(Article One)
(Статья первая)
Date: 1917
Source: ru:PSS/v32
Translated by: AI (Claude)

The question of the inevitably threatening disruption and catastrophe of unprecedented dimensions is of such importance that the fullest clarification of it must be returned to more and more often. In the previous issue of "Pravda" we already indicated that the program of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies now differs in nothing from the program of "terrible" Bolshevism.

Today we must point out that the program of the minister-Menshevik Skobelev goes further than Bolshevism. Here is this program as transmitted by the ministerial newspaper "Rech":

"The minister (Skobelev) declares that... the state economy is on the edge of an abyss. Intervention in economic life in all its areas is necessary, since there is no money in the treasury. It is necessary to improve the position of the toiling masses, and for this it is necessary to take the profit from the coffers of entrepreneurs and banks. (A voice from the floor: 'By what method?') By merciless taxation of property,—answers the Minister of Labor Skobelev.—Financial science knows this method. It is necessary to increase the rates of taxation of the propertied classes up to 100 percent of profit. (A voice from the floor: 'That means everything.') Unfortunately,—declares Skobelev,—various joint-stock enterprises have already distributed dividends to shareholders, but we must therefore tax the propertied classes with a progressive individual tax. We will go even further, and if capital wants to preserve the bourgeois method of conducting the economy, then let it work without interest, so as not to lose customers... We must introduce labor obligation for Messrs. shareholders, bankers and factory owners, whose mood is sluggish because there are no stimuli which previously prompted them to work... We must force Messrs. shareholders to submit to the state, and for them there must be an obligation, a labor obligation."

We advise the workers to read and reread this program, to discuss it and to delve into the conditions of its feasibility.

Everything depends on the conditions of implementation, on the immediate beginning of implementation.

The program itself is not only magnificent and coincides with the Bolshevik one, but in one point goes further than ours, namely in the point where it promises to "take the profit from the coffers of banks" in the amount of "100 percent of profit."

Our Party is much more modest. It demands in its resolution less, namely: only the establishment of control over banks and a "gradual" (listen! listen! the Bolsheviks are for gradualness!) "transition to more just progressive taxation of incomes and properties."

Our Party is more moderate than Skobelev.

Skobelev distributes immoderate and even boundless promises, not understanding those conditions under which their implementation in fact is possible.

That is the whole point.

Not only to fulfill Skobelev's program, but even to take any serious steps toward its implementation is impossible either arm in arm with 10 ministers from the parties of landlords and capitalists, or with that bureaucratic, official apparatus which the government of capitalists (with an appendage of Mensheviks and Narodniks) is forced to confine itself to.

Fewer promises, citizen Skobelev, more efficiency! Fewer pompous phrases, more understanding of how to begin the work.

To begin the work for the salvation of the country from inevitable terrible catastrophe is possible and necessary immediately, not losing a single day. The whole point is that the "new" Provisional Government does not want to begin the work, and if it wanted to, it could not, being entangled in thousands of chains protecting the interests of capital.

It is possible and necessary in one day to call the entire people to begin the work, in one day to issue a decree, immediately convening:

1) Soviets and congresses of bank employees both in individual banks and all-Russian; task: to work out immediately practical measures for merging all banks and credit institutions into one state bank and for the most precise control over all operations of banks, to publish immediately the results of control;

2) Soviets and congresses of employees of all syndicates and trusts; task: to work out measures of control and accountability; to publish immediately the results of control;

3) this decree must give the right of control not only to all Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, but also to Soviets from workers of each large factory, as well as to representatives of each large political party (considering as large, for example, one which entered independent lists on May 12 in Piter in not less than two districts); all commercial books, all documents must be open to such control;

4) the decree must call upon all shareholders, directors and board members of all societies to publish lists of those who have shares of not less than 10,000 (or 5,000) rubles, with enumeration of shares and societies in which given persons are "interested"; for false testimony (to the control of bank and other employees)—confiscation of all property and prison of not less than 5 years;

5) the decree must call upon the entire people for immediate introduction of universal labor obligation through local organs of self-government; and for control and implementation of it—to introduce a nationwide, universal militia (at once in villages, through workers' militia in cities, etc.).

Without universal labor obligation the country cannot be saved from ruin. And without a nationwide militia it is impossible to implement universal labor obligation. Anyone who has not reached ministerial mental derangement or insanity on the basis of trust in ministerial eloquence will understand this.

Whoever wants in fact to save tens of millions of people from catastrophe will have to come to the defense of such measures.

In the next article we will speak about the gradual transition to more just taxation and about how talented organizers (both from workers and from capitalists) who will prove themselves successfully at work of the indicated character should be advanced from the people and gradually put in the places of ministers.