Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/76

 (a) .—It is elected by the universal suffrage of the workers of both sexes, without distinction of age or technical skill, and on the lines of the most absolute equality. It is elected either directly or indirectly; that is to say, by the intermediary of workshop committees, of which we shall speak presently. Its members may vary in number from a dozen in the small factories to fifty in the large ones. It meets generally during working hours. Its functions are complex; often it controls the whole activity of the establishment, but it does not pretend to direct it. It is not a council of administration; its role is rather like that of the Shareholders' Committee in a Limited Company: it supervises operations and states its views, not in the interest of the shareholders, but in that of the workmen. It is less interested in the financial results of production than in the conditions of work that it creates. The principal difference lies in the fact that the "recommendations" of the workmen are, under present conditions, much more imperious than those of the shareholders and that it is more