MARX AND THE TRADE UNIONS By A. LOZOVSKY % l INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS NEW YORK * o MARX AND THE TRADE UNIONS * * MARX and the TRADE UNIONS hy A. LOZOVSKY NEW TORK INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS 381 FOURTH AVENUE First published 1935 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE STANHOrE PRESS LTD. ROCHESTER ; KENT CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Preface .............................................................. 7 Introduction..................................................... 9 I. Role of the Trade Unions in the General Class Struggle of the Proletariat .... J5 II. Marx against Proudhonism and Bakuninism 26 III. The Struggle against Lasalleanism and all other forms of German Opportunism 37 IV. Marx and the Trade Union Movement in England - 49 V. Marx and the Labour Movement in France 63 VI. Marx and the United States .... 88 VII. Marx and the Struggle for the Partial Demands of the Working Class................................... 106 VIII. Marx and the Strike Movement .... 120 IX. Pseudo-Marxists and the Trade Union Critics of Marx ..................................................... 138 X. Marx, the Organiser of the Working Class . 159 XI. For Marxism-Leninism in the Trade Union Movement..................................................... 174 Index ........................................................ 187 5 n PREFACE This book goes beyond the scope of its title. First of all, because it gives not only the position of Marx on the trade unions, but also that of Engels, who is second to Marx as creator of the theory, strategy and tactics of revolutionary Marxism. Second, the tasks of the trade unions can be correctly defined only on the basis of the general class tasks of the proletariat— this leads to going beyond the framework of narrow trade union problems and to studying the political line of Marx and Engels concerning the problems of the labour movement. Third, history is the most political and most partisan science of all sciences. To study the past without relation to the present is possible only for persons who either have no sense of party or political responsibility whatever, or whose sense of this respon­ sibility has become completely atrophied. There are people who believe that to be a historian or a keeper of archives is almost one and the same thing, the only difference being that the keeper of archives collects documents of the past, while the historian comments on these documents, without leaving the framework of this past. This is wrong. The historian utilises documents concerning the past, but if he fails to see things beyond the walls of his archives, if he does not leave the palisade of the past, if he fails to glance over the fence hedging off old historical dates, he considerably lessens the value of his work. The past must help our struggle to-day. Otherwise it is not worth while spending time studying it. The positive and negative experiences acquired in the past must arm us for the struggle for a better future. The task is not only to study the world, but to transform it. This is what the author had in mind when he sat down to shed light on the trade union heritage of Marx and Engels. After having thoroughly analysed the views of Marx and Engels in the field of the trade union movement and economic struggle, I 7 8 MARX AND THE TRADE UNIONS realised clearly that we were late, that we should not have waited for the 50th anniversary of the death of Marx, but should long ago have collected all the views of Marx and Engels on the trade union movement and the economic struggle of the working class. Indeed, we are late. However, better late than never. Marx and Engels are modern; they are modern not only in what they themselves wrote, but in what their successors, their best pupils, have been doing since their departure from the battlefield. This means that we must study carefully what Lenin and Stalin contributed to the problem of immediate interest to us. That is why the author considers this book to be only a beginning. The second part will be Lenin and the Trade Unions, the third part, Stalin and the Trade Unions, while all three parts together will consti­ tute Revolutionary Marxism and the Trade Union Movement. This work must include not only the pre-war experience of the socialist and trade union internationals, but also the experience of the Marxian experience of the Communist International and the Red International of Labour Unions. It was time, high time, that this work was started. I hope that our strong historians will be drawn into the task and that all will jointly succeed in working out the theory, strategy and tactics of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin in the trade union movement. If this book will serve as an impetus, as a starting-point in furthering this great and complicated task of making a Marxian analysis of the theoretical and tactical principles of the inter­ national revolutionary trade union movement, its publication will have been justified. A. L. Moscow, March 14, 1933. INTRODUCTION As the physical image of Karl Marx fades more and more into the past, the spiritual figure of this giant of thought and revolutionary action comes more and more vividly to the fore. Marx represents a whole world of ideas and images; he is unsurpassed as a theo­ retician, statesman, strategist and tactician of the class struggle. His brain was like a tremendous laboratory, which analytically and synthetically worked over facts and events, beginning with revolutions, wars, colonial revolts, pronunciamentos, peasant rebellions and parliamentary debates, and ending with strikes, demonstrations and even the smallest spontaneous economic and political actions. Marx was not merely a person of encyclopaedic education, he was an independent dialectic thinker. He was not a scientist in the narrow, professorial sense of the word. He was an innovator, bold to the extreme, who fearlessly carried his thoughts to their logical conclusion. He was one of those thinkers (and there have been very few of them in the history of mankind) who with the minds of great geniuses looked into the future, and with the daring hands of revolutionaries and artists (“my work represents one artistic whole,” he wrote to Engels in 1865) pointed out the path of development from capitalism to communism. Marx did not guess nor did he prophesy. He argued, analysed, dissected facts, exposed their inner connections and placed them in such a way that they themselves compelled definite conclusions. He placed Hegelian dialectics on its feet, he was never lost in the face of facts; always remaining firm, he knew exactly what he wanted in theory, in politics and in tactics. Marx devoured an enormous number of books, deeply ana­ lysed facts and moulded them with his masterful mind, which to the very last days of his life continued to pour forth ever-new treasures for the international proletariat. 9 10 MARX AND THE TRADE UNIONS Marx was not a dry bookworm; he seethed with the great passion and ardour of a fighter. He disliked unnecessary words, glib but empty phrases, and fought against those who roamed in the “misty realm of philosophical phantasy” (Communist Mani­ festo, p. 32). Every phrase written by Marx, every one of his words lives to-day—so much life and passion is there in the works of this great scientist, the tireless destroyer of all pseudo-scientific authorities, the exposer of petty-bourgeois babblers, the merciless enemy of all pseudo-socialist schools, sects and groupings. Marx did not like words devoid of content, phrases without deeds; physically he could not tolerate phrasemongers of socialism. His mind penetrated to the very essence of a question. He knew how to extract the main issues, the very essence from the tens of thousands of pages that he had read and from the hundreds of thousands of facts he had stored up; he was able to say much in few words. Marx possessed the special ability of clothing his rich thought in scant but vivid language. This is why even to-day when one immerses oneself in the works of Marx one is bound to feel deeply moved. It is not only his major works that have retained their importance up to the present time; even his separate articles on vital questions, his notes and letters going far back to the nine­ teenth century, throw light on the path of the development of the labour movement in the twentieth century. The more one peruses the rich inheritance of Marx, the more vital it becomes, the more pronounced become the features of this great theoretician and organiser of the working class, the nearer and more comprehen­ sible does he grow—he who gave his life for the purpose of con­ verting the working class “from a class for others into a class for itself.” Marx is multiform, but uniform and consistent in all that he said and did. Not in vain did he succinctly describe the dis­ tinguishing feature of his character as singleness of purpose. Only conditionally is it possible to separate some one question or group of questions from the whole of Marx’s work. However, it must be borne in mind at the outset that the inheritance that Marx left is the richest that any person ever left to his descendants, that it is monolithic and it is difficult to divide into separate parts. It is especially difficult to separate from the depository of ideas MARX AND THE TRADE UNIONS II and thoughts that Marx left that part which deals with the trade union movement and the economic struggle. Marx did not write any special books or pamphlet or textbook on this subject. His ideas on problems of the economic struggle and the role of the trade unions in the past, present and future can be found all through his works, especially in his practical work as leader of the International Workingmen’s Association.