127. What is Labour Protection?
The working class fights to secure a communist system, because this system will deliver the workers from exploitation, and because communism will make it possible to develop productive forces to such an extent that it will no longer be necessary for people to devote the whole of their lives to the production of the necessaries of life. All the conquests, therefore, made by the working class on its way towards communism are in their essence directly or indirectly equivalent to labour protection; they all promote an improvement in the position of the workers. Let us consider, for example, the political freedom of the working class in the Soviet Republic, and let us consider the position of the workers as ruling class. It is plain that this new political status implies a step forward in the path of labour protection. The same thing may be said of all the conquests of the working class, all without exception. But we must distinguish from labour protection in this general sense, certain more special senses of the term. In the latter case we are not thinking of the position of the working class in general, but of the position of the working class in the factory, in the workshop, in the mine; in other words, we are thinking of the conditions which affect the workers in the actual labour process. Labour in factories and workshops, in the midst of machinery, and often in a contaminated atmosphere, is very dangerous. The danger is increased by the undue length of the working day, whereby the workers are fatigued, whereby their energy is exhausted, so that their attention is apt to wander and the liability to accident is greatly increased. An unduly long working day entails, of itself, extreme exhaustion of the organism.