workers' republic. Russia recognizes the right of the workers to live, and also their right to freely use the industries in order to earn that living. The dread horrors of unemployment have been eliminated from that country.
Compare this situation with conditions prevailing in capitalist countries. There the industries are in the hands of a few exploiters. If they find it profitable to operate their mills and factories they do so, and the workers may be able to beg employment from them. But if the capitalists do not see fit to run their industries, then the workers and their families are left to starve in unemployment, as millions of them are doing all over the world at this very hour. Under capitalism machinery and work animals, because they are property and cost money, are well taken care of in good times or bad; but workmen, because they are not property and cost the employer nothing. are thrown upon the streets in periods of industrial depression and left to degenerate in poverty and despair. In Russia alone alone are they guaranteed the right to work and live.
Without duties there can be no rights; hence with the Russians' right to work goes the legal obligation that they do so. The Soviet Republic takes the stand that no one has the right to live in Russia without working for his daily bread. The national constitution declares: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat." The law specifically requires that every able-bodied citizen do his share in producing the necessities of life. Exploiters of labor, those who parasitically live from work of others, are classed as a species of dangerous criminal.
Thus we come to one of the "horrors" of Sovietism. People actually compelled to earn their living, instead of being permitted to whip it out of the hides of others. It is an outrage. No wonder the various brands of reactionaries (most of whom never did a useful thing in their whose lives except to leave Russia) consider the compulsory labor laws a dreadful tyranny and are making the welkin ring with their howlings.
But their complaints are lost on the Russian labor militants now in charge of the country. The latter are working for the establishment of a Communist Society in which compulsion of any sort will be unnecessary; where the multitudes of the people will freely perform,
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