The key to economic organization is labor-power, skilled, elementarily
trained, semi-trained, untrained, or unskilled. To work out methods
for its accurate registration, mobilization, distribution, productive
application, means practically to solve the problem of economic
construction. This is a problem for a whole epoch--a gigantic problem.
Its difficulty is intensified by the fact that we have to reconstruct
labor on Socialist foundations in conditions of hitherto unknown
poverty and terrifying misery.
The more our machine equipment is worn out, the more disordered our
railways grow, the less hope there is for us of receiving machines to
any significant extent from abroad in the near future, the greater is
the importance acquired by the question of living labor-power. At
first sight it would seem that there is plenty of it. But how are we
to get at it? How are we to apply it? How are we productively to
organize it? Even with the cleaning of snow drifts from the railway
tracks, we were brought face to face with very big difficulties. It
was absolutely impossible to meet those difficulties by means of
buying labor-power on the market, with the present insignificant
purchasing power of money, and in the most complete absence of
manufactured products. Our fuel requirements cannot be satisfied, even
partially, without a mass application, on a scale hitherto unknown, of
labor-power to work on wood, fuel, peat, and combustible slate. The
civil war has played havoc with our railways, our bridges, our
buildings, our stations. We require at once tens and hundreds of
thousands of hands to restore order to all this. For production on a
large scale in our timber, peat, and other enterprises, we require
housing for our workers, if they be only temporary huts. Hence, again,
the necessity of devoting a considerable amount of labor-power to
building work. Many workers are required to organize river navigation;
and so on, and so forth....
Capitalist industry utilizes auxiliary labor-power on a large scale,
in the shape of peasants employed on industry for only part of the
year. The village, throttled by the grip of landlessness, always threw
a certain surplus of labor-power on to the market. The State obliged
it to do this by its demand for taxes. The market offered the peasant
manufactured goods. To-day, we have none of this. The village has
acquired more land; there is not sufficient agricultural machinery;
workers are required for the land; industry can at present give
practically nothing to the village; and the market no longer has an
attractive influence on labor-power.
Yet labor-power is required--required more than at any time before.
Not only the worker, but the peasant also, must give to the Soviet
State his energy, in order to ensure that laboring Russia, and with it
the laboring masses, should not be crushed. The only way to attract
the labor-power necessary for our economic problems is to introduce
_compulsory labor service_.
The very principle of compulsory labor service is for the Communist
quite unquestionable. "He who works not, neither shall he eat." And as
all must eat, all are obliged to work. Compulsory labor service is
sketched in our Constitution and in our Labor Code. But hitherto it
has always remained a mere principle. Its application has always had
an accidental, impartial, episodic character. Only now, when along the
whole line we have reached the question of the economic rebirth of
the country, have problems of compulsory labor service arisen before
us in the most concrete way possible. The only solution of economic
difficulties that is correct from the point of view both of principle
and of practice is to treat the population of the whole country as the
reservoir of the necessary labor-power--an almost inexhaustible
reservoir--and to introduce strict order into the work of its
registration, mobilization, and utilization.
How are we practically to begin the utilization of labor-power on the
basis of compulsory military service?
Hitherto only the War Department has had any experience in the sphere
of the registration, mobilization, formation, and transference from
one place to another of large masses. These technical methods and
principles were inherited by our War Department, to a considerable
extent, from the past.
In the economic sphere there is no such heritage; since in that sphere
there existed the principle of private property, and labor-power
entered each factory separately from the market. It is consequently
natural that we should be obliged, at any rate during the first
period, to make use of the apparatus of the War Department on a large
scale for labor mobilizations.
We have set up special organizations for the application of the
principle of compulsory labor service in the centre and in the
districts: in the provinces, the counties, and the rural districts, we
have already compulsory labor committees at work. They rely for the
most part on the central and local organs of the War Department. Our
economic centres--the Supreme Economic Council, the People's
Commissariat for Agriculture, the People's Commissariat for Ways and
Communications, the People's Commissariat for Food--work out estimates
of the labor-power they require. The Chief Committee for Compulsory
Labor Service receives these estimates, co-ordinates them, brings them
into agreement with the local resources of labor-power, gives
corresponding directions to its local organs, and through them carries
out labor mobilizations. Within the boundaries of regions, provinces,
and counties, the local bodies carry out this work independently, with
the object of satisfying local economic requirements.
All this organization is at present only in the embryo stage. It is
still very imperfect. But the course we have adopted is unquestionably
the right one.
If the organization of the new society can be reduced fundamentally to
the reorganization of labor, the organization of labor signifies in
its turn the correct introduction of general labor service. This
problem is in no way met by measures of a purely departmental and
administrative character. It touches the very foundations of economic
life and the social structure. It finds itself in conflict with the
most powerful psychological habits and prejudices. The introduction of
compulsory labor service pre-supposes, on the one hand, a colossal
work of education, and, on the other, the greatest possible care in
the practical method adopted.
The utilization of labor-power must be to the last degree economical.
In our labor mobilizations we have to reckon with the economic and
social conditions of every region, and with the requirements of the
principal occupation of the local population--_i.e._, of agriculture.
We have, if possible, to make use of the previous auxiliary
occupations and part-time industries of the local population. We have
to see that the transference of mobilized labor-power should take
place over the shortest possible distances--_i.e._, to the nearest
sectors of the labor front. We must see that the number of workers
mobilized correspond to the breadth of our economic problem. We must
see that the workers mobilized be supplied in good time with the
necessary implements of production, and with food. We must see that at
their head be placed experienced and business-like instructors. We
must see that the workers mobilized become convinced on the spot that
their labor-power is being made use of cautiously and economically and
is not being expended haphazard. Wherever it is possible, direct
mobilization must be replaced by the labor task--_i.e._, by the
imposition on the rural district of an obligation to supply, for
example, in such a time such a number of cubic sazhens of wood, or to
bring up by carting to such a station so many poods of cast-iron, etc.
In this sphere, it is essential to study experience as it accumulates
with particular care, to allow a great measure of elasticity to the
economic apparatus, to show more attention to local interests and
social peculiarities of tradition. In a word, we have to complete,
ameliorate, perfect, the system, methods, and organs for the
mobilization of labor-power. But at the same time it is necessary once
for all to make clear to ourselves that the principle itself of
compulsory labor service has just so radically and permanently
replaced the principle of free hiring as the socialization of the
means of production has replaced capitalist property.