To succeed in great things, we must begin in little things. And even after the "great" thing—the overthrow of the state, whereby capitalism is destroyed and power is transferred to the proletariat—the formation of industrial life on a new basis must start with the little things. Communist Saturdays, industrial armies, compulsory labor—these are various forms of the practical working out of Socialist labor.
A radical American Socialist, Albert Boni (formerly of the publishing firm of Boni and Liveright) who has just returned from several months in Soviet Russia has given us, in the New York Globe, a pro-Soviet newspaper, the following unforgettable picture of the new slavery.
The industrial collapse of Russia brings not merely a problem of technical reorganization, replacement of machinery and supplying raw materials and motive power. The Communist party is facing a situation in which the laboring classes, in whose behalf, supposedly, the Communist party is working, are proving themselves not only unwilling, but unable to endure the hardships and suffering that industrial disorganization has imposed upon them. In the face of impossible living conditions, the workers are abandoning the cities for the country and its more certain existence.
To meet the dearth of man-power, the Russian government decreed that every male over sixteen years of age must labor at such tasks as the state may assign. Labor books, showing that this obligation is being fulfilled, have been issued to all citizens, replacing passports and all other identification papers.
Wherever plans of the central government meet with opposition they have one resort that never fails—military force and the terror imposed by the extraordinary commission. But the peasants are already in a state of too