[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

1918, Lenin stated his preference for the "single will" in the management
of enterprises. The workers must obey "unconditionally" the single will
of the directors of the work process. All the Bolshevik leaders, Kollontay
tells us, were "skeptical with regard to the creative abilities of workers'
collectives." Moreover, the administration was invaded by large numbers
of petty bourgeois, left over from old Russian capitalism, who had
adapted themselves all too quickly to institutions of the soviet type, and
had got themselves into responsible positions in the various
commissariats, insisting that economic management should be entrusted
to them and not to workers' organizations.
The state bureaucracy played an increasing role in the economy. From
December 5, 1917, on, industry was put under a Supreme Economic
Council, responsible for the authoritarian coordination of the activity of
all organs of production. From May 26 to June 4, 1918, the Congress of
Economic Councils met and decided that the directorate of each
enterprise should be composed of members two-thirds of whom would
be nominated by the regional councils or the Supreme Economic Council
and only one third elected by workers on the spot. A decree of May 28,
1918, extended collectivization to industry as a whole but, by the same
token, transformed the spontaneous socializations of the first months of
the revolution into nationalizations. The Supreme Economic Council was
made responsible for the administration of the nationalized industries.
The directors and technical staff were to remain at their posts as
appointees of the State. At the Second Congress of the Supreme
Economic Council at the end of 1918, the factory councils were roundly
trounced by the committee reporter for trying to direct the factories in the
place of the board of directors.
For the sake of appearances, elections to factory committees continued to
take place, but a member of the Communist cell read out a list of
candidates drawn up in advance and voting was by show of hands in the
presence of the armed "Communist guards" of the enterprise. Anyone
who declared his opposition to the proposed candidates became subject
to economic sanctions (wage cuts, etc.). As Peter Archinoff reported,
there remained a single omnipresent master - the State. Relations
between the workers and this new master became similar to those which
had previously existed between labor and capital.
The functions of the soviets had become purely nominal. They were
transformed into institutions of government power. "You must become
basic cells of the State," Lenin told the Congress of Factory Councils on
June 27, 1918. As Voline expressed it, they were reduced to the role of
"purely administrative and executive organs responsible for small,
unimportant local matters and entirely subject to 'directives' from the
central authorities: government and the leading organs of the Party."
They no longer had "even the shadow of power." At the Third Trades-
Union Congress (April 1920), the committee reporter, Lozovosky,
admitted: "We have abandoned the old methods of workers' control and
we have preserved only the principle of state control." From now on this
"control" was to be exercised by an organ of the State: the Workers' and
Peasants' Inspectorate.
The industrial federations which were centralist in structure had, in the
first place, helped the Bolsheviks to absorb and subjugate the factory
councils which were federalist and libertarian in their nature. From April
1, 1918, the fusion between the two types of organization was an
accomplished fact. From then on the trade unions played a disciplinary
role under the supervision of the Party. The union of workers in the
heavy metal industries of Petrograd forbade "disruptive initiatives" from
the factory councils and objected to their "most dangerous" tendency to
put this or that enterprise into the hands of the workers. This was said to
be the worst way of imitating production cooperatives, "the idea of
which had long since been bankrupt" and which would "not fail to
transform themselves into capitalist undertakings." "Any enterprise
abandoned or sabotaged by an industrialist, the product of which was
necessary to the national economy, was to be placed under the control of
the State." It was "not permissible" that the workers should take over
such enterprises without the approval of the trade-union organization.
After this preliminary take-over operation the trade unions were, in their
turn, tamed, deprived of any autonomy, purged; their congresses were
postponed, their members arrested, their organizations disbanded or
merged into larger units. At the end of this process any anarcho-
syndicalist tendency had been wiped out, and the trade-union movement
was completely subordinated to the State and the single party.
The same thing happened with regard to consumers' cooperatives. In the
early stages of the Revolution they had arisen everywhere, increased in
numbers, and federated with each other. Their offense, however, was that
they were outside the control of the Party and a certain number of social
democrats (Mensheviks) had infiltrated them. First, local shops were
deprived of their supplies and means of transport on the pretext of
"private trade" and "speculation," or even without any pretext at all.
Then, all free cooperatives were closed at one stroke and state
cooperatives set up bureaucratically in their place. The decree of March
20, 1919, absorbed the consumer cooperatives into the Commissariat of
Food Supplies and the industrial producer cooperatives into the Supreme
Economic Council. Many members of cooperatives were thrown into
prison.
The working class did not react either quickly or vigorously enough. It
was dispersed, isolated in an immense, backward, and for the most part
rural country exhausted by privation and revolutionary struggle, and, still
worse, demoralized. Finally, its best members had left for the fronts of
the civil war or had been absorbed into the party and government
apparatus. Nevertheless, quite a number of workers felt themselves more
or less done out of the fruits of their revolutionary victories, deprived of
their rights, subjected to tutelage, humiliated by the arrogance and
arbitrary power of the new masters; and these became aware of the real
nature of the supposed "proletarian State." Thus, during the summer of
1918, dissatisfied workers in the Moscow and Petrograd factories elected
delegates from among their number, trying in this way to oppose their
authentic "delegate councils" to the soviets of enterprises already
captured by authority. Kollontay bears witness that the worker felt sore
and understood that he had been pushed aside. He could compare the life
style of the soviet functionaries with the way in which he lived - he upon [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

skierniewice.pev.pl