Boublikovs, or, for that matter, with the Teretchenkos and the Kerenskys.
The compulsory grouping into associations will on the one hand accelerate capitalist development which leads everywhere and always to the organisation of the class struggle, to the increase in the number, the variety and the importance of the Trusts. On the other hand, it is the indispensable preliminary condition for even the least serious control, and for all economy of national effort.
The German law, for example, compels the master tanners in a locality, or in a whole state, to join an association in the management of which a representative of the government participates, so as to control it. Of itself this law does not affect the property regime at all; it does not take a centime from anybody and does not determine in what spirit, reactionary and bureaucratic or revolutionary and democratic, control will be carried out. Such laws can and ought to be promulgated in Russia without a moment's delay; social circumstances can be left to determine, according to the needs of the situation, the forms of rapid application and the methods of controlling their application, etc. … The government needs no special machinery, no preliminary investigation, no preparatory work for the promulgation of these laws. All it requires is the firm decision to break with the private interests of a few capitalists who are not "accustomed" to such interference in their affairs and who do not want to lose the monstrous profits which are guaranteed to them by the absence of all control and by the running of their businesses on the old lines.
There is no need for any machinery, for any system of statistics (like that which Tchernov wishes to substitute for the revolutionary initiative of the worker and peasant masses) in order to promulgate this law; for the application of it ought to be entrusted to existing social forces, to the industrialists themselves, under compulsory control of the "lower classes"—of the oppressed and exploited classes who have always been, as history shows, infinitely superior to the exploiters in heroism,spirit of sacrifice and fraternal discipline.
If we had a really democratic and revolutionary government, it would decree that the manufacturers and industrialists in every branch, employing, let us say, at least two workers each, are obliged to group themselves immediately into districts and provincial associations. The responsibility for the complete execution of the law
