Having witnessed many an attempt mounted by various political parties, “businessmen” or “erudite personages” to resolve the labor issue: and having scrupulously examined the idea and the results of state take-over (nationalization) of the means and instruments of worker production (the mines, communications, workshops, factories, etc.) as well as of the workers’ organizations themselves (trades unions, factory and workshop committees, cooperatives, etc.), we can announce with certainty that there is one genuine and fair solution to the workers’ question: the transfer of all the means, instruments and materials of labor, production and transportation, not to the complete disposal of the State — this new boss and exploiter which uses wage-slavery and is no less oppressive of the workers than private entrepreneurs — but to the workers’ organizations and unions in natural and free association with one another and in liaison with peasant organizations through the good offices of their economic soviets.
It is our conviction that only such a resolution of the labor issue will release the energy and activity of the worker masses, give a fresh boost to repair of the devastated industrial economy, render exploitation and oppression impossible, and put paid to speculation and swindling and bring to an end the artificial escalation of prices and runaway rise in the cost of living.
We have come to the belief that only the workers, with the help of their free organizations and unions, will be able to secute their release from the yoke of State and Capital (private and state alike), take over the working of mineral and coal reserves, get workshops and factories back into operation, establish equitable exchanges of products between different regions, towns and countryside, get rail
Traffic moving again, in short, breathe life back into the moribund shell of our economic organization.
No State authorities, no party, no system for direction and supervision of workers, commissars, officials, political activists and others can, we are thoroughly persuaded, meet the target set. The organization of work, production, transportation, distribution and exchange should be the task of free workers’ unions, abetted by experienced and competent individuals, in a context of free labor in factories and workshops.
In order to ensure that such organization is active and its development fruitful it is vital that, above all else, genuine worker congresses and conferences be prepared on free foundations, without pressures or dictatorship from parties or individuals. Only those free congresses and conferences will have the capacity to arrive at an effective resolution of all the urgent issues of worker life and of worker construction along necessary and purposeful lines.
Needless to say, just resolution of and further progress on the worker question are largely dependent on an equitable solution to the supply issue and the division of the land, as well as the financial question which is also closely bound up with the worker question.
The housing issue is part and parcel of this and so we are offering only the essence of our position on this matter: one of the primary tasks of the free worker organizations is to see to equitable allocation of available accommodation and thereby pursue the construction of requisite housing and this is achievable only in collaboration with those in charge of housing management (the house and district committee).
World History
