Without the abolition of commercial secrecy, control over production and distribution either remains the emptiest of promises, needed only for the Kadets to hoodwink the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and for the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks to hoodwink the working classes, or control can be implemented only through reactionary-bureaucratic methods and measures. However obvious this is to every impartial person, however persistently *Pravda*[8] insisted on the abolition of commercial secrecy (shut down in large measure precisely for this reason by the Kerensky government, which serves capital), — neither our republican government nor the "competent organs of revolutionary democracy" have given a thought to this first condition of genuine control.

Here lies the key to all control. Here is capital's most vulnerable spot — capital which plunders the people and sabotages production. And precisely for this reason the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks fear to touch upon this point.

The usual argument of the capitalists, parroted thoughtlessly by the petty bourgeoisie, is that capitalist economy absolutely cannot permit the abolition of commercial secrecy at all, since private property in the means of production, the dependence of individual enterprises on the market, makes the "sacred inviolability" of commercial books and commercial — including of course banking — transactions necessary.

People who in one form or another repeat this or similar arguments deceive themselves and mislead the people, closing their eyes to two fundamental, major, and universally known facts of contemporary economic life. The first fact: large-scale capitalism, that is, the peculiarities of banking, syndicates, large factories, etc. The second fact: war.

It is precisely modern large-scale capitalism, becoming monopolistic capitalism everywhere, that eliminates any semblance of rationality in commercial secrecy, reducing it to hypocrisy and making it exclusively an instrument for concealing financial swindles and the incredible profits of large capital. Large-scale capitalist enterprise, by virtue of its very technical nature, is socialized enterprise — it operates for millions of people and unites through its operations, directly and indirectly, hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of families. This is not the case with the enterprise of a small craftsman or middle peasant, who keep no commercial books at all and to whom therefore the abolition of commercial secrecy does not apply!

In large-scale enterprise the operations are already known to hundreds and more persons. The law protecting commercial secrecy serves here not the needs of production or exchange, but speculation and profiteering in its crudest form, direct fraud, which, as is well known, acquires particular prevalence in joint-stock enterprises and is particularly cunningly concealed by reports and balance sheets manipulated to dupe the public.

If commercial secrecy is inevitable in small commodity enterprise, that is, among small peasants and craftsmen, where production itself is not socialized, is scattered, fragmented, then in large-scale capitalist enterprise the protection of this secrecy is the protection of privileges and profits of literally a handful of people against the entire people. This has already been recognized even by law insofar as the publication of reports by joint-stock companies has been introduced, but this control — already implemented in all advanced countries and also in Russia — is precisely reactionary-bureaucratic control, which does not open people's eyes, which does not allow them to know the whole truth about the operations of joint-stock companies.

To act in a revolutionary-democratic manner, one ought immediately to promulgate a different law, abolishing commercial secrecy, requiring from large enterprises and the wealthy the most complete reports, granting to any group of citizens reaching a solid democratic number (say, 1,000 or 10,000 voters) the right to examine all documents of any large enterprise. Such a measure is entirely and easily implementable by simple decree; only it would unleash the people's initiative for control through unions of office workers, through unions of workers, through all political parties, only it would make control serious and democratic.

Add to this moreover the war. The vast majority of commercial and industrial enterprises now work not for the "free market," but for the state treasury, for war. I have already said in *Pravda* that people who object to us with arguments about the impossibility of introducing socialism are lying and thrice lying, because the question is not about introducing socialism now, immediately, from today to tomorrow, but about exposing embezzlement of state funds.[9]

Capitalist enterprise "for war" (that is, enterprise directly or indirectly connected with military supplies) is systematic, legalized embezzlement of state funds, and the gentlemen Kadets, together with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, who oppose the abolition of commercial secrecy, are nothing other than accessories to and concealers of embezzlement of state funds.

War costs Russia now 50 million rubles a day. These 50 million a day go for the most part to military suppliers. Out of these 50 million at least 5 million daily, and more probably 10 million and more, constitute the "pure and simple gains" of capitalists and officials in one or another collusion with them. Especially the largest firms and banks lending money for operations with military supplies harvest here unheard-of profits, enrich themselves precisely through embezzlement of state funds, for this fleecing and plundering of the people "on the occasion" of the calamities of war, "on the occasion" of the deaths of hundreds of thousands and millions of people cannot be called by any other name.

About these scandalous profits on supplies, about "guarantee letters" concealed by banks, about who is profiteering from mounting price increases — "everyone" knows, about this there is talk with a smirk in "society," about this there are plenty of concrete indications even in the bourgeois press, which as a general rule keeps silent about "unpleasant" facts and avoids "delicate" questions. Everyone knows — and everyone is silent, everyone tolerates it, everyone makes peace with the government, eloquently speaking of "control" and "regulation"!!

Revolutionary democrats, if they were truly revolutionaries and democrats, would immediately promulgate a law abolishing commercial secrecy, obligating suppliers and traders to submit reports, forbidding them to abandon their line of activity without government permission, introducing confiscation of property and execution[10] for concealment and deception of the people, organizing verification and control from below, democratically, on the part of the people themselves, unions of office workers, workers, consumers, etc.

Our Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks fully deserve the name frightened democrats, because on this question they repeat what all frightened philistines say, namely that capitalists will "flee" when "too severe" measures are applied, that without capitalists "we" cannot manage, that the Anglo-French millionaires, who after all are "supporting" us, might possibly be "offended," and so forth. One might think that the Bolsheviks are proposing something unprecedented in human history, never before tried, "utopian," whereas in fact already 125 years ago in France there were people who were truly "revolutionary democrats," truly convinced of the just, defensive character of their war, truly relying on the popular masses, sincerely convinced of the same — these people knew how to establish revolutionary control over the wealthy and achieve results before which the whole world bowed. And during the past five quarters of a century the development of capitalism, having created banks, syndicates, railways, and so on and so forth, has made measures of truly democratic control on the part of workers and peasants over exploiters, landowners, and capitalists a hundred times easier and simpler.

Essentially, the entire question of control reduces to this: who controls whom, that is, which class is the controlling class and which is the controlled class. Up to now, in republican Russia, with the participation of the "competent organs" of supposedly revolutionary democracy, landowners and capitalists are recognized and left in the role of controllers. The inevitable result is the looting by capitalists that provokes universal indignation of the people, and that ruin which is artificially maintained by the capitalists. One must transition decisively, irrevocably, not fearing to break with the old, not fearing boldly to construct the new, to control over landowners and capitalists on the part of workers and peasants. And it is precisely this that our Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks fear more than fire.