The decree is an agreement with the bourgeois co-operatives and with the workmen's co-operatives adhering to the bourgeois standpoint. The agreement or compromise consists, firstly, in the fact that the representatives of these institutions not only participated in the deliberations on this decree, but had practically received a determining voice, for parts of the decree which met determined opposition from these institutions were rejected. Secondly and essentially, the compromise consists in the rejection by the Soviet authority of the principle of free admission to the co-operatives (the only consistent principle from the proletarian standpoint), and that the whole population of a given locality should be _united in a single co-operative_. The defection from this, the only Socialist principle, which is in accord with the problem of doing away with classes, allows the existence of working-class co-operatives (which in this case call themselves working-class co-operatives only because they submit to the class interests of the bourgeoisie). Lastly, the proposition of the Soviet government completely to exclude the bourgeoisie from the administration of the co-operatives was also considerably weakened, and only owners of capitalistic commercial and industrial enterprises are excluded from the administration. * * * * * If the proletariat, acting through the Soviets, should successfully establish accounting and control on a national scale, there would be no need for such compromise. Through the Food Departments of the Soviets, through their organs of supply, we would unite the population in one co-operative directed by the proletariat, without the assistance from bourgeois co-operatives, without concessions to the purely bourgeois principle which compels the labor co-operatives to remain side by side with the bourgeois co-operatives instead of wholly subjecting these bourgeois co-operatives, fusing both?[69] V