courage the masses to use it. But just the reverse prevails in Russia. Although the workers have the full legal right to strike the labor movement is decidedly against using it save under extreme circumstances. It is exactly the most intelligent and militant elements who are most against strikes.
The reason for this is that the Russian trade unions have finally and definitely defeated their old-time enemies, the capitalists, and in so doing they have passed from the era of industrial war into that of industrial peace. This has revolutionized their functions. From fighting organizations they have been turned into producing organizations. Henceforth, their supreme task is to assist in the re-construction and operation of industry along Communist lines. To do this, considering the broken-down state of industry, will require the utmost co-operation from every part of the labor movement. Strikes can only hinder the program. They cannot improve the conditions of the workers; they merely make things worse. Moreover, they are unnecessary, as the workers have all the industrial and political machinery of the country in their hands and can adjust whatever grievances they may have without recourse to striking.
Strikes in Russia are so much scabbing on the revolution. They are about on a par with the movements of bodies of workers in capitalist countries who break ranks during strikes and go back to work. Practically all the strikes that have occurred so far under the Soviet regime have been the work of the more ignorant toilers blindly rebelling against unavoidable cuts in food rations, or of counter-revolutionary plotters seeking to defeat the organized workers’ supreme task of getting industry going. The militants have been dead against them. They are for fighting the thing through to the finish. And that can be done, not by striking, but by sticking on the job and solving the enonomic crisis.
So far the Russian workers have not reaped any great prosperity from their newly-born right to work and to the full product of their labor. They are still in want. But this is because the industry of the country has been ruined by seven long years of imperialist and civil war. Production is far below the actual needs of the people. When the unions come together to work out their wage scales they find but little social product
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