Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/66

 the peasant owners, with these we must continue our struggle. Now that we have beaten such enlightened people as the leaders of international politics that experienced and rich body possessing a hundred times more guns and dreadnoughts than we—it is ludicrous to think that we shall not be able to solve the questions regarding the relationship between the workers and the peasants. What we will win with here is discipline and loyalty to the common will. The will of hundreds and of tens of thousands can be personified in one individual. This complex will is elaborated by the Soviet system. The number of congresses of workers and peasants that have taken place in Russia is greater than in any other State in the world. In this way we develop class consciousness; not a single State has given tor the last 300 years what the Soviet constitution thus gives.

The whole of our Soviet structure, of our Soviet Government is to be considered from this wide basis. The decisions of the Soviet Government have the power of unprecedented universal authority; it has at its back the whole force of the workers and of the peasants. But we do not remain satisfied with this; we are materialists and the power of authority is not enough for us. This authority must be realised in life. But what we see is that the spirit of the old bourgeoisie is gaining on us; we are bound openly to recognise that it is stronger than we are. The old petty bourgeois habits of playing the master, of each man working on his own, and of free speculative trading—all this is stronger than we are. Trade unions arose out of capitalism as a means of developing a new class. The conception of class is one that is formed in struggle and in the course of development. A high wall separates class from class. But there is no kind of Chinese wall separating the workers from the peasants. When the proletariat became a class it became so strong that it took the whole machinery of State government into its hands, declared war on the whole world and was victorious. At this point guilds and trade unions become obsolete, out of date. There was a time under capitalism also when unification of the proletariat went on by guilds and trade unions. This represented a progressive manifestation, as the proletariat could unite in no other way; it is absurd to assert that the proletariat could unite as; a class in a body immediately. This kind of amalgamation may go on for years. No one fought such myopic sectarian views as did Marx. Class grows under capitalist conditions and when the appropriate moment for revolution arrives it takes the government power into its hands. Then all guilds and trade unions become out of date; they become conservative and have a tendency to go back, and that is not due to the fact that they harbour bad men, but because bad men and enemies to communism find a good soil here for their propaganda. We are at the present time surrounded with a petty bourgeoisie which is reviving free trade and the capitalism of petty owners and the small business man. Karl Marx fought this old Utopian socialism, demanding a scientific point of view which holds that we should learn from, the struggle of the classes how the class grows and that we should help this class to ripen. He also fought against those