Trade Union Government (3.10.2014)

Lenin once wrote in 1919 that Soviet Power equalled trade union government and the electrification of the Soviet Union.

The Workers and Peasants Inspectorate began slowly, was planned to progress to between 350 and 500 ‘specialists, well paid’ (Lenin). It evolved ignominiously into a brutal revanchist, nationalist-socialist dictatorship, best forgotten. It was a network of factory committees known as the Central Control Commission. That organisation was a tripartite arrangement whose inspiration was the Works Public Administration of the United States,part of the New Deal. It's central aim was to increase productivity and industrialise the USSR. While the CPC was modelled on the WPA,it was in most of its outworkings unique and solely the creation of the CPSU Central Committee.

Some of the lessons of trade union government have refused to go away unlike Lenin and his like.

In the 1970s, the English adopted the National Economic Development Council to bolster nationalised industries and stimulate investment under Tony Benn. This was partly removed and then  entirely swept away by Thatcher in 1981.

What do Social Democrats say today?

Irish Labour and Social Democracy means trade union participation at all levels in society and the reconstruction and electrification of the railways to link up town and country, as that lost ideal of long ago, the electrification of the Soviet Union, was intended to do.

Joseph Mc Carroll