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.
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