Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/112

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
108
WORLD'S TRADE UNION MOVEMENT

to participation in the Frankfort conference, threatening even to take disciplinary action against those who violated that decision. But anyhow, a fraction was organized. It was a small one compared to the other delegates, nevertheless the Communist majority did not force upon the conference such questions which generally are not acceptable to Social-Democratic workers.

We do not see in the resolutions adopted at Frankfort the questions of the proletarian dictatorship, of joining the Comintern—all those questions were not even placed on the agenda. The questions there were the struggle against the occupation of the Ruhr, the struggle against Fascism, etc.

In the resolutions adopted at Frankfort an attempt was made to formulate the idea of a United Front organizationally. The significance of the Frankfort conference was that it promulgated the idea of creating committees for the struggle against Fascism, the creation of Port Committees, the creation of self-defense groups, etc.

This conference has shown that by the United Front we understand the creation of a platform adaptable to both sides aimed against the bourgeoisie. We leave out all which would separate both sides which are trying to come together. The Frankfort conference, which had a great practical significance, has shown, by the resolutions and decisions adopted, our honest wish to create a United Front. It had an influence upon the workers who formerly did not trust the Communists, and who thought that under the idea of the United Front there was hidden some kind of an injurious "soviet trick."

By these resolutions the workers could convince themselves of our honest intentions. The Frankfort conference also had an influence on the working masses because it was the only international conference after the occupation of the Ruhr which adopted a clear and generally acceptable platform of struggle against the occupation of the Ruhr.

What did we see in connection with that question in the resolutions, of the Second, Secand-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals? Protests, in general, and reference of it to the League of Nations. But we adopted a method of struggle against occupation. This had a great influence on the wide masses, and brought to the Communist and revolutionary workers—to the Comintern and Profintern—the sympathy of the wide masses who formerly did not trust our tactics of the United Front.

The second example is more characteristic—the international conference of Transport Workers, At this conference we had to do, not with the representatives of shops and factories, but with the. representatives of centralized organizations. We had representatives of the International Federation of Transport Workers, with whom we conducted official parleys for the creation of a United Front.