Russia faces an inevitable catastrophe. Railway transport is disrupted to an unimaginable degree and is becoming more disrupted by the day. The railways will come to a halt. The supply of raw materials and coal to the factories will cease. The supply of grain will cease. The capitalists are deliberately and relentlessly sabotaging (damaging, stopping, undermining, obstructing) production, hoping that an unprecedented catastrophe will be the collapse of the republic and democracy, the Soviets and in general the proletarian and peasant unions, thereby facilitating a return to monarchy and the restoration of the absolute power of the bourgeoisie and landowners.

A catastrophe of unprecedented scale and famine threaten inevitably. This has already been spoken of in all newspapers an innumerable number of times. An unimaginable quantity of resolutions has been adopted both by parties and by the Soviets of workers', soldiers', and peasants' deputies – resolutions in which it is acknowledged that catastrophe is inevitable, that it is approaching very closely, that a desperate struggle against it is necessary, that "heroic efforts" of the people are necessary to prevent destruction and so forth.

All this they say. All this they acknowledge. All this they have decided.

And nothing is being done.

Half a year of revolution has passed. The catastrophe has drawn even closer. It has come to mass unemployment. Just think of it: in a country where there is a shortage of goods, a country dying from the lack of products, from the lack of working hands, while there is a sufficient quantity of grain and raw materials – and in such a country, at such a critical moment, mass unemployment has grown! What further proof is needed that over half a year of revolution (which some call great, but which for now would perhaps be fairer to call rotten), under a democratic republic, with an abundance of unions, organs, and institutions, proudly calling themselves "revolutionary-democratic," in fact absolutely nothing serious has been done against catastrophe, against famine? We are approaching collapse ever faster and faster, because the war does not wait, and the disorder it creates in all sides of national life is constantly intensifying.

And yet it is enough to pay the slightest attention and reflection to convince oneself that the means of fighting catastrophe and famine exist, that the measures of struggle are entirely clear, simple, entirely feasible, entirely within the reach of popular forces, and that these measures are not being taken solely and exclusively because their implementation would affect the unprecedented profits of a handful of landowners and capitalists.

Indeed. One can be assured that you will not find a single speech, not a single newspaper article of any orientation, not a single resolution from any assembly or institution, where the basic and main measure of struggle, the measure for preventing catastrophe and famine, is not recognized entirely clearly and definitively. This measure is: control, supervision, accounting, and regulation on the part of the state; the establishment of proper distribution of working forces in production and in the distribution of products; the preservation of popular forces; the elimination of every unnecessary waste of strength; the economy of it. Control, supervision, accounting – these are the first words in the struggle against catastrophe and against famine. This is what is indisputable and universally acknowledged. And this is precisely what is not being done out of fear of encroaching upon the absolute power of landowners and capitalists, upon their boundless, unprecedented, scandalous profits – profits that are reaped from high prices, from military contracts (and now for war, directly or indirectly, almost everyone "works"), profits that everyone knows of, everyone observes, and about which everyone gasps and moans.

And absolutely nothing is being done for any serious control, accounting, or supervision on the part of the state.