For reasons which will be developed in subsequent chapters, the present writer does not accept this view. The principal objection to the Soviet system, as such, is not that it is inseparable from Bolshevism, that it must of necessity be associated with the aims and methods of the latter, but that--unless greatly modified and limited--it must prove inefficient to the point of vital danger to society. This does not mean that organizations similar in structure to the Soviets can have no place in the government or in industrial management. In some manner the democratization of industry is to be attained in a not far distant future. When that time comes it will be found that the ideas which gave impulse to syndicalism and to Soviet government have found concrete expression in a form wholly beneficent. III THE SOVIETS UNDER THE BOLSHEVIKI After the _coup d’état_, the Soviets continued to be elected in the same haphazard manner as before. Even after the adoption, in July, 1918, of the Constitution, which made the Soviets the basis of the superstructure of governmental power, there was no noticeable improvement in this respect. Never, at any time, since the Bolsheviki came into power, have the Soviets attained anything like a truly representative character. The Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic stamps it as the most undemocratic and oligarchic of the great modern nations. The city Soviets are composed of delegates elected by the employees of factories and workshops and by trades and professional unions, including associations of mothers and housewives. The Constitution does not prescribe the methods of election, these being determined by the local Soviets themselves. In the industrial centers most of the elections take place at open meetings in the factories, the voting being done by show of hands. In view of the elaborate system of espionage and the brutal repression of all hostile criticism, it is easy to understand that such a system of voting makes possible and easy every form of corruption and intimidation. The whole system of government resulting from these methods proved unrepresentative. A single illustration will make this quite plain: