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

THE QUESTION OF CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES279as the means of production remain In the hands of the class withoutwhose expropriation socialism cannot be attained;“2) that consumers’ societies are not organisations for directstruggle against capital and exist alongside similar bodies organisedby other classes, which could give rise to the illusion that these organisationsare a means by which the social question may be solved withoutclass struggle and the expropriation of the bourgeoisie.“The Congress calls on the workers of all countries:“a) to join the proletarian consumers’ societies and to promotetheir development in every way, at the same time upholding the democraticcharacter of these organisations;“b) by untiring socialist propaganda in the consumers’ societies, tospread the ideas of class struggle and socialism among the workers;“c) to strive at the same time to bring about the fullest possibleco-operation between all forms of the labour movement.“The Congress also points out that producers’ co-operatives canbe of importance for the struggle of the working class only if they area component part of consumers’ societies.”All the draft resolutions were handed to a subcommission(the commissions at International Congresses are so large—each nation delegating four representatives to each commission—thatit is simply out of the question to work out thetext of resolutions at a full commission meeting). Thissubcommission consisted of ten persons; two Belgians(Anseele and Vandervelde), one Frenchman (Jaurès), oneAustrian (Karpeles), one German (Elm), one Dutchman(Wibaut—a Marxist), one Italian, one Dane, one Englishmanand one Russian Social-Democrat (Voinov and myself—our Social-Democratic delegation was unable to meet toelect a representative—so we both attended and one voted).It was in the subcommission that the real business ofdrawing up the text of the resolution took place. The textadopted by the Congress, except for some small stylisticchanges, is the same as the one drawn up by the subcommission;the reader will find the text of the Congress resolutionelsewhere in this issue. The fight in the subcommissioncentred not on the question of the relations of co-operatorsto the Party—as was the case in the commission—but onthe more fundamental question of the significance and roleof co-operative societies. The Belgians tended to definetheir role, quite correctly in principle, as one of the possible(in certain conditions) auxiliary weapons in the proletarianclass struggle for the “total expropriation” (expropriationintègrale) of the capitalist class. Elm, supported by Jaurès,