This dictatorship is to be no light affair, no purely nominal force, but a relentless iron-hand rule. Lenine is afraid that the proletariat is too soft-hearted and lenient. He says: But "dictatorship" is a great word. And great words must not be used in vain. A dictatorship is an iron rule, with revolutionary daring and swift and merciless in the suppression of the exploiters as well as of the thugs (hooligans). And our rule is too mild, quite frequently resembling jam rather than iron.[72] And so the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes the _dictatorship of a single person_, a super-boss and industrial autocrat: We must learn to combine the stormy, energetic breaking of all restraint on the part of the toiling masses _with iron discipline during work, with absolute submission to the will of one person, the Soviet director, during work_.[73] As I copy these words from Lenine's book my memory recalls the days, more than twenty years ago, when as a workman in England and as shop steward of my union I joined with my comrades in breaking down the very things Lenine here proposes to set up in the name of Socialism. "Absolute submission to the will of one person" is not a state toward which free men will strive. Not willingly will men who enjoy the degree of personal freedom existing in democratic nations turn to this: With respect to ... the significance of individual dictatorial power from the standpoint of the specific problems of the present period, we must say that every large machine industry--which is the material productive source and basis of Socialism--requires an absolute and strict unity of the will which directs the joint work of hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of people. This necessity is obvious from the technical, economical, and historical standpoint, and has always been recognized by all those who had given any thought to Socialism, as its prerequisite. But how can we secure a strict unity of will? _By subjecting the will of thousands_ to the will of one.