The co-operative societies are also given the right to organize enterprises for production or working over raw products, and also to organize truck gardening and dairies on a large scale. To the co-operative societies are assigned the sole right to organise distribution and exchange of products throughout the country. They are to be directed by administrators elected in general conventions at which all citizens have the right to vote except those excluded from suffrage by the Soviet Constitution.
The sentences underlined when taken together show what it all amounts to. The co-operatives remain a compulsory governmental monopoly. They trade in what agricultural products the Soviets are pleased to leave to the peasant and in the products of the Soviet's nationalized industries at prices fixed by the Soviets. The "conventions" that are to govern the co-operatives are official, are conducted under Soviet "law" and supervision and, the voting being public, opposition voters will be men marked for discrimination by the Sovet Government and, if too assertive, for prosecution by the lawless Extraordinary Commission. A régime which has not permitted majority control even in the Soviets will scarcely permit any but Communist control of the co-operatives.
An almost exact parallel may be noted between the Bolshevist treatment of the co-operatives and their treatment of the trade unions. (See previous chapter.)
In spite of all these undeniable facts the American pro-Bolshevist press, Red, Yellow, and "liberal," as well as the press representing reactionary capitalistic groups who hope to make a profitable deal with Lenin, have hailed the restoration of "taxation in kind" as the end
