Branches of the co-operative societies were established by the government in conjunction with the trade unions in the factories, and these committees conduct the distribution of the products. Ii that manner the workers receive through this committee thei] pound of bread directly in the factory. But oftener the factoi committee, elected in the factory, performs this function. But must here note that in all factories which I have visited— an< they amounted in Russia and Ukraine to 20 — the workers complained of not receiving a sufficient ration of food stuffs. In chocolate factory the girls cried and complained that they hac not received any bread for three days. In a textile factory they were just receiving bread when we visited them. They started use harsh language and complained that they were not receiving full weight. The manager, who showed us the factory, wanted prove to them that they were mistaken, and he went to the scal< and weighed portions of the bread, and, in fact, there was gram missing to the pound. The soldiers, however, receive much richer rations. On a Volga steamer the sailors, beaming with joy, showed us the great quantity of bread and sugar that the] received.
As the reason for the low productivity of the workers we may put down the lack of food stuffs. One would think that the food shortage was general, as the workers could not themselves procure food stuffs in a different manner, and it would lead one to think that there was a shortage in the market place, or everywhere. But such is not the case. While the workers were unable to obtain sufficient through the organs of the government, for the stated reason that there was not enough, it is possible to buy everything in the market. Besides, the workers organize small circles in the factory, pool their money and send one of several of their fellow workers out in the country to buy provisions from the peasants. These provisions are thereafter divided between the participants. Thus, the workers have again created new, voluntary, small co-operatives, or consumers' unions, although of only a temporary character, because the nationalized consumers' societies no longer were able to cover their needs.
Just as little as the state was able to acquire the whole of production, just so little was it possible to force the whole of consumption into the state organization. Economic life cannot be forced into the compulsory forms of the state; if it is tried, the impossibility of it comes to light. Centralism is always greatest in governments during times of war, and this applies also to Russia. While during the war it was not possible to force the whole economic life into* the centralist mold, after the war it was still less possible to handle everything by means of the centralist apparatus of the state, it being then necessary to loosen up the tight reins a little, if a catastrophe shall not be conjured up. Society and social-economic life are not a machine, nor an apparatus. But the bolsheviks seem to conceive of them as an apparatus — to their daily vocabulary belongs the word "apparatus," for the single parts of an apparatus or a machine are dead things. But the separate parts, of which human society is composed, are beings with will power. The mistake inherent in all bolshevik theories and which all bolsheviks are always making, is that they do not sufficiently count with this. And that is also the reason why all their organizing and "apparatus creating" so far has been so imperfect, as they themselves admit, while they, naturally, do not want to use any other name for the organizations which are born out of their autocratic world conception. In the future it will be still more impossible than in the three past years of bolshevik rule to lay hold of everything by means of various kinds of apparatus in the bolshevik sense, by means of state organs. Leaving out the fact that the bolsheviks degrade the individual to a will-less tool in the hands of an apparatus, they can never reach what they are striving for by such means.