their Russian colleagues with horror or with satisfaction,
according to their views of events in Russia taken as a
whole. If they do not believe that there has been a social
revolution in Russia, they must regard the present position of
the Russian Trades Unions as the reward of a complete
defeat of Trade Unionism, in which a Capitalist government
has been able to lay violent hands on the organization which
was protecting the workers against it. If, on the other hand,
they believe that there has been a social revolution, so that
the class organized in Trades Unions is now, identical with
the governing, class (of employers, etc.) against which the
unions once struggled, then they must regard the present
position as a natural and satisfactory result of victory.


When I was in Moscow in the spring of this year the Russian
Trades Unions received a telegram from the Trades Union
Congress at Amsterdam, a telegram which admirably
illustrated the impossibility of separating judgment of the
present position of the Unions from judgments of the
Russian revolution as a whole. It encouraged the Unions "in
their struggle" and promised support in that struggle. The
Communists immediately asked "What struggle?
Against the capitalist system in Russia which does not exist?
Or against capitalist systems outside Russia?" They said that
either the telegram meant this latter only, or it meant that its
writers did not believe that there had been a social revolution
in Russia. The point is arguable. If one believes that
revolution is an impossibility, one can reason from that
belief and say that in spite of certain upheavals in Russia the