The great proletarian revolution, while overthrowing the landowners and the capitalists, had at the same time opened the floodgates of petty-bourgeois instincts. The landowners' property was being seized and shared out, and increasingly used for purposes of profiteering. These petty-bourgeois passions had to be brought under control, the masses had to be re-educated, a new socialist structure had to be created, and the administration organized. During March and April 1918 all these problems absorbed Ilyich completely.
How to organize a nation-wide accounting and control, how to raise the productivity of labour, how to teach people to work, to draw the masses into public activities, make them socially alert citizens, how to reorganize work and work discipline on new lines—this is what Ilyich wrote of in The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government. He also wrote about socialist emulation in this pamphlet.
Rereading it today tells one such a lot. Today everyone understands what a tremendous role socialist emulation has played in the business of socialist construction, but at that time the question was somehow passed over (partly no doubt, on account of the civil war which commenced soon after). Socialist emulation was first widely applied on a mass scale during the years of struggle for the First Five-Year Plan, beginning approximately with 1928—ten years after Ilyich had written about it.
This pamphlet contains a special chapter entitled "Raising the Productivity of Labour." Ilyich, as always, dealt with the question in all its aspects and bearing on a number of other fundamental issues.
"The raising of the productivity of labour first of all requires that the material basis of large-scale industry shall be assured, viz., the development of the production of fuel, iron, the engineering and chemical industries...Another condition for raising the productivity of labour is, firstly, the raising of the educational and cultural level of the masses of the population. This is now taking place extremely rapidly, and only those who are blinded by bourgeois routine are unable to see it; they are unable to understand what an urge towards light and initiative is now developing among the 'lower ranks' of the people thanks to the Soviet form of organization. Secondly, a condition for economic revival is the raising of the discipline of the toilers, their skill, their dexterity, increasing the intensity of labour and improving its organization·" (Works, Vol. 27, p.228)
Lenin dealt with the question of raising the productivity of labour from the angle of socialist emulation problems. He pointed out in this pamphlet that the task of raising labour efficiency was a long-range problem:
"...While it is possible to capture the central power in a few days, while it is possible to suppress the military resistance (and sabotage) of the exploiters even in different parts of a great country in a few weeks, the capital solution of the problem of raising the productivity of labour requires, at any rate (particularly after a most terrible and devastating war), several years. The protracted nature of the work is certainly dictated by objective circumstances." (Ibid.)
Today, at the beginning of 1936, when we are witnessing the Stakhanov movement, when the new technics created under the First and Second Five-Year plans have given rise to a movement from below aimed at increasing labour efficiency, when we have achieved a tremendous upsurge in labour productivity, Ilyich's pamphlet The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government appears to us in a new light and strikes home with a fuller and clearer impact.
Vladimir Ilyich spoke a good deal with workers and peasants, and could not help noticing at every step an inaptitude for work, coupled with an attitude, fostered by centuries of task labour, which regarded work as a curse, as something that had to be reduced to a minimum. The revolution had done away with the bullying, swearing and driving class of foremen and bosses, and the worker was glad to be rid of them, glad to be able to sit down and have a smoke when he was tired without anyone driving him. At the beginning the factory organizations readily released the workers to attend all kinds of meetings. I remember a woman worker coming to me once at the Commissariat of Education to receive some certificate or other. During our conversation I asked her what shift she was working in. I thought she was working in the night shift, otherwise she would not have been able to come to the Commissariat in the daytime. "None of us are working today. We had a meeting yesterday evening, everyone was behindhand with her domestic work at home, so we voted to knock off today. We're the bosses now, you know." When you tell this to comrades now, eighteen years later, they hardly believe it and do not think it was typical. For early 1918, however, this was a typical case. The bosses and exploiters with their bullying foremen and driving overseers had been got rid of, but that the factory had now become public property, that that property had to be taken care of, and the productivity of labour raised, was something that had not yet been brought home to people. That is why Lenin was so emphatic about this aspect of the problem; he could face the truth when need be. The workers had to be educated to an intelligent work attitude, and all labour had to be organized on efficient lines.
Ilyich particularly showed up the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in this pamphlet. Those representatives of the petty bourgeoisie had failed to grasp the importance of practical efficient work, which they looked upon as narrow practicalness, and "gradualness" while they dreamt of a "revolutionary war," and so on.
The class on which Ilyich relied and in whose gift of leadership he implicitly believed, despite the fact that that class still had to develop and work hard at its self-improvement, was the proletariat. "The only class that can lead the toiling and exploited masses is the class that unswervingly follows its path without losing courage and without giving way to despair even at the most difficult, arduous and dangerous stages. Hysterical spurts are of no use to us. What we need is the steady march of the iron battalions of the proletariat."
With these words the pamphlet The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government ended.
It appeared as an article in Izvestia on April 28, and on April 29 Ilyich addressed a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.
To enable the workers' active of Moscow to hear Ilyich's report on the immediate tasks of the Soviet Government, the meeting was held at the Polytechnical Museum. Ilyich was greeted with a tumultuous ovation and listened to with rapt attention. Obviously, the question was one of keen interest to everybody. Ilyich spoke there with extraordinary fervour. Even today one cannot read that speech without emotion. Ilyich spoke about the distinguishing features of our revolution, the causes of its triumph, the difficulties of socialist construction in a petty-bourgeois country; he characterized our bourgeoisie and its weaknesses, urged that we should learn organization of production from the Western and American bourgeoisie, from the trust organizers; he scathingly criticized the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, the representatives of the petty-bourgeois elements, criticized our "Left Communists" who had succumbed to that influence, although he still called them our friends of yesterday, today and tomorrow; he spoke about the role of the proletariat, about the influence of the petty-bourgeois element, the significance of socialist organization, and the necessity of our proletariat organizing on new lines—only then would it be capable of rallying the masses behind it.
"Until the advanced workers learn to organize the millions," said Ilyich, "they are not Socialists or creators of a socialist society, and they will not acquire the necessary knowledge of organization. The way of organization is a long way, and the tasks of socialist construction demand long hard work and corresponding knowledge in which we are lacking."
(Works, Vol. 27, p. 268.) In his speech at the Central Executive Committee on April 29 Ilyich also said that the proletariat, who had learnt discipline in big industry, would appreciate the significance of the May Day slogan which the Central Committee of the Party had put forward: "We have overcome Capital, and we shall overcome our own lack of organization." He spoke about the importance of the railways: "...Without the railways we shall not only have no socialism, but we shall all die of starvation like dogs while the grain lies right next to us," for "that is the crux of the matter, a manifestation of the most striking connection between the town and the country, between industry and agriculture, on which socialism is founded. To combine this for regular activity in the whole population, the railways are ne p. 277.)
