This extremely significant decision was taken practi- cally without discussion.
The proposer of the resolution spoke for ten minutes and the seconder for seven minutes. Immediately the seconder sat down Mr. J. H. Thomas leaped to his feet but the President ruled him out of order. It might be supposed that the Congress had been very much impressed by M. Tomsky, the President of the All Russian Council of Trades Unions, who was present as a " fraternal delegate " and who had spoken at great length. We have seldom read anything balder than his .statement of the aims and achievements of the Russian rulers. " Our aim," he declared, " is to create a strong and effective International, a unity of the whole working classes in their struggle against the capitalistic class."
he Russian rulers, he went on to explain, had been accused of disguising their ideas but as a matter of fact they were proud of them.
" It was in the name of those ideas that in October, 1917, they gave up criticizing the capitalist class by resolutions and began criticizing them by arms. In 1917 they set free the bankers from the burden of the banks, they set free the employers from the burden of conducting the factories, they set free the landowners from the burden of the ownership of the land, they had set up .a-working-class State. and now, after nearly eight years of power,
they saw no reason why they should give up the ideas for which they had had to fight.' ,
That is a terribly witty glorification of robbery.
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