Free Association of German Trade Unions

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FVdG

Free Association of German Trade Unions
Freie Vereinigung deutscher Gewerkschaften
Founded	1897
Date dissolved	1919
Re-founded as	Free Workers' Union of Germany
Members	1897: 6,803 1900: 19,752 1903: 17,061 1906: 16,662 1910: 6,454 1914: 6,000
Country	Germany
Key people	Chairmen of the central commitee: Fritz Kater (1897-1901) Jonny Hinrichsen (1901- )
Office location	Berlin

The Free Association of German Trade Unions (German: Freie Vereinigung deutscher Gewerkschaften; abbreviated FVdG) was a radical trade union federation in Imperial and the beginning of Weimar Germany.

Contents 1 Localist roots 2 Founding 3 Early years 4 Radicalization and expulsion from the SPD 5 World War I 6 Re-founding as FAUD 7 Notes 8 Bibliography

[edit] Localist roots

The FVdG's history goes back to the so-called Localists. These arose out of the Free Trade Union movement allied with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which was still named Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) at the time. While the Anti-Socialist Laws were enforced the trade unions were forced to organize only locally giving every local trade union a large amount of autonomy. These only communicated via intermediaries, who worked illegally or semi-legally.^[1] After the laws were repealed in 1890, the General Committee of the Trade Unions of Germany was founded on November 17 as a central labor authority at a conference in Berlin. In 1892, the Trade Union Congress of Halberstadt was held to organize the local unions under the committee.^[2] The Localists, however, wanted to retain a lot of the changes that had been made to adapt to illegality. For one, they were opposed to having separate organizations for political and economic matters, i.e. the party and the trade union. But they especially wanted to keep their grassroots democratic structures. They wanted local trade unions to be networked by delegates, rather than ruled centrally, and were wary of any bureaucratic structures.^[3] In Halberstadt, the Localists' proposals were rejected, so they refused to join the centralized trade union. This was not meant to symbolize a renunciation of social democracy, the Localists rather considered themselves to be an avant garde within the social democratic movement in Germany.^[4]

The Localists' main stronghold was Berlin, though unions in the rest of the empire also existed. Masons, carpenters, and some metall working professions, especially those requiring a higher degree of qualification like coppersmith or gold and silver workers, were represented in high numbers. The Free Association of German Masons was founded in 1892, that of the carpenters as soon as 1887. By 1891, there were at least 20,000 metal workers in Localist trade unions, just as many as in the centralist German Metalworkers' Union.^[5]

[edit] Founding

At a congress in 1897 in Halle, the Localists founded a national organization of their own to network the individual local trade unions under the name Representatives Centralization of Germany (Vertrauensmänner-Zentralisation Deutschlands). The congress was originally supposed to take place a year earlier, but a lack interest in the idea forced it to be postponed. It was decided to found a five-person central commission seated in Berlin to organize political actions and to aid in communication between local organizations. It was also supposed to help raise financial support for strikes. Fritz Kater was became the chairman of the commission. The decision to found a newspaper also came at the first congress of what would become the FVdG. The name Solidarität (Solidarity) was chosen, but it was changed to Einigkeit (Unity) in the following year. It appeared fortnightly until being published on a weekly basis from 1898.^[6]

The decision to found this national organization was likely the result of several factors: for one, the central trade unions continued to become increasingly reformist and centralist; secondly the Localists' gained confidence from the involvement in the strike of dock workers in Hamburg in 1896/97;^[7] thirdly, an erosion - for example, the Berlin metal workers rejoined DMV in 1897 - within the movement forced the it to react somehow.^[8] In 1897, the unions represented at the congress had a total of 6,803 members represented by 37 delegates. Almost two thirds of these came from Berlin or Halle. Almost half of the delegates worked in the construction industry. The remaining fourteen delegates came from really specialized professions.^[9]

The Representatives Centralization's relationship to SPD was ambivalent. The organization was allied with the SPD and supported the Erfurt Program.^[10] At the same time the party was mostly opposed to its founding and called upon its members to re-join the central trade unions. The FVdG continued to be afiliated with the SPD, which in turn tolerated it, because it was afraid a split would lead to a large loss of members. At the same time the FDVG stated it would only re-join the central trade unions as the SPD wanted if the cetral unions would accept its organizational principles.^[11]

[edit] Early years

The early years of the Representatives Centralization of Germany were dominated by a discussion on how to finance strikes by the individual local trade unions. The problem was how local unions could retain their autonomy, while not being harmed by their lack of financial self-reliance. Originally, all support between the local organizations had been voluntary. But this system became more and more impractical, especially as the turn of the century saw numerous large strikes and employers started being more offensive often locking out workers. In 1899, the central committee felt it had to support a strike in Braunschweig and had to take out a loan to this extent, which was payed off using the dues and with help from the Berlin unions. In the following year, the central commitee incurred 8,000 Marks in debts by supporting strikes. These were payed off in part by the SPD, while the rest was apportioned to the local unions.^[12]

This practice soon led to problems. Therefore a complex system to financially support strikes was introduced in 1900, which was, however, replaced in 1901, because it was found to be impractical. The system adopted in 1901 had both every local organization and the central committee create strike funds. The local unions would receive support for strikes from Berlin under certain circumstances and the central committee's fund would then be re-filled by all member organizations in amounts proportional to their membership and the average wage of the members. This system was, however, also problematic, because it penalized the larger, wealthier unions, especially the construction workers in Berlin, who had higher wages, but also higher costs of living, which were not taken into account. From 1901 to 1903, a lot of small organizations joined the federation while the membership receded, because this system of financial support favored these smaller unions. In 1903, at the same congress in Berlin, which the federation got the name Free Association of German Trade Unions at, it was decided to return to the old system of voluntary solidarity, which remained in place until 1914. The central committee made sure that no union contributed less than they could. Often it had to resort to threatening unions with expulsion in order to raise funds for a strike, so the support was not always completely voluntary. Fritz Kater once called this system a dictatorship that was necessary for the movement.^[13]

[edit] Radicalization and expulsion from the SPD

From 1901, but especially after the First Russian Revolution in 1905, there was a debate within the SPD about the role of general strikes in the fight of the socialist movement. The FVdG held the view that the general strike must be a weapon in the hands of the proletariat and the last step before the socialist revolution. The mainstream opinion in the party, however, was that the general strike should not be used to provoke the state, but rather to defend political rights, especially the right to vote, if the state should decide to abolish them. This shows that at the time most of the SPD wanted to work mostly through parliaments, while the Localists wanted to act as a revolutionary economic organization. The dispute further alienated them from the party.^[14]

At the 1904 party convention, August Bebel, who had always favored a stronger role of the SPD-afiliated unions, proposed a resolution, which would require all members of the party to also be part of central trade unions for their professions. This meant that all FVdG members had to either leave the party or the trade union. At the FVdG congress of 1906, the organization decided against re-joining the central trade unions, which led some of the masons, carpenters, and construction workers in the union to leave the FVdG in 1907 to avoid being expelled from the SPD, saying the organization was "taking a path, which would certainly lead to fight with the SPD and to syndicalism and anarchism."^[15]

[edit] World War I

During World War I, the FVdG refused to support the German efforts in the war, because it regarded support for a national war to be incompatible with its workers' internationalism, unlike the SPD and the Free Trade Unions, whose Burgfrieden politics meant they subordinated their opposition to the national cause. The FVdG was the only labor organization in the country to do so.^[16] This soon led to government repression; the FVdG's two major newspapers, Der Pionier and Die Einigkeit, were banned. The trade union advised its members against reckless antimilitarist gestures, but refused to defend the war.^[17] It criticized the wave of nationalism, which sweapt Germany and Europe, and protested against the hostility towards foreign workers in the country. At the same time the work of the FVdG was severely limited by the Burgfrieden. Strikes were not possible, except for a few minor cases. Therefore most of the FVdG activity consisted in keeping the union's structures alive while at the same time constantly criticizing the other union's cooperation with employers and the German state.^[18] With the return of peace the FVdG proudly noted it was the only trade union that did not have to adjust its program to the new political conditions because it had remained loyal to its anti-state and internationalist principles.^[19]

[edit] Re-founding as FAUD

After World War I and the November Revolution, the Free Association of German Trade Unions became the Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD), which was explicitly anarcho-syndicalist, at a congress in September of 1919. The FAUD's members did not consider this a startup of a new trade union, but rather a renaming of the old one, which was supposed to express, that the previous fights would now be continued in one union rather that in an association of unions, i.e. a re-organization of the FVdG.^[20]

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography

• Bock, Hans-Manfred (1989). "Anarchosyndikalismus in Deutschland. Eine Zwischenbilanz" (in German). Internationale wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 25: 293-358. 
• Müller, Dirk H. [1985]. Gewerkschaftliche Versammlungsdemokratie und Arbeiterdelegierte vor 1918: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Lokalismus, des Syndikalismus und der entstehenden Rätebewegung (in German). Berlin: Colloqium Verlag. ISBN 3-7678-0650-9. 
• Rübner, Hartmut (2005). "Eine Analyse des revolutionären Syndikalismus in Deutschland" (in German). Lecture held on June 17, 2005 in Berlin. Retrieved March 21, 2007.
• Schuster, Dieter (2000). Chronologie der deutschen Gewerkschaftsbewegung von den Anfängen bis 1918 (German). Retrieved on 11, 2006. Retrieved on 11, 2006. Retrieved on October 2006.
• Thorpe, Wayne (June 2000). "Keeping the Faith: The German Syndicalists in the First World War". Central European History 33 (Number 2): 195-216. 
• Vogel, Angel [1977]. Der deutsche Anarcho-Syndikalismus: Genese und Theorie einer vergessenen Bewegung (in German). Berlin: Karin Kramer Verlag. ISBN 3897560706.