use of the bourgeois specialists for the purpose of replowing the soil so that no bourgeoisie can grow on it.
This is a peculiar stage of development, and in order definitely to defeat capitalism, we should be able to adapt the forms of our struggle to the peculiar conditions of such a period.
Without the direction of specialists in different branches of science, such as technical men, the transformation toward Socialism is impossible, for Socialism demands a conscious mass movement toward a comparatively higher productivity of labor on the basis which has been attained by capitalism. Socialism must accomplish this movement forward in its own way, by its own methods—to make it more definite—by Soviet methods. But the specialists are inevitably bourgeois, on account of the whole environment of social life which made them specialists. If our proletariat, having obtained power, had rapidly solved the problem of accounting, control and organization on a national scale (this was impossible on account of the war and the backwardness of Russia), then having crushed the" sabotage of the capitalists, we would have obtained, through uniform accounting and control the complete submission of the bourgeois specialists. In view of the considerable delay in establishing accounting and control, although we have succeeded in defeating sabotage, we have not yet created an environment which would put at our disposal the bourgeois specialists. Many saboteurs are coming into our service, but the best organizers and the biggest specialists can be used by the state either in the old bourgeois way (that is, for a higher salary) or in the new proletarian way (that is, by creating such an environment of uniform accounting and control which would inevitably and naturally attract and gain the submission of specialists.) We were forced now to make use of the old bourgeois method and to agree to a very high remuneration for the services of the biggest of the bourgeois specialists. All those who are acquainted with the facts understand this, but not all give sufficient thought to the significance of such a measure on
