The Red International of Labour Unions (RILU; ), commonly known as the Profintern (), was an international body established by the Communist International (Comintern) with the aim of coordinating communist activities within trade unions.
Formally established in 1921, the Profintern aimed to act as a counterweight to the influence of the so-called "Amsterdam International", the social-democratic International Federation of Trade Unions (founded in 1919), an organization which the Comintern branded as "class-collaborationist" and as an impediment to revolution. After entering a period of decline in the middle 1930s, the Profintern was finally dissolved in 1937 with the advent of Comintern's "Popular Front" policy.
Organizational history
Preliminary organization
In July 1920, at the behest of Comintern head Grigory Zinoviev, the 2nd World Congress of the Communist International established a temporary International Trade Union Council, commonly known by its Russian acronym, Mezhsovprof. This organizing committee—including members of the Russian, Italian, British, Bulgarian, and French delegations to the Comintern Congress—was presented with the task of organizing "an international congress of Red trade unions.
Soviet trade union leader Solomon Lozovsky was named president of this new council, assisted by British unionist Tom Mann and Alfred Rosmer of France. The Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) directed the new council to issue a manifesto to "all trade unions of the world", condemning the social democratic International Federation of Trade Unions based in Amsterdam as a "yellow" organization and inviting them to join a new revolutionary international union association.
This decision was to mark a split of the international trade union movement that followed the recently achieved split of the international socialist political movement into revolutionary Communist and electorally-oriented Socialist camps. This desire for a new exclusive international of explicitly "Red" union represented a fundamental contradiction with the Comintern's firm insistence that Communists should work within the structure of existing trade unions—an important detail noted at the time by delegate Jack Tanner of the British Shop Stewards Movement. Tanner's objection was brushed aside as Grigory Zinoviev denied him the floor, referring his complaints to committee.
Historian E. H. Carr argues that the decision to launch a Red International of Labour Unions at all was a byproduct of the era of heady revolutionary fervor that world revolution was around the corner, declaring:
"It was a step taken in a moment of hot-headed enthusiasm and the firm conviction of the imminence of the European revolution; and a device designed to bridge a short transition and prepare the way for the great consummation had unexpected and fatal consequences when the interim period dragged on into months and years."
As the plan for a new labour international moved forward, Mezhsovprof established propaganda bureaus in different countries in an attempt to win the existing unions affiliated to the rival "Amsterdam International," as the International Federation of Trade Unions was commonly known, over to the forthcoming "Red International." These bureaus attracted the most rebellious and dissident trade unionists to their banner while at the same time alienating sometimes conservative union leaderships, already raising charges that what was actually being proffered was dual unionism and a destructive split of the existing unions.
On 9 January 1921, ECCI decided that the launch of a new Red International of Trade Unions would take place at a conference to be convened on May Day of that year. An appeal was issued to the trade unions of the world who were "opposed to the Amsterdam International" and called for their affiliation to the new organization. This conclave was ultimately postponed until July, however, so that it could be synchronized with the scheduled 3rd World Congress of the Comintern—travel to and from Soviet Russia being a difficult and dangerous process in these years.
Grandiose claims were made about the new organization, with Lozovsky declaring in a speech in May 1921 that already unions representing 14 million workers had proclaimed their allegiance to the forthcoming Red International. Zinoviev ferociously declared the Amsterdam International to be "the last barricade of the international bourgeoisie"—fighting words to social democratic trade unionists.
For their own part, the Social Democratic trade union movement emerged from World War I relatively united, on the offensive, and unbowed. Even before the Profintern was launched, the line in the sand was clearly drawn, with the Amsterdam International declaring at a May 1921 executive session that it was "not permissible for trade union organizations to be affiliated to two trade union International at the same time" and adding that "every organization which affiliates to the political trade union International of Moscow places itself outside the International Federation of Trade Unions."First Report on the Activities of the International Federation of Trade Unions (July 1919-December 1921). Amsterdam: n.d.; pg. 73. Cited in The great civil war within the world trade union movement had begun.
The foundation congress of 1921
The Founding Congress of the Red International of Trade Unions was convened in Moscow on 3 July 1921. The gathering was attended by 380 delegates from around the world, including 336 with voting rights, claiming to represent 17 million of the 40 million trade union members worldwide. The gathering was neither homogeneous nor harmonious, as it quickly became clear that a number of delegates held a syndicalist perspective that sought to avoid politics and participation in the existing trade unions altogether, in favor of direct action leading to workers' control of industry. These delegates sought the new Red International of Labour Unions to be fully independent of the Communist International, seen as a political organization.
Among those expressing such a desire for the organizational independence of RILU from the Comintern was "Big Bill" Haywood of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)—an individual already living in Moscow after skipping bail to avoid a lengthy prison sentence under the Espionage Act. The IWW's perspective was joined by syndicalist trade unionists that were part of the French and Spanish delegations. Ultimately, however, the syndicalist elements proved a small minority and the Congress approved a resolution sponsored by Mann and Rosmer which called for "the closest possible link" between the Profintern and Comintern, including joint sessions of the organizations, as well as "real and intimate revolutionary unity" between the Red unions and the Communist parties at the national level.
Despite the initiative of starting a new trade union international in direct competition with the previously existing Amsterdam international, the Profintern in its initial phase continued to insist that its strategy was not to "snatch out of the unions the best and most conscious workers," but rather to remain in the existing unions in order to "revolutionize" them. The founding Congress's official resolution on organization declared that the withdrawal from the existing mass unions and abandonment of their memberships to their often conservative leaderships "plays into the hands of the counter-revolutionary trade union bureaucracy and therefore should be sharply and categorically rejected."
Still, the Profintern insisted upon a real split of the labour movement, establishing conditions for admission which included "a break with the yellow Amsterdam International." The organization effectively advocated that radicalized workers engage in "boring from within" the existing unions in order to disassociate the full organizations from Amsterdam and for Moscow. Such tactics insured bitter internal division as non-Communist members of the rank-and-file and their elected union leaderships sought to maintain existing affiliations.
As part of its strategy for winning over the existing unions, the Profintern decided to establish a network of what it called "International Propaganda Committees" (IPCs), international associations of radical unions and organized fractional minorities in unions that were established on the basis of their specific industry. These groups were intended to conduct conferences and publish and distribute pamphlets and periodicals in order to propagandize for the idea of revolution and for the establishment the dictatorship of the proletariat. The IPCs were to attempt to raise funds to help sustain their efforts, with the governing Executive Bureau of Profintern subsidizing their publications. By August 1921 a total of 14 IPCs had been established.
The Profintern's International Propaganda Committees proved ineffectual in changing the opinions of union memberships. Unions began to expel their radical dissidents and international unions began to expel those national sections which participated in the activities of the Profintern, exemplified by the October 1921 expulsion of the Dutch Transport Workers' Federation from its international trade organization.
The 2nd World Congress of 1922
The 2nd World Congress of RILU was held in Moscow in November 1922, in conjunction with the 4th World Congress of the Comintern.
As might be expected, the 1922 RILU Congress spent much of its time shaping the application of the Comintern's recently adopted united front policy to the trade union movement. With the prospects for imminent world revolution on the wane, RILU head Solomon Lozovsky proposed an international conference bringing together leaderships of RILU, the Amsterdam International, and various unaffiliated unions—a gathering which was to echo the April 1922 meeting between the Second International, the Two-and-a-Half International, and the Comintern in Berlin "to work out parallel forms and methods of struggle against the offensive of capitalism."
In retrospect, 1922 marked the high-water mark for the Profintern's size and influence in Europe, with a sizable new contingent joining the organization's ranks in France when the Confédération Genérale du Travail (CGT) attempted to discipline and expel its syndicalist members but ended up causing a full scale organizational split in which the majority of French trade unionists affiliated with a new "Red" union.
Additional headway was made in Czechoslovakia, where a majority of trade union members similarly affiliated with RILU, following a campaign of expulsions of Communist individuals and unions by the Social Democratic leadership. In October 1922 the Czech Red unions held a congress of their own, formalizing the split with the Social Democratic unions. It is worthy of mention that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was an extremely large organization in this period, claiming 170,000 members in 1922, dwarfing all but a few Communist parties around the world.
In Bulgaria the All-Bulgarian Federation of unions chose to affiliate with the Profintern outright, but even that movement was split when opponents established a rival organization called the Free Federation of Trade Unions. Spain, too, saw its national labour movement formally divided. The climate was acrimonious as bitter charges and counter-charges levying responsibility for the shattering the trade union movement flew in all directions.