measure on
the part of the proletarian state. _It is clear that the measure
is a compromise, that it is a defection from the principles of the
Paris Commune and of any proletarian rule, which demand the
reduction of salaries to the standard of remuneration of the
average workers_--principles which demand that "career hunting" be
fought by deeds, not words.

Furthermore, it is clear that such a measure is not merely a halt
in a certain part and to a certain degree of the offensive against
capitalism (for capitalism is not a quantity of money, but a
definite social relationship), _but also a step backward by our
Socialist Soviet state_, which has from the very beginning
proclaimed and carried on a policy of reducing high salaries to
the standard of wages of the average worker.

... The corrupting influence of high salaries is beyond
question--both on the Soviets ... and on the mass of the workers.
But all thinking and honest workers and peasants will agree with
us and will admit that we are unable to get rid at once of the
evil heritage of capitalism.... The sooner we ourselves, workers
and peasants, learn better labor discipline and a higher technique
of toil, making use of the bourgeois specialists for this purpose,
the sooner we will get rid of the need of paying tribute to these
specialists.[68]

We find the same readiness to compromise and to follow the line of least
resistance in dealing with the co-operatives. From 1906 onward there had
been an enormous growth of co-operatives in Russia. They were of various
kinds and animated by varied degrees of social consciousness. They did not
differ materially from the co-operatives of England, Belgium, Denmark,
Italy, or Germany except in the one important particular that they relied
upon bourgeois Intellectuals for leadership and direction to a greater
extent than do the co-operatives in the countries named. They were
admirably fitted to be the nuclei of a socialized system of distribution.
Out of office the Bolsheviki had sneered at these working-class
organizations and denounced them as "bourgeois corruptions of the militant
proletariat." Necessity and responsibility soon forced the adoption of a
new attitude toward them. The Bolshevik government had to accept the
despised co-operatives, and even compromise Bolshevist principles as the
price of securing their services:

A Soc