15. The Party of the proletariat cannot in any way set itself the goal of "introducing" socialism in a country of small peasants so long as the overwhelming majority of the population has not come to the consciousness of the necessity of socialist revolution.

But only bourgeois sophists, hiding behind "quasi-Marxist" phrases, can draw from this truth a justification for such a policy that would delay immediate revolutionary measures, which have become fully ripe in practice and have been carried out frequently during the war by a number of bourgeois states, and which are urgently necessary for the struggle against impending total economic disruption and famine.

Such measures as the nationalization of land, all banks, and the syndicates of capitalists, or at least the establishment of immediate control over them by Soviets of workers' deputies and so forth, while in no way being an "introduction" of socialism, must be absolutely defended and, to the extent possible, brought about by revolutionary means. Without such measures, which are merely steps toward socialism and which are entirely feasible economically, it is impossible to heal the wounds inflicted by war and to prevent the threatening catastrophe; and the Party of revolutionary proletariat will never halt before an assault on the unprecedentedly-high profits of capitalists and bankers, who are profiting in the most scandalous manner precisely "from war."