Main NI Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From The New International, Vol. XVI No. 1, January–February 1950, pp. 48–50.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Historic London’s County Council has just seen the birth of a new trade-union international. Ironically enough, the hall where the new International Confederation of Free Trade Unions came into being also served as the stage for the first pronouncements of the WFTU (World Federation of Trade Unions) in February 1945.
Forty-eight million organized workers were represented at the Congress by 260 delegates from 53 different countries. A fact of greatest significance was the complete participation of the American trade unions, with the AFL, the CIO, and the United Mine Workers of America represented. From the point of view of numbers, the new International begins impressively. The same cannot be said of the objectives it sets for itself – of which we shall speak later.
But first, we wish to briefly review the course of events which finally led to the creation of the new International.
From its very first moments, the organic cohesion of the WFTU was revealed as forced and artificial. The modus vivendi established under the sigh of a “sacred union” between the Stalinist trade unions and the reformist trade unions could not longer endure. The activity of the WFTU was paralyzed by the latent crisis, which was hastened and aggravated by the creation of the Cominform in October 1947. The strikes that erupted in France and Italy two months afterward, obviously inspired by Moscow and appropriately dubbed the “Molotov” strikes, were a new cause of disintegration.
In March 1948, London was the scene of a conference of trade-union federations of the countries receiving Marshall Plan aid, in which the American AFL and CIO participated. The Conference centered on the problem of defending the Marshall Plan against Stalinist attacks, and at the same time constituted a reply to the “Molotov” strikes. The split in the WFTU thereby became a virtual fact.
In October of 1948, the British Trade Union Congress demanded that the WFTU Secretariat suspend all activity. A few months later, in January 1949, the rupture was an actual fact: the CIO, the British Trade Union Congress, and the Dutch Federation withdrew from the WFTU.
The regroupment of the non-Stalinist trade-union federations followed. A preliminary conference was held in Geneva in June. The process of gestation culminated in the recent London Congress.
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions has scattered to the four winds a declaration of its purposes and tasks. The new International’s Charter of fundamental demands consists of a defense of democracy – the formal democracy of a capitalist regime in full force – and we already know the utmost that such a regime can give – and in the raising of the working class’ standard of living. The trilogy – Bread, Freedom, Peace – constitute and sum up this program.
An examination of the documents prepared by the founding Congress does not reveal any intent to infringe on the bases of bourgeois society. The fundamental aspiration of the workers’ movement for more than a century tended toward the socialization of the means of production. The ICFTU has forgotten this, just as it has forgotten to mention the historic necessity to realize effective structural reforms in the actual capitalist process of production. There is not the least mention of the demand for workers’ control, one of the manifestations of authentic economic ... democracy.
According to the program of the ICFTU, the proletariat’s mission is reduced to improving its living conditions, subject in eternum to the regime of wage labor, without posing the problem of destroying the all-persuasive power of the great international trusts that rule over bread ... freedom ... and the peace ... of the peoples.
“Our objective,” the Declaration says, “is the establishment of a world system of collective security. Therefore we accept defensive regional agreements within the framework of the United Nations against the dangers of aggression by dictators.”
Another aspiration underlined is that of “reinforcing the organizations of the United Nations, and of its specialized institutions for the pacific solution of international problems.”
It defends the policy of participation in all the organisms of international collaboration, such as “the International Organization of Labor, the Economic and Social Council, the World Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, the European Organization of Economic Cooperation, the World Bank, etc.”
With such an “interventionist” program, the new International is well on the way to becoming the captive of the policies of American and European imperialism to the obvious injury of the interests of the working class, of its bread, freedom, and peace.
The ICFTU has risen to challenge the WFTU and Stalinist totalitarianism. However, the bourgeois institutions of the United Nations are not the best trenches from which to defend the demands of the working class.
The development and strength of the new International can signify a defeat of Stalinist influence in the ranks of the working class on one condition: that it hold high the banner of defense of the sacred interests of the proletariat in its great struggle for its own emancipation and that of all humanity. And it is undeniable that it can not succeed in this unless it acts with complete independence in respect to the institutions tied to the employer-state as well as the police-state.
Consequently, the “constructive” mission the reformist trade unions (new style) have set themselves is neither the most correct nor the most adequate for the purpose of freeing the working class from the criminal influence of Stalinist totalitarianism.
Walter Reuther, one of the most dynamic, most serious, and most promising figures on the American labor scene, has quite correctly said that the only effective way to attack Stalinism is by tenaciously and consistently defending the interests of the working class. In essence, this is the heart of the matter. The unrestrained demagogy of the Cominform can only be counteracted by taking the lead in the struggle against capitalist exploitation and for a socialist peace. Not by falling into an all-too-easy dependence on a reactionary anti-Communist line which is fundamentally reactionary and anti-working class.
Nothwithstanding our criticisms, we must continue to pay attention to the activities of the new International. And by virtue of its anti-Franco declarations, to see what will be the result of its promises of solidarity formulated in London with so much enthusiasm and emotion.
Paris, December, 1949
Main NI Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 18 October 2018