Economic life consist of two parts, production and consumption. In the capitalist system both parts, naturally, offer a chance for the .exploitation of the workers. For that reason the workers should combat both these kinds of exploitation equally, if they want to annihilate the capitalist system and replace it with a socialist or communist system. But they did not do this, and they are not doing it yet. Even to-day their struggle is directed more against the exploitation on the field of production. Only as producers have they created class struggle organizations, and only as producers are they fighting the battle against capital. The consumers' societies, which existed in Russia, were not class struggle organizations. Nor are they so in Germany. Even if there are consumers' societies who only have workers as members, they still are only class organizations, but no class struggle organizations. Towards the end they also began to function as such a little, by taking care of workers in strikes. Evident as this matter is, equally regrettable is it that the workers neither have nor had any class struggle organizations on the field of consumption. It can be understood because the workers were, and are, directly exploited only as producers. But as consumers they are indirectly exploited. The direct exploitation the workers can easily see and understand, the indirect exploitation they discern with more difficulty. The socialists made use of this circumstance. They showed the workers that they were exploited as producers and called on them to organize and to fight. But this is quite unpardonably thoughtless. It was the duty of the socialist propaganda to point out to the workers that side of the exploitation which was equally important, although not so easy to see and understand. It was, of course, easy to induce the workers to struggle for a higher wage. But what good did this one-sided battle as producers do them? No good at all! Even if they won the struggle and got higher wages, the capitalists always had the other side of the exploitation open, the side of which the workers had not thought. The capitalist raised the price of his wares and thus rolled the wage increase on the consumers, or, in other words, through the wage increase the exploitation was not diminished by one iota.
With impetuous force the Russian workers fought for the abolition of private ownership of the establishments by capitalists. And they succeeded. If they had fought with the same impetuosity against the second kind of exploitation, on the field of consumption, then — . But this they could not do ; for the Russian workers the abolition of capitalism was equal to the abolition of the capitalists. They had embodied the exploiter in their own employer. But the exploitation through consumption was not a person ; it was a system. A system, hoivever, can not be removed by removing or driving away persons. This was also verified on the field of production. An economic system which in the human society fills the functions of supplying the population with all the things that are necessary for life, cannot be removed except by means of another economic 'system, and only to the extent that this new system is capable, in each single instance, of stepping into the breach of the old.