Factory Inspection
(called the Murder Commission)
When there was a factory inspection a few weeks ago the foreman Figge surpassed himself. No work was allowed to be done from morning to midday, in order that there should be no smell of poison gas or any sign of dirt. Then the Social Democrat Jumpertz appeared on the scene. He looked around and found everything as it should be. Thereupon Figge went to the telephone and a few minutes later the murder commission arrived. The CG factory known for its dirty condition was now a marvel of cleanliness before the eyes of the murder commission — the finest and healthiest of factories.
Question?
Why does not the Murder Commission visit the factory unawares and during working hours?
Answer
Because it is in the service of the capitalist and not the workers!
Der Leverkusener Farbenkumpel (The Leverkusen Dyer)
Extract from a wall newspaper of the nuclei of the Russian Communist Party
A reminiscence
Prior to the revolution, I never had an opportunity to see Comrade Lenin, to speak to him, but we Bolsheviks listened of course very attentively to every one of Lenin’s words which reached us from beyond the border. More than once stress has been laid on the fact that Vladimir Ilyitch considered it his first and foremost duty whilst living abroad to be in as close contact with the masses as possible, to breathe so to speak the same air with them.
I well remember the following incident: in 1907 I was a member of the Managing Committee of the first Moscow Shop Assistants Union (one of the biggest Moscow Trade Unions at that time). We Bolsheviks were only a small but strongly welded together group which was persecuted and derided by the Menshevik liquidators. Mockery and derision, demagogic attacks of the lowest kind, nothing was bad enough to serve as a weapon against us.
But we did not allow ourselves to be intimidated, and it happened frequently that the Mensheviks were defeated, whilst we managed to get our proposals accepted and to win the sympathy of the non-Party workers.
During one of these struggles — I do not remember what it was about — the Mensheviks behaved very badly indeed, and we related this incident in a letter to Vladimir Ilyitch.
As the incident was very commonplace and not of particular importance, we did not expect to get an answer from Ilyitch. But it came almost by return of post. What struck us in this letter was that Lenin wrote, as if he were in our midst. But he did not limit himself, as we had done, to mere comments on this everyday incident. As it was his wont, he dealt with this insignificant incident from the viewpoint of principle. For him insignificant questions did not exist, where the revolutionary struggle of the workers was involved.
We were victorious and we will go on from victory to victory as long as Lenin’s spirit lives in us.
Golenko