V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v40; en:CW/CW30;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

Comrades, as the organisers of the conference have informed me, you have appointed a report on the question of the subbotniks, dividing it into two parts, so as to be able to discuss in detail the most important aspects of this question: first, the organisation of the subbotniks in Moscow and their results, and, second, the practical conclusions for their further organisation. I should like to confine myself to general propositions, to the ideas which the organisation of the subbotniks, as a new phenomenon in our Party and Soviet construction, suggests. Consequently, I shall touch upon the practical aspect only in the briefest outline.

When the communist subbotniks were first organised, it was still difficult to judge how far this phenomenon deserved attention and whether anything big could grow out of it. I remember that when the first reports of it began to appear in the Party press, the comments of comrades closely connected with the work of the trade unions and the Commissariat of Labour were at first extremely cautious, not to say pessimistic. They thought that there was no reason to attach great importance to these subbotniks. Since then, the subbotniks have developed so widely that their importance in our construction cannot be disputed by anyone.

Indeed, we very often use the word “communism”, so often that we have even included it in the name of our Party. But when one thinks this question over, the idea occurs that, together with the good that has resulted from this, a certain danger may have been created for us. The main reason that compelled us to change the name of the Party was the desire to dissociate ourselves as sharply as possible from the prevailing socialism of the Second International. After the overwhelming majority of the official socialist parties, in the person of their leaders, had, during the imperialist war, sided with the bourgeoisie of their own countries, or of their own governments, the greatest crisis, the collapse of the old socialism, became clearly evident to us. And in order to emphasise in the sharpest possible manner that we cannot regard as socialists those who, during the imperialist war, went together with their governments, in order to show that the old socialism had rotted, had died, it was mainly for this that the idea of renaming our Party was advanced. The more so because, from a purely theoretical standpoint, the name “Social-Democracy” had long ceased to be correct. As far back as the forties, in France, when it first came into wide political use, it was appropriated by the party of petty-bourgeois socialist reformism, and not by the party of the revolutionary proletariat. Thus, the main urge, the main motive in changing the name of the Party, which became the name of the new International, was the desire to break decisively with the old socialism. If we ask ourselves what communism differs from socialism, we shall have to say that socialism is the society that grows out of capitalism directly, that it is the first form of the new society. Communism, however, is a higher form of society and can develop only when socialism has become fully consolidated. Socialism presupposes work without the aid of the capitalists, social labour with the strictest accounting, control and supervision by the organised vanguard, the advanced section of the working people; and the measure of labour and its remuneration must be determined. This determination is necessary because capitalist society has left us such traces and such habits as scattered labour, distrust of the social economy, the old habits of the small proprietor, which prevail in all peasant countries. All this runs counter to a really communist economy. Communism is the order of things under which people become accustomed to performing social duties without any special apparatus of compulsion, when unpaid work for the common benefit becomes a universal phenomenon. Naturally, from the standpoint of those who are taking the first steps towards the complete victory over capitalism, the concept “communism” is too remote. Therefore, however correct the change in the name of our Party was, however great the benefit it brought, however big the thing that has been done, which has assumed enormous dimensions—for communist parties now exist all over the world, and although not yet a year has passed since the foundation of the Communist International{14}, from the standpoint of the working-class movement it is incomparably stronger than the dying old Second International—nevertheless, if the name “Communist Party” is interpreted to mean that the communist system is being introduced now, that would be a great distortion and would cause practical harm, amounting to sheer boasting.

That is why the word “communist” must be treated with great caution, and that is why the communist subbotniks acquired particular value when they began to be put into practice, for it was only in this extremely small phenomenon that something truly communist began to appear. From the expropriation of the landlords and capitalists we obtained only the possibility of building the most elementary forms of socialism, but there is nothing communist in this as yet. If we take our present economy, we shall see in it still very weak beginnings of socialism and the tremendous predominance of old economic forms, expressed either in the prevalence of small-scale farming, or in the most savage, unbridled speculation. But when our opponents, the petty-bourgeois democrats, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, argue against us and say: you have smashed large-scale capitalism, but in its place you have the worst speculative, usurious capitalism oozing out of every pore, we reply to them: if you imagined that we could pass directly from large-scale capitalism to communism, then you are not revolutionaries, but reformists or utopians.

Large-scale capitalism has been radically undermined everywhere, even in those countries where no steps towards socialism have yet been taken. From this standpoint, all this criticism, all these objections that our opponents advance against us are utterly frivolous. Of course, after large-scale capitalism has been smashed, new sprouts of small-scale speculative capitalism begin to appear in its place. We are going through a furious struggle with the remnants of large-scale capitalism, which has thrown itself into all kinds of small-scale speculation, where it is more difficult to catch and where it assumes the worst, the most disorganised form of trade.

The struggle, which has become much more bitter in the conditions of war, has given rise to the most brutal manifestations of speculation, especially where capitalism was organised on a larger scale, and it would be quite wrong to imagine the revolutionary transition otherwise. That is how matters stand from the standpoint of the present-day economy. If we ask ourselves what the present economic system of Soviet Russia is, we shall have to say that it is the laying of the foundations of socialism in large-scale production, the remoulding of the old capitalist economy under the most stubborn resistance of capitalism, which manifests itself in millions upon millions of forms. The West European countries, which emerged from the war as much devastated as ours, for example, Austria, differ from us only in that there this disintegration of capitalism, this speculation, manifests itself with even greater force, while the beginnings of socialist construction, of something that offers resistance to capitalism, are absent there. But there is as yet nothing communist in our economic system. “Communist” begins only when the subbotniks appear, i.e., when unpaid, unregulated by any authority, by any state, labour of individuals on a broad scale for the public benefit makes its appearance. This is not neighbourly help, which has always existed in the countryside, but labour that is performed on a broad scale for the needs of the whole state, organised on a broad scale and unpaid. Consequently, it would be more correct to apply the word “communist” not only to the name of the Party, but exclusively to those economic phenomena in our life that actually realise communism. If there is anything communist in the present system of Russia, it is only the subbotniks, and everything else is only a struggle against capitalism for the consolidation of socialism, from which, after its complete victory, that very communism, which we observe in the subbotniks not from books but from living reality, must grow.

Such is the fundamental significance of the subbotniks, which show that here something quite new is being created and is beginning to arise in the form of unpaid labour, broadly organised for the needs of the whole state, something that runs counter to all the old capitalist rules, something that is higher than the socialist society that is conquering capitalism. Therefore, when this year, after the Central Committee of the Party had called for help to the country{15}, the railwaymen of the Moscow-Kazan Railway, who live in conditions of the greatest hunger and the greatest need, were the first to respond, and when signs appeared that the communist subbotniks were ceasing to be an isolated phenomenon, were beginning to spread and were meeting with the sympathy of the masses, it could be said that here we have a phenomenon of enormous fundamental importance and that we must really give it all-round support if we want to be communists not only in the fundamental sense, not only from the standpoint of the struggle against capitalism. From the standpoint of the practical construction of socialist society this is not enough. It must be said that in practice the movement can be carried out on a mass scale. Whether we have proved this, I will not undertake to answer, because no general summaries of the dimensions of the movement we call communist subbotniks have yet been made. I have only fragmentary information and have read in the Party press that these subbotniks are developing more and more in a number of towns. Comrades from Petrograd have said that the subbotniks in Petrograd are incomparably more widespread than in Moscow. As for the provinces, many comrades—among those who are practically acquainted with this movement—have told me that they are collecting enormous material on this new form of social labour. But only after repeated discussion of this question in the press and at Party conferences of various towns shall we be able to obtain the summarised data on the basis of which we can say whether the subbotniks have really become a mass phenomenon and whether we have really achieved serious successes in this field.

Be that as it may, whether we shall soon or not soon obtain such complete and verified data, it must be beyond doubt for us that from the fundamental standpoint we have no other phenomenon that would indicate that we not only call ourselves communists and not only want to be communists, but are actually realising something communist—and not only socialist—than the subbotniks. Therefore, every communist, everyone who wants to be true to the principles of communism, must direct all his efforts, all his attention, to helping to elucidate this phenomenon and to its practical application. Such is the fundamental significance of the subbotniks. Consequently, at every Party conference this question must be constantly raised and discussed both from the theoretical and from the practical side. We must not confine this phenomenon to the theoretical, fundamental aspect alone. The communist subbotniks are of enormous value to us not only because they actually realise communism. In addition, the subbotniks have a twofold significance for us: from the state standpoint—purely practical assistance to the state; and from the Party standpoint, which must not remain in the shade for us as members of the Party—the significance they have for purging the Party of elements that have attached themselves to it, for combating the influences that the Party is experiencing in the conditions of a disintegrating capitalism. Economically, the subbotniks are necessary to save the Soviet Republic from economic ruin and to begin the realisation of socialism. I should like to dwell in somewhat greater detail on this second aspect of the question…[3]