Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

276V. I. LENINunions of separate persons into general federations ofassociations. Proletarian co-operative societies are confusedwith the co-operatives of petty proprietors (in agriculture).The resolution advocates the neutrality of co-operativesocieties, describing as harmful the imposition of anyobligations on the co-operative societies with respect tothe Socialist Party.Lastly, the draft submitted by the minority of the Frenchsocialists (Guesde-ists) declares emphatically that the cooperativesin themselves are by no means class organisations(as, for instance, the trade unions are), and that theirimportance is determined by the use which is made of them.The workers, by joining the co-operative societies en masse,can benefit from them in their struggle against capital;from the example they offer, the workers can to some extentget an idea of the socialist society that would be organisedafter the contradictions of the present social orderhave been eliminated. The draft therefore emphasises thelimited significance of the co-operative societies and callsupon the socialist parties to assist the proletarian co-operativesocieties, warns against illusions as to the role ofco-operative societies, and recommends socialists to unitewithin the co-operative societies in order to explain to themasses their real task: the conquest of political power andthe conversion of the means of production and distributioninto common property.It is quite clear that there are two main lines of policyhere: one—the line of proletarian class struggle, recognitionof the value of the co-operative societies as a weapon in thisstruggle, as one of its subsidiary means, and a definitionof the conditions under which the co-operative societieswould really play such a part and not remain simple commercialenterprises. The other line is a petty-bourgeois one,obscuring the question of the role of the co-operative societiesin the class struggle of the proletariat, attaching to theco-operative societies an importance transcending thisstruggle (i.e., confusing the proletarian and the proprietors’view of co-operative societies), defining the aims of the cooperativesocieties with general phrases that are acceptableeven to the bourgeois reformers, those ideologues of theprogressive employers, large and small.