The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-08-15
BY A. LOSOV SKY.

.x,p17N in the middle of the year 1920, in the
W fire Of intervention and blockade, the foun-
dations of the Red International OF LABOR
Unions were laid, even among the Communists
some voices of doubt were to be hearo. IL
was argued there is still trade union inter-
national which unites % million workers.
would it not be better not to create our own
world organization of trade unions, III oroea
not TO Law ourselves open to the accusaIion VI
shifting the workers But the Com1nVerh
and our Party dismissed these objections
which were based on the fear that some
thing bad might happen" and determlieuly
pursued the course, through the medium VI
the Central Council of the Trade Unions OF
the Soviet Union, of founding and forming an
international revolutionary trade union center
The negotiations for the founding Oh TINS
hodv commenced upon the initiative OF the
Comntern already in June, 1920. Inc llrst
negotiations were participated in by the lett
representatives of the English Trades Union
CONGRESS. Robert Williams and A. Purcell, VINO
immediately after their departure from the
Soviet Union forgot the pledges and promises
given by them. After long discussions WIN
the representatives of the Italian Comedera-
ton of Labor, D'Aragona, Colombina and otn-
ers and with representatives OF the spanish
Confederation of Labor, the anarchist, res
tanha, an agreement was arrived at on 'he
founding of a provisional International Coun-
ell of Trade Unions.
The main question in dispute in this period
was the question of the dictatorship OF the
proetariat and the mutual relations OF the
Comintern and the r. |. L. U. We should not
have succeeded at that time in founding the
nrovisional international Council if the Com
intern had not interviewed and brought pres
+bo Jfolia socialist
if. on the other hand, Lenin had not inter-
ested himself in this question and advised that
we must in the first place found the Center,
and the exact formulation of the platform OF
the new international could be undertaken
later.
At the time of the founding of the K. l. l..
H. the yellow Amsterdam International had
moro than % million members. Now, at their
Stockholm Congress, at which the social las
cist bureaucrats come forward as open repre-
sentatives of their movements, they number
only Is million.
In these ten years the r. /. L. U. has de-
veloped from an International Propaganda
Committee embracing only a few European
countries, into world organization uniting
the revolutionary trade unions and the revolu-
tionary minorities of SIS countries.
The way of the r. |. L. U. is the way OF
unrelenting fight in every factory, in every
work place, not only against capital but also
against its agents among the working class.
In these years the r. /. L. U. has grown far
beyond the frontiers of Europe and step by
STEP won the trade unions of new countries
where the labor movement has arisen only
in the last few years. At the present time
the r. |. L. U. has organized trade unions,
minorities or groups in all important coun-
tries of Europe Asia, Africa, North and South
America and Australia, while four-fifths of
the organizations affiliated to the Amsterdam
International are European organizations.
The work of the sections of the r. ]. L. U.
and of the r. I. L. U. itself has consisted in
the carrying out of Communist policy in the
trade union movement, in winning the masses
for the Communist Party and the Comintern,
in spreading the influence of Communist ideas
to ever fresh sections of the workers.
While in the first period the chief danger
was the remnants of anarcho- syndicalism, in
the next periodic the extent to which the
reformist trade unions became auxiliary Or
gans of the bourgeois state and of the EN-
ployers' organizations-the Right danger be-
came the chief danger, for it sought to con-
vert the united front with the masses into a
united front with the leaders; the united front
for the fight against the capitalists into pact
of non-aggression between reformists; the
united front of the class struggle into the
united front of reconciliation with reformsm.
The Right danger became particularly con-
spcuous after the Ninth Plenum of the E. G..
G. J. and the Fourth r. l. L. u. Congress
March, 1929 At that time the Comntern
modified all its organizations for the fight
against this danger-the advance of the Rights