The objective situation outlined above, created by an extremely severe and precarious peace, the most excruciating devastation, unemployment and hunger bequeathed to us as a legacy of war and the rule of the bourgeoisie (in the person of Kerensky and the Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries who supported him) – all this has inevitably produced extreme exhaustion and even depletion of the forces of the broad masses of the working people. They urgently demand – and cannot but demand – a certain respite. The order of the day is now set by the restoration of the productive forces destroyed by the war and by the mismanagement of the bourgeoisie; – the healing of the wounds inflicted by the war, by defeat in the war, by speculation and by the attempts of the bourgeoisie to restore the overthrown power of the exploiters; – the economic uplift of the country; – firm maintenance of elementary order. It may appear paradoxical, but in reality, in consequence of the objective conditions indicated, it is absolutely certain that Soviet power at the present moment can consolidate the transition of Russia to socialism only if it practically resolves, in spite of the resistance of the bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, precisely these very elementary and most elementary tasks of preserving the social order. The practical resolution of these most elementary tasks and the overcoming of the organizational difficulties of the first steps toward socialism is now, in consequence of the concrete peculiarities of the given situation and given the existence of Soviet power with its decrees on the socialization of the land, workers' control and so forth, two sides of one coin.

Keep an accurate and conscientious account of money, manage economically, do not shirk, do not steal, observe the strictest discipline in labor – precisely such slogans, rightly ridiculed by the revolutionary proletariat at a time when the bourgeoisie covered its rule, as a class of exploiters, with such speeches, now become, after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the urgent and principal slogans of the moment. And the practical implementation of these slogans by the masses of working people is, on the one hand, the sole condition for saving the country, torn to half-death by imperialist war and imperialist brigands (with Kerensky at their head), and, on the other hand, the practical implementation of these slogans by Soviet power, by its methods, on the basis of its decrees, is necessary and sufficient for the ultimate victory of socialism. This is precisely what those who contemptuously brush aside the putting forward of such "hackneyed" and "trivial" slogans are unable to understand. In a petty-peasant country, which only a year ago overthrew tsarism and less than half a year ago freed itself from the Kerenskys, there naturally remains considerable spontaneous anarchism, intensified by the brutalization and barbarization accompanying every long and reactionary war, considerable moods of despair and undirected malice have taken root; if we add to this the provocative policy of the lackeys of the bourgeoisie (Mensheviks, Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and so forth), it becomes quite clear what lengthy and stubborn efforts of the best and most conscious workers and peasants are necessary for a complete reversal of the moods of the masses and their transition to proper, sustained, disciplined labor. Only such a transition, accomplished by the masses of the poor (proletarians and semi-proletarians), is capable of bringing the victory over the bourgeoisie to completion, and in particular over the most stubborn and numerous peasant bourgeoisie.