The trade unions are the lifeline of capitalism.

Small pamphlets of the Communist Workers' Party (Germany).

No. 5. Price 25 Pfg.

The trade unions are the lifeline of capitalism.

Communism has the task of clarifying the causes that determine the formation of class relations within each individual phase of development. The greatest mistake that the proletariat repeatedly makes in its struggle against capitalist economy and bourgeois society is to apply the knowledge gained through severe suffering from a past phase of the development of the class struggle to the class relations of the present phase, in other words: to wage the struggle with outdated methods. In order to see clearly, the economic causes that are decisive for the current phase of the world economic crisis within the two classes, the bourgeoisie on the one hand and the proletariat on the other, must be determined and thus the justification for appropriate methods for the class struggle of the proletariat in the present phase must be presented.

With the Treaty of Versailles, world capital hoped to re-establish its power in the countries of Central Europe, where, as a result of the lost war, class relations had shifted to the disadvantage of the bourgeoisie. However, the chauvinistic sections of the bourgeoisie in the victorious states repeatedly prevented the conclusion of the Versailles agreement from being used as an unadulterated source of capital's power in Central Europe. In addition, the destruction of the economic balance throughout the world, the inevitable accompaniment of the war, could not be remedied with the help of the treaty, because the absolute blockade of Russia and the partial blockade of the defeated Central European states made the re-ordering of the world economy impossible. Finally, the pressure of economic conditions and the "revolutions" of the autumn of 1918 in Central Europe made the attitude of the proletariat extremely unfavorable to such efforts. The revolutionary influence of the fact that the Russian Soviet power withstood the economic isolation as well as the military attacks could not be prevented, even despite the Amsterdam International's willing participation in these measures of capital. The result of this was an ever-increasing equalization of the competing capitalist states and their interest groups with a view to the reintegration of Central Europe into the world economy, with the express purpose of using economic pressure to make the part of the proletariat that had emerged from the war still able to work submissive to increased exploitation.

The burdens that have piled up as a result of the war, the debts of the belligerent states as well as the repair of the human and material destruction, are to be forced upon the proletariat in the defeated Central European states. The trade union bureaucracy of Amsterdam obliges them to, if not prevent the resistance of the proletariat, which is under such enormous pressure, then at least to divert it in a direction which could render it virtually ineffective in terms of this development. In addition, the trade unions see their present task as the consolidation of the capitalist economy, which through their participation in this is to be gradually led over into a kind of state capitalism, as a preliminary stage of the socialist economy which they are at least aiming for in their program. The appropriate instrument for this is, for them as well as for capital, the Treaty of Versailles, which thus essentially becomes the work of the Amsterdam International. This was not quite clear until now. It was only with the acceptance of the ultimatum of May 5, 1921, that the effective factors of the current phase of capitalism became apparent. Only now does it become clear why the big bourgeoisies of the capitalist world could not reach an agreement until the international trade union bureaucracy gave them a guarantee that the bad consequences that the elimination of international (imperialist) competition would inevitably bring for capitalism as a system would not come to fruition. Of course, things did not happen exactly like that from an external perspective. But the line that emerges from an investigation of the internal connections illuminates the facts so that they can be recognized in their true form. This, however, leads to important conclusions for the further development of the tasks of the revolutionary section of the proletariat, for its struggle as the vanguard of the class.

The most dangerous mistakes against the principles of communism are illusions, the false, almost always overly favorable assessment of the factors that determine the revolutionary class struggle of the proletariat in relation to the basic methods and tactics used. Now capital, for its part, leaves no room for illusions about its will: by means of the complete oppression and total impoverishment of the proletariat (which, due to the nature of the means used, almost borders on despair). The capitalist system is trying to make a delayed attempt to regain its own economic power and thereby consolidate its already severely shaken rule. The ground in which capital could anchor this rule is the same ground from which it draws its power to rule: the dullness and indifference of the individual proletarian to the misery of his life and the associated reluctance of a considerable part of the working class to take up the fight against it. The trade union bureaucracy uses this attitude and tries to exploit it in the direction of its intentions by creating the illusion that capitalism can once again overcome the current crisis, which at the same time would be the historical verdict that capitalism is not yet ripe for collapse, or, conversely, that the proletariat is not yet ripe to assume control of the economy and society. Therefore, capitalism must be "made mature" by helping it to flourish, and of course no one else can do that but the proletariat, of course only under the leadership of the unions. And because that is so convenient and he does not have to fight, the worker slides to this tune ever deeper into the misery and filth of the enormous crisis of the capitalist world, with which he believes himself to be bound for better or for worse; which is true, but in a completely different sense.

The nature of this crisis has consequences for the proletariat which make the attitude of the trade unions a clear betrayal of the proletariat and their arguments a mass of scientific whitewashing and criminal illusions. The most primitive reflection of the proletariat on its own real situation should immediately give it the correct understanding of the situation of capitalism and thus the insight that it and its entire class have no other choice than to fight for the downfall of the collapsing capitalist system to accelerate the collapse of the existing system or to be swept into the maelstrom of ruin as a pointless sacrifice. To refute the union lies, the nature of the current crisis in the world economy must be established.

All crises of capital before the period of the world wars were caused by overproduction after a period of economic boom. They were overcome by improving and broadening the production base. Increased communization, increased use of the human apparatus on the one hand; reduction of production costs, increase in labor output through technical innovations, monopolistic restraint and restriction to the point of the market's receptiveness on the other.

These crises of the past, which were simply the consequences of capitalist anarchy, are contrasted by the current death crisis of capital as a result of the world economy changed by the World War.

The human production apparatus has been crushed and worn down in tens of millions. The material production apparatus is destroyed and torn to pieces. Improvement and renewal, the conversion to so-called peacetime production cannot take place due to a lack of capital, as a result of the devaluation of money, as a result of the lack of raw materials or raw materials that cannot be sold (capitalistically, i.e. with profit). Four years of dead war production, the value of which has literally gone up in smoke, is offset by purely fictitious values ​​on paper.

The purchasing power of the masses has fallen to one fifth of what it was before the war. Russia as a consumer is, for the time being, almost completely excluded from the capitalist calculation.

Sparsely populated colonial areas cannot replace it. A corresponding "penetration", i.e. plundering of India and China as rich countries, required more than a generation.

For Germany in particular, there is also a strong geographical reduction in its territory, loss of all its colonies, loss of the fleet and consequences of an insane war financing policy.

Is there now also a total underproduction in Central and Eastern Europe a "relative" overproduction, especially in America against Japan and at times England, which among other things, in an even higher unemployment rate than in the other countries, the effects in the same way, in the fact of the death crisis of the capital.

There is only one factor through which capital could find a way out: the proletariat.

Reduction of wages below the most primitive minimum subsistence level, increase in work output, lengthening of working hours - in other words: complete enslavement, degradation to a mindless animal, killing many millions and bleeding the rest white is the price for the possibility of a "recovery" of capitalism.

We can completely ignore those other suggestions of silly fools, ideologists and degenerate capitalist metaphysicians who, in the death dance of capital, between insanely increasing waste, between bars and dance perversions, with simultaneously increasing judicial brutality and total administrative corruption, seek a way out by appealing to idealism, by appealing to capitalists to think "morally", to lower their own standard of living, to not consume luxury goods, and evaluate them in the same way as the increase in bourgeois philosophical interest in ethics, metaphysics, spiritualism and other hocus-pocus as a sign of a declining social class or as a deliberate fraud. As far as capitalism sees clearly and has remained a sober calculator, it has taken that only way out.

To carry it out, two things are necessary: ​​international union of capital for the joint and more intense exploitation of the proletariat and a tactic that tears the proletariat apart, splits it, plays the parts off against each other, makes some subservient and the whole incapable of fighting.

Capital is pursuing both paths with growing awareness and not without success.

The negotiations of a Stinnes with the big capital of the Allies, the negotiations of a Rathenau with Loucheur on the question of reconstruction, the attempts to peacefully resolve the Upper Silesian question, the attitude of America towards the guilt of the Allies, the rapid national and international trust speak their own language.

Of course, there are a number of serious obstacles standing in the way of such an international business alliance on a world scale: capitalist competition of a national and international nature, cultural differences as a long-lasting legacy of a past era, and the gradual indebtedness of individual countries. The political consequences of the still different economic bases, such as the ever-looming conflict between America, England and Japan, the aspirations for independence of the English colonies, especially Canada, the tough struggle between England and France over Poland, the method of struggle against Russia, and the problem of the Middle East, are ever-threatening storm clouds that never disappear from the horizon. They can trigger new world catastrophes at any moment, just as the victorious breakthrough of the proletariat can bring the avalanche down with a thunderous roar somewhere. Nevertheless, capital, insofar as it has understood itself and must understand itself in the constraint of necessity, seeks to wriggle through Scylla and Charybdis on the only path that offers the hope of revival or at least it means gaining time. 

In this way, on an economic basis that has been completely changed since the World War, it must destroy the limited national state, it must destroy the existing parliamentary state apparatus and create an apparatus that performs the functions of the outdated parliamentary state apparatus in a more productive, cheaper and more rational way, the functions of mass suppression (police, military, schools, administration, etc.) and mass fraud (parliaments of every kind) by pretending to have a balancing justice that hovers above class antagonisms. This endeavor requires the relocation of the "democratic" pariah state apparatus into the production facilities themselves. And despite the still existing opposition between means of production capital and commercial capital, whose differences in the exploitation of the proletariat are expressed in the worsening of wage and working conditions or in price increases and taxes, the same interest in this transfer exists. It is already documented internationally in the factory police, in the working groups, in the arbitration committees, in the legal councils, etc., all of this carried out with the help and often under the initiative of the trade unions. In Germany in particular, the trade unions (from the Christian to the free) rule under the leadership of big capital and with the benevolent support of social democratic policies of all calibers.

The joint will to exploit and the extent of international capital are documented just as clearly and in a particularly interesting way in the gradual reorganization of the Treaty of Versailles. The financial provisions of the London ultimatum give and should give German capital the absolute opportunity to free itself of the burdens and to impose them on the proletariat in every conceivable form.

The German government has to issue treasury bills with different terms for the total German debt. (The big German banks have taken on the good business of endorsement for the redemption of the next due ones.) To ensure the redemption of the first series, a bond will be issued, which will be taken over by German capital. This bond is exempt from all taxes. It is to be expected that, despite the enormous amount of this bond, it will be oversubscribed. For who would not like to remain tax-free? The equivalent of this debt will have to be paid by taxes on consumption. The bourgeoisie will of course, as it has always been able to do, compensate itself by shifting the part of the burden that falls to its members. The proletariat cannot increase its wages, but must instead provide increased work performance. This is now being demanded of it, and, since the workers cannot do this without resistance the state will tolerate the increased exploitation if it is rendered ineffective. That is the special task of the trade unions, that is also the meaning of the takeover of the government in the Reich and in some cases in the states by the trade union bureaucracy. The trade unions are thus becoming the most important factor in the struggle of the world bourgeoisie against the world proletariat.

On the other hand, the opposite can be said: In such a situation, in this world crisis of capital, open, brutal class struggle is unavoidable; there is only one way or the other. The situation in Germany is characterized by a secret circular from the employers' associations with the following content:

“The wage policy of the near future must primarily prevent a further increase in wages. The slogan issued by the Federation of Workers' Associations not to grant any wage increases has generally been followed. The authorities and arbitration committees have also adopted this. Our position is being fiercely opposed by the workforce. However, major strikes as a result of rejected demands have been rare. Locking out the workers in one or more districts is recommended against partial strikes. Should arbitration committees still grant wage increases, it is urgently recommended that the arbitration award be rejected with detailed reasons, referring to the poor economic situation, and that the demobilization commissioner be informed of the rejection and the reasons for it. There is no material reason for wage increases, since food and overall living costs have fallen considerably in the last two months.”

New tariffs should not be agreed without making sufficient room for piecework. Full use of the 48-hour work week is an urgent requirement. The Reich Labor Ministry also recommends that preparatory and final work be carried out outside of regular working hours. A number of demobilization commissioners have already given general permission for exceeding the 8-hour working time.

To prepare for wage cuts, it is best to start with mining and industry. Before this happens, enough propaganda articles must be released in the press. The influence of the union leaders on the works councils must also be kept in mind. Relevant material must be sent to the chairman of the arbitration committee. The reduction in wages must begin first with young people and unmarried people, whose wages are too high. The Federation of German Employers' Associations will issue more precise instructions on this matter."

In such a situation two things are necessary: ​​a unified union of the proletariat as a class in organizational forms that correspond to the economic situation, and a struggle in the place and with the methods that are absolutely fatal to capitalism. But the trade unions are outdated organizations that are not capable of leading the struggle in such a way that capital is compelled to accept it in the form in which the increasingly conscious working class wants to lead it.

There is no doubt that the distribution of power in the struggle of the proletarian class against the bourgeois class is very unequal. All violent organizations are in the hands of the bourgeoisie or are directed exclusively against the proletariat. Here too the monopoly character of the capitalist system is evident - the bourgeois state is completely subordinated in its functions to the capitalist monopoly of property.

If the proletariat thus appears to be compelled to wage its struggle by leaving the initiative and the form of implementation to capital, there is nevertheless a factor on the side of the proletariat which enables it, in turn, to compel capital to wage the struggle in a form which corresponds to the nature of the purely proletarian class struggle. This factor is the proletarian monopoly on the possession of labor power, and all catalytic monopolies place the power of capital over the proletariat, [max: so that] monopoly is a prerequisite for all social and economic power organizations of capital. All social and economic power organizations of capital have no other purpose than to secure this basis for capital while maintaining its monopolies. The entire complex structure of the modern economy as well as of state social institutions is disrupted in its connections, the gigantic apparatus disrupted in its operation, if somewhere at a decisive point the proletarian labor power is not deployed in the way the capitalist will demands. Labor is the "key industry" through which the proletariat can exercise decisive power over all the stages of the capitalist economy and bourgeois society that depend on it. That this is the case in the economy is already known to very wide circles in the proletariat. The fact that this awareness of power over the social and state organization of capital is not alive in the German proletariat must be surprising after the course of the Kapp Putsch. This is of course not to say that the general strike alone is sufficient to overcome the state and social organizations of capital. But they are so hindered in their exercise of power against the proletariat by the consistent implementation of a general strike that the fight for final annihilation is considerably simplified, proof that they too are exclusively based on the power over the labor power of the proletariat. The proletarian class can only fight and win if it is organized as a mass. This mass must, however, be permeated with the awareness that it is always and everywhere fighting for its existence as a class and that this existence is only guaranteed if the class simultaneously overthrows the power of the bourgeois class and establishes its own against it. The previous form of organization of the proletariat, which with its trade union and parliamentary methods is geared towards leading the proletariat's struggle for existence within capitalism, is of course incapable of winning the now inevitable struggle of the proletariat for its existence against capitalism to bring about a decision by overcoming its power. Anyone who negotiates in any way with the ruling class on behalf of the oppressed class thereby fundamentally affirms the right of this rule to exist, thereby excluding the development of an awareness of the power of the basic proletarian means of struggle among those who are united in such an organization. Furthermore, since the negotiating positions of capital will always be superior to those of the proletariat, even with the more intensive application of trade union methods of struggle, the proletarian struggle on this organizational basis will never be able to take on purely proletarian forms, but will remain constrained by capitalist ones. This would also prevent the use of purely proletarian methods of struggle by these organizations of the proletariat, which are superior to capitalist ones for the reasons described, once and for all, to such an extent that it would be tantamount to excluding the possibility of their use.

The revolutionary class struggle organization of the proletariat must therefore build its organization on principles which, from the outset, unconditionally ensure the use of the purely proletarian weapon, labor power. It must therefore build itself where the proletarian class as a mass provides labor power, that is, in production in the factories. Only here can the consciousness of the unity of the proletarians, the true class consciousness, be alive, since it is precisely from the provision of labor power to an exploiter that the proletariat derives its character as a class. And here, in the factories of industrial and agricultural production, in the transport companies, the consciously conducted struggle of the proletarian class will be able to impose its proletarian character on capital by applying the purely proletarian means of struggle.

Proletarian!

The unification of world capital is taking place at the expense of the impoverishment of the German proletariat. The acceptance of the German bourgeoisie into the exploitative international depends on the surplus labor of the German workers. By accepting the ultimatum, the trade union government has sold you out to the big capitalists of the world and committed itself to squeezing everything out of your labor that the bourgeoisie needs to maintain its power.

Proletarian!

Refuses any extra work, any extra hours and any extra shifts. Refuses piecework and sabotages the "reparations".

Destroy the unions, whose bureaucracy will then not have the power to sell you off. Create revolutionary action committees in the factories and unite with the unemployed. The victory of the working class depends on the capitalists' conflicts not ending!

Let the bourgeoisies of the world tear each other apart. That is what the proletariat can only wish. But the workers must resist being victims of the bourgeoisie.

Proletarian!

The machinery of the state of war is based on the surrender of your labor power, just as the machinery of production is. If the railway workers refuse, the Orgesch transports, if there is no electricity, the bourgeoisie cannot spread its hate and lying press to the world their communications apparatus fails.

Proletarian!

Use your strongest weapon, which is so easy to use:

Deny your labor to capital, the bourgeoisie and their states.

KAPD pamphlet series.

1. The Moscow International. 

2. The main questions of revolutionary tactics. Principles of the KAPD, presented to the Third Moscow Congress.

3. The West European policy of the Third International. 

4. World crisis and class struggle.

5. The trade unions are the lifeline of capitalism.

6. The policy of the V.K.P.D. 

7. Centralism, federalism and councils. Unemployment question. 

8. The policy of the K.A.P.D.

9. Unemployment 

10. Unified organization or political organization and union.

Price per issue 25 Pf. – – No. 2 double issue. 

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The theory of the KAPD and the AAU is developed in

"Proletarier"

Monthly Journal for Communism

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Gorter:  Open letter to Lenin 2.50 Mk.

The class struggle organization of the proletariat 2, –

Pannekoek: World Revolution and Communist Tactics 2, –

The Way of Dr. Levi - The Path of the VKPD 1,50

Program of the KAPD 0.50

The General Workers' Union 1, –

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1921