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Draft Resolutions for the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P

                                   

The Trade Unions

V. I. Lenin


Whereas:

(1) the Social-Democratic Party has always regarded the economic struggle as a component of the proletarian class struggle;

(2) the experience of all capitalist countries shows that the most advisable form of organisation of the working class for the economic struggle is that of broad trade unions;

(3) at the present time a general striving is observed among the masses of the workers in Russia to associate in trade unions;

(4) the economic struggle can bring about a lasting improvement in the conditions of the masses of the workers, and a strengthening of their truly class organisation, only if this struggle is properly combined with the political struggle of the proletariat;


We are of the opinion, and propose that the Congress should agree:

(1) that all Party organisations must promote the formation of non-party trade unions, and induce all Party members to join the trade unions in their respective trades;

(2) that the Party must exert every effort to educate the workers who belong to trade unions in the spirit of a broad understanding of the class struggle and the socialist aims of the proletariat; by its activities to win a virtually leading position in these unions; and lastly to ensure that these unions, under certain conditions, come into direct association with the Party—however, without at all expelling non-party members from their ranks.



Published: Published in Partiiniye Izvestia, No. 2, March 20, 1906.
Published according to the newspaper text.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 10, pages 160-161.


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