and must be resolutely and categorically rejected. Not to destroy, but to conquer the unions; that is, the great mass of workers who are in the old trade unions—this should be our rallying point in the development of the revolutionary struggle."
The congress agreed overwhelmingly with this point of view. Not for a moment was it in doubt. Dozens of speakers from all over the world, including such able militants as Tom Mann, cited their practical experiences to demonstrate the fallacy of revolutionaries quitting the old unions and trying to form simon-pure, theoretically perfect organizations. Such separatist tactics, they argued, never lead to the hoped-for powerful revolutionary movements, but always to the disastrous result of strengthening the grip of the reactionaries in the old unions by sabotaging and destroying all rebel resistance to them in those bodies. They condemned the slogan, "Out of the Trade Unions" as counter-revolutionary, because it has the endorsement of reactionaries the world over and it dovetails exactly with their interests. The bureaucrats like nothing better than for the militants to quit the unions and leave them in undisputed control. The complete failure of dualism in the United States, Germany, and other countries was cited as positive evidence of the folly of leaving the old unions. On the other hand, many instances were shown of the success achieved by working within. The French delegation declared that through their system of minority committees they had just about won control of the general labor movement of their country. Tom Mann produced figures to demonstrate that at least 20 per cent of the great British unions had been won over to a clean-cut revolutionary position, and that the rest had been largely influenced by the propaganda among them. The German delegates who represented the minority committees in the trade unions stated that they had the direct backing of at least 2,500,000 of the 9,000,000 members of German trade unions.
Representatives of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Freie Arbeiter Union of Germany, and one or two other small dual revolutionary unions, attempted to defend the dualistic policy, but their voices were lost in the storm of condemnation of that program. The congress was categorically against them. Quite evidently the Communists have little sympathy for the De
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