short the official statistics include in the trade unions every organization, which under the law of 1884 had to register its by-laws—and even without such registration was under that law.
It is clear such figures cannot give the real picture of the trade union movement, for such a picture we can get only when we know not only the amount bat also the contents—in other words the political composition and the political movements which exist in that group of workers.
The same about Germany. Here were 3,500,000 members, at a time when the reformist unions show only 2,500,000.
The same about England, where instead of four million and a couple of hundred thousand, we should say a maximum of about three million workers had, if not a class conscious platform, at least very close to it.
In the whole world we had about ten million organized workers. In the first question which naturally comes up—what actually did that big army represent?—we have to look behind the figures. That ten million is a big army is shown by the last war. Ten million well organized workers, knowing what they want, distributed all over the world, are a great power. We can say without exaggeration that, if these ten million organized workers had been not only. revolutionary in mood but revolutionary in fact, the world war would have never come about. You will see farther on that this mass of workers represented a very vivid and varied picture.
Tendencies in the Trade Union Movement
The trade union movement of that time was divided on the main lines, between those having a class-conscious point of view and those of non-class view-point. Among those with a class conscious viewpoint we can count the principal trade union bodies of Germany, England, France, Italy and the Scandinavian countries, which in their programs, resolutions, etc., pointed out the class struggle and which theoretically, at least, were opposed to class collaboration.
The non-class unions, were those which in their programs declared openly for cooperation between classes and for social peace; these were the Catholic, democratic, Protestant, and other unions. We should also count here the yellow unions, which theoretically recognized the class and social peace, but, in practice had been conducting a class struggle—but not on the side of the workers; rather on the side of the bourgeoisie. This is the first grouping which divided the great mass of organized workers and which is the primary classification of the trade unions existing at that time.
But this rough division of the class and non-class is, in itself, not enough if we do not explain what the class unions at that time really were.
