Tanner’s speech (Shop Stewards[2]) has made it quite clear that:
1) a place should be made within the Third International for sympathisers;
2) a special reservation should be made for Britain and America to the effect that in spite of our contradictions on parliamentarism we propose that
(a) the mass movement in the form of the I.W.W. and the Shop Stewards should remain affiliated to the Third International; and
(b) the question should be threshed out once more and a practical test made to improve the socialist parties which had agitated among the masses insufficiently and failed to establish ties with them.
Lenin
| Written July 23, 1920 | |
| First published in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI | |
| Printed from the manuscript |
[1] Lenin dealt at length with Tanner’s speech in his own speech on the role of the Communist Party (see present edition, Vol. 31, pp. 235-39).
[2] Shop Stewards (or Shop Stewards Committees) elected workers’ organisations which existed in Britain in a number of industries and became widespread during the First World War. After the October Revolution in Russia the. Shop Stewards Committees came out actively in support of the Soviet Republic against foreign military intervention.
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