First as tragedy, second as farce

So there’s a proposal to reintroduce conscription then:

Every 18-year-old will be required by law to sign up for a year of National Service under plans unveiled this weekend.

Sigh. The first and most obvious point is that conscription is slavery. It might be slavery to the state, might be slavery to society but helotry is still slavery. So, let’s not do that.

But what moves this from tragedy into farce are the following two points.

We’ve, around and about, 800,000 18 year olds at present. The armed forces are, in total, some 138,000. The Navy, as with last time around, will take between none and very, very, few (stopping bored teenagers from drowning takes too much effort). The Air Force, perhaps some, but obviously the great bulk will be in the Army. Of those who decide to take the military route that is. Yes, we know, the British sergeant is incomparable and all that but we really simply do not have enough of them to cope with that influx.

The “community service” aspect:

Subbotnik and voskresnik (from Russian: суббо́та, IPA: [sʊˈbotə] for "Saturday" and воскресе́нье, IPA: [vəskrʲɪˈsʲenʲjɪ] for "Sunday") were days of volunteer unpaid work on weekends after the October Revolution, though the word itself is derived from суббо́та (subbota for Saturday) and the common Russian suffix -ник (-nik).

The tradition is continued in modern Russia and some other former Soviet Republics. Subbotniks are mostly organized for cleaning the streets of garbage, fixing public amenities, collecting recyclable material, and other community services.

The first mass subbotnik was held on April 12, 1919, at the Moscow-Sortirovochnaya railway depot of the Moscow-Kazan Railway upon the initiative of local Bolsheviks. It was stated in the Resolution of the General Council of Communists of the Subraion of the Moscow-Kazan Railway and Their Adherents that "the communists and their supporters again must spur themselves on and extract from their time off still another hour of work, i.e. they must increase their working day by an hour, add it up and on Saturday devote six hours at a stretch to physical labour, thereby producing immediately a real value. Considering that communists should not spare their health and lives for the victory of the revolution, the work is conducted without pay." This subbotnik prompted Lenin to write the article The Grand Initiative [ru], where he called subbotniks "the actual beginnings of the communism".

On April 12, 1969, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Subbotnik, the Soviet Union revived the concept and millions of citizens volunteered for extra work at least as late as 1971.

That a manifesto pledge in a British election is derived from a 1919 “Resolution of the General Council of Communists of the Subraion of the Moscow-Kazan Railway and Their Adherents” is farce, no?

Now add in that this isn’t coming from the CPGB, the CPB, the NCP or even the CPB (Marxist-Leninist) but from, well, you guess…..yes, farce.