When formerly, in pre-revolutionary days, socialists, syndicalists, or anarchists imagined their ideal society realized or painted it before themselves, they never thought of such a thing as workers' insurance or labor laws. For the German anarchosocialists or syndicalists such things always had the flavor oJ Bismarckian politics. Social law-making against unemploymenl sickness, accident, etc., in behalf of the workers was conside] necessary only in the capitalist state while already the funt mental principle of socialism is mutual help, so that social lawmaking in the old capitalist sense of the word could not be thought of.
That workers' insurance is being introduced in Russia only proves again that there we have not to do with a social revolution but with a political revolution, which has deeply impressed itself upon the social life of Russia. Private property has for the largest part been abolished and the revolution might develop into a social revolution in a more far-reaching sense if other countries also are entangled in the revolution.
That influential, revolutionary, bolshevik circles in Russia first of all thought of introducing the progressive measures which had been realized in the rest of Europe for some time past, should not be counted to their discredit. Thus, the bolsheviks carried out the social law-making which Kerensky had commenced on a small scale, but on a much larger scale. True, one cannot defend onself for the thought, that Kerensky would have done the same thing if he had remained in power longer. This policy of social law-making gives us the impression of a certain reformist tendency. Up to then all social law-making had had the significance of an addition or improvement to the structure of capitalist society. But one cannot pass judgment on the basis of this single point; we must rather take into consideration the whole achievement of the bolsheviks and the whole Russian revolution. Such a general consideration shows us that the Russian revolution was one half political and one half social and in i.ts later development even partly inclined to reaction. This all constitutes the curves of development we cannot yet consider as ended.
In the realm of the czar, workers' insurance was only poorly developed. Up to the year 1917, including the brief Kerensky period, there were in all Russia 1,457,503 workers insured. In the year 1919 the number grew to 3,009,510, and in the year 1920, according to the statement of the Commissar of Labor, there were 6,000,000 persons, who were all subject to insurance. But in a population of 120,000,000 this is still very small. Besides one must consider the whole insurance, in the present situation, to be more on paper than carried out into reality.