THE ORGANISATION OF INDUSTRY

to engage “hands,” and so on. Under capitalism, artels or cooperatives of production have tended, as they have grown stronger, to degenerate, in actual fact, into capitalist undertakings. It will be very different under the proletarian dictatorship. Here there is no scope for capitalism. Instead, we have the State authority of the workers, which organises all possible kinds of unions among the workers, and which holds in its hands all the financial resources of the community, and, still more important, all the means of production. Formerly it was absurd to believe that artels could bring us nearer to socialism; inevitably, in the course of their development they became transformed into capitalist companies. But now, when we are able to draw them within the organisation of the workers’ State, such bodies can be helpful in the upbuilding of socialism. They can be helpful, not because the home workers are themselves eager for communism (many of the home workers, like petty entrepreneurs in general, are prejudiced against communism), but because new roads are being opened, while the old roads have been completely closed.