Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 26 - From Marx to Mao

410V. I. LENINleads the working people on to the road of the independentcreation of a new life.Accounting and control—this is the main economic taskof every Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies,of every consumers’ society, of every union or committeeof supplies, of every factory committee or organ ofworkers’ control in general.We must fight against the old habit of regarding the measureof labour and the means of production, from the pointof view of the slave whose sole aim is to lighten the burdenof labour or to obtain at least some little bit from the bourgeoisie.The advanced, class-conscious workers have alreadystarted this fight, and they are offering determined resistanceto the newcomers who flocked to the factory world in particularlylarge numbers during the war and who now wouldlike to treat the people’s factory, the factory that has comeinto the possession of the people, in the old way, with thesole aim of “snatching the biggest possible piece of the pieand clearing out”. All the class-conscious, honest and thinkingpeasants and working people will take their place inthis fight by the side of the advanced workers.Accounting and control, if carried on by the Soviets ofWorkers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies as the supremestate power, or on the instructions, on the authority, ofthis power—widespread, general, universal accounting andcontrol, the accounting and control of the amount of labourperformed and of the distribution of products—is the essenceof socialist transformation, once the political rule of the proletariathas been established and secured.The accounting and control essential for the transitionto socialism can be exercised only by the people. Only thevoluntary and conscientious co-operation of the mass of theworkers and peasants in accounting and controlling the rich,the rogues, the idlers and the rowdies, a co-operation markedby revolutionary enthusiasm, can conquer these survivals ofaccursed capitalist society, these dregs of humanity, thesehopelessly decayed and atrophied limbs, this contagion,this plague, this ulcer that socialism has inherited fromcapitalism.Workers and peasants, working and exploited people!The land, the banks and the factories have now become the