The most important task of the shop cell is to concentrate the
non-Party active workers in the shop compactly around itself. To
organize the shop, the dept.--this is the task of the shop cell,
so that every shop of a factory may act as an organized force. How
can this be done? It can be done only provided the shop cell works
on the foundation of the defense of the everyday interests of the
working class, that every Communist in every shop organizes the
mass of the workers of that shop around every question of everyday
struggle of the working class. For example, there is a foreman in
the shop who behaves very roughly to the workers. The cell must
organize the whole mass of the workers around the demand that this
foreman should be dismissed. The cell should create a committee
of action, organize elections of shop stewards who should be
delegate-representatives of all the workers in the shop, in order
to effect the driving out of the foreman. Active Communists among
these shop stewards should form the leading core, but non-Party
workers who are respected by the mass of the workers, should also
be drawn in, including even individual Social-Democratic workers
who have declared their readiness to fight for the removal of this
foreman, in spite of all orders and threats from their leaders. If
the shop cell succeeds in creating such a directing center around
concrete tasks affecting the interests of all the workers of the
factory, then we can say that this shop cell has worked well: it
has become the revolutionary leader of the workers of a given
shop. A cell which is every day closely bound up with the working
masses on questions of the defense of their closest interests
and which enjoys the full confidence of the workers in the cause
of the defense of their interest, will retain that confidence in
the future, in more responsible actions and at most responsible
moments of the struggle for power.
The question of the creation of such support points for
revolutionary class struggle in the shops and also on a general
factory scale is the most important question in the work of our
factory cells. In the first place the question of the so-called
revolutionary shop stewards is bound up with this. This slogan was
issued by the Communist Party of Germany in 1929. At present it is
extremely real for all capitalist countries. Revolutionary shop
stewards--that means those workers elected by the revolutionary
section of the workers of the factory at their workshop of general
factory meetings, who are the organizers of the united front from
below in the struggle for the defense of the closest interests
of the workers of the given factory against the attacks of the
employers and against the leaders of the Social Democratic and
reformist trade unions.
So the factory cell can only become a strong Party organization
capable of acting efficiently, and connected with the masses,
when it operates on the basis of strong shop cells. Therefore the
strong shop cell is the most important organizational guarantee
for the good working of the general factory cell. The shop cell in
its turn will only work well when it is able to organize the whole
mass of the workers of its shop around the issues of the class
struggle, which are near to and understood by all the workers of
the shop, including non-Party workers and members of the reformist
unions and members of the Social-Democratic Party. Shop cells
should carry on their mass work within the shop on the basis of
the tactic of the united front from below through revolutionary
shop stewards. Revolutionary shop stewards in their turn most
include among their number the most active Communists, members of
the shop cells, but in addition individual revolutionary-minded
Social-Democratic workers and non-Party advanced workers must be
drawn into this work who are ready not to listen to their leaders
in the struggle against the employers and their agents. When the
shop cell succeeds in creating the institution of revolutionary
shop stewards leading their everyday struggle, then no police can
drive the Party organization from the factory, then, in order
to drive the Party organization out of the factory it will be
necessary to shut the factory down, to dismiss all the workers and
recruit a new staff of workers.