, 1914 opened the eyes of those who did not want to know it beforehand to the fact that the directors of the General Commission, arm in arm with the party grandees and their squires, directed their power and self-importance, which had grown through the fault of the workers themselves, against the proletariat to an unlimited extent, made a pact with the government, which had previously only appeared to be opposed, and sacrificed the workers' hard-earned savings with all the means of the organizations they administered.

Anyone who then inquired about the whereabouts of the workers' property was snubbed in the most arrogant manner. Without any word of justification, without any semblance of a democratic mindset, a looting of the workers' coffers took place that is unique in the history of the workers' movement. And the organized workers? They looked on in silence. -

It was not the coup d'état of the few rulers, not the failure of parliamentary representation, not the fall of the “leaders” that caused the disaster, but the fact that an organized proletariat of millions allowed itself to be led by a few people. In this fact lies the whole banal superficiality of the educational methods before the war. Weak, educated without the will to act in a disgusting cult of personality, immature for a deeper, independent way of thinking in the direction of socialism, incapable of a bold initiative - that was the unfortunate fruit of an excessively exaggerated trade unionism. Here lies the key to the complete and utter bankruptcy, to the miserable collapse of the great International.

Can anything still be changed here? Is it possible to drain this unfathomable swamp, to force the proletariat onto the path of a clear-cut socialist policy?

3. The New Unitary Organization

It took a long time for a section of the German working class to recognize these conditions. It took three and a half years to bring clear recognition to at least a part of the working class. But even among this fraction of the working class, which is approaching awakening, there is still uncertainty about the rebirth of the coming organization. The section grouped around the independents wants a reorganization of the trade unions, in which remaining within them is recommended, but leaving is warned against.

We left-wing radicals, however, recognize in this a half-measure that has become second nature to the independents and cannot change the whole system in the slightest. We wish and strive first of all to leave the trade unions in order to prepare the ground for the unitary organization, to lay the foundation for the unrestricted rise of the proletariat. We clearly recognize that remaining in the trade unions is the stumbling block to socialization, the stagnation of the present superficiality and laziness of thought. If what the Independents are striving for comes to pass, the replacement of the socialist government by their own bureaucracy, the change of the system in name only, the proletarian movement would be at the old dead point, nothing would be achieved, a tremendous loss of time and an even deeper resignation of the disappointed workers would be the result. That is why we want to do all the work. Out of the trade unions, between which there is no difference today - whether “free”, Christian or yellow - away with a system that supports a bloated parasitism, down with the chains of that trade union cadaver obedience!

Gather together in the new formation of the unitary organization, in a new, healthy, truly free movement, where the struggle for economic liberation goes hand in hand with the political class struggle in loyal brotherhood in arms, where unadulterated socialist politics is pursued alongside general economic questions, where the decisive struggle between capital and labour, between the bourgeois and socialist social order is fought out.

Here in this organization you are all equal, whether industrial or agricultural workers, artists or day labourers, one bond holds you together, the class solidarity of the entire proletariat.

But this is also the only possible basis on which socialism can be built.