Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/198

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OUT OF THEIR OWN MOUTHS

the entire twenty-one points. A powerful faction of the Socialists in Germany, now organized as the Communist Party and including a million or two supporters, has taken the same action. And, finally, in Italy both the Communist Party and the Socialist Party adhere to the Third Internationale and accept the twenty-one points, although the latter also claims a certain measure of autonomy. The leadership of all these movements is largely in the hands of "intellectuals" and outsiders, non-members of the labor unions. This is markedly the case with the Italian Communist Party. But the influence on labor is, nevertheless, formidable.

Of Moscow's twenty-one points accepted by all these so-called labor parties, points nine and ten refer to organized labor. They are as follows:

9. Every party which desires to join the Communist Internationale must systematically and constantly develop a communist activity within the trades unions, the workmen's and factory councils, the consumers' societies and other mass organizations of the workmen. Within these organizations it is necessary to organize Communist "cells" which by constant, perseverant work shall win the trades unions, &c., over to the cause of Communism. The "cells" are obliged in their daily work to unmask everywhere the treason of the social-patriots and the fickleness of the "Centre." The Communist "cells" must be completely subordinated to the whole party.

10. Every party belonging to the Third Internationale is obliged to wage a stubborn war against the Amsterdam "Internationale" of the yellow trade unions. They must most emphatically propagate among the unions of organized workmen the necessity of a breach with the yellow Amsterdam Internationale. They must support