Excerpt from Resolutions and Decisions of the First International Congress of Revolutionary Trade and Industrial Unions

The resolutions we now submit to the attention of the reader are the results of the fortnight's labors of the first International Congress of Revolutionary Labor Unions. Only eleven months ago the Provisional Coun cil of Labor Unions was estab ished which aimed to oppose the ideas of a revolutionary class struggle and social revolution to the conception of the class collabora tion. These eleven months were a period of a gathering of forces and decentralized agitation. During that period considerable minorities were forming and shaping themselves in all countries which declared themselves resolutely and sharply against the policy of the old trade unions. The revolutionary labor union movement was a very variegated one; there was no unity of program; no unity of tactics. There was a great variety of ten dencies, ideas, disunited in their understanding of the paths leading to social revolution and of the problems before the working class of the present epoch, the only connecting link between them being the common hatred for the exploiters. This natural variety of forms created by the pecularities of the labor movement in each country at a period when the movement begins to define and oppose itself to the old trade union move ment, was of course unavoidable. But this variety which is undoubtedly preventing unity of action had to be out lived. One general and obligatory line of action had therefore to be defined and worked out. The first Inter national Congress of the Revolutionary Labor Unions has fully acquitted itself of the task of gathering the revolutionary disintegrated forces, of adopting one com mon line of action and of creating a solid foundation for a rapid organization of the revolutionary classes. Perusing attentively the minutes and resolutions of the first congress, we see how the collective thought of the revolutionary unions has molded itse'f after long and heated debates, after struggle and mutual concessions. The resolutions found below are the crystalized expe rience of the labor movement of all countries. The bal ance sheet of a whole epoch in the trade union movement had been summed up at the congress, the pre-war and post-war pages of history turned over and concrete revolutionary inferences from the positive and negative experience of the working class were drawn by the congress.

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