‘The Trade Union Movement in Colonial and Semi-Colonial Countries’ from Resolutions and Decisions of the Second World Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions. Labor Herald Library No. 6. Trade Union Educational League, Chicago. 1923.

1. Colonies and semi-colonial countries are an integral part of the present imperialist countries whose existence as such is impossible without them.

(a) Colonies are a source of direct State income, drawn out by the Metropolis by the pressure of taxes and a system of government monopolies.

(b) The colonies supply armies, which together with the “national” armies, make possible the rule of the imperialist bourgeoisie, both in the colonies and outside of them (England in India, Persia, Mesopotamia, France in Africa and in Germany).

(c) The colonies are large markets for the cheap manufactures of the Metropolis.

(d) The colonies are a field for investment (in the railroads, ports, electrical stations, tramways, colonial banks).

(e) Finally, the colonies are a source of raw materials and fuel for the metropolitan industries. The last factor is of growing importance now, because the struggle for raw materials is one of the principal factors, deciding the policies of the imperialist States.

2. The plundering of the colonies and semi-colonies is carried out by political and economic measures. Politically, by means of concentrating the entire military, legislative and administrative power, in the hands of the government agents and of a small clique of large landowners and capitalists, chiefly from among the invaded state. Economically, by means of retarding the industrial development of the colonies through legislative, administrative customs, tariffs, and other measures. Not only did these measures prevent the development of native industry, but very often led to the retrogression of the previously existing industries of the country: colonies which had been manufacturing and exporting goods have consciously and systematically turned into purely agricultural countries, exporting only raw materials and consuming manufactures of the Metropolis (India).

For the purpose of greater exploitation the imperialistic bourgeoisie consciously keeps the great toiling masses of the colonies in ignorance, robbing them not only economically, but also intellectually, and depriving them of the opportunities of social and cultural development.

3. While enriching the bourgeoisie, the colonies have had a negative effect upon the labor movement of the Metropolis. Work in the colonies is paid for incomparably worse than in the Metropolis. Owing to the lack of native industries, owing to the breakdown of the artisan industries unable to compete with the cheap manufactures imported from the Metropolis, owing to the impoverishment and decrease in the holdings of the peasantry in consequence of the policies of the Metropolis, the colonies are becoming centers of cheap labor, ready, in view of the general low standard of living and the undeveloped trade union organizations themselves, to work under any conditions and for pay insufficient to sustain life. This enables the capitalists to make tremendous profits in the colonies, not only profits, but super-profits.

At a time of prosperity in the Metropolis, where the demand for labor, especially for highly skilled labor, is great, the capitalists of the Metropolis are able to share part of the super-profits made in the colonies with the labor aristocracy of their country, making them superior to the great masses poorly paid, splitting and disorganizing the labor movement of the Metropolis, and turning a certain part of the working class into the willing servants of the imperialist machine. This is responsible to a certain degree for the reformist tendencies of the labor aristocracy of Europe and America. And it is not, of course, by accident that reformism has gripped the upper layer of the working class of these countries in whose economic life the super-profits, derived from the colonies, play an important part (America, formerly Germany, Holland, etc.).

Even greater was the demoralization of the white worker (as well as the Japanese in Korea) in the colonies: the difference in wages and in the entire standard of living on the one hand, the frequent strike breaking activities of the white workers during strikes of the native workers, as well as their general leaning towards capitalists on the other hand, and rivalry of the white and native workers hampering the development of class solidarity.

4. The war has made considerable changes in the economic and political position of the colonies and semi-colonies. The sharp drop in imports during the war, the great dependence upon the colonies in a financial and military sense (England, France), the keen rivalry between the imperialistic states, gave the native capital the opportunity to free itself from under the imperialist guardianship of the metropolis, and resulted in the rapid industrialization of the colonies and semi-colonies (India, China, Egypt), and in the rise of a numerous industrial native proletariat employed in concerns of European and American type, and concentrated in large masses in great industrial centers. This newly born proletariat at once gave great breadth to the movement which came into being at the end of the war and which has shaken the entire East.

5. The young labor movement of the colonies has its peculiarities:

(a) The number of organized workers, while large in absolute figures, is small in proportion to the entire proletariat, embracing only an insignificant minority.

(b) In addition to the establishment of trade union organizations which have recently come into being, there sprung into being a number of organizations of a temporary nature arising suddenly during a strike and vanishing soon after.

(c) The trade union organizations are often permeated with the artisan spirit, with sectionalism, provincialism, local patriotism (China), and when there are no strikes have very little class consciousness.

(d) Under the conditions of the anti-imperialistic, nationalistic movement, which has spread to all countries of the East, the young labor movement of the colonies and semi-colonies easily becomes influenced by the bourgeoisie and its leaders who are striving to utilize the mass movement of the workers in their interests; the trade unions are often headed by bourgeois public workers, and even by capitalists (China, India).

These peculiarities are due, on the one hand, to the fact that the rapid growth of the native industries took place under conditions of a patriarchal feudal system where the usurious commercial capital was prevailing, characteristic under all differences of structures, of all the colonial and semi-colonial states; and on the other hand, to the yoke of imperialism which gave the bourgeois national movement an easy opportunity of utilizing the racial, caste, and national peculiarities, traditions and prejudices of the unconscious proletariat, overwhelmed by the peasantry. The bourgeoisie all the time deceived the masses by the slogan of: “The fight for independence,” betraying the workers all the time and directing the class movement of the toilers into the channels of the nationalistic, democratic, emancipation movement against the rule of the invaders.

6. The problems of the trade union movement in the colonies and semi-colonies are in their main features everywhere the same, namely:

(a) To create industrial unions based upon the principle of class struggle which should act quite independently of the bourgeoisie, aiming to defend the class interests of the proletariat, for which purpose it will be necessary to carry on in the majority of countries (not excluding Turkey), a constant struggle for the legalization of the unions, for the right of organization, etc.

(b) To carry on a systematic and persistent struggle for the equalization of the conditions of labor of the native workers in wages, working hours, and in general conditions with those of the white workers emigrated from the metropolis.

(c) To carry along with it a struggle against the racial, national enmity between the white and native workers, which is very advantageous to the capitalists and is mainly responsible for the slow development of the labor movement in the colonies and semi-colonies. The native capital of the newest formation is particularly interested in maintaining and deepening the hostility which it utilizes in two directions: (1) to split the labor movement itself, and (2) to draw the great masses into the struggle for national freedom advantageous to the interests of the native bourgeoisie.  

(d) While watchfully guarding its class interests, the proletariat of the colonies and semi-colonies should at the same time participate directly in the entire anti-imperialist movement, which in the colonies and semi-colonies assumes, inevitably, a quite national emancipation character, for without overthrowing the rule of the imperialists who are anxious to derive super-profits from the colonies, the working class of these countries cannot attain a real improvement in their conditions of labor.

But while participating in the general national emancipation struggle, the workers should take a foremost and independent position in the anti-militarist front, exposing the hypocrisy, the half-heartedness of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie and their parties (No-Min-Dun in China, Ghandian in India, Kemalism in Turkey), and insufficiencies of their agrarian program. The proletariat of the colonies should strive to seize the leadership of the peasantry and the agrarian revolution, without which the liberation of the colonies and semi-colonies is unthinkable.

(e) The special task of the trade union movement of the colonies and semi-colonies is the organization of the tremendous mass of the agricultural laborers, who make up in some Eastern countries (Korea, Persia, Turkey) a very considerable part of the population, and also the numerous artisans, who are beginning to leave the patriarchial craft system and are being drawn into the struggle of the proletariat.

7. These problems are of the utmost importance, not only to the colonies, but to the labor movement of the entire world, and the R.I.L.U. should come to the aid of the young trade union movement of the colonies and semi-colonies in the following way:

(a) The revolutionary national federation and the minorities of the countries which possess colonies (England, France, America, Holland, Italy, Belgium, Japan, etc.) affiliated to the R.I.L.U., should organize special bodies to keep up connections with the trade union movement of these colonies. Japan, which is very close to its colonies and semi-colonies (Korea, China, etc.), must particularly play an important part in this work. The grade of development of the labor movement in these countries will solve the entire problem of the Pacific.

(b) In order to work out a concrete program of action for each country and colony in accordance with the actual situation, the Second Congress of the R.I.L.U. decides to call simultaneously with the next Congress of the R.I.L.U. as far as possible a large conference of the revolutionary trade union organizations in the colonies and the semi-colonies of the whole world. Preparations for such a conference should begin immediately.

(c) In order to establish before the convocation of this conference, the best relations between the revolutionary trade union movement of the West and the East on the one hand, and the countries of the East between themselves on the other hand, a number of Port Bureaux should be established in the most important ports. The choice of the particular port and the formulation of the immediate activities of this Port Bureau should be left to the special conference of the transport workers in which the R.I.L.U. is to participate.

Resolutions and Decisions of the Second World Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions. Labor Herald Library No. 6. Trade Union Educational League, Chicago. 1923.

Contents: Resolution on the Report of the Executive Bureau, Organization Problem of the Adherents of the R.I.L.U., The Capitalist Offensive and the United Front, R.I.L.U. and the Comintern, The High Cost of Living and Unemployment, The Struggle Against Imperialism and Militarism, The Trade Unions and the Co-operative Movement, The Trade Union Movement in Colonial and Semi-Colonial Countries, Appendix: Constitution of the Red International of Labor Unions. 46 pages.

The Labor Herald was the monthly publication of the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL), in immensely important link between the IWW of the 1910s and the CIO of the 1930s. It was begun by veteran labor organizer and Communist leader William Z. Foster in 1920 as an attempt to unite militants within various unions while continuing the industrial unionism tradition of the IWW, though it was opposed to “dual unionism” and favored the formation of a Labor Party. Although it would become financially supported by the Communist International and Communist Party of America, it remained autonomous, was a network and not a membership organization, and included many radicals outside the Communist Party. In 1924 Labor Herald was folded into Workers Monthly, an explicitly Party organ and in 1927 ‘Labor Unity’ became the organ of a now CP dominated TUEL. In 1929 and the turn towards Red Unions in the Third Period, TUEL was wound up and replaced by the Trade Union Unity League, a section of the Red International of Labor Unions (Profitern) and continued to publish Labor Unity until 1935. Labor Herald remains an important labor-orientated journal by revolutionaries in US left history and would be referenced by activists, along with TUEL, along after it’s heyday.

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