Terrorism and Communism

If even under capitalism economic interest is inevitably combined with legal compulsion, behind which stands the material force of the State, in the Soviet State – that is, the State of transition to Socialism – we can draw no watertight compartment at all between economic and legal compulsion. All our most important industries are in the hands of the State. When we say to the turner Ivanov, “You are bound at once to work at the Sormovo factory; if you refuse, you will not receive your ration,” what are we to call it? Economic pressure or legal compulsion? He cannot go to another factory, for all factories are in the hands of the State, which will not allow such a change. Consequently, economic pressure melts here into the pressure of State compulsion. Abramovich apparently would like us, as regulators of the distribution of labor power, to make use only of such means as the raising of wages, bonuses, etc., in order to attract the necessary workers to our most important factories. Apparently that comprises all his thoughts on the subject. But if we put the question in this way, every serious worker in the trade union movement will understand it is pure utopia. We cannot hope for a free influx of labor power from the market, for to achieve this the State would need to have in its hands sufficiently extensive “reserves of maneuver,” in the form of food, housing, and transport, i.e., precisely those conditions which we have yet only to create. Without systematically organized transference of labor power on a mass scale, according to the demands of the economic organization, we shall achieve nothing. Here the moment of compulsion arises before us in all its force of economic necessity. I read you a telegram from Ekaterinburg dealing with the work of the First Labor Army. It says that there have passed through the Ural Committee for Labor Service over 4,000 workers. Whence have they appeared? Mainly from the former Third Army. They were not allowed to go to their homes, but were sent where they were required. From the army they were handed over to the Committee for Labor Service, which distributed them according to their categories and sent them to the factories. This, from the Liberal point of view, is