V. I.

Lenin

The Sixth (Prague) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.

JANUARY 5–17 (18–30), 1912

THE PARTY’S ATTITUDE TO THE WORKERS’
STATE INSURANCE DUMA BILL

I

1. The share of the wealth produced by the wage-worker which he
receives in the form of wages is so insignificant that it is scarcely
sufficient to provide for his most essential requirements; the proletarian
is therefore deprived of any opportunity to lay aside any part of his earnings to provide for himself in
case of inability to work as a result of accident, illness, old age or
permanent disablement, as well as in case of unemployment which is
inseparably linked up with the capitalist mode of production. The insurance
of workers in all the aforementioned cases is therefore a reform
imperatively dictated by the entire course of capitalist development.

2. The best form of workers’ insurance is state insurance
based on the following principles:

(a) it should provide for the workers in all cases of incapacity
(accidents, illness, old age, permanent disablement; extra provisions for
working women during pregnancy and childbirth; benefits for widows and
orphans upon the death of the bread-winner) or in case of loss of earnings
due to unemployment; (b) insurance must include all wage-earners and their families; (c) all insured persons should receive compensations equal to their
fall earnings, and all expenditures on insurance must be
borne by the employers and the state; (d) all forms of insurance should be handled by uniform insurance
organisations of the territorial type and based on the principle
of jail management by the insured persons, themselves.

3. The government Bill, passed by the State Duma, is in radical
contradiction to all these fundamental requirements of a rational insurance
scheme; for (a) it provides for only two kinds of insurance, cases of accident
and cases of illness; (b) it extends to only a small part (according to the most liberal
calculations, to one-sixth) of the Russian proletariat, since it excludes
from insurance whole regions (Siberia and, in the government’s version,
also the Caucasus) and whole categories of workers who particularly need
insurance (farm labourers, building workers, railway workers, post and
telegraph workers, shop assistants, etc.); (c) it provides for beggarly rates of compensation (the maximum
compensation in case of total disablement resulting from accidents
is set at two-thirds of the earnings, the latter, moreover, calculated on
the basis of standards lower than the actual earnings) and at the same time
makes the workers pay the lion’s share of the expenditure on
insurance—for the plan is to make the workers cover the expenditures not only on insurance against illness but also on insurance against
“minor” injuries, which in practice are the most numerous. This new
procedure is a change for the worse even compared with the present law,
according to which compensation for injuries is paid entirely by the
employers; (d) it deprives the insurance bodies of every vestige of independence,
placing them under the combined surveillance of civil servants (from the
courts and the “Council for Insurance Affairs”), the gendarmerie, the
police (who, besides exercising general surveillance, are invested with the
right to direct the practical activities of the insurance bodies, influence
the selection of their personnel, etc.), and the employers (the accident
insurance societies under the exclusive control of employers; sick benefit
societies run by the factories; society rules guaranteeing the influence of
the employers, etc.).

4. This law, which rides roughshod over the most vital interests of the
workers, is the only one possible in this present period of frenzied
reaction, this period of the domination of counter-revolution, and is the
result of many years of preliminary negotiations and agreement between the
government and the representatives of capital. An insurance reform really
corresponding to the interests of the workers can only be accomplished
after the final overthrow of tsarism and the achievement of conditions
indispensable for the free class struggle of the proletariat.

II

In view of the aforementioned, the Conference resolves that:

(1) It is the urgent task both of the illegal Party organisations and
of the comrades active in the legally existing organisations (trade unions,
clubs, co-operative societies, etc.) to develop the most extensive
agitation against the Duma Insurance Bill, which affects the interests of
the entire Russian proletariat as a class, since it grossly violates them.

(2) The Conference considers it necessary to emphasise that all
Social-Democratic agitation concerning the Insurance Bill should be
presented in relation to the class position of the proletariat in modern capitalist society, and should criticise the
bourgeois illusions being spread by the social-reformists; this agitation
must, in general, be linked up with our fundamental socialist tasks; on the
other hand, it is necessary in this agitation to show the connection
between the character of the Duma “reform” and the current political
situation and, in general, its connection with our revolutionary-democratic
tasks and slogans.

(3) Fully approving of the vote of the Social-Democratic group in the
Duma against the Bill, the Conference draws the attention of the comrades
to the extensive and valuable material clarifying the attitude of the
various classes to labour reforms furnished by the debate in the Duma on
this question; the Conference particularly stresses the fact that the
debate vividly brought out the aspirations of the Octobrist representatives
of backward capital openly hostile to the workers, as well as the attitude
of the Constitutional-Democratic Party masked, in the hypocritical speeches
of its representatives, by social-reformist phrases about “social peace”;
in point of fact, the Cadets came out in the Duma against the independent
activity of the working class and virulently contested the principal
amendments to the Bill proposed by the Social-Democratic group in the Duma.

(4) The Conference most earnestly warns the workers against all
attempts to curtail or completely distort Social-Democratic agitation by
confining it to what is legally permissible in the present period of the
domination of the counter-revolution; on the other hand, the Conference
emphasises that the main point of this agitation should be to explain to
the proletarian masses that no real improvement in the worker’s conditions
is possible unless there is a new revolutionary upsurge, that whoever
wishes to achieve a genuine labour reform must above all fight for a new,
victorious revolution.

(5) Should the Duma Bill become law in spite of the pro test of the
class-conscious proletariat, the Conference summons the comrades to make
use of the new organisational forms which it provides (workers’ sick
benefit societies) to carry on energetic propaganda for Social-Democratic
ideas in these organisational units and thus turn the new law, devised as a
means of putting new chains and a new yoke upon the proletariat, into a means of developing its
class-consciousness, strengthening its organisation and intensifying its
struggle for full political liberty and for socialism.

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