Dictatorship vs. Democracy

the Organiza

GOVERNMENT

e made responsible chiefly for the economic disorganization of the country. In harmony with his present mission, Kautsky methodically translates into the language of pseudo-Marxism all the bourgeois charges against the Soviet Government of destroying

obstinacy, hides the real cause for our economic disorganizati

per cent. of the ore and 4 per cent. of the coal. Both these regions, during the civil war, were cut off from us. We were deprived of half a milliard poods of coal imported from abroad. Simultaneously, we were left without oil: the oilfields, one and all, passed into the hands of our enemies. One needs to have a truly brazen forehead to speak, in face of these facts, of the destructive influence of "premature," "barbarous," etc., socialization. An industry which is completely deprived of fuel and raw materials-whether that industry belongs to a capitalist trust or to th

t at all follow from this that the terrible devastation caused by the Anglo-American-French blockade and the robber

The inevitable hour of Nemesis was brought nearer by the fuel crisis. Our almost simultaneous loss of the Donetz coal, foreign coal, and the oil of the Caucasus, obliged us in the sphere of transport to have recourse to wood. And, as the supplies of wood fuel were not in the least calculated with a view to this, we had to stoke our boilers with recently stored raw wood, which has an extremely destr

ad, began under Tsarism and continued under Kerensky, embracing ever new and newer regions. Endless evacuations simultaneous with the destruction of industry, of necessity meant the destruction of transport also. During the civil war, with its changing fronts, evacuations assumed a more feverish and consequently a still more destructive character. Each side temporarily or permanently evacuated this or that industrial centre, and took all possible steps to ensure t

ent was being accomplished on an unprecedented scale, the supply of machines from a

etariat-suffer. The proletariat was consolidating the November revolution, building and defending the apparatus of Soviet power, and carrying on a ceaseless struggle with the White Guards. The skilled workers are, as a rule, at the same time the most advanced. The civil

and a half years of its existence, to the problem of military defence

During simple economic strikes the workers consume, and do not produce. Still more powerful, therefore, are the blows inflicted upon economic life by the class strugg

rder, living labor-power is scattered over the face of the country, and a high percentage of it has been lost to the front-is there any need to seek supplementary reasons in the economic Utopianism of the Bolsheviks in order to

-create it, just like the army, out of fragments. War industry, set up again under these conditions of unprecedented difficulty, has fulfilled and is fulfilling

lready, in the course of three or four months of intensive work in this sphere, it has become clear beyond all possibility of doubt that, thanks to its most intimate connection with the popular masses, t

We had to find the solution in practice, and test it in practice. Kautskianism is a whole epoch behind the gigantic economic problems being solved at present by the Soviet Government. In the

thor of this book at the Third All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions. With the object of the fullest possible elucidation of the question, the text of the speech i

HE ORGANIZA

more coming to the fore. History is bringing us, along the whole line, to our fundamental problem-the organization of labor on new social foundations. The organization of labor is in its essence the organization of the new society: every historical form of society is in its foundation a form of organization of labor. While every previous form of society was an organization of labor in the interests of a minority, which organized its State apparatus for the oppres

receive the largest possible quantity of products in return for a small quantity of energy, there would have been no technical development or social culture. It would appear, then, from this point of view that human laziness is a progressive force, Old Antonio Labriola, the Italian Marxist, even used to picture the man of the future as a "happy and lazy genius." We must not, however,

RY LABOR

mobilization, distribution, productive application, means practically to solve the problem of economic construction. This is a problem for a whole epoch-a gigantic prob

, we were brought face to face with very big difficulties. It was absolutely impossible to meet those difficulties by means of buying labor-power on the market, with the present insignificant purchasing power of money, and in the most complete absence of manufactured products. Our fuel requirements cannot be satisfied, even partially, without a mass application, on a scale hitherto unknown, of labor-power to work on wood, fuel, peat, and combustible slate. The civil war has pla

surplus of labor-power on to the market. The State obliged it to do this by its demand for taxes. The market offered the peasant manufactured goods. To-day, we have none of this. The village has acquired more land;

the Soviet State his energy, in order to ensure that laboring Russia, and with it the laboring masses, should not be crus

e. Its application has always had an accidental, impartial, episodic character. Only now, when along the whole line we have reached the question of the economic rebirth of the country, have problems of compulsory labor service arisen before us in the most concrete way possible. The only solution of economic

utilization of labor-power on the

zation, formation, and transference from one place to another of large masses. These technical me

d labor-power entered each factory separately from the market. It is consequently natural that we should be obliged, at an

r economic centres-the Supreme Economic Council, the People's Commissariat for Agriculture, the People's Commissariat for Ways and Communications, the People's Commissariat for Food-work out estimates of the labor-power they require. The Chief Committee for Compulsory Labor Service receives these estimates, co-ordinates them, bring

ryo stage. It is still very imperfect. But the cour

in no way met by measures of a purely departmental and administrative character. It touches the very foundations of economic life and the social structure. It finds itself in conflict with the most powerful psycho

ust see that the workers mobilized be supplied in good time with the necessary implements of production, and with food. We must see that at their head be placed experienced and business-like instructors. We must see that the workers mobilized become convinced on the spot that their labor-power is being made use of cautiously and economically and is not being expended haphazard. Wherever it is possible, direct mobilization must be replaced by the labor task-i.e., by the imposition on the rural district of an obligation to supply, for example, in such a time such a number of cubic sazhens of wood, or to bring up by carting to such a station so many poods of

ARIZATION

reater or less degree, of the methods of militarization of labor. This term at once brings

s. But the members of the trade unions are workers, while in the army the workers constitute about 15 per cent., the remainder being a peasant mass. And, none the less, we can have no doubt that the true builder and "militarizer" of the Red Army has been the foremost worker, pushed forward by the party and the trade union organization. Whenever the situation at the front was difficult, whenever

s more than once been put forward as a watchword and realized in separate branches of economic life in the bourgeois countries, both in the West and in Russia under Tsarism. But our militarization is distingu

-there spring the greater part of the prejudices, mistakes, protests, and outcries on this subject. It is on such a confusion of meanings that the whole pos

o. They reject these methods as "compulsory." They preach that general labor service means

is helpful or otherwise to give the military revolutionary tribunal powers to punish corrupt workers who steal materials and instruments, so precious to us, or who sabotage their work. No, the Mensheviks have gone much further into the question. Affirming that compulsory labor is always unproductive, they t

poch, and that our revolution is a bourgeois revolution, and that we Communists are only destroying capitalist economy, and that we are not leading the country forward but are throwing it back. This was the root difference-the most profound, the most irreconcilable-from which all the others followed. Now the Mensheviks tell us incidentally, in the introductory paragraph of their resolution, as something that does not require proof, that we are in the period of transition from capitalism to Socialism. And this quite une

ive philosophers of the bourgeoisie, in the struggle against unfree, i.e., against the serf labor of peasants, and against the standardized and regulated labor of the craft guilds. Free labor meant labor which might be "freely" bought in the market; freedom was reduced

ted labor on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory for the whole people and consequently compulsory for each worker in the country. Without this we cannot even dream of a transition to Socialism. The element of material, physical, compulsion may be greater or less; that depends on many conditions-on the degree of wealth or poverty of the country, on the herit

labor-power at a moderate price-that is for him the sole measure of the freedom of labor. Th

of economic life grew up out of definite conditions of production, and created definite forms of social life, with which the peasant grew accustomed, and which he at certain periods considered just, or at any rate unalter

the army has ever considered itself justified in subordinating citizens to itself in such a measure, and to control them by its will on all sides to such a degree, as the State of the proletarian dictatorship considers itself justified in doing, and does. Only the army-just because in its way it used to decide questions of

mic, and together with them our professional and productive organizations, have the right to demand from the

not at all founded merely on the "free" contract, but includes the

sm, verbally acknowledged by the Mensheviks, means the transition from anarchical distribution of labor-power-by means of the game of buying and selling, the movement of market prices and wages-to systematic distribution of the workers by the economic organizations of the county, the province, and the

ot to be realized without the abolition of fiction of the freedom of labor, and without the

ys and under every condition, as the Menshevik resolution says, all our constructive work would be doomed to failure. For we can have no way to Socialism except by the authoritative regulation of the economic forces and resources of the country, and the centralized distribution of labor-power in harmony with the general State plan. The Labor State considers itself empowered to send every worker to the place w

educate, discipline, distribute, group, retain certain categories and certain workers at their posts for fixed periods-in a word, hand in hand with the State to exercise their authority in order to lead the workers into the framework of a single economic plan. To defend, under such conditions, the "freedom" of labor means to defend fruitless, helpless, absolutely unregulated searches for bette

abor-power, its brief or prolonged retention at particular industries and factories, its regulation within the framework of the general State economic plan-if these forms of compulsion lead always and everywhere, as the Menshevik resolution states, to the lowering of productivity, then you can erect a monument over the grave of Socialism. For we cannot b

n was in certain conditions a step forward, and led to the increase in the productivity of labor. Production has grown extremely under capitalism, that is, in the epoch of the free buying and selling of labor-power on the market. But free labor, together with the whole of capitalism, entered the stage of imperialism and blew itself up in the imperialist war. The whole economic life of the world entered a period of bloody anarchy, monstrous perturbations, the impoverishment, dying out, and destruction of masses o

h is arising to replace imperialism led to the lowering of economic life, it would mean the dest

re and under all conditions"-is only a belated echo of ancient Liberal melodies. The productivity of labor is the total productive mean

ted myself to point out, is lazy; that is, he instinctively strives to receive the largest possible quantity of products for the least possible expenditure of energy. Without such a striving, the

he most varying methods and practices, which in addition changed from one epoch to another. First of all the bourgeoisie drove the peasant from the village to the high road with its club, having preliminarily robbed him of his land, and when he would not work in the factory it branded his forehead with re

school, the press, the market-place, and parliament were adapted by the bourgeoisie for the moral fashioning of the working-class. Different forms of wages-day-wages, piece wages, contract and collective bargaining-all these are merely changing methods in the hands of the bourgeoisie for the labor mobilization of the proletariat. To this there are added all sorts of forms for encouraging labor and exciting ambition. Finally, the bourgeoisie learned how to gain possession even of the trade unions-i.e., the organizations of the working clas

ng and stubborn policy of repression, education, organization, and encouragement, applied by the bourgeoisie in its relations with the working class. Step by step it learned to squeeze out of the workers ever

ture of labor corresponds to the relations and current ideas of the epoch. The productivity of labor is developed, on the basis of the development of t

re-education, with the one unchanging end of the increase in the productivity of labor. The working class, under the leadership of its vanguard,

lly-imposed, but actually slave labor. For it was the labor of the majority in the interests of the minority. We, on the other hand, organize labor in the interests of the workers themselves, and therefore we can have no motives for hiding or masking the socially compulsory character of our labor organization. We need

arization of labor by the will of the workers themselves is the Socialist dictatorship. That compulsory labor service and the militarization of labor do not force the will of the workers, as "free" labor used to do, is best shown by the flourishing, unprecedented in the history of humanity, of labor voluntarism in the form of "Subbotniks" (Communist Saturdays). Such a phenomenon there never was before, anywhere or at any time. By their own voluntary labor, freely given-once a week and o

f things, the extension of scientific and technical knowledge, and the initiation of the masses into the general economic pla

le to the masses. To-day, social riddles are explained to the masses by the very mechanism of the Soviet order, which draws the masses into all branches of administration. Polit

press as a whole must fall into line with the economic problems of the country-not in that sense alone in which this is being done at present-i.e., not in the sense of a mere general agitation in favor of a revival of labor-but in the sense of the discussion and the weighing of concrete economic problems and plans

is now in its entirety imposed upon the industrial organizations of the proletariat. A good engineer, a good mechanic, and a good carpenter, must have in the Soviet Republic the same publicity and fame as hitherto was enjoyed by prominent agitators, revolutionary

be a system of wages. But at present we are not sufficiently rich for this. Our main problem is to raise the quantity of products turned out, and to this problem all the remainder must be subordinated. In the present difficult p

Taylor system, etc., have as their object to increase the exploitation of the workers by the squeezing-out of surplus value. Under Socialist production, piece-work, bonuses, etc., have as their problem to increase the volume of social

labor solidarity, undermining the common work, and seriously impairing the Socialist renaissance of the c

will not disappear even in the developed Socialist society; but with the growing guarantee of the necessary requirements of life rivalry will acquire an ever less selfish and purely idealist character. It will express itself in a striving to perform the greatest possible service for one's village, county, town, or the whole of society, and to receive in return renown, gratitude, sym

We are now only beginning, together with you, to write that book in the sweat and the blood of the workers. We say: working men and women, you have crossed to the path of regulated labor. Only along that road will you build the Socialist so

R AR

circumstances had arisen which had left considerable military forces free for an indefinite period. To transfer them to other active fronts, especially in the winter, was difficult in consequence of the disorder of railway transport. Such, for example, proved the position of the Third Army, di

s of opposition. The same Abramovich, at the Congress of Economic Councils called in January or the beginning of February-that is to say, when the whole affair was still in draft stage-foretold that we should suffer an inevitable failure, for th

al. In this way, in its composition and structure, the Third Army represented a peasant mass bound together into a military organization under the leadership of the foremost workers. In the army there worked a considerable number of military specialists, who carried out important military functions while remaining under the general control of the Communists. If we consider the Third Army from this general point of view, we shall see that it represents in miniature the whole of Soviet Russia. Whether we take the Red Army as a whole, or the organization of the Soviet regime in the county, province, or the whole Republic, including the economic organs, we shall find everywhere the same scheme of organization: millions of peasants drawn into new forms of political, economic, and social life by the organized workers, who occupy a controlling position in all sphere

hands of the appropriate economic organs; the army supplied the necessary labor-power in the form of organized, compact units, suitable in the mass for the

present parasitic formations, in which there are 100 officials for every ten workers. Is this true? No. This is the irresponsible and malignant criticism of men who stand on one side, do not know the facts, collect only fragments and rubbish, and are concerned in any way and every way either to declare our bankruptcy or to prophecy it. In reality, the labor armies have not only n

the bond of morale and organization-Communist voluntarism and State compulsion combined-allowed us to carry out mobilizations of millions to carry through numerous formations and redistributions, and to solve the most difficult military problems. In the long run, the army was victorious. In relation to labor problems, on the foundation of our military experience, we awaited the same results; and we were not mistaken. The Red soldiers did not scatter when they were transformed from military to labor service, as the sceptics prophesied. Thanks to our splendidly-organized agitat

staff of the army and its administrative apparatus, the percentage of workers produced by the army was actually extremely low. From the general number of 120,000 Red soldiers, 21% proved to be employed in administrative and economic work; 16% were engaged in daily detail work (guards, etc.) in connection with the large number of army institutions and stores; the number of sick, mainly typhus cases, together with the medico-

as already had time to give some very significant results. At the present moment (March, 1920), the former Third Army gives about 38% of its total composition as workers. As for the military units of the Ural military area working side by side with it, they already provide 49% of their number as workers. This result is not so bad, if we compare it with the amount of work do

eral number of over 30,000, over 75% attend work. This is already a very great step forward. It shows that, using the military apparatus for mobilization and formation, we can introduc

under favorable conditions, of producing one cubic sazhen per day per man. What happened in reality? The military units were quartered far from the forest to be felled. In many cases it was necessary to march to and from work 6 to 8 versts, which swallowed up a considerable portion of the working day. There were not sufficient axes and saws on the spot. Many Red soldiers, born in the plains, did not know the forests, had never felled trees, had never chopped or sawed them up. The provincial and county Timber Committees were very far from knowing at first how to use the military units, how to direct them where the

In January there were spent on a cubic sazhen of wood two and one-third working days; in February, 2.1; in March, 1.5; which represents an exclusively high level of productivity. This result was achieved by moral influence, by the exact registration of the individual work of each man, by the awakening of labor pride, by the distribut

r, as is known, assisted considerably to raise the traffic capacity of the Kazan-Ekaterinburg Railway; and, wherever the experiment of the adaptation o

of the last epoch: "militarism," "military organization," "the unproductiveness of compulsory labor." We must approach the phenomena of the new epoch without any prejudices, and with eyes wide open; and we must remember that Saturday exists for man, and not vice

LE ECONO

single economic plan covering the whole country and all branches of productive activity. This plan must be drawn up for a number of years, for the whole epoch that lies before us. It is naturally broken u

s for industry, fodder for the cattle. Without this we shall not make one step forward. Consequently, the first part of the plan comprises the improvement of transport, or, in any case, the prevention of its further deterioration and the preparation of the most necessary supplies of food, raw materials, and fuel. The whole of the next period will be in its entirety filled with the concentration and straining of labor-power to solve these r

n the interests of transport and the storage of raw m

pare parts. To-day, when the whole network of the railways and the factories is in the hands of one master, the Labor State, we can and must fix single types of locomotives and trucks for the whole country, standardize their constituent parts,

re again open to us, we must concentrate our ex

-building in the interests of the produ

rst three, will allow us to begin the production of articles of

the future; we must tell them openly that our economic plan, with the maximum of exertion on the part of the workers, will neither to-morrow nor the day after give us a land flowing with milk and honey: for during the first period our chief work will consist in preparing the conditions for the production of the means of production. Only after we have secured, though on the smallest possible scale, the possibility of rebuilding the means of transport and production, shall we pass on to the production of articl

amental from the auxiliary and secondary. Needless to say, under no circumstances are we striving for a narrow "national" Communism: the raising of the blockade, and the European revolution all the more, would introduce the most radical alterations in our economic plan, cutting down the stages of its development and bringing them together. But we do not know when these events will take place; and we must act in such a way that we can hold out and become stronger under the most unfavorable circumstances

steps by which we descended, and only after a certain, quite prolonged, period will be able to raise our Socialist economy to the level at which it stood on the eve of the imperialist war. Such a conception would not only be not consoling, but absolutely incorrect. Economic collapse, which dest

alist economy. After we have conquered our terrible misery, have accumulated small supplies of raw material and food, and have improved our transport, we shall be able to leap over a whole series of intermediate

and in the sphere of personal consumption, without passing through "the age of steam." The programme of electrification is alr

ear that at the foundation of all our work-labor mobilization, militarization of labor, Subbotniks, and other forms of Communist labor voluntarism-there must lie the single economic plan. And the period that is upon us requires from us the comp

AND ONE-MAN

he collegiate (board) or the one-man principle. We are told that the transference of factories to single directors instead of to a board is a crime against the working class and the Socialist revolution. It is remarkable that the most zealous d

active assistance of the trade unions; the building up of all Soviet organs by means of the Soviet congresses, representing tens of millions of workers; the attraction into the work of administration, or control of administration, of those who are administered. It is in such things that the independence of the working class can be expressed. And if the working class, on the foundation of its existence, comes through its congresses, Soviet party and trade union, to the conclusion that it is better to place one person at the head of a factory, and not a board, it is making a decision dictated by the independence of the working class

also untrue that in defence of one-man forms of administration of our economic enterprises with the attraction of experts, we took our stand only on the foundation of our military experience. In reality, in this question we took our stand, and continue to do so on purely Marxist views of the revolutionary problems and creative duties of the proletariat when it has taken power into its own hands. The necessity of making use of technical knowledge and methods accumulated in the past, the necessity of attracting experts and

g and acquiring experience: but a man who is appointed to control a factory is not going to school, but to a responsible post of economic administration. And, even if we look at this question in the limited, and therefore incorrect light of a "school," I will say that when the one-man principle prevails the school is ten times better:

say with indignation that only a madman can demand that a board of three or five should manage a workshop. There must be one manager, and one only. Why? If collegiate administration is a "school," why do w

hesitation and chaos into all their work. The working class is very deeply interested in raising its capacity for administration, that is, in being educated; but this is attained in the sphere of industry by the periodical report of the administrative body of a factory before the whole factory, and the discussion of the economic plan for the year or for the current month. All the workers who display serious interest in the work of industrial organization are registered by the directors of the undertaking, or by special commissions; are taken through appropriate courses closely bound up with the practical work of the factory itself; and are then appointed, first to less responsible, and then to more responsible posts. In such a way we shall embrace many thousands, and, in the future, tens of thousands. But the question of "threes" and "fives" interests, not the laboring masses, but the more backward, weaker, less fit

put him in charge of the factory and give him an expert as an assistant. Where there is a good expert, let us put him in charge and give him as assistants two or three of the workers. Finally, where

il war-everywhere we find the principal part being played by this upper layer of the proletariat. The chief work of the Soviet Government during these two and a half years consisted in man?uvring and throwing the foremost section of the workers from one front to another. The deeper layers of the working class, which emerged from the peasant mass, are revolutionarily inclined, but are still too poor in initiative. The disease of our Russian peasant is the herd instinct, the absence of personality: in other words, the same quality that used to be extolled by our reactionary Populists, and that Leo Tolstoy extolled in the character of Platon Karatayev: th

and displayed in rivalry. The one-man principle in the administrative and technical spher

ON OF TH

he strength of the current. He has to swim over: that is his task! But our Kautskian stands first on one foot and then on the other. "We do not deny," he says, "the necessity of swimming over, but at the same time, as realists, we see the danger-and not only one, but several:

working class, what did you do then? You opposed, you sabotaged-while not repudiating self-defence in principle. You said and wrote in your papers: "Down with the civil war!" at the time when we were surrounded by White Guards, and the knife was at our throat. Now you, approving our victorious self-defence after the event, transfer your critical gaze to new problems, and attempt to teach us. "In general, we do not repudiate the principle of general labor service," you say, "but ... without legal compulsion." Yet in these very words there is a monstrous internal contradiction!

ctivity of labor, are possible only by means of the simultaneous application of various methods-economic interest, legal compulsion, the influence of an internally c

these methods can we attain a h

n of labor-power, to make use only of such means as the raising of wages, bonuses, etc., in order to attract the necessary workers to our most important factories. Apparently that comprises all his thoughts on the subject. But if we put the question in this way, every serious worker in the trade union movement will understand it is pure utopia. We cannot hope for a free influx of labor-power from the market, for to achieve this the State would need to have in its hands sufficiently extensive "reserves of man?uvre," in the form of food, housing, and transport, i.e., precisely those conditions which we have yet only to create. Without systematically-organized transference of labor-power on a mass scale, according to the demands of the economic organization, we shall achieve nothing. Here the moment of compulsion arises

e, but on the contrary pre-supposes, that the State and the trade unions-without which the Soviet State will not build up industry-acquire new rights of some kind over t

omy. Such a form of union is in principle a new organization, which is distinct, not only from the trade unions, but also from the revolutionary industrial unions in bourgeois society, just as the supremacy of the proletariat is distinct from the supremacy of the bourgeoisie. The productional union of the ruling working class no longer has the problems, the methods, the discipline, of the union for struggle of an oppressed class. All our workers are obliged to enter the unions. The Mensheviks are against this. This is quite comprehensible, because in reality they are against the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is to this, in the long run, that the whole question is reduced. The Kautskians are against the dictatorship of the proletariat, and are thereby against all its consequences. Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of the expression of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely connected regions. True, Abramovich demonstrated to us most learnedly that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the principle of compuls

e to lose all practical significance. To-day the Mensheviks, albeit with reservations, do not deny the lawfulness of stern measures with the White Guards and with deserters from the Red Army: they have been forced to recognize this after their own lamentable experiments with "democracy." They have to all appearances understood-very late in the day-that, when one is face to face with the counter-revoluti

s recipes. The question is not what is going to happen in twenty or thirty years' time-at that date, of course, things will be much better-but of how to-day to struggle out of our ruins, how immediately to distribute labor-power, how to-day to raise the productivity of labor, and how, in particular, to act in the case o

pt there were Pharaohs, there were slave-owners and slaves. It was not the Egyptian peasants who decided through their Soviets to build the pyramids; there existed a social order based upon hierarchial caste; and the workers were obliged to toil by a class that was hostile to them. Our compulsion is applied by a workers' and peasants' government, in the name of the interests of the laboring masses. That is what Abramovich ha

ough one and the same school of Tsarism. The same rifles, the same cartridges in both camps. Where is the difference? There is a difference, gentlemen, and it is defined by a fundamental test: who is in power? The working class or the landlord class, Pharaohs or peasants, White Guards or the Petrograd proletariat? There is a difference, and evidence on the subject is furnished by the fate of Yudenich, Kolchak, and Deni

inseparable from the military organization. In war every piece of slackness, every lack of thoroughness, and even a simple mistake, not infrequently bring in their train the most heavy sacrifices. Hence the striving of the military organization to bring clearness, definiteness, exactness of relations and responsibilities, to the highest degree of development. "Military" qualities in this connection are valued in every sphere. It was in this sense that I said that every class prefers to have in its service those of its members who, other things being equal, have passed through the military school. The German peasant, for example, who has passed out of the barracks in the capacity of an N.C.O. was for the German monarchy, and remains for the Ebert Republic, much dearer and more valuable than the same peasant who has not passed through military training. The apparatus of the German railways was splendidly organized, thanks to a considerable degree to the employment of N.C.O.'s and officers in administrative posts in the transport department. In this sense we also have something to learn from militarism. Comrade Tsiperovich, o

bramovich are just as lifeless as on all other questions-the ar

owledge or experience. Others have neither one nor the other. Out of this material we have to create our factory and other administrative bodies; and here we cannot be satisfied with general phrases. First of all, we must select all the workers who have already in experience shown that they can direct enterprises, and give such men the possibility of standing on their own feet. Such men themselves ask for one-man management, because the work of controlling a factory is not a school for the backward. A worker who knows his business thoroughly desires to control. If he has decided and ordered, his decision must be accomplished. He may be replaced-that is another matter; but while he is the master-the Soviet, proletarian master-he controls the undertaking entirely

ies attached to expert commanders. The responsibility fell on the expert, who knew that, if he made a mistake, he would bear the full brunt, and would not be able to say that he was only an "adviser" or a "member of the board." To-day in our army the majority of the posts of command, particular

ks to have papers, if only the Mensheviks remain in existence until that time. But to-day we are living in the period of dictatorship, political and economic. And the Mensheviks continue to undermine that dictatorship. When we are fighting on the civil front, preserving the revolution from its enemies, and the Menshevik paper writes: "Down with the civil war," we cannot permit this. A dictators

hrough the people," says the representative of the Mensheviks, "no guardians of the laboring masses! All through the laboring masses, through their independent activity!" And, further, "It is impossible to convince a class by arguments." Yet look at this very hall: here is that class! The working class is here before you, and with us;