The monopoly by the Socialist State of the necessities of life, and an indefatigable struggle against speculation have saved the Russian cities from starvation, and made it possible to supply food to the Red Army. The centralization of scattered mills, factories, private railroads and ships has assured the possibility of production and transport.
The concentration of industry and of the means of transportation in the hands of the government leads to the standardizing of the industrial arts and makes them the common property of society. Only under a socialist regime is it possible to fix the minimum number of types of locomotive cars and steamers to be manufactured and repaired, and to carry on standard manufacture en masse of parts of machinery designed by periodic regulations, thus securing enormous advantages in the matter of productivity. Beside the imperialist assaults from abroad nothing stands in the way of Soviet Russia’s further economic achievements, and nothing is going to prevent her scientific organization of industry and the introduction of the Taylor system, divested of course, of its capitalistic features of exploitation and sweating.
While in the rest of the world national interests clashing with imperialist encroachments serve as the source of incessant conflicts, uprisings and wars, socialist Russia has shown how easily a Workers' Government can reconcile national requirements with industry interests by purging the former of chauvinism and the latter of imperialism. Socialism strives to bring about a union of all regions, districts, and nationalities by means of a unified social economy. For an economic centralism freed from the exploitation of one class by another and of one nation by another and, hence, beneficial to all alike can be brought about without any infringement upon the real freedom of national development.
All the oppressed nations and tribes, the peoples of the British dominions, the Egyptians and the Turks, the Hindoos and the Persians, the Irish and the Bulgarians, the nations of central Europe, and of the Balkan states, have all convinced themselves by the example of Soviet Russia that the establishment of a Federation of Soviet Republics will make it possible for all the national units of humanity to live together in friendly cooperation.
As a result of the Revolution Russia has become the first proletarian empire. During the three years of her existence her boundaries have undergone continual changes; they have shrunk under the external military pressure of international imperialism and extended again when that pressure relaxed. The struggle for Soviet Russia has become blended with the struggle against world imperialism.
The attitude towards Soviet Russia forms the touchstone by which all labor organizations are tested. When the German So-
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