We feel as if we were hard labor convicts, where everything but our feeding has been made subject to iron rules. We have become lost as human beings, and have been turned into slaves. (Resolution of Petrograd workers of September 5, 1920.)
It must not be supposed that the arguments of Lenin differ from those of Trotzky on this fundamental point. The American organ Soviet Russia declares that Soviet Russia is "the property of the producers" and "every worker belongs to Soviet Russia." No more absolute abandonment of individual liberty has ever been seen in print. Soviet Russia then proceeds to justify itself by reproducing the following article from the pen of Lenin, who differs from Trotzky only in the proposition that methods of compulsion will have to be continued not for one but for many generations:
Communist labor, in the strictest sense of the word, is the voluntary labor of future society, performed without pay, not as a definite duty, not in order to obtain the right to a share of production, and not according to rigid rules. It is labor performed freely, bound by no rule, without regard to compensation, and not with an eye to any reward. It is labor performed as a habit, for the common good, and with the realization of its necessity (which will also become a habit), in order to provide for the needs of society.
It is clear to every one that we, and this means our society, must advance very far indeed before labor of this kind can be realized in our social order.
To build up a new labor discipline, to create new forms of social relations, to find new methods of drawing people to work—this is a task of many generations. It is the supreme task. …
