The same is true of meat and vegetables—not to speak of all the fancy equipment you've got! It all takes coordinators, organizers, planners!"
The baker turns to her and, as if quoting a philosophical text, says slowly: "At the heart of the production process itself, where the productive forces are created, the previous forms of social activity did not exhaust the possibilities of contemporary human existence."
"This is exasperating!" shouts the militant.
"Can you boil an egg?" asks the man stirring soup.
"You're all lying!" she screams. "Productive activity on such a scale simply isn't possible without regular staffs, without coordinators and organizers, without leaders. These tasks can't be left to chance! They're the proper tasks of an organization. For the sake of stability and order the development of the productive forces must be controlled."
"But did you hear of anyone who starved," the woman with the cheese shouts back, "either during the insurrection or after? Did you hear that the food stopped growing because it had lost its managers? Did you hear that all the trucks stopped running until the coming of the organizers? Did you hear that food stopped being distributed because the coordinators hadn't arrived? Did you hear we were all so stupid that we didn't know how to get flour from the mill to the bakery?"
"If all those things are running," shouts the militant, "then it merely proves that there must be Councils and Committees coordinating and directing it."
"And if they aren't," snaps the woman, "we've got to go hungry until the day they do!"
In response to this, the militant storms out of the kitchen. At the street entrance to the restaurant, she turns toward the people who are still at the tables talking. She raises her fist and shouts, angrily, "All Power to the Workers' Councils. All Power to the Council Committees!" No one turns to look at her. People simply continue their conversations.
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