Joe Knight Speech to the Comintern, 1921

In 1921, Ella Reeve Bloor, a leader of the U.S. communist movement, traveled to Winnipeg to persuade R.B. Russell, the leader of the One Big Union to attend the first Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions, but Russell declined. Bloor then went to Toronto and convinced Joe Knight, who was the OBU's main organizer in Ontario and a sympathizer of the underground communist movement in Canada, to attend.

He traveled to Moscow with the U.S. delegation, and attended sessions of both the Third Congress of the Communist International and the founding Congress of the RILU (also knows as Profintern, the Russian abbreviation). He appears in the Congress proceedings under the pseudonym "Morgan."

The Communist International’s leadership had proposed to the congress that Communists should seek to take part in major established trade unions, even if their leadership was in the hands of pro-capitalist officials. During the congress debate on this point, a number of delegates, including the renowned U.S. Communist Bill Haywood, questioned this view, counterposing an orientation to smaller unions such as the U.S.-based Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), that attempted to present a revolutionary trade union alternative.

Knight’s speech to the congress took place on July 7, 1921, the day after Haywood’s remarks. After criticizing Haywood for giving a false picture of the IWW, Knight argued that the Winnipeg General Strike experience confirmed the correctness of the Communist International leadership’s proposals for trade union work.

The transcript of his remarks is here presented for the first time in English.

Knight’s remarks are translated from the German stenographic transcript published in Protokoll des III. Weltkongresses der Kommunistischen Internationale, Hamburg: Verlag der Kommunistischen Internationale, 1921, vol. 2, pp. 850-855. The translation is by John Riddell.

Joe Knight

Comrades, the Third Communist International’s relationship to the trade union movement has particular significance for both the trade union and Communist movements in the United States and Canada. True, there is no workers’ movement in these countries capable of pulling the revolutionary masses along with it. I remind you of the facts that Comrade Haywood laid out in his speech, and indeed, they are facts of substance. It must be brought home to those who fight against this fraud that the organization described to you claims to be a workers’ organization not only of America, but of the whole world, and is extolled as a workers’ organization to the four corners of the earth. You should give no credence to Haywood’s empty talk from the podium of the Third International’s congress. The IWW’s empty self-advertising has caused us much harm in America. The organization has claimed to have 800,000 members. How imposing that sounds: 800,000 members and 15 years of activity! And yet we learn from this organization’s latest reports that they number no more than 15,000-16,000 members. I advise the KAPD members to study carefully the history of the IWW in America. That will give an idea of what the future holds in store for them.

Attempting to found an ideal organization in the framework of the slave system is already in itself childish and ridiculous. This is proven by the failure of all such attempts in the past. Is it not a bit preposterous to want to erect a new society within the “shell of the old”? I recently saw an interesting picture in one of their publications. It was a map of the IWW’s components. It was laid over a map of the world such that its middle landed on New York, and there we have the Industrial Workers of the World. I thought to myself, who then should sit in the middle? Either Daniel De Leon or William Haywood. The United States and Canada are flooded with the IWW’s pictures, cards, and drawings. But the slogan of their propaganda is not “overthrow capitalism” but “admire our consummate organizational forms.” That is the absolute truth, which cannot be refuted.

I have here with me a copy of an official publication of the IWW, from which I would like to read to you the following portion: “The IWW has not yet been able to establish direct contact with the Russian trade unions. We are nevertheless convinced that not a single voice will be raised against joining such a trade union International. On the other hand, however, we believe that only a few IWW members would be prepared to adhere directly to the political Third International.” Quite true. “We have always been just a workers’ organization. We still are, and hope to solve the entire social problem on the basis of industrial unionism. We want to build industrial federations as organs of production and distribution. The central councils of these industrial federations will serve as organs for local and regional administration. Industrial federations as well as central councils must be subordinate to the overall administration of the IWW. This is our proposal to solve the social problem. As soon as we include a political party in our program, whether or not it is communist, then we deviate from our principles and destroy our own independence. If we adopt the proposal of the Third International, we give up our leadership position in the world workers’ movement, and accept as our masters and leaders the members of a political party who have been recruited from all layers of society. The Industrial Workers of the World have tasted the fruit of intellectual independence and now feel themselves to be masters of their own fate. For this reason, they will never seriously accept such a proposal. Their goal is to establish workers’ rule. They have been working for this for fifteen years and have now become a world movement. They will hardly agree to a program that puts them under the tutelage of a political party.”

I took this excerpt from the publication of the Industrial Workers of the World. As you see, they fear the Third International because it jeopardizes the IWW’s world leadership. “World leadership”—with a membership of 15,000-16,000.

Let us take the main principle the IWW proceeds from—that of quitting the old federations. My experience permits me to speak on this with a certain authority. Someone or another will surely say: “You yourself belong to a dual union. You belong to the Canadian One Big Union.” That is true. I belong to this union, which does not compete with the IWW. However, the One Big Union does not presume to be a world organization. It sees itself only as a revolutionary facilitator. It was born out of specific conditions against which we were powerless.

Right at the beginning of the war, in 1914-15, the workers of Canada workers were driven into a corner not only by their government, but by their own reactionary officialdom. They were sacrificed to the military apparatus. What was the situation of the Socialist Party, the only revolutionary party in America at the time? It either had to go into the trade unions and participate in the workers’ struggles there, or try to continue its old educational and propaganda activity, at the risk of going under without having fulfilled its historic revolutionary role. So under the pressure of circumstances we entered the western Canadian trade unions. Revolutionaries did not go into the trade unions as individuals in order to bore from within. They did not trade their individuality for a good position. They were to some degree disciplined through the organization, which exercised control over its members.

From Vancouver to Winnipeg, a span of 2,000 miles, revolutionaries carried on continuous consultation by correspondence on policy. They discussed how to build the union, how to win over the masses, and how to elect delegates to congresses and conferences. Thanks to the tactic of “boring from within,” in the year 1917 the Socialists accounted for 51 delegates at the Ottawa congress, which represented a powerful fraction. That moment marked the beginning of a new history for the Canadian movement.

What was the outcome of this policy? Here certain opponents will raise their hands and call out, “You should not agree to compromises.” But what really happened? We had control of the council, that is, the old Winnipeg trade union council. The different trade unions had elected Socialists as delegates, who were active in the interests of the workers. They were revolutionaries. They were occupied not only with the parliamentary struggle; their goal was to utilize the movement for revolutionary ends.

Then came the strike, or as some here have put it, the “collective bargaining of the workers with the employers.” Some “collective bargaining”! The whole Winnipeg strike was actually tactics and revolution. We used something as commonplace as collective bargaining to unite the workers. The metalworkers went on strike. They struck to obtain better conditions. The employers wanted to negotiate only with individual groups, like the lead workers, the sewer workers, the boilermakers, and so on. But the metalworkers said, “No, we are going to unite. We will build a committee, and you have to negotiate with us collectively.”

The comrades from the council immediately seized the opportunity. “Collective bargaining on such a small scale? No. We must draw all the workers in the region into the metalworkers’ struggle.” Their work was so exemplary, they succeeded so splendidly in welding the workers together, that the Winnipeg strike of 1919 has become a milestone in the history of the American workers’ movement. The meaning of the action was understood by not only two or three but by all unions. All the workers joined the strike, even the public employees, the postal and telegraph employees. They all participated in the big general rally and in the strike, which lasted seven weeks. A situation was created in which we were only one step away from taking power. Nothing was done in Winnipeg except by order of the strike committee, which was no less powerful than the state itself. Naturally, Winnipeg is not all of Canada. But had the struggle in Winnipeg gripped all of Canada, it would certainly have ended in revolution. We had a reactionary state against us, and the masses did not follow us. The strike had to be broken off after most of our people had been imprisoned.

I ask you—do you not find the tactics of the Winnipeg revolutionaries to be correct? We had control of the organization. And if you have not succeeded in achieving this, you cannot blame the principles, or the rigidity of the organization, or the functionaries, but only yourselves for not being able to find the correct way to get to the workers. That is my experience. I pass it on to you Communists and trade unionists so you can benefit from it in the future.

I will take just another minute. There is still the question of the supremacy of the Communist party, which is feared by some. What nonsense! How do they want to take command of the unions? Can they perhaps go to the trade unions and say, “We have come in order to dominate you”?

No. We must work from within, take part in their struggles, win their trust, and then try to get elected by them to the most important posts in the movement. So I totally agree that we must go into the trade unions. I would add that we in the trade unions must maintain as close a connection with the Communist party as possible, because its goal is not to be active as a political/industrial organization, but rather to build a unified, great revolutionary army of the workers of the world to overthrow capitalism.