Leon Trotsky: The role and tasks of the trade unions

[My own translation of the Russian pamphlet, compared to the German translation, Russische Korrespondenz, Volume II, Issue 3/4, March/April 1921, pp. 158-170. Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome]

Instead of a preface

The most important issue at the Xth Party Congress – and at the same time, apparently, the only controversial issue – will be the question of the role of trade unions and the methods of their work. In this brochure, an attempt is made in a concise, almost abstract, form to answer the main questions that should determine the future fate of trade unions.

Although the brochure is signed with my name, in essence it is the fruit of collective work. A number of responsible workers, especially trade unionist (members of the Praesidium of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, Central Committee of Metalworkers, Tsektran, etc.) took part in the formulation of the fundamental provisions and the development of practical proposals that make up the content of this brochure.

Together with all these comrades, I express the hope that this platform brochure will help to more accurately orient the comrades on the question of the new tasks of the trade unions in connection with the new economic era in the development of Soviet power, and thus will serve its purpose.

25 December, 1920

I. The crisis in the trade union organisation.

1. Our trade unions are undergoing a difficult crisis, which is expressed in the weakening of ties with the masses, in constant friction and frequent conflicts with economic organs and party organisations, in the unions treading water, in the uncertainty of the tasks facing them and in the confusion of ideas arising from this, which throws some workers of the trade union movement back to the trade unionist positions, which were essentially liquidated by the party long ago.

2. One of the most indisputable causes of the crisis is the weakening and exsanguination of the trade unions as a result of the heavy sacrifices they suffered during the entire period of the civil war. Many active and proactive elements of the trade unions were, in addition, thrown into food and into various areas of administrative and Soviet work. The weakening of the leading cadres could not but affect the work of the trade unions, the relations of the leading organs with the masses, etc.

3. In the same direction, but more decisively, acted the shift of all the attention and of all efforts of the party towards the fronts. The economic tasks, and with them the questions of the trade union movement, receded into the background and the third plan.

In the conditions of the superhuman military concentration of all the forces of the working class, the inner life and initiative of workers' organisations, including trade union ones, inevitably weakened. The methods of workers' democracy (wide discussion, criticism, struggle of ideas, election, etc.) were extremely limited and curtailed.

4. However, the above reasons, common to all working class organisations – for party, Soviet, as well as trade union organisations – by no means hide the special, specific features of the trade union crisis as such. And this fact comes out most clearly at the moment.

While the transition to methods of self activity, election, etc. is dictated by itself and is completely indisputable for the entire party, in the field of the trade union movement we are faced with various tendencies on the role and significance of trade unions and on the methods of their work. The upcoming Party Congress will only have to unanimously record the ever more widening and deepening application of the methods of workers' democracy in all areas of our work. But this same Congress will have to choose between two tendencies in the field of the trade union movement.

5. The main reason for the crisis of trade unions is the discrepancy between the tasks that objectively confront our trade unions at this stage of development, and those skills of thought and methods and techniques of work that dominate trade unions as a legacy of the past. The discrepancy between the trade union as it is and the union as it should be has now grown into the biggest contradiction within the workers' state. Without coping with this contradiction, we will not make a serious step forward in the economic sphere.

II. The position of trade unions – according to the program in practice.

6. On the question of the role and tasks of the trade union organisation, our Party program says:

“The organisational apparatus of a socialised industry should be based primarily on trade unions. They must more and more get rid of the narrowness of the guild and turn into large production associations, embracing the majority, and gradually all the toilers in this branch of production.

Participating already, according to the laws of the Soviet Republic and established practice, in all local and central organs of industrial management, the trade unions must come to actually concentrate in their hands the entire management of the entire national economy, as a single economic whole. Thus ensuring an indissoluble link between the central state administration, the national economy and the broad masses of the working people, the trade unions should involve the latter in the widest possible scope of direct work on economic management. The participation of trade unions in the management of the economy and their attraction to this of the broad masses is, at the same time, the main means of struggle against the bureaucratisation of the economic apparatus of the Soviet government and makes it possible to establish truly popular control over the results of production."

In practice, over the past period, we have not come nearer to the goal set in the program, but moved farther away from it. If our development continued along that path, this would mean the greatest danger to the unions and to the economy.

7. In bourgeois society, trade unions united the working class to fight for the improvement of the condition of the workers; and then for the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist mode of production.

In the Kerensky era, the unions moved to control industry, which was one of the forms of the class struggle between labour and capital.

After October, the working class – mainly through the trade unions – had spun off primitive organs for the control of nationalised enterprises. This movement received, without sufficient reason, the name of spontaneous syndicalism. In essence, the masses of the workers in this initial period of the revolution, using the same methods of semi-spontaneous mass creative work, built Soviet state organs, the economic apparatus, the army, etc.

With the further development of economic institutions, their refinement, specialisation, etc., they were spun off from the trade unions. The growth of the independence of economic organs entailed the inevitable phenomena of parallelism, the competence struggles, organisational frictions and conflicts. The efforts of the economic organs, and, to a large extent, of the Soviet power as a whole, are directed during this period of specialisation and delimitation to bring the unions within a certain frame, limiting their interference in economic life.

What constituted the essence of the trade union in bourgeois society has disappeared: in the workers' state, the trade union cannot wage an economic class struggle. On the other hand, as the economic organs that had separated from the unions developed more and more independently, selected the necessary workers, created new methods and skills of work, built and rebuilt their apparatuses, the participation of unions in economic construction became more and more curtailed, unsystematic and superficial. It was from here that the profound crisis of the trade union movement arose and developed.

8. The removal of unions from active and responsible construction has greatly contributed to the development of trade union conservatism in the leading layer of trade union workers.

Over the past three years of the Soviet regime, the unions have undergone changes in their structure, methods of work and in the personal composition of their governing organs to a much lesser extent than all other organisations of the workers' state. Having lost the old basis of their existence, the economic class struggle, the unions, due to a number of conditions, did not have time to gather in their ranks the necessary forces and develop the necessary methods in order to be able to solve the new task set before them by the proletarian revolution and formulated by our program: organise production.

9. The present situation, when the AUCCTU [All-Union Central Council of Trade Union] and the central committees of individual production unions remain entirely outside the main economic work, is completely intolerable. The system by virtue of which almost every union worker who has succeeded in distinguishing himself for his organisational, economic and administrative qualities automatically breaks away from the union, being completely absorbed by the production apparatus, is completely abnormal. However, the fact that the central administrations and commissariats are becoming more and more separated from the production unions, isolating them from the latter and, as it were, monopolising the management of the economy in their own hands, cannot be blamed on the economic organs alone: To work out more correct relationships, it is necessary that the trade unions themselves are willing and able to participate directly in the development of economic plans and methods of their actual implementation.

In a workers' state there can be no organisationally separate specialists for the organisation of production and specialists in the trade union movement. As a general principle, it should be recognised that everyone who is needed by socialist production is thereby needed by the union, and vice versa – every valuable trade union worker must thus be a participant in the organisation of production.

10. The concentration in the hands of the unions of all production management, as required by our program, means the systematic transformation of the unions into the apparatus of the workers' state and the gradual merging of union organs with economic organs. It is not a question of the formal proclamation of unions as state organs, but of their actual transformation into production organisations, encompassing every branch of industry from all sides and responsible for the interests of both production and producers.

11. This point of view, which has found its expression in the resolution of the Ninth Congress of the party, is formally, that is, in words, recognised by the majority of trade unions. Thus, at the Ninth Congress, Comrade Tomsky refrained from delivering a co-report, joining Comrade Bukharin, who developed the point of view of our program.

The pamphlet recently published by the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions describes the role and position of the unions in the workers' state as follows:

"As a result of the outlined process, the trade unions will inevitably turn into organs of the socialist state, participation in which for all persons employed in this production will be a state obligation."

“The trade unions are turning from organs of struggle with capital in the organisation of socialist construction, whereby, as we move from capitalism to communism, the centre of gravity of the work of the unions passes into the area of organisational and economic management. The trade unions have the main job of organising labour and production, and the more the unions master this task, the more they merge with the national economy, becoming its backbone.

“Soviets of workers' deputies and trade unions jointly create, in the transitional era, production management organs (councils of the national economy, main committees for the management of nationalised enterprises, etc.), and they themselves, as they move towards socialism, lose their specific features: all the work of the soviets and trade unions focus on the organisation of labour and production; their non-productive functions disappear. There is a merger of trade unions and Soviet economic organs, a single economic apparatus appears ”^*.

12. The task, therefore, is not to reconsider the programmatic prerequisites on the question of trade unions, but to take a new factual step towards the implementation of the principle recognised by the party and enshrined in its program. In the year that has passed since the IXth Congress, economic organisations have made a significant step forward. In some areas, significant production results have been achieved. The question of the unified economic plan is acquiring ever more concrete, practical outlines. Meanwhile all this work has almost no effect on the trade union. If the general direction of development, in the sense of merging trade union organs with the production organs, is indisputable for us, then it is absolutely obvious that each new stage in the field of economy must at the same time mark a new stage on the path of combining trade unions with the economic organs. Until this is achieved the crisis will deepen.

Meanwhile, we observe the fact that as the tasks of the economy are brought to the fore, many trade unionists are more and more sharply and irreconcilably opposed to the prospect of "merging" and the practical conclusions arising from it. Among these trade unionists we find the comrades Tomsky and Lozovsky.

Not only that. Fighting off new tasks and methods, many trade unionists develop in their midst a spirit of corporate isolation, hostility to new workers involved in this area of the economy, and thus actually support the remnants of the guild among workers organised in trade union.

III. Different positions on the question of the trade unions.

13. With the correct formulation of the question, the task of organising labour in a workers' state can only have a production basis and purpose. In other words, the organisation of labour and the organisation of production must coincide. It is precisely from this that the gradual "merging" of the trade union and economic apparatus follows. This, as we have seen, is the point of view of the party program.

14. It is opposed by the point of view of Soviet trade unionism, which, in the ranks of our party, is formulated more or less completely and openly only by Comrade Ryazanov. (See, for example, his co-report at the IX Party Congress).

Comrade Ryazanov retains for the trade unions their old position in the state, as organisations that unite workers to protect or defend their material and spiritual interests. Of course, Comrade Ryazanov renounces methods of struggle, that is, strikes, and from this side reduces the task to organised pressure or influence on state power. But even in bourgeois, especially Anglo-Saxon, countries, the leaders of large trade unions abandon methods of struggle in relation to the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state, reducing their task to ideological, parliamentary, etc. pressure on the state. Thus, Comrade Ryazanov essentially seeks to preserve for the trade unions the position in the workers' state which the powerful opportunist trade unions have in the capitalist state. Comrade Ryazanov wants comrade Tomsky to be the Gompers of the workers' state.

15. We saw above that Comrade Tomsky at the IX Party Congress formally aligned himself with the report of Comrade Bukharin, and Comrade Lozovsky rather sharply formulated the point of view of "merging" and "fusion" of the trade union organs and the economic ones. However, the contradiction between old methods, skills in organising trade unions and a fundamentally new task (organisation of production) is so great that it almost automatically throws many trade union leaders away from practical conclusions from the programmatic position. As far as Comrade Tomsky and his like-minded people oppose their own position to the gradual merging and nationalisation, they are more and more linked with the Soviet trade unionism of Comrade Ryazanov.

16. Comrade Shlyapnikov and the group of his like-minded people propose to immediately and completely transfer the management of the economy to the trade unions — to "unionise" the state. This kind of measure, clearly dictated by a syndicalist bias of thought, seems very radical, but in fact lacks any material substance. Transferring the management of production means, in the present state of affairs, transferring to the unions the existing apparatus of this management, in other words, it means, instead of the board of the Metal Department, to put the presidium of the Central Committee of Metal Workers with corresponding replacements locally. The Metalworkers' Central Committee does not have any apparatus of its own for direct management of the metal industry. By formally unionising the Metal Department, it would have to use the apparatus that actually took shape in three years in the Metal Department with the participation of the Metalworkers' Union.

Of course, in the future, a new board of the Metal Department, set up by the union, could begin to transform the managing organs, renew the personnel by introducing responsible union workers, etc. But in this case, it would not mean that the trade union would actually be in charge of production; it would bring us much closer to a fusion, but this could hardly be regarded as correct and systematic, since it has not at all been proven that in the current state of the unions the Presidium of the Central Committee of Metal Workers would be more adapted for the leadership of the metal industry than the current Board of the Metal Departments. An attempt to bypass all the difficulties with a simple mass raid on production, where a definite, not accidentally created apparatus already exists, without in any way increasing the production role of the Union, would only introduce a monstrous organisational chaos.

Comrade Shlyapnikov's seemingly radical position coincides with the position of conservative trade unionists in the sense that he does not see the main task: the need to regroup, restructure and re-educate the trade unions in accordance with the tasks of organising production.

IV. Production criterion and production education.

17. The transformation of trade unions into production unions — not only by name, but by content, work — is the greatest task of the era into which we are pouring. The trade unionist must see himself not as a worker for the satisfaction of the needs and demands of the workers, but as an organiser of the toilers for production on an ever-increasing technical basis.

In the workers' state, a trade union makes sense insofar as it actually takes possession of production, involving all its workers in its ranks, improves the organisation of labour, increases its mechanisation and productivity, and on this basis improves the material situation of the masses and raises their spiritual level.

Any other work, in the field of production, educational, military, the trade union performs without violating its basic character, as a production organisation of the toilers.

18. A production union should include all workers required for a given branch of the economy, from the unskilled worker to the most qualified engineer.

The union must register its members from the production point of view, always having a fairly complete and precise description of the production value of each worker.

The union should impose certain union duties on all workers who occupy one or another administrative and technical positions. Work for the union should be a necessary and mandatory addition to the administrative and production work.

It is necessary that the working masses be imbued with the consciousness that their interests are best protected by those who increase labour productivity, revive the economy, and increase the amount of material wealth. It is necessary that organisers and administrators of this kind should be elected to the governing organs of the unions along with the workers who continue to work at the machine tool and along with the special trade union workers.

"All elections, nomination of candidates, their support, etc. should take place from the point of view of not only political stamina, but also economic abilities, administrative experience, organisational skills and proven concern for the material and spiritual interests of the working masses."

“The Party is obliged by all measures to support and educate a new type of trade unionist, energetic, initiative economist, who looks at economic life not from the point of view of distribution and consumption, but from the point of view of production growth, not through the eyes of a person who makes demands on and negotiating with the Soviet government, but through the eyes of an organiser and owner". (Resolution of the Central Committee of the Party of December 7).

19. Production re-education, of course, must first of all extend to trade union workers, the ranks of which must be strengthened and refreshed in every possible way. The leaders of the trade unions at the centre and at the local level will have to enter the sphere of purely economic questions and thus introduce the production criterion into their daily work in the trade unions. On the other hand, the leading workers of economic organs must learn to approach all questions of production, including purely technical ones, first of all, as questions of organising the living labour force with increasing consciousness and solidarity. Only the mutual fertilisation of these two points of view will create the necessary psychological basis for the organisational fusion of the parallel existing apparatuses into a unified apparatus, which will equally safeguard the common interests of production and directly the interests of the producers.

20. Production propaganda, which is an integral part of production education, has as its task to establish new relationships between workers and production. If under the capitalist system the worker's critical thought developed insofar as it broke out of the clutches of wage labour, then under present conditions it is necessary to direct the thought, criticism, initiative and will of the worker towards a better organisation of production itself, towards a more correct construction and use of tools and machine tools, towards the mechanisation and the machine use of labour, for its scientific organisation, within the workshop, the factory, the district, the entire state.

This detailed, indefatigable, agitation and propaganda renewed again and again on the basis of practical experience — mainly by deed and example, also by the spoken and written word — should henceforth constitute the most important content of the life and work of the trade unions. One of the surest criteria for the vitality and value of a union will be the efficiency, concreteness and success of its production propaganda.

The masses must learn to treat with contempt the superficial, economically vacuous, ostentatious shape, the purely decorative forms of workers' democracy without businesslike, that is, first of all, production content.

The working masses were awakened and brought up by the Bolshevik striker, the barricade fighter, and followed him to storm the bourgeois state. They then got to know this Bolshevik on the battlefields, in the form of a commander and commissar, trained and tempered themselves with him, and under his leadership they won a number of victories. Now the broadest and most backward masses must recognise in yesterday's striker, barricade fighter, red soldier the production worker, organiser, economic manager and renew and strengthen their confidence in him as a practical builder of communist society.

V. Workers' democracy and production, military methods, bureaucracy, specialists and labour.

21. The desire of some trade unionists to present the current struggle of ideas on the issue of the role of trade unions as a struggle between "democratic methods" and methods of "appointment", "commissarism and command", creates a fundamentally false idea of the essence of the matter.

Appointment and commissarism in the economic field is only an inevitable addition to the powerlessness of the given trade union in production, its inability at the given moment to cope with the urgent tasks of the economy. It is not enough to condemn the appointment and commissarism in principle, as emergency measures to which the Soviet government resorted to on the most threatened sectors of the economic front. It is necessary to practically eliminate the need for emergency measures by the methods of production democracy. It is necessary that the trade unions, placing both feet on the soil of the economy, should learn to solve by their own methods those most important economic problems which have hitherto been usually solved apart from the unions.

22. The production point of view can in no way be interpreted as opposing the idea of workers' democracy. On the contrary, workers' democracy can only flourish as a production democracy. Workers' democracy cannot develop in conditions of exhaustion and poverty. The self-activity of the masses can develop only on the basis of growing material prosperity. The orientation of all forces and all attention towards the economy must constitute the content of the inner life of all organs and forms of workers' democracy.

The more the work of the trade unions develops in a new direction, the deeper they penetrate into the masses, giving a fundamentally new, production point of view, the more and more it will be possible to apply the methods of democracy in the field of economy, i.e. not only a systematic discussion at large mass meetings of the most important economic events, but also the ever wider use of elections for a number of posts of economic and administrative significance, by connecting these posts with a certain position within the production organisation.

23. A workers' democracy must consciously place itself under the criterion of production. It is quite obvious that meetings, proposals, discussions, criticism, propaganda, elections are necessary and permissible within the limits in which they do not disrupt the course of production. The degree and method of application of democratic methods have to be determined depending on objective circumstances. To approach all tasks from the point of view of the abstract, i.e. empty slogans of workers' democracy is fundamentally wrong.

A vivid example of a formal democratic attitude to economic issues are the fierce attacks that the past activities of the Glavpolitput [Main Political Committee of Transport] in the field of transport have been subjected to by some trade unionists. Despite the fact that the party created the Glavpolitput as a temporary organ, in view of the extremely difficult situation of the railways, despite the fact that the Glavpolitput coped with the task assigned to it, that is, helped to bring transport out of the state that threatened the death of the whole country – some trade unionists, completely ignoring the production side of the question, approach the matter with a formally democratic criterion and condemn the Glavpolitput, without asking whether it was possible, under the given conditions, to achieve the necessary results using the methods of trade union democracy. The point of view of workers' democracy here becomes formal and therefore vulgar. Workers democracy knows no fetishes. It knows only revolutionary expediency.

24. There is no contradiction between the principle of production democracy (the initiative of the toilers, the widespread use of elections, etc.) and the principle of the militarisation of labour and the system of economic shock groups (in the spirit of the resolution of the IX Party Congress). The militarisation of labour is an inevitable method in the transition from the destroyed and ruined labour market to the planned universal labour service in the most difficult economic conditions of the country. But this militarisation, as the IX Party Congress explained, can be carried out only under the leadership of trade unions, and the measures of coercion inevitable in a transitional era must be based on more and more extensive work to involve, organise and develop initiatives to raise the production and general cultural level of dozens millions of workers and peasants.

Military methods and the militarisation of labour were not so long ago recognised also by the conservative wing of the trade union organisation.

“The militarisation of labour in the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat,” wrote Comrade Tomsky in October 1920, “is nothing more than the distribution of the labour force, in accordance with the national plan and the current economic needs, even against the will of individual groups of workers, which, at one time or another, are affected by this measure. It is time to understand and learn that on the labour front there is a struggle going on as hard as on the military front. Every negligence, mismanagement, indifference in economic activity brings with it need, cold and hunger for hundreds of thousands of toilers, with inevitable companions – epidemics and mortality. It requires the same energy and determination as in war. Whiny cries about "coercion" cannot stop the working class and its organisation from taking urgent measures in the name of the interests of the working class and its deliverance from defeat, want and disease.

“No matter how the representatives of philistine socialism, who at the moment are ideologists of the old selfish strata in the working class, may shout, the trade union unions, proceeding from the interests of the class as a whole, carry out and are obliged to carry out the militarisation of labour as one of the most necessary prerequisites leading to the victory of the Russian proletariat on the economic front.”^**

“The production front,” wrote comrade Lozovsky, “is the most important front of the Russian revolution, and every citizen is obligated to work. There will be no mercy for labour deserters. This is what labour conscription means, this is what the militarisation of labour is. Who can deny that the proletarian state has such a right in the period when private ownership of the instruments of production and exchange is abolished? Who can deny its obligation to demand a certain amount of labour from each for the benefit of society? Nobody, except for pathetic philistines, total fools or dishonourable demagogues.”^***

25. “To work in a military manner” does not mean for us to work only or mainly by intimidation, and not by persuasion. The military work of a communist requires the highest selflessness and fosters a heroic attitude to the idea of duty: to perish, but to carry out. Hence the diligence, the accuracy, the responsibility. We will accomplish our present gigantic tasks only on the condition that we give our economic work the same heroic character as our work at the front. In this sense, military work is the direct opposite of external discipline and bureaucratism – and it is not a rejection of workers' democracy, but, on the contrary, its most heroic expression.

26. Production democracy means overcoming bureaucratism. Our party program says with excellent insight that precisely "the participation of the trade unions and through this of the broad masses in the management of the economy — is the main means of combating the bureaucratism of the economic apparatus" ... Thus from the point of view of our programme the struggle against bureaucratism is not a self-sufficient task, which can be solved with the help of individual organisational methods, it is not, first of all, an integral part of the work of the trade unions to educate the masses in production and to actually master production.

Hence, in particular, the conclusion follows that in the field of combating bureaucratism, the workers' state should spend its forces not only on piling up control organs, but also on straightening and improving the existing economic apparatus by combining them with mass production unions.

Insofar as the trade unions do not stand on the soil of creative production work, they begin to stagnate, ossify and manifest themselves all the negative features of bureaucratism.

27. The so-called "workerisation" of Soviet organs — not in the sense of mechanically ousting specialists and replacing them with incompetent workers, but in the sense of the systematic mastery of all branches of state activity by the organised proletariat — can be fully achieved only on the basis of production democracy. Only by educating, selecting, nominating workers as economists, organisers, by creating an atmosphere of production in the unions and throughout the country, can the party and the unions in the next period cause the necessary inflow of fresh creative forces from below. The economic upsurge will not only provide the spiritual upsurge of the proletariat: in general, it will also create conditions for the creative flourishing of its most gifted sons.

28. The possible objection that it is not necessary to force (to extremely accelerate) the equalisation of union and economic organs, that it is necessary to take into account the level of consciousness of the masses, that the nationalisation of the unions creates the basis for Menshevik trade unionism, which is hostile to the workers' state, etc., etc., misses the point. ... The pace of development may be different depending on the basic conditions in which our development as a whole will proceed in the coming period. But it is necessary that the direction of development of trade unions will be clear to all their workers and determine each step forward, no matter how modest it may be.

It is completely unacceptable to turn the nationalisation of unions into a transcendental "ultimate goal" that will remain without any influence on today's practice, in which this is precisely why trade unionist tendencies are reviving. Nationalisation is a creative process that takes place in stages. You need to attentively and carefully determine these stages, taking into account the general level of the masses and the characteristics of individual branches of industries, but you need to clearly observe the direction, so as not to take steps backwards when the situation decisively requires steps forward.

29. In any case, the idea that the working masses will not understand the transformation of trade unions into production unions and will turn their backs on them is fundamentally wrong. The trade unionist policy, that is, pressure on the state from the outside does not open up any prospects for the masses now. On the contrary, production policy, by improving the economy, will overcome the misery of the masses. The toilers want, above all, economic successes: they will support every serious and reasonable effort in this direction. They will display the greatest production enthusiasm as soon as the first economic successes, more tangible for the masses, are achieved. If anyone opposes the new production course in the trade unions, then it is not the masses, but the more conservative part of the trade union bureaucracy.

VI. Practical conclusions.

30. Based on the considerations developed above, it is necessary to immediately take a number of organisational measures that should eliminate the inertia of the unions, practically introduce them into the field of new tasks and coordinate their work with economic organs. It is necessary that the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions and the Praesidium of the Supreme Economic Council now have from ⅓ to ½ of the total number of members in common. Thus, the one-sided specialisation of the two most responsible production councils will become impossible. Each of them will include a proportion of workers who are directly under the pressure of the administrative and technical needs of production and at the same time live in an atmosphere of a trade union organisation.

Along with this, each council will have from ½ to ⅔ “pure” administrators and “pure” trade unionists, which will sufficiently ensure both the necessary specialisation in work and sufficient elasticity in the relationship between economic and trade union organisations during the transition period.

Both councils, the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions and the Supreme Economic Council, in their entirety, at joint meetings periodically report on their work, discuss and resolve all fundamental issues of organising the economy, including the organisation of labour.

The same order of organisational relationships and combination of ⅓ to ½ members, with the obligation to work correctly in both institutions, is established in relation to the economic commissariats, central administrations and central committees of the respective production unions.

The same organisational principle is applied in relation to the lower levels of economic and union organisations (regions and districts, provinces, districts and bushes, roads, workshops and factories, etc.).

In those conditions where the administrative and economic organ is built on the principle of one-person management, it is necessary to include the one-person-administrator in the corresponding cell of the union, at least with an advisory vote.

If he is a worker, who enjoys the full confidence of the union, it is desirable that such an administrator be elected to the union cell with a casting vote.

If he is a specialist whom the union, for one reason or another, considers impossible to include in its cell, even with an advisory vote, the union cell designates its agent (commissioner), who represents the union's control over the specialist administrator.

Note. The appointment of plenipotentiaries (with commissars' rights) constitutes the exclusive prerogative of the production union, being one of the means of carrying out the proletarian regime in the apparatus of the economy.

In individual factories, mines etc. the organisational and personal combination of administrative and trade union organs will become the easier, the more resolutely the unions take the production course, the deeper the masses assimilate the production criterion in all kinds of elections. It seems quite expedient to appoint one of the factory committee members as the plant manager, provided, of course, he is the appropriate person. And, conversely, if the plant manager is appointed from outside and has managed to earn the workers' trust by his work, the union cell must make every effort to include him in its membership.

31. The economic departments of the trade unions, reinforced by the best administrative and technical workers of the respective economic institutions, should become powerful instruments for improving the entire organisation of the economy, the scientific organisation of production, mechanisation, Taylorisation, etc.

The corresponding cells in the factories should build a certain rapport with the plant management, which is obliged to carefully consider all technical and organisational proposals that go through the assistance cells, etc. of the organisation and periodically report on the use of the proposals made, whenever possible, before the general meeting of the factory.

32. The allocation of labour and its pay and norm regulation is transferred to the organs of the union.

33. Conflicts between workers and economic organs in the production process are resolved exclusively by the trade unions for which they are responsible to the Workers' and Peasants' State.

34. From the point of view of production democracy the question of specialists, that is, of reconciling their place in production and in the trade union organisation, presents certain difficulties. However, this question can be solved with full success with a persistent and firm policy on the part of the production unions.

All specialists, without exception, must pass through the filter of the trade union. Due to the conditions of the entire past and the barely completed civil war, specialists should be divided — approximately — into 3 categories: 1) those to be tested (yesterday's Kolchakites, Wrangelites, etc.). 2) candidates, 3) full members of the union.

Only specialists of the latter category can be appointed to positions of responsibility without commissars. Specialists of the second category can occupy positions of responsibility only under the control of commissars from the production union. Specialists of the first category can only be assistants or consultants to administrators who are members of the union. In this way, the title of a member of the union will receive a large weight in production, which will be reflected in an equally beneficial way both on the consciousness of workers and on the consciousness of specialists.

35. One-person-power in the industrial enterprise remains an unshakable law for the entire transitional period, despite the parallel existence of production unions and economic organs to a certain extent. Administrative power belongs to that board, which is established by the appropriate order. But the very procedure for appointing the board, preparing candidates for it, its relation to the union as a whole, and the production atmosphere in which the board operates, should more and more transform boards into administrative and economic organs allocated for this purpose by the production union. Under these conditions, the very question of intervention or non-interference of unions in the management of production should disappear, for it is perfectly natural that a department for production propaganda or a department for improving the workers' life cannot interfere in administrative work, which is carried out by a department specially created for that purpose.

36. To achieve complete consistency in the work of the production union and the economic organ, both must be built in general and on the whole according to the same pattern, in accordance with the structure and needs of the given branch of production.

In the restructuring and reorganisation of trade unions, their districts, etc., one should be guided not by the self-sufficient needs and conveniences of the union apparatus, but by the deeper needs of the economy itself.

37. There is not and cannot be a ready-made organisational recipe that covers all cases of mutual relations between economic and union organisations. In this area, creativity, initiative, personal and organisational combinations appropriate to the specific conditions of the situation are required. But all these experiments should be illuminated by the unity of the task:

to educate and promote among trade unionists production executives, production workers and administrators;

to bring together and organisationally combine the work of the unions and the economic apparatus;

highlight the common part of their work and make them solve it together;

systematically strive to ensure that this common part of the work becomes wider and wider and in the end would absorb all the work, that is, finally to merge the union and economic organs.

38. Developing comprehensively this system, gradually increasing the application of the principle of election, more and more closely linking the responsible role of the union with the responsible role in production, we will come sooner or later to a position in which the union, embracing a given branch of production entirely and from all sides, will, through a combination of methods of election and selection, single out the entire administrative and economic apparatus under the general control and leadership of the workers' state, coordinating the work of all sectors of the economy.

39. The question of the pace of development in the indicated direction cannot be determined with any certainty, since it depends to a great extent on the international situation and the development of the world revolution, that is, on the extent to which we will be able to concentrate all our forces and resources on economic work. It is quite obvious, however, that under both favourable and unfavourable conditions, the pace of development will be different in different sectors of the economy, depending on the technical characteristics of the given branch of industry and the level of workers employed in it.

Undoubtedly, in the field of transport, especially the railroad, and in the metal industry, the question of the relationship between economic and union organs can find its solution much earlier than in the field of the textile and wood-processing industry, and even more so in the field of agriculture, where the question has not even been raised in any broad scope.

The policy of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions and of the economic organs should be flexible in this respect, be guided by a specific consideration of the peculiarities of each given branch of the economy and should by no means have as its goal a mechanical equalisation of all unions and branches of the economy on a certain average organisational template, which for some will turn out to be too broad, but for others — too narrow.

Not only will there not be any harm to the unity and solidarity of the working class, but there will be a tremendous benefit for all its work if the more advanced productions in their socialist construction overtake the more backward ones, giving them a model and thus accelerating development.

40. From all that has been shown it follows that the reorganisation of the unions should consist in: 1) giving them a broad production goal (mastery of production), which should form the basis of agitation, propaganda, organisation, selection of personnel; 2) to immediately strengthen the unions with a significant number of workers, whose economic and organisational qualities in general have been tested by experience in various fields; 3) to provide for the unions the necessary apparatus capable of really covering the tasks facing the unions.

41. The general state of the country excludes the possibility of a one-time and even upsurge of the entire economy, and thus makes it impossible to strengthen all trade unions at one time and evenly: for this there would not be enough strength or means.

In the field of consumption, i.e. conditions for the personal existence of toilers, it is necessary to pursue a line of equalisation. In the field of production, the principle of shock-groups will remain decisive for us for a long time to come: only after passing through the stage of shock-group economy will we achieve the necessary proportionality in the main branches of the economy.

How deeply this thought has penetrated the ranks of the trade unionists themselves is evident from the fact that at the last (5) conference of trade unions the overwhelming majority adopted a resolution on the report of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, in which the leading trade union organ is reproached for the insufficiently decisive use of shock-group methods.

42. Currently, in accordance with the general needs of the economy, the unions of miners and metal workers are in the foreground. Their all-round strengthening should be the subject of special attention of the party and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions.

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43. Production education is not limited to the walls of factories and clubs. Questions of the personal life and everyday life of workers should be the subject of special attention of every production union. With all the economic difficulties of our country, there are fairly broad opportunities to improve the housing, clothing and food situation of workers with the assistance of local Soviet organs, with the proper initiative of the workers themselves and with the introduction of elements of collectivism into the sphere of everyday life (house communes, public canteens, nurseries, cooperative repair shops, etc., etc.). Every responsible worker of the union is obliged to find ways to improve the living conditions of the workers and periodically notify both the higher-standing union organs and the union press about the measures taken and the results achieved.