the idea of a United Front found a place in the heads of the Belgian trade union leaders it was not their fault. It is clear that even there where the sabotage of the United Front was being used successfully—and in this respect we have to give the Belgian labor leaders their due—even there it was impossible to get rid of it with resolutions.
It was necessary to give the laboring masses a straight answer to the question: Do you want to fight together with the Communists against reaction? In this decision of the Convention of the Belgian trade unions is reflected the ideological and organizational crisis of the Amsterdam International, separate parts of which under pressure of the workers, were forced to act in contradiction to the general line of their international unit.
To show another example: Parallel with the Transport Workers Conference in Berlin, between the 23rd and 25th of May the Congress of the Second and Second-and-a-Half Internationals met at Hamburg. At that Congress, six hundred delegates were present; at the same time at our Transport Workers Conference in Berlin only nine. They had a "Congress." We had only a little conference. At the Congress was present one secretary of the Amsterdam International, Oudegeest. At our conference another of its secretaries, Fimmen. At Hamburg, Oudegeest was talking against the Communists and the United Front, while at Berlin, Fimmen agreed to a United Front with us. It is easy to imagine the political basis, the political strength of an organization in which one secretary is fraternizing with the Communists, and another with their enemies.
From this fact alone it is possible to make a conclusion on the weakness of the Amsterdam International and of its lack of any possibility of action. This is not an international of action, not an international which organizes the proletariat for struggle but, so to speak, an international for the exchange of information, an international for periodical writing of resolutions. But there are many such international units: there are international sport societies, international rabbit raisers—O, there are many international associations! But there is nothing here which would describe the Amsterdam International in the sense of uniting a class, or in the sense of united tactics, for coordinate action in all countries.
All this proves the maximum disintegration of the whole reformist movement, and also that reformism in its essence—as long as it sticks to the bourgeoisie—is unable to create an international
Industrial Internationals
The characterization of the whole right wing of the trade union movement would not be final if we would not touch the existing industrial
