Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/77

Rh But the discipline that lives in the proletariat is not the military discipline; it does not imply blind obedience to an authority appointed from above; it is the democratic discipline, the free submission to self-chosen leadership, and to the will of the majority of one's own comrades. If this discipline is to prevail in the factory, it will presuppose a democratic organisation of the work, that is, the substitution of the democratic factory for the autocratic. It is self-understood that a Socialist régime will endeavour from the very start to organise industry on democratic principles. But, even if the victorious proletariat should not be possessed of such intentions from the outset, it will be driven to it by the necessity of assuring the further progress of production. The maintenance of the necessary discipline in the work will only be realised by the introduction of trade union discipline into the process of production.

That, however, will not be possible everywhere in the same way, since every concern has its peculiarities, to which the organisation of the workers must adapt itself. There are, for example, concerns which cannot dispense with a bureaucratic organisation—for instance, the railways. The democratic organisation can be effected there in such a way, that the workers choose delegates, who form a kind of parliament to settle the working rules, and to watch over the working of the bureaucratic machinery. Other concerns can be handed over to the trade unions, others again can be managed on a co-operative plan. Thus there are innumerable forms of democratic organisation of the concerns possible, and we cannot expect that the organisation of the entire industry will proceed on one cut-and-dried plan.

We have seen how different will be the forms of property—State, municipal and co-operative property. In addition, private property might also continue to exist in some of the means of production, as will be shown later. Now we see that the organisation of industry will also be different for various concerns.

But democratic discipline and the habit of regular work, powerful as they are, do not yet, perhaps, offer us sufficient guarantee that the entire working class will always take part in production. We cannot expect that trade union organisation and discipline will ever embrace in the present society, we will not say the whole, but at least the majority of the working class. When the latter attains to power, it is, therefore, probable that only a minority of its members will, be organised. It will, therefore, be necessary to look for other motives to work. And a proletarian régime will have one very close at hand—the power of attraction, exercised by work. It will have to make work—which is to-day a burden—a joy, so that it should be a pleasure to work and to go to work.

No doubt, that is no simple matter; still the proletariat will make at least a beginning in this direction by shortening, immediately on assuming power, the hours of labour. Along with this