Page:Karl Radek - Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism - tr. Patrick Lavin (1921).djvu/52

45 of society. If the workers had realized this they would not have been concerned about the sabotage of the petit-bourgeois Intellectuals. Their opposition was based on wholly different grounds. Lenin proceeded on the assumption that with the defeat of Kaledin the period of the open counter-revolutionary resistance of the bourgeoisie was ended, and that we could begin to hire the services, as directors of production, of the best members of the bourgeoisie—men who had been tested, and with whose help production could be extended. "We Communists and the working class have not managed factories anywhere. We must first learn, and we can learn only from the directors of the trusts. If we pay for our learning we shall get back our money a thousand fold," declared Lenin. And his declaration was merely the result of earnest conversations with a number of prominent industrial experts on the formation of a great mixed factory in the Urals, in whose revenue the industrial experts should be interested and whose direction should be in the hands of industrial experts, and of representatives of the State and of the workers. All the brand-new clever ideas of Kautsky were known to the Communists of Russia; and even the Left Wing of the Communist Party did not consider Lenin’s proposals as an infraction of principle. Nobody thought that Communism must be accomplished at one bound, or that in the Communist society the capitalist elements could be immediately removed. Lenin's plan was in strict accordance with principle, but the Left Communists considered it unworkable. They said it was wrong to adopt it till the open resistance of the counter-revolutionaries was crushed once and for all. The bourgeoisie had not abandoned this resistance and therefore it was impossible to attract their leaders to the work even if economic concessions were granted them in the period of transition. They would either refuse to cooperate with the Soviet Government in the hope of its early downfall under the pressure of the European counter-revolution, and in the desire to hasten its downfall; or they would, in appearance, make a compromise with the Soviet Government in order to erect the positions