Wojtkiewicz, Mirosław Zdziarski, was a leading Polish Communist famous for his escape from prison in 1926. Here, he writes for the Profintern on the role of trade unions in repression, legality and illegality, etc.

‘How the Trade Unions Must Fight Suppression’ by M. Wojtkiewicz from Pan-Pacific Monthly (San Francisco). No. 35. April, 1930.

ONE of the most urgent problems facing the world revolutionary trade union movement today is that of the illegal trade union movement and the elaboration of concrete forms of organization for the illegal trade unions. This problem can be regarded is forced upon our notice by the political situation in many capitalist countries.

THE ILLEGAL TRADE UNION MOVEMENT

In certain countries the Labor movement has been driven underground for some years back.

This is the position in Italy, China, and Indonesia, where there can be no thought at present of any legal form of existence for the trade unions. The inevitability of illegal existence, not only for the Party, but also for the trade union organizations in these countries, has been recognized by the congresses and findings of both the Comintern and the R.I.L.U. The number of countries in which the revolutionary wing of the trade union movement will be compelled to go underground (whence they will have to direct the mass struggle of the proletariat) is bound to increase in the immediate future. For in this the third period of post-war capitalism a period that witnesses the extension of bitter class battles, the rocking of the very pillars of the capitalist order, and the radicalization of the broad working masses-the bourgeois governments, with the very vital support of the Social-Fascists, in their struggle against the revolutionary organizations of the proletariat are going to apply their policy of White terrorism with greater insistence and on a wider scale and so drive these organizations underground.

This means that, with the wider application of Fascist methods of rule, the problem of the underground existence of the working class organizations becomes one of growing urgency. Already the supporters of the R.I.L.U. face the job of building up, if not illegal, at any rate semi-legal, trade union organizations, and this, too, not only in China, Italy, Indonesia, and Chile, but also in Yugo-Slavia, Roumania, Hungary, Spain, and the Baltic States, as well as in certain Latin-American countries. Even in countries still in thrall to the ideas of “classic parliamentarianism” and “broad measures” of democracy the revolutionary trade union movement has frequently to recourse to semi-legal forms for its activities. In France the arrest of the C.G.T.U. leaders in connection with the First of August demonstrations shows how close the revolutionary trade union movement is to the prospect of underground existence.

But can the trade unions exist illegally? It seems to many that the trade unions are not adapted to illegal existence. The view is fundamentally wrong. It is an expression of the other side of the “liquidationist” stand that would surrender in face of the difficulties that undoubtedly do form part of the illegal existence of the trade unions. But are we going to retreat upon the appearance of difficulties in our work if that work is essential? Before the revolutionary labor movement there stands a series of questions that can only be solved by the joint efforts of the Party and the trade union organizations. Preparations for, and the launching of, economic movements, the struggle for the every-day demands of the workers in production, no matter how trifling their nature at first glance, the need for roping in those groups of the workers still outside the Communist ranks but prepared to fight exploitation, etc., is all extremely important work that can only be carried out by trade union organizations whose existence therefore becomes an imperative necessity under any and all conditions. Where the Labor movement exists above ground, and to a still larger measure where it is illegal, it is essential to have some transmission belt, as it were, between the working class and its spearhead, the Communist Party. And to act as just such a transmission belt is precisely the job of the trade unions.

TRADE UNIONS GO BELOWGROUND ONLY IN EXTREME NEED

But if it is out of the question, nay, most detrimental to the movement, to refuse to build up illegal trade unions under the conditions imposed by the Fascist regime, it is no less detrimental for the unions to go below-ground too soon. Yet this happens not infrequently in our case. We find, for instance, that when in Poland our supporters were confronted with the question of building up their own independent trade union organizations and still had the advantage of good legal possibilities, they were in rather too much of a hurry to embody in one resolution at their Trade Union Conference of February, 1928, a statement of policy as to preparations for the creation of a “powerful, mass, illegal trade union organization.” Again, when the Roumanian Government dissolved the unitary trade unions, the liquidationists, Muller at their head, were prepared, at the price of the betrayal of their revolutionary principles, to obtain recognition from the Government for the unions. Certain of our Roumanian comrades went to the other extreme, that of deciding voluntarily to go belowground without endeavouring by a real hard fight to work for the re-establishment of the legal Unitary trade union movement.

In view of the many negative features bound up with the illegal existence of trade union organizations, we must go belowground only in cases of extremity. The point here is that illegal trade union organizations cannot cater for the masses to the same extent that legal unions can; they are always menaced by the danger of losing contact with the masses and risk turning into narrow sectarian groups; and are, further, compelled to adopt special and more difficult methods of leadership for the workers’ struggle which demand a greater strain and skillful handling. In brief, in the conditions of our struggle the illegal existence of the unions is only, and can only be, an unavoidable evil and the result of grave necessity. For this reason, whenever forced underground, our comrades must keep on fighting steadily to come to the surface, to smash the chains of their illegal conditions and work for their open existence. No amount of suppression at the hands of any police regime must on any account compel us to repudiate the struggle for the open and legal existence of the trade. unions. This struggle logically emanates from our general struggle against the Fascist regime, for the destruction of political oppression and the overthrow of the capitalist order. In this regard the watchword of our daily activities must be no going underground, but emergence from belowground; no voluntary submission to any state of compulsory illegality, but the forcible smashing of illegal conditions imposed upon us.

WE MUST FIGHT FOR LEGALITY OF TRADE UNIONS

At the present juncture, with its acute and extending class battles, with its mass strikes involving new sections of the workers who used to stand passively by, it is most essential that the struggle for legality must be waged to the utmost of our ability. To take the lead of mass wage movements through the illegal trade union organizations affords splendid opportunities to enable them to take open action and is a means of compelling the Government concerned to recognize them as the spokesmen of the workers. By setting up various kinds of temporary organs–strike committees and committees of action–for the purpose of directing the struggle, these bodies, acting openly or as much so as possible, and by later developing these temporary organs into permanent bodies and by guiding all their activities and regarding them as our footholds in the movement, the illegal trade unions will be creating the foundations both for establishing close touch with the masses and for ensuring their own open existence. And the resolution on the matter passed by the Tenth E.C.C.I. Plenum is perfectly correct in laying it down that “the fighting committee may prove the best means for smashing the whole system of police-Fascist restrictions and enabling the illegal trade unions to emerge on the arena of open existence,” seeing that the “struggle to emerge from belowground, which ought to be the primary consideration of the revolutionary trade unions, can only be successful providing the illegal unions link up this struggle with the struggle of the every-day needs of the workers and combine it with actual direct leadership of their economic movements.”

The struggle for open existence must occupy foremost place in the attention of the revolutionary trade unions, but it does not exclude the existence of illegal trade union organizations. Rather the reverse. As a resolution of the Tenth E.C.C.I. Plenum puts it, “War must be declared on all defeatist and liquidationist tendencies calling for the whittling down of the activities of the illegal trade unions on the excuse that it is entirely impossible for illegal trade unions to exist generally.” We contend that illegal trade unions exist and always will.

ILLEGAL FORMS OF EXISTENCE AND ACTIVITIES

In Russia, under the conditions imposed by the autocracy, when all working-class organizations and even study circles were banned, when the “chief weapon of the workers’ economic struggle, the strike, was, speaking generally, a criminal (and sometimes a political) offense,” we find Lenin writing on the eve of the 1905 Revolution. (in 1902), when outlining the organizational landmarks for the Bolshevik Party:

“The organization of the Revolutionary Social-Democratic Party is bound to be of a different nature from the organization of the workers for such struggle (referring to the economic struggle. M.W.) The organization of the workers must, in the first place, be trade union organization; in the second, it must be as thoroughly representative as possible; and, the third, it must have as few conservative features about it as possible. .” (his pamphlet, “What is to be Done?” in Collected Works, vol. v, p. 210, Russian edition).

Setting forth his views in greater detail as to the forms to be taken by “secret trade union organizations,” Lenin wrote:

“The organizations of the workers for economic struggle must be trade union organizations…but it is by no means in our interest to demand that only Social-Democrats be members of the ‘craft’ unions…The aim itself of the craft unions would be unattainable…if these craft unions were not very broad organizations. And the broader these organizations are the more extensive will be our influence upon them…But if your organizations have a broad membership it is impossible to maintain strict secrecy (which demands considerably more preparation than is necessary for participation in economic struggle) What are we to do to get the craft organizations to be as little as possible of a secret nature? There can only be two alternatives in this regard: either you legalize your craft unions…or maintain your organizations as secret bodies, but of so ‘free’ a nature that for the mass of the members the secrecy of the organization is reduced practically to nil.” (Ibid., page 211).

And replying to the latter question he himself raises, Lenin wrote: “We see, then, that we cannot settle the question of the creation of as little conspirational and as broad a trade union organization as possible through the instrumentality of legalization. There remains the alternative of secret trade union organizations, and we must extend every support to the workers who are already taking this road.” (Ibid., page 213).

The line laid down by Lenin for Czarist conditions in regard to the creation of illegal trade union organizations is not only apply–cable under present-day conditions in many countries with Fascist regimes, but constitutes a splendid program of organization for the illegal trade union movement today.

THE ILLEGAL TRADE UNION AND THE PARTY

What do we see, then? That in the first place we must take care not to duplicate the Party with any illegal trade unions. These trade unions must be broader. They must include not only Communists, but non-Party workers as well, and even workers who are hesitant as to the soundness of the Communist idea. As Losovsky points out, “We need no duplicate of the Party.” Losovsky is perfectly right again in contending that “the preservation of the illegal trade unions has very much to be said for it, and there is certainly some sense in doing so if these small illegal trade unions (speaking generally, there can be no big mass organizations in illegal conditions) include at least a small number of workers who are not members of

the Communist Party.” (See his “Economic Movements and Tasks of the C.P.”, p. 49). Our supporters in those countries with an illegal or semi-legal trade union movement are not sufficiently discriminating in regard to this principle, and are not doing enough to carry it into effect. Our Italian Confederation of Labor, which inherited hundreds of thousands of non-Party workers from its legal forerunner, is steadily dropping membership, and is approaching the state of a body organizing Communists alone. We see the same thing in China, where the legal trade union movement embraced several million members, whereas the present illegal trade unions are only small organizations for Communists and workers in sympathy with Communist aims. They have lost large numbers of non-Party Italian or Chinese comrades, who are displaying the greatest self-sacrifice under appalling conditions of terrorism, but the facts have to be recognized and every effort made to get rid of these facts in order to break down those restrictions against organization imposed by the different capitalist Governments.

It seems to us that this last statement is too sweeping and exaggerated.

But the question here lies not only in the defects of our activities in Italy or in China, but in the fact that certain of our comrades do not realize the vital difference, both as regards membership and structure, between the Red revolutionary organizations and purely Communist bodies. In practically all countries we find the Red and Communist fractions of the trade unions being mixed. In many countries where you have an illegal Communist Party there exist legal revolutionary working class organizations and very often the latter are regarded as bodies constituting a legal substitute, the legal representative, of the illegal party. To put up the trade union thus in place of the Party is likely to have an adverse effect on our day-to-day activities, and will handicap our efforts to bring as large a number of workers as possible into the revolutionary trade unions.

And in yet another respect must the illegal trade unions not be a duplicate of the Party. I mean as regards organizational structure. “Any organization of revolutionaries should include primarily and mainly persons whose profession consists in revolutionary activities. This organization must not be very broad, and should be as conspirational as possible.” (Lenin). The organizational structure of the illegal parties must be strictly “illegal,” strictly conspirational, and generally be such, that it is impossible for the police to lay hands upon it or for the non-Party workers either. As for the structure of the illegal trade unions, it ought to be freer, or looser, as our German friends would say. In the Party there is a hard and fast line between members and non-members; this borderline cannot exist in the trade unions. More, in the illegal trade union, where there is no opportunity for arranging for the regular collection of dues, which constitutes the mark of trade union membership in the case of the legal trade union organization, the difference between the member carrying out definite functions in the organization, paying his dues, etc., and the non-member who only abides by the decisions and responds to the appeals of the organization is flattened out to a certain extent. In the illegal trade union the distinction between the “organized” and the “unorganized” worker is less noticeable than anywhere else. And if in the legal trade union movement we stigmatize the neglect of the unorganized and the granting of voting powers in trade union affairs only. to members in good standing as bare opportunism, any such policy in the illegal trade union movement is a direct crime. In the case of the illegal trade union movement it is not so much the size of the membership or their solidity of organization that matters so much as the influence wielded over the masses and the ability to direct their struggle. Which means that while your leadership, the main directing nucleus, must be on a secret footing, it is advisable to apply the broadest, freest, most diverse and least secret methods of maintaining contact and rallying the masses around the revolutionary principles of the trade union movement.

THE ILLEGAL TRADE UNION AND THE MASSES

And here we come to the question of the relations of the illegal unions to the masses. Can illegal trade union organizations be bodies really catering for the masses? Regarded strictly from the viewpoint of organization, they can, of course, not be mass organizations. But if we do not want to become fetish-worshippers of organization, if we are going to look upon the illegal trade union, not as a sectarian group but as the freest organization possible under the conditions, then it can become a mass organization as well.

How is that to be achieved?

The new revolutionary period of the labor movement, with its induction of fresh hundreds of thousands of workers into the class struggle, is creating new rank-and-file bodies for welding the workers together to carry on the fight; strike committees, committees of action, factory committees, factory delegations, and revolutionary shop stewards. All these bodies must be a component part of the illegal trade unions, must be their foundation, their feelers reaching into the masses, roping them in, guiding them, and leading them into battle. If the R.I.L.U. supporters working in countries with an illegal trade union movement are able to build up a network of rank-and-file organizations to carry on systematic activities day after day and provide support for our followers, then they will be able to build up a mass illegal trade union movement, and it will no longer be important whether all the participants in that movement feel themselves members of the trade union or not. The prime object is that the movement should really be of a mass nature.

Concurrently with the creation of a network of rank-and-file organizations, a necessary condition for the successful development of the activities of the illegal trade unions is that all legal opportunities should be utilized to the full and various legal organizations of the most innocent nature created as screens and auxiliary bodies, such as various friendly societies, cultural-educational, sports, co-operative societies and the like. Providing they have skillful leadership, they can be made excellent use of as organs for roping in the masses and bringing them together for the struggle against the common enemy and inducting them into a single channel to advance the aims of the revolutionary trade union movement. This important and most necessary work is not being carried out yet. By no means. And here the R.I.L.U. supporters face an important problem, that of combining illegal with legal forms of organization. And in this field, as is the case, by the way, in many other fields, we have the rich and untouched experience of the Russian revolutionary movement to draw upon. This problem is of particular importance wherever the labor movement has not yet been driven underground entirely and where alongside the illegal party and the revolutionary trade unions you have various kinds of “unseen” legal organizations.

After the 1905 Revolution and when certain “legal possibilities” had already been created, the Bolsheviks simply instructed their nuclei that it was “necessary for the illegal party organizations to participate most actively in the leadership of economic struggles (strikes, strike committees, etc.), and to establish collaboration in this field between the illegal party nuclei and the trade unions, especially with the Social Democratic nuclei in the trade unions, as well as with individuals prominent in the trade union movement. What is needed is as much initiative as possible in the matter of arranging Social-Democratic activities in the legal associations–unions, libraries, various recreation societies, to extend the field of endeavor of the trade union bodies and breathe the spirit of Marxism into the trade union press, making use of speeches by Social-Democratic members of the Duma, training legal lecturers from among the workers, setting up workers’ and other elected committees for town wards, even single streets, etc., and carrying on Social-Democratic agitation in connection with the elections to the different organs of the municipalities, etc.” (From Decisions of the Prague Conference of the Revolutionary Social-Democratic and Labor Party held January, 1912. See Lenin’s Collected Works, vol. xii, page 21.)

Everything Lenin at that time called on the Bolshevik Party to carry out under the conditions imposed by the Czarist regime is perfectly applicable in these days, as far as the illegal trade unions are concerned, to their activities in different kinds of legal organizations. And here we must bear in mind still one other lesson that we can draw from the experience of the old Bolshevik Party. “It is imperatively necessary in illegal structures to adapt international forms to local conditions. Diversity of forms to cover up the illegal nuclei, the greatest possible elasticity in adapting working forms to local conditions and customs is the surety of the vitality of illegal organization.” (Ibid., page 330.)

The illegal trade union movement confronts the R.I.L.U. and its Fifth Congress as one of their most important problems. The experience gained during the last few years’ existence of the illegal unions in many countries, and the many years’ experience accumulated by the illegal labor movement in Russia, will furnish us with sufficient material to study and hammer out the tactics and organizational structure of the illegal trade union movement.

The epoch we are living in today sees the revolutionary movement marching forward throughout the world, and, carefully studied and skillfully utilized, this experience will serve as a powerful factor to further the victorious struggle of the workers against capitalism and help usher in the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Pan-Pacific Monthly was the official organ of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (PPTUS), a subdivision of the Red International of Labor Unions, or Profitern. Established first in China in May 1927, the PPTUS had to move its offices, and the production of the Monthly to San Francisco after the fall of the Shanghai Commune in 1927. Earl Browder was an early Secretary of tge PPTUS, having been in China during its establishment. Harrison George was the editor of the Monthly. Constituents of the PPTUC included the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the Indonesian Labor Federation, the Japanese Trade Union Council, the National Minority Movement (UK Colonies), the Confédération Générale du Travail Unitaire (French Colonies), the Korean Workers and Peasants Federation, the Philippine Labor Congress, the National Confederation of Farm Laborers and Tenants of the Philippines, the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions of the Soviet Union, and the Trade Union Educational League of the U.S. With only two international conferences, the second in 1929, the PPTUS never took off as a force capable of coordinating trade union activity in the Pacific Basis, as was its charge. However, despite its short run, the Monthly is an invaluable English-language resource on a crucial period in the Communist movement in the Pacific, the beginnings of the ‘Third Period.’

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