Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/92

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Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution

federation, their total membership reaching more than 180,000.

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Thus, side by side with the factory committees, with which we have dealt in the foregoing pages, organizations of older date, founded on a different principle, owing their existence to the experience of the working classes of the world, and answering such a need that even the Czar's rule could not prevent their formation, are rapidly developing. They deal with the same questions, solve the same problems, intervene in the same conflicts as the committees. We shall study presently the connection between these two series of organisms, but before going any farther we would like to point out to the reader that they are really two different organizations, not only with regard to their outward form, but in their very essence.

A man obtains a right to vote for a workshop committee by the sole fact of being a worker in the factory, without having to make any choice, without engaging himself to any

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