Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/30

 The soviet is an organ of proletarian dictatorship, and as a definite form of state, will disappear with the complete victory of socialism.

But what will be the fate of the trade unions? The trade unions have become converted from fighting organisations against capital into organs of socialist construction, and to the extent that we advance from capitalism to communism the centre of gravity of the work of the union will be transferred to the sphere of organisation and administration. The main task of organising labour and production lies upon the trade unions and the more the trade unions are able to cope with this task, the more it will become merged in national economy and become part and parcel of it. In a completely developed socialist society the trade unions as fighting organisations in the class war will disappear and their place will be taken by an apparatus for registration, distribution and public production.

But where will this apparatus for registering, distributing and producing in socialist society come from? What organisation will create it? Evidently it will be created in the transitional periods by the trade unions and the Soviets. And its importance will grow in proportion to the victory of the social revolution and the strengthening of the new industrial relations. Thus, the Soviets of workers' delegates and the trade unions jointly create in the transitional period an organ for managing production (Councils of National Economy and the chief Committees for the management of nationalised undertakings). These organs, however, lose their specific character as fast as we advance to socialism: the whole work of the Soviets and the trade unions becomes concentrated upon the organisation of labour and production, but their industrial functions disappear. The trade unions and the Soviet economic organs merge into one another; a single economic machinery grows out of it swallowing both unions and Soviets, thus being the synthesis of all the organisations created by the proletariat. Socialism emerges in its perfect form of organisation. This perspective of the development and the rebirth of the existing proletarian organisations gives rise to the idea of "nationalising" the trade unions and many comrades regarded this possibility as meaning the immediate subordination of the trade unions to the soviets and their formal inclusion in the machinery of the soviet government. The first All-Russia Congress of Trade Unions which advocated "the closest co-operation and inseparable connection between the trade unions and the Soviets of workers' delegates" declared in its fundamental resolution that "in the process of development which has been, outlined, the trade unions will inevitably be converted into organs of socialist government, participation in which will be obligatory for all persons engaged in any given industry."