Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 31 - From Marx to Mao

512V. I. LENINof the economy under a single economic centre. We havebegun to tackle this task and we are submitting for yourconsideration a decision of the Council of People’s Commissarsand the Council of Labour and Defence regardingthe reorganisation of the latter body.You will examine this project, and I trust that with thenecessary amendments it will be adopted unanimously. Itscontents are very modest but its significance is great,because we need a body which definitely knows what itsposition is and unites all economic work; it is on economicwork that the chief stress is now being laid.This has been dealt with in the literature which appearedbefore and in connection with the Congress, in a pamphletby Comrade Gusev, which, incidentally, is not as wellwritten as his earlier one. The pamphlet contains a sweepingplan for the organisation of the Council of Labour andDefence, to which it is proposed to transfer many prominentworkers, among whom we find the names of Trotsky andRykov. I would say that we need somewhat fewer flights offancy like this. We cannot burst out of an apparatus whichit has taken three years to build up. We realise its immenseshortcomings, of which we shall speak in detail atthis Congress. This question has been placed on the agenda;it is one of the most important questions. I am referring tothe question of improving the Soviet apparatus. But wemust at present act with circumspection, confine ourselvesto what is essential, and change our apparatus on the basis ofpractical experience. Comrade Gusev has derided the projectwe have submitted and says that we are proposing to add thePeople’s Commissariat of Agriculture to the Council ofLabour and Defence. Quite right, we are proposing such aproject. In it we assign a very modest place to the Councilof Labour and Defence, making it a Commission of Labourand Defence under the Council of People’s Commissars.Until now we have been working in the Council of Labourand Defence without any constitution. The powers of theCouncil of People’s Commissars and the Council of Labourand Defence have been poorly defined; we have sometimesexceeded these powers and acted as a legislative body. Butthere has never been any conflict on these grounds. Suchcases have been settled by immediately referring them to