after prolonged argument, contributed their views. They
pointed out (1) the need of bringing to work numbers
of persons who instead of doing the skilled labor for which
they were qualified were engaged in petty profiteering, etc.;
(2) that there evaporation of skilled labor into unproductive
speculation could at least be checked by the introduction of
labor books, which would give some sort of registration of
each citizen's work; (3) that workmen can be brought back
from the villages only for enterprises which are supplied
with provisions or are situated in districts where there is
plenty. ("The opinion that, in the absence of these
preliminary conditions, it will be possible to draw workmen
from the villages by measures of compulsion or mobilization

is profoundly mistaken.") (4) that there should be a census
of labor and that the Trades Unions should be invited to
protect the interests of the conscripted. Finally, this
Conference approved the idea of using the already existing
military organization for carrying out a labor census of the
Red Army, and for the turning over to labor of parts of the
army during demobilization, but opposed the idea of giving
the military organization the work of labor registration and
industrial conscription in general.


On January 22, 1920, the Central Committee of the
Communist Party, after prolonged discussion of Trotsky's
rough memorandum, finally adopted and published a new
edition of the "theses," expanded, altered, almost
unrecognizable, a reasoned body of theory entirely different