Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - The Chief Task of Our Times.djvu/13

 geoisie, whose attitude was: "We are ready to strike a blow at the rich, but we do not believe in control and discipline for ourselves." The small capitalists find this superfluous; they do not want it; and yet self-discipline and organisation are the only guarantees for the stability of our Revolution.

Comrades, I will not go into any more details, but will say briefly: It is time to remonstrate when some people have worked themselves up to a state in which they consider the introduction of discipline into the ranks of the workers as a step backwards. I confess that I see in this attitude such a sign of reaction, such a menace to the Revolution, that I should consider the Revolution as lost if it were not for the knowledge that those who reason thus belong to a small and uninfluential group, and that no assembly of class-conscious workers would endorse. such opinions.

The Communists of the Left write as follows: "The introduction of labour discipline, except in connection with the re-establishment of capitalism, cannot increase the productivity of labour; on the contrary, it will lessen labour's self-reliance and organising activities; it threatens to enslave labour, and to arouse the dissatisfaction of the most backward classes."

This is false. If it were true, then our Revolution, with its socialist ideals and tasks, would be on the eve of collapse. But this is not true. The "intelligentsia" of the small bourgeoisie, which has lost its status, does not understand that to secure labour discipline constitutes Socialism's greatest difficulty. Long. ago, in the distant past, Socialists were writing on this question, making it the subject of the most careful analysis, for they understood that this would be the beginning of the real difficulties of the Socialist Revolution.

There have already been revolutions which discarded the bourgeoisie mercilessly, and quite as energetically as we have done, but we have gone further in creating a Soviet Government. Thus we have shown that we are stepping from economic independence to labour self-discipline—that our power must be the power of labour. The dictatorship of the proletariat does not consist in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the landowners merely—this has been done in all revolutions—our dictatorship of the proletariat has for its object the establishment of order, discipline, the productivity of labour, sound finance, and control of the proletarian Soviet Power, which is more stable, more firm than that which preceded it. It is essential to make all the class-conscious workers and peasants concentrate all their energies on this. Yes, by the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the landowners we have only cleared the way; we have not erected the structure of Socialism. On the soil which has been cleared from one bourgeois generation, new bourgeois generations always rise (and history proves this), for as long as the soil is capable of producing, it produces bourgeois in plenty. The small owners, who say of victory over the capitalists, "They have grabbed, and now our turn has come," will each one in turn become a source of a new generation of bourgeois. When we are told that the introduction of labour discipline, in connection with the re-establishment of controlled capitalism, is a menace to the Revolution, I say: "These people have not grasped the socialist character of our Revolution; they are using arguments identical with those of the small bourgeoisie, which fears discipline, organisation, and financial control as the devil fears salvation. The bourgeois professional people possess knowledge which we lack. A class-conscious worker is not afraid of such guidance, as he is aware that the Soviet Government is his Government, which will protect him, and he recognises that in accepting the guidance of the capitalists he is learning how to organise successfully.

Under the Czar we organised ourselves in hundreds; under Kerenski in hundreds of thousands. But this was only a trifling effort, and in politics does not count. This was preliminary work, so to speak, a preparatory class. Until the workers have learned how to organise on a large scale, they are not Socialists, not builders of a socialist structure of society, and will not acquire the necessary knowledge for the establishment of a new world order. The path of organisation is a long one, and the tasks of socialist constructive work require strenuous and continuous effort, with a corresponding knowledge, which we do not sufficiently possess. It is hardly to be expected that the even more developed following generation will accomplish a complete transition into Socialism. Call to mind what has been written by former