the value of emulation. In reality only Socialism, destroying classes and, hence, the enslavement of the masses, for the first time opens up opportunities for emulation on a mass scale. And only the Soviet organization, passing from the formal democracy of a bourgeois republic to the actual participation in management of the toiling masses, for the first time puts emulation on a broad basis. This is much easier to accomplish on the political than on the economic field, but for the success of Socialism the latter is the more important.
Let us take publicity as a means for stimulating emulation. A bourgeois republic establishes this only formally, actually subjecting the press to capital, amusing the "mob" with spicy political trifles, concealing occurrences in the factories, commercial transactions, etc., as a "business secret," protecting "sacred property." The Soviets abolished commercial secrecy and entered on a new road, but have done almost nothing to make use of publicity in the interests of economic emulation. We must systematically endeavor that—along with the merciless suppression of the thoroughly dishonest and insolently slanderous bourgeois press—work shall be carried on to create a press which will not amuse and fool the masses with spicy political trifles, but which will bring to the attention of the masses, and will help them to study seriously, the questions of everyday economics. Every factory, every village, is a production and consumption commune having the right and duty to apply the general Soviet regulations in its own way (not in the sense of violating the regulations, but in the sense of a diversity of forms in carrying them out), to solve in its own way the problem of accounting in production and distribution. Under capitalism, this was the "private affair" of the individual capitalist or landowner. Under the Soviets, this is not a private affair, but the most important national affair.
And we have hardly begun the immense and difficult, but also promising and important work of stimulating emulation between the communes, to introduce reports and
