V. I.

Lenin

BRIEF NEWSPAPER REPORT

Comrade Avilov’s resolution shows a complete disregard for the
class stand. B. V. Avilov would seem to have made up his mind in
this resolution to collect together and concentrate all the
faults common to all the resolutions of the petty-bourgeois
parties.

Avilov’s resolution starts with the postulate, by now indisputable to any socialist, that capitalism’s robber economy
has reduced Russia to complete economic and industrial ruin, but
then goes on to propose the hazy formula of control of industry
by “the state authorities” with the co-operation of the broad
democratic mass.

Everybody nowadays is having a good deal to say about control. Even people who used to scream “murder” at the very
mention of the word “control” now admit that control is
necessary.

By using the term “control” in the abstract, however, they want
to reduce the idea of control to naught.

The coalition government, which “socialists” have now joined,
has done nothing yet in the way of putting this control into
effect, and therefore it is quite understandable that the shop
committees are demanding real workers’ control, and not control
on paper.

In dealing with the idea of control and the question of when and
by whom this control is to be effected, one must not for a
single moment forget the class character of the modern state,
which is merely an organisation of class rule.

A similar class analysis should be applied to the concept
“revolutionary democracy”, and this analysis should be based on
the actual balance of social forces.

Avilov’s resolution starts with a promise to give every thing,
but ends, in effect, with a proposition to leave every thing as
it was. There is not a shadow of revolutionism in the whole
resolution.

In revolutionary times of all times it is necessary accurately
to analyse the question as to the very essence of the state, as
to whose interests it shall protect, and as to how it should be
constructed in order effectively to protect the interests of the
working people. In Avilov’s resolution this has not been dealt
with at all.

Why is it that our new coalition government, which “socialists”
have now joined, has not carried out control in the course of
three months, and, what is more, in the conflict between the
colliery owners and the workers of Southern Russia, the
government has openly sided with the capitalists?

For control over industry to be effectively carried out it must
be a workers’ control with a workers’ majority in all the leading bodies, and the management must give an account of
its actions to all the authoritative workers’ organisations.

Comrades, workers, see that you get real control, not fictitious
control, and reject in the most resolute manner all resolutions
and proposals for establishing such a fictitious control
existing only on paper.

---
Notes: