Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

112V. I. LENINof their class-consciousness. With this end in view the Billsin their entire structure must be imbued with a spirit ofproletarian distrust of the employers and of the state as anorgan serving the employers: in other words, the spirit ofthe class struggle must permeate the whole structure of theBill and ensue from the sum of its separate propositions;finally (5) under conditions in Russia today, i.e., in the absenceof a Social-Democratic press and Social-Democraticmeetings, Bills must give a sufficiently concrete idea of thechanges demanded by the Social-Democrats and not limitthemselves to a mere proclamation of principle. The ordinaryunenlightened worker should find his interest arousedby the Social-Democratic Bill, he should be inspired by itsconcrete picture of change so that later he passes from thisindividual picture to the Social-Democratic world outlookas a whole.Proceeding from these basic premises, it has to be admittedthat the type of Bill chosen by the author of the originaldraft of the Bill on the Eight-Hour Working Day is morein accordance with Russian conditions than, for example,those Bills on a shorter working day which were introducedby the French and German Social-Democrats in their parliaments.For example, the Bill on the Eight-Hour WorkingDay moved by Jules Guesde in the French Chamber of Deputieson May 22, 1894, contains two articles: the first forbidsworking longer than eight hours per day and six daysper week, the second permits work in several shifts providedthat the number of working hours per week does not exceed48.* The German Social-Democratic Bill of 1890 contains14 lines, proposing a 10-hour working day immediately,a nine-hour working day from January 1, 1894, and an eighthourday from January 1, 1898. In the session of 1900-02the German Social-Democrats put forward a still shorterproposal for limiting the working day immediately to tenhours, and subsequently.*** Jules Guesde, Le Problème et la solution; les huit heures à lachambre, Lille. (The Problem and Its Solution; the Eight-Hour Dayin Parliament—Ed.)** M. Schippel, Sozial-Demokratisches Reichstagshandbuch (Social-Democratic Handbook to the Reichstag—Ed.) Berlin, 1902, pp. 882and 886.