The Mensheviks attacked not only the militarization of labor, but general labor service also. They reject these methods as “compulsory.” They preach that general labor service means a low productivity of labor, while militarization means senseless scattering of labor-power.
“Compulsory labor always is unproductive labor,” – such is the exact phrase in the Menshevik resolution. This affirmation brings us right up to the very essence of the question. For, as we see, the question is not at all whether it is wise or unwise to proclaim this or that factory militarized, or whether it is helpful or otherwise to give the military revolutionary tribunal powers to punish corrupt workers who steal materials and instruments, so precious to us, or who sabotage their work. No, the Mensheviks have gone much further into the question. Affirming that compulsory labor is always unproductive, they thereby attempt to cut the ground from under the feet of our economic reconstruction in the present transitional epoch. For it is beyond question that to step from bourgeois anarchy to Socialist economy without a revolutionary dictatorship, and without compulsory forms of economic organization, is impossible.
In the first paragraph of the Menshevik resolution we are told that we are living in the period of transition from the capitalist method of production to the Socialist. What does this mean? And, first of