War has forced all belligerent and many neutral states to transition to the regulation of consumption. The bread ration card came into being and became a customary phenomenon, and it has pulled other ration cards in its wake. Russia did not stand aside and also introduced bread ration cards.

But it is precisely on this example that we can compare, perhaps most vividly of all, the reactionary-bureaucratic methods of combating catastrophe—striving to confine themselves to a minimum of transformations—with the revolutionary-democratic methods, which, in order to deserve their name, must make violent rupture with the moribund old order and the greatest possible acceleration of forward movement their direct task.

The bread ration card, this typical specimen of consumption regulation in modern capitalist states, sets itself the task and accomplishes (at best accomplishes) one thing: to distribute the available quantity of bread so that there is enough for everyone. A maximum is introduced for the consumption not of everything, but only of the principal "popular" products. And that is all. Nothing more is undertaken. They bureaucratically count the existing bread reserves, divide them per capita, establish a norm, introduce it, and confine themselves to this. Articles of luxury are left untouched, because "in any case" there are few of them and they are "in any case" so expensive that they are "inaccessible" to the "people." Therefore in all, without any exception whatsoever, belligerent countries, even in Germany—which, it seems, without provoking dispute, can be considered a model of the most orderly, the most pedantic, the most strict regulation of consumption—even in Germany we see the constant circumvention by the rich of any "norms" of consumption. Everyone "knows" this too, everyone talks about it too with a smirk, and in the German socialist—and sometimes even bourgeois—press, despite the ferocity of the barracks-like strict German censorship, there constantly appear notices and reports about the "menu" of the wealthy, about the obtaining of white bread in any quantity by the rich at such-and-such a resort (under the guise of being patients, all those with plenty of money visit it…), about the replacement by the wealthy of common popular products with refined and rare articles of luxury.

The reactionary capitalist state, which fears to undermine the foundations of capitalism, the foundations of wage slavery, the foundations of the economic dominance of the rich, fears to develop the self-activity of workers and all toilers in general, fears to "inflame" their demands; such a state needs nothing except the bread ration card. Such a state does not for a moment, does not in any single step of its own, lose sight of the reactionary goal: to strengthen capitalism, not to allow it to be undermined, to confine the "regulation of economic life" in general, and the regulation of consumption in particular, only to such measures as are absolutely necessary to feed the people, in no way encroaching upon genuine regulation of consumption in the sense of control over the rich, in the sense of imposing upon them—better situated, privileged, satiated and overfed in peacetime—greater burdens in wartime.

The reactionary-bureaucratic solution of the task set for the peoples by the war is confined to the bread ration card, to the equal distribution of the absolutely necessary "popular" products for nourishment, not retreating one iota from bureaucratism and reactionism—precisely from the goal: not to raise the self-activity of the poor, of the proletariat, of the mass of the people (the "demos"), not to permit control on their part over the rich, to leave plenty of loopholes so that the rich can reward themselves with articles of luxury. And in all countries, we repeat, even in Germany—about Russia there is nothing to say—plenty of loopholes have been left, the "common people" go hungry, while the rich drive to resorts, supplement the meager official ration with all sorts of "additions" from outside, and do not permit themselves to be controlled.

In Russia, which has just carried out a revolution against tsarism in the name of freedom and equality, in Russia, which has immediately become a democratic republic in its actual political institutions, it strikes the people in the eye particularly, and particularly provokes discontent, irritation, embitterment, and the indignation of the masses, that everyone sees the ease with which "bread ration cards" are circumvented by the rich. This ease is particularly great. "Under the counter" and for especially high prices, especially "through connections" (which only the rich possess), they obtain everything and plenty. The people go hungry. Regulation of consumption is confined to the narrowest, bureaucratically-reactionary bounds. On the part of the government there is not a shadow of a thought, not a shadow of concern, to place this regulation on the basis of genuinely revolutionary-democratic principles.

From the queues everyone "suffers," but… but the rich send their servants to stand in the queues and even hire special servants for this purpose! There you have your "democracy"!

Revolutionary-democratic policy during the unprecedented calamities being experienced by the country, for combating the approaching catastrophe, would not confine itself to bread ration cards, but would add to them, first, the compulsory unification of the entire population into consumer societies, for without such unification it is impossible to carry out control over consumption fully; second, labor conscription for the rich, so that they serve these consumer societies gratis with secretarial and other similar work; third, the equal distribution among the population of genuinely all products of consumption, so that the burdens of war are distributed genuinely equally; fourth, the organization of control such that it is precisely the poor classes of the population that control the consumption of the rich.

The creation of genuine democracy in this sphere, the manifestation of genuine revolutionariness in the organization of control by precisely the most needy classes of the people would be the greatest stimulus to the mobilization of every available intellectual force, to the development of genuinely revolutionary energy of all the people. But now the ministers of the republican and revolutionary-democratic Russia speak in exactly the same way as their brothers in all the other imperialist countries, speak in grandiose words about "common labor for the benefit of the people," about "the mobilization of all forces," but it is precisely the people that see, feel, and perceive the hypocrisy of these words.

The result is marking time in place and the irresistible growth of disintegration, the approach of catastrophe, because our government cannot introduce military hard labor for workers in the Kornilovite, Hindenburg-like, general imperialist fashion—the traditions, memories, traces, habits, and institutions of revolution are still too much alive among the people; but our government does not wish to take genuinely serious steps along the revolutionary-democratic path, because it is thoroughly saturated and bound from top to bottom with relations of dependence on the bourgeoisie, "coalition" with it, fear of touching its actual privileges.