THE NEW LABOR MOVEMENT
 Up to this point our efforts have been directed to showing that the "movement of labor" assumes in the workers' councils the form through which it is in a position to master the social forces. We now turn our attention to the new "labor movement", to the organizational binding together of the still relatively small number of revolutionary workers who have consciously adopted the standpoint of the workers' councils. In this connection it is first necessary to draw a sharp boundary line between organizations which call themselves revolutionary but in reality still belong to the old "labor movement" and those which are developing in the new direction. All organizations which lay claim on the leadership of the struggles, which want to become the "general staff" of the working class, stand on the other side of the boundary line, regardless of how recent may be their date of birth. On the other hand, all organizations which do not want to snatch the power into their own hands but only want to promote class power, which elevate to a principle the self-movement of the masses through the workers' councils, -- all these we count as belonging to the new labor movement. This new labor movement is already present, but still after all just in the first beginnings, so that as yet it is scarcely possible to speak of a developed organizational structure. For the present, it still appears in the form of small illegal propaganda groups which turn up here and there, are of varying opinion on a great number of practical and theoretical questions and for the moment will no doubt remain so. But even as they are, they are still the organs through which the class strives to come to an understanding of its true situation. In these groups, which remain rooted in the mass, is revealed the reorientation of the thinking of the class. Still spontaneously at first, here and there groups take form which are without much cohesion and hence also with divergent conceptions. But the more this group-forming asserts itself, becomes the general rule, and is finally recognized as a necessary schooling of the working class, the more also will the divergent conceptions be merged into a unity. |