# Trade Unions in Soviet Russia/Lenin's Speech at the Third Congress

LENIN'S SPEECH
AT THE
Third All-Russia Trade Union Congress.
[Published by the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions, Moscow, 1920].
Comrades,—First of all permit me to greet the Third All-Russian Trade Union Congress on behalf of the Council of People's Commissaries. Comrades! The Soviet Government is at the present moment passing through a period of the utmost gravity in many respects; a period which places before us interesting and complex problems, and which lays particular tasks and particular responsibility upon the Trade Unions in the work of constructive socialism. For this reason I would much rather deal, not with particular decisions of the recent party congress but with those changes in the conditions of Soviet policy which link together the problems of social construction with the activity of the Trade Unions.
Peaceful Economic Construction.
Comrades, the distinguishing feature, of the present moment is the transition from problems of a military nature to those of peaceful economic construction, the former of which had up to the present time absorbed all the attention and activity of the Soviet Government. It must be pointed out here that this is not the first time that the Soviet Government and the Soviet Republic are passing through such an important phase. It is the second time that we are returning to conditions which render the task of peaceful construction one of first importance. The first time in the history of the Soviet Republic was in the beginning of 1918; at that time, after a short but powerful attack by German imperialism, when the old capitalist army had completely collapsed and when the conditions were such that we neither had nor were able in a short time to create an army, the Brest peace was forced upon us by German imperialist rapacity. Then in the beginning of 1918 it seemed as if military problems had become a thing of secondary importance and we were in a position to devote ourselves to problems of peaceful construction.
​Comparison with 1918 Situation.
I read a paper in the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on the 29th of April, 1918, almost two years ago; the Central Committee accepted a number of proposals in connection, with my report, including proposals in connection with labour discipline; and the whole thing therefore bears a similarity to the present moment. It is most erronous to assert that the decisions of the Communist Party and of the Soviet Government have been arrived at as a result of our present disputes. Such a statement would misrepresent the whole trend of the activity, regulations and attitude of the Communist Party and of the Soviet Government to this problem. In order to gain a proper understanding of the question and to make a proper attempt at its solution, it is extremely advisable to draw a comparison between the state of things prevailing in the beginning of 1918 and that of the present time. At that time, after a short period of war with German Imperialism, we were first faced with problems of peaceful construction. There were prospects of a lengthy period of such construction. The civil war had not yet begun. Krasnoff, making use of the German assistance he obtained in the Ukraine, had just appeared at the Don; the North was clear from attacks and the Soviet Republic held a vast territory, excluding that part of Russia which had been taken away by the Brest peace. The general conditions were such that it was justifiable to count upon a considerable period of peaceful construction. It was under these conditions that the first thing put forward by the Communist Party and emphasised by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in the form of a resolution passed on the 29th of April, 1918, was the necessity for an agitation to explain the insistent need for labour discipline. It is necessary to realise in this connection that dictatorial power and single man management are not inconsistent with socialist democracy. This must be brought to mind now so that both the decisions arrived at by the Party congress as well as the general problems with which we are faced may be fully understood. This is not merely a solution of the questions which now arise, but is inseparably connected with the conditions of the present phase. Whoever has any doubt upon this subject has only to compare the state of things prevalent two years ago, and it will become obvious; to him that all attention must now of necessity be transferred to labour discipline and to questions connected with the labour army, although at that time, two years ago, this army was not yet in existence. By drawing a comparison between the past and the present aspect of the question we can arrive at a correct conclusion it we disregard details and consider only that which is of general and vital importance.
The whole attention of the communists and of the Soviet Government should be concentrated on the question of peaceful economic construction, on the question of dictatorship and on that of single man management. The experience of the two years of civil war makes the solution of these questions imperative; but they were raised as far back as 1918 when there was no civil war and experience was out of the question.
​The Essence of the Class Struggle.
Consequently it is not merely the experience of the Red Army and of the victorious civil war, but something far deeper than that, something connected with the problems of proletarian dictatorship, that is compelling us now, just as it did two years ago, to concentrate all our attention on questions of labour discipline, which is the essence of socialist economic construction and which helps us to understand the nature of proletarian dictatorship. With the overthrow of capitalism, every day of our revolution removed us further from former ideas so much in vogue with the old internationalists who are thoroughly imbued with a petty bourgeois spirit; the belief that, while private property in land, in the means of production and in capital were retained, the decisions of a majority in a democratic institution of bourgeois parliamentarism can really be an effective solution of questions which can in fact only be solved by an acute class struggle. The full significance and actual conditions of proletarian dictatorship became fully apparent to us when governmental power had been acquired and proletarian dictatorship was approached from a practical standpoint. We then learned that the class struggle had not ceased and that the victory over the capitalists and landlords had only defeated these classes but had failed to destroy them completely.
It is sufficient to mention the international relationship of capital, which is much closer and firmer than the relationship which exists between the working classes of the various countries. Capital, considered on an international scale, is both in a military and economic sense stronger than the Soviet Government and the Soviet system. This is the basic principle which has to be laid down. The form of the struggle against Capital constantly changes; at one time it is of an international character, whilst at another it is concentrated in one country. But though the form changes, the struggle continues, and the basic law of class struggle as formulated by preceding revolutions is confirmed by our revolution. The greater the unity of the proletariat which leads to the overthrow of the bourgeois classes, the more practical knowledge is gained by the working class, and the wider is the progress of the revolution in the course of the struggle itself. With the overthrow of capitalism the struggle does not cease, and the fact itself of the overthrow of the capitalist class in one country only becomes of a practical world importance when such overthrow is made absolutely definite. It will be remembered that at the beginning of the October revolution our revolution was looked upon in the light of a curiosity—many a strange happening of no importance occurs in this world.
To make this manifestation one of universal importance an actual coup d'etat was required to take place in some country. It was only then that the capitalists of all countries, who at first hesitated to help the Russian capitalists, became aware that what had happened was of grave universal significance. And it was only then that the resistance of the capitalists on an international scale attained the power which it was able to wield. It was only then that the civil war fully developed in Russia, ​only then that the victorious countries resolved to render united assistance in this civil war to the Russian landlords and capitalists.
The attitude of the Peasants.
In addition to the natural development of the resistance of the overthrown class, it drew a new source of power from the attitude of the proletariat and the peasantry. All those who have made a study of Marxism, all those whose views of socialism are connected with its relation to the international movement of the working class as the only scientific basis of Marxism, all these know that socialism means the abolition of classes. But what does this mean? It does not stop at overthrowing the capitalists; its next step is to remove the difference between the social position of the workers and the peasants. The peasants who as a class are toilers, who have for scores and hundreds of years been oppressed by the landlord and capitalist class, cannot forget for long that their emancipation from this oppression has been effected by the working class. The endless disputes on this question and the mountains ot paper used in dealing with it, as well as the numerous political groupings to which this led, have ended in the fact that all these differences have paled into insignificance before the actual facts of life.
But on the other hand under the conditions of commodity production the peasants remain owners, property holders; every instance of the sale of bread in the open market, every sack of flour or other food carried from place to place by private traders, every speculative deal means the restitution of commodity production and therefore the restitution of capitalism. The overthrow of capitalism involved and brought about the emancipation of the peasantry, but against this overthrow there was the petty bourgeoisie—in old Russia undoubtedly a large class. The peasantry remain private owners as far as their production is concerned, and are establishing new capitalistic relations. These are the principal features of our economic position, and it is this that gives rise to those absurd speeches emanating from men who fail to understand the real position: speeches on liberty, equality and democracy. We are conducting a class struggle and our aim is to abolish classes; so long as there still exists two classes, those of peasants and workers, socialism cannot be realised, and an irreconcilable struggle goes on incessantly. The chief problem now is how under the conditions when one class is carrying on the struggle, to attract the labouring peasantry, to defeat or to neutralise it or crush its resistance with the aid of a strong; government apparatus involving all the measures of compulsion.
Education and Organisation must solve the problem.
The class struggle is being continued and the significance of proletarian dictatorship appears before us in a new light. Here it appears not only as an application of the means of compulsion through the whole State apparatus, though this of course remains the principal idea of proletarian dictatorship. It is to some extent true that so far we have achieved little on this ​basis; but it should be kept in mind that there is one more task with which the proletarian dictatorship has to deal, and in which the part played by the proletariat js that of an organiser who has been trained by capitalist discipline. We must now organise production on a new higher base and make ourselves masters of all the fruits and conquests of capitalism. This is the condition without which no socialism or communism can be built up. Methods of state compulsion alone will not enable us to attract to our side the labouring peasantry as against the peasant owners. We are faced here with problems of an educational and organising nature, and we must clearly understand why this is a far more difficult problem than the military problem, which was easier of solution. That question lent itself to solution by raising the energy and inspiring the peasantry with a spirit of self-sacrifice. The military problem was an easy one for the peasantry who were out to fight their old enemy—the land owner. There was no need to understand the connection between working class government and the necessity of abolishing free traffic in goods. It was easier to deal with the Russian white guards, landlords and capitalists and all their assistants in the shape of the Mensheviks; but this new victory is harder to achieve. It is not possible to make victories in the sphere of economic production in the same way as on the war arena. Free traffic in goods will not be defeated by enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. What is needed is steady and continuous work, progressing inch by inch; we must use the organising power of the proletariat; victory can be gained; on the field only if the proletariat will put its dictatorship into practice as the greatest organising and moral power of all workers, including even those of the non-proletarian masses. To the extent to which we have successfully solved and will continue successfully to solve the first simpler question—the suppression of the exploiters whose direct attempt is to drive out the Soviet Government—to an equal extent are we faced with the second and more complex problem of how to bring the cause of the proletariat to final victory by establishing it as an organising power.
A task that will take Years.
Labour is to be organised upon a new basis, new forms are to be established to attract to labour discipline all the working elements. This is a problem that capitalism also was attempting to solve for tens of years. Our antagonists include a number of people who show an utter failure to comprehend this question. They called us utopians when we declared that it was possible to acquire power; whilst on the other hand, they demand that we carry out our project of organisation of labour within a few months. That is an absurdity. It is possible to maintain power under conditions of a favourable political period by the enthusiasm of the workers even against the whole world, as we have proved; but to create new forms of social discipline is a different matter—one requiring tens of years. Even capitalism required thirty years to change the old organisation into a new organisation of labour. Therefore when it is expected of us and when it is suggested to the workers and peasants that we ​are capable of changing the entire organisation of labour in short time—theoretically it is sheer nonsense, whilst in practice it does the greatest possible harm, preventing the workers from clearly understanding the distinction between the new and the old problems. This new problem is in the first place one of organisation, and in organisation we are weak, far weaker than any other country. Organising ability develops under conditions of big machine industry. There is no other material historical basis.
The Special problem of the peasants.
The interests of the workers and the peasants do not coincide. We are faced with a difficult period. We are also confronted with a moral problem—to prove to the peasantry that there is no alternative—they are either definitely with the workers, assisting the proletariat, or they return to their old condition. There is no middle course; no middle course exists except for the Mensheviks, but their method is in decay, falling to pieces wherever it is used, falling to pieces in Germany. This the peasant masses will not understand from theory and by observing the 2nd and 3rd Internationals. The peasant masses and tens of millions of people can understand it in the practice of every day life. A matter of principle which the peasantry could understand was victory over Kolchak and Denikin. They easily drew a comparison between the power of Denikin and Kolchak and the power used by proletarian dictatorship—although the latter phrase was used to frighten the peasantry and is still being used to that end. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries are still trying to frighten the peasantry with proletarian dictatorship. But in fact the peasantry is not and was not able to deal with matters theoretically. The peasant masses witness the facts of their own condition and of our struggle against speculation. It must be recognised that both the white guards as well as the Mensheviks have learned a lesson in propaganda from our Army Political Departments. The peasantry have seen banners upon which was written not proletarian dictatorship but "All power to the Constituent Assembly" and "All power to the government of the people" and so forth, but what they actually learned was that the Soviet Government was best. At the present moment we are confronted with the second problem of proletarian dictatorship moral persuasion; there are no means of forcible persuasion of the peasantry, there can be no question of such means. The solution of the question here is taking place through rupture in the ranks of the peasantry. In the struggle following the overthrow of the capitalists, in the two years' civil war, the workers formed a single body welded into a unity; the very opposite is observed amidst the peasantry; they are undergoing gradual internal disintegration. The peasants cannot possibly forget the landlords and the capitalists they remember but too well what they, the peasants, were at that time. On the other hand, the present peasantry is such that the interests of the various classes of the peasantry diverge widely, with the result that the peasantry is not united. (It is a fact that the state of the food question is not equally satisfactory for every peasant. There is no truth in the talk of freedom and equality). The truth is that the peasants are half workers, half owners.
​Unity of will necessary.
The execution of our task requires a unity of will, it requires that in every practical question we act as one man. Unity of will should not only remain a phrase, a symbol; we demand that unity shall become a matter of actual practice. In the war unity of will was expressed by the fact that whenever personal interests, the interests of villages or groups were placed before the common interests, the guilty man was branded for a coward and an egoist and was finally shot; and this execution was morally justified by the conscience of the working class that it must strive for victory. We spoke openly of these executions, we never denied this violence because we were fully aware that we can never free ourselves from the relics of old society without using force against the backward layers of the proletarian masses. And in this was expressed our unity of will. In practice this uniformity was realised in the repression directed against deserters, in every battle and in every crusade when the Communist Party formed the vanguard, setting an example of courage and self-sacrifice. Now we can make an attempt to apply this unity of will to industrial labour and to agriculture when we are in possession of a territory of thousands of miles and of a huge number of factories. You will clearly see that mere force of violence will not do here, you will understand the gigantic task with which we are confronted, you will grasp what unity of will really means. It is not a mere watchword, a fit subject for a pamphlet endorsed with the words "to be voted for." It is necessary to think and to ponder what this word demands from us in our every-day work. As an example take the year 1918; at that time there were no disputes in connection with this question, and I pointed out the necessity for single man management, the necessity of recognising the dictatorial authority of single individuals for the purpose of carrying out the Soviet idea; that therefore all these phrases regarding equality are sheer nonsense. The class struggle is not carried on on a basis of equality of rights. The possibility of the proletariat being victorious is based on the fact that they represent hundreds of disciplined men, expressing one single will; they are in a position to conquer the peasantry which is economically completely disorganised, a peasantry which has no common basis such as leads the proletariat to unite the closer at its factories and works.
Peasant owners and peasant workers.
The peasantry is completely disorganised; and in addition to this it represents partly owners, partly workers. Private ownership draws it to capitalism. "The higher the price the better. Should starvation appear—the better still; this will ensure the best possible prices." On the other hand the labouring peasant knows that he has been freed from the yoke of the landlord by the working class. There is a struggle here of two aspects of the soul, a struggle resulting from the economic position of the peasants. This has to be considered; our victory is possible only upon the condition: that we pursue a firm policy. Workers always remain workers in our eyes, and as to ​the peasant owners, with these we must continue our struggle. Now that we have beaten such enlightened people as the leaders of international politics that experienced and rich body possessing a hundred times more guns and dreadnoughts than we—it is ludicrous to think that we shall not be able to solve the questions regarding the relationship between the workers and the peasants. What we will win with here is discipline and loyalty to the common will. The will of hundreds and of tens of thousands can be personified in one individual. This complex will is elaborated by the Soviet system. The number of congresses of workers and peasants that have taken place in Russia is greater than in any other State in the world. In this way we develop class consciousness; not a single State has given tor the last 300 years what the Soviet constitution thus gives.
The growth of class consciousness.
The whole of our Soviet structure, of our Soviet Government is to be considered from this wide basis. The decisions of the Soviet Government have the power of unprecedented universal authority; it has at its back the whole force of the workers and of the peasants. But we do not remain satisfied with this; we are materialists and the power of authority is not enough for us. This authority must be realised in life. But what we see is that the spirit of the old bourgeoisie is gaining on us; we are bound openly to recognise that it is stronger than we are. The old petty bourgeois habits of playing the master, of each man working on his own, and of free speculative trading—all this is stronger than we are. Trade unions arose out of capitalism as a means of developing a new class. The conception of class is one that is formed in struggle and in the course of development. A high wall separates class from class. But there is no kind of Chinese wall separating the workers from the peasants. When the proletariat became a class it became so strong that it took the whole machinery of State government into its hands, declared war on the whole world and was victorious. At this point guilds and trade unions become obsolete, out of date. There was a time under capitalism also when unification of the proletariat went on by guilds and trade unions. This represented a progressive manifestation, as the proletariat could unite in no other way; it is absurd to assert that the proletariat could unite as; a class in a body immediately. This kind of amalgamation may go on for years. No one fought such myopic sectarian views as did Marx. Class grows under capitalist conditions and when the appropriate moment for revolution arrives it takes the government power into its hands. Then all guilds and trade unions become out of date; they become conservative and have a tendency to go back, and that is not due to the fact that they harbour bad men, but because bad men and enemies to communism find a good soil here for their propaganda. We are at the present time surrounded with a petty bourgeoisie which is reviving free trade and the capitalism of petty owners and the small business man. Karl Marx fought this old Utopian socialism, demanding a scientific point of view which holds that we should learn from, the struggle of the classes how the class grows and that we should help this class to ripen. He also fought against those ​leaders of the working class who fell into these errors. I have recently read once more about the movement in England in 1872. At the Federal Council a resolution was passed reprimanding Marx for asserting that the English leaders had been bribed by the bourgeoisie. Marx of course did not mean it in the sense that such and such men are traitors. This is nonsense. He had in view the alliance of the bourgeoisie with a certain section of the workers, with a certain union, asserting that the bourgeoisie supports this section of the workers directly and indirectly, gives it every opportunity to work as a legal body, supplies it with a press organ, and establishes it in parliament. In this regard the English; bourgeoisie performed miracles; it went ahead of all the others. For forty years—from 1852–1892—Marx and Engels exposed this bourgeoisie.
The transition to power.
All the world over the transition of the trade unions from the part of slaves to that of constructive workers means a crisis. The workers raised a cry to the effect that to increase productivity of labour means to oppress the masses, to skin them so to speak; they not only said so, but they also thought and felt so. We have now existed for two years; what has it meant? At the present time it means extreme starvation of the working class. This has been proved by statistics. In 1918 and 1919 the industrial workers of the State have received only 7 poods of bread per head, while the peasants of the fertile provinces received 17 poods per head. The proletariat has gained its victory, but thanks to this victory it fell into a period of starvation, whilst the peasant (who under the Soviet Government has far more than he ever had under the Tsarist regime) as a matter of fact has more than he requires. At the very best the peasant under the Tsarist regime had 16 poods, whilst under the Soviet Government he has 17 poods. We all know this, as we have statistical data to prove it. Everybody knows what hunger of the workers means. Proletarian dictatorship has doomed the proletariat to two years of starvation; but this starvation testifies to, the fact that the proletariat is capable of sacrificing not only its craft interests, but also its life. That for a period of two years the proletariat proved able to withstand hunger is due to the fact that it had the moral support of all the working classes and that it made all these sacrifices in the name of victory for the Workers' and Peasants' Government. True enough, the division of the workers into trades and professions still exists; but of these professions there are some which may be useful to the capitalist but are undesirable for us. We also know that the workers in these trades are starving more than other workers; but this could not be otherwise. Capitalism has been crushed, but socialism has not yet been built up, nor is likely to be for some time to come; the misunderstandings with which we are faced are not at all accidental—they are the result of the historical split in the trade unions, which are an instrument of craft unification under capitalism and of class unity of the workers when they have taken governmental power into their own hands. Such workers are ready for every kind of sacrifice which may be demanded by discipline, sacrifices which force ​them to say and dimly to feel that class interests stand higher than craft interests. Those workers who are not capable of making such sacrifices we regard as selfish men and cowards, and exile them from the proletariat.
The difficulties of administration.
This is the principal question regarding labour discipline and single man management with which the Party congress had to deal. This is the decision of the Party congress, as you have learned by now, and which will be explained at greater length by the other speakers. The gist of the matter is that the working class has grown up and matured, it has taken governmental power into its own hands and is fighting the whole world, and that this battle is growing more and more difficult. It was easier to fight in the actual war; at present what is demanded from us is organisation and steady education, whilst, as it happens, numerically our industrial working class is not large. To some extent it has been decreased by the war. Administration has become a difficult matter thanks to our victories. It should be understood by everyone that, when we speak of dictatorship, it is not the whim of the people at the centre.
We must confess that we find administration a difficult matter. The proletariat has decreased in number as we have already said, while the territories gained by us increased in extent. We have taken Siberia, the Don and Kuban. The percentage of the proletariat in these regions is a negligible quantity. We must approach the working class in a spirit of straightforwardness and tell it so openly. What we require is more discipline and more single man responsibility and more dictatorship. Without these it is idle to think of victory. We have an army of three millions, but the 600,000 Communists must serve as the vanguard of these three millions. These three millions must go to war with perfect confidence. We must test these labour armies and the trade unions. We will learn by every step of practical experience.
But it is also necessary to understand that we have no other army with which to gain victories. We have 600,000 vanguard men and an army of three millions in which there are many peasant profiteers and no proletarians. This makes it clear that we must have a new co-relationship between the proletarian and non-proletarian masses; whilst the new conditions tell us that we can achieve little by violence, but that only organisation and moral authority can win the day. This gives rise to our absolute conviction which we have formulated at the congress and which I consider it my duty to emphasise. Our principal watch-word now is: nearer to single man management, more labour discipline, and a decision to work with war time resoluteness, firmness and self-sacrifice; abandoning all group and craft and private interests. Victory is not possible otherwise. But if we carry out these resolutions of the party through the three million workers as one man, and later on through tens of millions of peasants, who will feel the moral authority and the power of men who have sacrificed themselves for the victory of socialism—then this will make us absolutely and finally invincible.