The reason why the Bolshevist dictators are now conscripting Russian labor seems evident. These pick-pockets have finished exploiting the Russian aristocracy and "bourgeoisie," squeezed them dry, and squandered what they stole. The only game left to them now is to exploit labor to the limit and appropriate the profits.
Two other features of this thimble-rigging arrangement complete the exposure of the most inhuman scheme to exploit labor which the world has seen for centuries. One of these shows us, in the fourteenth place, that the rascals Lenine and Trotzky, are actually inviting "foreign capital" to form a partnership with them in their exploitation of Russian labor, under promise to turn over to this outside "capital" a good share of the "profits" to be wrung by labor conscription out of the sweat of Russia's brow.
The invitation to "foreign capital" to join hands with the Bolshevist dictatorship, under promise of good profits and guarantees of security was made by both Lenine and Trotzky through interviews granted to Lincoln Eyre. Through courtesy of the "New York World" we have quoted the propositions of these "friends" of Russian labor near the close of Chapter XV of this book, as the reader doubtless remembers, and we merely recall the facts here to put them in line with the other features of Bolshevist labor oppression which we have just been considering. Who could have imagined that within a little more than two years after beginning their barbarous Socialist experiment with Russian industries the brazen dictatorship would be urging "foreign capital" to join in a scheme to squeeze both a domestic and a foreign profit out of the toil of Russian workingmen conscripted by Socialist task-masters and held in wage-slavery under fear of death by court martial?
In the fifteenth place, we have the dreadful fact that Russian labor is enslaved by a Socialist autocracy not for the sake of promoting peace but for the sake of promoting war. In our last chapter we quoted the statements of Zinovieff to Lincoln Eyre that the Third Internationale would never give up its purpose to make the whole world Bolshevist. Eyre also found the belief general in Russia that so long as the Socialists retain power, any peace made by them with the outside world will only be a short truce in which to prepare for another war. He says, in his cable printed in the "New York World" of February 27, 1920:
"All, Bolsheviki included, feel that as long as the Soviets remain in power in Russia and Bolshevism does not spread to other lands, peace cannot be more than a truce in the international class warfare."
Again, in his cable printed in the "New York World" of March 4, 1920, Lincoln Eyre says:
"The Red Army's victories against Kolchak, Yudenitch and Denikine are in themselves paradoxical, in that they serve to increase the Russian need for peace.... Every advance recorded in Siberia or the Crimea brings the front line further from the base and complicates the task of supplying munitions, food and equipment. Thus it becomes increasingly evident to all Russians, whatever their political leanings may be, that Russia must have peace in order to survive economically. And yet--another paradox--all feel that any peace established now between Soviet authority and Governments of the bourgeois and democratics cannot be more than a brief truce because Socialism and capitalism cannot abide side by side, and because neither can be suppressed without warfare. The Bolshevik faith in the ultimate appearance of a world revolution has not waned, but their hope of its speedy coming has lessened considerably."
Who but the long-suffering Russians would endure the hopeless fate imposed by Socialism on Russian labor? The workingmen were conscripted by Trotzky's armies. They won victories, but these have not freed them. Returning from the front they are conscripted for labor armies, to work as they fought, under military discipline, subject to court martial and death if they rebel. Yet this military toil will not free them. They slave under the pistols of the commissaries only to get themselves economically equipped for a new war against their "capitalistic" neighbors, and in this war the workingman, if he can still walk, will be conscripted to go to the front again. Should he survive this, must he begin the same round over again?
But why not strike against this slavery? Russian labor does not dare to strike. Tender-hearted Socialism has made the labor strike a crime in Russia. Says Lincoln Eyre, in a cable dated March 11, 1920, and printed in the "New York World" of March 13, 1920:
"The unions, of course, lost their former principal weapon--the strike. Today any body of workers that would venture out on strike would be considered, to quote President Melnitchansky of the Moscow unions, as traitors to their Socialist fatherland and as such would doubtless be shot."