Soviet Dumping

39

SOVIET SLAVERY

UMPING presupposes some form of cheap labour,
D In this respect the Sovietshave been very successful;
not only are their labour costs extremely low, but
they are employing ordinary labour under a variety of
forms of compulsion and are making extensive use of
prison labour. This form of forced labour differs little from
that of serfdom or slavery.
Low labour costs are general throughout Soviet Russia.
Wages paid in the paper currency have a nominal value,
but their real value is at best only one third of the nominal
value. The average wage for industrial workers throughout
the country is officially given as seventy-seven roubles a
month. But it is useless to translate these roubles into
shillings by accepting the nominal value of a rouble as
two shillings, since no one in Russia, and not even the
Soviet Government itself, would claim that the real average
wage of the industrial workers averages 154s. a month or
38s. 6d. a week.
This nominal wage, however, is easily translated into
purchasing power and this shows that after making every
possible allowance (on a very generous scale) the real value
of the average weekly wage of the town worker in Soviet
Russia amounts to only 11s. 3d. a week. In the allowances
made the official *“ budgetary workers’ rations’ have been
increased by 25 per cent. and the purchases in the “ private
sector ”’ (private shops) have been reduced to a minimum.
Compared therefore with the level of British wages and
even of unemployment relief (dole) Russian wages are
ridiculously low and, measured by the same standard, they
can safely be described as sweated.” It was undoubtedly
afteractualobservation of the results of these low wages that
Mr. J. Toole, Labour Member of Parliament for South
Salford, stated in the Dazly Herald {August 28th, 1930):