The Russian Revolution/Chapter 7
VII.
LABOR LAWS AND WORKING CONDITIONS.
In no other place on the face of the earth do the workers enjoy so many rights in industry as they do in Russia. This is perfectly natural, because all other countries are ruled by a few capitalists who own the industries and crush down the workers in order to grind out the utmost profit for themselves; whereas Russia is controlled throughout by the workers themselves, who utilize the industries for the use and benefit of the whole people.
The universal eight-hour workday (seven-hour night shift) for adults, and the six hour day for persons under twenty years of age; the freeing of women from industry, with full pay, for eight weeks before and after childbirth; the compulsory weekly rest time of at least 42 consecutive hours for all workers; the legal limitation of overtime; the granting of two weeks' vacation, with full pay, for each six months of continuous labor; the universal and complete recognition of trade unionism; and dozens of other important measures in force in Russia making for the improvement of the workers' conditions, would be considered great achievements in capitalistic countries, where the powerful trade unions, in spite of long and bitter struggles, have not been able to win even an approach to them. But in Russia they are only minor details of a great social program aimed to lift the workers from their present low estate to the greatest possible heights of civilization.
Something much more fundamental than all of them put together is the right to work, which means the right to live, that is guaranteed by the Soviet Republic to all its citizens. This means that every Russian worker has the right to employment in the industries at the prevailing union scales and conditions, and if no work is to be had, then he must be paid full wages as long as he is out of work On the same principle, if an individual is incapacitated for work because of youth, old-age, sickness, or any other legitimate reason, he is given a decent standard of living, not as a matter of charity, but because of his right as a citizen of the workers' republic. Russia recognizes the right of the workers to live, and also their right to freely use the industries in order to earn that living. The dread horrors of unemployment have been eliminated from that country.
Compare this situation with conditions prevailing in capitalist countries. There the industries are in the hands of a few exploiters. If they find it profitable to operate their mills and factories they do so, and the workers may be able to beg employment from them. But if the capitalists do not see fit to run their industries, then the workers and their families are left to starve in unemployment, as millions of them are doing all over the world at this very hour. Under capitalism machinery and work animals, because they are property and cost money, are well taken care of in good times or bad; but workmen, because they are not property and cost the employer nothing. are thrown upon the streets in periods of industrial depression and left to degenerate in poverty and despair. In Russia alone alone are they guaranteed the right to work and live.
Without duties there can be no rights; hence with the Russians' right to work goes the legal obligation that they do so. The Soviet Republic takes the stand that no one has the right to live in Russia without working for his daily bread. The national constitution declares: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat." The law specifically requires that every able-bodied citizen do his share in producing the necessities of life. Exploiters of labor, those who parasitically live from work of others, are classed as a species of dangerous criminal.
Thus we come to one of the "horrors" of Sovietism. People actually compelled to earn their living, instead of being permitted to whip it out of the hides of others. It is an outrage. No wonder the various brands of reactionaries (most of whom never did a useful thing in their whose lives except to leave Russia) consider the compulsory labor laws a dreadful tyranny and are making the welkin ring with their howlings.
But their complaints are lost on the Russian labor militants now in charge of the country. The latter are working for the establishment of a Communist Society in which compulsion of any sort will be unnecessary; where the multitudes of the people will freely perform, of their own volition, their full industrial and political duties toward themselves and each other. But they know that the time is not yet here for the full realization of that program. This is the transition stage from capitalism to communism. The people are still afflicted with the ignorance, selfishness, and short-sightedness of the old dog-eat-dog competitive system. Discipline is still necessary. Only a minority are intellectually prepared for the new society. And it falls as naturally to this intelligent minority to set up the essential discipline in Russian industry as it does to the corresponding minority in Amercan trade unions to create the discipline absolutely necessary to make the masses function in those bodies. At this stage of social development proletarian organizations without a strong discipline are impossible. Compulsory labor is only a temporary measure in Russia. It is a reaction from the ignorance and stupidity of capitalism, and will disappear as the effects of this capitalistic training are eliminated from the workers' minds by proletarian education.
Far more important even than legal right to work is the Russian workers' recognized right to the full product of their labor. In other countries the cream of industry's products flow into the maw of the exploiters; the benefits of invention and intensified production are absorbed by social parasites; the drones idle in luxury; while the workers drudge in poverty and deprivation. But how different in Russia: there there are no exploiters. The workers have to pay no tribute to a ruling class. They get all they produce, after deducting, of course, the expenses of running the Government. That is the meaning of the arrangement, which we have noted in the previous chapter, whereby the trade unions have a monopoly on setting wage scales in Russia. The right of the workers to the full product of their labor is the foundation of the Soviet Government and all its institutions. It is the very heart of the revolution itself.
The revolution, bringing as it did many new rights and duties for the workers, has changed their viewpoint in many fundamental matters. One instance relates to the question of strikes. In all capitalistic countries the right to strike is jealously guarded and fought for by the best and most militant elements of the working class. They consider it one of the very best means for advancing their cause and seek to encourage the masses to use it. But just the reverse prevails in Russia. Although the workers have the full legal right to strike the labor movement is decidedly against using it save under extreme circumstances. It is exactly the most intelligent and militant elements who are most against strikes.
The reason for this is that the Russian trade unions have finally and definitely defeated their old-time enemies, the capitalists, and in so doing they have passed from the era of industrial war into that of industrial peace. This has revolutionized their functions. From fighting organizations they have been turned into producing organizations. Henceforth, their supreme task is to assist in the re-construction and operation of industry along Communist lines. To do this, considering the broken-down state of industry, will require the utmost co-operation from every part of the labor movement. Strikes can only hinder the program. They cannot improve the conditions of the workers; they merely make things worse. Moreover, they are unnecessary, as the workers have all the industrial and political machinery of the country in their hands and can adjust whatever grievances they may have without recourse to striking.
Strikes in Russia are so much scabbing on the revolution. They are about on a par with the movements of bodies of workers in capitalist countries who break ranks during strikes and go back to work. Practically all the strikes that have occurred so far under the Soviet regime have been the work of the more ignorant toilers blindly rebelling against unavoidable cuts in food rations, or of counter-revolutionary plotters seeking to defeat the organized workers’ supreme task of getting industry going. The militants have been dead against them. They are for fighting the thing through to the finish. And that can be done, not by striking, but by sticking on the job and solving the enonomic crisis.
So far the Russian workers have not reaped any great prosperity from their newly-born right to work and to the full product of their labor. They are still in want. But this is because the industry of the country has been ruined by seven long years of imperialist and civil war. Production is far below the actual needs of the people. When the unions come together to work out their wage scales they find but little social product on hand to be divided. So, naturally, they cannot share out a prosperity that does not exist. But the economic crisis will eventually be solved and the period of deprivation ended. Then the Russian workers, freed from the 57 varieties of social parasites that afflict capitalism, and with their destiny in their own hands, will develop a standard of life and well-being absolutely unknown and impossible in capitalist countries.