The Daily News. TUESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1921. REVOLUTIONARY LABOR.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 January 1921, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1921. REVOLUTIONARY LABOR.

“We want a Soviet,” was the ery that arose at a recent meeting of Laborites in London, when Mr. J. R. Clynes, one of the staunchest friends of the workers, was howled down amid a scene of great, disorder. If it were possible to arrange matters so that the request could be granted—not in Britain, but by transporting these howling demagogues to Russia and compelling them to labor for three months shoulder to shoulder with their Bolshevik “brothers” under the Soviet regime—they would speedily realise the difference between Paradise and Purgaand the lesson would" do more than anything else to cure them of their madness, and make them cry aloud: “Save us from our friends!” In a grim account of the “Theory and Practice of Bolshevism,” Mr. Bertrand Russell, who, though notorious as a “crank,” has the gift of close reasoning and lucid statement, says he went to Russia as a Communist, but, as the result of his experiences there, he was compelled to reject Bolshevism for two reasons: First, because the price mankind must pay to achieve Communism by Bolshevik methods is too terrible ; and, secondly, because, even after paying the price, he does not believe the result would be what the Bolsheviks -profess to desire. The Bolshevik theory, he states, requires that every country should go through what Russia is now experiencing. The highest wages in Moscow are about fifteen shillings a month, which will buy one pound of butter. Life there, he emphasises, as compared with London is drab, monotonous, and depressed. Strikes are illegal. By proclaiming itself the friend of the proletariat, the Government has been able ‘ ‘ to establish an iron discipline, beyond the wildest dreams of the most autocratic American magnate.” Holidays, common in Britain, are very difficult in Russia, as it often takes several days to obtain a permit, and when that is obtained it takes several days to get a seat in a train. There is little to read, books being rare. Most people work much longer hours than in Britain; the ten hours day prevails with “extra work,” and after it a good deal of time has to be Loeat ia fetching food and water,

as well as other necessaries of life. Industry has utterly collapsed. The system of rule is an Asaatic tyranny, and “ there are only 600,000 Communists holding down 120 million Russians who dislike Communism. Everyone is living an animal life, hunting for food, and only the hated Communists or Bolshevik officials are comfortable and happy.” Such is the lurid picture of Soviet conditions as presented by a would-be sympathiser. Little wonder is it that at a recent meeting of the executive committee of the Second International in London it issued a manifesto in which it is stated: “What capitalism never succeeded in doing, fanatical dogmatists have accomplished in our camp. They have split the rock of proletarian unity from within. Nevertheless, workers throughout the world, the International lives. It is waging the battle for the ideals of democratic Socialism as against the slavery of capitalism on the one hand, and the dictatorship of Bolshevism on the other. Socialism means peace. Bolshevism means violence and war.”

Yet in spite of this there are workers who clamor for the Soviet. The manifesto proceeds:

“We accuse the leaders of the Third International of demoralising the workers. . . In the place of democracy they established an armed dictatorship, not of the proletariat, but of a committee. Now they are at-, tempting to impose their will and decrees upon the Socialist and Labor Parties of the whole world. They have insulted twenty-seven millions of organised trade union workers by calling them ‘blacklegs,’ and have declared their intention to disrupt the trade unions, the organisation of the class struggle of the proletariat. They may have ended wage-slavery. They have robbed the workers of freedom of movement and of combination, and are preventing the creation of economic democracy. Nothing but equal rights, politically and economically, for all producers can break the chains which capitalism has forged on humanity.”

Stripped of its high falutin verbiage, the real meaning of this remarkable condemnation of the Soviet is obviously a claim for the dictatorship of the Second International; complete and arbitrary control of capital and labor by the executive committee. Would the workers be any the less slaves under the International than under the Soviet? In reality no, though in some respects, such as wages and hours of work, they would be better off, but none the less would they be subservient to the will of the executive, the members of which, like the commissars, <?r Bolshevik officials, would be “comfortable and happy” at th a, expense of the deluded workers. Possibly the splitting of the rock of “proletarian unity” may prove advantageous to the mass of the workers by opening their eyes to the chains by which they are being fettered by a machine worked by “fanatical dogmatists.” The best interests of sane labor can only be served by a wise and friendly co-operation with employers; by a policy of peace instead of perpetual turmoil, and by bringing about a relationship in which their claim to a fair share of the reward for their labor will be recognised and conceded. As between the two evils of rule by the International or the Soviet, the latter is by far the greater, but if the workers want real freedom and prosperity they will only find it by a sane policy of co-operation with capital.