I'd rather have less than better.
(1March 2, 923)
On the issue of improving our state organs, I don't think the 308 Workers and Peasants' Procuratorate should pursue quantity and be eager for success. Up to now, we have paid little attention to and cared about the quality of our state organs, so naturally we should pay special attention to improving their quality, and concentrate talents with real modern quality, that is, those who are not inferior to those in Western Europe, in the Workers and Peasants Inspection Institute. Of course, this requirement is too low for the socialist Republic. But in the first five years, our minds were full of disbelief and doubt. For example, for those who talk too much and too rashly about the "proletarian" culture, we cannot but adopt this attitude, because at the beginning, it is enough for us to have a real bourgeois culture. At the beginning, it is beneficial for us to get rid of the terrible culture before the bourgeois system, that is, the culture of bureaucracy or serfdom. On cultural issues, impatience is the most harmful. Many of our young writers and writers should remember this.
Therefore, on the issue of state organs, according to past experience, the conclusion that should be drawn now is that it is best to slow down.
The situation of our state organs is pathetic, if not disgusting. So first of all, we should seriously consider how to overcome its shortcomings. At the same time, we must remember that these shortcomings are rooted in the past. Although the past has been overthrown, it has not been eliminated, nor has it retreated to the stage of the old culture that has already become the past. What I am asking here is cultural issues, because only those things that have penetrated into culture, daily life and become habits can be counted as achievements. Here, we can say that we didn't think carefully about the nature of the social system, didn't fully understand it, didn't feel deeply, just grabbed it in a hurry, didn't pass the test, didn't pass the test, wasn't confirmed by experience, didn't repair it, and so on. Of course, in the revolutionary era, at such a dizzying speed of development, we changed from a tsarist system to a Soviet system in five years, and there was nothing we could do.
Should wake up in time. The remedy we should take is not to believe anything rash and boastful. We should think about how to check the forward steps that we announce every hour and execute every minute, and then prove that they are not solid, reliable and understandable every second. The most harmful thing here is impatience. The most harmful thing is that we always know something, or there are always many people who can use it to build really new organs, which are truly socialist and Soviet organs, and so on.
In fact, in our country, there are few such institutions, and even the staff of such institutions are pitiful, so we must remember that it should take many, many years to establish such institutions.
Who can we use to set up such an institution? There are only two kinds of people. First, workers who devote themselves to socialism. These people don't have enough education. They want to build excellent institutions for us. But they don't know how to do it. They can't do it. Until now, they do not have the necessary cultural literacy to establish such an institution. To do this, what is needed is culture. Here, recklessness or attack, vigilance or perseverance, and any good qualities of people will not help. Second, people with knowledge, education and training are ridiculously few in our country compared with other countries.
Don't forget here that we often like to make up (or think we can make up) the lack of knowledge with enthusiasm and desire for success.
In order to reform our state organs, we must set ourselves such tasks: first, study; Second, study; Third, study; Then check, so that what we have learned can really penetrate into the flesh and blood and become a part of life, instead of learning without using it, or just saying fashionable words (needless to say, this phenomenon is particularly common here). In a word, what we should put forward is not the demands put forward by the bourgeoisie in western Europe, but the appropriate demands for a country whose purpose is to develop into a socialist country.
The conclusion is that the workers' and peasants' inspection institute should be transformed into a real model organ as a tool to improve the organ.
In order to make the workers and peasants inspection institute reach its due level, we must abide by the principle of "cutting once every seven times"
To achieve this, we must use the true essence of our social system to establish a new people's committee department very carefully, thoughtfully and intimately.
To achieve this, we need all outstanding elements in our social system, that is, advanced workers first, and those who are truly educated, who can guarantee that they will never believe in empty words, never say ambiguous words, and are not afraid to admit any difficulties and fight for their solemnly declared goals.
We have been busy for five years in improving our state organs, but this is just busy. The past five years have proved that this is useless, futile and even harmful. This busyness makes us look like we are working, but in fact it confuses our organs and minds.
This situation will change eventually.
We should abide by a rule, it is better to have fewer but higher. We should abide by a rule: it is better to wait for two or even three years than to rush in without any hope of obtaining excellent talents.
I know this rule is difficult to adhere to and apply to our real life. I know that the opposite principle will be followed here through countless channels. I know that we need to vigorously resist and show great tenacity, and this work will be extremely difficult to achieve results at least in the first few years. But I am convinced that only through such work can we achieve our goal, and only by achieving this goal can we establish a real Soviet socialist Republic, and so on.
Many readers may think that the number of examples I cited in my last article is too large. I believe that many calculations can be used to prove that these figures are not enough. But I think, we should regard the quality that really reaches the standard as more important than all calculations.
I think it's finally time for our state organs to do some work very seriously, and impatience is almost the biggest harm to this kind of work. So I will try my best to prevent these figures from expanding. On the contrary, in my opinion, we should be very strict with the figures here. Let's get this straight. The people's committee for inspecting workers and peasants has no prestige now. As we all know, there is nothing worse than our workers and peasants inspection institute. Under the present circumstances, there is no requirement for this people's Committee. If we are really determined to establish such an institution in a few years: first, it should be exemplary; Secondly, we must win everyone's absolute trust; Third, if we can prove to you that what we have done is really worthy of the work of such a high-level organ as the Central Supervision Commission 22 1, then we must bear this in mind. In my opinion, we should immediately and resolutely break through the general staffing standards. The staff of the workers and peasants inspection institute must be selected by completely special methods and through very strict examinations. If a people's committee is sloppy, it can't get any trust, and what it says has no prestige. Frankly speaking, why should it be established? I think the main task of the reorganization we are talking about now is to avoid this phenomenon.
The workers we recruited as the Central Supervisory Committee should be blameless. In my opinion, in order to enable them to learn working methods and be competent for their tasks, they should also be trained for a long time. Secondly, in this work, there must be a certain number of secretarial staff as an assistant, and they must go through repeated audits before being appointed. Finally, we decided to make an exception and immediately appoint any public official as the staff of the workers and peasants inspection institute to meet the following conditions:
First, there must be several * * * members to recommend;
Second, they must pass the exam about the knowledge of our state organs;
Third, we must pass the examination of basic knowledge such as the basic theory of state organs, management, and the system of running a document;
Fourth, they must cooperate with the work of the Central Supervision Commission and the Secretariat of our hospital, so that we can trust all the work of the whole organ.
I know that there are many preconditions to meet these requirements, so I'm worried that most "doers" in the workers' and peasants' inspection institute will say that these requirements can't be implemented, or laugh contemptuously. But I would like to ask the people who are currently working in or related to the workers and peasants inspection institute, can you tell me sincerely what is the practical necessity of the people's commission department like the workers and peasants inspection institute? I think this question will help them master proper limit. Either it is not worthwhile to complete the hopeless task of reorganizing the workers and peasants inspection institute (we have reorganized it many times), or we really set ourselves a task to conduct many inspections in a slow, difficult and super way, and establish a real model institution, which is not only respected by everyone because of its rank and position.
If you have no patience, if you are not going to spend a few years doing it, you'd better not do it at all.
In my opinion, we should choose several institutions that we have established in the Advanced Labor Research Institute and check whether they are working completely and seriously. Only when their work truly conforms to the level of modern science and enables us to get all the achievements provided by modern science can we continue to work. In this way, it is not a daydream to expect to build a competent organ in a few years; Ability means winning the trust of the working class, Russia and all the residents of our Republic, and making gradual and unremitting efforts to improve our state organs.
The preparatory work in this respect can begin now. If the People's Committee for Inspection of Workers and Peasants agrees to this transformation plan, it can now start to take preparatory measures so as to finish the work in an orderly manner without being impatient or refusing to redo the work already done.
Here, any incomplete solution is extremely harmful. Any establishment of the workers' and peasants' inspection institute based on other considerations is essentially based on the consideration of old bureaucrats, old prejudices and viewpoints that have been criticized and caused ridicule.
In essence, the question here is:
Either show now that we have really learned something in national construction (it is time to learn something in five years); Either admit that we are not mature enough, then we don't have to do it.
I think, as far as our present talents are concerned, it is not humble to think that what we have learned is enough to rebuild a people's Committee in an orderly way. Yes, this people's Committee department should be able to decide the face of our entire state organs.
Now send an essay notice and try to write two or more textbooks on organizing labor, especially management. Our existing Yermansky's book can be used as a basis by the way, although he obviously sympathizes with Menshevism and is not suitable for writing textbooks suitable for the Soviet regime. Secondly, Kerzhentsev's recently published book can also be used as a basis. Finally, some existing specialized reference books may be useful.
Send a few knowledgeable and reliable people to Germany or Britain to collect books and study this problem. I mentioned Britain because I think it may be impossible to send people to the United States or Canada.
A committee was set up to draft the preliminary examination outline for the staff of the Workers and Peasants Inspection Institute and the candidates of the Central Supervision Commission.
These and other tasks will certainly not embarrass the people's Committee members, nor will they embarrass the members of the Ministerial Committee of the Workers and Peasants Inspection Institute or the presidium of the Central Supervision Commission.
At the same time, a preparatory committee should be set up to find candidates for the Central Supervision Commission. I believe that there are enough candidates for this position among experienced staff in various departments and students in our Soviet school. It is not necessarily correct to exclude a certain category of people in advance. It's best to let this organization have all kinds of personnel. In this organization, we should try to combine various qualities and different advantages. Therefore, we must work hard to draw up a list of candidates. For example, if the new Human Resources Commission is composed of people from the same mold, assuming that it is composed of bureaucrats, or excluding those who are transferred, or those who are good at communication, or those who are unfamiliar with themselves, it would be terrible.
* * *
I think my meaning will be clearer if I compare my plan with an academic institution. Members of the Central Supervision Commission must regularly check all documents of the Political Bureau under the leadership of their own presidium. At the same time, they should allocate their own inspection time appropriately, so as to check the system of running documents in our organs (from the smallest branch to the highest state organ). Finally, their scope of work includes studying theory, that is, how to organize the work to be done, and internship under the guidance of old comrades or teachers of advanced research institutes of labor organizations.
But I don't think they should be confined to this kind of academic work. Besides these jobs, they have to learn to do other jobs. This kind of work, I can say bluntly, is not to learn to catch liars, but also to catch such guys. At the same time, they must come up with particularly clever ways to cover up their attacks, methods and so on.
Such a proposal will cause unprecedented dissatisfaction, moral indignation and so on in western European countries, but I hope we don't have bureaucrats to adopt such an attitude. In our country, the new economic policy has not been respected to the extent that people get angry at the thought of arresting people. Our Soviet Republic was founded not long ago, but it has accumulated so many kinds of dross. It is unlikely that someone will get angry at the thought of using some clever tricks, and sometimes they will use the method of tracing back to the source or tortuous reconnaissance. If there is, I believe we will all laugh at such people happily.
We hope that our new workers and peasants inspection institute can get rid of what the French call prudery, which we can call ridiculous posturing or ridiculous arrogance. It is most suitable for our bureaucrats, whether in the Soviet Union or in the Party. By the way, bureaucracy exists not only in Soviet organs, but also in Party organs.
I said above that I must study in an institution such as the Advanced Labor Organization Society, but this does not mean that I understand this kind of "learning" as a bit like school-style learning, or that my idea is limited to school-style learning. I hope no real revolutionary will doubt me and say that I don't admit that the "learning" mentioned here contains some kind of half-joking technique, some kind of originality, some kind of trick and so on. I know that in those serious countries in western Europe, this kind of opinion will definitely shock the people, and even no decent official will allow it to be discussed. But I hope we are not so bureaucratic. It will only make people happy to discuss such opinions here.
Really, why not combine pleasure with income? Why can't you use some kind of joke or half joke to expose those ridiculous, harmful, semi-ridiculous and semi-harmful phenomena?
I think: if our workers and peasants inspection institute studies these ideas, it will benefit a lot; Recording the extraordinary cases in which our Central Supervision Commission or its colleagues working in the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection Institute won several brilliant victories will add many adventures to our future "workers' and peasants' inspectors" and the Central Supervision Commission, as well as things that are not easy to mention in boring textbooks.
* * *
How can we combine the organs of the Party with those of the Soviet Union? Isn't there anything not allowed here?
This question is not what I want to ask. As I said above, bureaucracy exists not only in our Soviet organs, but also in our party organs. This question is raised on behalf of the people I alluded to in this sentence.
Really, for the benefit of work, why not combine the two organs into one? In the departments of the people's committees such as the People's Committee for Foreign Affairs, this combination has brought great benefits, and it has been done from the beginning. Has anyone not seen it? In order to defeat the foreign strategy (let's just say so), didn't we discuss a lot of big and small problems about how to use "tricks" to deal with foreign "tricks" from the perspective of the party in the Politburo? Isn't this flexible combination of Soviet organs and party organs a great source of strength for our policy? In my opinion, it has become a common practice that has been proved to be correct and established in our foreign policy. There is no doubt that it is at least equally applicable (I think it is more applicable) to all our state organs in this department. The workers' and peasants' supervision institute was originally set up for all our state organs, and its activities should involve all state organs without exception: local, central, commercial, purely official, educational, archival, dramatic and so on. In short, all organs are without exception.
Why can't an organ with such a wide range of activities and a very flexible way be allowed to merge the party's supervisory organs with those of the Soviet Union in a special form?
I don't see any obstacles here. And I think this combination is the only guarantee for smooth work. I think only in the dusty corners of our state organs will someone doubt this, and this doubt can only be laughed off.
* * *
Others doubt whether it is appropriate to combine study with business. I think this is not only appropriate, but also necessary. Generally speaking, although we have adopted a revolutionary attitude towards the national system in Western Europe, we are still infected by many of its most harmful and absurd prejudices. To some extent, our lovely bureaucrats deliberately infected us with this prejudice, and they deliberately fished in the muddy water of this prejudice again and again; They are so rampant that only we blind people can't see them.
We are "extremely" revolutionary in all fields of social relations, economic relations and political relations. However, our "revolutionary" is often replaced by the most corrupt old habits in respecting the boss and observing the form and etiquette of the office. We can often see an extremely interesting phenomenon here: in social life, the biggest leap forward and the amazing fear of small changes are both.
This is not difficult to understand, because it is a field that has been the object of theoretical research for a long time and has made the bravest progress. It is a field that is mainly cultivated in theory or even almost completely in theory. Russians avoid the disgusting bureaucratic reality and brew very bold theoretical thoughts at home, so these very bold theoretical thoughts are very one-sided here. The theoretical courage to put forward a general idea here and the amazing timidity in the trivial office system reform are both. We carried out the great agrarian revolution with unparalleled courage, but we lacked imagination or patience in the tiny office system reform, and applied the universal principle of "brilliant" effect on common problems in this reform.
Therefore, in our real life, extraordinary courage and fear of the smallest change coexist surprisingly.
I think any truly great revolution is like this, because the truly great revolution arises from the contradiction between the old things and the intention to transform the old things and the abstract desire to pursue new things (not even a little old things).
The more violent this revolution comes, the longer many such contradictions will exist.
* * *
The general feature of our present life is this: we destroyed capitalist industry, tried to completely destroy medieval facilities and landlords' land ownership, and on this basis, cultivated small farmers and extremely small farmers, who followed the proletarian revolutionary work because they believed in it. However, before the socialist revolution won in more developed countries, it was not easy for us to rely on this trust, because small farmers and extremely small farmers, especially under the conditions of the new economic policy, remained at a very low level of labor productivity due to economic inevitability. In addition, the international environment has also thrown Russia back to the past level. Generally speaking, China's national labor productivity is much lower now than before the war. Western European capitalist powers, semi-consciously and semi-spontaneously, tried their best to throw us back to the past level and use various factors in the Russian civil war to destroy our economy as much as possible. Of course, in their view, ending the imperialist war is the most beneficial: even if we can't overthrow the Russian revolutionary system, at least it will be difficult to develop into socialism. That's probably what those in power think, and they can't help thinking from their perspective. As a result, their task was only half finished. They didn't overthrow the new system created by the revolution, but they didn't let the new system make great strides at once, so as to confirm the predictions of socialists, enable them to develop productive forces rapidly, give full play to all their potential and develop into socialism, and intuitively and clearly prove to everyone that socialism contains great power, and mankind has now entered a new stage of development with a bright future.
The system of international relations has now become like this: one country in Europe is enslaved by the victorious country, and that is Germany. Second, some countries, as well as some of the oldest countries in the West, can use their victory to make some modest concessions to their oppressed classes. After all, these concessions delayed the revolutionary movements in these countries and led to a situation similar to "social peace".
At the same time, many countries in the East, such as India and China, have been completely thrown out of the normal track due to the influence of the recent imperialist war. The development of these countries has been fully in line with the capitalist direction of Europe as a whole. In these countries, the turmoil throughout Europe began to appear. Now it is clear to the whole world that these countries have been involved in the development process that cannot but cause a capitalist crisis all over the world.
So, now we are faced with such a problem: under the production conditions of small farmers and extremely small farmers in China and the economic destruction in China, can we support the capitalist countries in western Europe to develop into socialism? However, these countries will not complete this development process as we expected. They will not "mature" socialism in these countries in a balanced way, but will complete this development process through the exploitation of other countries by some countries, the first defeated country in the imperialist war and the whole East. On the other hand, it was precisely because of the first imperialist war that the East finally joined the revolutionary movement and was finally involved in the general whirlpool of revolutionary movements all over the world.
In this case, what kind of strategy should China adopt? Obviously, we should adopt such a strategy: in order to keep the workers' regime in our country, and to maintain the prestige of the workers' regime among the small farmers and extremely small farmers in our country and lead them, we must be extremely cautious. Now the whole world is entering a movement that will inevitably lead to the socialist revolution all over the world, which is beneficial to us. But it also has disadvantages for us, that is, the imperialists have divided the whole world into two camps, and this division is more complicated, because it is difficult for Germany, a truly advanced, civilized and developed capitalist country, to raise its head now. All the so-called western capitalist powers are pecking at it to prevent it from raising its head. On the other hand, the whole East, with hundreds of millions of exploited working people living in extreme poverty, has fallen into such a situation that its physical and material resources cannot be compared with any much smaller country in Western Europe.
Can we avoid future conflicts with these imperialist countries? In the past, the contradiction between the East and West counter-revolutionary camps, the contradiction between the East and West exploiters camps, and the contradiction between Japan and the United States made the attack launched by the counter-revolutionary forces in western Europe to help the Russian counter-revolutionary forces fail. Can we still expect the internal contradictions and conflicts between the increasingly powerful imperialist countries in the West and the increasingly powerful imperialist countries in the East to give us another chance to delay our conflicts with the imperialist countries as in the past?
I think the answer to this question should be this: the solution of the problem here depends on many situations; Generally speaking, only according to the fact that the vast majority of the population on the earth finally struggled under the training and cultivation of capitalism itself can we foresee the end of the struggle.
In the final analysis, the result of the struggle depends on the following points: Russian, Indian, China and so on constitute the vast majority of the world population. It is the majority of these people who have been involved in the struggle for their own liberation very quickly in recent years, so in this sense, it is impossible to have the slightest doubt about the final solution of the world struggle. In this sense, the ultimate victory of socialism is absolutely guaranteed.
But what we care about is not the inevitability of the ultimate victory of socialism. What we care about is our Russia, the strategy that our Russian Soviet regime should adopt to prevent the counter-revolutionary countries in western Europe from strangling us. In order to ensure that we can exist in the counter-revolutionary imperialist west and the revolutionary nationalist east, the most civilized country in the world is as backward as the east, but the country with the majority population will have the next military conflict, and this majority must be able to catch up with the establishment of civilization. Our civilization level is not enough to directly transition to socialism, although we already have the political premise to do so. We must adhere to this strategy, or, in order to save ourselves, we must adopt the following policies.
We should strive to build a country in which workers can maintain their leadership over farmers, maintain farmers' trust in them, and eliminate any traces of waste in their social relations by vigorously saving.
We should make our state organs practise economy. We should remove all traces of waste left by tsarist Russia and its capitalist bureaucrats in our state organs.
Isn't this the world where farmers are limited?
I won't. As long as we can maintain the leadership of the working class over the peasants, it is possible for us to save any savings in our country by vigorously saving, so as to develop our large machine industry, develop electrification, develop peat hydraulic mining industry, complete Volkhoff Hydropower Project 326, and so on.
Our hope is here, and only here. Only in this way can we-metaphorically speaking-jump from one horse to another, that is, from farmers, plowmen and the poor, from a bankrupt peasant country to a country that the proletariat can't help but seek, to a big machine industry, electrification, Volkhov hydropower station project and so on.
In my opinion, this is how I relate our work, our policies, our strategies, our overall plans, etc. to the tasks of the reorganized workers and peasants inspection institute. In my opinion, this is why we should pay special attention to the workers and peasants inspection institute, raise its status to a particularly high level, and give its leaders central power.
The reason is that only by thoroughly cleaning our organs and reducing everything that is not absolutely necessary can we stick to it with great confidence. Moreover, we will be able to persist, not at the level of small-scale peasant countries, not at the level of such general restrictions, but at the level of continuous progress and progress towards large machinery industry.
This is the lofty task of the workers and peasants inspection institute that I yearn for. This is why, for the sake of the workers and peasants inspection institute, I intend to merge one of the most prestigious upper-level party newspaper organs with an "ordinary" people's Committee department.