Dictatorship vs. Democracy Part 12

The trade unions must organize scientific and technical educational work on the widest possible scale, so that every worker in his own branch of industry should find the impulses for theoretical work of the brain, while the latter should again return him to labor, perfecting it and making him more productive. The press as a whole must fall into line with the economic problems of the country--not in that sense alone in which this is being done at present--_i.e._, not in the sense of a mere general agitation in favor of a revival of labor--but in the sense of the discussion and the weighing of concrete economic problems and plans, ways and means of their solution, and, most important of all, the testing and criticism of results already achieved. The newspapers must from day to day follow the production of the most important factories and other enterprises, registering their successes and failures encouraging some and pillorying others....

Russian capitalism, in consequence of its lateness, its lack of independence, and its resulting parasitic features, has had much less time than European capitalism technically to educate the laboring ma.s.ses, to train and discipline them for production. That problem is now in its entirety imposed upon the industrial organizations of the proletariat. A good engineer, a good mechanic, and a good carpenter, must have in the Soviet Republic the same publicity and fame as. .h.i.therto was enjoyed by prominent agitators, revolutionary fighters, and, in the most recent period, the most courageous and capable commanders and commissaries. Greater and lesser leaders of technical development must occupy the central position in the public eye. Bad workers must be made ashamed of doing their work badly.

We still retain, and for a long time will retain, the system of wages.

The further we go, the more will its importance become simply to guarantee to all members of society all the necessaries of life; and thereby it will cease to be a system of wages. But at present we are not sufficiently rich for this. Our main problem is to raise the quant.i.ty of products turned out, and to this problem all the remainder must be subordinated. In the present difficult period the system of wages is for us, first and foremost, not a method for guaranteeing the personal existence of any separate worker, but a method of estimating what that individual worker brings by his labor to the Labor Republic.

Consequently, wages, in the form both of money and of goods, must be brought into the closest possible touch with the productivity of individual labor. Under capitalism, the system of piece-work and of grading, the application of the Taylor system, etc., have as their object to increase the exploitation of the workers by the squeezing-out of surplus value. Under Socialist production, piece-work, bonuses, etc., have as their problem to increase the volume of social product, and consequently to raise the general well-being. Those workers who do more for the general interest than others receive the right to a greater quant.i.ty of the social product than the lazy, the careless, and the disorganizers.

Finally, when it rewards some, the Labor State cannot but punish others--those who are clearly infringing labor solidarity, undermining the common work, and seriously impairing the Socialist renaissance of the country. Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a necessary weapon of the Socialist dictators.h.i.+p.

All the measures enumerated above--and together with them a number of others--must a.s.sist the development of rivalry in the sphere of production. Without this we shall never rise above the average, which is a very unsatisfactory level. At the bottom of rivalry lies the vital instinct--the struggle for existence--which in the bourgeois order a.s.sumes the character of compet.i.tion. Rivalry will not disappear even in the developed Socialist society; but with the growing guarantee of the necessary requirements of life rivalry will acquire an ever less selfish and purely idealist character. It will express itself in a striving to perform the greatest possible service for one's village, county, town, or the whole of society, and to receive in return renown, grat.i.tude, sympathy, or, finally, just internal satisfaction from the consciousness of work well done. But in the difficult period of transition, in conditions of the extreme shortage of material goods, and the as yet insufficiently developed state of social solidarity, rivalry must inevitably be to a greater or less degree bound up with a striving to guarantee for oneself one's own requirements.

This, comrades, is the sum of resources at the disposal of the Labor State in order to raise the productivity of labor. As we see, there is no ready-made solution here. We shall find it written in no book. For there could not be such a book. We are now only beginning, together with you, to write that book in the sweat and the blood of the workers. We say: working men and women, you have crossed to the path of regulated labor. Only along that road will you build the Socialist society. Before you there lies a problem which no one will settle for you: the problem of increasing production on new social foundations.

Unless you solve that problem, you will perish. If you solve it, you will raise humanity by a whole head.

LABOR ARMIES

The question of the application of armies to labor purposes, which has acquired amongst us an enormous importance from the point of view of principle, was approached by us by the path of practice, not at all on the foundations of theoretical consideration. On certain borders of Soviet Russia, circ.u.mstances had arisen which had left considerable military forces free for an indefinite period. To transfer them to other active fronts, especially in the winter, was difficult in consequence of the disorder of railway transport. Such, for example, proved the position of the Third Army, distributed over the provinces of the Ural and the Ural area. The leading workers of that army, understanding that as yet it could not be demobilized, themselves raised the question of its transference to labor work. They sent to the centre a more or less worked-out draft decree for a labor army.

The problem was novel and difficult. Would the Red soldiers work?

Would their work be sufficiently productive? Would it pay for itself?

In this connection there were doubts even in our own ranks. Needless to say, the Mensheviks struck up a chorus of opposition. The same Abramovich, at the Congress of Economic Councils called in January or the beginning of February--that is to say, when the whole affair was still in draft stage--foretold that we should suffer an inevitable failure, for the whole undertaking was senseless, an Arakcheyev Utopia, etc., etc. We considered the matter otherwise. Of course the difficulties were great, but they were not distinguishable in principle from many other difficulties of Soviet constructive work.

Let us consider in fact what was the organism of the Third Army. Taken all in all, one rifle division and one cavalry division--a total of fifteen regiments--and, in addition, special units. The remaining military formations had already been transformed to other armies and fronts. But the apparatus of military administration had remained untouched as yet, and we considered it probable that in the spring we should have to transfer it along the Volga to the Caucasus front, against Denikin, if by that time he were not finally broken. On the whole, in the Third Army there remained about 120,000 Red soldiers in administrative posts, inst.i.tutions, military units, hospitals, etc. In this general ma.s.s, mainly peasant in its composition, there were reckoned about 16,000 Communists and members of the organization of sympathizers--to a considerable extent workers of the Ural. In this way, in its composition and structure, the Third Army represented a peasant ma.s.s bound together into a military organization under the leaders.h.i.+p of the foremost workers. In the army there worked a considerable number of military specialists, who carried out important military functions while remaining under the general control of the Communists. If we consider the Third Army from this general point of view, we shall see that it represents in miniature the whole of Soviet Russia. Whether we take the Red Army as a whole, or the organization of the Soviet regime in the county, province, or the whole Republic, including the economic organs, we shall find everywhere the same scheme of organization: millions of peasants drawn into new forms of political, economic, and social life by the organized workers, who occupy a controlling position in all spheres of Soviet construction.

To posts requiring special knowledge, we send experts of the bourgeois school. They are given the necessary independence, but control over their work remains in the hands of the working cla.s.s, in the person of its Communist Party. The introduction of general labor service is again only conceivable for us as the mobilization of mainly peasant labor-power under the guidance of the most advanced workers. In this way there were not, and could not, be any obstacles in principle in the way of application of the army to labor. In other words, the opposition in principle to labor armies, on the part of those same Mensheviks, was in reality opposition to "compulsory" labor generally, and consequently against general labor service and against Soviet methods of economic reconstruction as a whole. This opposition did not trouble us a great deal.

Naturally, the military apparatus as such is not adapted directly to the process of labor. But we had no illusions about that. Control had to remain in the hands of the appropriate economic organs; the army supplied the necessary labor-power in the form of organized, compact units, suitable in the ma.s.s for the execution of the simplest h.o.m.ogeneous types of work: the freeing of roads from snow, the storage of fuel, building work, organization of cartage, etc., etc.

To-day we have already had considerable experience in the work of the labor application of the army, and can give not merely a preliminary or hypothetical estimate. What are the conclusions to be drawn from that experience? The Mensheviks have hastened to draw them. The same Abramovich, again, announced at the Miners' Congress that we had become bankrupt, that the labor armies represent parasitic formations, in which there are 100 officials for every ten workers. Is this true?

No. This is the irresponsible and malignant criticism of men who stand on one side, do not know the facts, collect only fragments and rubbish, and are concerned in any way and every way either to declare our bankruptcy or to prophecy it. In reality, the labor armies have not only not gone bankrupt, but, on the contrary, have had important successes, have displayed their fidelity, are developing and are becoming stronger and stronger. Just those prophets have gone bankrupt who foretold that nothing would come of the whole plan, that n.o.body would begin to work, and that the Red soldiers would not go to the labor front but would simply scatter to their homes.

These criticisms were dictated by a philistine scepticism, lack of faith in the ma.s.ses, lack of faith in bold initiative, and organization. But did we not hear exactly the same criticism, at bottom, when we had recourse to extensive mobilizations for military problems? Then too we were frightened, we were terrified by stories of ma.s.s desertion, which was absolutely inevitable, it was alleged, after the imperialist war. Naturally, desertion there was, but considered by the test of experience it proved not at all on such a ma.s.s scale as was foretold; it did not destroy the army; the bond of morale and organization--Communist voluntarism and State compulsion combined--allowed us to carry out mobilizations of millions to carry through numerous formations and redistributions, and to solve the most difficult military problems. In the long run, the army was victorious.

In relation to labor problems, on the foundation of our military experience, we awaited the same results; and we were not mistaken. The Red soldiers did not scatter when they were transformed from military to labor service, as the sceptics prophesied. Thanks to our splendidly-organized agitation, the transference itself took place amidst great enthusiasm. True, a certain portion of the soldiers tried to leave the army, but this always happens when a large military formation is transferred from one front to another, or is sent from the rear to the front--in general when it is shaken up--and when potential desertion becomes active. But immediately the political sections, the press, the organs of struggle with desertion, etc., entered into their rights; and to-day the percentage of deserters from our labor armies is in no way higher than in our armies on active service.

The statement that the armies, in view of their internal structure, can produce only a small percentage of workers, is true only to a certain extent. As far as the Third Army is concerned, I have already pointed out that it retained its complete apparatus of administration side by side with an extremely insignificant number of military units.

While we--owing to military and not economic considerations--retained untouched the staff of the army and its administrative apparatus, the percentage of workers produced by the army was actually extremely low.

From the general number of 120,000 Red soldiers, 21% proved to be employed in administrative and economic work; 16% were engaged in daily detail work (guards, etc.) in connection with the large number of army inst.i.tutions and stores; the number of sick, mainly typhus cases, together with the medico-sanitary personnel, was about 13%; about 25% were not available for various reasons (detachment, leave, absence without leave, etc.). In this way, the total personnel available for work const.i.tutes no more than 23%; this is the maximum of what can be drawn for labor from the given army. Actually, at first, there worked only about 14%, mainly drawn from the two divisions, rifle and cavalry, which still remained with the army.

But as soon as it was clear that Denikin had been crushed, and that we should not have to send the Third Army down the Volga in the spring to a.s.sist the forces on the Caucasus front, we immediately entered upon the disbanding of the clumsy army apparatus and a more regular adaptation of the army inst.i.tutions to problems of labor. Although this work is not yet complete, it has already had time to give some very significant results. At the present moment (March, 1920), the former Third Army gives about 38% of its total composition as workers.

As for the military units of the Ural military area working side by side with it, they already provide 49% of their number as workers.

This result is not so bad, if we compare it with the amount of work done in factories and workshops, amongst which in the case of many quite recently, in the case of some even to-day, absence from work for legal and illegal reasons reached 50% and over.[9] To this one must add that workers in factories and workshops are not infrequently a.s.sisted by the adult members of their family, while the Red soldiers have no auxiliary force but themselves.

[9] Since that time this percentage has been considerably lowered (June, 1920).

If we take the case of the 19-year-olds, who have been mobilized in the Ural with the help of the military apparatus--princ.i.p.ally for wood fuel work--we shall find that, out of their general number of over 30,000, over 75% attend work. This is already a very great step forward. It shows that, using the military apparatus for mobilization and formation, we can introduce such alterations in the construction of purely labor units as guarantee an enormous increase in the percentage of those who partic.i.p.ate directly in the material process of production.

Finally, in connection with the productivity of military labor, we can also now judge on the basis of experience. During the first days, the productivity of labor in the princ.i.p.al departments of work, in spite of the great moral enthusiasm, was in reality very low, and might seem completely discouraging when one reads the first labor communiques.

Thus, for the preparation of a cubic sazhen of wood, at first, one had to reckon thirteen to fifteen labor days; whereas the standard--true, rarely attained at the present day--is reckoned at three days. One must add, in addition, that artistes in this sphere are capable, under favorable conditions, of producing one cubic sazhen per day per man.

What happened in reality? The military units were quartered far from the forest to be felled. In many cases it was necessary to march to and from work 6 to 8 versts, which swallowed up a considerable portion of the working day. There were not sufficient axes and saws on the spot. Many Red soldiers, born in the plains, did not know the forests, had never felled trees, had never chopped or sawed them up. The provincial and county Timber Committees were very far from knowing at first how to use the military units, how to direct them where they were required, how to equip them as they should be equipped. It is not wonderful that all this had as its result an extremely low level of productivity. But after the most crying defects in organization were eliminated, results were achieved that were much more satisfactory.

Thus, according to the most recent data, in that same First Labor Army, four and a half working days are now devoted to one sazhen of wood, which is not so far from the present standard. What is most comforting, however, is the fact that the productivity of labor systematically increases, in the measure of the improvement of its conditions.

While as to what can be achieved in this respect, we have a brief but very rich experience in the Moscow Engineer Regiment. The Chief Board of Military Engineers, which controlled this experiment, began with fixing the standard of production as three working days for a cubic sazhen of wood. This standard soon proved to be surpa.s.sed. In January there were spent on a cubic sazhen of wood two and one-third working days; in February, 2.1; in March, 1.5; which represents an exclusively high level of productivity. This result was achieved by moral influence, by the exact registration of the individual work of each man, by the awakening of labor pride, by the distribution of bonuses to the workers who produced more than the average result--or, to speak in the language of the trade unions, by a sliding scale adaptable to all individual changes in the productivity of labor. This experiment, carried out almost under laboratory conditions, clearly indicates the path along which we have to go in future.

At present we have functioning a series of labor armies--the First, the Petrograd, the Ukrainian, the Caucasian, the South Volga, the Reserve. The latter, as is known, a.s.sisted considerably to raise the traffic capacity of the Kazan-Ekaterinburg Railway; and, wherever the experiment of the adaptation of military units for labor problems was carried out with any intelligence at all, the results showed that this method is unquestionably live and correct.

The prejudice concerning the inevitably parasitic nature of military organization--under each and every condition--proves to be shattered.

The Soviet Army reproduces within itself the tendencies of the Soviet social order. We must not think in the petrifying terms of the last epoch: "militarism," "military organization," "the unproductiveness of compulsory labor." We must approach the phenomena of the new epoch without any prejudices, and with eyes wide open; and we must remember that Sat.u.r.day exists for man, and not vice versa; that all forms of organization, including the military, are only weapons in the hands of the working cla.s.s in power, which has both the right and the possibility of adapting, altering, refas.h.i.+oning, those weapons, until it has achieved the requisite result.

THE SINGLE ECONOMIC PLAN

The widest possible application of the principle of general labor service, together with measures for the militarization of labor, can play a decisive part only in case they are applied on the basis of a single economic plan covering the whole country and all branches of productive activity. This plan must be drawn up for a number of years, for the whole epoch that lies before us. It is naturally broken up into separate periods or stages, corresponding to the inevitable stages in the economic rebirth of the country. We shall have to begin with the most simple and at the same time most fundamental problems.

We have first of all to afford the working cla.s.s the very possibility of living--though it be in the most difficult conditions--and thereby to preserve our industrial centres and save the towns. This is the point of departure. If we do not wish to melt the town into agriculture, and transform the whole country into a peasant State, we must support our transport, even at the minimum level, and secure bread for the towns, fuel and raw materials for industry, fodder for the cattle. Without this we shall not make one step forward.

Consequently, the first part of the plan comprises the improvement of transport, or, in any case, the prevention of its further deterioration and the preparation of the most necessary supplies of food, raw materials, and fuel. The whole of the next period will be in its entirety filled with the concentration and straining of labor-power to solve these root problems; and only in this way shall we lay the foundations for all that is to come. It was such a problem, incidentally, that we put before our labor armies. Whether the first or the following periods will be measured by months or by years, it is fruitless at present to guess. This depends on many reasons, beginning with the international situation and ending with the degree of single-mindedness and steadfastness of the working cla.s.s.

The second period is the period of machine-building in the interests of transport and the storage of raw material and fuel. Here the core is in the locomotive.

At the present time the repairing of locomotives is carried on in too haphazard a fas.h.i.+on, swallowing up energies and resources beyond all measure. We must reorganize the repairing of our rolling-stock, on the basis of the ma.s.s production of spare parts. To-day, when the whole network of the railways and the factories is in the hands of one master, the Labor State, we can and must fix single types of locomotives and trucks for the whole country, standardize their const.i.tuent parts, draw all the necessary factories into the work of the ma.s.s production of spare parts, reduce repairing to the simple replacing of worn-out parts by new, and thereby make it possible to build new locomotives on a ma.s.s scale out of spare parts.

Now that the sources of fuel and raw material are again open to us, we must concentrate our exclusive attention on the building of locomotives.

The third period will be one of machine-building in the interests of the production of articles of primary necessity.

Finally, the fourth period, reposing on the conquests of the first three, will allow us to begin the production of articles of personal or secondary significance on the widest possible scale.

This plan has great significance, not only as a general guide for the practical work of our economic organs, but also as a line along which propaganda amongst the laboring ma.s.ses in connection with our economic problems is to proceed. Our labor mobilization will not enter into real life, will not take root, if we do not excite the living interest of all that is honest, cla.s.s-conscious, and inspired in the working cla.s.s. We must explain to the ma.s.ses the whole truth as to our situation and as to our views for the future; we must tell them openly that our economic plan, with the maximum of exertion on the part of the workers, will neither to-morrow nor the day after give us a land flowing with milk and honey: for during the first period our chief work will consist in preparing the conditions for the production of the means of production. Only after we have secured, though on the smallest possible scale, the possibility of rebuilding the means of transport and production, shall we pa.s.s on to the production of articles for general consumption. In this way the fruit of their labor, which is the direct object of the workers, in the shape of articles for personal consumption, will arrive only in the last, the fourth, stage of our economic plan; and only then shall we have a serious improvement in our life. The ma.s.ses, who for a prolonged period will still bear all the weight of labor and of privation, must realize to the full the inevitable internal logic of this economic plan if they are to prove capable of carrying it out.

The sequence of the four economic periods outlined above must not be understood too absolutely. We do not, of course, propose to bring completely to a standstill our textile industry: we could not do this for military considerations alone. But in order that our attention and our forces should not be distracted under the pressure of requirements and needs crying to us from all quarters, it is essential to make use of the economic plan as the fundamental criterion, and separate the important and the fundamental from the auxiliary and secondary.

Needless to say, under no circ.u.mstances are we striving for a narrow "national" Communism: the raising of the blockade, and the European revolution all the more, would introduce the most radical alterations in our economic plan, cutting down the stages of its development and bringing them together. But we do not know when these events will take place; and we must act in such a way that we can hold out and become stronger under the most unfavorable circ.u.mstances--that is to say, in face of the slowest conceivable development of the European and the world revolution. In case we are able actually to establish trading relations with the capitalist countries, we shall again be guided by the economic plan sketched above. We shall exchange part of our raw material for locomotives or for necessary machines, but under no circ.u.mstances for clothing, boots, or colonial products: our first item is not articles of consumption, but the implements of transport and production.

We should be short-sighted sceptics, and the most typical bourgeois curmudgeons, if we imagined that the rebirth of our economic life will take the form of a gradual transition from the present economic collapse to the conditions that preceded that collapse, _i.e._, that we shall reascend the same steps by which we descended, and only after a certain, quite prolonged, period will be able to raise our Socialist economy to the level at which it stood on the eve of the imperialist war. Such a conception would not only be not consoling, but absolutely incorrect. Economic collapse, which destroyed and broke up in its path an incalculable quant.i.ty of values, also destroyed a great deal that was poor and rotten, that was absolutely senseless; and thereby it cleared the path for a new method of reconstruction, corresponding to that technical equipment which world economy now possesses.

If Russian capitalism developed not from stage to stage, but leaping over a series of stages, and inst.i.tuted American factories in the midst of primitive steppes, the more is such a forced march possible for Socialist economy. After we have conquered our terrible misery, have acc.u.mulated small supplies of raw material and food, and have improved our transport, we shall be able to leap over a whole series of intermediate stages, benefiting by the fact that we are not bound by the chains of private property, and that therefore we are able to subordinate all undertakings and all the elements of economic life to a single State plan.

Thus, for example, we shall undoubtedly be able to enter the period of electrification, in all the chief branches of industry and in the sphere of personal consumption, without pa.s.sing through "the age of steam." The programme of electrification is already drawn up in a series of logically consequent stages, corresponding to the fundamental stages of the general economic plan.

A new war may slow down the realization of our economic intentions; our energy and persistence can and must hasten the process of our economic rebirth. But, whatever be the rate at which economic events unfold themselves in the future, it is clear that at the foundation of all our work--labor mobilization, militarization of labor, Subbotniks, and other forms of Communist labor voluntarism--there must lie the _single economic plan_. And the period that is upon us requires from us the complete concentration of all our energies on the first elementary problems: food, fuel, raw material, transport. _Not to allow our attention to be distracted, not to dissipate our forces, not to waste our energies._ Such is the sole road to salvation.

COLLEGIATE AND ONE-MAN MANAGEMENT

The Mensheviks attempt to dwell on yet another question which seems favorable to their desire once again to ally themselves with the working cla.s.s. This is the question of the method of administration of industrial enterprises--the question of the collegiate (board) or the one-man principle. We are told that the transference of factories to single directors instead of to a board is a crime against the working cla.s.s and the Socialist revolution. It is remarkable that the most zealous defenders of the Socialist revolution against the principle of one-man management are those same Mensheviks who quite recently still considered that the idea of a Socialist revolution was an insult to history and a crime against the working cla.s.s.

The first who must plead guilty in the face of the Socialist revolution is our Party Congress, which expressed itself in favor of the principle of one-man management in the administration of industry, and above all in the lowest grades, in the factories and plants. It would be the greatest possible mistake, however, to consider this decision as a blow to the independence of the working cla.s.s. The independence of the workers is determined and measured not by whether three workers or one are placed at the head of a factory, but by factors and phenomena of a such more profound character--the construction of the economic organs with the active a.s.sistance of the trade unions; the building up of all Soviet organs by means of the Soviet congresses, representing tens of millions of workers; the attraction into the work of administration, or control of administration, of those who are administered. It is in such things that the independence of the working cla.s.s can be expressed. And if the working cla.s.s, on the foundation of its existence, comes through its congresses, Soviet party and trade union, to the conclusion that it is better to place one person at the head of a factory, and not a board, it is making a decision dictated by the independence of the working cla.s.s. It may be correct or incorrect from the point of view of the technique of administration, but it is not imposed upon the proletariat, it is dictated by its own will and pleasure. It would consequently be a most crying error to confuse the question as to the supremacy of the proletariat with the question of boards of workers at the head of factories. The dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat is expressed in the abolition of private property in the means of production, in the supremacy over the whole Soviet mechanism of the collective will of the workers, and not at all in the form in which individual economic enterprises are administered.

Here it is necessary to reply to another accusation directed against the defenders of the one-man principle. Our opponents say: "This is the attempt of the Soviet militarists to transfer their experience in the military sphere to the sphere of economics. Possibly in the army the one-man principle is satisfactory, but it does not suit economical work." Such a criticism is incorrect in every way. It is untrue that in the army we began with the one-man principle: even now we are far from having completely adopted it. It is also untrue that in defence of one-man forms of administration of our economic enterprises with the attraction of experts, we took our stand only on the foundation of our military experience. In reality, in this question we took our stand, and continue to do so on purely Marxist views of the revolutionary problems and creative duties of the proletariat when it has taken power into its own hands. The necessity of making use of technical knowledge and methods acc.u.mulated in the past, the necessity of attracting experts and of making use of them on a wide scale, in such a way that our technique should go not backwards but forwards--all this was understood and recognized by us, not only from the very beginning of the revolution, but even long before October. I consider that if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs of all that was strongest, most independent, most endowed with initiative, we should undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man management in the sphere of economic administration much sooner, and much less painfully.