Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/68

 them to say and dimly to feel that class interests stand higher than craft interests. Those workers who are not capable of making such sacrifices we regard as selfish men and cowards, and exile them from the proletariat.

This is the principal question regarding labour discipline and single man management with which the Party congress had to deal. This is the decision of the Party congress, as you have learned by now, and which will be explained at greater length by the other speakers. The gist of the matter is that the working class has grown up and matured, it has taken governmental power into its own hands and is fighting the whole world, and that this battle is growing more and more difficult. It was easier to fight in the actual war; at present what is demanded from us is organisation and steady education, whilst, as it happens, numerically our industrial working class is not large. To some extent it has been decreased by the war. Administration has become a difficult matter thanks to our victories. It should be understood by everyone that, when we speak of dictatorship, it is not the whim of the people at the centre.

We must confess that we find administration a difficult matter. The proletariat has decreased in number as we have already said, while the territories gained by us increased in extent. We have taken Siberia, the Don and Kuban. The percentage of the proletariat in these regions is a negligible quantity. We must approach the working class in a spirit of straightforwardness and tell it so openly. What we require is more discipline and more single man responsibility and more dictatorship. Without these it is idle to think of victory. We have an army of three millions, but the 600,000 Communists must serve as the vanguard of these three millions. These three millions must go to war with perfect confidence. We must test these labour armies and the trade unions. We will learn by every step of practical experience.

But it is also necessary to understand that we have no other army with which to gain victories. We have 600,000 vanguard men and an army of three millions in which there are many peasant profiteers and no proletarians. This makes it clear that we must have a new co-relationship between the proletarian and non-proletarian masses; whilst the new conditions tell us that we can achieve little by violence, but that only organisation and moral authority can win the day. This gives rise to our absolute conviction which we have formulated at the congress and which I consider it my duty to emphasise. Our principal watch-word now is: nearer to single man management, more labour discipline, and a decision to work with war time resoluteness, firmness and self-sacrifice; abandoning all group and craft and private interests. Victory is not possible otherwise. But if we carry out these resolutions of the party through the three million workers as one man, and later on through tens of millions of peasants, who will feel the moral authority and the power of men who have sacrificed themselves for the victory of socialism—then this will make us absolutely and finally invincible.