The Congress recognizes

1) that proletarian cooperatives afford the working class the possibility of improving its position by reducing middleman exploitation, by exerting influence on conditions of labor among suppliers, by improving the position of employees, and so forth;

2) that proletarian cooperatives are acquiring ever-greater significance in the mass economic and political struggle, rendering assistance during strikes, lockouts, persecution, and so forth;

3) that proletarian cooperatives, when they organize the masses of the working class, teach it the independent conduct of affairs and the organization of consumption, preparing it in this sphere for the role of organizer of economic life in the future socialist society.

The Congress recognizes, on the other hand,

1) that the improvements achievable by cooperatives are limited within very narrow boundaries so long as the means of production and exchange remain in the hands of the class whose expropriation is the principal aim of socialism;

2) that cooperatives, being purely commercial institutions and by virtue of the pressure of conditions of competition, have a tendency to degenerate into bourgeois joint-stock companies;

3) that cooperatives, not being organizations of direct struggle against capital, are capable of generating and do generate illusions that they are a means of resolving the social question. The Congress therefore calls upon the workers of all countries

a) to enter into proletarian cooperative societies and to support their development in every way, directing their organization in a strictly democratic spirit (low entrance fee, one share – one person, and so forth);

b) by means of unceasing socialist propaganda and agitation within the union to promote the dissemination of ideas of class struggle and socialism among the working masses;

c) as socialist consciousness grows within cooperatives, to establish and strengthen organic links between cooperatives and the party of socialists, as well as with trade unions;

d) at the same time the Congress points out that production cooperatives have significance for the struggle of the working class only if they are constituent parts of consumer cooperatives.

Written August 16–17 (29–30), 1910.

First published in 1929–1930 in the 2nd–3rd editions of V. I. Lenin's Collected Works, vol. XIV

Printed from the manuscript