This final post on the decisions reached by the Fourth (1922) Congress of the Communist International, seeks to summarise - in brief - the key points from a range of resolutions looking at different aspects of strengthening its sections, specifically work amongst Trade Unions, Youth, Women, Black workers and on Education and Agitation.
Trade Unions
The Congress resolution on trade unions noted that, globally, unions had lost membership and strength thanks to the ferocity of the capitalist offensive - and the inability of the reformist trade union leaderships to resist it.
Rather than accept losing control of the leaderships of national federations, the leaders of the reformist 'Amsterdam' trade union international were resorting to expulsions and splits. Anarcho-syndicalist federations had also resorted to similar action against Communist trade unionists too. This was being done in the name of keeping unions 'neutral' from party politics - but, in practice, that meant allying themselves with the existing order, rather than a political struggle to change it.
In response, Communist workers had to organise firm caucuses within their unions, and seek to work in alliance with the most revolutionary workers in other currents, such as the syndicalists. Rather than allowing the reformists to retain their damaging control by driving the best forces out of the unions, the Communists must fight expulsions and oppose splits in the trade union movement, fighting for readmission where expulsions have been enforced. They should call for the fusion of parallel trade union confederations in countries such as Spain, France and Czechoslovakia. This should be done around a concrete programme of demands and action for each branch of industry.
Youth
The Congress resolution on youth referred back to the previous Congress resolutions seeking to build mass organisations of worker youth, based primarily on political struggle.
In general, that work had not yet succeeded in building such a mass base. In part this was owing to the pressures of the capitalist offensive that particularly weighed down on young workers, and also from the lack of support for young workers by the trade union bureaucracy. The Communist parties needed to campaign for the workers' movement to take up the defence of young workers, including in opposition to the growing militarism. That should include working to build Communist youth groups within workplaces and trade union branches, and in schools as well.
Within the Party itself, the education of youth needed careful and systematic attention, helping to organise schools and courses and making sure youth were writing for party publications, including features on the lives and struggles of worker youth.
 |
| Zetkin and other delegates at the International Women's Congress, 1921 |
Women
The Fourth Congress resolution focussed on the work being carried out by the International Communist Women’s Secretariat. Their work had helped to build international connections between Communist women in different sections and to set up women's organisations within them.
"In the countries still under bourgeois class rule, the first priority of systematic Communist work among women producers and proletarians has been the struggle to defend the bare essentials of life against capitalist exploitation, the struggle to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish a proletarian dictatorship. In the Soviet states, by contrast, the main emphasis has been the effort to draw worker and peasant women into all arenas of the economy and social life for construction of the proletarian state, and their schooling to carry out the resulting tasks".
Clara Zetkin, in charge of the Secretariat's work, spoke to emphasise that: "What we conventionally term the Communist Women’s Movement is not at all an independent movement of women and has nothing in common with any women’s rights currents. It signifies methodical Communist work among women for a double goal. First, with respect to women who already embrace the idea of communism, to integrate them ideologically and organisationally into the different national sections of the Communist International and to make them into active and conscious collaborators in and contributors to the entire life and work of these sections. In addition, with regard to women not yet imbued with Communist ideas, it involves winning them and drawing them into all the actions and struggles of the proletariat".
However, the Congress resolution again had to state its criticism of some sections for the lack of attention they had placed on this area of work and stressed the need for these omissions to be corrected. In her speech, Zetkin drew attention to some specific examples and pointed to how work could be improved.
Black Workers
The Fourth Congress resolution pointed to imperialism's attempts to fully colonise and exploit the continent of Africa. But the struggles against imperialism were awakening a 'racial consciousness' amongst millions of Black people, not only in Africa but also in the United States: "The history of Blacks in the United States has prepared them to play an important role in the liberation struggle of the entire African race. Three hundred years ago, the American Blacks were torn from their native soil, transported on slave ships under the most indescribably cruel conditions, and sold into slavery ... The Blacks were not docile slaves. Their history tells of rebellions, revolts, and underground techniques of winning freedom. But all their struggles were savagely suppressed".
The American Civil War, fought "to maintain the industrial supremacy of capitalism in the Northern states ... presented Blacks with the choice between slavery in the South and wage slavery in the North". The 'emancipated' Black workers were then recruited into the American army as supposed 'equals' but returned to the US to face "racial persecution, lynching, murder, deprival of the right to vote, and inequality." The anger against this persecution "combined with the impact of the Blacks’ integration into industry in the North ... assigns to American Blacks, especially in the North, a place in the vanguard of the struggle against oppression in Africa".
The resolution pointed to the common enemy of both Black and white workers - capitalism and imperialism. It called for the international struggle for emancipation to be based on the struggle against them - linking together the workers of the US with the masses of Africa and Central America and the Caribbean. The Comintern had to promote that international organisation against Black oppression whilst also showing Black workers that workers and peasants from other peoples across the world faced the same outrageous attacks of racial oppression, inequality and exploitation.
The Congress resolved to support Black peoples' struggles against oppression, for equality of wages and political and social rights and for unions to recruit Black workers into their ranks.
Education and Agitation
The Congress resolution proposed that each section should develop an "Education Secretariat" to oversee the education of party members, including central and local Party schools, day and evening classes, with particular attention being paid to youth. It should be supported by an international education section which can assist in publishing materials, for example on understanding the ideas of Marxism.
The resolution particularly stressed ensuring that "Party members are acquainted with at least the programme of their own Party, the twenty-one conditions for joining the Communist International, and any decisions of the Communist International that particularly concern their own Party" and that organisers are similarly "aware of every major tactical and organisational decision taken by the Congress."
Cadre development would also came from their practical activity, from taking part in agitation in the workplaces, unions, workers' clubs and, sometimes most effectively, in homes - but in fact anywhere where there are workers present. The agitation had to be understandable to workers - starting with the basic demands of workers - "there must be no attempts to force on those listening Communist principles and demands that are incomprehensible to them."
The Party leadership should issue practical advice to help with agitational work, especially when it came to specific campaigns "such as election campaigns, the campaign against high prices and for tax cuts, the movements for industrial soviets and for the unemployed, and other forms of Party activity". It also proposed that a survey be sent to all members to find out how often they carried out Party work and agitational activity.
No comments:
Post a Comment