Profintern

Origins

The Profintern was prepared before its formal founding. In July 1920, at the behest of Comintern head Grigory Zinoviev, the Comintern's 2nd World Congress created a provisional International Trade Union Council (Mezhsovprof), including members of the Russian, Italian, British, Bulgarian, and French delegations. Soviet trade unionist Solomon Lozovsky headed it, with Alfred Rosmer of the French CGT and Tom Mann of Britain as deputies.

Founding congress and the syndicalist dispute

The founding congress opened in Moscow on 3 July 1921. Some 380 delegates attended, claiming to represent 17 million of the 40 million trade union members worldwide. The congress endorsed the dictatorship of the proletariat and rejected the principle that the labour movement should remain "neutral" in political struggle. But it was far from united: "Big Bill" Haywood of the Industrial Workers of the World and syndicalists in the French and Spanish delegations demanded full independence from the Comintern. They proved a small minority, and the congress adopted a resolution calling for "the closest possible link" with the Comintern.

Organizational tactics

The Profintern's strategy was not to split off separate "red" unions but to work inside existing mass unions in order to revolutionize them. Its founding congress declared that abandoning mass unions and leaving their memberships to conservative leaders "plays into the hands of the counter-revolutionary trade union bureaucracy" and must be categorically rejected. Admission nevertheless required a break with the social-democratic Amsterdam International. The tactic took form as industry-based International Propaganda Committees, 14 of which existed by August 1921. They proved ineffectual at changing members' opinions, and provoked expulsions, such as that of the Dutch Transport Workers' Federation from its international body in October 1921.

1922 peak, and the turns of 1924 and 1928

The 2nd Congress of November 1922 applied the Comintern's newly adopted united front policy to the trade union movement. 1922 proved the high-water mark of the Profintern's size and influence in Europe: the French CGT's attempt to expel its syndicalist members produced a full-scale split in which the majority affiliated to a "red" union, and a majority of Czech trade unionists similarly joined. A December 1922 unity conference at The Hague with representatives of the rival Amsterdam International ended in failure. At the 3rd Congress of July 1924, the attitude toward Social Democracy hardened with the declaration that "fascism and democracy are two forms of the bourgeois dictatorship," alongside continuing debate over unity. 1928 was the year of the policy turn: under the "third period" theory the 4th Congress of April 1928 adopted the building of separate "red" unions and struggle against reformist union federations, a line continued by the 5th Congress in 1930.

Colonial and regional work, and dissolution

The Profintern expanded outside Europe, establishing offices in Berlin (Central European Bureau), Paris (Latin Bureau), Bulgaria (Balkan Bureau) and Britain (British Bureau), then the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat and a Latin American secretariat in 1927. It founded the Confederación Sindical Latino-Americana and the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers in 1928. As union unity was restored in France, Czechoslovakia, the United States, Romania, India, Spain and Canada in 1935–1937, its national sections wound down, and it was dissolved in 1937 as the Comintern shifted to the Popular Front line.