V. I.

Lenin

Resolution on Measures to Cope with Economic Disorganisation [1]

[ This document refers to the decisions of the Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (Bolsheviks)
held in Petrograd on April 24–29 (May 7-12), 1917.]

1. The complete disruption of Russia’s economic life has now
reached a point where catastrophe is unavoidable, a catastrophe of such appalling dimensions that a number of
essential industries will be brought to a standstill, the
farmer will be prevented from conducting farming on the
necessary scale, and railway traffic will be interrupted with
a consequent stoppage of grain deliveries to the industrial
population and the cities, involving millions of people. What
is more, the break-down has already started, and has affected
various industries. Only by the greatest exertion of all the
nation’s forces and the adoption of a number of immediate
revolutionary measures, both in the local areas and at the
centre of government, can this debacle be effectively coped
with.

2. Neither by bureaucratic methods, i.e., the setting up of
institutions in which the capitalists and officials preponderate, nor by preserving the profits of the
capitalists, their supreme rule in industry, their supremacy
over finance capital, and their commercial secrets as regards
their banking, commercial, and industrial transactions, can
the disaster be averted. This has been amply proved by the
partial effects of the crisis as revealed in a number of
industries.

3. The only way to avert disaster is to establish effectual
workers’ control over the production and distribution of
goods. For the purpose of such control it is necessary, first
of all, that the workers should have a majority of not less
than three-fourths of all the votes in all the decisive
institutions and that the owners who have not withdrawn from
their business and the engineering staffs should be enlisted without fail; secondly, that shop committees, the central and
local Soviets, as well as the trade unions, should have the
right to participate in this control, that all commercial and
bank books be open to their inspection, and that the management supply them with all the necessary information;
third, that a similar right should be granted to representatives of all the major democratic and socialist
parties.

4. Workers’ control, which the capitalists in a number of
conflict cases have already accepted, should, by means of
various well-considered measures introduced gradually but
without any delay, be developed into full regulation of the
production and distribution of goods by the workers.

5. Workers’ control should similarly be extended to all
financial and banking operations with the aim of discovering
the true financial state of affairs; such control to be
participated in by councils and conventions of bank, syndicate and other employees, which are to be organised
forthwith.

6. To save the country from disaster the workers and peasants
must first of all be inspired with absolute and positive
assurance, conveyed by deeds and not by words, that the
governing bodies both in the local areas and at the centre
will not hesitate to hand over to the people the bulk of the
profits, incomes, and property of the great banking, financial, commercial, and industrial magnates of capitalist
economy. Unless this measure is carried out, it is futile to
demand or expect real revolutionary measures or any real
revolutionary effort on the part of the workers and peasants.

7. In view of the break-down of the whole financial and monetary
system and the impossibility of rehabilitating it while the
war is on, the aim of the state organisation should be to
organise on a broad, regional, and subsequently country-wide,
scale the exchange of agricultural implements, clothes, boots
and other goods for grain and other farm products. The services of the town and rural co-operative societies should
be widely enlisted.

8. Only when these measures have been carried out will it be
possible and necessary to introduce general and compulsory
labour service. This measure, in turn, calls for the establishment of a workers’ militia, in which the workers are
to serve without pay after their regular eight-hour day; this
to be followed, by the introduction of a nation-wide people’s militia in which the workers and other employees shall be
paid by the capitalists. Only such a workers’ militia and the
people’s militia that will grow out of it could and should
introduce universal compulsory labour service, not by bureaucratic means and in the interests of the capitalists,
but to save the country from the impending debacle. Only such
a militia could and should introduce real revolutionary
discipline and get the whole people to make that supreme
effort necessary for averting disaster. Only universal compulsory labour service is capable of ensuring the maximum
economy in the expenditure of labour-power.

9. Among the measures aimed at saving the country from disaster,
one of the most important tasks is that of engaging a large
labour force in the production of coal and raw materials, and
for work in the transport services. No less important is it
that the workers employed in producing ammunition should be
gradually switched over to producing goods necessary for the
country’s economic rehabilitation.

10. The systematic and effective implementation of all these
measures is possible only if all the power in the state
passes to the proletarians and semi-proletarians.

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Notes:
[1]