Lies
being taught;
Hitler
was Psychic, deranged mental nut;
Now
the truth;
Understanding Hitler- Mein Kampf Chapter II (part e)
Years of Study and suffering in Vienna.
VIEWS
ON TRADE UNIONS;
“On innumerable occasions the bourgeoisie
took a definite stand against even the most legitimate human demands of the
working classes. That conduct was ill-judged and indeed immoral and could bring
no gain whatsoever to the bourgeois class. The result was that the honest
workman abandoned the original concept of the trade’s union organization and
was dragged into politics.
There were millions and millions of workmen
who began by being hostile to the Social Democratic Party; but their defenses
were repeatedly stormed and finally they had to surrender. Yet this defeat was
due to the stupidity of the bourgeois parties, who had opposed every social
demand put forward by the working class. The short-sighted refusal to make an
effort towards improving labor conditions, the refusal to adopt measures which
would insure the workman in case of accidents in the factories, the refusal to
forbid child labor, the refusal to consider protective measures for female
workers, especially expectant mothers--all this was of assistance to the Social
Democratic leaders, who were thankful for every opportunity which they could
exploit for forcing the masses into their net. Our bourgeois parties can never
repair the damage that resulted from the mistake they then made. For they sowed
the seeds of hatred when they opposed all efforts at social reform. And thus
they gave, at least, apparent grounds to justify the claim put forward by the
Social Democrats--namely, that they alone stand up for the interests of the
working class.
And this became the principal ground for the
moral justification of the actual existence of the Trades Unions, so that the
labor organization became from that time onwards the chief political recruiting
ground to swell the ranks of the Social Democratic Party.
While thus studying the social conditions
around me I was forced, whether I liked it or not, to decide on the attitude I
should take towards the Trades Unions. Because I looked upon them as
inseparable from the Social Democratic Party, my decision was hasty--and
mistaken. I repudiated them as a matter of course. But on this essential
question also Fate intervened and gave me a lesson, with the result that I
changed the opinion which I had first formed.
When I was twenty years old I had
learned to distinguish between the Trades Union as a means of defending the
social rights of the employees and fighting for better living conditions for
them and, on the other hand, the Trades Union as a political instrument used by
the Party in the class struggle.
The Social Democrats understood the enormous
importance of the Trades Union movement. They appropriated it as an instrument
and used it with success, while the bourgeois parties failed to understand it
and thus lost their political prestige. They thought that their own arrogant
VETO would arrest the logical development of the movement and force it into an
illogical position. But it is absurd and also untrue to say that the Trades
Union movement is in itself hostile to the nation. The opposite is the more correct
view. If the activities of the Trades Union are directed towards improving the
condition of a class, and succeed in doing so, such activities are not against
the Fatherland or the State but are, in the truest sense of the word, national.
In that way the trades union organization helps to create the social conditions
which are indispensable in a general system of national education. It deserves
high recognition when it destroys the psychological and physical germs of
social disease and thus fosters the general welfare of the nation.
It is superfluous to ask whether the Trades
Union is indispensable.So long as there are employers who attack social
understanding and have wrong ideas of justice and fair play it is not only the
right but also the duty of their employees--who are, after all, an integral
part of our people--to protect the general interests against the greed and
unreason of the individual. For to safeguard the loyalty and confidence of the
people is as much in the interests of the nation as to safeguard public health.
Both are seriously menaced by dishonorable employers who are not conscious of
their duty as members of the national community. Their personal avidity or
irresponsibility sows the seeds of future trouble. To eliminate the causes of
such a development is an action that surely deserves well of the country.
It must not be answered here that the
individual workman is free at any time to escape from the consequences of an
injustice which he has actually suffered at the hands of an employer, or which
he thinks he has suffered--in other words, he can leave. No. That argument is
only a ruse to detract attention from the question at issue. Is it, or is it
not, in the interests of the nation to remove the causes of social unrest? If
it is, then the fight must be carried on with the only weapons that promise
success. But the individual workman is never in a position to stand up against
the might of the big employer; for the question here is not one that concerns
the triumph of right. If in such a relation right had been recognized as the
guiding principle, then the conflict could not have arisen at all. But here it
is a question of who is the stronger. If the case were otherwise, the sentiment
of justice alone would solve the dispute in an honourable way; or, to put the
case more correctly, matters would not have come to such a dispute at all.
No. If unsocial and dishonourable treatment
of men provokes resistance, then the stronger party can impose its decision in
the conflict until the constitutional legislative authorities do away with the
evil through legislation. Therefore it is evident that if the individual
workman is to have any chance at all of winning through in the struggle he must
be grouped with his fellow workmen and present a united front before the
individual employer, who incorporates in his own person the massed strength of
the vested interests in the industrial or commercial undertaking which he
conducts.
Thus the trades unions can hope to inculcate
and strengthen a sense of social responsibility in workaday life and open the
road to practical results. In doing this they tend to remove those causes of
friction which are a continual source of discontent and complaint.
Blame for the fact that the trades unions do
not fulfil this much-desired function must be laid at the doors of those who
barred the road to legislative social reform, or rendered such a reform
ineffective by sabotaging it through their political influence.
The political bourgeoisie failed to
understand--or, rather, they did not wish to understand--the importance of the
trades union movement. The Social Democrats accordingly seized the advantage
offered them by this mistaken policy and took the labour movement under their
exclusive protection, without any protest from the other side. In this way they
established for themselves a solid bulwark behind which they could safely
retire whenever the struggle assumed a critical aspect. Thus the genuine
purpose of the movement gradually fell into oblivion, and was replaced by new
objectives. For the Social Democrats never troubled themselves to respect and
uphold the original purpose for which the trade unionist movement was founded.
They simply took over the Movement, lock, stock and barrel, to serve their own
political ends.
Within a few decades the Trades Union
Movement was transformed, by the expert hand of Social Democracy, from an
instrument which had been originally fashioned for the defence of human rights
into an instrument for the destruction of the national economic structure. The
interests of the working class were not allowed for a moment to cross the path
of this purpose; for in politics the application of economic pressure is always
possible if the one side be sufficiently unscrupulous and the other
sufficiently inert and docile. In this case both conditions were fulfilled.
By the beginning of the present century the
Trades Unionist Movement had already ceased to recognize the purpose for which
it had been founded. From year to year it fell more and more under the
political control of the Social Democrats, until it finally came to be used as
a battering-ram in the class struggle. The plan was to shatter, by means of
constantly repeated blows, the economic edifice in the building of which so
much time and care had been expended. Once this objective had been reached, the
destruction of the State would become a matter of course, because the State
would already have been deprived of its economic foundations. Attention to the
real interests of the working-classes, on the part of the Social Democrats,
steadily decreased until the cunning leaders saw that it would be in their
immediate political interests if the social and cultural demands of the broad
masses remained unheeded; for there was a danger that if these masses once felt
content they could no longer be employed as mere passive material in the
political struggle.
The gloomy prospect which presented itself to
the eyes of the CONDOTTIERI of the class warfare, if the discontent of the
masses were no longer available as a war weapon, created so much anxiety among
them that they suppressed and opposed even the most elementary measures of social
reform. And conditions were such that those leaders did not have to trouble
about attempting to justify such an illogical policy.
As the masses were taught to increase and
heighten their demands the possibility of satisfying them dwindled and whatever
ameliorative measures were taken became less and less significant; so that it
was at that time possible to persuade the masses that this ridiculous measure
in which the most sacred claims of the working-classes were being granted
represented a diabolical plan to weaken their fighting power in this easy way
and, if possible, to paralyse it. One will not be astonished at the success of
these allegations if one remembers what a small measure of thinking power the
broad masses possess.
In the bourgeois camp there was high
indignation over the bad faith of the Social Democratic tactics; but nothing
was done to draw a practical conclusion and organize a counter attack from the
bourgeois side. The fear of the Social Democrats, to improve the miserable conditions
of the working-classes ought to have induced the bourgeois parties to make the
most energetic efforts in this direction and thus snatch from the hands of the
class-warfare leaders their most important weapon; but nothing of this kind
happened.
Instead of attacking the position of their
adversaries the bourgeoisie allowed itself to be pressed and harried. Finally
it adopted means that were so tardy and so insignificant that they were
ineffective and were repudiated. So the whole situation remained just as it had
been before the bourgeois intervention; but the discontent had thereby become
more serious.
Like a threatening storm, the 'Free Trades
Union' hovered above the political horizon and above the life of each
individual. It was one of the most frightful instruments of terror that
threatened the security and independence of the national economic structure,
the foundations of the State and the liberty of the individual. Above all, it
was the 'Free Trades Union' that turned democracy into a ridiculous and scorned
phrase, insulted the ideal of liberty and stigmatized that of fraternity with
the slogan 'If you will not become our comrade we shall crack your skull'.”
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