6 THE REVOLUTIONARY AGE December 11, 1918 Wages and High Prices in Russia moves by jumps, money, DALIWO goal, of the most important questions in the By Bronsky From the Moscozu Prardu cnt angle; owing to the unreality of the incre to the struggle against the high cost of living: program on an all Russian scale.
with these products which compose the greater the high cost of living which is moving value of a ruble can be only achieved by increas. family; We have alrendy dwinted out that to raise the part of expenditure in the budget of the worker forward with terrific speed. No matter how much ing the mass of products in the merchandise mar.
wagcs are increased the price of the articles In the first place nre the expenses of subsist.
ket.
prime necessity increase much more swiftly. The ence: bread, meat, potatoes, buiter, cte; further.
increase of wages is not moving parallel with the ing power, because having been forced to issue then follow the expenses for clothing, shows. un.
And this is why the ruble drops in its purchas the expenses for room rent, heating and lighting: under the pressure of struggle, strikes, threats paper rubles during the war in grent quantity needs: schools, newspapers, books, melicine.
growth of high prices, but it and all sorts of administrative demands.
we at the same time used up a great mass of pro Thus, the nominal wage of the workers is divila derwcar, etc. and then expenses for cultur: ducts in the war.
During the period of eight months of the bourgeois revolution in Russia, the workers obtained Even now we shall be compelled to issue paper into its component parts and must cover all the a number of changes in the scale of wages, and but our economic problem is the produc above named expenses. If, instead, part of the in this manner they met the high cost of living: tion of merchandise, necessary not for war, but noney wager is paid to the workers in products they tried to insure themselves against a return hundreds of thousands of workmen who work in for the requirements of the country. If these for which they spend their wages, and on the by tying the capitalist with regulations for for consumption or machines, which lighten labor measured the war factories, will begin to produce products then as a matter of fact the nominal risc of was a definite period of rubles can be stopped, increasin: itx contracts are of value millions of soldiers who are listed in the armies, power, and But the regulation, and increase the proluctivity of Inbor; if thcsoducts of primo providing the con the workers with the products of consump. will return to productive labor. then the value necessity.
all By organizing public tion are more or less stable. As soon, however of the ruble will rise. For only then the supply familics, it is possible not only to categories of won the hour.
and their meat, butter, wood, rooms, clothes, Shoes, and of merchandise will be increased in comparison sen on the workers wives in preparing veka of and hourly, then these regulative contracts become ducers of these products.
other necessary articles are changed not doily but chase prmluctx also be in some degree the pro: fuel. but it is possible to provide their subsist.
the time limit, and they appear to be only high prices, that is, to fight the decrease of the subsistence. The public lunch rooms which can Thus, the most substantial means of fighting of that part of wages which is being spent for brings a condition where, in spite of the contracts, in the number of persons working on productive and not simply nominally in rubles.
of the ruble, is the incrense of be established at the fnctorier, or in the working than a weapon for curbing the capitalists. This purchasing power the country productivity, by means of increase quarters, can actually increase wage: materially, in wages in order to prevent their condition of needs of the people economy.
In this manner could be solved the question of life becoming worse.
It is understood, that this path is long, and that rent. Here, more radical menns will have to be It is cleur, then, that to fight the high cost of results. But this is the only path leading to the ly into the pockets of landlords who collect from one cannot expect in the near future apparent employed. The expenses for rent are going directa living one must choose another path, and the increase of wages at the present time, a time of paper currency, does not guarantee the worker established a few months ago, can scarcely mect of the capitalist proſit, which less than anything But the workers cannot wait. Their wage scale building the house. This is one of the sources from the high cost of living. The oftener the wage changes, the more influence it has on spe first necessity.
the systematic rise in the prices of products of clse has the right to exist. The question of :1culation, on the increase of merchandise prices tionalization or municipalization of houses is. and it would have required a most strict and exact It is necessary to take extraordinary measures, question of the near future. The moratorium on regulation of fixed prices in order that the inin order, on the one hand, to safeguard the work the rents is only a temporary mensure and muxt crense of wages should not effect, in its turn, the ers families against a lack of products of prime give way to municipalization of the house and worker. consumer, in the form of an avanecessity, and on the other hand, protect the State monopoly of the city real catnte. By insticountry against industrial disorganization. tuting socialization (municipalization of houses, carrency circulation, the tendency of a sudden and incompetence for the proletarian government with this they lanche of high prices on all products of consumption.
Especially now, political power is in the hand we, in this way, decrease that part of the waste The increase in wages because of the paper of the proletariat and pensantry, it would be folly which is being carpended for rent. Simultaneously al ditz and State will be on outs and strikex, as a of and State proportionally its purchasing power. As a mattere struggle of li proletariat.
way the city and the able to put into ito such inatiliving is chiefly the result of the dropping in the The strike is a method of strugle of the pro. tutions (free schools, dispensaries, theatres, minvalue of the ruble. The other side of this drop in the capitalista to make comescims, under great sums from the pages of the workers a mwans of com seums and so forth. which, in their turn, absorb gle against which must go simultaneously with. which could the workour very dearly. cost of living.
it high other means of fighting the high cost.
As a necessary form of the transition period And to fight high prices one must proceed from her wisty. lid sovern ruble, its stability, and, on the other end, by the interests of workers coincide with the chief products of food, but also on products of two ends at once by raising the value of the lives of working clim ir to class and as a means in highting speculation, it is not increase of real wages.
It is necessary, in short, to try to make things have been crime on the part of the interests of the whole of noiety, it woull consumption in generalinst the high cost In a word, the struggle and that wages chould not only be given in paper their interests by the costly and dinicult way of cannot tread the old path increasing the no tender, but represent real purchasing power.
It is clear that this program of fighting high We are face to fnce with the problem of solving minal wage, but it must follow the path of estab prices cannot merely go on within the boundaries the high cost of living from an absolutely differ lishing a real wage by providing at the working masses with the necessary means of consumption.
The Class Character of Bourgeois Mercy The meaning of life to Mooney, is still. prison!
By Hourwich nothing in common with the struggle between labor and capital, the question arises: Why did mency to Mooney, declares he ventured on that President Wilson in the letters to Gov. Stephens Could we expect anything better from capital act of mercy upon the urgent requests of printed in the papers, constantly allude to the ixt justice. Of course not! For the release of President Wilson. But President Wilson has more international significance of the Mooney case.
Mooney, or even a new trial of his case, would be than once appealed to the Governor to pardon What, one may ask, is the international sini.
at the same time a verdict of guilty for the Mooney, and the last request of this character ficance attached to the pardoning or on the cont.
whole system of capitalist justice. new was sent as far back as March of last year. rary, the sentencing of nn ordinary crimin:l trial, on the eve of the execution of the death question arises, then why has California Gov: as Governor Stephens is picturing Mooney. sentence, would mean putting on trial all those who, during two and a half years, kept Mooney on the eve of a threatened general strike through who attempts with all sorts of absurd comical who for a long time tried to fasten the noose that the threat of a gencral strike and not the fet rid of that indisputable fact of life that it around his neck, and would have succeeded had urgent requests of President Wilson has been was not the requests of any sort from above, but the working classes, their just and severe wrath, it not been for the intervention of organized labor, the whip that lashed the merciful governor on in America as well as in other countries.
Grant to act?
which stopped the hand of the executioner.
ing a new trial would mean undermining the Truc, the Governor, forseeing the possibility But, of course, the working class will not by foundations of Inw and order, and not a single of such unfounded suspicious, attempts to pro deceived by this tawdry act of mercy a bone defender of law and order would, of course duce some sort of explanation of his tardiness. thrown to the dog. The workers threat of a venture upon such a sacrilegious task.
But the explanations are so empty that they neral strike, the evident determination to im. ne.
will convince no one.
diately begin to act, only owing to this did they Two and a half years ago Capitalism, with the Mooney from the ranks of the check the mananchine ed. suspicions regarding the true character of the strong claws of the capitalist cerberus akin the cause of labor. And now the same predatory fine matter. the Governor solemly declares that he working class will not stop at this with mode terests favor clemency. for Mooney and the representing a clash between capital and labor. will continue the struggle, until Mooney shall be purpose is the same striking at labor.
But if this is so, if the Mooney case is one of the ret free and return to the ranks of the fighters The Governor of California, in granting cle thousands of ordinary criminal cases having in the cause of labor from which he was snatched.
State will be you throuenied to content nocent man!