Date: 1917
Source: ru:PSS/v32

When Skobelev, in a ministerial flourish, went so far as to advocate seizing 100 percent of capitalists’ profits, what we were witnessing was nothing more than a rhetorically calculated slogan—designed to dazzle and impress. In bourgeois parliamentary republics, such slogans are endlessly employed to deceive the masses.

But there is something even worse than mere rhetoric. “If capital wishes to preserve the bourgeois mode of production,” Skobelev declared, “then let it operate without interest, so as not to lose its customers.” To the capitalists, this may sound like a “terrifying” threat—but in reality, it represents an attempt—likely unconscious on Skobelev’s part, yet almost certainly deliberate on the part of the capitalists—to safeguard the absolute dominance of capital, at least for a brief period, by sacrificing short-term profits.

“Workers are taking ‘too much,’” the capitalists reason. “Let us place the burden of responsibility upon them—by denying them both real power and effective control over the entire process of production.” Let us, the capitalists, for a time find ourselves without profit—but by “preserving the bourgeois mode of production and never losing our customers,” we will hasten the collapse of this intermediate stage in industrial development; we will undermine it in every possible way, shifting the blame onto the workers!

The facts bear this out: the coal barons in the South are deliberately sabotaging production, “consciously disrupting and disorganizing it” (see New Life, May 16, reporting on the statements made by the workers’ delegation{62}). The picture is clear: the “speeches” are full of lies, while the blame is shifted onto the workers. The coal barons are “deliberately disorganizing production.” Skobelev sings a siren song: “If capital wishes to preserve the bourgeois mode of production, then let it operate without interest.” The picture is crystal clear!

For capitalists and bureaucrats alike, it is highly advantageous to make “unlimited promises,” diverting the people’s attention away from the truly crucial issue: the transfer of genuine control into the hands of the working class itself.

Workers must cast aside the empty rhetoric, the hollow promises, the declarations, the idle schemes concocted by officials in the central government—officials who are only too eager to sit down and draft the most spectacular plans, regulations, charters, and standards. Down with all this mendacity! Down with the clamor of bureaucratic and bourgeois scheming, which has failed miserably at every turn! Down with this habit of sweeping matters under the rug! Workers must demand that control be exercised immediately—and that it be exercised, above all, through the workers themselves.

This is the key to success in the struggle to avert catastrophe. Without it, everything else is but a sham. Once we have achieved this, we will have no need to rush to “seize 100 percent of the profits.” We can—and indeed must—adopt a more measured approach, gradually moving toward a more equitable tax regime. We will distinguish between small shareholders and wealthy shareholders; we will levy very little from the former, while taking a substantial—though by no means total—share from the latter. The number of the wealthiest shareholders is vanishingly small; yet their role, and the aggregate wealth they hold, is immense. Without fear of being mistaken, we may say that if we were to compile a list of the five thousand—or perhaps even just three thousand (or maybe even one thousand)—richest individuals in Russia, or if we were to trace, through grassroots oversight conducted by bank employees, syndicate officials, and other intermediaries, all the threads and connections of their financial capital, their banking networks, we would uncover the entire web of capitalist domination, the vast bulk of wealth accumulated at the expense of others’ labor, and the true roots of “control” over social production and the distribution of goods.

It is precisely this control that must be transferred to the workers. This very nexus—the very roots of capitalist interests—must be concealed from the people. Better to agree, for a time, to surrender “all” of our profits, or 99 percent of our income, than to reveal to the people these hidden springs of our power, reasons the ruling class of capitalists—and their unwitting servant, the bureaucrat.

Under no circumstances will we renounce our right and our demand: to expose to the people the very citadel of financial capital, to bring that citadel under workers’ control—this is how the conscious worker thinks, and how he will continue to think. And with each passing day, this final line of reasoning will win the conviction of ever-larger numbers of the poor, of an increasingly significant majority of the people, and of ever more sincere individuals—those who earnestly seek salvation from catastrophe.

We must seize the very citadel of financial capital; without doing so, all talk of saving the people from disaster is nothing more than a deception. As for individual capitalists—even the majority of capitalists—the proletariat does not intend to “strip them bare” (as Shulgin and his ilk had so often threatened), nor does it intend to deprive them of “everything.” On the contrary, the proletariat intends to put them to work in a useful and honorable endeavor—under the watchful eye of the workers themselves.

In the face of an impending catastrophe, the most vital and most urgent task for the people is organizational work. The marvels of proletarian organization—that is our rallying cry now, and it will become our rallying cry and our demand even more strongly when the proletariat comes to power. Neither the introduction of a universally mandatory labor duty—so absolutely essential—nor the establishment of any meaningful oversight over banks, syndicates, or the processes of production and distribution is possible without the organized mobilization of the masses.

Therefore, we must begin—begin without delay—with the workers’ militia, advancing steadily and skillfully toward the creation of a nationwide militia, replacing the police and the standing army with the universal arming of the people. We must draw forth talented organizers from every stratum of the people, from every class—not excluding the capitalists, who today possess the greatest experience in this regard. There are many such talents among the people. In the peasantry and among the proletariat, these forces lie dormant, lacking opportunities to be put to use. We must bring them forth from below, through practical experience—through the astute elimination of “dead ends” in a given region, through the skillful organization of household committees, through the consolidation of domestic staff, through the establishment of model farms in the countryside, through the proper management of factories that have passed into workers’ hands, and through countless similar initiatives. By drawing these leaders from below, testing their talents in practice, and elevating them to positions of “ministers”—not in the old sense of the word, not in the sense of bestowing portfolios, but in the sense of serving as national instructors, itinerant organizers, assistants in the task of establishing the strictest order everywhere, of achieving the greatest possible economy in human labor, and of enforcing the most rigorous comradely discipline.

This is what the party of the proletariat must preach to the people in order to save them from catastrophe. This is what it must begin to implement, piece by piece, even now—wherever it gains power in specific localities. And this is what it must carry out in full when it seizes power over the entire state.

“Pravda,” Nos. 58 and 59, May 29 and 30 (May 16 and 17), 1917.

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “Pravda.”