Page:Karl Kautsky - Georgia - tr. Henry James Stenning (1921).pdf/38

 a certain quantity. The difference between the price paid by the Government and the price at which the goods are sold was made up by the employer with whom the worker was engaged.

This peculiar system of a sliding-scale of wages which varies with the changes ini the prices of the necessaries of life has been found to work quite well.

The wage workers are the only organised and resolute class in Georgia. They know exactly what they want. They know not only their special interests, but also the common interests of the community, which they allow to guide them.

This enables them; to exercise an influence on the best sections of the numerous intellectuals, such as teachers, doctor, engineers, artists;—Tiflis is a very artistic town—lawyers, etc. The revolutionary section of the intellectuals was inclined to Socialism during the struggle against Czarism.

Among the one hundred and two members of the Social-Democratic Party in the Constituent Assembly are thirty-two workers, the rest being intellectuals; twenty teachers, fourteen journalists, thirteen lawyers, seven doctors, three engineers and thirteen officials.

Nearly all of them are elected by peasants, who form over eighty per cent. of the population. The Social-Democratic deputies are nearly eighty per cent. (one hundred and two out of one hundred and thirty) of the whole house.

In the February 1919 elections to the Constituent Assembly the Social-Democrats received eighty-two per cent. of all votes cast in the country, on a total poll of seventy-six per cent.

In the towns they received seventy-two per cent, on a total poll of only fifty-two per cent. The heavy peasant vote for the Social-Democrats is partly explained by the system of small holdings which prevails in Georgia. Most of the peasants cannot live from agriculture alone; many of them must seek to supplement their scanty income by casual labour. It was not difficult to accustom