February 28th.
This morning I went round to the Commissariat of Labour,
to see Schmidt, the Commissar. Schmidt is a
clean-shaven, intelligent young man, whose attention to business
methods is reflected in his Commissariat, which, unlike that
of Foreign Affairs, is extremely clean and very well
organized. I told him I was particularly interested to hear
what he could say in answer to the accusations made both
by the Mensheviks and by the Extremists on the Left that
control by the workers has become a dead letter, and that a
time will come when the trades unions will move against
the state organizations.
Schmidt answered: "Those accusations and suggestions are
all very well for agitational purposes, but the first to laugh
at them would be the trades unions themselves. This
Commissariat, for example, which is the actual labour
centre, is controlled directly by the unions. As Commissar
of Labour, I was elected directly by the General Council of
the Trades Unions. Of the College of nine members which
controls the whole work of the Commissariat, five are
elected directly by the General Council of the Trades
Unions and four appointed by the Council of People's
Commissaries, thus giving the Unions a decisive majority
in all questions concerning labour. All nine are confirmed
by the Council of People's Commissaries, representing the
state as a whole, and the Commissar is confirmed by the
All-Russian Executive Committee."
Of course control by the workers, as it was first introduced,
led speedily to many absurdities and, much to the
dissatisfaction of the extremer elements, has been
considerably modified. It was realized that the workers in
any particular factory might by considering only their own
interests harm the community as a whole, and so, in the
long run, themselves. The manner of its modification is an
interesting example of the way in which, without the
influence of tanks, aeroplanes or bayonets, the cruder
ideas of communism are being modified by life. It was
reasoned that since the factory was the property, not of the
particular workmen who work in it, but of the community
as a whole, the community as a whole should have a
considerable voice in its management. And the effect of
that reasoning has been to ensure that the technical
specialist and the expert works manager are no longer at the
caprice of a hastily called gathering of the workmen who
may, without understanding them, happen to disapprove of
some of their dispositions. Thus the economical,
administrative council of a nationalized factory consists of
representatives of the workmen and clerical staff,
representatives of the higher technical and commercial
staffs, the directors of the factory (who are appointed by the
Central Direction of National Factories), representatives of
the local council of trades unions, the Council of Public
Economy, the local soviet, and the industrial union of the
particular industry carried on in the factory, together with, a
representative of the workers' co-operative society and a
representative of the peasants' soviet of the district in
which the factory is situated. In this council not more than
half of the members may be representatives of the workmen
and clerical staff of the factory. This council considers the
internal order of the factory, complaints of any kind, and
the material and moral conditions of work and so on. On
questions of a technical character it has no right to do more
than give advice.
The night before I saw Schmidt, little Finberg had come to
my room for a game of chess in a very perturbed state of
mind, having just come from a meeting of the union to
which he belonged (the union of clerks, shop assistants and
civil servants) where there had been a majority against the
Bolsheviks after some fierce criticism over this particular
question. Finberg had said that the ground basis of the
discontent had been the lack of food, but that the outspoken
criticism had taken the form, first, of protests against the
offer of concessions in Chicherin's Note of February 4th,
on the ground that concessions meant concessions to
foreign capitalism and the formation in Russia of capitalist
centres which would eventually spread; and second, that the
Communists themselves, by their modifications of
Workers' Control, were introducing State Capitalism
instead of Socialism.
I mentioned this union to Schmidt, and asked him to
explain its hostility. He laughed, and said: "Firstly, that
union is not an industrial union at all, but includes precisely
the people whose interests are not identical with those of
the workmen. Secondly, it includes all the old civil
servants who, as you remember, left the ministries at the
November Revolution, in many cases taking the money
with them. They came back in the end, but though no
longer ready to work openly against the revolution as a
whole, they retain much of their old dislike of us, and, as
you see, the things they were objecting to last night were
precisely the things which do not concern them in
particular. Any other stick would be as good to them.
They know well that if they were to go on strike now they
would be a nuisance to us, no more. If you wish to know
the attitude of the Trades Unions, you should look at the
Trades Union Congress which wholly supported us, and
gave a very different picture of affairs. They know
well that in all questions of labour, the trades unions have
the decisive voice. I told you that the unions send a
majority of the members of the College which controls the
work of this Commissariat. I should have added that the
three most important departments-the department for
safeguarding labour, the department for distributing labour,
and that for regulating wages-are entirely controlled by the
Unions."
"How do politics affect the Commissariat?"
"Not at all. Politics do not count with us, just because we
are directly controlled by the Unions, and not, by any
political party. Mensheviks, Maximalists and others have
worked and are working in the Commissariat. Of course if
a man were opposed to the revolution as a whole we should
not have him here, because he would be working against us
instead of helping."
I asked whether he thought the trade unions would ever
disappear in the Soviet organizations. He thought not. On
the contrary, they had grown steadily throughout the
revolution. He told me that one great change had been
made in them. Trade unions have been merged
together into industrial unions, to prevent conflict
between individual sections of one industry. Thus
boilermakers and smiths do not have separate unions, but
are united in the metal-workers' union. This unification
has its effect on reforms and changes. An increase in
wages, for example, is simultaneous all over Russia. The
price of living varies very considerably in different parts of
the country, there being as great differences between the
climates of different parts as there are between the countries
of Europe. Consequently a uniform absolute increase
would be grossly unfair to some and grossly favourable to
others. The increase is therefore proportional to the cost of
living. Moscow is taken as a norm of 100, and when a new
minimum wage is established for Moscow other districts
increase their minimum wage proportionately. A table for
this has been worked out, whereby in comparison with 100
for Moscow, Petrograd is set down as 120, Voronezh or
Kursk as 70, and so on.
We spoke of the new programme of the Communists,
rough drafts of which were being printed in the newspapers
for discussion, and he showed me his own suggestions
in so far as the programme concerned labour. He wished
the programme to include, among other aims, the further
mechanization of production, particularly the mechanization
of all unpleasant and dirty processes, improved sanitary
inspection, shortening of the working day in employments
harmful to health, forbidding women with child to do any
but very light work, and none at all for eight weeks before
giving birth and for eight weeks afterwards, forbidding
overtime, and so on. "We have already gone far beyond
our old programme, and our new one steps far ahead of us.
Russia is the first country in the world where all workers
have a fortnight's holiday in the year, and workers in
dangerous or unhealthy occupations have a month's."
I said, "Yes, but don't you find that there is a very long way
between the passing of a law and its realization?"
Schmidt laughed and replied: "In some things certainly,
yes. For example, we are against all overtime, but, in the
present state of Russia we should be sacrificing to a theory
the good of the revolution as a whole if we did not allow
and encourage overtime in transport repairs. Similarly,
until things are further developed than they are now, we
should be criminal slaves to theory if we did not, in some
cases, allow lads under sixteen years old to be in the
factories when we have not yet been able to provide the
necessary schools where we would wish them to be. But
the programme is there, and as fast as it can be realized we
are realizing it."