cipline by the revolution. When capitalism prevailed the employers used the customary methods of the wages system, brutally driving the workers to their tasks and making them produce enormous quantities of commodities. But with the revolution this external compulsion was abolished and the workers had to discipline themselves in industry; they had to secure quantity production practically upon a voluntary basis. This has proved one of the very greatest problems of the revolution, because masses of the workers, densely ignorant in consequence of a thousand years of working class slavery and accustomed to forced labor, had hardly an inkling of what the social upheaval was all about. They thought that the revolution meant that they did not have to work any more, or at best, only at such odd times and in such haphazard fashion as they saw fit. They were unable to discipline themselves. If they went to the plants at all it was only to idle and fool about. They had next to no understanding of the needs of industry. The general consequence was a serious drop in production, and the inauguration of a great educational campaign by the militants to show these ignorant masses that only when they keep society supplied with a plentitude of products can they hope to enjoy a high standard of living. Unforunately this simple lesson has not been driven entirely home. Russian industry is still afflicted with large numbers of slacker workers who as yet are intellectuallly unable to rise to the heights of the new revolutionary system of voluntary labor discipline. It is for them that the compulsory labor laws had to be promulgated.
The industrial collapse was further hastened by the food shortage which has existed for many months. This shortage was caused in the first place largely by the industrial breakdown, which it in turn reacts against and tends to make worse. Let us examine briefly the cause and effects of the food shortage:
The end of the world war found Russian agriculture in a badly run-down state. Millions of the peasants had been killed and other millions hopelessly mutilated, thus making labor scarce. Likewise great numbers of draft animals perished in the war and the plagues that accompanied it, making that type of labor scarce also. Farm machinery was worn out, and the land impoverished for want of fertilizers. All these things seriously
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