Dictatorship vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism): a reply to Karl Kantsky — Kant — John Shaqi
Dictatorship vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism): a reply to Karl Kantsky
Kant · en
While as to what can be achieved in this respect, we have a brief but
very rich experience in the Moscow Engineer Regiment. The Chief Board
of Military Engineers, which controlled this experiment, began with
fixing the standard of production as three working days for a cubic
sazhen of wood. This standard soon proved to be surpassed. 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 distribution of bonuses
to the workers who produced more than the average result--or, to speak
in the language of the trade unions, by a sliding scale adaptable to
all individual changes in the productivity of labor. This experiment,
carried out almost under laboratory conditions, clearly indicates the
path along which we have to go in future.
At present we have functioning a series of labor armies--the First,
the Petrograd, the Ukrainian, the Caucasian, the South Volga, the
Reserve. The latter, as is known, assisted considerably to raise the
traffic capacity of the Kazan-Ekaterinburg Railway; and, wherever the
experiment of the adaptation of military units for labor problems was
carried out with any intelligence at all, the results showed that this
method is unquestionably live and correct.
The prejudice concerning the inevitably parasitic nature of military
organization--under each and every condition--proves to be shattered.
The Soviet Army reproduces within itself the tendencies of the Soviet
social order. We must not think in the petrifying terms 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 versa; that all forms of
organization, including the military, are only weapons in the hands of
the working class in power, which has both the right and the
possibility of adapting, altering, refashioning, those weapons, until
it has achieved the requisite result.
THE SINGLE ECONOMIC PLAN
The widest possible application of the principle of general labor
service, together with measures for the militarization of labor, can
play a decisive part only in case they are applied on the basis of a
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 up
into separate periods or stages, corresponding to the inevitable
stages in the economic rebirth of the country. We shall have to begin
with the most simple and at the same time most fundamental problems.