John Medhurst - No Less Than Mystic - A History of Lenin and the Russian Revolution for a 21st-Century Left

This kind of thinking cannot remain the province of bohemians and anarchists. The mainstream left needs to develop concrete proposals for a post-work society and for better measures of “growth” than the GDP, indeed to redefine the very concept of growth. The Refusal of Work philosophy is useful and necessary as a statement of intent. Clearly we do not live in a utopia where work is productive play. Nor will the mists simply part one day to reveal it. The task for the left now is to create transitional spaces, structures and policies, such as workers’ cooperatives run on egalitarian lines, a shorter working week with no loss of pay, remuneration for housework, non-hierarchical trade unions for freelance workers and a universal basic income for all.

Most of these solutions to the problem of compulsory work were not available in 1920 to a semi-industrialised country shattered by war. Soviet Russia’s “debate” on work was whether to labour under the supervision and discipline of trade unions and fellow workers, or buckle under to the robotic dictats of Taylorism. Lenin claimed that a Taylorist regime overseen by a proletarian state would not replicate that of the US, that it would take the positive and reject the negative. But as one of the main critics of Taylorism in the Soviet Union in the 1920s pointed out, the system invariably meant “not the optimum use of labour, but the maximum use”. 33“Taylorist socialism” was a misnomer. In reality it meant turning workers into an army of labour, and an inevitable confrontation with the trade unions.

The relationship between Sovnarcom and the trade unions was fractious from the start, despite Bolsheviks securing leading positions in most of the major unions between February and October 1917. Whether they were Bolshevik, Menshevik or SR, trade union leaders reached their positions through different routes and with different skill-sets than party leaders. Keep’s study of the revolutionary tumult of 1917-18 devotes more time than usual to the role of the unions, and found that “in this early period of Soviet history trade union officials were as a rule drawn directly from the working class milieu; they knew industrial conditions at first hand; and they owed their election to their personal qualities as activists and organisers, rather than their record for ideological rectitude”. 1

As such they reflected the desires of the Russian working class in a way that party activists did not. This, and the importance of the unions at the point of production, gave them an influence on the Bolshevik government that no other non-governmental body could match. Even after the Vikzhel’s failed attempt to form a post-October coalition government, it still assumed de facto management of the railway network. Sovnarcom’s Commissar for Transport, Andrei Bubnov, had little choice but to work in uneasy alliance with it.

This dual-power could not last. Bolshevik militants in the Moscow and Petrograd branches of the union began to agitate against the Vikzhel, and the schism came to a head at the union’s congress on 20th December, 1917. The congress, which ran from 20th December until 6th January, saw in miniature the process whereby the Bolsheviks had taken over the government–direct, sometimes physical action and a disregard for accepted democratic procedures. Bolshevik activists from Moscow and Petrograd formed a caucus, which they claimed represented over one million “railway proletarians”. On the basis of their claim to be the largest faction, they asserted that they alone had the right to elect the congress’s Presidium. This proposal was defeated by 216 votes to 192. After the congress, the majority voted in favour of the right of the Constituent Assembly to continue to exist, and the Bolshevik faction walked out and set up a new Executive. In the next few months, supporters of the Vikzhel were purged from local branches.

The same events played out in the Postal Workers Union and in the Union of Employees and Workers in Inland Waterways, who also opposed the establishment of a one-party state and threatened strike action against Sovnarcom. The Postal Workers Union’s congress in late November passed a resolution by 52 votes to 8 to support the Constituent Assembly and take strike action should it be dissolved.

The government offered postal workers special bonuses and pay increases in order to defuse the situation, but as soon as the Assembly was dissolved and Sovnarcom’s power more firmly established it increased the political pressure. The “industrial” unions, such as the metalworkers and engineers, were initially supportive of Sovnarcom and the Bolsheviks, taking active stands against the Constituent Assembly and attacking Mensheviks and SRs within their unions. Although these pro-Bolshevik unions were heavily dominated by their militant Petrograd vanguards, there is no reason to doubt their commitment to genuine Soviet power.

The role of the trade unions within a socialist society was debated at length at the First All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions, held from 7th to 15th January, 1918. As with the All-Russian Soviet Congresses of 1917, the delegates tended to come from the more militant north and central regions of the country. Their mandate to represent the estimated 2.5 million unionised Russian workers did not bear much scrutiny, although it is probable that in early 1918–after the Decrees on workers’ control and peace, but before War Communism and the suppression of the Soviets–most workers did support the Bolshevik government. The key issue was trade union independence. Speaking for the Bolsheviks, Zinoviev told the Congress they were in favour of trade union independence, “but only from the bourgeoisie”. He considered that after October independence as such had no meaning. They now had to become organs of the state.

In early 1918 Martov was still allowed to address gatherings like the All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions. He told delegates that the transfer of power had not been as complete as Zinoviev claimed, and that in view of possible counter-revolution the trade unions needed to be built up, not diluted. He agreed the unions must play their part in preventing counter-revolution, “insofar as consideration of the actual forces available permit the union to modify the plans of the (state) power”. 2At the close the Congress voted on two resolutions: one from the Bolsheviks that advocated trade union absorption into the machinery of the state, and another from the Mensheviks that maintained the principle of independence. The result was 182 votes for the Bolsheviks and 84 for the Mensheviks.

The foundation of Soviet labour relations had been established. It constituted “an overweening commitment to production and to planning”, 3in which the trade unions would play a key collaborative role. It would now be trade unions and their local agents, the Factory Committees, who were responsible for promoting productivity and for ensuring discipline and attendance in the workplace.

By the end of 1919 this system was already cracking. Workers had taken strike action against the Bolshevik government, and thereby the workers’ state, for a number of reasons, some industrial, some political. Strikes had been crushed. Trade unionists had been arrested, sometimes shot. Even Bolshevik trade unionists were angry with the interference and compulsion to which the government was subjecting the unions. At the same time the economy was in ruins. The transport infrastructure was shattered. Food and other essential supplies were hardly moving. In December 1919, Trotsky (now devoting less time to the Red Army as it became clearer that the Reds were going to defeat the Whites in the Civil War) turned his attention to economic policy.

On 17th December Pravda published Trotsky’s “theses” on the problem of the transition from a war to a peace economy (the theses had been submitted to the Central Committee in secret but by “accident” they were published). The theses proposed that the Commissariat of War assume the duties of the Commissariat of Labour, and that the methods used to mobilise the Red Army be applied to labour and industry. In essence workers would be treated like soldiers, directed and compelled to go wherever the state decreed and fulfill whatever tasks they were given. The trade unions were not mentioned. Trotsky’s proposals became known as the “Militarisation of Labour”.