Next Tasks for Worker Correspondents

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A speech to the All-Union Conference of Worker Correspondents of Rabochaya Gazeta

We must struggle to raise the cultural level We must struggle to raise the cultural level, beginning with A in a literal sense, that is, with ABC. On Monday in Moscow the congress of the Down With Illiteracy Society opens. We put forward that slogan quite a while ago, yet there is still plenty of illiteracy to be found, illiteracy in the most straightforward sense of the word, and we must not forget this; and must not forget that there are ten million persons in our country who cannot read Rabochaya Gazeta. We are going to enlarge Rabochaya Gazeta, and that will be a good thing, but even in its present small size it is beyond the mental reach of ten million grown men and women. And yet, Comrades, we want to build socialism. If socialism is to be built in an illiterate country, a heroic effort will be needed from the advanced people, in order to raise the dark backward masses, first of all and at the very least to the level of ordinary literacy.

The first task-to abolish illiteracy

As I was leaving to come here, I glanced through the latest mail, which had been placed on my desk. It included some emigre White Guard newspapers. In these were accounts of the New Year celebrations. At one party, some emigres belonging to the Nationalists, or the Cadets, proposed a toast to the letter yat. ³⁵ There are a lot of young people here, and I am afraid that many of you will not know what sort of personage is meant. The letter yat, together with the hard sign, fita, and izhitsa, were the estate of nobles in our alphabet, suppressed by the October Revolution. They were unnecessary letters, superfluous and nobly parasitic. They were abolished. And in Paris one of the leaders of the emigres (I have forgotten his name) proposes a New Year's toast to the letter yat Well, there you are, it is a symbolic toast. We on our part can, at the New Year -and today, if I'm not mistaken, is the old Russian New Year's Day-declare that we hand over yat, the hard sign, fita, and izhitsa to the emigrants, whole and entire. In the Ukraine, I believe, they call this giving somebody "the hole from the doughnut." But now all the remaining letters, which are really needed- not the noble parasitic ones, but the functional proletarian ones that we need in our work — in the year ahead of us, in the next two or three years, must at all costs be made the possession of everybody in our country. We should not have such a disgraceful situation as grown-up peasant men and women, working men and women, not knowing how to read and write. And it is the worker correspondent who must be the real moving force in this work. The abolition of illiteracy is our first task in the struggle for culture.

Women in the fight against drunkenness

But, Comrades, in this struggle we have another fierce adversary whom we must overcome if we are to be able to advance. I speak of alcoholism, of drunkenness. Various forms and methods of struggle against drunkenness have been tried and will be tried in the future. But the basic method is to bring about the cultural progress of the masses themselves, to develop in them a stubborn fighting vanguard in the battle against alcoholism.

in this connection, the first place must be taken by the women, and of course the worker correspondents must make their contribution to this movement The period that lies ahead must be a period of heroic struggle against alcoholism. The working masses still live very poorly, but nevertheless not so poorly as in past years. We can observe a weariness of the nerves, both from the revolutionary upsurge of the recent past and from the present revolutionary lull, which demands stubborn everyday work. People's nerves are badly worn. There is a great demand for different sorts of stimulants or, conversely, sedatives. The demand for alcohol, for intoxicating, artificially simulating drink, is very strong among the workers in the towns.

And, Comrades, the worker correspondent who sets a bad example in this matter is not worthy of the name of worker correspondent. A worker correspondent must be a fighter against drunkenness. This is no laughing matter. History will subject us to a hard test in this matter. If we do not give a rebuff to drunkenness, starting in the towns, then we shall drink away socialism and the October Revolution.

This evil must be exposed and scourged. Together with cultural progress in general, we need to enlist for the fight against drunkenness particular people, the youngest, most militant, and best elements of the working class, in the first place working women, for nothing bears so hard upon the working woman, and especially upon the working mother, as drunkenness. Nothing threatens the physical and moral health of the rising generation of the working class as drunkenness does. Without a fight against it there can be no real social service by worker correspondents.

The worker correspondent in the fight for quality in production

The third question is the question of quality in production. I have a lot of notes on this subject

What do we mean by quality. in production? Quality in production means that what you do, you do well, remembering that you are doing it for the community, for society as a whole. So far as the reports sent in by worker correspondents are concerned, quality means conscientiousness. Don't write from hearsay, and don't exaggerate. Again, the newspaper itself will exaggerate; such errors do occur. Fight against this kind of thing!

In the matter of quality of production, of course, mistakes are made in both directions. Sitting here is a correspondent who caught me out in a mistake regarding the cars produced at the AMO factory. The fact is that I was led into error and supposed that things were worse at that factory than proved to be actually the case.

More often, though, the mistakes made are of the other sort, mistakes of bragging, of boasting. Don't you see, we have made the October Revolution, and we will show up the Germans, the French, and the Americans -with cars and machines, too, with textile goods, with anything you care to mention. People who talk like this forget that our cultural level is low, that we even have illiteracy, that drunkenness still plays a big and cruel role in our people's life, and that at present we produce worse than capitalist economies produce.

Every article is the product not only of living human labor, but also of accumulated dead labor, i.e., of machinery and equipment. At present we are weak in the latter, and we have to put forth all our efforts to catch up with the capitalist countries economically. We must never forget that we are building socialism amidst capitalist encirclement.

How is one social system distinguished from another? How must socialism be distinguished from capitalism? Socialism must provide more products per unit of labor than capitalism provides. H we don't achieve that, then we ourselves will have to admit that socialism is of no use to us.

Socialism, after all, does not consist only in the abolition of the exploiters. If people lived more prosperously under the exploiters, more abundantly and freely, and were materially more secure; If they lived better with exploiters than without, then they would say "Bring back the exploiters."

This means that our task is, without exploiters, to create a system of material prosperity, general security, and all-round cultured existence, without which socialism is not socialism. The October Revolution merely laid down the state foundations for socialism; only now are we laying the first bricks. And when we ask ourselves whether we are at this moment producing more goods per unit of labor-power than are produced in other countries, the answer can only be: at present, no, we are producing considerably less — in comparison with America, monstrously less. This question will decide everything. They tried to crush us with their armies, but they failed; they used blockade and famine, but that failed, too. And now we have gone out onto the world market — and this, you know, means that the world market is also creeping up on us. We import foreign goods and export our own. Thereby has begun direct and immediate competition between our fabrics and British ones, our machines and American ones, our grain and North America's.

The question of quality is a question of competition

What does competition mean? in the language of the capitalist market it means comparison between the quality of our work and the work of the capitalist countries. This question is a perfectly clear and simple one. If we stitch one pair of shoes in two days, for example, and these shoes wear out in one year, while the Americans, thanks to better technology, correct division of labor, and greater specialization, stitch a pair in half a day, and these shoes last the same length of time, it means that in this branch of industry the Americans are four times as powerful as we are.

Under the capitalist system, every society is divided into different classes with a very great variety of incomes, and the goods produced reflect this structure of society. As we have seen, the old alphabet included some aristocratic letters: well, there are aristocrats among goods, too, which are adapted to privileged tastes. We, of course, need in the next few years to produce mass goods, democratic goods. This does not mean crudely and badly made goods that cannot satisfy human tastes; but that the basic quality of goods for us is still their durability. And we must now learn to compare our economy with Europe's, not just by superficial appearances or by hearsay. Nor is it enough now to make comparisons with prewar levels. The prewar economy of czarism was backward and barbarous - that was why the czarist government was routed in the war: it relied upon a backward economy. We need to compare our economy with that of the countries of Europe, so as first to catch up with them and then to surpass them.

I repeat, we have to make comparisons not on the basis of superficial appearances or of hearsay. People say that we work "almost" as the Germans, the French, and others work. I am ready to declare a holy war on that word "almost" "Almost" means nothing. We need exact measurement. This is very simple We need to take the cost of production; we need to establish, for example, what it takes to make a pair of shoes, to establish how long the goods last and how long they take to produce, and then we will have what we need to make comparisons with other countries. In scientific terminology, this is called finding the comparative coefficient.

I have often quoted the example of the electric light bulb. It reveals the heart of the problem more clearly than anything else. It is easy to measure a light bulb, to estimate what it costs, how many hours it will burn compared with a foreign-made one, how much electric power it uses and how much light it gives. If we work all that out we get a perfectly precise comparative coefficient. If, say, it proves that one of our bulbs is only half as good as a foreign one, then the coefficient will be 1:2. The social utility of our bulb will be equal to one- half If we take such comparative coefficients for shoes, for machines, for fabrics, for nails, for matches, etc., and compare them together, we get what is called in statistics the average weighted coefficient, which will show how far behind we are. It may turn out that our weighted coefficient in relation to America is 1:10, i. e., that we work only one tenth as well as America. I give this figure only for illustration, but I think that it is not far from the truth, for in the U. S. they have more than forty times as much mechanical labor- power as we have.

In our country we have less than one unit of mechanical labor-power per head of population, while over there they have more than forty. That is why the national income in America is eight to ten times as big as ours. There the population numbers 115 million, whereas we have 130 million, and yet there they turn out in a year eight to ten times as many products of agriculture, stock breeding, and industry. These basic figures must hit the worker correspondent in the eye, but they ought not to call forth any feeling of dejection. There are no grounds for that The U. S. arose and grew up on virgin territories under the capitalist system; we have a people liberated by the revolution, living in a country of unlimited natural resources, and working for themselves and only for themselves.

No communist conceit and no worker correspondent conceit

Thus, our opportunities are very much greater. But, while recognizing our opportunities, we ought at the same time to see clearly the degree to which we are backward: bragging, conceit, communist conceit, worker correspondent conceit, can have no place here at al. We must clearly and truthfully evaluate what exists.

Recently, I had the following experience. I won't mention any names, lest once again I get caught out by some worker correspondent-though this time I'm well shod. It concerns cars and rubber. We held a run to test out cars and tires. The report on the results of this test was sent to a newspaper. In this report it was stated that our rubber had proved to be definitely worse than foreign rubber, and in some cases was quite useless. And now I take up the newspaper—I won't name it, but, out of respect for our visitors, I will say that it is not Rabochaya Gazeta I don't make any promises. Perhaps later on I will name this paper; for the moment I am only making a preliminary reconnaissance. [Laughter] What was published in this paper? They said that our rubber was not in any way inferior to foreign rubber, and in some cases was even superior to it.

in my opinion, Comrades, this is downright shamelessness. Of course, we live in a socialist state. Corporal punishment is forbidden here; corporal punishment is a disgraceful thing; but if we were to allow corporal punishment for anything at all, then it should be for stunts of this sort. Because to deceive yourself, to deceive public opinion, means to ruin the cause of socialism. Naturally, people will offer thousands of arguments in justification for such things. They will say that we mustn’t let the outside world know of our shortcomings, that this matter has a military significance, and so forth. Rubbish! You can't hide rubber. There are plenty of foreigners here. And a foreigner will take our rubber, weigh it in a laboratory and evaluate it, both mechanically and technically, from all angles, with complete accuracy. Whom, then, are we deceiving? We are deceiving our own working men who read this paper, we are deceiving our own working women, we are deceiving the very managers in charge of our industries. We are deceiving the peasants, the army. We are deceiving ourselves. And by so doing we are ruining the cause of socialist construction. We must burn out our mendacity with a red-hot iron, and our propensity to boast, which takes the place of real, stubborn, relentless struggle to raise the level of our technology and our culture. This also forms part of the task of the worker correspondent in the fight for quality in production.

Weak sides of our newspapers

Comrades, I want to add only a few more words regarding a section which is fearfully weak in all our publications, all our newspapers. I refer, Comrades, to the section dealing with the world labor movement This section must at all costs be strengthened and enlarged. H we were to examine not merely the ordinary worker, not only the ordinary party member, but even the worker correspondent, to sec if he knows the basic facts about the life of the German or the French Communist Party, or about the British trade unions, I am convinced that the outcome of such an examination would be poor. And this is not the fault of the worker correspondent; it is our fault, the fault of the newspapermen – I, too, belong in that shop to some extent and take part of the blame upon myself. If you take the communist press of the prewar, pre-revolutionary period – In those days it was the Social Democratic press – you find that incomparably more space was allotted to this section. And the advanced elements of the working class were not only educated on their own internal political experience, but, as they climbed upward, they penetrated into the life of the world working class. Things are a lot worse here in this respect today. Of course, there are vast objective causes operating: we have great tasks on hand, we have begun to build a new economy, to raise millions of people to a higher level. Our forces, our attention, are absorbed in internal construction, but all the same it is now not 1918, not 1919, not even 1920, but 1926. The eight-hour working day is in our country the fundamental precondition for the mental culture of the working class. One can study; there is spare time available for self-education. And, of course, we shall not surrender the eight-hour day on any account. On the contrary, we have to raise the level of technology, through increasing the productivity of labor, so as to be able over the years to pass from the eight-hour to the seven-hour day, then to the six-hour day, the five-hour day, and so on. But for the present we have the eight-hour working day, as one of the most precious conquests of the October Revolution and as the most important precondition for raising the level of our working class culturally and with respect to knowledge of international politics.

More attention to the world working class movement

We are too dependent on the world revolution, on the European revolution, to dare to turn our backs upon it. What we need is for concrete facts about the life of the working class to penetrate through the newspapers into the minds of our advanced people. They should find news about familiar figures in the newspapers; they should follow the activity, say, of the parliamentary group in the German Communist Party, the changes in policy, the radicalization, the turn to the left of the British trade unions. The advanced workers, and through them the wider mass of the workers, should understand the ebbs and flows in the European and world revolutionary movement.

We cannot restrict ourselves in relation to the world revolution to mere waiting and nothing else. I think that those of you who engage in local agitational work will have noticed more than once that when one speaks to the masses about the European revolution, they yawn, they don't feel it, they don't sense its internal development; in short, the European revolution has been turned for them into an empty phrase. And yet it is not at all just a phrase: the European revolution is growing, but it has its ebbs and flows, its mistakes and its successes. in the course of this experience the leading strata of the working class are being prepared and formed.

This process must be followed, and it is the workers' press that must follow it first and foremost. Worker correspondents must see to it that German and French worker correspondents occupy an appropriate place in our press, so that there may be a real international exchange of news between worker correspondents on the basic questions of our economic construction and of the world proletarian revolution. No onesidedness, no narrowness or craft exclusiveness can be allowed for worker correspondents on even a single question, beginning with frozen meat and flared skirts and ending with the European revolution. There, Comrades, in that little space between flared skirts and frozen meat and the world revolution — is defined the range of interests of worker correspondents. And only that worker correspondent is worthy of the name who strives to embrace all of these various interests and the entire complexity of the struggle and of culture throughout the world. [Stormy applause]