following resolution of the Commumist Party, and such resolutions invariably become the law of the land:
To complete the work which has been begun by the decree of March 20, and the subsequent activity of the Party in connection with obtaining a dominating influence for the Party in every section of the organisation of Consumers' Co-operatives.
For the purpose of obviating parallel activity of both Co-operative and Soviet Organs to establish a gradual abolition of Local Co-operative Societies and Provincial and Central Unions of all those Sections which are of a parallel and competitive nature with Soviet Sections. Such Sections—namely, Industrial, Timber, Agricultural, Co-operative, Educational—and others are to be transferred to the corresponding Government Departments, such as the Supreme Council of Public Economy, the People's Commissariat for Agriculture and so forth.
As regards the Agricultural and Trading Co-operatives, the Congress completely approves of the first step taken on the basis of the decree of January 27, that is to say, the complete abolition of the existence of the All-Russian Agricultural and Industrial Co-operatives and their amalgamation with the Central Union of which they are to become Sections.
The pro-Bolshevist British delegate, Margaret Bondfield, in the report of the British Labor Party, admitted that every voluntary element in the co-operatives had been abolished and that all citizens had been "decreed" as members. The crime of the real co-operatives was that they believed in the exchange of commodities which the Bolshevists themselves now call "free trade" but which they formerly called "criminal speculation and profiteering." Here is a paragraph from Miss Bondfield's report:
