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Rh Such is the general mechanism of the proletarian State considered from “above,” from the point of view of practice in realization of the dictatorship. It is hoped that the reader will understand why, to a Russian Bolshevik well acquainted with this mechanism and having watched its growth out of small underground circles during twenty-five years, all talk of “from above” or “from below,” the “dictatorship of leaders” or “the dictatorship of the masses” cannot but appear as childish nonsense. It is something like discussing whether the left leg or the right arm is more useful to man.

Not less laughable and childishly nonsensical appears to us the important, learned and horribly revolutionary disquisitions of the German “Left” as to why Communists cannot and should not work in reactionary Trade Unions; why it is permissible to refuse such work; why it is necessary to leave the craft unions and to create in their stead quite new and quite pure “workmen’s unions” invented by exceedingly nice (and, for the most part, probably very youthful) Communists, etc., etc.

Capitalism inevitably leaves, as an inheritance to Socialism, on the one hand, old professional and craft differences created among the workers in the course of centuries; and on the other, Trade Unions, which only, very slowly and in the course of years, can and will develope [sic] into broader industrial rather than craft organization (embracing whole industries and not merely crafts, trades and professions). These industrial unions will, in their turn, lead to the abolition of division of labor between people, to the education, training and preparation of workers who will be able to do everything. Communism is moving in this direction; it must move and will arrive at that goal but only after a great many years. To attempt in practice today, to precipitate development of this characteristic of a thoroughly developed, stable and completely matured Communism would be like trying to teach a four-year-old child higher mathematics.

We can and must begin to build up Socialism, not with the fantastic human material created by our imagination, but out of the material left to us by capitalism. This, no doubt, is