Establishing a Global Network

Abstract

In midAugust 1924, the revolutionary transport workers summoned for their fourth conference in Hamburg. A few months earlier in Moscow, the Comintern had held its Fifth World Congress followed by the Third World Congress of the rilu in June/ July 1924. Trade union tactics ranged high on the agenda of both congresses. The split of the labour union movement was evident for all, and voices were raised that communists should either join or form revolutionary unions. Still, the leaders of the Comintern and rilu stood firm behind their calls for trade union unity and issued a resolution denouncing the social democrats and socialists (i.e., “reformists”) as splitters. The Comintern Congress branded the leaders of the unions and the Amsterdam International, i.e., the iftu, as supporters of conservative, backward, national narrowminded and bourgeoisimperialist sentiments. The communists, in turn, were to remain within the existing unions, and the Comintern ordered them to endorse the ‘United front from below’tactics. Their core task was the extension of communist influence within the unions and, ultimately, to assume control of the union leadership.1 Communist trade union strategies and tactics dominated discussions at the rilu Congress. The Congress urged its members to stick to the rilu programme and tactics. Echoing the Comintern theses on tactics in the trade unions, communist ideas were to be promoted among the rank and file of the unions and to push for a ‘united front’. The communist vision of a unified trade union movement was to be achieved at a projected World Unity Congress of the rilu and the iftu.2 The Comintern and rilu declarations on the ‘United front from below’ were made in the aftermath of the failed hopes for a ‘Unity Congress’ of transport workers in autumn 1923. The itf General Council rejected the idea, and the itf cemented its negative stance towards admitting communistcontrolled unions within its ranks at its congress, summoned in Hamburg 7 to 12 August