Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/67

 leaders of the working class who fell into these errors. I have recently read once more about the movement in England in 1872. At the Federal Council a resolution was passed reprimanding Marx for asserting that the English leaders had been bribed by the bourgeoisie. Marx of course did not mean it in the sense that such and such men are traitors. This is nonsense. He had in view the alliance of the bourgeoisie with a certain section of the workers, with a certain union, asserting that the bourgeoisie supports this section of the workers directly and indirectly, gives it every opportunity to work as a legal body, supplies it with a press organ, and establishes it in parliament. In this regard the English; bourgeoisie performed miracles; it went ahead of all the others. For forty years—from 1852–1892—Marx and Engels exposed this bourgeoisie.

All the world over the transition of the trade unions from the part of slaves to that of constructive workers means a crisis. The workers raised a cry to the effect that to increase productivity of labour means to oppress the masses, to skin them so to speak; they not only said so, but they also thought and felt so. We have now existed for two years; what has it meant? At the present time it means extreme starvation of the working class. This has been proved by statistics. In 1918 and 1919 the industrial workers of the State have received only 7 poods of bread per head, while the peasants of the fertile provinces received 17 poods per head. The proletariat has gained its victory, but thanks to this victory it fell into a period of starvation, whilst the peasant (who under the Soviet Government has far more than he ever had under the Tsarist regime) as a matter of fact has more than he requires. At the very best the peasant under the Tsarist regime had 16 poods, whilst under the Soviet Government he has 17 poods. We all know this, as we have statistical data to prove it. Everybody knows what hunger of the workers means. Proletarian dictatorship has doomed the proletariat to two years of starvation; but this starvation testifies to, the fact that the proletariat is capable of sacrificing not only its craft interests, but also its life. That for a period of two years the proletariat proved able to withstand hunger is due to the fact that it had the moral support of all the working classes and that it made all these sacrifices in the name of victory for the Workers' and Peasants' Government. True enough, the division of the workers into trades and professions still exists; but of these professions there are some which may be useful to the capitalist but are undesirable for us. We also know that the workers in these trades are starving more than other workers; but this could not be otherwise. Capitalism has been crushed, but socialism has not yet been built up, nor is likely to be for some time to come; the misunderstandings with which we are faced are not at all accidental—they are the result of the historical split in the trade unions, which are an instrument of craft unification under capitalism and of class unity of the workers when they have taken governmental power into their own hands. Such workers are ready for every kind of sacrifice which may be demanded by discipline, sacrifices which force