N. B. Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 1916 (August 4, 1916) (Vol. 42, No. 1).
Article:—p. “The Trade Union Movement in 1915”.... Subheading: “Trade Union Ideologies”....
Two trends which are not part of reformism or radicalism—Korrespondenzblatt and Sozialistische Monatshefte.
“On the other hand, there are only a few trade union journals which clearly express their dissident, more radical views. For the most part these are organs of trade unions whose membership consists mainly of unskilled workers or women” (325)....
...”For the organs of the old, big unions are wholly on the side of the majority, whereas the others are more reserved. There is no evidence, as far as we can see, of a definite attitude in favour of the views and tactics of the minority” (327)....
|
Of the metalworkers’ union, the author says the Executive Committee supports the majority, wages in this trade are higher (330), fewer have been called up,[1] it is an old and very big union, “which has always been a bulwark of moderate views”, but at a general meeting on June 30, 1915... a motion was passed that was, indirectly, practically a censure of the Executive Commit- tee: “The adoption of this motion indicates at any rate that other views and moods prevail among the rank and file than those in the leadership” (332).... |
||
A “petty-bourgeois stratum” is developing at the top (335)....
Korrespondenzblatt (April 17, 1915) declares that the struggle against imperialism is as much an absurdity as the destruction of machines.
It censures the majority in the French and British unions (the same as the majority it itself represents) and this evokes a malicious remark by the bourgeois author:
“It cannot be said, therefore, that the Right-wing tendency in Germany has altogether ceased to understand radical labour policy” (338).
Properly speaking, the author admits, the majority are no longer socialists (p. 340 and elsewhere).
[1] for military service.—Ed.
| | |
| | | | | | | ||||||