On the 100th anniversary of the first communist subbotnik
On April 12, 1919, the first communist work day was held at the depot Moscow-Sorting Moscow-Kazan railway.
From the article V.I. Lenin's "Great Initiative" (On the heroism of the workers in the rear. Regarding the communist subbotnik):
“The press reports many examples of the heroism of the Red Army. Workers and peasants in the struggle against Kolchak, Denikin and other troops of landowners and capitalists often show wonders of courage and endurance, defending the gains of the socialist revolution. Slowing down guerrilla fights, overcoming fatigue and licentiousness, is slow and difficult, but it goes forward no matter what. The heroism of the working masses, consciously sacrificing the cause of the victory of socialism, is what is the basis of the new, comradely discipline in the Red Army, its revival, strengthening, growth.
The heroism of the workers in the rear deserves no less attention. The device by the workers, on their own initiative, of communist subbotniks has a tremendous significance in this respect. Apparently, this is just the beginning, but this is the beginning of an unusually great importance. This is the beginning of a coup, more difficult, more substantial, more fundamental, more decisive than the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, because it is a victory over their own inertia, licentiousness, petty-bourgeois egoism over these habits that cursed capitalism left to the workers and peasants. When this victory is consolidated, then and only then a new social discipline, socialist discipline will be created, then and only then a return back to capitalism will become impossible, communism will become truly invincible. ”
"Less political chatter, more attention to the simplest, but alive, life taken, life-tested facts of communist construction - this slogan must be tirelessly repeated to all of us, our writers, agitators, propagandists, organizers, and so on."
“The dictatorship of the proletariat,” as I had to point out more than once, by the way, and in a speech on March 12 at a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, “is not only violence against the exploiters and not even mainly violence. The economic basis of this revolutionary violence, the key to its vitality and success, is that the proletariat represents and implements a higher type of social organization of labor compared with capitalism. This is the essence. This is the source of strength and the guarantee of the inevitable complete victory of communism.
The capitalist organization of social labor rested on the discipline of hunger, and the huge mass of workers, despite all the progress of bourgeois culture and bourgeois democracy, remained in the most advanced, civilized and democratic republics of a dark and crammed mass of hired slaves or crushed peasants who were robbed and handled by a handful capitalists. The communist organization of social labor, to which socialism is the first step, keeps going and the farther away, the more will it stand on the free and conscious discipline of the working people themselves, who have overthrown the yoke of both landlords and capitalists.
This new discipline does not fall from the sky and is not born from good wishes, it grows out of the material conditions of large-scale capitalist production, only from them. Without them, it is impossible. And the carrier of these material conditions or their guide is a certain historical class, created, organized, cohesive, trained, enlightened, hardened by large capitalism. This class is the proletariat.
The dictatorship of the proletariat, if we translate this Latin, scientific, historical and philosophical expression into a simpler language, means this:
only a certain class, namely, urban and, in general, factory, industrial workers, are able to lead the entire mass of workers and exploited in the struggle to overthrow the yoke of capital, during the very overthrow, in the struggle to retain and strengthen victory, to create a new, socialist, social system, in the whole struggle for the complete destruction of classes. "
“It is clear that for the complete destruction of classes it is necessary not only to overthrow the exploiters, landlords and capitalists, not only to abolish their property, it is also necessary to abolish all private ownership of the means of production, it is necessary to destroy both the distinction between town and country and people of mental labor. This is a very long business. To make it, we need a huge step forward in the development of the productive forces, we must overcome the resistance (often passive, which is especially hard and especially difficult to overcome) of the numerous remnants of small-scale production, it is necessary to overcome the enormous power of habit and inertia associated with these remnants. ”
“In order to win, to create and consolidate socialism, the proletariat must solve a twofold or twofold task: first, to entice the whole mass of working and exploited people with their selfless heroism of the revolutionary struggle against capital
bake it, organize it, lead it to overthrow the bourgeoisie and completely suppress all resistance on its part; secondly, to lead the whole mass of workers and exploited, as well as all the petty-bourgeois strata, on the path of new economic construction, on the path of creating a new social connection, new labor discipline, new labor organization, connecting the last word of science and capitalist technology with mass unification conscious workers, creating large socialist production ".
““ Communist subbotniks ”precisely because of their enormous historical significance, because they show us the conscious and voluntary initiative of workers in the development of labor productivity, in the transition to a new labor discipline, in the creative work of socialist conditions of economy and life.”
“And these hungry workers, surrounded by malicious counter-revolutionary agitation of the bourgeoisie, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, organize“ communist subbotniks ”, work overtime without any pay and achieve a tremendous increase in labor productivity, despite the fact that they are tired, exhausted, undernourished. Is this not the greatest heroism? Is this not the beginning of a turn of world historical significance? ”
