Page:Raymond Augustine McGowan - Bolshevism in Russia and America (1920).pdf/18

 18 Over a factory stands a high-salaried manager, sometimes the old owner or the former manager, again a new man, who is often a foreigner. These labor directors are, as Lenin says, dictators in the factory during the working hours. With them stand the much weakened works council of the workers, the chief duty of which is to apply locally the national regulations regarding the conditions of labor.

The national regulations regarding labor have also changed. It was the earlier policy to pay all the same wages. Later this was changed in two ways. Workers are now divided into 27 classes, the lowest class receiving 600 rubles a month, and the highest, 2,200 rubles. Piece rate and premiums have also been introduced.

Strikes. are prohibited and compulsory work is the rule. The bringing about of greater production and the prevention of loafing is a problem of administration, placed first in the hands of the local Soviets. Violators of the labor discipline. "should be discovered, tried and punished without mercy." That is to say, those, for example, who offend against the regulations regarding compulsory work, or who strike, will be seized, tried, and mercilessly punished.

The safeguard to industrial democracy in all this, according to Lenin, is to be found in the holding of meetings by the workers after their work is over. The local workers' assemblies and councils are the saving point for the time, and will become of greater importance and value when the "labor discipline" develops, as Lenin says, the new Socialist spirit.

Thus the local meetings or works' councils, as the nucleus of the future industrial democracy and as the 'chief organ for the enforcement of the present autocracy, become 6f great present importance. Lenin called out to the local conscious-vanguard to enforce the labor discipline locally. That means that he asked the help of the