The most burning question now, the question which forms the very center of socialization, is : What organization will undertake to procure the raw material and the disposal of the manufactured products, and what organs will supply the workers with the necessary means of life. Only when the workers have created organizations for this purpose can the taking over of the factories meet with success. The misfortune of the Russian workers was that they had no such organs at their disposition, that they, under the rule of czarism, were not in a position to create such organs. It was exactly on this rock that socialization in Germany stranded in the November days of 1918. The theoretical foundation of the German trade unions was not of that kind. On this point only the French syndicalist unions have fought themselves through to a clear understanding of the role of the labor organizations for the realization of the social revolution. The German syndicalists also have taken this standpoint, even if not always so clearly, but in their congress of Christmas, 1919, they adopted a clear program. Up to the present time they are the only labor organization in Germany with whom we can find a clear program for the taking over and the organizing of production and consumption by the workers.
The lack of a clear understanding of hoiv the different industries work hand in hand, as well as the lack of proper organizations for the purpose, had for result that the workers, who had no idea of these things and only knew capitalist economic methods, retained the idea of these and kept on running along capitalist lines. But when they had taken over the factories they found themselves in the place of the single private owner, the factory owner, or the capitalist stock companies. That means that they now divided the owners' profits between them. But that did not abolish capitalism ; it had only been changed from private ownership ^into another, collective form of ownership. Capitalist competition, the cheating of consumers, the more favorable position of the workers who produced goods more in demand or more important, all this remained as before, and under similar circumstances it will be the same in any place.
The workers of the world must keep this in sight. That the idea has not yet broken through in the labor movement that the workers are not only exploited as producers but also as consrawers, that depends very likely upon the influence of Marx. The whole labor movement which calls itself Marxian has never been directed upon the carrying on of a struggle against the exploitation of the workers as consumers. There was not sufficient attention called to this circumstance in their propaganda. The workers are not cheated and exploited only in the factory, but also in the satisfying of all their needs.