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The Founding of the Red Trade Union International. Proceedings and Resolutions of the First Congress, 1921

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Published Sep 2024

Mike Taber

Editor: Mike Taber
The 1921 founding congress in Moscow of the Red International of Labour Unions was a historic event. That gathering set out to create an international revolutionary trade-union organisation embracing millions of workers, and it brought together a wide variety of forces within the world labour movement. Lively and at times acrimonious debates occurred at the congress with syndicalist and other currents over the purpose and tasks of trade unions, the nature of class-struggle unionism, and union strategy and tactics.
The congress proceedings, published here in a richly annotated edition, are part of a multi-volume series on the Communist International in Lenin’s time.

Biographical Note

Mike Taber is editor of The Communist Movement at a Crossroads (Brill, 2018), Fighting Fascism (Haymarket Books, 2017), and Under the Socialist Banner (Haymarket Books, 2021). He has also edited and prepared collections by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, James P. Cannon, and Maurice Bishop.

Readership

The book is especially relevant for academic libraries, institutes, and historians including (post)graduate students specializing in the history of communism, socialism, labor, and trade unionism during the interwar period.

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Edition

List of Abbreviations

Proceedings of the RILU First Congress

Session 1. 3 July 1921, Evening
Opening Session; Greetings
Session 2. 4 July 1921, Evening
Congress Organisation; Work of International Council
Session 3. 6 July 1921, Morning–Afternoon
Manifesto; Debate on International Council Report
Session 4. 8 July 1921, Morning–Afternoon
World Economic Crisis; Trade Union Tasks and Tactics
Session 5. 9 July 1921, Morning–Afternoon
Credentials; RILU-Comintern Relations
Session 6. 9 July 1921, Evening
RILU-Comintern Relations (continued)
Session 7. 10 July 1921, Morning–Afternoon
RILU-Comintern Relations (continued)
Session 8. 11 July 1921, Morning–Afternoon
RILU-Comintern Relations (continued)
Session 9. 11 July 1921, Evening
RILU-Comintern Relations; Workers’ Control
Session 10. 13 July 1921, Morning–Afternoon
Factory Committees; Italian Question
Session 11. 13 July 1921, Evening
Italian Question (continued)
Session 12. 14 July 1921, Morning–Afternoon
Debate on Tactics
Session 13. 14 July 1921, Evening
Debate on Tactics (continued)
Session 14. 15 July 1921, Morning–Afternoon
Debate on Tactics (continued)
Session 15. 15 July 1921, Evening
Organisation Report; Women in Unions
Session 16. 18 July 1921, Morning–Afternoon
Commission Reports; War Victims
Session 17. 19 July 1921, Morning–Afternoon
Trade Unions in East; Commission Reports; Russian Anarchists; Congress Closing
Statements Handed in to Presidium and Attached to Minutes

Congress Commissions and Central Council Session

Organisation Commission

Commission on Tactics

Commission on Workers’ Control

Central Council Session

Resolutions

Manifesto to the Workers of the World

Resolution on the Activity of the Provisional Council of Red Trade and Industrial Unions over the Past Year

Resolution on Relations between the Red Labour Union International and the Communist International

Resolution on the Italian Question

Resolution on the Tasks and Tactics of Trade Unions

Resolution on Workers’ Control

Resolution on Factory Committees

Resolution on the Organisation Question

Statutes of the Red International of Labour Unions

Resolution on the Women’s Question

Resolution on the Unemployment Question

Resolution on the Question of War Victims

Resolution on the Labour Movement in the Near and Far Eastern Countries and the Colonies

Appeal against the White Terror

To the Workers of the United Kingdom

To the Spanish Proletariat

Greetings to the Russian People

Appendix1: Amiens Charter
Appendix2: June 1920 Conference of Unionists from Britain, Italy, and Russia
Appendix3: KAPD Resolution on the Trade-Union Question
Appendix4: Women in the French Metallurgy Industry
Louise Heuchel
Chronology
Glossary
Bibliography
Index