The Unknown Revolution by Voline; McKay Iain; Rocker Rudolph

Author:Voline; McKay, Iain; Rocker, Rudolph
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2019-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

1This was written in 1939.

CHAPTER 2

Situation of the Workers

SOCIALLY, THE basis of the system in the domain ruled by Stalin lies in the following facts:

As in all other countries, the worker in the U.S.S.R. is an employee. But he is a State employee. The State is his only employer. Instead of having thousands of “choices”, as is the case in the nations where private capitalism prevails, in the U.S.S.R. (the U.S.C.R.) the worker has only one. Any change of employer is impossible there.

It is pretended that, this State being a “Workers’ State”, it is not an employer in the usual sense of the word. The profits it realizes from production of commodities do not go into the pockets of capitalists, [so the Stalin régime asserts], but in the last analysis, serve the interests of the workers, returning to them in forms other than money.

Subtle as it may sound, this reasoning is purely theoretical. The “workers’ State” is not directed1 by the workers themselves, (workers can direct production themselves only in an entirely different social system, never in a modern centralized State), but by a very large stratum of functionaries in the pay of the Government, which itself forms the center of a solid group, detached from the masses of toilers, and acting on its own. It is said that it is “answerable” to the workers. This is another abstraction. The reality has nothing in common with the formulas.

Ask any worker in the U.S.S.R.—if he be a simple, real worker—in what form he gets any advantage out of the profits realized by the State above his wages. He won’t even understand you; he knows nothing about it. The only thing he knows is that he gets his meager wage, always inadequate, and that he has all the difficulty in the world in subsisting on it. He knows also that there are many people in the “Soviet” Union who live “agreeably” (as Stalin has said), richly, luxuriously.

Ask him if he can bring pressure to bear on those who are purportedly “answerable” to the workers, if he can criticize them, call them to order, eliminate them, replace them. He will understand you still less. What he knows is that he has only to carry out the orders of his chiefs “who know what they are doing”, and that the least criticism of them would cost him dearly. Those chiefs are imposed on him by the Government and are answerable only to it. As for the Government, it is infallible, and unassailable: its answerability is a myth.

Let us see a little of the real situation of the worker in the U.S.S.R. Does it differ essentially from that of the workers in the countries where private capitalism flourishes?

As everywhere else, the worker in Stalin’s domain is obliged to present himself, on payday, at the paymaster’s window in the establishment where he is employed, to get his wages. These wages are paid to him by a functionary, the paymaster of his only boss, the State.

That functionary makes up his payroll according to the wage scale decreed by the Government.

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