Page:Lenin - The Soviets at Work (1919).pdf/24

22 from the proletarian standpoint) and that the whole population of a given locality should be united in a single co-operative. The defection from this, the only Socialist principles, which are in accord with the problem of doing away with classes, allows the existence of "working class co-operatives" (which, in this case, call themselves "class" co-operatives only because they submit to the class interests of the bourgeoisie.) Lastly, the proposition of the Soviet government completely to exclude the bourgeoisie from the administration of the co-operatives was also considerably weakened, and only owners of capitalistic commercial and industrial enterprises are excluded from the administration.

If the proletariat, acting through the Soviets, should successfully establish accounting and control on a national scale, there would be no need for such compromise. Through the Food Departments of the Soviets, through their organs of supply, we would unite the population in one cooperative directed by the proletariat, without the assistance from bourgeois co-operatives, without concessions to the purely bourgeois principle which compels the labor co-operatives to remain side by side with the bourgeois co-operatives instead of wholly subjecting these bourgeois co-operatives, fusing both.

Entering into such an agreement with the bourgeois cooperatives, the Soviet authority has concretely defined its tactical problems and characteristic methods of action for the present stage of development; i. e.: directing the bourgeois elements, using them, making certain individual concessions to them, we are creating conditions for a movement forward which will be slower than we at first supposed, but at the same time more steadfast, with a more solidly protected base and communication line, and with better fortifications of the conquered positions. The Soviets can (and should) now measure their successes in the work of Socialist construction, by very simple and practical tests: "In exactly what number of communities (communes, or villages, blocks, etc.) and to what extent does