V. I.

Lenin

SPEECH AT A MEETING OF ThE COMMUNIST GROUP IN THE ALL-RUSSIA CENTRAL COUNCIL OF TRADE UNIONS. MARCH 15, 1920 [3]

MINUTES

Comrades, Comrade Lozovsky said that Comrade Bukharin and I
will be partly in agreement with him. That is true. You
have written the theses, but what are you defending? Then
you must strike out your theses, because they say: “as a
basic principle”, but we do not take practice as our point
of departure. So write that down, then. What in that case
remains of your theses? Today I had occasion to be at a
meeting of the water transport workers, and to argue there,
and Comrade Ishchenko said: “In any case, there is a guarantee that we shall put the question as practical men.”
All right then, put that down; but what you have written is
something different. You have written: “as a basic principle”. Where is your justification, who is defending it?
No one. They edge away. Write that down, and then half our differences will disappear. And after all, what you
have written is untrue: where do you answer the argument
which is put forward, against collective management; where
is the participation of the broad masses, with three, five
or seven workers taking part in the collegiums? Do you want participation by the broad masses or don’t you? Of
course, those who don’t want it are to be thrown out, but
that is no argument. You say, the “broad non-Party masses
of workers”. There are no such masses in a single collegium: it’s not true, and that’s no way to reason. That
is not the system you need to draw in the broad non-Party
masses: you have to train, to promote, to enliven. How many workers have the Central Committee of the textile
workers and others put forward? How many of them have been promoted and how many demoted during the last
three months? Give me figures, and then I will say: there
are the people. It’s childish to write “principles”: after
studying it for two years, all you have written are principles—people will laugh. Here your argument does not
correspond to your conclusion: participation of the broad
masses is assured by a collegium of seven, or of three,
persons. People will laugh at it. That is my first objection.

Secondly, I refer you to the bourgeoisie. Whom shall we learn from, if not the bourgeoisie? How did they
manage? They managed as a class when it was the ruler, but
didn’t it appoint managers? We haven’t yet caught up with them in their degree of development. They knew how
to rule as a class, and to manage through anyone you please
individually, entirely in their own interests; at the top
they had a small collegium and they didn’t discuss basic
principles and didn’t write such resolutions. They had all power in their hands, and regarded as competent the
one who knew his job. The workers have not yet reached that point, and in order to win we must give up our old
prejudices. The rule of the working class is reflected in
the constitution, the ownership and in the fact that it is
we who are running things, while management is quite another matter, it is a question of skill, a question of
experience. The bourgeoisie understood this perfectly, but
we have not yet realised it. Let’s get down to learning.
We have already said here that we must hold power firmly
in our hands, but we haven’t yet learned how to manage;
we have to do a great deal to learn the business of management.

My third argument: competence. How can you show that it is possible to manage without being competent, to
manage without full knowledge, without knowledge of the
science of management? It is ridiculous! What sort of system is it? Why all the words that you have spoken here?
In order to manage, one must know the job and be a splendid administrator. Where does it say that for this reason
we need collective management? The fact that we have few experienced workers proves the contrary; what follows
is that collective management is intolerable. In that case,
adopt theses in which you say: keep a commissar or a commission, etc., attached to every expert. So long as we lack
the principle of competence and respect for the expert,
we remain at the primitive level. In that way we shall never create any industrial front. Unity of will! Without
this there is no dictatorship at the front, but dawdling.
You know it is a typical result, that there is friction there,
not management. Appoint an expert with experience; but we know by now that when we combine a competent person
with an incompetent one in a collegium, we create a multitude of wills and complete confusion. That is my fifth
argument. [1]

Everyone is writing resolutions about each person being answerable for his own job. But where is this being
carried out? Let them say: where did we divide responsibility according to that principle? We have been learning for two
years how to run the state, and still write: “the basic
principle.” This is ridiculous, this is on the second-form level;
but let’s have your experience, and we shall see from it to what extent you are competent people and where the
lack of competence tells. They say that under the artillery department the works managements were poor. That
is the example Lozovsky and Tomsky have quoted. When was this? Comrade Lozovsky, we have to reckon with the
condition of the Soviet Republic. What did we begin with,
who was at the head? Krylenko, Dybenko and Podvoisky, before we had Trotsky—and that was our collective
management. And if Kolchak and Denikin lambasted us, why
did they? Because while we had seven men in charge, we had to learn for two years, and after that we went over
to one-man management. Do we have to reckon with this, or not? Of course, it’s only a trifle, you’ve just taken the
two years’ history of the Republic and crossed it out. Why?
You don’t like it, do you? Do it all over again. And what
about Rykov: he was appointed Extraordinary

Plenipotentiary for Soviet Defence, and Rykov began dragging things
out of the mess by himself. You don’t know your own history, the history of your Supreme Economic Council and
of the Soviet Republic. History tells us that from collective
management by the workers we went over to management by
tens, we broke our necks, and Kolchak lambasted us, and
it was a good thing he did, because we learned something
thereby, we learned that collective management must be held in a tight grip. We have described four systems:
accept these four systems, [4] accept the C.C. theses. Then
you will be taking your stand on the groundwork of the two
years’ history of the Soviet power, of its experience, and
not on arguments which are primitive, which will muddle
you ... [2] for an adult worker, who is not afraid of any
expert and says, “if you put experienced people in charge,
our machinery will run”. That is how an adult workman reasons, while the timid ones say: “I’m afraid that I shall
be left without an expert.” That is a sign of weakness.
Stop whining, and be your age.