Comrades, the arguments of the Menshevik orators, particularly of
Abramovich, reflect first of all their complete detachment from life
and its problems. An observer stands on the bank of a river which he
has to swim over, and deliberates on the qualities of the water and on
the strength of the current. He has to swim over: that is his task!
But our Kautskian stands first on one foot and then on the other. "We
do not deny," he says, "the necessity of swimming over, but at the
same time, as realists, we see the danger--and not only one, but
several: the current is swift, there are submerged stones, people are
tired, etc., etc. But when they tell you that we deny the very
necessity of swimming over, that is not true--no, not under any
circumstances. Twenty-three years ago we did not deny the necessity of
swimming over...."
And on this is built all, from beginning to end. First, say the
Mensheviks, we do not deny, and never did deny, the necessity of
self-defence: consequently we do not repudiate the army. Secondly, we
do not repudiate in principle general labor service. But, after all,
where is there anyone in the world, with the exception of small
religious sects, who denies self-defence "in principle"! Nevertheless,
the matter does not move one step forward as a result of your abstract
admission. When it came to a real struggle, and to the creation of a
real army against the real enemies of the working class, what did you
do then? You opposed, you sabotaged--while not repudiating
self-defence in principle. You said and wrote in your papers: "Down
with the civil war!" at the time when we were surrounded by White
Guards, and the knife was at our throat. Now you, approving our
victorious self-defence after the event, transfer your critical gaze
to new problems, and attempt to teach us. "In general, we do not
repudiate the principle of general labor service," you say, "but ...
without legal compulsion." Yet in these very words there is a
monstrous internal contradiction! The idea of "obligatory service"
itself includes the element of compulsion. A man is _obliged_, he
is bound to do something. If he does not do it, obviously he will
suffer compulsion, a penalty. Here we approach the question of what
penalty. Abramovich says: "Economic pressure, yes; but not legal
compulsion." Comrade Holtzman, the representative of the Metal
Workers' Union, excellently demonstrated all the scholasticism of this
idea. Even under the capitalism, that is to say under the regime of
"free" labor, economic pressure is inseparable from legal compulsion.
Still more so now.
In my report I attempted to explain that the adaptation of the workers
on new social foundations to new forms of labor, and the attainment of
a higher level of productivity of labor, are possible only by means of
the simultaneous application of various methods--economic interest,
legal compulsion, the influence of an internally co-ordinated economic
organization, the power of repression, and, first and last, moral
influence, agitation, propaganda, and the general raising of the
cultural level.
Only by the combination of all these methods can we attain a high
level of Socialist economy.
If even under capitalism economic interest is inevitably combined with
legal compulsion, behind which stands the material force of the State,
in the Soviet State--that is, the State of transition to Socialism--we
can draw no water-tight compartment at all between economic and legal
compulsion. All our most important industries are in the hands of the
State. When we say to the turner Ivanov, "You are bound at once to
work at the Sormovo factory; if you refuse, you will not receive your
ration," what are we to call it? Economic pressure or legal
compulsion? He cannot go to another factory, for all factories are in
the hands of the State, which will not allow such a change.
Consequently, economic pressure melts here into the pressure of State
compulsion. Abramovich apparently would like us, as regulators of the
distribution of labor-power, to make use only of such means as the
raising of wages, bonuses, etc., in order to attract the necessary
workers to our most important factories. Apparently that comprises all
his thoughts on the subject. But if we put the question in this way,
every serious worker in the trade union movement will understand it is
pure utopia. We cannot hope for a free influx of labor-power from the
market, for to achieve this the State would need to have in its hands
sufficiently extensive "reserves of manoeuvre," in the form of food,
housing, and transport, _i.e._, precisely those conditions which
we have yet only to create. Without systematically-organized
transference of labor-power on a mass scale, according to the demands
of the economic organization, we shall achieve nothing. Here the
moment of compulsion arises before us in all its force of economic
necessity. I read you a telegram from Ekaterinburg dealing with the
work of the First Labor Army. It says that there have passed through
the Ural Committee for Labor Service over 4,000 workers. Whence have
they appeared? Mainly from the former Third Army. They were not
allowed to go to their homes, but were sent where they were required.
From the army they were handed over to the Committee for Labor
Service, which distributed them according to their categories and sent
them to the factories. This, from the Liberal point of view, is
"violence" to the freedom of the individual. Yet an overwhelming
majority of the workers went willingly to the labor front, as hitherto
to the military, realizing that the common interest demanded this.
Part went against their will. These were compelled.
Naturally, it is quite clear that the State must, by means of the
bonus system, give the better workers better conditions of existence.
But this not only does not exclude, but on the contrary pre-supposes,
that the State and the trade unions--without which the Soviet State
will not build up industry--acquire new rights of some kind over the
worker. The worker does not merely bargain with the Soviet State: no,
he is subordinated to the Soviet State, under its orders in every
direction--for it is _his_ State.
"If," Abramovich says, "we were simply told that it is a question of
industrial discipline, there would be nothing to quarrel about; but
why introduce militarization?" Of course, to a considerable extent,
the question is one of the discipline of the trade unions; but of the
new discipline of new, _Productional_, trade unions. We live in a
Soviet country, where the working class is in power--a fact which our
Kautskians do not understand. When the Menshevik Rubtzov said that
there remained only the fragment of the trade union movement in my
report, there was a certain amount of truth in it. Of the trade
unions, as he understands them--that is to say, trade unions of the
old craft type--there in reality has remained very little; but the
industrial productional organization of the working class, in the
conditions of Soviet Russia, has the very greatest tasks before it.
What tasks? Of course, not the tasks involved in a struggle with the
State, in the name of the interests of labor; but tasks involved in
the construction, side by side with the State, of Socialist economy.
Such a form of union is in principle a new organization, which is
distinct, not only from the trade unions, but also from the
revolutionary industrial unions in bourgeois society, just as the
supremacy of the proletariat is distinct from the supremacy of the
bourgeoisie. The productional union of the ruling working class no
longer has the problems, the methods, the discipline, of the union for
struggle of an oppressed class. All our workers are _obliged_ to
enter the unions. The Mensheviks are against this. This is quite
comprehensible, because in reality they are against the
_dictatorship of the proletariat_. It is to this, in the long
run, that the whole question is reduced. The Kautskians are against
the dictatorship of the proletariat, and are thereby against all its
consequences. Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of
the expression of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely
connected regions. True, Abramovich demonstrated to us most learnedly
that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the principle
of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that under Socialism we shall be
moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of working, the attractiveness
of labor, etc., etc. This is unquestionable. Only this unquestionable
truth must be a little extended. In point of fact, under Socialism
there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the
State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and
consuming commune. None the less, the road to Socialism lies through a
period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the
State. And you and I are just passing through that period. Just as a
lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State,
before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, _i.e._, the most ruthless form of State, which
embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction.
Now just that insignificant little fact--that historical step of the
State dictatorship--Abramovich, and in his person the whole of
Menshevism, did not notice; and consequently, he has fallen over it.
No organization except the army has ever controlled man with such
severe compulsion as does the State organization of the working class
in the most difficult period of transition. It is just for this reason
that we speak of the militarization of labor. The fate of the
Mensheviks is to drag along at the tail of events, and to recognize
those parts of the revolutionary programme which have already had time
to lose all practical significance. To-day the Mensheviks, albeit with
reservations, do not deny the lawfulness of stern measures with the
White Guards and with deserters from the Red Army: they have been
forced to recognize this after their own lamentable experiments with
"democracy." They have to all appearances understood--very late in the
day--that, when one is face to face with the counter-revolutionary
bands, one cannot live by phrases about the great truth that under
Socialism we shall need no Red Terror. But in the economic sphere, the
Mensheviks still attempt to refer us to our sons, and particularly to
our grandsons. None the less, we have to rebuild our economic life
to-day, without waiting, under circumstances of a very painful
heritage from bourgeois society and a yet unfinished civil war.
Menshevism, like all Kautskianism generally, is drowned in democratic
analogies and Socialist abstractions. Again and again it has been
shown that for it there do not exist the problems of the transitional
period, _i.e._, of the proletarian revolution. Hence the lifelessness
of its criticism, its advice, its plans, and its recipes. The question
is not what is going to happen in twenty or thirty years' time--at
that date, of course, things will be much better--but of how to-day to
struggle out of our ruins, how immediately to distribute labor-power,
how to-day to raise the productivity of labor, and how, in particular,
to act in the case of those 4,000 skilled workers whom we combed out
of the army in the Ural. To dismiss them to the four corners of the
earth, saying "seek for better conditions where you can find them,
comrades"? No, we could not act in this way. We put them into military
echelons, and distributed them amongst the factories and the works.
"Wherein, then, does your Socialism," Abramovich cries, "differ from
Egyptian slavery? It was just by similar methods that the Pharaohs
built the pyramids, forcing the masses to labor." Truly an inimitable
analogy for a "Socialist"! Once again the little insignificant fact
has been forgotten--the class nature of the government! Abramovich
sees no difference between the Egyptian regime and our own. He has
forgotten that in Egypt there were Pharaohs, there were slave-owners
and slaves. It was not the Egyptian peasants who decided through their
Soviets to build the pyramids; there existed a social order based upon
hierarchial caste; and the workers were obliged to toil by a class
that was hostile to them. Our compulsion is applied by a workers' and
peasants' government, in the name of the interests of the laboring
masses. That is what Abramovich has not observed. We learn in the
school of Socialism that all social evolution is founded on classes
and their struggle, and all the course of human life is determined by
the fact of what class stands at the head of affairs, and in the name
of what caste is applying its policy. That is what Abramovich has not
grasped. Perhaps he is well acquainted with the Old Testament, but
Socialism is for him a book sealed with seven seals.
Going along the path of shallow Liberal analogies, which do not reckon
with the class nature of the State, Abramovich might (and in the past
the Mensheviks did more than once) identify the Red and the White
Armies. Both here and there went on mobilizations, principally of the
peasant masses. Both here and there the element of compulsion has its
place. Both here and there there were not a few officers who had
passed through one and the same school of Tsarism. The same rifles,
the same cartridges in both camps. Where is the difference? There is a
difference, gentlemen, and it is defined by a fundamental test: who is
in power? The working class or the landlord class, Pharaohs or
peasants, White Guards or the Petrograd proletariat? There is a
difference, and evidence on the subject is furnished by the fate of
Yudenich, Kolchak, and Denikin. Our peasants were mobilized by the
workers; in Kolchak's camp, by the White Guard officer class. Our army
has pulled itself together, and has grown strong; the White Army has
fallen asunder in dust. Yes, there is a difference between the Soviet
regime and the regime of the Pharaohs. And it is not in vain that the
Petrograd proletarians began their revolution by shooting the Pharaohs
on the steeples of Petrograd.[10]
[10] This was the name given to the imperial police, whom
the Minister for Home Affairs, Protopopoff, distributed at
the end of February, 1917, over the roofs of houses and in
the belfries.
One of the Menshevik orators attempted incidentally to represent me as
a defender of militarism in general. According to his information, it
appears, do you see, that I am defending nothing more or less than
German militarism. I proved, you must understand, that the German
N.C.O. was a marvel of nature, and all that he does is above
criticism. What did I say in reality? Only that militarism, in which
all the features of social evolution find their most finished, sharp,
and clear expression, could be examined from two points of view. First
from the political or Socialist--and here it depends entirely on the
question of what class is in power; and secondly, from the point of
view of organization, as a system of the strict distribution of
duties, exact mutual relations, unquestioning responsibility, and
harsh insistence on execution. The bourgeois army is the apparatus of
savage oppression and repression of the workers; the Socialist army is
a weapon for the liberation and defence of the workers. But the
unquestioning subordination of the parts to the whole is a
characteristic common to every army. A severe internal regime is
inseparable from the military organization. In war every piece of
slackness, every lack of thoroughness, and even a simple mistake, not
infrequently bring in their train the most heavy sacrifices. Hence the
striving of the military organization to bring clearness,
definiteness, exactness of relations and responsibilities, to the
highest degree of development. "Military" qualities in this connection
are valued in every sphere. It was in this sense that I said that
every class prefers to have in its service those of its members who,
other things being equal, have passed through the military school. The
German peasant, for example, who has passed out of the barracks in the
capacity of an N.C.O. was for the German monarchy, and remains for the
Ebert Republic, much dearer and more valuable than the same peasant
who has not passed through military training. The apparatus of the
German railways was splendidly organized, thanks to a considerable
degree to the employment of N.C.O.'s and officers in administrative
posts in the transport department. In this sense we also have
something to learn from militarism. Comrade Tsiperovich, one of our
foremost trade union leaders, admitted here that the trade union
worker who has passed through military training--who has, for example,
occupied the responsible post of regimental commissary for a
year--does not become worse from the point of view of trade union work
as a result. He is returned to the union the same proletarian from
head to foot, for he was fighting for the proletariat; but he has
returned a veteran--hardened, more independent, more decisive--for he
has been in very responsible positions. He had occasions to control
several thousands of Red soldiers of different degrees of
class-consciousness--most of them peasants. Together with them he has
lived through victories and reverses, he has advanced and retreated.
There were cases of treachery on the part of the command personnel, of
peasant risings, of panic--but he remained at his post, he held
together the less class-conscious mass, directed it, inspired it with
his example, punished traitors and cowards. This experience is a great
and valuable experience. And when a former regimental commissary
returns to his trade union, he becomes not a bad organizer.
On the question of the _collegiate principle_, the arguments of
Abramovich are just as lifeless as on all other questions--the
arguments of a detached observer standing on the bank of a river.
Abramovich explained to us that a good board is better than a bad
manager, that into a good board there must enter a good expert. All
this is splendid--only why do not the Mensheviks offer us several
hundred boards? I think that the Supreme Economic Council will find
sufficient use for them. But we--not observers, but workers--must
build from the material at our disposal. We have specialists, we have
experts, of whom, shall we say, one-third are conscientious and
educated, another third only half-conscientious and half-educated, and
the last third are no use at all. In the working class there are many
talented, devoted, and energetic people. Some--unfortunately few--have
already the necessary knowledge and experience. Some have character
and capacity, but have not knowledge or experience. Others have
neither one nor the other. Out of this material we have to create our
factory and other administrative bodies; and here we cannot be
satisfied with general phrases. First of all, we must select all the
workers who have already in experience shown that they can direct
enterprises, and give such men the possibility of standing on their
own feet. Such men themselves ask for one-man management, because the
work of controlling a factory is not a school for the backward. A
worker who knows his business thoroughly desires to _control_. If
he has decided and ordered, his decision must be accomplished. He may
be replaced--that is another matter; but while he is the master--the
Soviet, proletarian master--he controls the undertaking entirely and
completely. If he has to be included in a board of weaker men, who
interfere in the administration, nothing will come of it. Such a
working-class administrator must be given an expert assistant, one or
two according to the enterprise. If there is no suitable working-class
administrator, but there is a conscientious and trained expert, we
shall put him at the head of an enterprise, and attach to him two or
three prominent workers in the capacity of assistants, in such a way
that every decision of the expert should be known to the assistants,
but that they should not have the right to reverse that decision. They
will, step by step, follow the specialist in his work, will learn
something, and in six months or a year will thus be able to occupy
independent posts.
Abramovich quoted from my own speech the example of the hairdresser
who has commanded a division and an army. True! But what, however,
Abramovich does not know is that, if our Communist comrades have
begun to command regiments, divisions, and armies, it is because
previously they were commissaries attached to expert commanders.
The responsibility fell on the expert, who knew that, if he made a
mistake, he would bear the full brunt, and would not be able to say
that he was only an "adviser" or a "member of the board." To-day in
our army the majority of the posts of command, particularly in the
lower--_i.e._, politically the most important--grades, are filled
by workers and foremost peasants. But with what did we begin? We put
officers in the posts of command, and attached to them workers as
commissaries; and they learned, and learned with success, and learned
to beat the enemy.
Comrades, we stand face to face with a very difficult period, perhaps
the most difficult of all. To difficult periods in the life of peoples
and classes there correspond harsh measures. The further we go the
easier things will become, the freer every citizen will feel, the more
imperceptible will become the compelling force of the proletarian
State. Perhaps we shall then even allow the Mensheviks to have papers,
if only the Mensheviks remain in existence until that time. But
to-day we are living in the period of dictatorship, political and
economic. And the Mensheviks continue to undermine that dictatorship.
When we are fighting on the civil front, preserving the revolution
from its enemies, and the Menshevik paper writes: "Down with the
civil war," we cannot permit this. A dictatorship is a dictatorship,
and war is war. And now that we have crossed to the path of the
greatest concentration of forces on the field of the economic rebirth
of the country, the Russian Kautskies, the Mensheviks, remain true to
their counter-revolutionary calling. Their voice, as hitherto, sounds
as the voice of doubt and decomposition, of disorganization and
undermining, of distrust and collapse.
Is it not monstrous and grotesque that, at this Congress, at which
1,500 representatives of the Russian working class are present, where
the Mensheviks constitute less than 5%, and the Communists about 90%,
Abramovich should say to us: "Do not be attracted by methods which
result in a little band taking the place of the people." "All through
the people," says the representative of the Mensheviks, "no guardians
of the laboring masses! All through the laboring masses, through their
independent activity!" And, further, "It is impossible to convince a
class by arguments." Yet look at this very hall: here is that class!
The working class is here before you, and with us; and it is just you,
an insignificant band of Mensheviks, who are attempting to convince it
by bourgeois arguments! It is you who wish to be the guardians of that
class. And yet it has its own high degree of independence, and that
independence, it has displayed, incidentally, in having overthrown you
and gone forward along its own path!
9