News, conjectures, fears and rumours about the threatening catastrophe are becoming more and more frequent. The capitalist newspapers are spreading panic, foaming at the mouth against the Bolsheviks, flaunting anonymous references by Kutler to “one” factory, “some” factories, “one” enterprise, and so on. Amazing methods, strange “proofs”.... why not name the specific factory? Why not give both the public and the workers an opportunity to verify these rumours, which are calculated to arouse alarm?

You capitalist gentlemen might well understand that by failing to give precise data about specifically named enterprises, you only make yourselves ridiculous. You are the government, capitalist gentlemen; you have ten ministers out of sixteen; you bear responsibility and you are in control. Is it not ridiculous when people who have a majority in the government, who are in control, confine themselves to anonymous references by Kutler, afraid to come out openly and directly, trying to shift the responsibility onto other parties that are not at the helm of power?

The newspapers of the petty-bourgeois parties, the Narodniks and Mensheviks, also complain, but in a somewhat different tone, not so much blaming the horrible Bolsheviks (though, of course, this is not omitted), as piling one good wish upon another. In this respect, *Izvestia*, whose editorial board is in the hands of a bloc of the two above-mentioned parties, is particularly characteristic. Its issue No. 63 of May 11 carried two articles on the subject of combating economic ruin, articles of similar content. One of them bears the extremely.... how shall I put it more mildly?.... extremely incautious title (just as the entry of the Narodniks and Mensheviks into the imperialist ministry is “incautious” in general) – “What the Provisional Government Wants”. It would be more correct to title it: “What the Provisional Government Does Not Want and What It Promises?”.

The other article is a “resolution of the economic section of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies”. Here are a few excerpts from it which will give the most exact idea of its contents:

“For many branches of industry the time is ripe for a state trade monopoly (grain, meat, salt, leather); for others, conditions are ripe for the formation of state-regulated trusts (coal and oil extraction, metal production, sugar, paper); and, finally, for almost all branches of industry present-day conditions demand a state regulatory role in the distribution of raw materials and manufactured products, as well as price fixing.... At the same time, all credit institutions should be placed under the control of state and public authority in order to combat speculation in goods subject to state regulation.... Moreover.... the most resolute measures should be taken to combat idleness, up to the introduction of a labour duty.... The country is already in a catastrophe and can be saved from it only by the creative effort of the whole people, headed by a state authority that consciously assumes” (hm.... hm....!?) “the grandiose task of saving the country ruined by the war and the tsarist regime.”

With the exception of the last sentence with the words we have underlined – a sentence that with purely philistine trustfulness “imposes” on the capitalists tasks they will be unable to accomplish – with that exception, the programme is splendid. Control, the nationalisation of trusts, the fight against speculation, a labour duty – why, how does this differ from “horrible” Bolshevism? What more did the “horrible” Bolsheviks want?

That is the very crux of the matter, the very essence, what the philistines and philistines of all colours stubbornly refuse to understand: the programme of “horrible” Bolshevism has to be accepted, for no other programme for escape from the really threatening, really horrible collapse can exist, but.... but the capitalists “accept” this programme (see the famous paragraph 3 of the declaration of the “new” Provisional Government) precisely in order not to carry it out. And the Narodniks and Mensheviks “trust” the capitalists and teach the people this ruinous trust. Herein lies the whole essence of the entire political situation.

To introduce control over the trusts – with the publication of their full accounts, with the immediate convocation of congresses of their employees, with the mandatory participation of the workers themselves in the control, with the granting to representatives of every major political party of the right to independent control – all this can be introduced by decree, one day being sufficient to draft it.

What, then, is holding up matters, citizens Shingaryov, Tereshchenko, Konovalov? What is holding up matters, citizens almost socialist ministers, Chernov, Tsereteli? What is holding up matters, citizen Narodnik and Menshevik leaders of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies?

Neither we nor anyone else has proposed, nor could possibly propose, anything else but the immediate introduction of such control over the trusts, the banks, trade, the “idlers” (an amazingly good word that the *Izvestia* editors, as an exception, have chanced upon....), and food supplies. Nor can anything else be invented except the “creative effort of the whole people”....

Only one must not believe the words of the capitalists, must not believe the naive (at best naive) hope of the Mensheviks and Narodniks that the capitalists can carry out such control.

Ruin threatens. Catastrophe is approaching. The capitalists have brought and are bringing all countries to ruin. There is only one salvation: revolutionary discipline, revolutionary measures of the revolutionary class, the proletarians and semi-proletarians, the transfer of all state power into the hands of this class, which will be able to introduce such control in practice, to carry out successfully in practice the “struggle against idleness”.