First International Syndicalist Congress - National Reports and Declaration of Principles

National Reports and Declaration of Principles

Even after that issue was resolved, the congress did not turn its attention to the points raised by Kater. First, it discussed and condemned the police's treatment of Portuguese syndicalists and the British government's actions in the Dublin Lockout. Next, a series of national reports gave delegates the opportunity to learn about their allies' struggles in their respective countries. The most contentious of these reports were the two submitted by French unions. The first came from delegates, who were members of the CGT. They claimed that the French "revolutionary organization preserved its purely revolutionary aspect and refused to accept the interference of Parliamentarians" and remained "a driving force against militarism, patriotism, the State, and capitalism, and anything which prevented the march of the movement", despite the fact that the organization as a whole had decided to abstain from the London congress. A delegate representing several union that were not aligned with the CGT disagreed.

It wasn't until the fourth day that the debate on the declaration of principles started. On the evening before, a resolution committee had discussed and revised a draft submitted by the Dutch. The committee's proposal was then debated by all delegates. The most controversial part of the draft was a sentence stating that "the proletariat can only effectively influence the state by methods of direct action". Opponents of this sentence held that the state should be ignored and that class struggle could only occur on economic grounds. Its proponents, however, claimed that the proletariat lived under the political tyranny of the state just as it lived under the economic tyranny of capitalism and that neither could be ignored. De Ambris further complicated the discussion by calling for the phrase "political and economic" be replaced by "capitalist system" throughout the text. The discussion on this question was prolonged and lively. It became a debate on the syndicalist rejection of statism. De Ambris's support eventually ebbed and he gave in; the declaration that was finally unanimously accepted contained a number of references to the overthrow of the state.

This declaration rejected "capitalist slavery and State oppression", from which, as it claims, "the working class of every country suffers". According to the document these wrongs, are "a necessary result of private property in the means of production and distribution". As a solution, the congress "declares for the socialization of such property by constructing and developing our Trade Unions in such a way as to fit them for the administration of these means in the interest of the entire community." However, the syndicalists felt "Trade Unions will only succeed when they cease to be divided by political and religious differences by using Direct Action".