The Socialist Forum: Can Russian Peasants be Industrialised?
A correspondent writing from St. John (New Brunswick) asks some interesting: questions about the possibility of making efficient factory workers out of the Russian peasants:—
Isaac Don Levine, author of the “Life of Stalin,” … in a recent article in the New York Scribners’ Magazine, would have us believe that a Dictatorship such as the one in Russia can by no manner of means create a proletariat, capable of working in machine industry in anything less than several generations or centuries. He implies that the Slav is racially an inferior type, not amenable to factory discipline, and a clumsy animal in other respects.
If it is true that an agricultural population is not of a type that can readily be adapted to machine production, and it takes generations of workers coming originally from rural districts to make mechanics, how can we account for the remarkable rise of German industry in the space of forty or fifty years up till about 1914? The majority of Germans, prior to 1860 or 1870, were villagers and farmers, and in a very few years after coming to the cities, turned out lo be capable mechanics, and this same thing happened in other places. Any number of Polish, Hungarian and Balkan peasants who arrived in the United States prior to 1915, took their place in machine industry without any experience, and fitted right into the scheme of things, their children even more so, after them.
If the Soviet Government succeeds in obtaining the required number of capable technicians and foremen to manage the factories and shops built and building, in this five-year plan, what is there to prevent the transformation of millions of mujiks into machine tenders as has happened in other countries?
Yours, etc.,
M. WASSON.
Not having seen the article by Mr. Levine we do not know what evidence he adduces to show either that Russian peasants or Slavs generally are incapable of being trained as industrial workers.
It is true that some employers (e.g., Ford Motors) in their selection of workers give preference to American or Canadian born, or to immigrants from Great Britain, Germany, etc., and often reject applicants from the more backward European States. There is, however, no evidence to show that the latter are unsuitable because of racial characteristics. An explanation is that some countries, having reached a fairly high level of capitalist development, have framed their general and technical education in a way which produces workers suitable for up-to-date factory work. Workers from backward countries and rural areas are unlikely to possess the qualifications of training and education needed.
It is interesting to recall that in Great Britain, in the early days of the factory system, employers found the same difficulty in compelling handicraftsmen and peasants to fit themselves into the discipline of machine production.
The whole question of racial differences is discussed very thoroughly by Friedrich Hertz in his “Race and Civilization” (Published by Kegan Paul, London, 1928, and by the MacMillan Co., New York). He shows how old are the theories of racial superiority, and how completely they cancel each other out; for there is no race that at some period has not cherished the illusion of its own innate superiority. Hertz deals with the capacity for social progress and reached this conclusion :—
“The differences between distant groups of one and the same linguistic family or race are greater than those between any two ‘unrelated’ races as a whole. This assertion can be proved up to the hilt. Therefore it follows from this that it is not racial character which has prevented the backward from progressing, but environmental influences.” (P. 259.)
He gives a neat answer to the belief in the superior fitness for industrialism supposed to be possessed by non-Slav races by pointing out that early in the 19th century it was said that the Germans also were inherently a backward race. He quotes Genovesi as having written in 1820 that the Germans would never be able to develop a trade and commerce or produce a population like the French and English. A German writer when he first heard of railways being built was of the opinion that such things were of no good to Germany, because the German character was too easy-going (p. 59).
In Hertz’s book there are a large number of illustrations of stupid theories of racial superiority being encouraged by ruling classes for their own interests. He shows, for example, how these theories were used by the Governments during the war.
As regards the Russian Five-Year Plan, the Soviet Government have banked very heavily on early success of their industrialisation schemes. The slowness with which peasants can be trained to equal the efficiency of workers in advanced capitalist countries is likely to present a very difficult problem to the Government there, hardly less difficult than the problem would be if—as Mr. Levine suggests—the Slavs could for racial reasons never be industrialised. The Russians themselves claim, with what justification we do not know, that they have every reason to be optimistic about their ability to produce skilled workers. According to Mr. J. C. Crowther (an English scientist who visited Russia) :—
“The Russians have evolved their own system. They say a raw worker can become as skilled in six months by this training as he would in four years casual work as an artisan’s mate in the shops. They propose to put 700,000 workers through such courses in 1931” (“Industry and Education in Soviet Russia.” Pub. Heinemann, 1932).
Ed. Comm.