V. I.

Lenin

(ARTICLE ONE)

The inevitable debacle, the catastrophe of unprecedented
dimensions that is facing us is of such importance that we must
dwell on this question again and again if we are to fully grasp
its implications. In the last issue of Pravda we said that the programme of the
Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies no longer differs in any way from that of “terrible”
Bolshevism. [1]

Today we must point out that the programme of the Menshevik Minister Skobelev goes even further than Bolshevism. Here is
the programme, as reported in the ministerial paper, Rech :

“ The Minister [Skobelev] declared that ’... the country’s
economy is on the brink of disaster. We must intervene in all
fields of economic life, as there is no money in the
Treasury. We must improve the condition of the working masses,
and to do that we must take the profits from the tills of the
businessmen and bankers’.

( Voice in the audience : ‘How?’)

’ By ruthless taxation of property,’ replied the Minister of
Labour, Skobelev. ’It is a method known to the science of
finance. The rate of taxation on the propertied classes must be
increased to one hundred per cent of their profits.’ ( Voice in the audience : ’That means everything.’)

‘ Unfortunately,’ declared Skobelev, ’many corporations have
already distributed their dividends among the share holders, and
we must therefore levy a progressive personal tax on the
propertied classes. We will go even further, and, if the
capitalists wish to preserve the bourgeois method of business,
let them work without interest, so as not to lose their
clients.... We must introduce compulsory labour service for the
shareholders, bankers and factory owners, who are in a rather
slack mood because the incentive that formerly stimulated them
to work is now lacking.... We must force the shareholders to
submit to the state; they, too, must be subject to labour
service.’”

We advise the workers to read and reread this programme, to
discuss it and go into the matter of its practicability.

The important thing is the conditions necessary for its
fulfilment, and the taking of immediate steps towards its
fulfilment.

This programme in itself is an excellent one and coincides with
the Bolshevik programme, except that in one particular it goes
even further than our programme, namely, it promises to
take the profits from the tills of the bankers “to the extent of
one hundred per cent”.

Our Party is much more moderate. Its resolution demands much
less than this, namely, the mere establishment of control over
the banks and the “gradual [just listen, the Bolsheviks are for
gradualness!] introduction of a more just progressive tax on
incomes and properties”.

Our Party is more moderate than Skobelev.

Skobelev dispenses immoderate, nay, extravagant promises,
without understanding the conditions required for their practical realisation.

That is the crux of the matter.

It is impossible not only to realise Skobelev’s programme, but even to make any serious efforts towards its
realisation, either arm in arm with ten ministers from the party
of the landowners and capitalists, or with the bureaucratic,
official-ridden machine to which the government of the capitalists (plus a few Mensheviks and Narodniks )
is perforce limited.

Less promises, Citizen Skobelev, and more practicalness. Less
rhetoric and more understanding as to how to get down to business.

And get down to business we can and should immediately, without
a day’s delay, if we are to save the country from an inevitable
and terrible catastrophe. But the whole thing is that the “new”
Provisional Government does not want to get down to business; and even if it wanted to, it could not , for
it is fettered by a thousand chains which safeguard the
interests of capital.

We can and should in a single day call upon the people to get
down to business; we can and should in a single day issue a
decree immediately convening:

1) Councils and congresses of bank employees, both of individual
banks and on a national scale, to work out immediate practical measures for amalgamating all banks and banking
houses into a single State Bank, and exercising precise
control over all banking operations, the results of such
control to be published forthwith;

2) Councils and congresses of employees of all syndicates and
trusts to work out measures for control and accountancy; the
results of such control to be published forthwith;

3) This decree should grant the right of control not only to the
Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies, but
also to councils of the workers at every large factory, as
well as to the representatives of every large political party
(those parties should be regarded as large parties which, for
example, on May 12 put forward independent lists of candidates in not less than two Petrograd districts); all
ledgers and documents to he open to control;

4) The decree should call upon all shareholders, directors and
members of the boards of all companies to publish the names
of all shareholders owning stock to an amount of not less
than 10,000 (or 5,000) rubles, together with a list of stocks
and companies in which these persons are “interested”; false
statements (made to the controlling bodies of the bank and
other employees) shall be punished by confiscation of all
property and by imprisonment for a term of not less than five
years;

5) The decree should call upon the people to establish
immediately, through the local organs of self-government,
universal labour service, for the control and enforcement of
which a universal people’s militia should be established (in
the rural districts directly, in the cities through the
workers’ militia).

Without universal labour service, the country cannot be saved from ruin; and without a people’s militia, universal
labour service cannot be effected. This will be obvious to
everyone who has not reached a state of ministerial insanity or
has not had his brain turned by putting too much trust in
ministerial eloquence.

Every person is bound to stand for such measures if he really wishes to save tens of millions from ruin and disaster.

In the next article we shall deal with the question of the
gradual introduction of a more equitable system of taxation, and
also what should be done to advance from among the people and
gradually place in ministerial positions really gifted organisers (both from among the workers and the capitalists) who
have given a good account of themselves in this kind of work.

(ARTICLE TWO)

When Skobelev, with ministerial élan , [style and vigour] talked himself into
taking one hundred per cent of the capitalists’ profits, he
furnished us with a specimen of claptrap.

This kind of phrase-mongering is always used in bourgeois parliamentary republics to hoodwink the
people.

But here we have something worse than mere phrase-mongering. “If
the capitalists wish to preserve the bourgeois method of
business, let them work without interest, so as not to lose
their clients,” Skobelev said. This sounds like a “terrible”
threat to the capitalists; but in fact, it is an attempt
(unconscious probably on the part of Skobelev, but certainly
conscious on the part of the capitalists) to make safe the rule of almighty capital by a temporary sacrifice of
profits.

The workers are taking “too much”, say the capitalists; let us
make them responsible without giving them either power or the
opportunity to effectively control production. Let us sacrifice
our profits for a time; “by preserving the bourgeois method of
business and not losing our clients”, we shall hasten the
collapse of this transitory stage in industry, we shall
disorganise it in every possible way and lay the blame on the
workers.

That such is the plan of the capitalists is proved by the
facts. The coal mine owners in the South are actually disorganising production, are “ deliberately, neglecting and disorganising it ” (see Novaya Zhizn for May 16
reporting statements made by a workers delegation [2] ). The picture
is clear: Rech is lying brazenly when it puts the blame
on the workers, The coal mine owners are “deliberately disorganising production”; and Skobelev sings his song: “If the
capitalists wish to preserve the bourgeois method of business,
let them work without interest.” The position is clear.

It is to the advantage of the capitalists and the bureaucrats to make “extravagant promises”, diverting people’s
attention away from the main thing , namely, the transfer of real control to the workers.

The workers must sweep aside all high-sounding phrases,
promises, declarations, project-mongering by bureaucrats in the
centre, who are ever ready to draw up spectacular plans, rules,
regulations, and standards. Down with all this lying! Down with
all this hullabaloo of bureaucratic and bourgeois project-mongering which has everywhere ended in smoke. Down with
this habit of shelving things! The workers must demand the
immediate establishment of genuine control, to be exercised by the workers themselves.

That is the most important condition of success, success in
averting catastrophe. If that is lacking, all else is sheer
deception. If we have it, we need not be in a hurry to “take one
hundred per cent of the profits”. We can and should be more
moderate; we should gradually introduce a more equitable system of taxation; we shall differentiate between the
small and large shareholders; we shall take very little
from the former, and a great deal (but not necessarily all) from the latter only. The number of large
shareholders is insignificant; but the role they play, like the
wealth they possess, is tremendous. It may safely be said that if one were to draw up a list of the five or even three thousand (or perhaps even one thousand) of Russia’s
wealthiest men, or if one were to trace (by means of control
exercised from below , by bank. syndicate, and other employees) all the threads and ties of their finance capital,
their banking connections, there would be revealed the whole
complexus of capitalist domination, the vast body of wealth
amassed at the expense of the labour of others, all the
essential roots of “control” over the social production and
distribution of goods.

It is this control that must be handed over to the workers. It is this complexity, these roots, that the interests
of capital require to be concealed from the people. Better
forego for a time “all” our profits, or ninety-nine per cent of
our income, than disclose to the people these roots of our
power—thus reason the capitalist class and its unconscious
servant, the government official.

Under no circumstances shall we relinquish our right, our demand that this citadel of finance capital be disclosed to
the people, that it be placed under workers’ control—thus
reasons the class-conscious worker. And every passing day will
prove the correctness of this reasoning to growing masses of the
poor, to a growing majority of the people, to a growing number
of sincere people who are honestly seeking a way to avert
disaster.

This citadel of finance capital has to be taken if all those
phrases and projects for averting disaster are not to remain
sheer deception. As far as individual capitalists, or even most
of the capitalists, are concerned, the proletariat has no
intention of “taking their last shirt from them” (as Shulgin has
been “scaring” himself and his friends), has no intention of
taking “everything” from them. On the contrary, it intends to
put them on useful and honourable jobs—under the control of
the workers.

The most useful and indispensable job for the people at this
moment of impending catastrophe is that of organisation. Marvels of proletarian
organisation—that is our slogan now, and will become our
slogan and our demand doubly so when the proletariat is in
power. Without the organisation of the masses it will be
absolutely impossible either to introduce universal labour
service, which is absolutely essential, or establish any at all
serious control over the banks and syndicates and over the
production and distribution of goods.

That is why it is necessary to begin, and begin immediately,
with a workers’ militia, in order that we may proceed gradually,
but firmly and intelligently, to the creation of a people’s
militia and the replacement of the police and the standing army
by the universally armed people. That is why it is necessary to
advance talented organisers from among all sections of society, from among all classes, not excepting the
capitalists, who at present have more of the required experience. There are many such talents among the people. Such
forces lie dormant among the peasantry and the proletariat for
lack of application. They must be advanced from below in the
course of practical work, such as the efficient elimination of
queues in a given district, skilful organisation of house
committees, domestic servants, and model farms, proper management of factories that have been taken over by the
workers, and so on and so forth. When these have been advanced
from below in the course of practical work, and their abilities
tested in practice, they should all be promoted to “ministers”—not in the old sense of the term, not in the
sense of giving them portfolios, but by appointing them national
instructors, travelling organisers, assistants in the business
of establishing everywhere the strictest order, the greatest economy in human labour, the strictest comradely
discipline.

That is what the party of the proletariat must preach to the
people as the means of averting disaster. That is what it must
start carrying out now in part in those localities where it is
gaining power. That is what it must carry out in full when it
assumes state power.

---
Notes:
[1]


— Lenin

[2]
This refers to statements made by a delegation of Donet workers
to the Economic Department of the Petrograd Soviet. This
delegation was sent to Petrograd by the April-May conference
(1917) of workers of the coal and iron and steel industries in
the south of Russia to ask the Ministry of Commerce and Industry
and the Ministry of Labour to intercede in obtaining a rise for
the lower-paid brackets from the association of Donets capitalists.

The delegation submitted statements describing the intolerable
conditions of the workers and gave numerous instances of
sabotage on the part of the owners and mangers of the collieries and metallurgical works, who were out to crush the
revolutionary-minded workers and starve them into submission.