This would, consequently, mean that the unions have influence on the policy of the state, just as, inversely, the soviel organs have influence on the unions. I was told in Moscow thai this was the case, and that the unions had representations ii the different commissariats. Thus; the president of the Ail- Russian Central Council of the Unions, M. Tomski, is also member of the war commissariat. Besides, there are other members of the Central Council of the Unions in other commissariai through which arrangement the fusion spoken of in the cong] decision and the changing of the unions into state organ* (Verstaatlichung) is secured. But this is not so to understan< that any union member can become a member of a commissariat of the Council of People's Commissars. In order to hav< this possibility he must first have been elected to the Council of the Trade Unions. To this Central Council of the Unions onl\ members of the Communist Party (bolsheviks) can be elected. I know old revolutionaries who were communists before th< social-democratic party of the bolsheviks called itself communij who belong to the unions. They are also intelligent and surely have all the qualities which make them suitable for the Central Council of the Trade Unions. But they can never come to this as long as they do not join the Communist Party. Thus they can never participate in the work of the Soviets, and the socalled co-operation of the workers through their unions is possible only for the members of the ruling party. Not the unions as such, but the communist-bolsheviks who are in the unions, have the right to co-operate in the state organs.
It must be admitted that the revolutionary party could not make use of all workers or employees, organized into the unions, on all kinds of work and, particularly, not in the responsible positions. For in the unions there were, and is now, many who are against the revolution on principle and who, if they had been made use of, without doubt would have done everything to retard and hold up revolutionary progress. But this should not have been done with revolutionaries, only because they had a different opinion or because they belonged to a different party or movement. That means that the bolsheviks seek to monopolize the revolution, that they want to claim the right to the revolution for only one party, while there still are several revolutionary parties in Russia.
The Industrial Union is an advanced form compared with the guild or craft form. The industrial unions of Russia were organized on centralist lines. Thus the soviet government was best in a position to use the unions as their own apparatus. In the mad tempo of the Russian revolution the unions were too unripe to be able to choose their forms of organization. In order to come to some sort of order in the general disorder, the bolsheviks tried for a short while to eliminate the unions and only created Councils, Central Councils or Factory Councils, but these experiments have gone out of fashion . They disappeared after a very short duration; after the unions in their first congress, in January, 1918, had liquidated these central councils of the factory councils, — as they neither wished to have nor could have any competing organizations which only led to mutual provocation and quarrels, — the whole thing was laid into the hands of one central body which was given great authority. Through this central body the state could now place its hands on the smallest body, the outermost points on the circumference. Thus, the form of organization of the unions in Russia was born in the hour of need and carried the stamp of the process upon itself. The unions have lost their independence, they are tools of the state. Trotzky is not so very wrong when in his anti-Kautsky book he says: "After once taking the power one cannot accept certain consequences and repudiate others." From the possession of power, which they wanted to keep, and had to keep at any cost, one thing followed the other, and the workers are again ruled over.