ialist state can come into existence only as a net of
production and consumption communes, which keep conscientious
accounts of their production and consumption, economize labor,
steadily increasing its productivity and thus making it possible
to lower the workday to seven, six, or even less hours. Anything
less than rigorous, universal, thorough accounting and control of
grain and of the production of grain, and later also of all other
necessary products, will not do. We have inherited from capitalism
mass organizations which can facilitate the transition to mass
accounting and control of distribution--the consumers'
co-operatives. They are developed in Russia less than in the more
advanced countries, but they comprise more than 10,000,000
members. The decree on consumers' associations which was recently
issued is extremely significant, showing clearly the peculiarity
of the position and of the problem of the Socialist Soviet
Republic at the present time.

The decree is an agreement with the bourgeois co-operatives and
with the workmen's co-operatives adhering to the bourgeois
standpoint. The agreement or compromise consists, firstly, in the
fact that the representatives of these institutions not only
participated in the deliberations on this decree, but had
practically received a determining voice, for parts of the decree
which met determined opposition from these institutions were
rejected. Secondly and essentially, the compromise consists in the
rejection by the Soviet authority of the principle of free
admission to the co-operatives (the only consistent principle 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 principle, which is in
accord with the problem of doing away with classes, allows the
existence of working-class co-operatives (which in this case call
themselves working-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.

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