masses have taken, after November 7, 1918, the right road and have
proved the vitality of the Revolution, when they started to
organize their own workmen's and peasants' tribunals, before any
decrees were issued dismissing the bourgeois-democratic judicial
apparatus. _But our revolutionary and popular tribunals are
excessively and incredibly weak. It is apparent that the popular
view of the courts--which was inherited from the regime of the
landowners and the bourgeoisie--as not their own, has not yet been
completely destroyed_. It is not sufficiently appreciated that the
courts serve to attract all the poor to administration (for
judicial activity is one of the functions of state
administration); that the court is _an organ of the rule of the
proletariat and of the poorest peasantry; that the court is a
means of training in discipline_. There is a lack of appreciation
of the simple and obvious fact that, if the chief misfortunes of
Russia are famine and unemployment, these misfortunes cannot be
overcome by any outbursts of enthusiasm, but only by thorough and
universal organization and discipline, in order to increase the
production of bread for men and fuel for industry, to transport it
in time, and to distribute it in the right way. That therefore
_responsibility_ for the pangs of famine and unemployment falls on
_every one who violates the labor discipline in any enterprise and
in any business_. That those who are responsible should be
discovered, tried, and _punished without mercy_. The petty
bourgeois environment, which we will have to combat persistently
now, shows particularly in the lack of comprehension of the
economic and political connection between famine and unemployment
and the _prevailing dissoluteness in organization and
discipline_--in the firm hold of the view of the small proprietor
that "nothing matters, if only I gain as much as possible."

A characteristic struggle occurred on this basis in connection
with the last decree on railway management, the decree which
granted dictatorial (or "unlimited") power to individual
directors. The conscious (and mostly, probably, unconscious)
representatives of petty bourgeois dissoluteness contended that
the granting of "unlimited" (_i.e._, dictatorial) power to
individuals was a defection from the principle of boa