This issue continues the publication of summaries of the reports presented.

Trade union subservience to the interests of imperialism

The purpose of this report was to demonstrate how the bourgeois regime, having reached its imperialist phase, needs to subjugate the trade union movement to its own class interests and does so in almost identical ways in all countries with advanced capitalist development. “National approaches,” where they exist, are limited to details of form rather than substance.

The bourgeoisie can no longer propose the physical destruction of proletarian organizations and is forced to recognize their existence. However, in addition to creating its own white and yellow unions, it also attempts to influence “red” workers’ organizations from within through reformist leaderships that are always ready to collaborate with the enemy class. In the absence of a strong revolutionary party and a truly class-conscious proletariat, these collaborationist leaderships gradually developed until, on the eve of the First World War, they became dominant both politically, in the parties of the Second International, and in the trade unions.

So, after presenting, through a series of quotations from our classic texts, the position of revolutionary Marxism and the party on the trade union question, we moved on to analyze the behavior of the CGdL (General Confederation of Labor) throughout the war.

Through careful documentation, it was demonstrated how the CGdL trade union leaders, since the period of Italy’s neutrality, had declared themselves ready to go to war alongside the coalition of “democratic” nations, handing over the proletariat to the class enemy and pushing it into the global carnage. During the war, this “sacred union” became increasingly close. But the same thing happened in all the other belligerent countries.

It was during the war that the theory of common interests between the two antagonistic classes (bourgeoisie and proletariat) under the “impartial” arbitration of the state began to take hold. As we will see in the next reports, fascism appropriated this concept for the theorization of the corporative state.

We then moved on to the next chapter on the fate of the proletariat in the plans of imperialism.

The war had definitively marked an irreversible historical watershed; social democracy was now a cornerstone of bourgeois conservation at all levels, and the trade union policy directed by the social democratic bonzes would be equally reactionary.

At the same time, a revolution had recently broken out in Russia that threatened to spread throughout Europe and bring down all the plans for the new imperialist order that had emerged from the war.

Therefore, in order to prevent the rekindling of a genuine class-based trade union movement on a national and international scale, the victorious imperialist states created their own International Labor Organization as part of the League of Nations system, which the collaborationist trade unions promptly joined.

In November 1919, the US government, pursuant to Article 424 of the Treaty of Versailles, opened the first session of the International Labor Conference in Washington, where it was decided that a Council composed of 24 members would be appointed to head the International Office: 12 representatives of bourgeois governments, 6 representatives of industrialists, and 6 trade unionists of the worst opportunism. This was another international preview of the corporative system.

Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, the yellow trade union international had been restored, which did not fail to declare itself in favor of the International Labor Office, thus adhering, with an indissoluble bond, to the needs of world imperialism.

The cycle ended with the complete subjugation of the trade union headquarters to the respective national bourgeoisies, with their use for the patriotic mobilization of workers. And this too was a goal that the bourgeoisie achieved at the international level.

March on Moscow, second phase

Denikin, considering the first phase of the operation to strike Moscow and the heart of the Bolshevik revolution to be successfully concluded, moved on to organizing the central phase of the complex maneuver. He needed to conquer the city of Kursk, considered a valuable point for the subsequent assault on Moscow. He therefore assigned a large part of his troops to this task, which were opposed by those of the Red Army, in a clear imbalance: the Red Army had a clear superiority in artillery, twice that of the White Army, even if with little ammunition, but the White cavalry had a frightening supremacy over the Red cavalry, with a ratio of 7 to 1. The Cossack cavalry was decisive in those endless steppes.

Kursk was conquered by the Whites on September 19, creating a conspicuous gap in the Red lines that Denikin tried to extend towards Voronezh using the cavalry of the Škuro Wolves. Meanwhile, the devastating incursion of the Cossack Mamontov into the Red rear continued to such an extent that, overloaded with booty from their raids, the Cossacks decided to abandon their assigned front and return to their home territories. Shkuro conquered Voronezh, and the Red Army realized the absolute necessity of equipping itself with adequate cavalry. We read a few pages from Trotsky’s “Military Writings” on the analysis of the military situation and the surmountable difficulties in equipping themselves with cavalry forces, especially now that Denikin was threatening to conquer Tula, home to the historic military arsenal and only 195 km from Moscow. From Trotsky’s “The Steel of Tula,” we read his analysis on the matter.

Following new military developments, the two sides took three weeks to realign their units. Following a non-aggression agreement with the Bolsheviks, Makhno’s Insurrectionary Army had reorganized itself for an anarchist and independent Ukraine, which was a serious problem for Denikin, who meanwhile controlled the whole of Ukraine. To counter this danger, because Makhno had reached Mariupol on the Black Sea and was heading for Taganrog, the headquarters of the White forces, Denikin had to divert troops, including those in reserve, to block him.

Meanwhile, on the central front line, the White attack began on Kursk and then on Orel, opening the way to Tula. The Soviet command ordered a slowdown in the White advance to give the forces defending Orel time to organize a strong defense. The battle, which began on October 13, developed with extreme intensity throughout the theater of war. The turning point came when part of the 13th Red Army defending Orel deserted, causing the collapse of the Soviet defenses.

The White troops advanced with great caution towards Tula, thanks to the Red opposition, while in the Orel sector the situation was very fluid and uncertain. In the eastern sector along the Volga, the Red Ninth Army had taken control of the strategic Povorino-Caricyn railway line, which was essential for all White supplies. Denikin ordered an immediate and powerful counterattack, which took more than three days of fierce fighting to resolve in his favor. By mid-October, the counterrevolutionaries controlled a vast territory from Kalinin, Kiev, to Odessa, with over 50 million inhabitants.

It was a moment of extreme crisis, because in the northwestern sector Petrograd was under attack and in Moscow the evacuation of the Soviet government was being prepared.

On the history of trade unions in France

In the previous report on the trade union movement in France, presented at the general meeting in May 2025, we addressed two aspects of the economic organizations that emerged in the 19th century, namely mutual aid organizations for workers and trade union organizations specific to workers. We then summarized the economic and social situation of the main European countries (Great Britain, Germany, France) at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century with the emergence of four types of labor unionism (British collaborationist unionism, French anarchist unionism, German unionism, which was Marxist in origin but evolving towards reformism, and the communist unionism of the Communist International). In this second report, we described the characteristics of the French labor movement as analyzed by Marxists, before addressing in a future report the trade union forms that emerged after the Commune of 1871. The main aspects covered were the revolutionary alliance between the bourgeoisie and the French proletariat until February 1848, the importance of the petty bourgeoisie, the breeding ground of anarchism, parasitic financial capitalism, and finally French imperialism and the conquest of the colonies as a source of corruption for part of the proletariat.