THE CHARTER OF AMIENS

THE CHARTER OF AMIENS

Endorsed by the Confederation Generale du Travail

(830 votes to 8) at its 1906 congress.

The Confederal Congress of Amiens reconfirms article 2 of the CGT constitution. The CGT unites, outside all political schools, all workers conscious of the struggle to be conducted for the disappearance of the wage-earning and employing classes.

The congress considers this declaration to be a recognition of the class struggle, which, on the economic plane, puts the workers in revolt against all forms of exploitation and oppression, material as well as moral, exercised by the capitalist class against the working class.

The Congress clarifies this theoretical affirmation by the following points:

In its day-to-day demands, syndicalism seeks the coordination of workers efforts, the increase of workers well-being by the achievement of immediate improvements, such as the reduction of working hours, the increase of wages, etc.

But this task is only one aspect of the work of syndicalism: it prepares for complete emancipation, which can be realised only by expropriating the capitalist class: it sanctions the general strike as its means of action and it maintains that the trade union, today an organisation of resistance, will in the future be the organisation of production and distribution, the basis of social reorganisation. The Congress declares that this double task, the day-to-day and the future task, dervies from the position of wage-earners, which weighs upon the working class and which charges all workers, whatever their political and philosophical opinions and inclinations, with the duty to belong to the essential organisation, the trade union;

The Congress consequently affirms, regarding individuals, the complete liberty of the unionist to participate, outsidehis union, in whatsoever forms of struggle conform to his political or philosophical views, and limits itself to requesting that he, in exchange, not introduce into his unions the opinions he holds outside it.

The Congress resolves, regarding organisations, that since economic action must be conducted directly against the employers for syndicalism to achieve its maximum effect, affiliated organisations insofar as they are trade unions should not concern themselves with the parties and sects which, outside and alongside the unions, may in complete liberty pursue social transformation.