9. They participate in the engaging and discharging of workers and employees, according to the decree about labor exchanges and the instructions of the union.
These are to-day the functions of the shop councils. Thus, we must here add, that the workers no longer have the right to manage the establishment or to say a word about the process of production. In the third congress, in March 1920, position was expressly taken against this right of the workers, on the ground that this right now belonged to the unions as a whole and not to single groups. But it is not even the unions who appoint the managers of the enterprises; it is the Supreme Council of National Economy, which has this right, after the recommendation of the unions. Manager of the establishment becomes he who is appointed by the S. C, of N. E. In the decision of March, 1920, it says:
"The shop committees are hereby established as the local units of the unions, with functions analogous to the unions, with retention of responsibility, and under the report sphere of the higher instances of the unions, and they are hereby enjoined from in any manner meddling with the conduct of the establishment's business; for the elimination of parallel work in the offices of the management and the unions of an establishment all production commissions of the shop committees are hereby disestablished."
Hefre is, as we see, quite openly expressed, that the workers have no right wJiatsoever in the \management of production on the place of work; yes, even the control, ^vhich in the first days of the revolution was such a popular demand, has been suspended. It says plainly that the workers must keep from any meddlii ivith the conduct of the business.
Nor is the right of engaging and discharging workers mentioned in Article 9 saved to the workers. Through the "Law of Mobilization of Labor Power" the workers are compelled to go to the place of work to which they are assigned. If they leave that place without permission of their superiors they can be punished. And that happens often. The idea with this is to hit the bourgeoisie, all labor power being registered. But, as the Moscow papers related in the spring of 1920, there were in Moscow 312,- 000 unregistered persons, which were not affected by this decree, or only in an unsatisfactory way. Among these 312,000, few are workers, most of them belonging to the bourgeois element. This instance proves how difficult it is to hit the right ones and pull the bourgeoisie out to work. Now it is attempted to combat this by means of work-books. It is to be hoped that this will be successful now and in the future, in order that the burden of the workers may be lightened.
But if we consider the form of organization by itself and compare it with other upiions, we find the form used by the German syndicalists to be most like the Russian form. Here also we have two poles, the industrial o>r craft union with its groupings, and the Labor Bureaus. The difference consists only in this that the Russian unions have not fully carried out the idea of Labor Bureaus (Arbeiterboerse). In Russia we have only the local district council (this would correspond to the labor bureau of the German syndicalists) and gouvernement or provincial councils. ~Iir Russia there is no federation of all the "labor bureaus" of the country. This function falls to the Central Councils of the All- Russian Unions, which, however, at the same time is expected to be, and is, principally a centralistic grouping of the Industrial Unions. But as this is a centrum for both functions, its function must with necessity be a difficult one.