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 Socialist 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.
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