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

406V. I. LENINthe struggle, strikes in Western Europe are on an incomparablyhigher level. In the five-year period 1894-98 the numberof days on strike per striker was 10.3 in Italy, 12.1 inAustria, 14.3 in France, and 34.2 in Britain.Taking separately the purely political strikes, the figuresare as follows: 1905—7 days per striker, 1906—1.5 days,1907—1 day. Economic strikes are always more protracted.If we bear in mind the difference in the persistence of thestrike struggles in the different years, we arrive at the conclusionthat the figures of the number of strikers are not sufficientto give a proper idea of the relative sizes of the movementin these years. An accurate index is provided by figuresof striker-days, which were as follows:Of which inpurelypoliticalstrikesIn the ten years 1895-1904 a total of 2,079,408 —” 1905 ” ” ” 23,609,387 7,569,708” 1906 ” ” ” 5,512,749 763,605” 1907 ” ” ” 2,433,123 521,647” 1908 ” ” ” 864,666 89,021Thus we see that the accurate figures representing the sizeof the movement in the year 1905 alone are more than 11times as great as those for all the preceding ten years takentogether. In other words, the size of the movement in 1905was 115 times as great as the average per year for the precedingdecade.This ratio shows us how purblind are those people, whomwe encounter only too often among the representatives ofofficial science (and not only among them), who consider thetempo of social-political development in the so-called “peaceful”,“organic”, “evolutionary” periods as the standard forall times, as the index of the highest possible pace of developmentmodern humanity can achieve. Actually, the tempo of“development” in the so-called “organic” periods is an indexof the greatest stagnation, of the greatest obstaclesplaced in the way of development.The compiler of the official statistics uses the figures ofthe number of striker-days to determine the losses incurredby industry. These losses (representing the drop in output)amounted to 10,400,000 rubles in the ten years 1895-1904,