Page:Raymond Augustine McGowan - Bolshevism in Russia and America (1920).pdf/21

 Rh régime have been bought up by the coöperatives and are being run on the coöperative principles.

The industrial situation. under Bolshevism may be summarized in some such fashion as this: Nearly all capitalistic industries have been confiscated and are being directed by the State under the local dictatorship of appointed managers. The workers must not strike, must work, and must work well; local works' council, controlled by the militant vanguard in the factory and reënforced by the State; will mercilessly punish any infractions of the rules. Piece work, etc., have been introduced; wages are determined by the State. The efficiency of the nationalized industries is very low. Along side of the nationalized industries are coöperative factories, and coöperative associations of the peasants conducting cottage industries. These are very successful. Such a summary shows that Russia is not yet a Socialist society, as far as industrial production is concerned, and that it allows only slight control by the workers in their factories. The best name for the relation of men to their work is_that they are now under a dictatorship—the combined dictatorship of the State, the local manager, and the Bolshevik Works' Council. There appears to be far less industrial democracy than even political democracy.

Nor is the Socialist aim of common ownership of the means of distribution carried out any more fully than common ownership of the means of production. Food rationing and particularly the rationing of bread through the grain monopoly is practiced extensively in the cities. But private traders or "speculators," whom the Bolshevik State and the coöperative stores equally attack, still distribute most of the supplies. The coöperative stores distribute much more than the State. Norman Hapgood says that they distribute over a quarter of the necessities