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

114V. I. LENINhardly expedient at the present time for the Russian Social-Democrats to take the initiative in proposing an eight-hourworking day in agriculture. It would be better to make theproviso in the explanatory note that the Party reserves theright to introduce a further Bill in regard to both agricultureand domestic service, etc.Further, in all, cases where the Bill deals with the permissibilityof exceptions to the law, we have inserted a demandfor the consent of the workers’ trade union to each exception.This is essential in order to show the workers clearly that itis impossible to achieve an actual reduction of the workingday without independent action on the part of the workers’organisations.Next, we must deal with the question of the gradualintroduction of the eight-hour working day. The author ofthe original draft does not say a word about this, limitinghimself to the simple demand for the eight-hour day as inJules Guesde’s Bill. Our draft, on the other hand, followsthe model of Parvus* and the draft of the German Social-Democraticgroup in the Reichstag, establishing a gradual introductionof the eight-hour working day (immediately, i.e..within three months of the law coming into force, a ten-hourday, and a reduction by one hour annually). Of course, thedifference between the two drafts is not such an essentialone. But in view of the very great technical backwardnessof Russian industry, the extremely weak organisation ofthe Russian proletariat and the huge mass of the workingclass population (handicraftsmen, etc.) that has not yet participatedin any big campaign for a reduction of the workingday—in view of all these conditions it will be more expedienthere and now, in the Bill itself, to answer the inevitableobjection that a sharp change is impossible, that with sucha change the workers’ wages will be reduced, etc.** Laying* Parvus, Die Handelskrisis und die Gewerkschaften. Nebst Anhang,Gesetzentwurf über den achtstundigen Normalarbeitstag. München:1901 (Parvus, The Trade Crisis and the Trade Unions. With appendix:Bill on the Eight-Hour Normal Working Day, Munich, 1901.** On the question of the gradual introduction of the eight-hourworking day Parvus says, in our opinion quite rightly, that this featureof his Bill arises “not from the desire to come to an understandingwith the employers but from the desire to come to an understandingwith the workers. We should follow the tactics of the trade unions: