Does syndicalism want free labor or forced labor?

For several months now, the Third International's Bulletin du Bureau International has been publishing interesting documents concerning the Russian Revolution and Marxist “communism.” The latest issue (Petrograd, February 20, 1920) is devoted to the organization of socialist activity and contains an exposé of the Bolshevik views on “compulsory labor service,” an exposé that clearly demonstrates the difference in views between the Russian “communists” (Marxists) and the Western communists (libertarian communists) regarding the organization of work in the future society.

As is well known, according to a report by L. Trotsky, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party has formulated the general principles of “mobilization of the proletariat,” “compulsory labor,” “militarization of the national economy,” and “use of military units for economic tasks.”

If this exposé concerned temporary measures imposed on the Russian working people by the harsh necessities of war, it would be unnecessary to discuss them here.

But these principles take on real significance when one knows that the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party regards them as an expression of the very essence of socialism.

“The socialist regime,” says the Central Committee, “categorically rejects the principle of ‘freedom of labor’ characteristic of the liberal capitalist regime—a principle which in bourgeois society represents the freedom of some to exploit others, and the freedom of those others to be exploited.”

Let us leave aside for the moment what “freedom of labor” means in the present bourgeois society, but let us note that it is a misunderstanding of the deeper meaning of socialism — that is, worker socialism, socialism as it is understood in Western and Central Europe — — when one claims that socialism categorically rejects the principle of “freedom of labor.”

On the contrary: either “freedom of labor” must be recognized by socialism as a fundamental principle and as the very basis of its constitution, or else “socialism” has no chance of success in modern countries with an advanced civilization.

Modern socialism — we are not talking about Russian Bolshevism — is a popular movement, created not by an intellectual elite, but by the working masses themselves, according to the well-known principle: “the emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves.”

The last words are from Karl Marx, whose work and life we know well enough to be able to say that he would be the first to condemn present-day Bolshevism and to say that the “revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat,” which Russia now seeks to cover with Marx's name, is something quite different from a dictatorship of the proletariat itself.

Contemporary Bolshevism rejects the theories of the great French and English socialists, Godwin, Owen, Fourier, and Proudhon, more categorically than it rejects Marxism. But most prominent of all is its opposition to the ideas of modern syndicalism.

All socialist-communist theories have so far remained pure theories. Bolshevism and syndicalism, on the other hand, are forms of realization, of real social reconstruction. But syndicalism is based on the direct action of the masses, on the sovereignty of the will of the people. And this spirit is incompatible with any idea of militarization.

Modern syndicalism demands freedom of movement for workers in their trade unions and the autonomy of these trade unions in all internal matters, as well as the autonomy of the national trade union federation in the international trade union federation for the industry.

According to the principles of syndicalism, the decisive decisions on the organization of work do not belong to any group of officials, but to the collective will of the masses, expressed as a rule and in peaceful times in congress decisions and referendums, or in exceptional cases through spontaneous demonstrations and public meetings.

The transfer of the leadership of the labor movement into the hands of the government, which is currently the case in Russia with regard to workers' trade unions and cooperative enterprises, is unacceptable from a syndicalist point of view.

One must dispute any characterization of Bolshevism as workers' socialism. Bolshevism can at best be compared to the patriarchal socialism that prevailed in Paraguay under the Jesuit regime in the 13th and 14th centuries. If one prefers a comparison with modern institutions, Bolshevism is state socialism or state capitalism, whichever one prefers. What its adherents, the neo-Marxists, want is in fact to transform industries into public institutions headed by Bolsheviks.

In the “general principles” for “the mobilization of the proletariat,” published in the aforementioned bulletin from the Third International, the following reasons are given to justify the regime of forced labor:

"Since the fundamental problem of social organization involves a struggle against physical conditions that are hostile to man, socialism requires that all members of society be obliged to participate in material production; its task is to apply in this area the most rational, the most far-reaching, and above all the most attractive form of work: the form of public work. Thus, the principle of general compulsory labor, enshrined in the constitution of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, should now be applied in a general and practical manner."

It is clear that one can require all members of society to perform some form of productive work (we are not talking exclusively about material production) without the work being organized from the top down, as in Russia, according to the principle of “general mobilization” of the population and “militarization” of work.

On the whole, it can be said that the Bolshevik government in Russia started out from absolutely sound principles, but that this movement degenerated under the weight of events.

It has degenerated above all under the influence, on the one hand, of the lack of education and general civilization among the masses and, on the other hand, of their carelessness and unsuitability for regular and intensive modern work.

It would be even more unfortunate to now want to apply the Bolshevik regime, and in particular its principles of industrial militarization, in the countries of Western Europe, which have had a political and economic labor movement for more than a quarter of a century.

In all our modern countries, the workers would be the first to revolt against any attempt in this direction.

Today's wage earners demand not only bread but also freedom!