V. I.

Lenin

News, speculation, apprehensions and rumours of an impending
disaster are becoming more and more frequent. The capitalist
newspapers are trying to frighten people; they are fulminating
against the Bolsheviks and making play of Kutler’s cryptic
allusions to “a certain” factory, to “certain” factories, to “a
certain” enterprise, and so forth. Peculiar methods, strange
“proofs”. Why not name a definite factory? Why not give
the public and the workers a chance to verify these rumours, which are deliberately calculated to excite alarm?

It should not be difficult for the capitalists to understand
that by withholding the exact facts about definite specified
factories they are only making themselves ridiculous. Why,
gentlemen—you capitalists are the government, you have ten
out of the sixteen ministers, you bear the responsibility, you
give the orders. Is it not ridiculous that people who run the
government, people who have a majority in it, should confine
themselves to Kutler’s anonymous references, should be afraid to
come out in the open and should try to shift responsibility to
other parties that are not at the helm of the state?

The newspapers of the petty-bourgeois parties, the Narodniks and
Mensheviks, are also complaining, though in a somewhat different
tone. They do not so much level accusations against the terrible
Bolsheviks (that, of course, is all in the day’s work) as heap
one good wish upon another. Most typical in this respect is
Izvestia , which is run by a bloc of the two above-named
parties. In its issue No. 63 for May 11 are two articles on the
subject of combating economic chaos. The articles are identical
in character. One of them, to put it mildly, is injudiciously
headed (altogether as “injudicious” as the very fact of the
Narodniks and Mensheviks joining the imperialist cabinet): “What
Does the Provisional Government Want?” It would have been more
correct to say: “What the Provisional Government Does
Not Want and What It Promises.”

The other article is a “resolution of the Economic Department of
the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies”. Here are some quotations from it, best illustrative
of its contents:

“ Many branches of industry are ripe for a state trade monopoly
(grain, meat, salt, leather), others are ripe for the organisation of state—controlled trusts (coal, oil,
metallurgy, sugar, paper); and, finally, present conditions
demand in the case of nearly all branches of industry state
control of the distribution of raw materials and manufactures,
as well as price filing... Simultaneously, it is necessary to
place all banking institutions under state and public control in
order to combat speculation in goods subject to state control.... At the same time, the most energetic measures should
be taken against the workshy, even if labour conscription has to
be introduced for that purpose.... The country is already in a
state of catastrophe, and the only thing that can save it is the
creative effort of the whole nation headed by a government which has consciously shouldered [ahem! ahem!]
the stupendous task of rescuing a country ruined by war and the
tsarist regime.”

With the exception of the last phrase beginning with the words
we have italicised, a phrase which with purely philistine
credulity places on the “shoulders” of the capitalists tasks
they are incapable of fulfilling, the programme is an excel lent
one. ’We have here control, state-controlled trusts, the
combating of speculation, labour conscription—in what way
does this differ from “terrible” Bolshevism, what more could
these “terrible” Bolsheviks want?

That is just the point, that is the crux of the matter, that is
just what petty bourgeois and philistines of all shades and
colours stubbornly refuse to see. They are forced to accept the programme of “terrible” Bolshevism, because no other
programme offers a way out of the really calamitous debacle that
is impending. But—there is this but—the capitalists “accept” this programme (see the famous section 3 of the
declaration of the “new” Provisional
Government [1] ) in order not to carry it out . And the Narodniks and Mensheviks trust
the capitalists, and encourage the people to share this fatal
trust. That is the sum and substance of the political situation.

Control over the trusts, with publication of their full reports,
with immediate conferences of their employees, with the
unqualified participation in this control of the workers themselves , with independent control on the part of
representatives of every important political party—all this
can be introduced by decree which can be drafted in a single day.

What is the difficulty then, Citizens Shingaryovs, Tereshchenkos, Konovalovs? What is stopping you, citizens,
near-socialist ministers Chernov and Tsereteli? What is stopping
you, Citizens Narodnik and Menshevik leaders of the Executive
Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies?

Neither we nor anybody else could have proposed anything but the
immediate establishment of such control over the trusts, banks, trade, food supply, and the workshy (a
surprisingly good word to come from the pen of the
Izvestia editors!). Nothing better could be devised than “the creative effort of the whole nation”.

Only we must not trust the word of the capitalists; we must not
believe the naive (at best, naive) hope of the Mensheviks and
Narodniks that the capitalists can establish such control.

A debacle is impending. Disaster is imminent. The capitalists
are heading all countries to destruction. There is only one way
out: revolutionary discipline, revolutionary measures by the
revolutionary class , the proletarians and semi proletarians, the transfer of all power in the state to that
class, a class that is really capable of instituting such
control, that is able to cope effectively with the “workshy”.

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Notes:
[1]
The
Declaration referred to was issued on May 6 (19), 1917 by the
first coalition Provisional Government . Paragraph 3 of this document read:
“The Provisional Government will redouble its determined efforts
to combat economic disorganisation by developing planned state
and public control of production, transport, commerce and
distribution of products, and where necessary will resort also to the organisation of production.”