Developing more concretely the general tasks of Soviet power, the RCP defines them at the present time as follows:

in the economic sphere the task of Soviet power consists at the present time in the following:

(1) To continue unswervingly and carry to completion the expropriation of the bourgeoisie begun and in the main and fundamental respects already completed, the transformation of the means of production and circulation into the property of the Soviet republic, i.e., the common property of all the toiling masses.

(2) To pay especially great attention to the development and strengthening of comradely discipline among the toiling masses and the all-round elevation of their self-activity and sense of responsibility. Therein lies the principal, if not the sole, means of finally overcoming capitalism and the habits engendered by the domination of private property in the means of production. The achievement of this goal requires stubborn, slow work on the re-education of the masses, and such re-education has only now become possible when the masses have witnessed with their own eyes the elimination of the landlord, the capitalist and the merchant – this re-education is in fact now proceeding along thousands of paths, through the practical experience of workers and peasants themselves. Of extraordinary importance in this respect is the work on developing the professional organization of the toiling masses, which has never and nowhere in the world proceeded as rapidly as under Soviet power, but which must be brought to the point of embracing all the toiling masses without exception in orderly, centralized, disciplined, productive unions.

8.{30} The same task of developing the productive forces requires the immediate, broad and all-round utilization of the specialists in science and technology left to us as an inheritance from capitalism, despite the fact that they are in the vast majority of cases inevitably imbued with bourgeois ideology and habits. The Party must, in close union with professional organizations, pursue its former line: on the one hand, to make not the slightest political concession to this bourgeois stratum and to suppress mercilessly any counter-revolutionary attempt on its part, and on the other hand, to struggle equally mercilessly against pseudo-radical, in fact ignorant presumption—the presumption that the toiling masses are capable of overcoming capitalism and the bourgeois order without learning from bourgeois specialists, without utilizing them, without going through a long school of work alongside them.

Aspiring toward equality of remuneration for all labor and toward complete communism, Soviet power cannot set itself the task of immediately implementing this equality at the present moment, when only the first steps are being taken in the transition from capitalism to communism. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain for a certain time higher remuneration for specialists, so that they might work not worse but better than before, and for the same purpose one cannot refuse either the system of bonuses for the most successful and especially for organizational work.

Equally, it is necessary to place bourgeois specialists in an environment of comradely common labor side by side with the mass of ordinary workers, guided by conscious communists, and thereby to promote mutual understanding and rapprochement of those divided by capitalism—the workers of physical and mental labor.

Universal mobilization of the entire able-bodied population by Soviet power, with the participation of professional unions, for the performance of certain public works must be applied incomparably more broadly and systematically than has been done hitherto.

In the sphere of distribution, the task of Soviet power at the present time consists in unswervingly continuing the replacement of trade by planned, organized on a nation-wide scale distribution of products. The aim is the organization of the entire population into a single network of consumer communes, capable with the greatest speed, planning, economy, and with the least expenditure of labor of distributing all necessary products, while strictly centralizing the entire distribution apparatus.

Of special importance for this aim in the present moment of transition and of merging various principles of formations is the utilization by Soviet food organs of cooperatives as the sole mass apparatus of planned distribution, an apparatus inherited from capitalism.

Considering on principle such communist further development of this apparatus as the only correct course, rather than its rejection, the RCP must systematically continue its policy: obliging all party members to work in cooperatives, directing them, with the help also of professional unions, in a communist spirit, developing the self-activity and discipline of the toiling population united in cooperatives, striving to ensure that the entire population is encompassed by cooperatives and that these cooperatives merge into a single cooperative embracing from top to bottom the entire Soviet republic; finally, and most importantly, ensuring that the predominant influence of the proletariat over the other strata of the toiling masses is constantly guaranteed and that everywhere diverse measures are tested in practice, facilitating and effecting the transition from petty-bourgeois cooperatives of the old, capitalist type to consumer communes guided by proletarians and semi-proletarians.

(6) To destroy money immediately in the first period of transition from capitalism to communism proves to be impossible. Consequently, bourgeois elements of the population continue to utilize monetary tokens remaining in private ownership, these certificates of the right of the exploiters to receive social wealth, for purposes of speculation, profiteering and robbery of the toiling masses. The mere nationalization of banks is insufficient for combating this relic of bourgeois robbery. The RCP will strive toward the most rapid possible implementation of the most radical measures, preparing the elimination of money, first and foremost the replacement of money by savings books, checks, short-term certificates of the right to receive public products, etc., the establishment of mandatory holding of money in banks and the like. Practical experience in preparing and implementing these and similar measures will show which of them are most expedient.

(7) In the sphere of finances the RCP will pursue a progressive income tax and property tax in all cases where such becomes possible. But such cases cannot be numerous after the abolition of private property in land and in the majority of factories, mills and other enterprises. In the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat and state ownership of the principal means of production, state finances must rest upon the direct allocation of a certain portion of the revenues from various state monopolies to the needs of the state. The balancing of revenues and expenditures is possible only with the proper organization of commodity exchange, toward which the organization of consumer communes and the restoration of transport, constituting one of the principal immediate aims of Soviet power, are directed.

First page of V. I. Lenin's manuscript "The Agrarian Point of the Program." – 1919 (Reduced)