They would have asked him what the question of administration through one person or through a corporate body had to do with the question of class. It is claimed that corporate management means management by the workers, and that individual management means non-worker management. And that is natural. They did not learn to rule in two years, but in two hundred years, and much more than two hundred years if you take the European bourgeoisie. And I hope the vast majority of those present here, who are familiar with practical management, will understand that we must not confine ourselves to a general discussion of the question, but must act like serious practical men, abolishing the collegiums and managing without them.
All administrative work requires special qualifications.
You may be the very best of revolutionaries and propagandists, and yet be absolutely useless as an administrator. These are the conditions we must satisfy at any cost. And when we move general resolutions in which we talk with the pomposity of experts about corporate management and one-man management, the conviction gradually dawns upon us that we know practically nothing about management, but we are beginning to learn a little from experience, to weigh every step and to promote every administrator who shows any ability. You know from the debates in the Central Committee that we are not opposed to placing workers at the head, but we say that this question must be settled in the interests of production. We cannot wait.