Page:Karl Radek - Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism - tr. Patrick Lavin (1921).djvu/50

43 In all these cases the workers attempted to save themselves from unemployment, and angrily demanded the control of industry in order to see whether the suspension were really inevitable, and whether their demands were unreasonable, etc. Control was gained in varying measure in different parts of Russia, but everywhere the demand was fiercely resisted, and in many places the workers had to drive the factory owners off the premises in order to gain access to the offices. It is clear that at this stage of development neither the common interests of society nor those of the workers as.a whole were represented, that in the struggle much of value was lost. If Kautsky in his pamphlet on Democracy and Dictatorship believed it was necessary to convert Lenin from the opinion that the seizure of factories by the workers in these factories, is not Socialism—that merely shows the professors stupidity. So long as there is no organ which represents all the workers' interests; so long as the fighting organs of individual proletarian groups are merely in process of formation—just so long is it impossible for the object of the struggle to be common. In the same way the destruction of value which every group of workers attempted to carry through in their factories was impossible. The Soviet Government, when it attained to power in November, 1917, had to deal with the struggle of each group of proletarians against its own particular exploiters, with individualist tendencies, and with the necessity to escape want. What ought it to have done when confronted with such problems?

In the first place there was the danger confronting it that the capitalists were attempting to save what they possibly could. They drew their money from the banks, and endeavored to transfer the stocks of goods to speculators. It had to take the banks in its own hands, to declare the factories, with all their stocks, the property of the nation, and to hand their control over to workers' councils. Then it had to prevent the possibility of the workers in individual factories selling their raw materials and finished products to favorites of their own.