Labor

LABOR. Contents: General formulation of the problem...........883 Rationalization of labor ............... 893 Working time....................901 Women's labor....................911 Labor of minors.............9? in Protection of labor and labor legislation . . . .933 Achievements in labor protection as a result of the first five-year plan and immediate tasks in the second five-year period .......................947 General formulation of the problem.* Marx gave a number of definitions of labor. In particular, he defines L. as 'purposefully directed productive activity', as 'creator of use values', as 'purposeful activity for creating use values'. In 'Capital', Marx writes: 'Labor is above all a process taking place between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, mediates, regulates, and controls the metabolic exchange between himself and nature. He stands opposed to the substance of nature as a natural force. In order to appropriate the substance of nature in a form suitable for his own life, he sets in motion the natural forces belonging to his body: hands and feet, head and fingers. By acting through this movement on nature outside himself and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops the dormant forces in the latter and subjects the play of its forces to his own power'. A characteristic feature of L. is 'purposeful will manifesting as attention', the presence of a conscious purpose. L. is a social category, inextricably linked with human society. Animals have only the first instinctive animal-like forms of labor. Marx says: 'We assume labor in the form that constitutes the exclusive property of man'. Engels, speaking about the most developed monkeys in a phylogenetic sense, points out that 'there is as yet no labor in the proper sense of the word. Labor begins only with the manufacture of tools', and also: 'The animal makes use only of external nature and produces changes in it simply by its presence; man, by his changes, makes it serve his ends, dominates over it. And this last is the important distinction of man from the other animals, and man owes this distinction to labor'. And it is quite understandable, therefore, that the founders of Marxism always particularly emphasized the social character of L., and that misunderstanding it in the form of biologization of labor leads to the grossest theoretical distortions, which also have serious political significance. Thus, Marx wrote: '...Within the limits of this world, the universal character of labor is its specifically social character'. In another place he writes: '...As soon as men work for one another in any way, their labor thereby assumes a social form'. L. is, in Marx's words, 'independent of all social forms a condition for the existence of people, an eternal natural necessity; without it, the metabolic exchange between man and nature would not be possible'. It would, however, be a gross error to consider labor on this basis as some eternal prehistoric category with its own immanent, eternal, and absolute laws. On the contrary, as Marx wrote, 'The example of labor convincingly demonstrates that even the most abstract categories, despite the fact that it is precisely their abstractness that gives them validity for all epochs, in the very definiteness of this abstraction are in no less measure a product of historical conditions and possess full validity only for these conditions and within them'. From this it follows that all problems related to labor, and in particular questions of labor hygiene, should be examined in close connection with specific social conditions, necessarily within the specific framework of a given socio-historical formation.-Emphasizing that labor is a social category and that the leading and determining factor in it is the social, one must in no case simplistically underestimate the biological side of L., connected with the fact that in L. man appears naturally as a 'natural force', as an 'animal that makes tools', i.e., as a member of society*, who is at the same time the final stage in the evolution of the animal world. Marx in his works always clearly noted the biological side of the labor process: 'Man himself, considered simply as the being of labor power, is an object of nature, a thing, although a living, conscious thing, and labor itself is the material manifestation of this power'. 'However different the individual kinds of useful labor or productive activity may be, from the physiological side they are in any case functions of the human organism, and each such function, whatever its content and form may be, is in its essence an expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, sense organs, etc.'. Labor, in the words of Marx and Engels, is 'a natural condition of human existence', 'an eternal natural condition of human life', 'the basic condition of all human life'. The same ideas were repeatedly applied by the brilliant continuers of the work of Marx and Engels-Lenin and Stalin-to the specific conditions of socialist society (which will be discussed below). And it is understandable, therefore, that in no case is it permissible to pose the question as many bourgeois scientists do, as well as for a long time a number of our Soviet profhygienists and profpathologists following them, asserting that L. is always and everywhere a pathogenic factor, a source of diseases, early disability and degeneration of the working people. * That society is the primary category for man is evident from the fact that, as Marx wrote ('Critique of Political Economy'), 'Man is in the literal sense zoon politikon, not only a social animal, but an animal that can only be distinguished in society'. 883 тг ud Such a metaphysical, unhistorical formulation of this question contradicts the principles of Marxism-Leninism. As is known, physiology, general pathology, as well as clinical experience clearly demonstrate that the absence of normal labor functions, normal exercise of the whole organism and individual organs often leads to 'atrophy from inactivity', to disturbances of normal nutrition, normal blood circulation, normal metabolism, etc., to underdevelopment or reverse development of individual organs, to replacement of more differentiated types of tissue with less 'noble' connective tissue. The great importance of L., widely used in labor therapy, for establishing and maintaining normal correlations in the organism, for a harmonious relationship between somatic and psychic factors, for creating proper conditions ensuring positive general tonus of the organism, normal, cheerful, purposeful psyche, establishing normal connections of the individual with the environment, is also known. And if, despite this, it is an indisputable fact that under capitalism there is a negative influence of labor conditions on the health of both individuals and entire collectives, this is explained not by any immanent properties of labor in general, but by the specific nature of labor organization under certain socio-historical conditions. The role of labor in the origin of man. Labor plays an enormous role not only in the individual life of a separate person and entire social groups of the population, but also in the phylogenetic development of humanity. Neither bourgeois economists nor vulgar evolutionists understand this great historical, formative role of labor. For the first time, Engels revealed this aspect of the labor problem in his essay 'The Role of Labor in the Transition of Ape to Man', in which, on the basis of an exceptionally brilliant Marxist analysis that is a model of the unity of biological and social, he proved the basic proposition that 'labor created man himself'. If the living conditions of anthropoid apes led them to upright gait and thus to the liberation of the anterior extremities (hands) from participation in walking, then the further 'division of functions between hands and feet' became possible because the primitive ancestors of man began to transition to increasingly complex actions, which eventually reached the production and use of even the simplest tools, and then, as Engels says, 'the decisive step was taken, the hand became free and could perfect its dexterity and skill, and the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and multiplied from generation to generation'. And as a result of this progressive evolutionary advance, Engels states, 'the hand is thus not only an organ of labor, it is also its product.'

Only through labor, through adaptation to ever new operations, through the inheritance of the special development of muscles, ligaments, and, over longer periods, also bones, achieved in this way, and through the ever new application of these inherited improvements to new, increasingly complex operations—only through all this did the human hand reach that high degree of perfection at which it could, as if by magic, bring to life the paintings of Raphael, the statues of Thorvaldsen, the music of Paganini." The formative and creative role of L., however, by no means limits itself to what is already established at the first stage of human development: the enormous 'distance between the undeveloped hand of even the most monkey-like ape and the human hand perfected by hundreds of thousands of years of labor.' The number and general arrangement of bones and muscles are the same in both, and yet the hand of even the most primitive savage is capable of performing hundreds of operations inaccessible to any ape." Engels emphasizes that according to the basic principle of dialectical materialism about the inseparable connection, interaction, and mutual influence of the individual parts of a whole, which in particular does not allow considering the living organism as a simple sum of individual organs, the hand is not something self-sufficient, and all changes caused by L. in the development of the hand and the closely associated improvement of upright gait were reflected in the entire structure of the organism, although even now all the specific paths of this effect have not yet been fully uncovered. At the same time, ^LABOR, sharply intensifying and raising to a new, much higher level the social character of relationships among the ape-like ancestors of man, first led to the need for a new form of communication and social ties, and then to the development of language on this basis. As a result of the corresponding evolutionary development of speech organs, as Engels says, 'first labor, and then along with it articulate speech, became the two main stimuli under the influence of which the ape brain could gradually turn into the human brain, which, despite all similarities, surpasses the former in size and perfection. And with the further development of the brain went the parallel further development of its nearest instruments—the sense organs.' And then in the process of historical development there was a continuous interaction and mutual influence of speech and labor, determining the further all-round improvement of man, both of his somatics (first of all the brain and sense organs) and of his consciousness, and the further somatic and psychophysiological improvement of man is obviously continuing to this day. And all this took place already within the framework of conscious relations, within the framework of social ones. And this is precisely where the enormous biological and specifically phylogenetic role of L. lies, which remained unnoticed by bourgeois scientists, mechanists, and Menshevik idealists. At the same time, Engels showed that L. must be considered only in an indissuble unity of the biological and social. Engels was clearly not understood and distorted by both mechanists, who drew from Engels' statements the conclusion about the adequate inheritance of individually acquired characteristics, and Menshevik idealists, who asserted that the 'gene pool' remains eternally unchanged and independent of any social and generally exogenous influences. Meanwhile, Engels posed the problem purely historically, emphasizing that we are talking not about the short-term influence of sharp changes transmitted adequately from parents to offspring, but about the effects of seemingly insignificant in themselves but always acting in one direction over a series of generations. Thus, Engels wrote: 'As long as the first cobblestone with the help of human hands could turn into a knife, such a long period of time must have passed that, in comparison with it, the known historical period is completely insignificant.' And in another place he wrote: 'Hundreds of thousands of years, which in the history of the earth have no greater significance than a second in human life—surely passed before human society emerged from a herd of climbing apes. But it finally appeared. And in what do we again find the characteristic feature of human society, distinguishing it from a herd of apes? In labor.' Labor under capitalism and socialism. All questions of L. and in particular questions about the improvement of labor Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin always posed in an inseparable connection with specific socio-historical formations, in connection with certain class relations. And therefore they clearly distinguished the conditions of L. and the influence of L. on the worker under the antagonistic capitalist system and in the era when the main contradiction between the interests of the proletariat and the interests of production disappears. The founders of Marxist-Leninist theory with exceptional clarity and persuasiveness showed that the entire system of capitalist production, based on the use of machines, division of L. and factory organization of L., with absolute inevitability reflects exclusively perniciously on the worker, maims him not only physically but also mentally, deprives the organism of the possibility of harmonious development and turns L. into penal servitude, into a source of degeneration of the proletariat. In capitalist society 'the worker is opposed to production, the latter is hostile to him,' because, as Marx says, 'it is not the worker who applies the means of labor, but the means of labor apply the worker.' Already capitalist manufacture, connected with the beginning of capitalist division of L., reveals the characteristic of capitalism alienation of the worker from the means of production, the labor process and the creation of antagonistic relations of opposition, enslavement of man by dead elements of production equipment, impoverishment of the worker's personality, violation of physiological laws and interests of his health, etc. Thus, Marx writes in 'Capital': 'Manufacture division of labor leads to the fact that the spiritual forces of the material production process confront the workers as someone else's property and a force dominating over them. This process of separation begins with simple cooperation, where the capitalist in relation to the individual worker represents the unity and will of the socially working body. It further develops in manufacture, which mutilates the worker to the state of a partial worker. It is completed in large industry, which separates science from the worker as an independent productive force and forces it to serve capital.' Further, Marx specifically emphasizes that 'in manufacture the enrichment of the total worker, and consequently of capital with social productive forces is conditioned by the impoverishment of the worker with individual productive forces,' pointing out that 'in the middle of the 18th century some manufactures preferred to use semi-idiots for the production of certain simple operations, which, however, constituted the 'factory secret'.' In the book 'The Development of Capitalism in Russia,' Lenin, citing a huge amount of factual material, in particular from the works of zemstvo doctors, makes a general conclusion in strong and vivid images about the influence of capitalist division of L. on the health of workers and the emergence of professional pathology: 'Division of labor in capitalist manufacture leads to the mutilation and crippling of the worker—including the artisan-'master craftsman.' Appear virtuosi and cripples of division of labor, the former—as rare individuals exciting the amazement of researchers; the latter—as the mass appearance of 'master craftsmen' weak-chested, with disproportionately developed arms, with 'one-sided hunchback' etc. etc.' Speaking about the development of capitalist manufacture, Marx also specifically touches upon the questions of professional pathology as the reverse side of production: 'Some spiritual and bodily mutilation is inseparably connected even with division of labor within society as a whole. But since the manufacture period carries this social division of different branches of labor much further and since, on the other hand, only specifically manufacture division of labor affects the individual in the very basis of his life, the manufacture period for the first time gives also the material and stimulus for industrial pathology' (see Professional pathology). Capitalist division of L., beginning with manufacture and ending with large industry, leads to exceptional monotony and uniformity of L., to the deprivation of L. of any attractiveness and internal content. Marx sympathetically quotes A. Smith: 'The monotony of his stationary life kills, of course, the cheerfulness of his spirit... It further destroys the energy of his body and makes him incapable of strenuous and prolonged labor in all branches except that to which he is accustomed.' This division of labor, says further Marx, 'not only develops the social productive power of labor for the capitalist, and not for the worker, but also develops it by mutilating the individual worker.' With the development of machine production, the mutilation of the worker reaches its climax.'

Even in manufacture, 'the worker, performing the same simple operation throughout his life, transforms his entire body into an automatically one-sided organ for it.' 'Division of labor leads to the spiritual potentials of the material process of production confronting the workers as alien property and an enslaving force.' In the modern factory, built on machine production, 'lifelong specialization-managing a partial instrument, becomes lifelong specialization-serving a partial machine. The machine is abused in order to turn the worker himself from early childhood into a part of a partial machine.' And further, analyzing the universal law of capitalist accumulation, Marx writes: '... under the capitalist system, all methods for increasing the social productive power of labor are carried out at the expense of the individual worker; all means for the development of production are turned into means of subjugating and exploiting the producer, deform the worker, making him an incomplete person, reducing him to the role of an appendage to the machine, with the torment of labor destroy his contentment, alienate from the worker the spiritual forces of the labor process to the extent that science joins the labor process as an independent force.' Engels, in much the same way, illuminates the influence of capitalist labor, closely connected with monotony and uniformity: 'The dreary monotony, the endless torment of labor, constantly performing the same process over and over again, resembles the work of Sisyphus; the burden of labor, like a rock, constantly falls again and again on exhausted workers.' 'Machine labor, to an extreme degree capturing the nervous system, suppresses the multifaceted play of muscles and deprives man of any possibility of free physical and spiritual activity.' In the 'Communist Manifesto,' Marx and Engels write: 'The work of these proletarians, thanks to machines and division of labor, has completely lost its independent character and has therefore lost all attractiveness for the workers. The worker has become a simple appendage to the machine, from which only a series of the simplest, most monotonous, most easily learned movements is required.' 'To the same degree that the use of machines and division of labor increases, the burden of labor also increases. This is achieved either by lengthening the working day or by increasing the strain required of the worker at a given time, by accelerating the movement of machines and so on.' However, despite all these vivid descriptions, neither Marx nor Engels ever raised the question that this was about the results of the influence on the individual worker and the working class as a whole of the machine as such, of machine production in general, Labor in general, and so on. On the one hand, Marx emphasizes that 'even the alleviation of labor becomes a source of torment, because the machine does not free the worker from labor, but his labor from all content.' But at the same time, Marx in the very next phrase speaks of capitalist production, so it is quite clear that the issue is not about any machine in any conditions, but precisely about the influence of the machine under the conditions of the capitalist system. And elsewhere Marx already quite clearly points out the difference between the possibilities of the machine and the concrete results of its application in the capitalist system: 'If the machine is the most powerful means for increasing the productivity of labor, i.e., for reducing the labor time required for the production of goods, then as the bearer of capital it becomes first of all in the industries immediately taken over by it the most powerful means for lengthening the working day beyond all natural limits.' We see that here Marx directly emphasizes the role of the machine 'as the bearer of capital,' i.e., as a certain not purely technical, but socio-economic category in a specific class situation. In the same spirit, Engels repeatedly expressed himself. In 'The Condition of the Working Class in England,' he writes: 'Almost everywhere manual labor has been replaced by machine labor, the motive power is that of water and steam, and every year new and new improvements are introduced. Under normal conditions of society these improvements could only be welcomed, but during the war of all against all the benefits go to individuals, while the masses are deprived of the means of subsistence. Every improvement in machine technology takes bread from the workers and the more people it deprives of work, the more it affects them in the same way as a commercial crisis, i.e., it leads to want, poverty, and crime.' 'Under modern social conditions, improvements in machinery have exclusively unfavorable consequences for workers; every new machine generates unemployment, want, and poverty.' Thus, here a 'normal state of society' (i.e., socialism) is clearly contrasted with 'modern social conditions' (i.e., capitalism). Such a clear historically class-based approach to the question is also present when Marx, Engels, and Lenin speak of the results of professional harmfulness and professional dangers affecting the general and specific professional morbidity and traumatism of workers, motherhood, and so on. Repeatedly speaking about the general consequences of the influence of production on the health of workers and often interpreting it as a source of physical degeneration of the proletariat, Marx, Engels, and Lenin always clearly emphasized that they were speaking precisely about capitalist production, that the causes of this influence are by no means technical or biological, but deeply economic, rooted in the class structure of capitalist society and in the very essence of capitalist production, the sole stimulus of which is the extraction of maximum profit through the unpaid labor of the worker. Thus, Marx wrote: 'Experience shows the thoughtful observer how quickly and how deeply capitalist production, which arose, speaking historically, only as of yesterday, has already managed to undermine the vital force of the people to its very roots, how the degeneration of the industrial population is slowed only by the constant absorption of primitive strong vital elements from the countryside, and how even rural workers begin to die out, despite the fresh air and the unlimited domination among them of the principle of natural selection, thanks to which only the strongest individuals survive...' Lenin, in turn, in one of his first works, in the hectographed brochure 'What are the 'Friends of the People' and how do they fight against the Social-Democrats' (1894), speaks of the fact that large capital is characterized by 'the horrors of oppression of labor, extinction, savagery, mutilation of female and child organisms, etc.' In the explanation to the program of the Social-Democratic party, written by Lenin in prison in 1895-96, he writes: 'The exploitation of hired labor, which is the foundation of modern society, large factories bring to the highest degree of development. All the methods of exploitation used by all capitalists in all branches of industry, from which the entire mass of the working population of Russia suffers-are here, in the factory, collected together, intensified, made a constant rule, extended to all sides of the labor, life of the worker, creating a whole regimen, a whole system of squeezing the juices out of the worker by the capitalist... The factory regimen is deliberately tailored so as to squeeze from the hired worker as much Labor as he can give, to squeeze it out as quickly as possible and then throw him away.' So, here we already encounter almost the same formulation of the essence of capitalist exploitation, which Lenin then, many years later, again gives in his articles on Taylorism (see below). Here Lenin also develops the basic Marxist view of the progressive significance of the machine in capitalist society and at the same time of its pernicious influence on the position of workers, emphasizing that the issue is not about the role of the machine in general, but precisely about the role of the machine under capitalism. Along with this, Lenin points out that capitalists and their henchmen and servants in the person of the leaders of landlord-bourgeois governments reduce the worker to a machine: 'The ministers look at the worker as a machine: a machine can be fed oil while in motion, so why (think our 'caring' flunkies of capital, the ministers) can't the worker also be stuffed with food during work.' In 'Reply to Mr. P. Nezhdanov,' Lenin reveals the impossibility of any serious mechanization under capitalism due to the internal immanent contradictions associated with it: 'It is known that in every capitalist society the use of machines is often hindered by an excessively low wage (=low level of consumption of the masses). Moreover: it sometimes happens that machines acquired by entrepreneurs lie idle, because the prices for labor power fall to such an extent that it becomes more profitable for the owner to use manual labor! The presence of the contradiction between consumption and production, between the tendency of capitalism to develop the productive forces without limit and the limitation of this tendency by the proletarian condition, the poverty and unemployment of the people, is clear in this case as day.'

In his fundamental work 'The Development of Capitalism in Russia,' Lenin, in setting forth his conclusions about the three stages of capitalist development in Russian industry, gives the following general characterization of large-scale machine industry: 'The extremes of social opposites reach their highest development. All the grim aspects of capitalism are concentrated together: the machine, as is known, gives a tremendous impetus to the limitless lengthening of the working day; women and children are drawn into production; a reserve army of the unemployed is formed (and must form under the conditions of factory production), etc.'-The position of L. in capitalist countries during the period of imperialism-this final phase of decaying capitalism-not only does not 'improve' compared to these brilliant, scourging conclusions of Marx and Lenin, but continuously worsens. This found vivid expression in the following passages of the program of the Communist International: 'The growing application of machinery, the constant improvement of technique-and on this basis-the continuous rise in the organic composition of capital, accompanied by the growth of the division of labor, an increase in its productivity and intensity-also meant the ever wider application of female and child labor, the formation of huge reserve industrial armies, constantly replenished by the proletarianized and displaced peasantry from the villages and the ruined small and middle urban bourgeoisie. The formation of a clique of capital magnates on one pole of social relations and giant masses of the proletariat on the other; the continuous increase in the rate of exploitation of the working class, the reproduction on an expanded basis of the deepest contradictions of capitalism and their consequences (crises, wars, etc.); the constant growth of social inequality...' (Section I, 1). 'Technical progress and the rationalization of industry, which have as their other side the closing and liquidation of a number of enterprises, the restriction of output, the ruthless and predatory exploitation of labor power, lead to enormous, previously unknown chronic unemployment. It becomes a fact the absolute deterioration in the position of the working class even in a number of developed capitalist countries'. The entire formulation of the problem of L. is radically changed under socialism and in communist society. Only after the overthrow of capitalism, after the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in the process of building a classless society does L. return to its greatest significance in human life as a source of health and the all-round development of man: 'Instead of the division of labor, there must arise such an organization of production, under which no one could shift his share of participation in productive labor onto another, as a natural condition of human existence' (Engels). At the highest stage of communism, when the contradiction between physical and mental L. disappears, labor, in Marx's words, 'will become the first physical need, and not only a means of life'. In 'Capital,' Marx writes about how socialism will solve the task of 'the partial worker, the simple bearer of a partial social function, being replaced by an individual who has been developed in all-round fashion, for whom the various social functions are merely modes of life that alternate with one another'. In another place Marx writes: 'Freedom in this sphere can consist only in this: that the socialized man, the associated producers, regulate their metabolic interchange with nature rationally, bring it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind natural force; that they accomplish it with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most worthy and appropriate to their human nature'. Directly about the hygienic conditions of L. under socialism, Marx wrote in the words of one of the factory inspectors: 'factory labor can be as clean and pleasant as domestic labor, and probably even to a greater extent'. These ideas found particularly vivid development in the following words of Engels about the socialist organization of production: 'productive labor, instead of being a means of enslavement, would become a means of liberation, giving each individual the opportunity to develop in all directions and to manifest all his abilities, both physical and spiritual. Labor consequently must change from a heavy burden into a pleasure'. Before our very eyes, these predictions of Marx and Engels have come true. Their brilliant pupils and continuers of their work, the leaders of the Communist Party and the international proletariat-Lenin and Stalin-have carried their work through to its conclusion-to the victorious workers' revolution, to the dictatorship of the proletariat, to Soviet power. Developing in all-round fashion both the theory and practice of Marxism in the process of class struggle and socialist construction, they further developed the theoretical problems of L. as applied to the new situation. Lenin left in this field an exceptional legacy for its depth, for the first time theoretically developing the problem of replacing, after the overthrow of capitalism, coerced labor with labor 'for oneself'. In his articles and speeches ('The Great Initiative,' 'How to Organize Competition,' 'The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Power,' a number of speeches at congresses, etc.), Lenin repeatedly explained what is meant by the communist attitude toward L. and its first prototypes after the overthrow of capitalism at the first stage of the dictatorship of the proletariat. For example, he gave the following characterization: '...labor for the benefit of society, labor performed not to fulfill a certain obligation, not to obtain the right to certain products, not according to pre-established and legalized norms, but voluntary labor, labor beyond the norm, labor given without expectation of reward, without condition of reward, labor out of habit to work for the common good out of a conscious (having become habitual) attitude toward the necessity of labor for the common good-labor, as the need of a healthy organism'. Lenin developed an extensive doctrine on the socialist organization of L. as a powerful source of raising the productivity of L., this decisive factor in socialist construction and the improvement of the material and cultural level of the working population of city and countryside. His basic directives on this question, given in the pamphlet 'The Great Initiative,' are widely known: 'The productivity of labor is in the last analysis the most important, the main thing for the victory of the new social system. Capitalism created the productivity of labor, unknown under serfdom. Capitalism can be finally defeated and will be finally defeated by socialism creating a new, much higher productivity of labor'. 'Communism is the highest, compared to capitalist, productivity of labor of voluntary, conscious, united workers using advanced technology...'. In one of his most profound and powerful newspaper articles, 'One of the Great Victories of Technology' ['Pravda' (No. 91/295), May 4 (April 21) 1913], Lenin touches upon Ramsey's discovery of the possibility of underground gasification of coal and raises in all depth above all the problem that 'The technique of capitalism with each day more and more outgrows the social conditions that doom the working people to wage slavery,' and on the other hand, vividly reveals the irreconcilable difference between the two systems, clarifying that: 'the consequences of this revolution for the entire social life in the modern capitalist system will be quite different from what this discovery would cause under socialism'. At the same time, he unfolds the grandest picture of the improvement of labor conditions under socialism: 'The electrification of all factories and railroads will make the conditions of L. more hygienic, will free millions of workers from smoke, dust, and dirt, will accelerate the transformation of dirty, repulsive workshops into clean, light, worthy of man laboratories. Electric lighting and heating of every house will free millions of 'household slaves' from the necessity of killing three-quarters of their lives in a foul-smelling kitchen'. As is known, the technical reconstruction of the USSR and the enormous work in the field of labor protection already now lead to a fundamental improvement of labor conditions and the creation of palaces of labor-new plants, children of the 1st and 2nd Five-Year Plans, resembling 'clean, light, worthy of man laboratories'. Continuing to further brilliantly develop the theory and practice of Leninism, Comrade Stalin gave unsurpassed examples of the application of materialist dialectics to the practice of socialist construction and in particular in the field of the organization of L. His famous 'six conditions' and the fixing of special attention on the questions of mechanization are closely connected with the questions of improving labor conditions. According to the resolution of the XVI Party Conference, 'the wide introduction of mechanization becomes completely necessary both for the successful fulfillment of the production and construction plan, which requires the movement of enormous freight flows, and for the replacement of manual L. in heavy work and in harmful industries'. On the basis of Lenin's formulation of the question of socialist competition, our party, under the direct leadership of Comrade Stalin, achieved that socialist forms of L.'

(socialist competition and the shock-worker movement) have already become predominant in the USSR, so that Labor for the majority of workers has been transformed 'from a shameful and heavy burden, as it was considered before,' into 'a matter of honor, a matter of glory, a matter of valor and heroism' (Stalin). And not without reason, at the XVI Party Congress, Comrade Stalin, having analyzed the achievements of the USSR in recent years in regard to the material and cultural position of the working class, also said: 'all this will create such a working and living environment for the working class that will enable us to raise a new generation of workers, healthy and cheerful, capable of raising the power of the Soviet state to the proper height and defending it with their chests against encroachments from enemies.' In the past years of socialist construction in the USSR on the basis of fundamental technical reconstruction of production, its mechanization, significant successes in raising the cultural and living level of the proletariat and socialist forms of Labor, we have achieved enormous successes in regard to the growth of Labor productivity. It is sufficient to note that during the years of the first five-year plan, Labor productivity increased by 41%, and in the second five-year plan, the growth of Labor productivity in industry should reach 43%, i.e., as the resolution of the XVI Party Congress states, to such dimensions that Labor productivity becomes the decisive factor in fulfilling the planned program for increasing production in the second five-year period. In light of the tasks of raising Labor productivity, great importance is attached to the task put forward by Comrade Stalin at the plenum of the CC and CCC in January 1933 of mastering technology and the organization of Labor, one of the necessary constituent elements of which under the conditions of the socialist system is the creation of healthy working conditions, S94 the elimination of professional hazards and dangers, on the basis of maximum consideration of the requirements of human physiology with regard to the peculiarities of sex and age. Rationalization of labor. Taylorism. The beginning of capitalist rationalization of labor was laid by Frederick Taylor (Frederick Winslow Taylor, 1846-1915), an American engineer, who first developed the system of 'scientific management' (scientific management) or 'scientific organization of labor and production.' Taylorism was long extolled by the ideologues of the bourgeoisie as the true introduction of science into the spontaneous process of production, as a means to eliminate the anarchy and wastefulness of production, as a source of enormous increase in productivity and profitability of enterprises, as the prerequisites for civil peace—in a word, as a panacea for all the contradictions of capitalism, which the bourgeoisie clearly felt at the end of the 19th century, without being able or willing to uncover their true roots. At the same time, Taylorism met with fierce resistance from the working masses and revolutionary workers' organizations, since its implementation was naturally accompanied by a further intensification of exploitation, worsening of working conditions and the position of the working class as a whole. In a number of American Taylorized enterprises, the situation went as far as strikes, which sometimes even necessitated the appointment of special government commissions, which were forced to confirm (Hawthorne) that the new system leads to an unprecedented increase in the intensity of Labor, to sharp fatigue, to the dequalification of workers, etc. Lenin, even before the revolution, devoted two articles to Taylorism, in which he vividly reveals its entire class nature. In the article 'The System of Sweat Extraction' he wrote: 'What does this "scientific system" consist of? In extracting three times as much labor from the worker during the same working day. They make the strongest and most skillful worker work; they record in special hours in seconds and fractions of seconds the time spent on each operation, on each movement; they develop the most economical and most productive methods of work, they reproduce the work of the best worker on a cinematographic film, etc. And as a result—for the same 9-10 hours of work, they extract three times as much labor from the worker, they mercilessly wear out all his strength, they suck out every drop of nervous and muscular energy of the hired slave at triple speed. Will he die earlier?—There are many others outside the gate... The progress of technology and science in capitalist society means progress in the art of extracting sweat... The worker first gets an increase. And hundreds of workers are laid off. Those who remain work four times more intensively, straining at work. They will squeeze out all the strength of the worker and drive him out. They only take young and strong ones. They extract sweat according to all the rules of science...'. After the revolution, Lenin (in 1918) again returned to the questions of Taylorism, saying: 'The last word of capitalism in this respect is the Taylor system, and like every progress of capitalism, it combines in itself the refined atrocities of bourgeois exploitation and a series of the richest scientific achievements in the analysis of mechanical movements during work, in the elimination of unnecessary and awkward movements, in the development of the most correct methods of work, in the introduction of the best systems of accounting and control, etc. It is necessary to create in Russia the study and teaching of the Taylor system, systematic testing and adaptation of it.' And indeed, in Taylorism, one must clearly distinguish its negative aspects, related to the intensification of the exploitation of Labor, and those positive elements that were absorbed by the Soviet, socialist organization of Labor, in particular being widely used by the mass 'notovsk' movement in the USSR (approximately in 1921-27). To the typically capitalist features of Taylorism, which serve to strengthen capitalism, one should first of all attribute its peculiar social theory and practice. Complex systems of differential progressive wages are constructed in such a way that, by all means encouraging the worker to increase the speed and intensity of work and often bringing him almost to exhaustion (sweat system), they at the same time increase surplus value, and therefore the profit of the capitalist, incomparably more than the worker's earnings. Furthermore, Taylorism by all possible means seeks to cause frenzied 'competition' among workers: through very skillful systems of 'lessons' and wages, it leads to the fact that stronger, more skillful or healthier and at the same time less class-conscious workers who have surpassed their comrades are placed under special patronage of the employer or foreman and receive significant material benefits. In this way, Taylorism seeks in every way to sow discord and disrupt the feeling of solidarity among workers even within the framework of one enterprise. At the same time, although in the works of Taylor himself and his disciples there are often passages speaking of the need for careful attitude to the worker's strength, although examples of preventing fatigue are given, etc., all this is only non-binding phrases. While carefully studying all elements of the technological process and means of production, Taylorism completely forgets about scientificity when it comes to the living organism, energy expenditure and the course of physiological processes during work. The machine, tool, workshop equipment, all elements of production are carefully analyzed and studied, but the main productive force, the creator of all values—the worker—remains outside the sphere of study. In creating his 'lesson,' Taylor proceeded from the maximum working capacity of specially selected persons with exceptional physical strength and special, unusual endurance far exceeding the average capabilities of the vast majority of people. It is characteristic that Taylor conducted his experiments on the study of carrying cast ingots on a certain worker Schmidt, who, according to Taylor's own words, in his physical qualities approached the type of an ox. At the same time, quasi-scientific physiological observations were made in a completely unscientific, very simplified manner to establish the necessary periods of rest. It is also very characteristic of Taylorism that, while developing issues of maximum increase in the productivity of physical labor on the basis of its intensification, it never raises the question of its rationalization through mechanization of workers and production processes. In general, although Taylorism is only one and moreover an incipient system of capitalist rationalization, it entirely possesses all the basic features characterizing it, leading to early and rapid wear of the workers' organisms. The positive elements of Taylorism should include: 1) the striving for technical rationalization of all links of the production process. Taylor himself studied 'the art of cutting metal' (this is the title of one of his books) for 26 years in order to find the best systems of machines, the most advantageous cutting speeds, the properties of cutting tools, etc. How seriously he approached this work is shown by at least the following data: to determine the laws of metal cutting, more than 800,000 pounds of chips were removed by cutting tools; these experiments cost about 400,000 rubles. As a result of this enormous work, Taylor managed to achieve a significant increase in productivity due to changes in the types of cutting tools and working conditions of machines. 2) Careful study of working tools and instruments. For example, Taylor carefully studied the question of what the load of a shovel should be.'

To resolve this question, observations were made on several first-class workers. The load on the shovel was subjected to sequential changes, and it turned out that the greatest daily work was obtained with a certain material when using a shovel that lifts about 8³/₄ kg. On the basis of these conclusions, it was deemed advisable to supply the workers of the factory being studied with shovels of 8-10 different sizes, adapted to the type of material being moved. Similar to shovels, picks, crowbars, and other tools were also standardized, for which purpose thousands of observations with a stopwatch were previously conducted. 3) Rationalization of equipment and material layout. The same requirement of a rational plan as in Taylorism is also applied to the system of movement of materials and semi-finished products around the factory, to the timely delivery of materials and tools to machines, and to the system of acceptance, storage, and issuance of materials, tools, parts being processed, and finished products, etc., to the care of all production tools, transmissions, tools, etc. 4) Rationalization of management through a special distribution or instruction bureau, based on strict accounting of everything done at the enterprise and strict control over the fulfillment of the planned objectives. 5) Establishment of fixed work methods based on preliminary careful study of work methods, time studies, and study of individual worker movements, etc. All work in Taylorized enterprises is carried out according to a strictly planned plan based on a system of work orders and instruction cards. 6) The idea of professional selection, first expressed although carried out in an extremely simplified and elementary manner (see Professional Selection). Taylorism, having played a very significant positive role in the development of the ideas of the scientific organization of Labor, is now even in capitalist countries a passed stage, having given way to other systems of capitalist organization of Labor (especially Fordism), built on the basis of new technical trends (mechanization of production, continuous flow, etc.). The very term—scientific organization of management, or scientific organization of labor (NOT), originating from Taylorism—in recent years has been replaced by a broader term—rationalization of labor and production or simply rationalization. Capitalist and socialist rationalization. Various bourgeois and social-fascist theorists, as well as a number of authors in the USSR (Ermansky and others), interpreted rationalization in an abstract-idealist manner, completely classless—only as a special introduction of a rational principle into the organization of production, basically proceeding independently of the socio-historical formation, on the basis of only eternal 'general', logically constructed laws (e.g., the well-known 'tectological' laws of Bogdanov, the notorious 'optimum' law of Ermansky, etc.). Such an approach is fundamentally incorrect, contradicting the principles of Marxism-Leninism. It is necessary to clearly distinguish capitalist rationalization from socialist rationalization. Capitalist rationalization is a powerful means of intensifying the exploitation of Labor and increasing surplus value at the expense of the worker. At the same time, capitalist rationalization, as Lenin emphasized as early as in his work on Taylor's article in 1913, is limited only to the limits of one enterprise, and due to the very essence of the capitalist system, cannot introduce elements of rational organization into the national economy as a whole. The introduction of the latest scientific achievements and most valuable technical inventions is delayed due to the antagonistic contradiction between the productive forces and production relations, this fundamental contradiction of the capitalist system, which is very clearly revealed in the era of imperialism (developed by Lenin's teaching on the technical decay of capitalism in connection with monopolies) and especially in the last period of the general economic crisis. As early as 1924, at the II All-Union Conference on NOT, Comrade Kuibyshev in the theses of his program report indicated in the section 'NOT under capitalism' that 'the fear of overproduction and the resulting industrial crisis when sometimes all the major means of production of a given industry are concentrated in the hands of one giant trust creates a reverse incentive for some delay in the application of scientific and practical achievements. The anarchy of production and the disproportional development of individual industries makes the process of scientific creativity and practical application of achievements intermittent, inconsistent, chaotic'. The events of recent years during the general economic crisis have completely confirmed and deepened this assessment, providing a large number of very vivid examples of technical stagnation and regression, conscious braking of the introduction of new improvements, active opposition to mechanization of production, creation of a whole series of special theories about the necessity of stopping technical progress, introducing a 'moratorium on inventions', returning 'to the pick and shovel', etc. (Spengler, Chase, Cahou and many others). Capitalist rationalization directs its main attention not to improving technology, introducing the latest scientific achievements into it, and rationalizing production processes, but first of all to increasing the productivity of directly human Labor. 'The application of methods obtained by science to increase the productivity of living human labor (intensification, improvement of labor quality, etc.) in capitalist society is a favorite way to increase the overall productivity of the enterprise, because this method is always advantageous, directly and directly increasing the profits of enterprises, and is always applicable, if there is no direct resistance from organized workers, who naturally and rightly view an increase in the intensity of their Labor under private ownership of the means of production as an increase in the exploitation of labor by capital...' (Kuibyshev). In his report at the 10th plenum of the Comintern, Comrade Kuusinen gave the following clear definition of capitalist rationalization: 'Capitalist rationalization in the proper sense means pressure to achieve the greatest possible intensity of Labor of each individual worker by reorganizing the labor process according to the conveyor system or a fundamentally similar system of automatic goading... And previously intensification of Labor was always a phenomenon accompanying technical progress, now it has become the direct main goal of technical improvement of labor tools'. And in the resolution of this plenum it is said: 'falling with all its weight on the working class, it—capitalist rationalization—lowers its living standard and in connection with the lengthening of the working day and the introduction of the conveyor system brings the exhausting nature of labor to extreme limits...'. The question of rationalization of Labor is posed in a fundamentally different way in the USSR, because socialist rationalization has an absolutely different meaning. The resolution of the CC VKP(b) of March 25, 1927 states: 'Socialist rationalization has as its goal the increase in the size of the working class, the improvement of its material level, and the satisfaction of the growing needs of the broad masses of workers'. This resolution also specifically emphasizes that the main paths of rationalization in the USSR must go along the line of improving production technology. The resolution states the following about this: 'Improvement of technology and organization of production must go along three main directions: 1) creation of new enterprises on the basis of the latest achievements in science and technology; 2) radical re-equipment of existing enterprises by introducing better technical equipment and a more correct organization of Labor; 3) carrying out a number of practical measures to maximize the use of existing equipment and reorganization of production'. This idea is expressed very vividly and categorically also in the resolution of the XV Congress of the VKP(b) on directives for the compilation¹ of the 5-year plan for the national economy, which indicates that: 'rationalization cannot be carried out without increasing the role of science and scientific technology'. This position was expressed especially vividly by Comrade Stalin in his speech 'On the Tasks of Economic Leaders' at the I All-Union Conference of Workers of Socialist Industry in February 1931: 'We are a country of the most concentrated industry. This means that we can build our industry on the basis of the best technology and ensure thanks to this an unprecedented labor productivity'. No wonder Lenin repeatedly emphasized that we must 'combine the last word of science and capitalist technology with the mass union of conscious workers creating large-scale socialist production'.

From the definitions given above, it is completely clear that, while focusing primarily on the technical reconstruction of production, its maximum mechanization, and rational organization, socialist rationalization at the same time by no means excludes the possibility of a certain intensification of Labor, especially under conditions when its density is completely insufficient (as was the case in the USSR during the restoration period and as is still to some extent the case now, when the 7-hour working day contains on most enterprises a whole series of unfilled work 'gaps', which has recently given rise to the slogan 'work a full 420 minutes in the working day'). Ermansky, Shatan, Rabinovich and a number of other authors, who advocated Menshevik positions in the field of Labor economics, categorically opposed the concept of the intensity of Labor to its productivity, even attempting to rely on Marx. However, such an opposition is absolutely unfounded. Marx directly included two elements of Labor in the concept of its productivity, saying: 'The increase in the productive power of labor and the growth of its intensity in one respect have the same effect. Both increase the mass of products produced in a given period of time' ('Capital', Vol. I, 1934 ed., p. 590). In another place he writes: 'It goes without saying that, with the development of machinery and the accumulation of experience in the special class of machine workers, the speed, and therefore the intensity of labor, naturally increases' ('Capital', Vol. I, Ch. XIII). And finally, in Lenin's pamphlet 'Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Power' we also read: 'The increase in labor productivity requires, first of all, the provision of the material basis for large industry: the development of fuel production, iron, machine building, the chemical industry... Another condition for increasing labor productivity is, first, the educational and cultural elevation of the mass of the population... Secondly, a condition for the economic upturn is also the improvement in the discipline of the working people, their skill, speed, intensity of labor, and its better organization'. However, in the very formulation of the problem of intensification of Labor under capitalism and socialism there is a fundamental difference, making it completely impossible to have the same understanding and application of these terms. Under capitalism, intensification of Labor means an increase in the quantity and intensity of work that does not take into account any physiological laws and leads to exceptional overwork of workers, increased morbidity, intensified trauma, and their premature wear and tear. The conveyor system in the factories of Ford, Bat'a (in Czechoslovakia) and many others requires an unimaginable haste from the worker, an exceptional tension of all forces, which only a few workers can withstand for several years. At the same time, a characteristic feature of all 'rationalized enterprises' is the greatest disregard for issues of Labor protection. During the period of 'rationalization', a characteristic feature is the lowering of the age of workers, and under conditions of crisis unemployment, workers over 40 years old or with a thin, sickly appearance are generally not accepted at many factories. It is now very common among workers to dye their hair to look younger, and even to use atropin to give their eyes a more lively shine. At the XIII Plenum of the ECCI, Comrade Kuusinen elaborated in detail the essence of modern capitalist rationalization, characterizing it as follows: 'It is incorrect to attribute any progressive meaning to that crisis 'rationalization' which is carried out in capitalist countries. It basically amounts only to intensification, increasing the intensity of labor, to an increase in the degree of exploitation, and this is completely different from increasing labor productivity on the basis of technical improvement of the means of production. Indeed, in recent times, capitalists have almost everywhere intensified the sweating system in the process of work to such an extent that this explains in large part the prolonged preservation of 'Kurzarbeit', i.e., the employment of a huge number of workers only for a couple of days a week, because otherwise they cannot withstand exploitation pushed to the limits. This has nothing to do with increasing labor productivity on the basis of technical progress. It is simply predatory destruction of the productive force, the vital force of the hired slaves of capital'. As a result of this crisis rationalization, capital has shifted a significant portion of all costs and burdens of the crisis onto the working masses (unemployment, incomplete working week, reduction of wages, unprecedented intensification of labor). And if at the XVI Party Congress Comrade Stalin, pointing to the close connection between rationalization and the crisis, said: 'It turned out exactly as the Bolsheviks said two or three years ago. The Bolsheviks said that the growth of technique in capitalist countries, the growth of the productive forces and capitalist rationalization, within the limited limits of the living standard of millions of workers and peasants, must inevitably lead to a severe economic crisis', then at the XVII Congress Comrade Stalin already specifically emphasized that 'capitalism has managed to somewhat ease the position of industry at the expense of the workers—by deepening their exploitation through increasing the intensity of their labor...'. Modern capitalist rationalization especially vividly confirms the words of Marx: 'Capital does not ask about the length of life of labor power. It is interested only in the maximum of labor power that can be set in motion during the working day. It achieves this goal by shortening the life of labor power, as a greedy landowner achieves an increase in the yield of land by plundering the fertility of the soil'. Under socialism, the problem of intensification of Labor is posed in a completely different way. Already in the restoration period, Comrade Kuibyshev, in the theses cited above, developing Lenin's position on the need to apply the scientific and progressive that the Taylor system contains, said: 'Of course, in the work to increase the productivity of live human labor under the conditions of the Soviet state, we must emphasize raising the qualification of labor and improving its quality by applying the methods of work discovered by science and practice that save human energy. But it would be a mistake to fundamentally deny the possibility of increasing the intensity of labor in those areas of industry where the modern level of labor intensity lags behind the corresponding level in capitalist countries. The increase in the intensity of Labor under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat is not the exploitation of the working class, but only the efforts of the working class itself in defending the economic positions it has won from the bourgeoisie. Of course, in the intensification of Labor, the interests of Labor protection and the fight against the wear and tear of the organism must be taken into account. The existence of the proletarian dictatorship, the enormous role played by the trade unions in the life of our state, is a sufficient guarantee against perversions and deviations in this field'. And a little earlier he pointed out that 'in the field of increasing the productivity of live human Labor, only socialist society can abandon the intensification of Labor in the sense of increasing the expenditure of human energy and stand exclusively on the path of maximum increase in the qualification of workers and improvement of the quality of their Labor by applying scientifically discovered methods of work that save energy...'. In a number of decisive directive resolutions, the issues of rationalization in the USSR are closely linked with the issues of improving conditions of Labor and living conditions and the implementation of a number of measures in the field of improving working conditions. Thus, in the resolution of the CC VKP(b) 'On the organization of oral and printed agitation for rationalization of production and on involving the broad masses of workers in carrying out this campaign' of May 9, 1927, it says: 'It is especially necessary in agitation to use the achievements resulting from the rationalization of production, in particular in the field of improving the position of workers, such as: improvement of technical safety, measures for Labor protection, increase in wages, expansion of production, increase in the total number of employed workers, etc.'. The main method of rationalization in the USSR on the basis of its technical reconstruction is the widespread implementation of mechanization of production, and mechanization in the USSR has as its task not only solving the problem of labor-intensive work, but also facilitating and improving working conditions. Thus, in the resolution of the XVII Party Conference it is directly stated: 'The widespread introduction of mechanization becomes completely necessary both for the successful fulfillment of the production and construction plan, which requires the movement of huge cargo flows, and for the replacement of manual labor in heavy work and in harmful industries'. The second five-year plan provides 'to basically complete the mechanization of all labor-intensive and heavy processes in industry...', 'and also to basically complete the mechanization of agriculture'.

Thus, socialist rationalization is a powerful means of accelerating the pace of socialist construction and at the same time improving Labor, improving the living conditions of workers, raising their qualifications, and finally a powerful means of eliminating the opposition between city and countryside, since as a result of the technical reconstruction of agriculture, agricultural Labor is transformed into a variety of industrial Labor. Working time. The question of working time "has always been one of the most important problems of the labor movement since its inception, and at the same time has enormous social significance. The problem of working time is closely connected with questions of fatigue resulting from excessive strain of forces exceeding natural physiological boundaries, violating the physiological laws of normal functioning of the organism, and the lack of possibility of normal, timely and complete restoration of those physiological expenditures of the organism during Labor, which, as Marx says, must be compensated for again. Speaking of the tendency of capital to 'compensate for the number of workers, or the magnitude of variable capital, by increasing the rate of surplus value or by lengthening the working day,' Marx points out that it 'meets boundaries which it is unable to transgress,' for 'part of them (hours.-S. K.) according to biological laws is necessary as rest for the restoration of labor power.' And, Marx concludes, 'therefore... the decrease in the number of employed workers can be compensated for by an increase in the degree of their exploitation only within the physiological limits of the working day.' At the same time, it goes without saying that not every increase in the consumption of labor power, i.e., not every increase in the duration or intensity of Labor, adversely affects the organism. 'Up to a certain point, the increased wear and tear of labor power, inextricably linked with the lengthening of the working day, can be compensated for by increased replacement of the organism's expenditures. Beyond this point, the wear and tear increases in geometric progression, and at the same time all normal conditions for the reproduction and functioning of labor power are destroyed' (Marx). Indeed, according to numerous observations, with excessive length of the working day, clear symptoms of fatigue appear, both somatic and psychic, and work capacity decreases both quantitatively and qualitatively. Various experiments have established that fatigue from excessive duration of work not only causes a number of pre-pathological or sometimes even pathological disturbances in the organism, but also lowers the immunobiological properties of blood and lymph, i.e., lowers the resistance of the organism to infections, as well as increases the intensity of the effect of toxic substances, high temperature, etc. In the light of these experimental data, the numerous statistical data indicating, in relation to workers in capitalist countries, a direct connection between the duration of the working day and their morbidity and even length of life become completely understandable. Thus, for example, Marx cites without any comments one of the medical reports concerning bakers: 'Labor continuing more than 12 hours has the tendency to destroy the health of the worker, premature old age and early death.' About blacksmiths he writes: 'An occupation which represents almost an instinctive art of man, in itself impeccable, becomes due to excessive labor destructive to man... As a result, it turns out that within a limited period he increases the work he produces by one quarter and dies at 37 years instead of 50.' His general conclusion states: 'Capitalist production, which is essentially the production of surplus value, the extraction of surplus labor, produces by lengthening the working day not only the blighting of human labor power, from which the normal moral and physical conditions for its development and activity are taken away. It produces premature exhaustion and destruction of labor power itself. It lengthens the productive time of the worker for a certain period, by shortening the duration of his life.' From later works on the connection between health and the duration of the working day, the results of a special investigation of workers in military factories, conducted during the imperialist war by the British government commission on the study of industrial fatigue, are presented. table 1. Groups of workers Number of working hours per week Heavy or very heavy work Work of medium difficulty or light number of workers in the group percentage of workers with health below normal number of workers in the group percentage of workers with health below normal Workers aged 41 years and less 70 { { more than 70 ( less than 60 { more than 60 21 31 5 U 1 010 Teenagers aged 18 years At the same time, in no case can one, of course, limit oneself to considering the problem of working time only from the biological point of view (physiology of Labor) and in connection with questions of fatigue, as is often done. This problem is much broader and under capitalism and during the period of socialist construction. It is closely connected with the basic questions of economics, with the very essence of the capitalist system, with the material and living conditions of the working class, with the class struggle of the proletariat for the size of its share in the national income, with the struggle for labor legislation, with the productivity of Labor, with the pace of raising the general cultural and technical growth of the working masses in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is precisely in this way that Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin always posed the question. The founders of scientific socialism always considered questions of working time as the most characteristic object of one of the sharpest areas of class struggle and as part of the broader question of the production of surplus value in the form of absolute surplus value (as opposed to relative surplus value, created at a given duration of the working day as a result of reducing that part of it which goes to the reproduction of the value of labor power) by increasing the number of hours of surplus Labor. Theoretically considering the problem of the working day - logically, on the basis of an analysis of capitalist and pre-capitalist production relations, and historically - as a struggle lasting for centuries for its duration and for corresponding legislation, Marx clearly shows that this is by no means some physiological 'natural' problem conditioned by immutable biological laws. At the same time, Marx in the section 'The Working Day' gives an unsurpassed example of the dialectical-materialist unity of the comprehensive consideration of this question with full account of both the social and physiological aspects of the problem. Marx points out right at the beginning of his consideration of the question of the working day that its length 'is not a constant, but a variable quantity.' He further writes: 'On the basis of the capitalist mode of production, necessary labor can always constitute only one part of his working day, and therefore the working day can never be shortened to the dimensions of this minimum. But the working day has a maximum limit. It cannot be extended beyond a certain limit. The maximum limit of this is determined in two ways. First, by the physical limit of labor power. Man can expend only a certain amount of life force during the course of a day, the natural duration of which is 24 hours. Thus, a horse can work day in and day out only for 8 hours. For a certain part of the day the force must rest, sleep, for another part of the day man must satisfy other physical needs - eat, maintain cleanliness, dress, etc. Beyond these purely physical limits, the lengthening of the working day encounters moral limits: the worker needs time to satisfy intellectual and social needs, the volume and quantity of which are determined by the general state of culture. Therefore, the changes to which the working day is subject move within the limits of physical and social boundaries. But both kinds of limits are very elastic and open up the widest scope. Thus, for example, we encounter a working day of 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hours, i.e., a working day of very different lengths.' What then finally determines the physical length of the working day, or, speaking more generally, the duration of working time under capitalism, in each specific historical conditions of a certain time and space, i.e., in each separate country in a certain period of time? The answer is clear. Class struggle and the actual relationships of class forces. Under capitalism, especially in its early stages, when the increase in surplus value through the intensification of Labor, which sets natural limits to the lengthening of the working day, still played a relatively small role, the bourgeoisie establishes such a duration of working time which, in the words of Marx, contradicts all 'divine and human laws,' 'lengthens the working day beyond all natural limits'; and this is explained by 'the tendency of capital to the unlimited extraction of labor power.'

And as a result, 'it is self-evident that the worker throughout his life, without exception, is nothing other than labor power, that therefore all the time at his disposal naturally and rightfully constitutes working time and consequently must entirely enter into the process of self-increase of capital. As for the time necessary for the formation of a human being, for intellectual development, for the fulfillment of social functions, for comradeship, for the free play of physical and intellectual forces, even for the celebration of Sunday—be it in a country of at least the Saturday saints—all this is empty nonsense'. In one of Marx's manuscripts published only recently ('Bolshevik', 1933, No. 1-2) we read: 'The introduction of machine labor, etc., giving new impulses for the absolute lengthening of the working day, at the same time facilitates this lengthening, depriving labor of its, so to speak, capacity to help itself (auxiliary). And this action it produces quite independently of the special nature of the branch of production in which machines are introduced, and independently of whether the product of this branch enters into the consumption of workers or not'. Here we see that Marx clearly emphasizes that the tendency of capitalism to lengthen the working day is connected with the very essence of capitalist relations and is under these conditions quite inevitable. This theoretically exposes all the hypocrisy of the social-fascists, telling workers all kinds of fairy tales about the possibility of reducing working time to any significant limits by means of labor legislation alone and on the basis of international cooperation with employers and governments within, for example, the Labor Bureau of the League of Nations. In his works, V. I. Lenin devoted much attention to the question of working time. At the very beginning of his appearance on the political arena in the struggle for the liberation of the working class, Lenin in a number of proclamations and popular articles propagated the idea of the struggle for an 8-hour working day and exposed the class nature and all the hypocrisy of the tsarist factory legislation on working time. Lenin returned to the question of working time repeatedly during the reaction between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, studying factual materials (in connection with the statistical work of engineer Kozmikhin-Lanin) and theoretically illuminating this problem in connection with the policy of social-democracy and the struggle of Bolshevism against the liquidators. For example, in the 'Explanatory Note to the Project of the Basic Principles of a Law on the 8-Hour Working Day' written in the autumn of 1909, Lenin writes: 'The first part or first chapter of the explanatory note should include a popular and, as far as possible, agitation-oriented exposition of the arguments in favor of the 8-hour working day in general, from the point of view of labor productivity, the sanitary and cultural interests of the proletariat, in general the interests of its liberation struggle'. Thus we see that Lenin here also poses the problem of the 8-hour working day as part of the 'liberation struggle', without at the same time losing sight of the interests of the protection of Labor in the narrow sense ('sanitary'). In 1911 in the article 'On the Election Campaign and the Election Platform' ['Social-Democrat', No. 24, October 31 (18), 1911] Lenin, analyzing and justifying in detail the election platform of social-democracy for the elections to the Fourth State Duma, considers that the brief general slogan during the elections should be the following three points: 1) republic, 2) confiscation of all landlord land, 3) 8-hour working day, and further writes: 'Even less necessary are comments on the third point: 8-hour working day. The counterrevolution is furiously snatching away from the workers the gains of the fifth year, and the struggle for the improvement of conditions of Labor and life grows stronger in the working milieu; at the head of these improvements stands the 8-hour working day'. In the article 'Karl Marx', written in 1913 for the Granat Encyclopedic Dictionary, Lenin characterized the economy of the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat as follows: 'A tremendous increase in labor productivity, reduction of the working day, replacement of the remnants, ruins of small, primitive, scattered production by collective, improved labor—these are the direct consequences of such a transition'. During the October Revolution Lenin was not only the initiator of the promulgation of the law on the 8-hour working day already on the fourth day after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the victorious proletariat, but he also gave in the program of the RCP(b) a clear prospective line for the further development of the question of working time during the period of socialist construction. According to the text of the program 'The RCP(b) must set itself the task of establishing: 1) in the future, with the general increase in labor productivity, a maximum six-hour working day without reduction of remuneration for labor and with the obligation of the working people, in addition, to devote two hours, without special remuneration, to the theory of their craft and production, to practical training in the technique of state administration and military art...'. After the October Revolution Lenin specially emphasized that 'our aim is the free performance of state duties by every working person, after completing the 8-hour 'lesson' of productive work; the transition to this is especially difficult, but only in this transition lies the guarantee of the final consolidation of socialism'. And with the successes of socialist construction, with the approach to a classless society and the increase in the productive power of labor, the duration of necessary working time is constantly decreasing, and at the same time the inevitable and ineradicable contradiction under capitalism between working time and the worker's time, between Labor and rest, disappears. At the same time 'working time itself, thanks to the fact that it is limited to a normal period, that it no longer exists for another, but for me myself, together with the elimination of social oppositions between masters and workers, etc., as real social labor, finally, as the basis of free time—acquires a completely different, freer character' (Marx). Working time in capitalist countries. The workers' struggle for legislative reduction of the working day began already during the period of crafts, but received more significant development under capitalism. For the first time the slogan of the 8-hour working day as one of the basic demands of the proletariat was put forward by Karl Marx in the early 50s of the last century. The first congress of the Second International in 1889 adopted a resolution on the struggle for legislative implementation of the 8-hour working day. By 1914—at the beginning of the imperialist war—no country in the world had passed a law on the 8-hour working day (in fact the 8-hour working day was predominant only in Australia). After the end of the world war, in connection with the upsurge of the revolutionary workers' movement, the 8-hour working day was actually implemented almost everywhere. A number of governments made certain concessions in the field of legislative protection of labor and in particular on the enactment of laws on the 8-hour working day. At the Washington conference convened by the International Labor Bureau in 1919, a draft convention on the 8-hour working day (48 hours per week) was drawn up, which was then to be ratified (no later than July 1, 1922) by all countries belonging to the League of Nations. However, during the 16 years since then, the convention on the working day has been ratified only by a few minor states, and moreover, after the expiration of the 10-year term it lost all force, and now the fuss raised around it at the time by social-fascists of all countries has completely ceased. Although in individual states laws on the 8-hour working day were passed even before the Washington conference, very soon a sharp offensive of capital began against all post-war economic gains of the working class and first of all against the length of the working day. And very soon in all capitalist countries the 8-hour working day was nullified. For example in Germany the decree of December 21, 1923, while 'in principle' leaving the 8-hour working day, provided for the wide possibility of lengthening working time beyond this norm per day by collective agreements. In England the maximum working time for adult workers is not fixed, and cases of 11-hour working days are not infrequently encountered. The legislative limit of the working day for miners was raised from 7 to 8 hours after the defeat of the heroic miners' strike of 1926. In the USA regulation of working time is within the competence of individual states. Legislation to a small degree regulates the working time of adult workers. In France the law on the 8-hour working day, 'principally' established as early as 1919, is in fact nullified by a number of significant exceptions and exclusions of a temporary or permanent nature. In fascist Italy the 8-hour working day formally existed for some time, although by agreement between employers and workers an increase in working time to 60 hours per week was allowed.'

But subsequently, when the fascist government consolidated its power, a law was issued on June 29, 1926, which established a 9-hour workday for all industry in Italy. In the conditions of the worldwide economic crisis, the sharp decline in production led not only to an unprecedented increase in unemployment but also to the widespread adoption of a shortened workweek, of course with a corresponding reduction in wages, i.e., to a special form of hidden partial unemployment. And despite this, in a number of countries, a very long workday remains a common mass phenomenon, aggravated by the unprecedented intensification of Labor. For example, in Germany, according to trade union survey data, only 53.5% of all workers work 48 hours per week (which, by the way, means an actual workday of more than 8 hours both due to pre-holiday reduction of working time and due to the widespread adoption of an incomplete workweek), and 17.2% work more than 54 hours per week. And this was still before Hitler's 'labor front' policy with the elimination of trade unions and collective agreements. It is natural to expect that the picture of the actual workday in Germany, now shrouded in complete darkness, is even much worse. In the annual report of the English Central Industrial Inspection, it is stated that in 1951, despite the crisis, unemployment, and part-time work, in the English textile industry, after the abolition of the gold standard, the legal duration of the workweek for women and children was again established at 557₂ hours, and that for male workers not only in the textile industry but also in a number of other industries, the workweek is 56-60 hours. In Italy, the government issued a decree on November 25, 1931, which provided that 'public enterprises are permitted to employ their workers on Sundays and general holidays, as well as through overtime work.' In Poland, until 1933, there was still formally a law on the 8-hour workday, and despite this, in Lodz, for example, according to data from the Textile Workers' Union, out of 50 factories surveyed, 16 factories had workers working 9-10 hours a day, 27 had workers working 12 hours, and 7 had workers working 16 hours. Under the law adopted by the Sejm on March 17, 1933, not only did the Minister of Labor gain the right to extend working time for seasonal work, but in all enterprises in general, when concluding collective agreements, the establishment of any duration of the workday 'by agreement of the parties' is permitted. Working time in Russia. The history of tsarist Russia reveals a very clear parallel between the development of legislation on working time and the intensity of labor, in particular the strike movement. The only law in this field - the law of June 2, 1897 - was issued as a result of a series of strikes throughout Russia, starting in 1894. V. I. Lenin dedicated an extensive brochure to this law, printed in Geneva and distributed illegally in Russia. He explained the very issuance of the law simply and vividly in the following words: 'The new factory law was also forced upon the government by the workers, also won by the workers from their worst enemy, just like the law of June 3, 1886, about rules of internal order, about fines, about wage rates, etc., issued 11 years ago' ('The New Factory Law', Collected Works, Vol. I, p. 304). The 1897 law limited working time during daytime work to 11 1/2 hours per day, on Saturdays and on the eve of holidays, as well as during nighttime work - to 10 hours. At the same time, overtime work was widely permitted. Despite the fact that in the overwhelming majority of enterprises, actual working time was considerably lower than the standards established by the 1897 law, further reduction of working time standards by legislative means did not occur either under the tsarist power or under the Provisional Government of 1917. During the period of the 1905 revolution, the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies attempted to implement the 8-hour workday by revolutionary means, but this achievement was destroyed in connection with the employers' lockout and the further defeat of the revolutionary movement. In the era of the imperialist war, even the extremely broad standards of the 1897 law began to seem excessively oppressive to employers, and the Minister of Trade and Industry was granted the right to permit deviations to all factory, mining, and metallurgical enterprises producing items necessary for national defense. After the February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government, under the leadership of social democrats in the Ministry of Labor (from May 1917), also stubbornly refused to issue a law on the 8-hour workday, despite the fact that in the overwhelming majority of industrial enterprises, workers had implemented this basic revolutionary achievement by de facto means. Legislation on working time in the USSR. According to the decree of October 29, 1917, and the Labor Code, for all persons engaged in physical Labor, an 8-hour workday was established, and for persons engaged in clerical and mental Labor, not directly connected with production - a 6-hour workday. In addition, for a number of professions engaged in harmful work, a shortened workday was established, ranging from 7 to 3 hours (for example, in some departments of particularly harmful production in the manufacture of white lead). A shortened workday is established for the following groups of work and professions: 1) for professions that are constantly in contact with poisons in the course of work, under conditions that may cause chronic or acute poisoning with lead, mercury, arsenic, and other poisons; 2) for professions whose work is associated with continuous increased nervous tension (telephone, radio, etc.); 3) for work in compressed and rarefied air (caisson, diving, pilots, etc.); 4) for individual professions whose work underground is associated with special strain, harmfulness, or danger; 5) for work carried out at high temperatures for at least half of the normal workday; 6) for work in the open air at particularly low temperatures; 7) in exceptional cases with constant stay in an atmosphere with a high content of harmful dust: dry grinding in porcelain production, work on unprotected sandblasting apparatus, etc. When establishing a shortened workday on the basis of the above points, the combination of the listed harmful factors with each other, as well as with particularly heavy physical strain, is taken into account. At the same time, Soviet Labor legislation has radically limited the use of overtime work, which is permitted only in especially exceptional cases specifically named in the law, each time with the approval of the wage-conflict commission and with the confirmation of the labor inspectoror, and for a duration of no more than 2 hours in two consecutive days, and in total no more than 120 hours per year per worker. By the Manifesto of the USSR Central Executive Committee on the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, a gradual transition of all industrial workers to a 7-hour workday within 5 years was proclaimed. This transition was completed ahead of schedule, and now all industrial and transport workers work 7 hours in the day shift and 6 hours in the night shift. The actual duration of the workday for 1913-1935 is given in the following table *: Table 2. Average workday Total scheduled overtime work (in hours) Years absolute relative (in hours) 1913 ...... 9.7 0.30 10.0 1911 ....... 9.53 0.20 9.7 1915 ....... 9.50 0.16 9.7 1917 ....... 9.74 0.18 9.9 1918 ....... 8.76 0.13 8.9 1919 ....... 8.13 0.37 8.5 1920 ....... 7.90 0.40 8.3 1921 ....... 7.80 0.80 8.6 1922 ....... 7.61 0.29 7.9 1923 ....... 7.52 0.28 7.8 1924 ....... 7,И 0.19 7.8 1925 ....... 7.42 0.18 7.6 1926 ....... 7.34 0.16 7.5 1927 ....... 7.35 0.11 7.45 1928 ....... 7.21 0.13 7.37 1929 ....... 7.25 0.12 7.37 1930 ....... 7.26 0.12 7.38 1931 ....... 7.12 7.03 0.14 0.13 7.26 7.16 1932 ....... 72.6 71.8 1933 (September) . 6.89 - .- - 1935 (January) . 6.95 0.11 7.06 70.6 According to Soviet legislation, working time at night should be one hour less than the normal (daytime) working time for a given profession. Soviet labor legislation establishes a mandatory break during work, no later than 4 hours after the start of work and lasting from 1/8 hour to 2 hours (on breaks for breastfeeding a child, see below). For all workers hired Labor, in the USSR, according to the Labor Code, with a 7-day workweek, a mandatory 42-hour weekly rest was established. Also, in addition to weekly rest days, two types of non-working days were established: holidays (New Year and revolutionary anniversaries) and local rest days (8 per year). In 1929, the so-called 'continuous workweek' began to be widely implemented, and the introduction of a continuous workweek simultaneously meant a transition to a 5- and 6-day workweek. At the same time, 5 additional rest days per year were established - revolutionary holidays (May 1-2, November 7-8, and January 22 - the day of remembrance for Lenin).

As experience with the introduction of a more rational distribution of work and rest days associated with the reduction of the work week proves, this has had a very beneficial effect on both Labor productivity (as a result of increased work capacity) and on the morbidity and injury rates of the working masses. Along with serious achievements associated with continuous production, it is necessary to point out that in the course of its implementation, with insufficient attention to the organization of labor, a major deficiency was revealed in a number of enterprises, which was strongly condemned by the leader of the party, Comrade Stalin, in his historic speech of June 23, 1931. He pointed out that 'depersonalization is the absence of any responsibility for assigned work, the absence of responsibility for machinery, for machines, for tools, and that it came into enterprises as an illegal companion of continuous production.' At the same time, Comrade Stalin with all decisiveness stated that 'it would be incorrect to say that continuous production necessarily leads to depersonalization in production. With proper organization of labor, with the organization of responsibility of each for a specific job, with the attachment of specific groups of workers to machinery, machines, with proper organization of shifts not inferior to each other in quality and qualification—under these conditions continuous production leads to a tremendous increase in labor productivity, to improvement in the quality of work, to the eradication of depersonalization.' The entire party, following Comrade Stalin's speech, starting from the summer of 1931, declared a decisive struggle against 'the appearance of continuous production' when in fact both workers and equipment were idle, or against such continuous production that gives rise to depersonalization. In connection with this, a number of government decrees were issued, making it possible where appropriate to temporarily restore breaks (but already not with a seven-day, but with a six-day week). At the same time, however, it is emphasized everywhere that as the necessary conditions are created, the continuous five-day week must be restored. In three-shift enterprises while maintaining continuous production, the so-called 'four-team schedule' is introduced with a monthly balance of working time of 168 hours 45 min. Thus the conditions for Labor and rest under such a work regime are exceptionally favorable. At the same time, with the four-team schedule, 4 permanent workers are assigned to each machine (workplace) with an exact distribution of time for work and rest for each. The introduction of the four-team schedule into practice immediately showed its viability and was associated with an increase in Labor productivity and a number of other advantages. Furthermore, in the USSR, all persons working continuously for hire for at least 5½ months are granted an annual vacation of not less than two weeks, or 12 working days (in particularly harmful enterprises—four weeks, or 24 working days, for minors—in all cases one month). The provision of monetary compensation instead of a regular vacation is permitted only with the consent of the wage-conflict commission, and in the absence of the latter—by agreement of the relevant trade union body with the administration. If a regular vacation was not used in a given year through no fault of the worker and the worker did not receive compensation for it, the vacation of the following year must be extended by the unused period. Combining vacations for more than two years is not permitted, just as the non-provision of a vacation and its replacement with compensation for two consecutive years is prohibited. The non-provision and replacement of vacations for minors and additional vacations for harmful work with money is strictly prohibited. Special provision is made for compensation to a worker for an unused vacation upon dismissal. The actual duration of vacations in calendar days is given in the following table: Table 3. Years Calendar days Years Calendar days 1926/27 .... 6.8 | 1928...... 12.5 1929 ...... 10.3 1930 ...... 12.7 1931 ...... 12.9 1932 ...... 14.1 | 1934...... 14.14 | 14.22 13.98 14.02 14.21 14.02 13.«8 14.32 From this table it can be seen how only around 1926 did a fairly stable average duration of regular vacation become established and that it is significantly (by 17-19%) greater than that provided by law (12 calendar days), which is explained by the large number of persons enjoying three-week and month-long vacations ('for harmful work' and as teenagers). Female labor. The problem of female Labor has the most serious socio-hygienic and socio-political significance. The female organism is somewhat weaker than the male in its physiological properties and in certain cases may offer less resistance to various professional hazards and dangers. Engels in 'The Condition of the Working Class in England' wrote: 'The conditions of labor in modern industry, the attitude toward labor power, the long, tiring day, the lack of necessary rest, the low standard of living, the anti-hygienic conditions of factory premises in industrial cities—all this adversely affects the health of the working class and especially of working women.' At the same time, this is one of the most important problems of the unity of the working class in the class struggle against capital, and under the conditions of socialist construction—the maximum utilization of all the forces of the proletariat in building a new society. The problem of the complete elimination of socio-domestic inequality of the sexes was the result of the long evolution of the first form of division of Labor—the division of Labor between the sexes. It goes without saying that the problem of female Labor in the USSR is posed in a fundamentally different way than is the case under capitalism. The causes, purposes, and character of the involvement of women in production are radically changed, and the issues of protection of female Labor are posed in a radically new way. According to Marx, female Labor was 'the first word of the capitalist application of machinery for the purpose of subjecting all members of the working family without distinction of sex and age to the direct rule of capital' ('Capital', Vol. I). In the words of Engels, 'the more the activity of the hands, the strength of the muscles is replaced by the introduction of machines with the force of water or steam, the less the manufacturer needs adult men, and since women and children receive lower pay and, as already said, are more suitable for this work, they take the place of adult men' ('The Condition of the Working Class in England'). The history of the development of industry and the history of Labor clearly show that the development of capitalist industry was associated with the involvement of enormous numbers of women and adolescents in factories as the most submissive and cheap labor force, which also made it possible to reduce the wages of men both through the competition of female Labor and as a result of the increase in the number of working members in the family. And in the first period of the development of capitalism, its apologists (both economists and physicians) considered this process of women's penetration into industry as quite natural and in accordance with all the 'high principles of science and morality.' Despite the fact that the harmful effect of capitalist production on women's health, on motherhood, on infant mortality, on relations between the sexes cannot be hidden from the eyes of even a fairly impartial observer and was quite openly revealed in this area in the reports of English factory inspectors, the bourgeoisie and its ideologues in every way concealed the true state of affairs. And only the founders of Marxism in their main works gave a vivid picture of the condition of female Labor under capitalism and drew all the conclusions that follow from this. In particular, Marx emphasizes that very often capital resorted to replacing the Labor of horses with female Labor, 'because the labor necessary for the production of horses and machines is a mathematically determined quantity, while the labor necessary to maintain women from the surplus population costs less than any calculation.' In 'The Condition of the Working Class in England' Engels writes: 'That the work of mothers is also one of the causes of the high mortality of young children is self-evident and is fully and undoubtedly proven by facts...', as well as: 'the influence of factory labor on the female organism is also very peculiar. The long working day causes even more serious abnormalities in women than in men.' And indeed, professional hygiene and sanitary statistics of Labor with full obviousness prove that under the conditions of capitalist organization of production the working woman is even more than the man a victim of the most diverse professional hazards and dangers.'

This is explained by the fact that under capitalism, a working woman is forced to bend under the unbearable burden of a triple load: a) Labor under conditions of complete lack of actual protection for it, b) domestic life, which places on her the entire burden of serving the whole family and all household chores (of which Lenin wrote in the article 'The Great Initiative,' that it chains her 'to the kitchen and to the children, wasting her labor with work that is barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-wracking, stupefying, and stifling'), and finally c) motherhood under conditions of complete refusal by the bourgeois state to provide actual protection for motherhood, infancy, and childhood. According to data from almost all sick funds, from questionnaire surveys, from reports of Labor inspectors, and from special scientific monographs, a wealth of numerical material and individual observations has been collected, proving that women workers in bourgeois countries have higher morbidity than men of the same age group and the same professions; that women workers become to a greater extent victims of various types of professional poisonings; that unhealthy working conditions clearly affect the number of miscarriages, stillbirths, the course of childbirth, infant mortality, the viability of infants, etc. We will cite only a few numerical examples from the richest material accumulated in this field by the hygiene of Labor in relation to capitalist countries. According to the latest published statistical data (for 1931) for all of Germany, per 100 insured men there were 1,024.1 days of illness, while for women this figure was 1,056.8. Per one case of illness, there were days of incapacity to work for men: 26.5, and for women already 28.9, i.e. almost 10% more. According to data from the Dresden General City Sick Fund in 1929, per 100 workers there were days of incapacity to work for men: 1,634, for women: 1,799, and in metal processing industries women had 3,561 days of illness compared to 1,286 for men; in machine building: 2,664 compared to 1,529, in chemical: 3,537 compared to 1,378, and in the textile industry: 2,445 compared to 1,379. The number of cases and days of incapacity to work per 1,000 insured persons, according to data from the Berlin General City Sick Fund in 1930, is shown in the following table (age composition is standardized): Table 4. Diseases Cases Days m. L. m. f. 501.6 4.4 62.9 624.62 10.15 13.94 90.04 15 480 62 240 1 331 19 822 262 651 2 504 Diseases of the circulatory system Diseases of metabolism and internal secretion Nervous and mental From this table it is clearly seen that there is especially a sharp difference in the direction of exceeding female morbidity, particularly for those groups of diseases that are associated with the general condition of the organism and which are etiologically most associated with the simultaneous effect of factors both narrowly professional and domestic. In the Berlin Fund, according to data on morbidity with loss of working capacity, per 100 insured persons per year in the same 1930 (including injuries and excluding normal births): Table 5. Cases of illness Days of illness Age m. f. 14-16 years..... 70.3 73.1 1 015 1 622 17-20 » 47.9 68.8 1 279 1 979 21-25 » 58.1 72.2 3 056 31-35 » 53.0 66.9 2 107 36-40 » 50.0 66.1 2 154 41-15 » 48.2 58.4 2 037 46-50 » 48.7 55.4 2 054 51-55 » 47.2 51.9 1 910 2 086 56-60 » 47.8 46.6 2 178 2 152 61-65 » 45.0 40.5 2 891 2 083 66-70 » 43.0 31.8 2 583 2 786 70 years and more 44.2 29.5 2 921 On average . . . 50.2 62.0 1 543 According to these data, female morbidity sharply predominates over male morbidity in all ages from 14 to 55 years, and only beyond 55 years is the opposite observed—exceeding of male morbidity. In England, according to the official report of 1930, the morbidity of workers is expressed in the following figures per 100 insured persons (number of weeks of illness per 100): Table 6. Women Years Men unmarried married 113 263 114 268 120 282 Age-specific figures (number of days of illness per 100 insured persons) for 1927 are presented in the following table: Table Age Men Women unmarried married 16-19 years....... 460.8 594.0 3 603.6 20-24 » ...... 469.2 690.0 2 340.0 25-29 » ...... 441.0 667.8 1 771.2 30-34 » ...... 478.7 681.2 1 661.4 35-39 » ...... 501.0 660.0 1 581.8 40-14 » ...... 554.4 752.4 1 468.8 45-49 »...... 662.4 828.0 1 530.0 50-54 » ...... 806.4 982.8 1 531.2 55-59 » ...... 982.8 1 082.4 1 432.2 60-64 » ...... 1 287.6 1 296.0 ^! 1 747.2 These data show the characteristic regularities of capitalist conditions: a) exceeding of female morbidity over male morbidity in all ages, b) a sharp difference in the levels of morbidity of married and unmarried women, vividly revealing the pathogenic role of the triple load of women under capitalism (family, labor, motherhood) and the irreconcilable antagonism that arises between motherhood and labor. Engels wrote about this in his fundamental work 'The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State': 'In this matter, the situation is such that if she fulfills her duties in private service in the family, she remains excluded from social production and can earn nothing, and if she wants to participate in social labor and have her own independent earnings, she finds herself unable to fulfill her family duties. And in this respect, the position of the woman is the same both in the factory and in all branches of labor, up to medicine and the legal profession.' It is characteristic that some bourgeois scientists hypocritously cry out about a decrease in morbidity in a number of capitalist countries in recent years (both for men and women), using the same sick fund reports for this purpose. For example, such a conclusion is drawn from the following data on the number of paid days per year per insured person in Berlin: Table 8. Years Men Women 1927 16.8 17.9 1928 14.5 22.2 1929 23.1 18.5 1930 21.9 23.1 From this table, for all the years under consideration, there follows a very significant (approximately by 1/6) increase in female morbidity compared to men. The decrease in 1930 in the number of paid days (which by no means means actual morbidity) is definitely connected with the general economic crisis, which caused a sharp deterioration in legislation on social insurance, a strong decrease in the recourse of workers for medical help and for payment to sick funds due to fear of losing their job due to exceptional unemployment, as well as with a change in the composition of workers and working women (release of enterprises from older individuals and also persons with weaker health). We see the same picture in Vienna and in a number of other sick funds. Regarding the influence of heavy physical labor on the sexual function of women and in particular on the shape of the pelvis, which in turn determines abnormalities of the act of childbirth (about which Engels also spoke specifically in 'The Condition of the Working Class in England'), one can cite interesting data by Govorov, published in 1924 and reflecting the results of the influence on women of extremely heavy physical work during the tsarist period and in the first period of Soviet power long before the beginning of the reconstruction period, characterized by significant mechanization of production and a sharp easing of physical Labor both in industry and in agriculture. According to Govorov's data, among women workers in the mining industry, a narrow pelvis was found in 43% of all examined women workers, among metalworkers in 29%, among peasant women in 13%, and among those not engaged in physical Labor only in 8%. Naturally, in close connection with the number of narrow pelves stands the number of pathological births. Thus, per hundred women workers, those working in the mining industry had 12 abnormal births, metalworkers had 9, peasant women had 2.5, and women not engaged in physical Labor only 1.5. It goes without saying that the number of narrow pelves and the nature of childbirth are especially sharply affected by the age at which a woman began to engage in physical Labor (see below). The influence of unhealthy conditions of industrial Labor (in close connection with the general social living conditions) under capitalism on the generative function of women is seen at least from the following data. According to the report of Vienna sick funds for 1930, the number of abnormal births among women workers was 4.2%, while among members of the fund not working directly in production, it was 2.8%. The number of stillbirths in the first group was 3%, in the second only 1.6%. These data will become largely clear from the following table from the same report, showing what a large number of insured persons did not receive benefits during pregnancy and motherhood. Out of 100 women who gave birth, received benefits: Table 9; Group of women For pregnancy For motherhood 1 Factory workers Domestic workers . . 82.6 70.7 29.1 89.5 87.7 37.7 To illustrate the influence of female Labor in capitalist conditions on infant mortality, one can cite two examples from special surveys. The first concerns the statistics of the city of Halle, where in 1909 per 1,000 infants died: Among unskilled workers...... 13.1 » merchants, factory owners, landowners .... 12.4 » persons of free professions and higher officials

The second example concerns the statistics of the city of Bremen for 1912, where per 1,000 live births died: Among children of unskilled workers...... 16.1 » children of skilled workers...... 14.3 » children of officials and employees...... 12.5 » children of the bourgeoisie...... 9.7. These data clearly show that the higher the social status of the parents, the lower the infant mortality. But even more important is the fact that within the same social group, infant mortality is significantly higher among children of working women than among children of non-working women. This is explained by the fact that working women, especially in the conditions of capitalism, are forced to combine work with household chores and care for children, which leads to overwork, exhaustion, and neglect of children. In addition, working women often have to return to work shortly after childbirth, which negatively affects the health of both the mother and the child. The bourgeois state, instead of taking measures to protect motherhood and childhood, only worsens the situation of working women by not providing them with adequate medical care, maternity leave, and other social benefits. As a result, working women in capitalist countries are in a particularly difficult position, facing a triple burden of work, household chores, and motherhood, which leads to their increased morbidity and mortality, as well as to high infant mortality. The Soviet state, in contrast to the bourgeois state, takes all possible measures to protect the health of working women and mothers. In the USSR, women are provided with paid maternity leave, medical care, and other social benefits. In addition, the Soviet state promotes the development of social services, such as kindergartens and nurseries, which help women to combine work with motherhood. As a result, in the USSR, the morbidity and mortality of working women, as well as infant mortality, are significantly lower than in capitalist countries. The Soviet state also takes measures to improve the working conditions of women, such as prohibiting night work for pregnant women and nursing mothers, providing lighter work for them, and ensuring their right to breastfeed their children at work. All these measures contribute to the improvement of the health of working women and mothers, as well as to the reduction of infant mortality in the USSR.

The data presented above clearly demonstrate the detrimental effects of capitalist conditions on the health of working women. The triple burden of work, household chores, and motherhood, combined with the lack of social protection, leads to high morbidity and mortality among women workers. In contrast, the Soviet state, by implementing measures to protect the health of working women and mothers, as well as to improve their working conditions, has achieved significant success in reducing morbidity and mortality among women workers, as well as in reducing infant mortality. These achievements are a clear demonstration of the superiority of the socialist system over the capitalist system in protecting the health and well-being of working women and mothers.

4,8 Conditions were no better in tsarist Russia. According to data from I. S. Veger, who studied child mortality among factory workers in three textile factories (a spinning mill, a weaving mill, and a calico printing mill) in the city of Shuya, Vladimir Province (in 1909), out of every 100 born, died: at ages from birth to six months-43.2, from six months to 1 year-6.5, from 1 to 5 years-10.4, from 5 to 10 years-1.7, and in total 63.8. Meanwhile, the overall child mortality rate in Vladimir Province was 51.3, i.e., 12.5% lower.-Besides the direct effect of unhealthy Labor conditions on the worker's body, a serious role on the capitalist factory in increasing child mortality among workers is played by the impossibility for most of them under capitalist conditions to breastfeed their child. As is known, artificial feeding of children always causes a significant increase in child mortality. The earlier supplementary feeding of a child begins and the greater the number of children are artificially fed, not knowing the mother's breast at all, the greater the number of serious stomach diseases and rickets and the higher the number of early deaths. For normal motherhood and the child's health, it is also extremely important that the woman does not work right up to childbirth and has adequate rest after childbirth. Küstner published in 1930 the following figures, concerning only insured workers (mainly female workers): table 10. Weight of child in g Rest before birth unmarried married Did not work for 2 weeks . . . » » 2-3 weeks . . . 3 170 3 300 3 320 3 020 3 320 3 380 Thus it is clear that the longer a woman worked, the less the weight of her child. It is very characteristic of the 'objectivity' of bourgeois science that in different eras it drew completely different conclusions from the analysis of factual materials about the results of the introduction of female Labor into production. If in the first period of the development of capitalism the bourgeoisie tried not to notice all the harmful socio-hygienic significance of capitalist forms of applying female Labor, then in recent years we observe the opposite picture. In connection with the general revolutionization of the working class on the basis of the growth of class consciousness and the sharpening of class struggle, the bourgeoisie, and after it the social-fascists, in every way fear the proletarianization of the broad masses of women and all the socio-political consequences arising from this. Marx, Engels, and Lenin repeatedly spoke of the enormous progressive significance of involving the female half of the proletariat in the class struggle against the bourgeoisie, and Stalin in turn particularly emphasized the enormous role of women in kolkhoz construction. In particular, Marx already fought against the Proudhonists, who took the position of the inadvisability of the broad involvement of women in production, and specifically emphasized that 'social progress can be precisely measured by the social position of woman.' Lenin repeatedly emphasized before and after the October Revolution the enormous progressive significance of female Labor. In the article 'On the slogan of disarmament' (published in the collection 'Social-Democrat' in December 1916) Lenin wrote: 'The business of the bourgeoisie is to develop trusts, to drive children and women to factories, to torment them there, to corrupt them, to condemn them to extreme need. We do not 'demand' such development, we do not 'support' it, we fight against it. But how do we fight? We know that trusts and factory work for women are progressive. We do not want to go back, to handicraft, to pre-monopoly capitalism, to home work for women. Forward through trusts and etc. and beyond them to socialism.'--The bourgeoisie, clearly understanding that the emancipation of woman as a result of her broad penetration into spheres of productive Labor brings closer the hour of the social revolution, through its apologists and first of all social-hygienists, most concerned with the inviolability of the foundations of the capitalist system, proclaimed the slogan of returning woman to the family. Bourgeois social and professional hygienists and professional pathologists (Grothjan, Hirsch, Hayes, Lipman, etc.) put forward under the hypocritical cover of the interests of woman, the interests of the family, the interests of future generations the demand for either a complete prohibition of female Labor, or a prohibition of Labor for married women, or the creation of supposedly hygienically justified requirements for the protection of motherhood and infancy (such as prohibition of work during the entire period of pregnancy and 3-4 months after childbirth), which make female Labor economically completely unthinkable. The social-democratic parties as a whole also take the same positions, and moreover their agitation against female Labor intensified during the world economic crisis, when in connection with the need for intensified reduction of production capitalists began to strive first of all to displace women workers. At the end of 1930, the German Economic Party introduced a special bill into the Reichstag, proposing a number of measures to limit female Labor in order to fight unemployment. The Saxon government issued a number of corresponding regulations. In the decree of the German government of December 8, 1930, sharply worsening the position of the entire working class, there are a number of special regulations sharply worsening the conditions of motherhood and thereby affecting the reduction of the scale of female Labor. The recent measures of the Hitler government, aimed at returning woman from production to the family to fulfill her 'basic natural purpose' - to bear and raise pure-blooded national-socialist 'Aryans', are widely known. In a number of US states, in England, and especially in fascist Germany, the dismissal of all married women and the hiring of only single women is now being carried out. Under the cover of protecting women's Labor, they are being en masse dismissed from production. For this they even resort to such roundabout methods as such an unusual thing for bourgeois governments as the intensification of supervision over women's night work, and moreover the very concept of night is extremely extended (at a meeting of directors of cotton industry trusts in 1931 it was decided to consider as night time from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., thus for women the possibility of working in the textile industry is completely closed). Similarly, in England under the Labor government (with a woman Minister of Labor Margaret Bondfield) a special law on 'abuses' was developed and published in July 1931, on the basis of which a large number of women were removed from unemployment benefits, which was ultimately aimed at significantly reducing the number of married women working in industry. A number of congresses of social-fascist trade unions and a number of their leaders in speeches at meetings and in the press in recent years have also spoken against work, if not of all women, then first of all of married women. In unison with this united chorus of all bourgeois parties, from agrarians and large capitalists to social-democracy, among doctors, physiologists, and psychologists, various theories in the field of female Labor find wide circulation, characterized mainly by the biologization of this problem. Questions of female Labor are not approached from a Marxist point of view as a social phenomenon, the necessity of considering the entire problem in the light of certain class relations and the historical development of society is completely overlooked, and everything is reduced to the innate biological peculiarities of woman, supposedly making her inferior both in the somatic and in the intellectual-psychological sense and therefore unsuitable for active independent economic activity. The biologization of the problem of female Labor with incorrect socio-political conclusions was also present in the works of a number of Soviet authors. So for example Bogolepova raised the question that 'the biological peculiarities of woman often become for her an obstacle to improving her (or her family's) material position and cultural demands' and that therefore she cannot engage in certain types of professional Labor. I. N. Shpilrein in the book 'The Labor Method of Studying Professions' in the preface writes: 'The exceptional ability for prolonged continuous passive attention and lesser intensity-these virtues have long been accepted to characterize' female Labor in comparison with male Labor.' Such unhistorical, abstract-biologizing formulation of the problem directly contradicts the foundations of Marxism-Leninism and is the theoretical basis for right-opportunist positions in practice, hindering the broad introduction of women into all branches of the national economy of the USSR. In connection with the elimination of unemployment by 1930 and the enormous expansion and reconstruction of production carried out under the slogan of the great leader of the party comrade Stalin-already in the next decade to catch up and surpass the advanced capitalist countries in the technical-economic sense-we now have the broad penetration of women into all branches of the national economy..The number of women employed in production in the USSR is continuously increasing. The following table gives an idea of the number of female workers in censused industry during the years of the restoration period and the beginning of the reconstruction period (up to 1931 average annual data, and for 1932-1934-as of January 1): Table 11.

Percentage Percentage Number of women to total Number of women to total (in thousands) number of (in thousands) number of working working 404.2 28.1 827.6 28.3 441.1 27.8 1,057.7 28.8 649.9 28.6 1,449.7 31.2 658.5 28.2 1,738.4 32.9 699.7 28.2 2,206.7 31.5 769.3 28.6 2,274.1 35.5 From this table we see that the absolute number of women engaged in industry grew by 90% during the first 5 years (1923-28). The number of women increased particularly significantly during the years of the first five-year plan, when the grandest construction of new enterprises, requiring a huge number of new cadres, naturally coincided with the complete elimination of unemployment and the drawing into production on a mass scale of almost all able-bodied members of the families of workers and employees. The total number of women in the entire national economy grew from 2.7 million on 1/1/1929 to 6.8 million on 1/1/1933, i.e., it grew by 152%, and in census industry it more than doubled. Not only does the absolute number of women in industry grow sharply, but at the same time the relative share of female Labor in the entire economy and industry also increases. Throughout the entire period from 1923 to 1929, the percentage of women in industry fluctuated between 27 and 28%. On 1/1 1929 it was 28.3%, in 1931 it reached about 30%, by the end of the five-year plan it reached 31.3%, and by the end of the first half of 1933 it was 32.3%, i.e., it grew by about 20%. During the years of the first five-year plan, the percentage of women working in cities rose from 23.8% to 33.1% (in the first half of 1933 it grew to 33.7%). In state farms, the dynamics of the percentage of working women is shown in the following table (on 1/VII or 1/VIII of each year): table 12. Percentage Percentage Years of permanent seasonal workers workers 13.1 35.6 13.4 36.8 15.4 43.9 22.1 44.2 27.6 47.1 On 1/VII 1933, 1,106.8 thousand women worked in state farms (36.4% of the total number of workers), on 1/VII 1934 - 1,294.0 thousand (38.5%). Since our main slogan is not the self-sufficient protection of female Labor, which in bourgeois countries is now actually turning into protection of women from Labor, but the fulfillment of Lenin's behest, according to which 'for the complete emancipation of woman and for real equality with man, it is necessary to have a public economy and for woman to participate in the general productive labor', the problem of introducing women into skilled professions is of course of special importance. The work of the Central Institute for Labor Protection has clearly demonstrated that there can be no question of any fundamental innate differences between the sexes that would prevent a woman from doing skilled work requiring a special technical approach. Research in the laboratory and at the shops of plants ('Dynamo', 'Dukts' and others) showed that in those psychological functions on which the 'social training' of men is not reflected (verbal intelligence, finger motor skills, etc.), the comparison of different sexes does not reveal any statistically significant differences, and psychological analysis of the results of training leads to the conviction of the absence of any differences in the so-called general aptitude. Thus, the following indicators were obtained: verbal intelligence: boys - 59.8, girls - 60.4; motor skills: boys - 48.8, girls - 48.3. In relation to such psychological characteristics as technical intelligence, spatial representation, i.e., properties that develop more intensively with a specific interest in technology, with a conscious productive orientation, the following data were obtained: technical intelligence - boys: 1928 - 56.2, 1931 - 59.0; girls: 1928 - 47.0, 1931 - 56.6. It is especially important to emphasize that the certain difference in favor of boys almost completely smoothed out already in 1931 as a result of a series of measures over the past three years aimed at improving the vocational-technical education of girls, and in connection with the general rise in interest in vocational work among girls, associated with socialist forms of Labor and the mastery of technology. The level of technical intelligence of girls in 1931 exceeded that level of boys in 1928, and this clearly emphasizes the historical conditioning of the existing small difference and the indisputable tendency to completely eliminate even this small difference. In the USSR, special attention is paid to the maximum involvement of women in those branches of industry where they were previously little represented. Women have now widely penetrated all branches of heavy industry. The share of women in heavy industry is presented in the following table: Table 13. Years (on 1/1) Percentage of women Years (on 1/1) Percentage of women 11.2 11.3 13.5 1933 (on 1/VII) 11.2 21.6 26.9 Starting from 1930, the relative stability of the percentage of women working in heavy industry gives way to a rapid increase. About 75% of the total increase in women in industry during the period 1930-33 falls on the branches of heavy industry. In 1929, group 'A' accounted for only one fifth (21.4%) of all working women in industry, and by the end of the first five-year plan (on July 1, 1932), half of all working women (50.1%) were working in group 'A'. The percentage of women in the workforce of leading branches of industry is presented in the following table: Table 14. Branches of industry On 1/1 1929 On 1/VII 1933 Coal industry 8.4 6.3 6.8 18.8 17.6 21.5 20.3 22.9 33.0 Iron ore industry Electrical industry The number of women in construction during the years of the first five-year plan increased almost seven times (from 64 thousand in 1929 to 435 thousand on 1/1 1933); the share of female Labor in construction increased from 7% to 16%. According to materials of the 1926 population census and the accounting of the urban population in 1931, the number of skilled working women was: among metalworkers in 1926 - 4.8 thousand, and in 1931 - 68.7 thousand; among woodworkers - 5.2 thousand and 12.9 thousand; among builders - 0.7 thousand and 17.0 thousand; among operators of power installations - 0.6 and 12.5 thousand. Before the period of the first five-year plan, female Labor in heavy industry was used almost exclusively in unskilled and semi-skilled professions. Thus, for example, at the end of 1927, women fitters constituted in individual branches of the metal industry 0.3-0.5%, women turners - 0.7-2.4%, women milling machine operators - 1.3-7.9%, women operators in the coal industry - 2.5%. The bodies of Soviet power and trade unions have done extremely great work in raising the skill level of working women. In 1931, a broad program was outlined and basically carried out for the transfer within enterprises to more skilled work of 300 thousand working women graduates from FZU and SHUMP, 50 thousand working women were specially trained on courses, the skill level of 150 thousand working women was raised; the share of female labor in construction increased from 7% to 16%. The following table, compiled by the Institute of Social Insurance of the VTsSPS, is very interesting: Professions Percentage of women in relation to all workers of this profession 1931 Foundry work.......... 7.6 Machine tool work......... 11.5 Including turners-milling machine operators . 1932 13.6 22.4 22.4 6.6 8.4 1933 17.2 25.3 25.6 5.8 10.7 Great attention is paid to attracting women to skilled work and training women specialists in higher educational institutions and technical schools. The number of women studying in the entire system of higher educational institutions increased from 44.9 thousand in 1928 to 156.2 thousand in 1933, and their share in the total number of students increased from 28% to 33.3%. In industrial-technical higher educational institutions in 1933, 46 thousand women studied - one fifth of their total number. Thus, it can be boldly said that in the USSR woman is already fully conquering advanced technical positions. And at the XVI Party Congress, Comrade Stalin specifically pointed out that 'we must welcome the growing public activity of women and their promotion to leading positions as an indisputable sign of the growth of our culture'. For the planned introduction of female Labor into all branches of the national economy, the People's Commissariat of Labor (relying on scientific institutions) developed special lists of professions for the main branches of industry, to which women should be sent first. The bodies of the People's Commissariat of Labor, and now the trade unions, widely involve women in leading professions, connecting this work with the rationalization of individual works and production processes (on which a number of scientific institutes of the NKZdr and trade unions are now working). The working woman takes an active part in the socialist competition and shock work. The survey conducted by the VTsSPS in 1931, covering 1,567,000 workers, showed that if out of every 100 male workers 56 people participate in the socialist competition, then out of every 100 working women 58 people participate in the socialist competition. A secondary sample survey confirmed the conclusions about the particularly high activity of working women. Thus, at the Kerch plant, 45.8% of men and 50.9% of women were shock workers, at the Mytishchi plant, 63.8% of men and 96.3% of women were shock workers, at the 'Krasnaya Zarya' telephone plant, 59.7% of men and 76.6% of women were shock workers, at the Rostov 'Sel'mash' plant, 60.3% of men and 63.8% of women were shock workers. There are also bright qualitative indicators of the work of shock women.

Thus, for example, at the Dneprostroy construction site, women's shock brigades in concrete work, with a norm of 3 m³ per day, achieved an output of 7 m³. On all the surveyed enterprises, it was established that the labor discipline of women workers is higher than that of men. The density of the working day for women workers is also often higher than that of men. Thus, it is quite obvious that the woman worker is actively fighting for socialism in the ranks with men, and that for her, Labor has already become a matter of honor, a matter of glory, a matter of valor and heroism. The greatest achievements in the field of improving Labor and living conditions in the USSR, achieved during the years of socialist construction under the leadership of the Communist Party of the proletariat, have led to the fact that the issues of protecting women's Labor are now essentially subordinate to the general task of introducing it into production. The 7-hour working day, a shortened work week (5- and 6-day week), the construction of a number of new largest enterprises and combines based on the latest achievements of world science and technology, the radical improvement of old enterprises based on enormous capital investments in the field of labor protection, the most extensive legislation in the field of social insurance, socialist forms of Labor—all this creates an environment in which the question of the need for special protection and improvement of women's Labor as such is increasingly being removed. In individual cases, however, when certain work processes are indeed too heavy or especially harmful to a woman as a mother, the issue is usually resolved either by mechanizing production, or by completely improving it, covering all workers as a whole regardless of gender, or in individual cases by rationalizing production in accordance with the peculiarities of the female organism. In addition, the OMM and other bodies, when necessary, carry out special measures, for example, transferring pregnant women from night work to day work. As examples, we can cite the work of the State Scientific Institute for Labor Protection (now the Institute of Economics, Health and Labor Organization of the VTsSPS) on the special rationalization of Labor of turf-cutters by applying special stretchers designed by the institute, which incidentally increased labor productivity by 20%, or the special reconstruction and rationalization of sitting on a tractor, which almost completely eliminates the shaking that adversely affects the female reproductive sphere. Such radical measures influence the improvement of Labor and living conditions for women in the USSR. The issues of women's Labor cannot be separated from the problems of socializing domestic life. Lenin repeatedly returned to this issue in his works. In the article 'The Great Initiative,' Lenin wrote: 'The woman continues to remain a domestic slave, despite all the emancipation laws, because she is oppressed, stifled, dulled, and humbled by petty domestic economy, which chains her to the kitchen and the nursery, wasting her labor with work that is barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-wracking, dulling, and stifling. The true emancipation of woman, the true communism, will begin only there and when the mass struggle (led by the proletariat possessing state power) against this petty domestic economy begins, or rather, when its mass reconstruction into a large socialist economy begins.' In the article 'International Women's Day,' he also wrote about 'the smallest, blackest, heaviest, most stupefying work of the kitchen and generally of individual domestic-family economy.' In a speech at a conference of Moscow women workers in 1919, Lenin even said that 'the very construction of socialist society will begin only when we, having achieved full equality for women, take up a new job together with the woman freed from this petty, stupefying, unproductive work.' And it is therefore quite understandable that the entire system of the Soviet order [especially in connection with a number of special instructions from Comrade Stalin and decisions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)] in recent years has been directed toward the actual emancipation of women, inextricably linked with the entire business of improving the well-being of the working class, involving women in production, and raising the material level of the working family. The Party and government have always paid and continue to pay special attention to the development of public catering, the main lever for socializing domestic life and freeing women from 'the stupefying work of the kitchen' (Lenin), and it often plays a decisive role in turning millions of housewives into workers. The particularly wide development of the nursery network (see Nurseries), public catering institutions, and preschool education (see Protection of the Health of Children and Adolescents) plays a particularly large role here. Regarding legislation on the protection of women's Labor, Lenin's words can be fully applied: 'No state and no democratic legislation has done for woman even half of what the Soviet power did in the very first months of its existence' (Speech at the congress of women workers in November 1919). In addition to the general legislation on Labor protection, which applies to both men and women, a number of special laws concerning the Labor of women workers have also been enacted in the USSR. In the USSR, the Labor of women in particularly heavy and harmful industries is prohibited. Based on this, the People's Commissariat of Labor as early as October 1925 issued a list of harmful works where the application of women's Labor is not permitted, revised in 1930. According to the resolution of the People's Commissariat of Labor of the USSR of May 17, 1930, women are not admitted to the following main harmful works (from the list, 49 professions of railway, river, and sea transport and logging-rafting works are omitted here): 1) all underground works; 2) works directly related to manual crushing, roasting, and smelting of sulfur and arsenic ores; 3) works with cyanide compounds and chlorine in the primary processing of precious metals; 4) works on charging coke ovens; 5) works directly related to melting and pouring liquid metal; 6) works on hot metal rolling, starting from charging the furnace; 7) works on cleaning gas pipelines and scrubbers; 8) works directly related to smelting non-ferrous metals from ore (copper, lead, mercury, zinc, silver, etc.), as well as the production of phosphorus, arsenic, and its compounds; 9) works with pneumatic hand tools (riveting, stamping, drilling, chiseling, cutting); 10) hot works and riveting in boiler making, with the exception of heating rivets; 11) works on pickling and drying pickled wire in the absence of rational ventilation; 12) smelting, casting, rolling, drawing, and stamping lead products, tinning with lead, hardening in lead baths, manufacturing and soldering lead accumulators, tinning ships, enamel production when using lead, and cold working of lead on machines manually; 13) firemen, stokers, and boiler attendants; 14) production, packaging, and dusting of lead paints (white lead, red lead, and lead oxide); 15) rubber production: cold vulcanization and production of rubber substitutes and factices; 16) production of aniline and paranitroaniline, and production, packaging, and dusting of aniline and arsenic dyes; 17) production of benzene and nitro- and amido compounds of benzene; 18) production of trinitrotoluene; 19) filling shells with trinitrotoluene and cleaning them; 20) production of sulfuric and hydrochloric acids on manual furnaces; 21) production of nitric acid (except installations of the Valentinier system), hydrofluoric acid, and sodium sulfide; 22) work on pouring, sealing, and transporting acids; 23) preparation of pickling aniline oil and black aniline paste with manual work; 24) workers on paste machines, constantly working when dyeing with black aniline; 25) preparation of lime chloride for manual dyeing; 26) work on chlorine preparation; 27) work in type foundries (except the packing department, if it is isolated from the foundry); 28) caisson work; 29) work directly related to extinguishing fires; 30) work on manual loading and unloading retorts on gas plants. On the basis of a special study by the Institute of Labor Protection of the issue of norms for lifting weights by women, the People's Commissariat of Labor in 1931 issued a law prohibiting women from carrying loads over 20 kg. According to the legislation of the USSR, women workers engaged in physical labor are exempt from work for 8 weeks (56 days) before childbirth and for 8 weeks (56 days) after childbirth. Meanwhile, in most bourgeois countries, either there is no mandatory exemption from work at all, or it is limited to much shorter periods. Under tsarist legislation, a woman worker (starting from 1912) was exempt from work due to maternity for a total of only 6 weeks before and after childbirth. The female organism, besides being weaker physically, also has significantly lower resistance to all harmful effects and dangers than the organism of an adult worker.

It is therefore quite understandable that heavy and excessive physical labor of minors under capitalist conditions would primarily affect their growth and weight, since the latter is to some extent an indicator of the proper course of their developmental processes. The adverse effect in this regard of early labor is caused, on the one hand, by the significant expenditure of energy contained in food substances on external work and the associated relative insufficiency of these for plastic functions, and on the other hand, by the very harmful effect on health of working in crowded and stuffy workrooms, with a lack of sunlight and clean air. Early labor affects almost all organs and tissues of young children and adolescents, sometimes leaving indelible traces for life. Naturally, one should first expect serious consequences in the area of the locomotor apparatus, especially in cases where, with incomplete ossification still and weak ligaments and joints, they are subjected to increased load (prolonged monotonous body position, carrying heavy weights, constant walking, etc.). Even Engels wrote: 'This lengthening of the period of childhood is in essence nothing other than the result of delayed development, and later inevitably brings its own fruits. Under such conditions and with such a weak organism, the unnatural position of the body during work leads to curvature of the legs, bending of the knees inward and calves outward, curvature of the spine and other deformities. All these deformities are such a frequent phenomenon that in Yorkshire and Lancashire, Northumberland and Durham, many, and even doctors, claim that a miner can be recognized among a hundred other people by his build. Women apparently suffer particularly from this work; their build is rarely, if ever, completely normal'. Marx, in turn, pointed to 'the physical degradation of children and adolescents, as well as of female workers, whom the machine subjects to exploitation by capital-first directly-in the factories arising on its basis, and then indirectly-in all other branches of industry'. Elsewhere he wrote: 'Hundreds of testimonies show that work retards the growth of young workers'. 'A military medical officer testifies that factory workers are little suited for military service, that they are thin and weak, and doctors often reject them. In Manchester it was difficult for him to find people 5 feet 8 inches tall, while most were 1-2 inches short, whereas in agricultural districts most recruits were 5 feet 8 inches tall'. A large number of cases of spinal curvature in minors and adolescents who begin independent professional labor early is also constantly noted, especially in sedentary professions or those with one-sided strain of the back muscles. Early work involving intense visual strain can further contribute to the development of myopia. The one-sidedness of some authors' claims about the complete absence of influence of professional factors and about purely constitutional determination of myopia is best refuted by statistical data showing a close connection between the age at which vision-straining work begins and the prevalence of myopia. In 1921, Mitchell examined 1,200 students of professional schools in New York and found visual defects in 9.9% of young men and 14.3% of young women, and eye experts recognized that in 68.6% of cases in boys and 57.7% in girls, the cause should be attributed to the effect of work. Interesting figures were obtained by Koyransky in processing materials from a survey of Moscow printers. Among typesetters who began work at an age above 17, no cases of myopia were found at all. Those who began work between 13 and 16 years gave 13.1%, and before 13 years-21.3% myopic. Not only such specific diseases are consequences of early, excessive or unhealthy child labor, but its effect is also reflected in the prevalence of general diseases. Even Engels wrote that 'one cannot, of course, deny that a nine-year-old child and especially a working child can withstand daily work of 6₁/₂ hours without the harm from such work to his organism being evident and noticeable; but in any case it is clear that staying in a stuffy, often damp and hot atmosphere cannot favorably affect health. Be that as it may, it is dishonest that the time of children, which should be devoted exclusively to physical and mental education, is sacrificed to the greed of the insensitive bourgeoisie, that children are deprived of school and clean air, being sacrificed to the greed of factory owners'. According to data from a survey of Moscow printing houses in 1923, a direct connection was established between the amount of tuberculosis and the beginning of wage labor, as seen in the following table: Table W. Age of beginning of wage labor Number examined Number of tuberculosis per 100 examined tbc of lungs suspicion of tbc tbc of other organs total Under 13 years . . . 17 years and more . . 1480 165 3.0 2.7 1.8 6.3 4.9 4.8 0.4 0.3 0.6 9.7 7.9 7.2 Even the old Swiss factory inspector, Dr. Schuller, noted that girls under 18 years show 173% morbidity of male adolescents of the same age. Besides the general morbid condition, too early physical labor of girls also particularly seriously affects the proper further development of female sexual organs. Thus, Dr. Pis'menny, who at the beginning of the 20th century investigated a large number of working women in the Moscow province, noted that in those who start working early, sexual maturity usually is delayed. In those girls who went to the factory already fully developed, menstruation was established correctly in 72% of all observed cases; in girls, however, in whose year of onset of menstruation coincided with the beginning of factory labor, correct menstruation was observed only in 55%. According to Katsnelson's data on 90 young seamstresses who had already reached menstrual age, more than half suffer from dysmenorrhea. Engels already drew attention to such facts, presented in the literature in the middle of the 19th century. But even more significantly harmful is the effect of early labor on the proper development of the not yet fully formed girl in another, much more serious direction-in regard to the proper ossification of the pelvis. Also very interesting are the calculations of Dr. Govorov (Donbass), which were partially mentioned above. He showed the following connection between the beginning of physical labor, narrow pelvis and pathological births: table 17. Age of beginning of working life Percentage of narrow pelvis Percentage of pathological births I. Among female workers in metallurgy and mining industry 11-12 years........

II. Among female workers in light industry 13-14 years........ 18.5% 15.5% 15.2% 12.5% 10.8% 8.5% 15.5% 12.5% 10.8% 8.5% 6.5% 4.5% III. Among female workers who began work after 15 years........ 5.2% 3.8% 2.5% 1.5% 1.0% 0.5% Thus, the earlier the beginning of physical labor, the greater the percentage of narrow pelvis and pathological births. The harmful effect of early labor on the female organism is also reflected in the high infant mortality rate. According to data from the Moscow province, infant mortality among working mothers is much higher than among non-working mothers. In addition, early labor leads to premature aging of women and reduces their life expectancy. The harmful effects of early labor on the female organism are also reflected in the high incidence of diseases of the female genital organs. According to data from the Moscow province, the incidence of such diseases among working women is much higher than among non-working women. Early labor also leads to a decrease in the birth rate. According to data from the Moscow province, the birth rate among working women is much lower than among non-working women. The harmful effects of early labor on the female organism are also reflected in the high incidence of diseases of the female genital organs. According to data from the Moscow province, the incidence of such diseases among working women is much higher than among non-working women. Early labor also leads to a decrease in the birth rate. According to data from the Moscow province, the birth rate among working women is much lower than among non-working women.

15 II. For peasant girls 10-12 years . . . 13-15 » . . . 16 years and older . 17 12 8 2,5 1,0 0,8 From this table it is clearly seen that among workers who began heavy Labor as very young girls, the number of narrow pelves is 6 times, and abnormal births 8 times greater than among those who began their working life after the period of sexual maturity. For peasant girls the difference is not so great, but still very significant (the number of narrow pelves is correspondingly 27₂ times, and abnormal births 3 times greater). Finally, it should also be pointed out that excessive work at too early an age also very adversely affects the nervous system of minors and adolescents. Minor workers are usually very irritable and suffer from a whole range of nervous phenomena. Besides general nervous phenomena, early Labor under capitalism also affects the mental abilities of the immature organism. The double load of the growing adolescent—work, usually under difficult conditions, and study, under poor material and living conditions—mostly exceeds the load that the organism can bear. From the establishment of that indisputable fact that early child Labor under capitalism undoubtedly leads to a whole series of negative socio-hygienic consequences, it would be completely wrong to draw the conclusion about the need for a complete prohibition of child Labor. Even Marx had to fight with this viewpoint, expressed in particular by the Proudhonists. While vehemently scourging the conditions of Labor of minors and their consequences under capitalism, he at the same time always pointed to the progressive significance of child Labor and to the necessity in socialist society of combining productive Labor with education. Thus, in the resolution written by Marx for the Geneva Congress of the First International (1866), we read the following categorical assertion on the question of the work of women and children: "We consider the tendency of modern industry to attract children and adolescents of both sexes to participate in social production to be progressive, beneficial, and legitimate, although under capitalist domination this tendency takes on repulsive forms." In 1875 in his "Critique of the Gotha Program" Marx wrote: "A general prohibition of child labor is irreconcilable with the existence of large industry and will therefore remain a pious wish. And if this measure were possible, its implementation would be reactionary, since with a strict limitation of working hours for children in accordance with their age and with other precautionary measures to protect children, the early combination of productive labor with learning is one of the most powerful means of reorganizing modern society." And finally in "Capital" he wrote: "From the factory system, as can be traced in detail by Robert Owen, the germ of future education grew, which for all children from a certain age will combine productive labor with instruction and gymnastics, and this will not only be a method (means) of increasing social production, but also the only method of creating fully developed people." Lenin in turn as early as 1897 wrote: "One cannot conceive of an ideal of future society without combining education with the productive labor of the younger generation: neither education and instruction without productive labor, nor productive labor without parallel education and instruction could be raised to the height required by the modern level of technology and the state of scientific knowledge. In order to combine universal productive labor with universal education, it is obviously necessary to impose on everyone the obligation to participate in productive labor." These basic theoretical principles of the founders of Marxism-Leninism form the basis of the construction of the Soviet system of polytechnical education, inextricably linked with legislation on the protection of Labor of minors. Legislation on the protection of Labor in all countries began with laws on the protection of Labor of minors. In this line, England was ahead of all countries, where as early as 1802 a special law was issued concerning apprentices in cotton mills and prohibiting work for them of more than 12 hours. At the present moment, legislation on child labor in various countries amounts to the following: the minimum age for admission to work is set at 10 years—in Spain, China, Hungary, Portugal; at 12 years—in South Africa, Argentina, Austria, Brazil, India, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Czechoslovakia; at 13 years—in Germany, South Australia, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden; at 14 years—in East Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, England, Greece, Latvia, Holland, Switzerland; at 15 years—in Poland. In the USA for various industries the minimum age is fixed from 14 to 16 years. Night work is prohibited for minors under 15 years—in Italy, Japan, Romania and in certain cases in Denmark and Germany; under 16 years—in the USA, Argentina, South Africa, Spain, New Zealand; under 17 years—in Holland and Poland; under 18 years—in Denmark, France, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland. In the legislation of almost all countries there are a large number of exceptions that prevent the actual implementation of these laws. In Belgium, England, Greece, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Romania periodic medical examinations of minors are conducted. No legislation knows a reduction of the working day for minors below 8 hours per day, and in a number of countries even this limit applies only to those under 14-16 years. Especially severe at present are the conditions of child labor in countries with the most developed unlimited exploitation of the colonial proletariat by the "most cultured" European peoples, as well as in Japan. For example, in the report of a special commission that investigated working conditions in China in 1923-24, we read the following lines, illuminating the situation of child labor in Shanghai: "A fact to be regretted is that there are no restrictions on the use of child labor, and that on English and other foreign and Chinese factories children work unbelievably long hours, day and night, and very small children, who do not work, accompany their parents to the factory; normal working time on English paper mills—23¹/₂ hours in two sessions of 12 hours with a break of 15 minutes. On Japanese factories they work 22 hours in 2 shifts of 11 hours with a 30-minute break. On Chinese factories they work 14 hours without a break. Children and young workers work as much as adults. The position of children on the factories is worse than those living in the countryside... A common phenomenon is the selling of girls as domestic servants. They begin to work as soon as they are physically able to." The situation of child labor is now even worse in Japan, where as a rule children 8-9 years old (especially girls) are sold by the poorest peasants through special "buyers" (intermediaries) to factories, where they live in barrack-type factory dormitories and work in unbelievably difficult legal and hygienic conditions. It is also interesting to note that the association of cotton mill owners declared that the hiring of children on factories was an "act of virtue" towards their parents. Legislation on the protection of Labor in tsarist Russia also began with questions of child Labor. The first factory law was issued in Russia in 1845. A series of laws (1882, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1897) expanded and modified legislation on child Labor. In general, tsarist legislation regarding the Labor of minors by the time of the collapse of autocracy amounted to the following: the minimum age for admission to work was 12 years; for minors aged 12 to 15 years, night work was prohibited, with the exception of glassworks, as well as work on Sundays and holidays. However, it is very characteristic that the provincial factory inspectorates, governors and city heads were granted the right to permit work for minors also on holidays. The working day for minors was limited to 8 hours, but however in enterprises working continuously in two shifts, a 9-hour working day was also permitted for minors. For adolescents aged 15 to 17 years, the tsarist law prohibited only night work and that not everywhere, but only in some branches of textile production and in the match industry, and however even this prohibition was limited by a whole series of possible exceptions in special cases. As to how broad the scale of these exceptions was, it is enough to say that the provincial factory inspectorates were granted the right to permit night work for adolescents in all cases when adolescents work with mothers and fathers, and generally "in all respectable cases", which in particular included urgent orders in the enterprise. It is also interesting to note that at the beginning of the world war, on October 19, 1915, the Minister of Trade and Industry was granted the right to permit necessary exceptions from all the above points of laws concerning minor adolescents. Legislation on the Labor of minors in the USSR is basically as follows.

According to the Labor Code of 1922, the minimum age for admission to work is set at 16 years. However, considering the impossibility of fully implementing this rather high minimum under current conditions, the Code permits admission to work at a younger age for the time being, each time with the permission of the Labor Inspector, but in no case below 14 years. This age group from 14 to 16 years is designated by our legislation as 'minors,' while minors from 16 to 18 years are called adolescents. The rules of the People's Commissariat of Labor establish two requirements for the possibility of granting permission to work at ages 14 to 16: 1) material need of the minor, 2) the possibility of training them in the work where they wish to begin working. According to the Labor Code, working hours for minors are significantly reduced compared to the working day of adults and are set as follows: for adolescents - 6 hours, and for minors - 4 hours per day. The Labor Code of 1922 firmly establishes that payment for labor of adolescents for the shortened working day is made as for a full working day of the corresponding category. At the same time, for minor workers working part-time, with time-based pay, output norms are established in accordance with the output norms for adult workers and proportionally to the working day established for them, i.e., based on the six-hour and four-hour day. Soviet legislation also prohibits overtime and night work for minors and adolescents. It is interesting to cite some comparisons on the actual working hours of minors, clearly illustrating the achievements in this area during the Soviet period. An investigation of working hours conducted in 1913 by the Department of Industry showed that with a working day duration of 9.85 hours for all workers, adolescents aged 15-17 worked 9.83 hours, and adolescents under 15 years worked 7.9 hours. The average duration of working time in Moscow in 1918 was 7.4 hours for adolescents and 7.2 hours for minors, while in 1924 it had already reached 5.4 hours for adolescents and 4.4 hours for minors. In 1928, according to data from a special investigation by the Central Statistical Administration, the average working time for an adolescent was 5.38 hours, i.e., it had further decreased compared to 1924 and was significantly below the legally established six-hour norm. As for minors, their actual working time in 1928 had almost reached the legally required limit (4.08 hours or only five minutes more). In individual industries, these figures range for adolescents from 4.97 hours (processing of mixed fibrous substances) to 5.9 hours (extraction and processing of metals), and for minors from 3.98 hours (metal processing) to 4.27 hours (food industry). Now there are almost no minors in production, and adolescents in the main are studying in Factory Apprentice Schools (FZU), combining work with training (usually equally). Soviet legislation establishes special advantages for minors in relation to vacations. All minors under 18 years, in addition to the regular two-week vacation, also enjoy an additional two-week vacation, regardless of the nature of their work. Taking into account the peculiarities of the organism of minors, who are to a much greater extent than adults susceptible to the dangers of occupational diseases and occupational poisoning, our legislation prohibits minors and adolescents from underground work, particularly hazardous and particularly harmful work (according to the list of the People's Commissariat of Labor of October 13, 1932). In addition to individual harmful work prohibited to minors by a resolution of the People's Commissariat of Labor of August 4, 1921, minors are also prohibited from work involving regular carrying of heavy loads. This resolution permits minors to carry and move heavy loads only if this work does not take up more than a quarter of their working time. At the same time, the maximum permissible carrying load for male adolescents is 1 pud (16.4 kg) and for female adolescents - 25 pounds (10.2 kg). When moving heavy loads on carts moving on rails, young men from 16 to 18 years are allowed a maximum norm of 30 puds (491 kg), and for young women - 20 puds (327 kg), however, moving heavy loads on roads with a steep grade is not permitted at all. Another measure of very serious importance for the protection of the health of adolescent workers is established by a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of October 13, 1922 - annual medical examinations of adolescent workers. According to this resolution, all minor workers should not be sent to work in state, public and private institutions, enterprises and farms without prior medical examination. In addition, all adolescents working in state, public and private enterprises, institutions and farms, as well as students of factory apprentice schools must undergo regular medical re-examination, and such examination must be conducted periodically, at least once a year. In case of a clear discrepancy between the state of health and the severity of the work performed, it is necessary to transfer adolescents to lighter work. Finally, great medical preventive significance, closely connected with the maximum development of individual aptitudes and abilities of adolescents, and also acquiring enormous national economic importance from the point of view of rational distribution and proper use of personnel, is professional selection (see Professional Selection). Labor protection and labor legislation. Labor protection as one of the branches of social policy and a function of state power on the basis of special legislation on labor (usually called labor, or even more narrowly - factory legislation) arose only in the early 19th century, when, on the one hand, the development of capitalism along with the widespread spread of machine production led to unprecedented exploitation and intensification of labor, as a result of which very dangerous phenomena for the health of the entire society began to appear (increased spread of epidemics with particularly significant foci in workers' quarters, increased child mortality, a number of symptoms of general degeneration of the population), and on the other hand, the growth of the labor movement forced state power in all countries to intervene more and more actively in the relations between labor and capital. As a result of these tendencies of capitalist development, the struggle of the proletariat for labor protection and for labor legislation soon became one of the main moments of the class struggle throughout the world. And in this struggle, questions of labor hygiene always occupied one of the honorable places. Marx wrote in 'Capital': 'The immediate occasion for the enactment of the first "Statute of Labourers" (23 Edward III, 1349) (not the cause, because legislation of this kind continued to exist for whole decades without this occasion) was the great plague, which had diminished the population so much that, according to one Tory writer, "the difficulty of getting workers to work at reasonable prices (i.e., prices which would leave their masters a reasonable amount of surplus labor) had become truly unbearable". Therefore, the law began to compulsorily dictate reasonable wages, as well as the limits of the working day.' In another place he wrote: 'Factory legislation, this first conscious and systematic reaction of society to the spontaneously established order of its production process, is, as we have seen, just as much a necessary product of large industry as cotton yarn, self-actors, and the electric telegraph.' And finally we read in the same 'Capital': 'These laws (factory laws) - the tendency of capital to extract labor power without limit - are restrained by the compulsory limitation of the working day by the state, and by a state in which the capitalist and the landlord rule. Not to speak of the labor movement, which with each day became more and more threatening, the limitation of factory labor was dictated by the same necessity that forced guano to be poured on English fields. The same blind rapacity, which in one case exhausts the soil, in the other case uprooted the vital force of the nation. Periodically recurring epidemics spoke here as eloquently as the decrease in the height of soldiers in Germany and France.' Detailing the various stages of the development of labor legislation, especially in England, and first of all in the area of the struggle for the reduction of the working day, Marx and Engels always emphasized its close connection with the labor movement, the forced character of the concessions wrung from the government, and the instability and ephemeral nature of the achievements of the proletariat in this area.

Uncompromisingly exposing on the basis of the history of the development of factory legislation, which he calls 'the first meager concession wrung from capital,' the true class roots of legislation for the protection of Labor, Marx with all the *zo 'Labor' persuasiveness repeatedly proves that it cannot in any way resolve even the elementary questions of improving conditions of Labor. One can cite at least one example from his statements on this question: 'The sphere of factory laws vividly shows that the capitalist mode of production, by its very nature, excludes any rational improvement beyond a certain point. We have already noted several times that English doctors unanimously recognize 500 cubic feet of air per person as barely a sufficient minimum for constant work. Very well! If the factory law, with all its compulsory measures, indirectly accelerates the transformation of small workshops into factories, and thereby indirectly encroaches on the property rights of small capitalists and ensures a monopoly for large ones, then legislative compulsion to ensure the necessary amount of air in workshops for each worker would directly expropriate thousands of small capitalists in one blow! This would mean an encroachment on the very roots of the capitalist mode of production, i.e., the self-increase of capital, both large and small, through the 'free' purchase and consumption of labor power. That is why before these 500 cubic feet of air, factory law takes one's breath away. Health protection institutions, commissions for the investigation of industry, factory inspectors again and again repeat the necessity of these 500 cubic feet and the impossibility of wringing them from capital. Thus they actually declare that tuberculosis and other lung diseases are a condition for the existence of capital.' The general assessment of the class nature of factory legislation under capitalism is excellently expressed in the following concise and vivid characterization of Marx: 'Legislation concerning hired labor, from the very beginning having in view the exploitation of the worker and in its further development invariably hostile to the working class.' Lenin, in turn, in a number of articles, brochures, and leaflets-proclamations of the first period of his activity (early 1900s) repeatedly exposed the tsarist factory legislation, establishing the direct and immediate connection between the strike movement and the laws of 1886 and 1897, as well as other government acts. Lenin always attached the utmost importance to questions of the protection of Labor. How important Vladimir Ilyich considered the proletariat's demands in the field of labor protection is evident from the fact that when drafting the party program in 1899 and discussing the previously drafted program of the 'Emancipation of Labor' group, he was not satisfied with the brief and too general formulation of this section in it, pointing out: 'We believe that the workers' party should state in detail and more fully the demands on this point.' In turn, he proposed a detailed draft containing a number of specific demands. Also very characteristic is the following amendment by Lenin (under the pseudonym Frey) to the section of the RSDRP program project concerning the minimum program in the field of labor legislation (early 1902). While the project drafted by the commission formulated the introductory paragraph as follows: 'In the interests of protecting the working class and increasing its combat capability, the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party demands,' Lenin proposed to change the beginning of this paragraph as follows: 'In the interests of protecting the working class from physical and moral degeneration, as well as in the interests of increasing its ability to fight for its emancipation' (Collected Works, Vol. V, p. 14), i.e., he clearly emphasized and highlighted the point that the protection of Labor is not only one of the powerful means of increasing the combat capability of the proletariat in the class struggle, but at the same time has the greatest significance from the point of view of preserving the health of the working class—the main productive force of society. Labor protection as a system of measures basically covers three sections or groups of problems: 1) sanitary protection of Labor, or improvement of conditions of Labor, which aims to eliminate professional hazards and develops the problem of the complete improvement of production and the creation of a sanitary impeccable environment for Labor; 2) technical protection of Labor (or industrial safety), which develops measures to combat industrial injuries, and 3) legal protection of Labor, which develops the general questions of labor protection as part of state regulation. As the socialist foundations of the entire national economy are consolidated, legal protection of Labor is acquiring less and less significance, and in the process of reconstructing our entire industry and generally the national economy, the proportion of sanitary and technical protection of Labor is increasing. Labor protection in the USSR is built on principles that not only sharply differ from pre-revolutionary labor protection in tsarist Russia, but also from labor protection even in the most 'democratic' bourgeois countries, where 'socialist' non-worker' parties are in power. First of all, it should be noted that our labor legislation extends the main provisions for the protection of Labor to all without exception workers hired, regardless of where they work. This alone is a tremendous gain for the proletariat as a whole. Usually in all bourgeois countries, labor protection legislation covers only workers in factory-type industrial enterprises, and even then leaves aside the smaller ones. As a rule, all workers hired in artisan establishments, transport workers (railways and shipping), all employees in various kinds of offices, banks, public and state institutions, all workers in hospitals, baths, pharmacies, commercial employees, employees of hotels, cafes and restaurants, domestic servants, etc., are deprived of any state protection and are left entirely to the uncontrolled exploitation of their employers. In addition, in many countries, labor protection laws do not extend to agricultural and construction workers. The second feature of our legislation is that it establishes that minimum (least guarantees) of conditions of Labor below which they cannot be in any private or state enterprise or institution. Moreover, in the USSR, further improvement of conditions of Labor is widely carried out by including relevant provisions in collective agreements concluded between trade unions and economic organizations. In the event that a trade union concluded an agreement worsening conditions of Labor compared to labor legislation, or if an individual worker was forced to conclude such an agreement by a private entrepreneur or voluntarily entered into it, such agreements are considered invalid. They are not registered by labor inspection bodies and have no significance for the court, which when making its decisions relies not on them but on labor legislation. Finally, it should be emphasized that the entire system of work on labor protection in the USSR is based on the maximum involvement of the working masses themselves, which follows from the requirement of the VKP(b) program, which states: 'The All-Union Communist Party must conduct broad propaganda for the active participation of the working people themselves in the vigorous implementation of all measures in the field of labor protection.' Code of Laws on Labor. Almost all European countries have labor legislation consolidated in special codes (as for example in Germany Arbeitsgesetzbuch, in France Code du travail). In tsarist Russia before the revolution, a peculiar code was the 'Statute on Industrial Labor,' published in 1913 and representing a mechanical combination of previously issued laws concerning conditions of Labor (and only for factory and mining enterprises). This statute on industrial Labor was included in Part 2 of Volume XI of the Code of Laws. Only after the October Revolution was the question of issuing a Code of Laws on Labor, covering all aspects of labor legislation, raised for the first time. Unlike the statute on industrial Labor, the Soviet Code of Laws on Labor states the basic fundamental principles of labor legislation extremely briefly, but covers it comprehensively. The entire complex of problems of labor relations is regulated by legislation issued in development of the Code by the CEC and Sovnarkom of the USSR, CECs and Sovnarkoms of the union republics, as well as until the summer of 1932 by the NKT of the USSR and NKTs of the union republics, and then (after the abolition of NKT) by the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions which received these rights. The first Code of Laws on Labor was issued in December 1918, and it entirely reflected the policy of the so-called period of war communism, with the implementation of universal labor duty and strict regulation from a single center of all conditions of Labor and wages. This Code was radically revised and reissued on 9/XI 1922 in the form of the so-called 'Code of Laws on Labor of 1922.' The differences between the old and new codes are very great.

In addition to a series of changes in the specific content of individual articles, which reflected the significant development of our legislation in the field of Labor and the practical experience of the four years between them, we see that the nature of the interpretation of basic issues in the draft of the new Code, and even its structure and the scope of issues it covers, vividly reflects the serious difference in the socio-economic situation of Soviet Russia at the end of 1918 and at the end of 1922. The historical epoch when the first Code was developed was marked by the so-called 'war communism', the nationalization of industry, the actual elimination of free trade, the food requisitioning system, the state distribution of consumer products, etc. This naturally created special relations in the field of Labor, basically characterized by two features: 1) universal labor duty and the rejection of the concept of hiring as the basis of labor relations, and 2) complete state regulation and standardization of Labor conditions, extending to the very last details, almost completely leveling the peculiarities of individual industries or of the national economy as a whole and reducing to a minimum the role and rights of the employer (in this era, there could hardly be any question of private enterprise, and the Code provided mainly for state and administrative organs). The Code of 1922, however, as the basis of labor relations, places the principle of voluntary hiring, and all Labor conditions are established by agreement between the employer and organizations of employees or individual workers; therefore, the Code had to, abandoning the viewpoint of detailed state regulation of all details of labor relations, carefully focus on the detailed development of the legal foundations of labor and collective agreements between workers and employers, on the forms of resolving possible labor conflicts, and also to consolidate in legislative form the basic provisions regarding professional organizations and their rights. At the same time, the new Code, in contrast to the old Code, as well as to the 'General Provisions on Tariffs' issued in 1920 in its development and which was in essence also a small Labor Code, did not give rigid mandatory norms, with respect to which any violation, whether in the direction of expansion or in the direction of their narrowing, is equally inadmissible. Setting as its basic task to firmly establish only that minimum of rights and material guarantees for workers which the state undertakes to strengthen in all without exception cases, the Code establishes only minimum norms, on the basis of which trade unions can strive for and achieve further improvement of Labor conditions. At the present time, individual union republics have their own Codes of laws on labor. The Code consists of the following chapters: I-General Part, II-On the procedure for hiring and provision of labor force, III-On the procedure for attracting to labor duty, IV-On collective agreements, V-On labor contracts, VI-On rules of internal order, VII-On output norms, VIII-On remuneration for Labor, IX-Guarantees and compensations, X-Working time, XI-Time off, XII-Apprenticeship, XIII-Labor of women and minors, XIV-Protection of Labor, XV-On trade unions, XVI-Resolution of conflicts, XVII-On social insurance. Questions of social-hygienic and health protection directly concern chapters X, XI, XIII, XIV and XVII. In addition to those issues related to the protection of Labor, other chapters of the Code also touch upon them. To facilitate the use of the highly developed legislation on labor in the USSR and to coordinate numerous decrees with the basic Code, a number of collections codifying legislation as a whole and on its individual problems, as well as a number of commentaries on the Code, were published by the People's Commissariat of Labor and its individual officials. On the basis of the Code of Laws on Labor, the People's Commissariat of Labor of the USSR issued more than 100 various general and special mandatory decrees on individual productions, regulating in detail the conditions of Labor and production from the point of view of Labor hygiene. Labor Inspection. One of the basic issues of labor legislation is the establishment of proper control over its implementation. Even Marx emphasized, as a characteristic feature of the hypocrisy of English legislation, the complete absence in it at first of any guarantees and the non-establishment of inspectorate organs for control, and later the complete actual impunity of entrepreneurs in cases of their being brought to court and the powerlessness of the factory inspection, and often also the absence on its part of any real desire to ensure the implementation of legislation in life. Lenin illuminated this question in great detail in his early works. The institution of factory inspection (sometimes under the name of industrial inspection, labor inspection, etc.), which now exists in almost all bourgeois countries, plays a very important service role for the bourgeoisie, in every way protecting the interests of capital and at the same time creating in the backward strata of workers the illusion of 'state protection of labor' and the possibility of radical improvement of labor conditions within the framework of capitalism. Factory inspection is usually supported in all countries by social-fascists, who dream only of introducing into this organ of 'class peace' representatives of the top of the labor aristocracy in the interests of further obscuring the growth of class consciousness of the proletariat and combating its revolutionary moods. The class nature of factory inspection is clearly manifested both in the selection of appropriate personnel and in their direct dependence on the entire bureaucratic machine of the bourgeois state, and in the insignificance of the rights granted to them, and in their frequent direct subordination to various 'labor chambers' and other 'democratic organizations' in which entrepreneurs play a dominant role. Factory inspection first arose in England by the law of 1833, since before that special overseers from among the justices of the peace or priests watched over the enforcement of the law on minors (in Prussia in 1853). In 1873 an inspection was created in Denmark, and after that in a series of the next few years one after another several countries passed laws on the establishment of special supervision for the implementation of legislation on the protection of Labor. In 1874 an inspection was established in France, in 1877 in Switzerland (in some of its cantons considerably earlier, e.g. in Zurich in 1859), in 1882 in Russia, etc. In the initial period of the labor movement, the bourgeoisie had not yet fully understood what benefits the existence of such an organization as factory inspection brought it. Therefore, after the enactment of the law of 1833, entrepreneurs in England several times tried not only to weaken but even to completely destroy this institution. Particularly characteristic was the agitation that developed against factory inspection in 1854, when factory inspectors tried to implement the rules on the guarding of machines, issued back in 1844. In response to this campaign, the leading circles of the bourgeoisie in 1855 even created a special body, a large association of entrepreneurs, called the 'National Union'. This union officially set as its task the struggle against 'excessive requirements' for the guarding of machines, but in reality had the aim of abolishing all previous factory legislation, and along with it, to destroy the factory inspection. The famous novelist Dickens called this union a 'union for maiming workers', because it set as its task the struggle against the guarding of dangerous machines. Marx in Volume III of 'Capital' illuminates this characteristic episode in detail, in particular emphasizing that among the prominent members of this association there were many justices of the peace who, by their position, were supposed to watch over the enforcement of the law. This attack on factory inspection was not completely successful. However, even now the rights of factory inspection in England are in fact very limited. The inspector, in order to secure enforcement of the law upon discovering a violation of labor protection requirements, cannot impose any punishment or use any force of compulsion whatsoever, except by court decision; before the court he appears on completely equal terms with the employer he accuses—and finally, the Labor inspection, including the chief inspector, cannot give any orders mandatory for the employer. Both the imposition of penalties and the very establishment of the fact of violation are entirely left to the court. The court is bound by no acts of the inspection and 'freely weighs' in its decision whether the inspector asserting the presence of violations or the employer denying them is right. Such is the state of factory inspection in a country that can celebrate its 100th anniversary. It is clear that in other countries the situation is no better. In France, within an 18-day period any order of the inspector can be appealed to the Minister of Labor. The final decision, in case the entrepreneur refuses to carry out an administrative order, remains with the court, since the orders of the inspector, being merely an interpretation of the law, cannot, under French law, have force equal to that of the law itself.

In Germany as well, an entrepreneur can appeal the order of the district inspector to the higher administrative authority to which it is subordinate, as well as to the central office of industrial supervision, and only if the entrepreneur does not exercise his right of appeal, and also if the higher administrative authority rejects his complaint, does the inspector's order acquire the force of law. The same applies in the Netherlands. In Italy, during the inspection of enterprises, in case of violations of the law, the inspector only draws up a protocol and sends it to court to initiate criminal prosecution. In Switzerland, the federal inspector, in case it becomes necessary to resort to administrative compulsion, cannot himself give orders, but must apply to the cantonal government for this purpose. If the cantonal government does not carry out the inspector's proposals, then the matter is decided by federal authorities. In Sweden, the main task of the Labor inspection is recognized as supervision over the observance of safety rules and instruction of entrepreneurs in this area. The inspector's instructions in themselves do not have compulsory force. It is very significant that in a number of countries, the supervision of factory inspection extends only to all enterprises with mechanical engines, and of establishments without engines only to those in which the number of workers exceeds a certain minimum. This minimum figure is established, for example, at 5 persons by the legislation of Belgium, Denmark, Italy, and Norway. In Switzerland, supervision by inspection extends to factories with engines, especially harmful to health or employing child labor, if they employ not less than 5 persons, and in other cases to enterprises with not less than 11 workers. The same is true in Belgium. In Hungary, industrial supervision extends to all establishments with engines, to all engineless workshops where not less than 20 persons work, as well as to all establishments of certain especially harmful industries, and in the matter of prohibiting night Labor for women even to enterprises with 10 workers. The extension of inspection supervision to only those enterprises where female and child Labor is used, regardless of the number of workers, takes place in Bulgaria, Spain, and Portugal. At the same time, the interests of entrepreneurs are especially carefully protected from the point of view of industrial secrets. Thus, in Hungary there are direct instructions that the inspector, during inspection, should not ask questions relating to production secrets, should not insist on inspecting those premises whose inspection could damage these secrets. He should also avoid everything that could directly or indirectly affect the commercial interests of the enterprise. In composition, the institution of factory inspection in bourgeois countries is everywhere completely isolated from the working masses, and the pitiful fiction of worker participation in individual countries only more sharply emphasizes the general gloomy background. Therefore, it nowhere enjoys even the slightest confidence of the working masses. And no partial improvements or half-hearted reforms can seriously change the situation. In all countries, communist parties therefore put forward the demand to replace factory inspection with Labor inspection, which however can only be carried out after the socialist revolution, under the dictatorship of the proletariat. In this connection, Lenin wrote as early as in his article 'The New Factory Law' that 'real conditions for the actual fulfillment of factory laws will be created only when the workers themselves will strictly supervise its observance, not allowing the slightest deviations from it, refusing to work until the requirements of the law are fulfilled. This supervision by the workers themselves will be more effective than the supervision of any factory officials. Without such supervision, the law will not be fulfilled.' In tsarist Russia, factory inspection was established in 1882 - initially with the special purpose of supervising the fulfillment of labor protection requirements with respect to minors. According to the law of 1884, nine factory districts were created, and the entire staff of the inspection was planned at 20 people. In 1886, new rules on factory inspection were issued with an expansion of its composition. Further, its staff was gradually increased, and by the time of the revolution the number of inspectors was 273 (of which only 193 were directly district inspectors). However, very quickly, due to the change in tasks assigned to this institution by ruling circles and government bodies, the very nature of factory inspection also changed. Due to the growing labor movement, it became necessary for the government to intensify the struggle against it, using all possible means for this purpose. For this purpose, a fundamental reorganization of the entire organization of factory inspection was gradually carried out, in particular its transfer from the Ministry of Finance to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, to which the police was subordinate. Indeed, soon the entire institution of factory inspection in all its activities and further in its organization was placed in the closest connection with the police. Inspectors were instructed to work 'under the direct supervision of the governor' (Article 51 of the industrial charter). In the 'Instructions' of factory inspection (1910 edition), § 1 states: 'The general local supervision over the observance of proper order and cleanliness in factories and plants lies with the local provincial authorities and is carried out with the assistance of local factory and mining affairs boards, factory inspection officials, and the police as appropriate.' Further, the factory inspection was entrusted with the direct task of fighting the labor movement. Thus, § 15 of the 'Instructions' states that 'local officials' (district agents) of factory inspection are obliged to immediately inform the provincial authorities of all cases of open disorders, strikes, unrest, and other violations of the law, also notifying the local police to take all measures 'for maintaining public order and personal safety' (of course not of the workers). Every factory inspector, as § 45 of the 'Instructions' states, 'upon receiving information about disturbances, strikes, or unrest that have occurred or are only being prepared among workers, is obliged to immediately go to the place for investigation... and to take necessary measures, peaceful settlement of the parties and other regulatory actions established by law...'. In more important cases, which include all strikes that have begun, this is immediately reported to the relevant senior inspectors - by telegraph, telephone, or other means ensuring the greatest speed of communication. Circular 26/II 1902 even proposed that factory inspectors inform the Ministry of Finance not only about disorders in plants under their jurisdiction, but also about cases of disorders that have come to the attention of the inspection in all other plants not subject to inspection supervision, as well as about street disorders in which workers could have participated. The baseness of the behavior of factory inspection representatives literally reached its climax in the recently discovered petition of the Kiev and Odessa inspectors for the dispatch of a submarine to blow up the famous battleship 'Potemkin', which had raised the flag of revolt, motivated by 'the possibility of worker disorders until the core of sedition is eradicated.' V. I. Lenin in his works clearly revealed the entire police nature of the Russian factory inspection. Here is how he characterized it in 1897: 'Factory inspectors are appointed in Russia so few that they rarely appear at factories. Factory inspectors are completely subordinate to the Ministry of Finance, which turns them into flunkeys of the factory owners, forces them to inform the police about strikes and unrest, forces them to persecute workers for leaving the factory, even when the factory owner does not persecute them, in a word, turns factory inspectors into some kind of police servants, some kind of factory officials. The factory owner has thousands of ways to influence factory inspectors and force them to do things his way. The workers, however, have no means to influence the factory inspection, and of course the workers cannot have such means as long as the workers do not have the right to assemble freely, form unions, print about their affairs, publish their own worker newspapers. In the absence of these rights, no official supervision over factory owners can be and never will be serious and effective.'-And it is quite understandable that after the February Revolution, the question of the need to destroy this institution immediately became acute. As early as 20/IV 1917, the central organ of the insurance group of the Social Democratic Bolsheviks 'Insurance of Workers' writes that the slogan for it is an elected worker inspection. However, in the project of the Provisional Government, these demands of the working class found no reflection, and the so-called Labor inspection planned by them was to remain as before a purely bureaucratic organ of the bourgeois state.'-According to this project, inspectors are not elected, are not responsible to anyone, and are appointed only from persons who have completed a course of higher education, as well as from persons who have served in the position of assistant for not less than 4 years.'

It is clear that no worker could have penetrated such an inspection. Moreover, the first labor inspectors were appointed by the ministry, first of all, from persons who had served for at least one year previously, under the tsar, as factory inspectors or district mining engineers. As a tribute to the 'socialist program' of the Menshevik ministry, Labor proposed the creation of a special institute of assistant inspectors, nominated by worker organizations. However, according to the project, these assistants had no rights whatsoever, performing only the specific assignments of the inspector. Only after serving 4 years could they be admitted to the ranks of Labor inspectors. Finally, the bodies directing the Labor inspection were created according to the project on a parity basis, i.e., on the basis of equal participation from top to bottom of representatives of workers and employers, and in addition, special officials were also included in their composition. Only the October Revolution completely swept away this old, hated by workers institution of factory inspection and in its place put a completely new system of genuinely proletarian protection of Labor. By decree of May 18, 1918, the old factory inspection was dissolved and in its place was decreed the creation of a new labor inspection on completely different principles, in different organizational forms and on a completely different social basis. The main difference of the Soviet Labor inspection from corresponding Western European models is its elective nature. Labor inspectors are elected by the worker masses themselves through the trade unions of the corresponding area. At any moment, Labor inspectors who do not meet their task can be re-elected by the trade unions. The second feature of the Labor inspection is the extension of its supervision to all without exception types of hired Labor, including homeworkers (i.e., those working at home), and also to a certain extent to persons working even as members in industrial cooperatives and artels. According to the basic decree of May 18, 1918, the Labor inspection has as its purpose the protection of the life and health of the working people. Article 146 of the Labor Code, published in 1922, states its tasks somewhat more fully: 'Supervision over the implementation by all without exception institutions, enterprises, economies and persons of all provisions of this Code, decrees, instructions, orders and collective contracts insofar as they concern conditions of Labor, protection of health and life of the working people, is entrusted to the Labor inspection, the technical inspection and the sanitary inspection, which are under the jurisdiction of the People's Commissariat of Labor.' In accordance with Article 149 of the Labor Code, the instructions of the inspection (republished in 1926) emphasize that the inspection is entrusted not only with observation and control over the implementation of decrees, resolutions and other acts of Soviet power in the field of protecting the interests of the working masses, but also with the direct adoption of necessary measures for the protection of safety, health and life of workers and women workers. In 1933, in connection with the liquidation of the People's Commissariat of Labor, the entire Labor inspection was transferred to trade union bodies and was reorganized on a strictly production principle (elected and approved directly by the corresponding trade unions, being in their complete jurisdiction), which significantly improved the quality and effectiveness of its work. In bourgeois countries, factory inspection must devote a considerable part of its time to technical issues of safety of machines, engines, transmissions, steam boilers, etc. This was also the main task of the factory inspection in Russia. Only in the USSR were these functions assigned to the tasks of the special technical inspection of Labor created in 1918. How sharply the scale of work of the Labor inspection differs now is evident from the following figures. Before the revolution, only about 120 factory inspectors worked, while in 1932 alone in the RSFSR there were 2,393 Labor inspectors and 338 technical inspectors. Among the Labor inspectors in 1932, there were 68% workers, 17% peasants and 15% employees. Members of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in the Labor inspection were 72% and Komsomol members 5%. In addition, supervision over the implementation of health measures directly at enterprises has been carried out since 1930 by a whole army (over 40,000) of public Labor inspectors, elected by factory committees and carrying out their work on a voluntary basis without being released from production work. Sanitary inspection of Labor. Of great interest is the development within the state bodies of supervision over the implementation of legislation on Labor of a special and medical branch, the so-called sanitary inspection of Labor. The first country in the world where a sanitary inspection was organized is Belgium. Here the sanitary inspection was created as early as 1895, however, to this day it leads a miserable existence. At present, only five sanitary inspectors work in Belgium, and these physicians in their activities are subordinate to engineers and do not have sufficient freedom and independence even in questions requiring special hygienic knowledge. Sanitary inspectors have the right of independent visits to enterprises, and in case of detecting violations concerning purely medical issues, they also have the right to make corresponding proposals or, more correctly, only remarks about the noted defects. In all cases when questions are involved that are related to technology or production processes (and such are always the vast majority), sanitary inspectors must apply to the administration only through the corresponding engineer. Sanitary inspectors here are mainly engaged in examining adolescents entering work, and they themselves do not carry out this examination, but it is carried out by physicians invited for this purpose by the factory owners themselves. It is clear that the latter fiercely protect the interests of the factory owners, since they are materially dependent on the employer. The main work on the actual improvement of Labor conditions and changes in production processes is almost not carried out by the sanitary inspection. It is characteristic that in Belgium sanitary physician-inspectors are not allowed at all to supervise Labor conditions in the mining industry, although the latter is the most widespread among all other branches of the national economy. In England, the sanitary inspection was organized in 1898, but to this day there are only 4 sanitary inspectors there. Two of them live in London and are assistants to the chief sanitary inspector in his organizational work in the ministry. The insignificance of this figure stands out particularly sharply against the background that there are 330 factory inspectors (mainly engineers). The main task of the sanitary inspection is control over the activities of the so-called certifying physicians conducting medical examination of adolescents. These physicians (mainly private practitioners) number about 1,800. Visits to enterprises are made by sanitary inspectors comparatively rarely for the purpose of Labor protection proper, i.e., detection of sanitary-technical deficiencies of enterprises and taking measures to eliminate them. At the same time, sanitary inspectors usually submit their proposals only through the factory inspector, although formally they have the right to independently initiate court cases and appear in court. According to English law, the inspection has no right to make independent orders, but can only initiate corresponding court cases, and the court does not simply consider the initiated cases from the point of view of punishability of employers for violations of the law, but always considers the essence of the question of the advisability of carrying out certain sanitary-technical measures and the correctness of the inspector's orders, which without this do not have mandatory force. As in Belgium, in England the sanitary inspection has no right of entry into mines. The general position of the sanitary inspection in the state apparatus and its insignificant role clearly follows from the following fact. In early 1927, the senior sanitary inspector, the largest specialist in the field of occupational hygiene, Dr. Legg, who had held this position for almost 30 years, resigned. He was forced to leave his established post because he could not reconcile himself to the blatant hypocrisy of his government in the field of measures to improve Labor conditions. The occasion for his departure was the enactment of a law on lead, by which the use of highly toxic lead paints was permitted for interior painting of premises, whereas according to the convention adopted by the International Bureau of Labor at the League of Nations (with the consent of the British government), this was categorically prohibited. And so a man of very 'right' convictions and by no means standing on the positions of class struggle and generally not connected with working class organizations decided to leave his post in order not to remain a miserable pawn in the hands of capitalists who actually dictate their will to the government. In Holland there are 0 sanitary inspectors. The main task of theirs is the examination of minors and care for the organization of first aid on enterprises. In Germany as early as 1898 the Social Democratic Party put forward in the Reichstag the demand for the inclusion of sanitary physicians in the composition of the factory inspection.'

In 1902, this requirement was reiterated in the Prussian Landtag and was repeated several times in subsequent years, but only after the German revolution of 1921 was a sanitary inspection established in Prussia, with the entire country divided into 5 inspectorial districts. It is particularly interesting to note that under the influence of opponents of sanitary inspection (factory inspector-engineers, who relied on industrialists, were particularly vocal against it), the position of sanitary inspector was not initially established in Berlin, Germany's largest industrial center. This was done specifically to prevent the sanitary inspection from establishing itself in the German capital and thus make it easier to destroy it when favorable conditions arose. Subsequently, 3 more positions of sanitary inspectors were established in Prussia, in addition to which there is 1 sanitary inspector each in Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg. In Germany, the sanitary inspection was set up somewhat better than in other European countries before the fascist coup, but it still suffered from significant detachment from the general work of protecting Labor and was more engaged in the study of occupational diseases than in implementing sanitary-hygienic measures in production that would improve Labor, i.e., in protecting Labor in the proper sense of the word. Currently, the best sanitary inspectors, in particular doctors, have been dismissed by the fascist government. In Italy, the sanitary inspection was organized in 1912 and consists, besides the chief sanitary inspector, of only two people. These sanitary inspectors do not even have the right to independently inspect enterprises. They appear at a factory only at the call of factory inspectors or on special assignments directly from the ministry. They have no right to independently make any demands; it is therefore natural that they cannot bring violators to court for violations of sanitary protection of Labor. In Austria, the sanitary inspection was created only after the revolution, and to this day it is essentially still not organized at all. The entire of Austria is served by the sanitary inspector of the city of Vienna, who is also a consultant in the Ministry of Labor. Thus, we see that in all bourgeois countries to this day there are only pitiful embryos of sanitary inspection, vested with extremely insignificant rights and by no means capable of coping with all the broad tasks that life sets before it. The sanitary inspection of Labor in the USSR began to be created on the basis of the 'Regulations on the Sanitary Inspection of Labor', issued by the People's Commissariat of Labor on 8/III 1919 and 15/I 1920. The People's Commissariat of Labor issued instructions for the sanitary inspection, which were then thoroughly reviewed on the basis of accumulated experience and reissued on 1/XII 1925. According to paragraph 1 of these instructions, the sanitary inspection of Labor supervises the sanitary-hygienic conditions of Labor in all enterprises, institutions, and establishments employing hired Labor. This emphasizes that its supervision, similar to other types of inspection, extends to all persons engaged in hired Labor and to all places where it is applied, regardless of the size of the enterprise and the type of its owner (state, cooperative, or private). The general tasks of the sanitary inspection of Labor are defined in the second paragraph of the instructions, according to which the purpose of the sanitary inspection's supervision is to develop and implement health-improving measures concerning 1) the production process, 2) the production environment, and 3) the work regime of workers. Thus, the main task of the sanitary inspection of Labor in the USSR is the actual improvement of Labor conditions by intervening in the production life of enterprises, whereas in the West, almost exclusively educational measures and health monitoring of workers are carried out. The main task of the sanitary inspection of Labor is to improve production and labor processes in order to eliminate the danger of occupational diseases and poisonings and to reduce the general morbidity of workers. The second main task of the sanitary inspector of Labor is to monitor the implementation of all requirements of current legislation on the sanitary protection of Labor and to supervise the sanitary condition of enterprises and the course of production processes from the standpoint of Labor hygiene, which is carried out by the sanitary inspector through special revisional visits to enterprises, institutions, and establishments in his district. The sanitary inspector has the right to demand from the administration of enterprises, institutions, and establishments the necessary explanations, certificates, relevant documents, books, and information, as well as explanations about details of production processes, names and composition of items and substances used, even if this constitutes a trade secret. In carrying out his duties, the sanitary inspector has the right to require the cooperation of administrative personnel. In case of discovering serious violations of existing legislation on Labor protection, the sanitary inspector brings the relevant economic organization or individual entrepreneur to judicial responsibility or imposes a fine. In particularly exceptional cases, the sanitary inspector has the right to take emergency measures (up to and including closing the enterprise) upon discovering conditions directly threatening the life and health of workers, even if the adoption of such measures is not provided for by special laws, instructions, and decrees of the NKT or local authorities. The sanitary inspector bears the lion's share of the work in preventive (preliminary) sanitary supervision, i.e., the coordination of industrial projects with the requirements of Labor hygiene required by the Labor Code, and participation in the acceptance of newly constructed or reconstructed enterprises. He must: a) participate in the consideration of projects for newly constructed, rebuilt, or major repaired industrial buildings and structures, as well as projects for various sanitary-technical installations at enterprises (ventilation systems, wastewater treatment facilities, etc.) and, if necessary, make corresponding changes and additions from the standpoint of Labor hygiene; b) ensure that construction, reconstruction, or major repairs, as well as the implementation of various sanitary-technical installations, are carried out according to projects approved by Labor protection authorities; c) participate in commissions for inspecting industrial structures before their commissioning to determine the conformity of these structures to approved projects and existing regulations; d) ensure that no enterprise is opened, put into operation, or moved to another premises without the approval of Labor protection authorities in the established manner; e) visit the premises of enterprises planned for opening and give an opinion on their conformity to established sanitary standards. The sanitary inspector carries out his preventive supervision work in close agreement and constant coordination with communal sanitary authorities (see Industrial Sanitation). In case of discovering construction, reconstruction, or major repair work (regardless of the stage they are in), opening or commissioning of industrial enterprises or their individual parts without the approval of Labor protection authorities, the sanitary inspector brings the guilty parties to responsibility and, in addition, demands the submission of corresponding plans in the established manner. The sanitary inspection is also entrusted with the accounting and registration of occupational poisonings, guidance in the implementation of sanitary-technical minimums, sanitary-educational work on Labor protection issues, etc. In 1932, about 600 sanitary inspectors of Labor were working in the USSR. In the summer of 1933, the sanitary inspection of Labor was transferred to the trade unions and was reorganized on a production principle. In March 1934, by a resolution of the Secretariat of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, the sanitary inspection of Labor was merged with the institute of insurance (control) doctors of the trade unions. At present, according to the decree of the CEC USSR on the state sanitary inspection (23/XII 1933) and the regulations on sanitary inspection approved by the SNK of the RSFSR on 20/III 1934, the functions of sanitary-industrial state supervision are concentrated entirely in the People's Commissariat of Health, thereby finally resolving the long-standing interdepartmental dispute between the NKT and NKZdr authorities regarding the place of the sanitary inspection of Labor. Achievements in Labor protection as a result of the first five-year plan and the next tasks in the second five-year plan. 17 years of Soviet power have fundamentally changed the Labor conditions of workers in state enterprises. The period of the victorious completion of the first five-year plan in 4 years has contributed particularly much in this regard, as a result of which the USSR firmly established itself on the socialist path, building the foundation of a socialist economy. The fundamental technical reconstruction of the entire national economy of the USSR during the first five-year plan was accompanied by significant advances in the field of Labor protection, which in turn contributed to an increase in Labor productivity. Sanitary-technical conditions of Labor improved sharply on old factories, a number of enterprises after reconstruction became completely unrecognizable, and the new largest factories, built according to the latest word of science and technology, as a rule, amaze with their cleanliness, abundance of air and light, mechanization of heavy work, and elimination of harmful and dangerous work. And not without reason,

At the January joint plenum of the CC and CCC VKP(b) in 1933, Stalin cited as a typical assessment of the USSR from visiting worker delegations an excerpt from the following assessment by a Belgian worker delegation in the USSR: 'We are amazed by the enormous construction that we observed during our journey. In Moscow, as in Makeyevka, Horlivka, Kharkiv, and Leningrad, we could note with what enthusiasm people work there. All machines are of the latest design. In the factories - cleanliness, lots of air and light. We saw how in the USSR workers receive medical and sanitary help...'. Allocations for special measures to improve Labor and safety in industry and on transport (carried out in a planned manner according to industrial and financial plans by agreement between economic bodies and labor protection bodies) grew year by year (in 1928/29 - 64.9 million rubles, in 1929/30 - 95.2 million, in 1931 - 123.3 million and in 1932 - 169.5 million rubles). Thus, over four years of the five-year plan, 452.9 million rubles were allocated for labor protection. According to the first five-year plan, only 332.7 million rubles were supposed to be allocated over five years, so this part of the plan was overfulfilled by 36%. Special mention should be made of the significant increase in allocations for Labor protection in agriculture: in 1930, 3 million rubles were allocated, in 1932 - 8 million rubles, and in 1933 already 12 million rubles. The figures given concern only special allocations under a special section of industrial and financial plans (for only those types of activities specially provided for in a special nomenclature) of only operating enterprises and constitute only a negligible part of all expenses for all measures to improve Labor, associated with the reconstruction of old plants and major investments for these purposes in new construction. Of the fundamental health improvement measures carried out in recent years, we can mention in mining - the radical improvement of ventilation in underground workings in the coal industry, almost complete replacement of gasoline hand miner's lamps with battery lamps and the introduction of stationary-electric lighting already in a number of mines, the creation of new types of electrically safe motors, significant improvement of water supply and sanitation in mines, the creation of Soviet-type rescue apparatus, etc.; in metallurgy - the introduction of mechanical charging of blast furnaces and furnaces, the widespread implementation of skip blast furnace elevators and trestles, casting machines, Brozius guns, hydraulic and other improved valves in the gas system, water cooling of furnace frames and air showers in open-hearth, rolling and other hot shops, and the organization of gas rescue stations; in the chemical industry - the hermetization and mechanization of a number of processes associated with the danger of damage by acids and inhalation of toxic vapors and gases; in a number of industries - the replacement of toxic substances with harmless ones and first of all the complete displacement of lead from a number of production processes. Great work has also been done in the area of specifically sanitary-industrial measures. While at the beginning of the first five-year plan there were still few toilets in underground workings (before the revolution, only 13 mines had underground toilets), by the end of the first five-year plan already 62% of the total number of operating mines had underground toilets. Before the October Revolution, for every 10 mines there was only 1 bathhouse, but by the end of the first five-year period there were already more than 9 bathhouses for every 10 mines. Allocations for bathhouse construction are growing every year: 1928/29 - 914 thousand rubles, 1929/30 - 945 thousand rubles, 1930/31 - 1,015 thousand rubles. As a result of all these and a number of other measures not listed here for Labor protection, the first five-year plan gave a sharp reduction in industrial injuries, poisonings and morbidity among workers in the USSR (see Professional diseases). The results of the fundamental improvement of Labor conditions, along with a sharp improvement in the living conditions of the working masses, are even more clearly reflected in the dynamics of general morbid- 949

Labor, of disability. Thus, according to Tsustrakh data for 1929, there were 48.2 cases of illness per 100 insured persons with 445.2 paid sick days, while in the first half of 1932 there were 40.0 cases of illness and 334.2 paid sick days, i.e., the first five-year plan gave a reduction in the number of cases of illness by 16%, and in the number of sick days by 22%. Even more characteristic are the data on the dynamics of morbidity in individual industries, presented in the following table (based on current morbidity records): Table 19. Number of paid days per 100 insured (without quarantine and maternity leave). From the table it is clear that the overall morbidity in all main industries shows a significant decrease. It is also interesting to note that it is precisely those diseases that were always considered specific to individual industries and closely related to working conditions that are significantly decreasing. For example, in Ukraine, per 100 insured persons, the number of sick days from furunculosis in the coal industry was 248.6 in 1929, 201.9 in 1930, and 145.7 in 1931; muscular rheumatism gave 10.9 compared to 16.7, and joint rheumatism 49 compared to 53. The second five-year plan, the general plan of which was adopted at the XVI Party Congress, is the five-year plan for the elimination of capitalist elements and classes and the destruction of all conditions that create class contradictions. The plan of the second five-year plan creates all conditions for the elimination of classes and the transformation of all working people of the USSR into active and conscious builders of socialist society. Along with the largest program of new construction and an unprecedented growth in production anywhere in the world in the second five-year plan, its plan also provides for a significant scale and an exceptionally rapid increase in the improvement of the material and cultural level of the broad masses of workers in the city and countryside. This presupposes further successes in the field of improving working conditions, inextricably linked with the further increase in labor productivity, which 'becomes the decisive factor in fulfilling the planned program for increasing production in the second five-year plan' (resolution of the XVI Congress). No wonder the XV Party Congress already pointed to the need to 'improve the work of the People's Commissariat of Labor and its bodies, as well as economic and trade union bodies in protecting and improving working conditions in enterprises (especially in heavy industry)' (from the resolution on the tasks of trade unions). In the second five-year plan for the development of the national economy of the USSR, in the section 'Labor, personnel and living conditions,' it states: 'In this area [of sanitary-technical improvement of working conditions.-S.K.], even greater achievements must be obtained, as a result of which morbidity will decrease by one third and occupational injuries and occupational poisonings will be basically eliminated in the leading sectors of the national economy.' The entire organization of work in the protection of labor in the second five-year plan will be closely linked to the general lines of the technical-economic development of the USSR and will be a continuation of the trends that have already emerged in the first five-year plan and fundamentally differ from the policy of labor protection before the beginning of the technical reconstruction of the national economy. If in the first decade of Soviet power the main attention was paid to issues of legal protection of labor (duration and distribution of working time, issues of protection of labor for women and adolescents, vacations, etc.), then it is now completely natural that after the full practical implementation in our life of labor legislation on legal protection of labor, all attention will be paid to sanitary-technical improvement of working conditions and the creation of such a working atmosphere that fully ensures the worker 'development in all directions and manifestation of all his abilities, both physical and spiritual' (Engels). At the same time, incomparably less attention than in the first five-year plan will be paid to issues of radical improvement and implementation of major sanitary measures in old enterprises, since the program of the second five-year plan provides for the complete completion of the technical reconstruction of the entire national economy, so that about 80% of all industrial products will be obtained from new enterprises built or completely reconstructed during the first and second five-year plans. Therefore, the directive of the XVI Party Congress acquires special importance, which pointed out in its resolution on the tasks of trade unions in the reconstruction period that trade unions must ensure that in capital and new construction and in the rationalization of production, the requirements for protection and improvement of working conditions and technical safety are observed. The problem of mastering new production technologies is closely related to the development of issues of fundamentally changing the production processes and structures created under capitalism, which often did not take into account the interests of the organism and the health of workers, and which were sometimes uncritically or, rather to say, without proper processing (due to lack of sufficient time) transferred to the conditions of the USSR. In the second five-year plan, the following tasks are set as completely concrete ones: on the one hand, the basic elimination of industrial injuries and occupational diseases in harmful and dangerous productions, and on the other hand, the creation in new enterprises, the children of the first and second five-year plans, of such working conditions as the founders of Marxism and Leninism prophesied when outlining the working conditions under socialism. In connection with the resolution of the XVI Congress on the second five-year plan and the main technical trends of the latter, the following tasks acquire special importance in the second five-year plan: a) completion of mechanization of basic processes in hot shops, in particular not only in metallurgy but also in chemical, ceramic and other similar productions, mechanization of all intra-factory transport, mechanization of transportation, pouring of corrosive and explosive substances, etc. b) Further development of issues of complete replacement in a number of cases of poisonous substances with harmless ones. Scientific research thought already has a number of achievements in this direction, however, far from fully implemented in production practice. Moreover, in a number of cases, when the technological and economic aspects of the issue have already been sufficiently clarified, it is necessary to ensure a sufficient supply of new substances replacing the old familiar but poisonous components. In this direction, it is necessary to point to the need for the final displacement of lead white from production, ensuring sufficient output of lithopone, zinc and titanium whites, introducing in rubber and other productions instead of rubber glue aqueous dispersions of rubber, searching for harmless lead-free driers (manganese-cobalt driers according to the research of the Institute of Labor Protection, turned out to be far from harmless), searching for new non-poisonous solvents for varnishes, paints, etc. c) Standardization of mixtures of chemical products used in production and ensuring the purity and absence of impurities of a number of chemical substances, in case of their contamination (such as sulfuric acid, arsenic) threatening the possibility of poisoning, d) Thorough development of issues of hermetic sealing of chemical apparatus, completely eliminating the possibility of penetration into the working zone of even small quantities of harmful and dangerous gases and vapors. In this connection, the development of issues regarding materials for storage facilities and pipelines, as well as gaskets and putty, resistant to the action of acids and other corrosive substances, acquires special importance, e) Thorough development of issues of natural ventilation of work premises (aeration), based on temperature difference and the action of wind, f) In the field of industrial lighting, special attention should be paid in the second five-year plan to qualitative issues of lighting, and the enormous growth of electrification in the USSR will make it possible to increase lighting significantly above minimum sanitary norms, setting itself the task of creating truly comfortable conditions for work (especially fine and detailed), which in turn should significantly increase labor productivity.

It will be necessary to pay special attention to the proper organization of the production of electrical equipment (primarily industrial) and, in particular, explosion- and gas-proof fittings. g) It will be necessary to set the task of widely implementing the use of artificial daylight lamps in production practice during the second five-year plan, and especially so-called ultraviolet lamps that pass the extremely valuable ultraviolet rays ('rays of life') for the organism. h) The technical reconstruction, and especially the broad development of machine building, and the struggle for mastering the production of up to 200 new types of machines pose before the labor protection organs and scientific institutes the question of the need for their active participation in designing them in order to make them completely safe and at the same time maximally taking into account the physical and psychological characteristics of the worker, i.e., to make work on them maximally productive, convenient, and pleasant. i) During the second five-year plan, labor protection issues must be closely linked with issues of rationalization and organization of rest, both production (in particular, the introduction of physical culture during short breaks, using breaks for music, collective singing, etc.) and non-production (especially active in the form of various outings, local tourism, etc.). Particular attention should be paid to the greening of the entire territory of enterprises, which not only stimulates workers by raising their tone but also has the greatest hygienic significance. The experience of Horlivka and other Donbas regions has especially clearly demonstrated that flowers can serve as one of the powerful levers for increasing the extraction of coal and metal. The grandiose tasks facing the second five-year plan in creating healthy and joyful conditions for labor must be based on the words of the great leader of the world proletariat, Comrade Stalin, spoken by him at the graduation of Red Army academicians on 4/V 1935: 'Technique without people who have mastered technique is dead. Technique led by people who have mastered technique can and must perform miracles...' The second five-year plan is a five-year plan of an unprecedented rise in culture and exceptional attention to the needs of healthy, vigorous, and joyful, fully developed conscious builders of socialism—it is a five-year plan of the greatest achievements creating all conditions for healthy and joyful labor. See also Prevention, Professional Hygiene, Occupational Diseases, Social Hygiene, Social Insurance, Traumatism.