Second International | The 1889 Congresses | Proceedings of First Congress (Possibilist)
The chairmen of this session are: citizens Baldomero Oller, Spanish, and Bataille, French; the assessors: citizens Cooper, English, and Rogier, from Algeria; the position of secretary is taken by citizen Augé.
After reading and adopting the minutes, Congress turns to the third item on the agenda: Combinations of employers and intervention by the public authorities.
Belgian delegate Laurent Werryken, from the Brussels Federation of the workers' Party, kicks off.
—83— The combination of the employers and capitalists is all-powerful in Belgium. The employers increase the price of the prime necessities for purely physiological life or lower wages and work at their pleasure and according to their needs. It is therefore necessary to strike the employers through the heart — their property — otherwise the employer will always be the master; he will fire any worker he deems dangerous, and, by hypocritically writing a conventional formula into the worker's record, he will prevent him from being hired anywhere else. In this way two or three hundred Belgian workers have been left indefinitely on the streets.
As for strikes, they are mostly unsuccessful; the last strike in the Quenast porphyry quarries, which began in February and which only ended yesterday, is the proof. The unfortunate strikers had to give in to hunger. And what could the Belgian workers' Party do, reduced to its own resources? Send 4 to 500 kilos of bread a day for the 1,500 strikers. It would have taken 3,000 francs. If the foreign workers' unions, setting aside a little of their resources, had supported their comrades, the employers would not have won a victory which was fatal not only for the workers in these Quenast quarries, but for all Belgian workers and all the workers of the world. The example has been made. The employer will push his demands to the point of starving the worker, who will always give in.
If on the contrary the national and international unions lent one other the sums necessary to make the strike last as long as needed, the capitalist employer would give in, and the overall pay of the workers would benefit.
So let us unite, unionize, support each other, that is everything.
Citizen J.-B. Nic, of the study circle of Butte-Montmartre, said that the Employers' Institute —84— should be replaced by the action of the State, the Department, and the Municipality, which must take back under their management enterprises ceded to exploitative concessionaires. He cites an example of the casual way that certain employers and even foremen or site managers receive members of the municipal council who want to see firsthand the state of municipal works sites.
The state and the municipality must manage the work themselves, without haggling, at the rate set by the chambres syndicales, and, as a temporary measure, the employers must also stick to these prices on pain of punitive sanctions.
Citizen Lavy explains how it has come about that municipal councilors do not have the right to inspect City or private work. He says that the City Council is not the sole and absolute master of drafting specifications; but he adds that there is a municipal comittee pre-assessing eligibility for contractors, and that is where the list of contractors the city council does not want to grant anything to is fixed, even before any submission.
Citizen Georges Deaw, delegate of the carpenters and joiners of London, tables the following resolution:
Congress expresses the opinion that laws should be made by the various nationalities so that no one receives a government or municipal contract unless the concessionaires declare that they will pay their workers the wages allowed by the trade unions and will conform to the number of working hours laid down by the professional bodies.
The delegate adds that in London workers who work for the state are paid 15 or 20 centimes less per hour than workmen working for employers, thanks to rebates. He recalls that citizeness Besant and —85— citizen Cooper, here present, members of the purchasing and maintenance committee for secular schools (the School board), only buy from or give work to employers who guarantee decent wages to their workers. In the County Council (the new London City Council), of which citizen Burns is a member, the same resolution nas been adopted.
The delegate insists that these prohibitive conditions be included in the specifications for contractors.
In the municipal transport service across the Thames, for example, the sailors only work eight hours. (Applause.)
Delegate Racine (sculpture) believes that before addressing the public authorities, the workers have to be in agreement to limit the effectiveness of employers' combinations; the workers must organize nationally first, and only then in international unions. In the event of a strike in one place, the related chambres syndicales in all countries should be notified and act accordingly.
Next, citizen Allemane, rapporteur, proposes the following resolutions on behalf of the 3rd committee:
Considering that we will not see a real end to combinations of employers and financiers, both national and international, until the day when the universal proletariat is well enough organized to seize the means of production and organize the production and exchange of products in the best interests of the human community;
Considering, on the other hand, that it will take a long time for the workers to achieve such organization, and we should issue notice as soon as possible;
Congress decides:
The workers' organizations in each country must put the public authorities on notice to oppose, through existing or future laws, all combinations or rings, the aim of which is to corner the market whether in raw materials, or in essentials, or in labour.
—86— Citizen Burrows,[1] an American delegate, explains that one of the special forms of cornering markets, the trust, is a capitalist combination intended to secure large profits by creating a single market; for example, for salt there was only one buyer, one seller, and one manufacturer.
The trust has gigantic power; but at the same time it acts so strongly on the economic order of things that it stimulates progress in machinery and lowers cost prices.
For example: the oil that 3,000 American manufacturers used to process is today in the hands of a single capitalist who has ruined all the others.
The establishment of these de facto monopolies is the result of capitalist evolution.
By downgrading competition, the so-called law on which the "economists" of the liberal school based their entire system, these monopolies leave the workers faced with a single industrialist who has them in his power. This shows them that there are only two ways to break free: one, transitory, cooperation; the other, definitive, the final term of social evolution: public service.
The great battle is now being fought above all against the petty capitalists, the petty bourgeoisie, who are thrown back every day into the proletariat.
If we want to use laws to prevent the fatal ruin of small industrialists, that might suggest to the employers the idea of demanding laws to prevent action by workers.[2]
Once the whole of capital is in the hands of a minority so small that it is visible to all, the social problem will be simplified, just as the political problem would be simplified if there were only one monarch.
He therefore proposes to append the following additional paragraph to the resolutions under proposal: —87—
Considering, on the other hand, the immense difficulties, in the present state of capitalism, of preventing the formation of trusts by law.
Congress urges workers to make all possible efforts to organize themselves in such a way that when the time comes they can seize the means of production and distribution cornered by the present monopolists, in order to use them for the well-being of the nation and not for a single privileged class.
Citizen J.-B. Clément believes that employer combinations, which take other forms in France, are dangerous enough for the public authorities to apply existing legislation. He proposes laws to prosecute and punish employers who obstruct union organization:
Employers are prohibited from hiring foreign workers to replace striking indigenous workers.
He further demands that aid be distributed by the Departments to provide resources to workers on strike; that the public authorities intervene in favour of the workers whenever they are threatened by an employers' combination, and that it be prohibited to put armed forces at the disposal of the employers; that employers should not be able to pay foreign workers lower wages than indigenous workers; that articles 414 and 415 of the French Penal Code relating to combinations be repealed and that the tendering system be replaced by regulated labour; that prosecutions be ordered against monopolizers[3]; that public authorities announce the cancellation of contracts which have yet again alienated public property, abolish monopolies — transformed into public services — and finally that the law on the International be repealed.
After a short discussion, the resolutions of the —88— Committee, amended by Citizen Burrows, are carried unanimously.
The session ends at one o'clock.
1. There is no American named Burrows in the delegate list; the only Burrows listed is Herbert from the British SDF. It seems likely that this is a mistake for Paul Bowens.
2. Similar debates on whether the Socialist parties should aim to protect small farmers or hasten their demise were taking place in the Danish and German parties in particular.
3. 'Monopolizer' meant in the sense of people who corner the market in something, as in the medieval offence of engrossing, not in the more modern sense used by Burrows/Bowen.