THE SOCIALISTS AND THE TRADE UNIONS
Kautsky, Karl
THE SOCIALISTS AND THE TRADE UNIONS By Karl Kautsky (Tiawslal.ig free. Ow- Gcraaa by 7"Ar subject matter published belozc is part of a pamphlet entitled "Tactical Tendencies in the...
...The Southern Literary Messenger in the last decade of the old system finally accepted it...
...The owners of great plantations and troops of slaves had come to the conclusion that northern society was organized on a false basis and that the South had worked out a social system that was to endure for all time...
...The ultimate unification of the two fractions In 1875 was furthered considerably by the unions...
...Albert Brisbane and others were propagating the ideas of Fourier for a reorganization of society...
...they must by their waT** and propaganda instil their spirit into the others...
...It was no wonder, therefore, that not alone in many party circles, but also among a number of trade unionists, the new departure evoked considerable unfa slness and even considerable fear...
...He who imagines these fears groundless need but cast his eyes at France, where this has been the case...
...But Helper used the same information for another purpose and this was his great offense in the view of the aristocrats...
...Some southern leaders thought it might be possible to strike a bargain with northern leaders in industry and politics by which both sections would cooperate in working out the "mudsijl theory'' for the nation as a whole...
...Out in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln was aware of this philosophy...
...Up until that time the class-conscious part of the labor movement of Germany had known but one bead: that of the Social Democracy...
...Following this unity the unions blossomed forth no less than the party...
...Indeed, the existence of two central directing heads of the entire masses of organized workingmen permits the possibility of these two forms of organization—the political arid the economic— pursuing different and even conflicting aims and fundamental objectives, and thereby of most disastrously disrupting and crippling the entire labor movement...
...To guard against that, is 3ne of the most important problems of the party members But such problems ire not to be solved by means of weakening the attractive new which the unions and cooperatives offer for the masses of nan-Socialist workingmen...
...It was only getting together with a republican Social Democracy devoid of religion which seemed to prevent a unification of the two forms of economic organization...
...and where eventually the cooperatives also place themselves under the jurisdiction of a common leadership, where all of them are it presented...
...The bourgeois parties had no share therein...
...Even had the book been not suppressed, i illiteracy was so widespread among the poor whites that it is unlikely that they I could have been welded into a cohesive ! political movement that would have withstood the savage retaliation which its supporters would have faced...
...The author did not confine his actior to criticism...
...they must by their example and propaganda instill their spirit into others"--KARL, KAUTSKY...
...Doubtlessly, economic necessity in Germany urged to the formation of labor unions during the revival of the workingmen...
...To be sure, there have been occasional and temporary differences Inside the unions which found their echo In the party, or differences between the majority of the party and the leaders of the unions, but these differences never went beyond the point which these differences reached within the party itself, and which occasionally are bound to arise Inside every growing and fighting organization...
...namely, the conflict between "local is ts" and "centralists...
...To all this may be added the fact that for two or three decades workingmen had been organizing trade unions in the North and in some instances had formed labor parties In the cities...
...Lincoln lived in a region where small land holdings were the 1 rule and he feared the advance of the slavery system, into the West with its "mudsill theory" that was in conflict with it...
...Helper was forced to flee to the north...
...They contrasted the northern agitation with absence of it in the South...
...This was an aftermath of the Socialist Exception Law, which suppressed all organization of our party...
...If found In the mails it was destroyed...
...No bourgeois party in its demagogy a gain the support of the workers can o beyond a certain limit, be it ever so luch an opposition party, and ever so nuch expected to support the laboring nasses...
...Is there any doubt that there must be a laboring class everywhere...
...It was directly the purpose of this Exception Law to "put out of business" every independent fighting organization of the proletariat...
...alliances or cooperation with pro-slavery politicians were prohibited...
...For all that, the proletariat's urge toward organization could not permanently be suppressed...
...w Social Democracy included...
...And throughout the remarks there is to be gleaned the necessity for strategical handling of different situations that at times confront a movement,—situations, that will cast up doubts, fears, and trepidation...
...The only possession poor whites had in common with the aristocrats was their white skin...
...Channing and other notable literary men for the aspirations of these movements endangered northern society...
...He appealed to the white masses to organize for political action Independent of the southern leaders...
...Occasionally a southern leader lectured ii the Ncrth on the new theory whereupon the abolition press gave prominence to his views...
...and when in 1890 the antiSocialist law was withdrawn there were 300.000 organized workingmen in the unions...
...no person was to be admitted to membership who was an owner of slaves...
...Of course, the various individual unions always had complete independence in all trade questions: but in the matter of questions which concerned the working class as a whole the political party Itself assumed leadership...
...Lincoln's reaction to the southern creed of universal bondage was one of aversion but he was restrained in his views by the exigencies of politics and the ever present fact that much which the southern leaders claimed for slavery was guaranteed by the Constitution...
...3ut now, alongside of the party leadership, there was to be a second authority to direct the entire body of labor—the General Commission...
...Their unfortunate remnants are today in the camp of the Anarcho-syndicalists...
...Lincoln knew it and this knowledge prompted his famous speech in which he said that a house divided could not stand...
...The more it did that, the more did the localists become involved in conflict with it...
...The program of principles, organization and action ! showed by the reaction of the aristocrats to it that there was a fundamental conflict of interest between the handful of upper class whites and the mass of illiterate whites...
...They J-ad until then In no ray demanded a recognition of the Social Democratic program as a condition >f admission to their ranks...
...E HAVE already noted the beginnlngs of the German trade unions, ¦Ad we have seen that the latter, entirely different from the situation in England, appeared first in the wake of the Socialist movement, and for long remained only an appendage thereto...
...It was held that the very safety of society required their subordination to the class of upper rich, for the arts and culture in general could only be enjoyed by a few...
...Vnd the trade union journals...
...Radical literature of whatever kind was not permitted to circulate...
...In Congress the book became the subject of fiery debates between Northern and Southern representatives...
...The more that this eventuates, the sooner will the party and the unions—and also the cooperatives—where these acquire importance—reflect but different organizational forms of all the elements that are pressing forward to the same direction...
...The unions had become a power which could take equal rank with the party...
...In order to accomplish that, the Center party did not dare restrict too much the economic demands of its workingmen...
...Slave property stands upon the same footing as all other descriptions of property...
...In various districts the clerical leaders redone lied themselves the more easily to this—to the workers standing up against the employers—inasmuch as these latter were of the party of National Liberals, the opponents of the Center party and of the clerics...
...The activities of the trade unions, however, pressed for an extension of their organizations beyond local boundaries, toward the consolidation of all the organizations of a particular trade or brsfoch of industry, into a general body...
...He urged organization and action by the poor whites...
...They never took on dimensions which affected the unified character of the proletarian class struggle, and far from having grown in proportion, they are already matters of the past or are disappearing from the scene...
...The unions, however, were just as much affected by the Socialist Exception Law as was the party...
...There were northern merchants who had accounts with southern planters and northem bankers who made loans to southern men or who had large sums on deposit to the credit of southerners...
...But every such central authority which is wanting in this masterful many-sidedness, will easily glide Into the danger of not doing full justice to the one or the other of the organizations, of restraining or of encroaching upon them, or even of giving rise to friction and conflict between them, which it rather should avoid...
...The political impulse of our comrades to many instances and to consequence, found expression to the unions as soon as these vera again legally permitted...
...Public meetings could not be held if they were devoted to fundamental criticism* of slave society...
...He declared that the welfare ol the mass of poor whites had been sacrificed to the interest of the ruling handful of whites...
...They believed that the two social orders could be reconciled in a perpetual union, each sheltered under a common government, and each protecting the other against any resistance by the bondmen of the two sections...
...Even the Democratic Review, a monthly magazine of the Democratic Party in the North admitted articles occasionally which attacked the social system based upon wage labor...
...It is, nevertheless, the duty of every party member at least to belong to the union of his trade, and not tost as a passive member either...
...A general supreme authority which can achieve this will no doubt be to a position to bring about the unification of the labor movement, and thereby the development of its power to Its highest point...
...So human bondage for both black and white workmen came to be the philosophy of the handful of wealthy men who ruled the South...
...Nevertheless this was hampering for the economic movement...
...For all that, the German trade union movement is solely the product of German Social Democracy...
...And that k where a barrier remained between tben neutral organisations and the Chrhtna unions...
...The frontier democracy of the West could not live side by side with the southern system...
...At the very time of the inauguration of the General Commission there arose a conflict in the trade union field which grew out of the former's relation to the party...
...The centralized trade unions had the necessities of the economic struggle upon their side...
...The southern leaders were not slow to call attention to these movements...
...The Socialists must be the moat active, the most energetic, and the most sensible among the trade unions...
...British travellers in the South were astonished at the views expressed by the aristocrats and recorded what they heard In their books...
...That which Kautsky relates with reference to the relations between the German Socialists and the trade unions may in a sense be considered opportune for the situation in this country...
...Strangely enough, the southern aristocrats had themselves cited similar evidence to show that they were losing prestige and power under the Union and because of this they justified secession...
...But that will happen the less, the more that party members fulfil their functions...
...Otherwise the economic and soda: conditions of the majority of the lowei whites were little better than that of the Negroes, but race hatred between pool whites and slaves was a barrier to an] concerted action by both...
...In this respect a knowledge of what the movement m other countries has gone through is also timely...
...Accordingly, the Christian unions •]§ reached their nmita beyond which On* clerical guardians could not let thenaS On the other hand, no trade «ZS which claims to be a real class Strug}* organization can go so far as to rnnn3 Its Independence and its fighting character, no matter how neutrally otojenji It may be toward all other parties...
...If these latter attain the guidance of a union or cooperative, then such union or cooperative of necessity drifts into a position at variance with the Social Democratic party...
...It was shifted to the battlefield and there amid suffering and destruction the old slave philosophy was destroyed...
...It arose as a consequence of the changes of ISM and 1870—just at the time Liberalism abdicated and bowed before Bismarck...
...The unions were to exclude ill Socialist propaganda from their •anks ,in order not to offend conservailve or Christian-minded workingmen...
...Because of the legal rights affecting meat of the German associations, where these were local associations, this demand could not be fulfilled by the unions...
...which unions toereaaed to strength until the turn at the century...
...It was because of that that a number of trade unionists considered it best to declare themselves neutral in the situation...
...Thus since 1894 there arose a Christian, principally Catholic, trade union movement—a movement which foreshadowed an eventual merging into the same paths as those of the free trade unions...
...It is in this sense that the German Social Democracy regarded the relationship between the unions and the party, and it was through this relationship that the party was enabled to dissipate all the fears that, in the early nineties, were entertained about the formation of the General Commission...
...Due to this necessity, the neutrality...
...The danger that the unions and the cooperatives might come into conflict with the party arises easily out of the ract that both of those organizations are in a position to attract unto themselves —because of the material advantages that they offer—large masses of workingmen who are either politically indifferent or ire even attached to bourgeois parties...
...The conditions which led to this dislocation of the union movement came to an end with the revocation of the antiSocialist law...
...On the other hand, the very organizational independence of these three forms has it within its means to drag in such frictions and conflicts, but must not do so...
...Leading politicians and essayists expressed faith in it and it became a part of all the religious creeds...
...On the other hand, it was the very love for our party which held the localists to their course...
...There were absentee owners of southern lands who lived in the Ncrth and wanted no disturbance of southern property relations...
...The close connection between the party and the unions operated in the beginning to the latter's disadvantage, in so far as that connection carried over into the unions the effects of the party splits and schisms...
...For political associations were not permitted to combine with each other...
...Certain conditions prevailing^ at the time seemed to make this bargain a possibility...
...the whole system would be reconstructed on a basis favorable to white labor...
...Added to this, there was, in the hftnntng, also a certain underestimation of unions, which, as we have already remarked, was characteristic of all pre-Marxian Socialism...
...e • The social, economic and political ties had held North and South in a precarious union and upper class opinion in both sections had no desire to disturb it, although it was strained by the struggle for possession of the western lands...
...There again arose "The Socialists must be the most active, the moat energetic, and the most sensible among the trade unionists...
...Lincoln and the Old Slave Philosophy The 'Mudsill Theory' That Was To Endure For All Time By James Oneal pEW people understand that in the last twenty years before the Civil War souhem leaders had worked out a slave philosophy which largely correlated with the slave philosophy of the ancient Greeks...
...whipnuStf ittained a large circulation, *Srrid bjES >ecome one of the most important means if enlightenment In the labor world, were o forget about Socialist teachings...
...These economic organisations must consider the unification of the entire body of workers regardless of their opinions...
...In Philadelphia Senator Herschel V. Johnson said, "We believe that capital should own labor...
...If the poor whites, he said, came to understand how their own welfare was denied by the southern social order and they proceeded to overthrow it...
...To many conservatives It seemed that the restless agitation of the masses, the strikes for higher wages and shorter hours: the sympathy expressed by Emerson...
...People who yesterday made war to the knife upon each other in a political meeting could not on the morrow work together with trust and confidence In each other in a union meeting...
...The pamphlet itself reproduces a speech ¦which Kautsky made to a delegation of Belgian Socialists -which had come to Germany to study the union movement, and which asked Kautsky for information on the subject...
...As soon as the party as such could again openly organize itself it no longer required the prop of local trade unions...
...Southern gentlemen were astounded for the book endeavored to show by a series of comparisons how the North had outstripped the South in every field of progress...
...M In consequence, the attempts to May the Centrum-led workers Into the tm neutrality became more unpromising...
...This situation gave reason to expect an approaching political revolution...
...Here Socialist propaganda must first take root and prepare the ground for the free trade union...
...It can pever In its pretensions f friendliness to labor go so far as to ncroach upon the exploitation of workrs as the latter's independence and power toareaass...
...then, the unions are the iiiIiiij schools of Socialism for the pottticato indifferent workingmen...
...The southerners were compelled to abandon practically all the views of Jefferson and this they did by declaring that Jefferson's ideas were based upon insufficient study of history and the development of human society...
...But this lew kind of neutrality now demanded :ven more...
...That was due, in greater part, to the manner in which the German labor movement recovered Itself after the collapse of the revolution of 1848...
...These were understandable to the light of the rata which the Centrum, the part] of the clerical QathoBea, played In the Gannett labor movement...
...One should imagine that the most practical form for organizing the proletariat would be the consolidation of its various forms under one general authority, either in a manner where the various unions become likewise party organizations, or party organizations in turn become unions...
...On the other hand, however, the necessities of the economic situation were bound to call forth the effort to overcome the fractional differences...
...But insofar as these are not purely trade questions, but rather affect the organized workers as a whole, they cross in many ways the political questions...
...This view was expounded in the newspapers and such important reviews as Debow's Review...
...j new unions...
...Strange social and economic movements which questioned the whole basis of the social order In the North caused some apprehension among northern conservatives...
...Despite that, we find this kind of organisation carried out in but few countries, and it does not always show better results there than where the complete independence of these organizational forms exists...
...That's to be explained in view of the conditions determining the acquiring and accepting of new members, as well as determining the problems and the tactical principles for each of these organizations, which, though each of them have a uniformity of goal—that of the emancipation of the proletariat—are nevertheless so varied that it is exceedingly difficult for any single one of them to dominate completely all three fields and successfully direct their activities...
...the oppostn b the case for workingmen who have already developed a political interest tot who still allow themselves to be led er a bourgeois party...
...The tower stratum of poor white* was kept in the densest Ignorance...
...He read a number of southern newspapers and had also read two works by George Fitzhugh of Virginia who was the most thorough exi ponent of these views...
...This fratricidal struggle was very painful to the party...
...The relationship between the party and the unions was thereby placed under a new basis...
...Ow- Gcraaa by 7"Ar subject matter published belozc is part of a pamphlet entitled "Tactical Tendencies in the German Social Democracy," by Karl Kautsky, published by the "Voru-aerts Publishing Company," Berlin, 1911...
...Young southerrners who married into the "best families" of northern cities and northerners who married into the "best families" of -the South formed other ties between the two sections...
...In that way...
...This closer bond of unity became tto more necessary in view of the present which the progress of the party and tto trade unions exerted upon the bourse** parties on the one hand, and the enployers' associations on the other—consolidating the latter and presenting t challenge to the advance of tto proletariat...
...There were even large corporations in the North that owned and hired slaves in the South and they were naturally opposed to agitation...
...Indeed, the party finally placed itself decisively upon the side of the centralized unions...
...The book enraged the southern aristocrats and wherever copies could be found they were burned...
...Ttot was wrong, if by that one understood ft to mean that was their sole purpose nd • most important mission...
...And in that measure will it be impossible for serious, far-reaching conflicts to occur among them...
...it would seem, the greatest unification of the labor movement would be achieved...
...From an organization standpoint these latter had from time immemorial been Independent and aloof from the Social Democracy...
...Marx and Engels were the first and for a long time the only Socialists who recognized the i'g"<***«™*" of the unions, in contrast, for Instance, to Lassaile and Robertas...
...He was a southerner and in his book he appealed to the poor whites, that two-thirds of the white southern poulation whose welfare had been subordinated to the will and Interests of the ruling one-third...
...The Hirseh-Duncker trade organizations were, and are, doubtless working-men's organizations, but not trade unions in the real sense of the term—not combative organizations...
...But this conflict did not disturb the relations between the party and the unions...
...In the year 1857 attest was made of the power of the southern ruling class when Hlnton Rowan Helper published his famous book, "The impending Crisis of the South...
...as the other hand, however, the opposss efforts to wrest the Centrum-led stayers from the Center party thresgft means of energetic political propagsnfc' and thereby to overcome their alooraaa from the free trade unions grew lucres*, ingly more promising...
...association with them in religion and eoeiety were to be avoided...
...Aye, Instead of fflaappngiffl there was a tendency for this barrnr * rise even higher—in the measure mm the Center party In the tost decade .jS from the status of an opposition party to that of hrcnmtng a government parto and in the measure also that the psM bourgeoisie ever more repeatedly cant Into sharper conflict with the flghttoj proletariat—a conflict which was canter on possibly more against the unions thkr against the Social Democracy—and Sj the further measure that within tfc Center party Itself the conflict of tota> est between capital and landed propels, torship stepped more and more into 21 foreground...
...at first under innocuous I forms: they" Increased gradually in strength...
...Trade Union Neutrality That relationship seemed rather to be hreatened by the efforts for neutrality which appeared since the formation at the Christian unions to the trade union field In 1894...
...While of course the alignment of groups is different here, there is a method of operation indicated in Kautsky's narration—that of active participation in union work—which is distinctly applicable to the situation in America...
...This propagaask could be none other than Socialism...
...movement, but only few German Socialists were cognizant of their Bigrdflcance at the period of this revival...
...The Center's opposition coincided with their own demands, hindered them from Independent thinking, and retarded their intellectual emancipation from the ideas of the peasantry and small bourgeoisie...
...pro-slavery merchants, lawyers, parsons and newspapers were to be boycotted, and others were to be so heavily taxed for each slave thev nossesaed j that slavery would become unprofitable...
...In fact, it became known as the "mudsill theory...
...The duel between the two social orders eventually ceased to be one of verbal and literary argument...
...The comrades sought to induce the unions to partake of political activities and thereby provide a substitute body for the party organizations which had bean suppressed...
...Prior to that time it had been hat that the unions were the rcuralUsg schools for the Social Democracy...
...Since that time the Center was the only bourgeois party which energetically took up the struggle against Bismarck, and propped itself upon the mass of the working population, principally upon peasant owners and small bourgeoisie, whose interests It truly represented, but also upon wage-workers whose origin was from such peasant and petty bourgeois districts, and who held the former's views...
...But it wu ear* rect, however, in the sense that a wen> er politically indifferent is as a rule man easily brought into the union than lots the party, and in that in the union to j sooner attains the power and ability a become a converted Socialist...
...There was loud opposition against that n our party...
...It was thus that the interests of workingmen were turned toward the p""m»»' field...
...A few writers even turned to biology and other sciences to show the Negro really belonged to the lower animals As for white laborers...
...1 efforts which arose with the formation of I Christian unions have ceased completely i and have given way to a unanimous cooperation of party and union against tto Centrum...
...Despite that, our party never interceded for the latter...
...It was not without significance therefore, that very prominent Socialists like Marx and Bebel urgently advised the unions of that time to adopt an attitude of neutrality toward all political parties...
...So that the political and the economic interests in such Instances came into conflict, and according as the one or the other tendency in a union superseded, the union organized itself upon a local or central basis...
...No abolitionist was permitted to live in the South...
...Politics, the church, literature and journalism were all ranged in behalf of the "mudsill theory...
...It eould not da that «s3 out ceasing to be what it reauy feaB party created to represent the totend of a portion of the possessing deans...
...But this was more easily said than done, because the party and the union were but two sides of the same medal: they had the same members—and no man can artificially be split in two...
...Utopian colonization experiments were under way, the most notable being that of Brook Farm in Massachusetts...
...This Commission has fulfilled its task;—that of assuring the necessary unity pf the general labor movement and of strengthening it, without endangering the unity likewise necessary between the party and the unions...
...The Center party was thereby enabled to effect what no other bourgeois party of Germany was able to do: keep at a distance from, and even in antagonism to, the Social Democracy large masses of wage-workers—fighting masses at that...
...All questioning of the social order in the South had been suppressed...
...And they utilised at once the freedom attained to come together into one common body, with one common head: "The General Commission of German Trade Unions...
...The centralised unions after the withdrawal of the anti-Socialist law at once opened a campaign against the local organisations and soon placed them into the position of a hopeless minority...
...If the years from 1894 to 1900 reflects, the growth of a neutrality attitude, ttot attitude since then has become ever men dissolved and has been replaced by tto slogan: Party and union are one...
...in commerce, manufactures, transportation, agriculture, literature, population, and so on, although when the Constitution was adopted In 1789 the South stood first in almost all these respects...
...But despite it\il, it did lot come to any great conflict because if that, for the bone of contention was emoved from the scene by the logic of vents before the logic of heads had ound time tq bring forth Its sharpest reapons...
...To be sure, only for trade union questions...
Vol. 8 • February 1929 • No. 4
