In addition on December 23, 1918, the Commissars of the People signed a decree “on collective agreements, workers and employers committees, and the arbitration of labour disputes.” This decree[59] maintained the committees which were developed during the war by virtue of the law for patriotic service, and increased their powers. Here, too, the whole mechanism rested on the parity principle. According to this decree, committees of workers and employers had to be organized in all industries, in all the administrative bodies and in all offices where there were at least twenty labourers or employés. These had as their mission the protection of the economic interests of labourers and employés against employers in the factories, administrative bodies and offices. The committees had to supervise in co-operation with the bosses the carrying out of the various provisions in the collective contracts. In factories where there was no collective contract the committees were supposed to co-operate in the regulation of wages and other conditions of labour in agreement with the economic representatives of the workers and employés. It was their task, in addition, to maintain good relations among the workers, as well as between the workers and employers. It would seem that an evolution thus commenced could have continued normally and without difficulty, and that economic and social problems raised by the reorganization of Germany could thereafter be regulated by the _Arbeitsgemeinschaften_; that is to say, by direct agreement between employers associations and labour unions. But the problem was peculiarly complicated by the introduction and rapid diffusion in Germany of Russian revolutionary ideas. The Soviet differs essentially from the committee above described. Whereas in the latter employers and employés are placed on terms of equality and the committee itself becomes a purely economic institution, the Soviet, according to the Russian conception, is a political organization, whose purpose is to eliminate the employers and to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet must have in its hands all the political and economic power of the State.