itself and
uniting in opinion, though not in voting, the Mensheviks and a section
of their Communist opponents. This cleavage is over the question of
"workers' control." Most of those who, before the revolution, looked
forward to the "workers' control", thought of it as meaning that the
actual workers in a given factory would themselves control that factory,
just as a board of directors controls a factory under the ordinary
capitalist system. The Communists, I think, even today admit the
ultimate desirability of this, but insist that the important question is
not who shall give the orders, but in whose interest the orders shall
be given. I have nowhere found this matter properly thrashed out, though
feeling upon it is extremely strong. Everybody whom I asked about it
began at once to address me as if I were a public meeting, so that I
found it extremely difficult to get from either side a statement not
free from electioneering bias. I think, however, that it may be fairly
said that all but a few lunatics have abandoned the ideas of 1917, which
resulted in the workmen in a factory deposing any technical expert or
manager whose orders were in the least irksome to them. These ideas
and the miseries and unfairness they caused, the stoppages of work, the
managers sewn up in sacks, ducked in ponds and trundled in wheelbarrows,
have taken their places as curiosities of history. The change in these
ideas has been gradual. The first step was the recognition that the
State as a whole was interested in the efficiency of each factory, and,
therefore, that the workmen of each factory had no right to arrange
things with no thought except for themselves. The Committee idea was
still strong, and the difficulty was got over by assuring that the
technical staff should be represented on the Committee, and that the
casting vote between workers and technical experts or managers should
belong to the central economic organ of the State. The next stage was
when the management of a workshop was given a so called "collegiate"
character, the workmen appointing representatives to share the
responsibility of the "bourgeois specialist." The bitter controversy now
going on concerns the seemingly inevitable transition to a later stage
in which, for all practical purposes, the bourgeois specialist will be
responsible solely to the State. Many Communists, including some of
the best known, while recognizing the need of greater efficiency if
the revolutio