need of greater efficiency if the revolution is to survive at all,
regard this step as definitely retrograde and likely in the long
run to make the revolution not worth preserving.*[(*)Thus
Rykov, President of the Supreme Council of Public Economy:
"There is a possibility of so constructing a State that in it
there will be a ruling caste consisting chiefly of administrative
engineers, technicians, etc.; that is, we should get a form of
State economy based on a small group of a ruling caste
whose privilege in this case would be the management of the
workersand peasants." That criticism of individual control, from
a communist, goes a good deal further than most of the
criticism from people avowedly in opposition.] The enormous
importance attached by everybody to this question of individual
or collegiate control, may bejudged from the fact that at
every conference I attended, and every discussion to which

I listened, this point, which might seem of minor importance,
completely overshadowed the question of industrial conscription
which, at least inside the Communist Party, seemed generally
taken for granted. It may be taken now as certain
that the majority of the Communists are in favor of
individual control. They say that the object of "workers'
control" before the revolution was to ensure that factories
should be run in the interests of workers as well of
employers. In Russia now there are no employers other
than the State as a whole, which is exclusively made
up of employees. (I am stating now the view of the
majority at the last Trades Union Congress at
which I was present, April, 1920.) They say that "workers'
control" exists in a larger and more efficient manner than