THE NEW LABOUR MOVEMENT (4)
 The "diseases of childhood" The new labor movement thus arising has, naturally, its "diseases of childhood". These are frequently of such a dangerous character that most of the newly arisen groups succumb from them at present. In the last five years alone, such groups have arisen again and again, only in order to disappear as they come. The causes of this are mainly two : The most essential one is that they lacked a sufficient theoretical foundation; they were still too much of a hodgepodge of traditional ideas and of new ones insufficiently digested. The second cause lies in the fact that under the new conditions collaboration in the groups must have a quite different character than in the old movement. The intellectual qualities required for that purpose are not forthwith present, they must first be learned and acquired in struggle. For these two reasons the problem of group-forming is also much more difficult than appears at first sight. The insufficient theoretical foundation becomes so dangerous to the new groups for the very reason that it leads to inconsidered and aimless actions. When impatience instead of insight becomes the counselor of action, one seeks to drive the workers into all possible actions and expects thereby, through the artificial release of actions, that the faith in leaders will surely be driven out of them. This becomes at last a consciously applied method for "revolutionizing" the working class and "educating" it to the class struggle. And so their language is fearfully "revolutionary"; their description of the ruling class is horrifying and they end in stereotype manner with the alternative : Revolution or decline into barbarism. This gives them the feeling of being very revolutionary and the conviction that they are front-rank fighters in the proletarian revolution. But all that is accomplished by it is that the revolutionary impatience is discharged in strong words and explodes like loose powder, without injury to the ruling class. And when after all, here or there, isolated small groups permit themselves to be driven in this manner into an "action", they merely demonstrate how laughable such a tactic is. The revolutionary language can not replace what the class lacks in the matter of insight. The attempt by such methods to make the proletariat "ripe" for revolution merely demonstrates that these "front-rank fighters" themselves still lack the most elementary insight into the conditions of the proletarian struggle for emancipation. The other "disease of childhood" consists in the fact that the work in the group must first be learned, that collaboration in the groups has not yet found the form befitting the new tasks, and that even the workers collaborating in the groups have to acquire new intellectual qualities adapted to the new conditions. The most characteristic trait of the old organizations is that their members, who have joined them on the basis of certain principles, are controlled through the organization itself. The individual wants to subject himself to the principles which he holds to be correct; in reality he subjects himself to the organizational apparatus, which in its turn lays down the principles, alters them, determines in how far they are valid in this or that case, etc. and even establishes how the members must act in accordance with these principles. The individual member who through his entry becomes a part of the organization thus subjects himself to the "leadership" of the organization. This "leadership" is regulated, delimited and defined by regulations and statutes in which the rights and duties of the individual with respect to the organization and inversely are laid down. Anyone who sins in any manner is called to order in accordance with these rules of organization. The democratic constitution of the organization was designed to provide that this leadership should be decisively influenced by the members; but the more the old organization sprouted into a purely bureaucratic apparatus, the more was this sort of influence reduced to a minimum and finally quite thrown overboard. The labor organizations are thus a faithful image of the political order of bourgeois society in general. The national-socialist party has contributed the final touch to this development, in that it elevates the autocracy of the leadership into a principle; a leadership which is henceforth responsible only to its "God" and its "own conscience". But whether along democratic paths or through bureaucratic decree or finally just through the "God-illuminated" leader, the organizational rules and statutes are yet the basis on which the activity of the individuals in the organization is bound into a whole. In this way they can work together in spite of the fact that they mutually distrust each other's judgment as to the proper course and are ready at any time to discredit their neighbor if he stands in their way in the organization. In the last few years we have become acquainted with various groups which had retained this mentality from the old movement, and which have disappeared as quickly as they came. It was first attempted to bridge over the mutual differences through the building up of an organizational apparatus. But in small groups that is practically impossible : here the mutual distrust very soon dissolves any organizational bond. The first lesson which may be derived from this is that small groups are capable of working only when their members have at least an approximately like conception of their task. Groups which still today wish to become "big" -- big in the sense that the organization grows big and powerful -- find themselves on the same path that the old labor movement has taken. They still bear the distinguishing marks of the old labor movement, where the organization "leads" as an apparatus and the individual member subjects himself to this leadership. So that at the present time it is only like-minded people who can combine in small groups. It is better that revolutionary workers in thousands of small groups work on the coming to consciousness of their class than that their activity be subjected in a large organization to the striving for dominance on the part of their leadership. That does not preclude collaboration of the groups among each other, but rather makes it more necessary. If it shown in practice that such collaboration has been attended with success, then in truth is the smelting together into a great organization of like-minded persons surely accomplished. But this smelting together to an organic unity can only be the result of a process of development. The groups which are to be the starting point of the new labor movement must consist not merely of members with like conceptions regarding their tasks. These conceptions themselves must be distinguished essentially from those of the old labor movement. The first and most important of these conceptions is the one which has to do with the member's activity in the organization. It must be distinguished from the old conception in that the member does not subject himself to leadership, but that he combines in collective comradely manner with others of like mind in order that a "leadership" to which one must subject himself may be made superfluous. The leadership as well as the rules according to which the collaboration in the groups takes place can not be a foreign apparatus ruling over the members, but must proceed ever anew from the absolute devotion of those members. They themselves make ever anew the leadership and the bond that binds them to common action in the group; that is the all-surpassing will to leave personal interests out of account when the fulfillment of the common tasks so demands. |