The Manpower Crisis and How to Solve It

Leon Trotsky, The Manpower Crisis and How to Solve It. Theses adopted by the Party Central Committee. January 22, 1920

Adopted by the Party Central Committee in early 1920, these theses show Trotsky treating postwar economic collapse as a crisis of labor power. He rejected voluntary “free labor” and urged a system of registration, redistribution, and discipline: compulsory labor obligations, labor books assigning each citizen’s place, and administrative coercion when persuasion failed. The text outlined the institutions to enforce this program, borrowing from military practice. Its most radical proposals extended the Red Army model into civilian life, including “labor armies” formed from demobilized units and the “freezing” of workers at key enterprises.

Original Source: Sochineniia (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1920-), Vol. XV, pp. 107-14.

  1. The sharp economic decline of the country, resulting from the imperialist war and the counterrevolutionary attacks on the Soviet state, finds its direct expression in excessive shortages or disruption of such basic factors of production as technical equipment, raw materials, and, first and foremost, fuel and labor power.

  2. There is no reason to expect any immediate importation from abroad of any quantity of machinery, of coal, or of skilled workmen, and this is not only because of the blockade, about which no predictions can be made at the moment, but also because of the extreme economic exhaustion of Western Europe.

  3. Therefore, the principal lever capable of improving the national economy is the labor force, its organization, distribution, and rational utilization.

A. The Industrial Proletariat

  1. The industrial proletariat, in whom political power is principally concentrated, must from now on devote its entire attention and every effort to the organization of the economy and take part directly in the process of production.

  2. For this purpose it is necessary to reassemble the disrupted ranks of skilled and trained workers by recalling them gradually from the army, the food detachments,12 Soviet institutions behind the front, Soviet farms and communes, and, first and foremost, from the ranks of speculators.

  3. The release and concentration of professionally trained workers must be attained by the combined operation of measures designed to improve their food-supply conditions and their general standard of life; by a more accurate registration of these workers and greater trade-union influence upon them; and, finally, if necessary, by measures of administrative coercion.

  4. The implementation of these measures, as well as the entire effort of industrial development, is conditioned upon the organizational consolidation of the trade unions, by placing at their disposal an adequate staff of responsible and reliable workers, capable of enforcing principles of iron discipline.

  5. Simultaneously, extensive measures must be taken for the professional training of the younger generation, fourteen years of age and over, in order to secure the necessary reproduction of skilled workers. With this in view, the Commissariat of People's Education must create an organization, powerful and authoritative, in which representatives of all the institutions concerned must take part.

B. Unskilled Labor Force

  1. Under present economic conditions the employment in industry and in transport of unskilled workers, i.e., the peasants, is made necessary to a degree far greater than ever before.

a. The country's mechanical equipment is worn out and can

be replaced only by human labor;

b. The country's fuel position is critical and must depend on such labor-consuming work as wood procurement;

c. Cultivation of Soviet farms will require large numbers of peasants;

d. Clearing streets and roads of snow, loading and unloading freight, construction, etc., will require large numbers of unskilled labor.

  1. The present conditions of the country are of such a character that industry, transport and economic life generally cannot obtain the necessary labor force without the introduction of compulsory labor.

C. Universal Compulsory Labor

  1. Socialist construction repudiates the liberal capitalistic principle of "freedom of labor," a principle which in bourgeois society signifies freedom for some to exploit others, and freedom for others to be exploited. Insofar as the fundamental problem of social organization is to overcome the external physical conditions hostile to man, socialism demands that all members of society should be compelled to take part in the production of material values; at the same time socialism aims at the establishment of the most rational, i.e., the most economical and generally the most attractive form of socialization of labor. The principle of universal compulsory labor, firmly established in the Fundamental Laws of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, must now be applied on a wide and all-embracing scale.

  2. The full realization of the principle of universal compulsory labor, within the framework of a general economic plan, can only be accomplished by perfecting the entire administrative and economic apparatus of the state, and by the universal introduction of labor books, showing the exact place of each citizen, male or female, in the economic system, as well as in the national defense system of the Soviet Republic.

  3. The transition to the general application of compulsory labor must take place at once, in forms which may be lacking in precision but which are capable of securing the necessary labor force for the socialized economy.

  4. With this in view it is necessary to determine the number of workers who are needed at present and who, depending on the amount of available foodstuffs and machinery, can be put to work immediately to solve the most critical problems of the present time (1920).

  5. At the same time a special decree must be issued to specify which economic needs and requirements should be classified as local and regional, to be taken care of by means of local compulsory labor.

  6. The organization of compulsory labor, which is to cover both sexes, must take into consideration the peculiarities of the various regions; and the distribution of manpower between national and local compulsory work should, as far as possible, be carried out uniformly throughout the country, in order to lessen the harm to the peasant economy.

  7. In the immediate future compulsory labor is to be applied mainly to those age groups least affected by mobilizations for military service. As far as possible, women should be brought into this work.

  8. Local machinery for carrying out compulsory labor of both national and regional importance should be built on a combination of local departments of the Commissariat of War, the Administrative Department of the Executive Committee, and the Labor Section [of the Commissariat of Labor].

  9. This local organization (Committee for Universal Compulsory Labor), which will be immediately subordinate to the Executive Committee, will receive orders for requisite labor, both from the center for carrying out national plans, and from the local Executive Committee for the economic needs of its district. The task of the Committee for Universal Compulsory Labor is to coordinate local demands with requirements arising from the center, which, as a rule, should be given first priority.

  10. At the center, a committee for compulsory labor is to be established, composed of representatives of the Registration and Distribution Section of the Commissariat of Labor, of the Commissariat of the Interior, of the Mobilization Department of the Ail-Russian General Staff, and the Central Statistical Administration. For the immediate future the Central Committee [for Compulsory Labor] will be of an interdepartmental nature and will be attached to the Council of Defense. All state institutions, both central and local, are under obligation to carry out the orders of the Central Committee that relate to questions of compulsory labor.

D. Militarization of the Economy

  1. In a society which is in a transitional phase of its development and which is burdened with the inheritance of a distressing past, the passage to a planned organization of socialized labor is inconceivable without compulsory measures being applied to the parasitic elements, to the backward sections of the peasantry, and even to the working class itself. The weapon of state compulsion is military force. Therefore the militarization of labor, in one form or another, is inescapable in a transitional economy based on universal compulsory labor. The element of compulsion is bound to be more sparingly applied in proportion as the socialist economic system becomes more developed, as the conditions of work become more favorable, and as the education level of the growing generation improves.

  2. The militarization of the economy, in the given conditions of Soviet Russia, is to be understood in the sense that problems affecting the economy (labor intensity, careful handling of machinery and tools, conscientious use of materials, etc.) must be treated by workers and state institutions as if they were problems of military combat. The entire urban and rural population must recognize that the prevention of labor desertion, self-seeking, unpunctuality in work, carelessness, laziness, and abuse are problems of life and death to the country as a whole. These shortcomings must be brought to an end as rapidly as possible, even if the most severe measures are necessary.

  3. To this end a propaganda campaign must be undertaken to create a wide popular interest in the economic life of the country. The leading roles in this work should be assigned to the Party and the trade unions.

  4. Formal militarization of individual enterprises or whole branches of industry, which are especially important at the present time, or are particularly in danger of disruption, will in each case take place by special decree of the Council of Defense and will have as its primary aim the temporary "freezing" of workers to their enterprise, as well as the introduction within the enterprise of strict discipline, giving the administration wide disciplinary powers, if the restoration of the enterprise can be achieved in no other way.

  5. The summoning of large masses of unskilled and unorganized workers to perform compulsory labor in such fields as food and fuel gathering, construction, loading and unloading, etc., requires, especially at the outset, a form of organization which approaches the military type.

  6. The essentials of labor organization and the necessary discipline, both internal and external, required for the hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, mobilized for compulsory labor, can be supplied only by leading, class-conscious, determined, and energetic workers, especially those who have gone through the school of war and are accustomed to handling masses and leading them under the most difficult conditions.

  7. Basically, the establishment of compulsory labor involves the same problems of organization and of principle as underlie the establishment of the Soviet State as a whole and the creation of the Red Army: to make sure that the less class-conscious and more backward peasant masses are placed under natural leaders and organizers from among the most class-conscious proletarians, who are in most cases professionally trained. Inasmuch as the army represents the most important experiment in a mass Soviet organization of this type, its methods and procedures, (with all necessary modifications) must be carried over into the field of labor organization by utilizing the experience of those workers who will be transferred from military to economic work.

E. Labor Armies

  1. Military units, including large army formations, which are being released from combat duty, should be given labor assignments. This will serve as a transition stage in the introduction of universal compulsory labor, and is the reason for the conversion of the Third Army into the First Labor Army, an experiment which will be extended to other armies.

  2. The essential conditions in the employment of army units and whole armies for labor are the following:

a. The tasks imposed on the labor armies must be strictly limited to the simplest types of work, such as gathering and accumulating food supplies.

b. Organizational relationships must be established, with the relevant economic organs, to prevent the disruption of the economic plans of these organs and the disorganization of the centralized economic machinery.

c. Close contact and comradely relations must be established with the workers of the region, and, if possible, food rations of the two groups should be equalized.

d. An ideological struggle must be carried out against the prejudices of the petty intelligentsia and trade unionists who regard the militarization of labor and the employment of military units in the production process as a return to the Arakcheev regime. It is necessary to explain the inevitability and the progressive character of military compulsion aimed at economic improvement on the basis of universal compulsory labor, and to clarify the progressive character of the gradual rapprochement between the organization of labor and the organization of defense in a socialist society.

F. Food Supply

  1. In framing economic plans and programs, the first and most important problem in mobilizing and employing and establishing the Soviet regime in newly occupied regions is the concentration in the hands of the Soviet State of several hundred million pounds of bread, meat, fish, fats, i.e., of a food reserve sufficient to meet the needs of the industrial proletariat, of Soviet employees, and of the peasants mobilized for compulsory labor in the current year. The creation of food-supply bases in the most important industrial regions will serve as a firm guarantee for the realization not only of the current economic plan, but also of the whole process of socialist construction.

Source: James Bunyan, ed., The Origins of Forced Labor in the Soviet State, 1917-1921 (Stanford: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), pp. 95-101.

1921

The Antonov Rebellion Comintern Confiscating Church Gold Death of a Poet Electrification Campaign Famine of 1921-22 Homeless Children Kronstadt Uprising Militarization of Labor The Muslim East The New Economic Policy ROSTA Windows Close Tenth Party Congress Trade Pacts with the West Transcaucasia Workers’ Opposition