WHAT IS BOLSHEVISM?

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2161, 10 August 1920, Page 1

WHAT IS BOLSHEVISM?

TEE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LENIN.

(Contributed by the N.Z. Welfare League.)

Having observed that the Socialist papers in New Zealand, some of the Socialist M’s.P., and a good many of the Industrial Unionists, are taking every opportunity to praise the Russian Bolshevik system for the general information of the workers of the Dominion, we publish the following, taken from the manifesto issued by President Lenin, head of the Russian Soviet Republic.. His manifesto has been translated into English, and published under the title “The Soviets at Work." Coming from such a source, it cannot be regarded as a Capitalist statement. We invite the workers to ask themselves whether they want the system that he distinctly affirms. LENIN'S STATEMENT ON LABOUR.

‘‘Economic improvement depends on higher discipline of the toilers, on higher skill, efficiency and intensity of labour and its belter organisation. . . . The most conscious

vanguard of the Russian proletariat hits already turned to the problem of increasing discipline. We should immediately introduce piece work, and try it in practice. We should try every scientific and progressive suggestion of the Taylor s vs lent.

“The possibility of Socialism will be determined by our success in combining tin 1 Soviet rule and the Soviet organisation of management with the latest progressive measures of capitalism. The resolution of the last (Moscow) Congress of the Soviet advocates as the most important problem at present the creel ion of ‘efficient organisation’ and higher discipline. Such resolutions are now readily supported by everybody. . . But that their realisation requires compulsion, and compulsion in the form of a dictatorship, is ordinarily not comprehended.

“Socialism requires an absolute and strict unity of the will which directs the joint work of hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of people. This necessity is obvious from the technical, economic and historical standpoint, and has always been recognised by till those who have given any thought to Socialism as its pre-requisite. But how can we secure strict unity of will? By subjecting the wjll of thousands to the will of one. . . .

Socialism demands the absolute submission of the masses to the single will of those who direct the labour process.

“Our gains, our degrees, our laws, our plans must be secured by the solid forms of everyday labour discipline. This is the most difficult, but also the most promising, problem; for only its solution will give us Socialism. (* must, learn to combine the stormy, energetic' breaking of all restraint with iron discipline during work, with absolute submission to the will of one person, the Soviet director, during work."