Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/83

 the committees arising out of the Russian Revolution and those whose creation is recommended by the British committee charged to study the problem of industrial reorganization after the war, and which consists of the most experienced employers and workmen. At the same time we must remember that there are certain fundamental principles that one can never transgress with impunity, either in the economic domain or in the political, one of the principal being expressed in the following words: "No authority without responsibility."

Now, though the responsibility of the factory or workshop committee to the workmen who elect them is genuine, it is null with regard to the other interested parties. It is difficult, therefore, to conceive that they can exercise full power, the more so since the workmen thus represented do not accept themselves the responsibility for the production, as they would do, for instance, in a co-operative organization. What would happen did it organize the production so as to diminish the output, or to alter the quality, or even increase the