The bourgeoisie has been defeated among us, but it has not yet been uprooted, not yet destroyed, and has not even been fully broken. Therefore, a new, higher form of struggle against the bourgeoisie now comes onto the agenda—a transition from the simplest task of further expropriating capitalists to a far more complex and difficult task of creating such conditions as would make it impossible for the bourgeoisie either to exist or arise anew. It is clear that this is an immeasurably higher task, and without its resolution there is still no socialism.

If we measure ourselves by the scale of Western European revolutions, we now stand approximately at the level achieved in 1793 and in 1871. We have every right to take pride in having reached this level, and in one respect we have undoubtedly gone somewhat further—namely, we have decreed and introduced throughout Russia the highest form of state, Soviet Power. But we cannot by any means rest content with what has been achieved, for we have only begun the transition to socialism, but have not yet accomplished what is decisive in this regard.

What is decisive is the organization of the strictest and universal accounting and control of production and distribution of products. Meanwhile, in those enterprises, in those branches and aspects of the economy which we have taken from the bourgeoisie, we have not yet achieved accounting and control, and without this there can be no question of the second, equally essential material condition for the introduction of socialism—namely, the increase, on a nationwide scale, of the productivity of labor.

Therefore, the task of the present moment could not be defined by the simple formula: continue the offensive against capital. Despite the fact that capital has undoubtedly not been dealt a final blow by us, and that to continue the offensive against this enemy of the laboring masses is absolutely necessary, such a definition would be imprecise, not concrete; it would fail to take account of the peculiarity of the given moment, when in the interest of the success of a further offensive it is now necessary to "halt" the offensive.

This can be clarified by comparing our position in the war against capital with the position of a victorious army that has taken, say, half or two-thirds of the enemy's territory and is forced to halt its offensive in order to gather its strength, increase its supplies of military means, repair and reinforce its lines of communication, build new supply depots, bring up fresh reserves, and so on. The halt in the offensive of a victorious army under such conditions is necessary precisely in the interest of wresting the remaining territory from the enemy—that is, in the interest of complete victory. Whoever has not understood that it is precisely such a "halt" in the offensive against capital—dictated by the objective state of affairs at the present moment—that is prescribed to us, has understood nothing in the political moment through which we are passing.

Of course, one can speak of a "halt" in the offensive against capital only in quotation marks—that is, only metaphorically. In ordinary war, a general order can be given to halt the offensive; in fact, forward movement can be stopped. In war against capital, forward movement cannot be stopped, and there can be no question of our renouncing further expropriation of capital. The question concerns a shift in the center of gravity of our economic and political work. Until now, measures for the direct expropriation of the expropriators stood in the foreground. Now measures for organizing accounting and control in those enterprises where capitalists have already been expropriated, and in all remaining enterprises, come to the foreground.

If we were now to wish to continue expropriating capital at the former pace, we would certainly suffer defeat, for our work on organizing proletarian accounting and control has obviously and clearly lagged behind the work of direct "expropriation of the expropriators." If we now concentrate all our forces on the work of organizing accounting and control, we will be able to solve this task, we will make up for lost time, we will win our entire "campaign" against capital.

But is the admission that we must make up for lost time equivalent to admitting some error that has been committed? Not at all. Let us return again to a military comparison. If the enemy can be beaten and driven back by light cavalry alone—this must be done. But if this can be done successfully only up to a certain point, then it is quite conceivable that beyond this point the necessity arises for bringing up heavy artillery. In acknowledging that we must now make up for lost time in bringing up heavy artillery, we are not at all acknowledging the victorious cavalry charge to have been an error.

We have often been reproached by lackeys of the bourgeoisie for conducting a "Red Guard" assault on capital. A ridiculous reproach, worthy precisely of the lackeys of the money-bag. For the "Red Guard" assault on capital was prescribed by circumstances at that time absolutely: first, capital then resisted in military fashion, in the persons of Kerensky and Krasov, Savinkov and Gots (and Gegechkori resists in the same way even now), Dutov and Bogayevsky. Military resistance cannot be broken except by military means, and the Red Guards did the noblest and greatest historical work of liberating the laboring and exploited masses from the oppression of exploiters.

Second, we could not at that time put in the foreground methods of administration in place of methods of suppression, also because the art of administration is not innate in people but is given by experience. We did not have this experience then. Now we have it. Third, we could not at that time have at our disposal specialists in various branches of knowledge and technique, for they either fought in the ranks of the Bogayevskys or still had the possibility of offering systematic and stubborn passive resistance through sabotage. But now we have broken sabotage. The "Red Guard" assault on capital was successful, was victorious, because we defeated both the military resistance of capital and the sabotage resistance of capital.

Does this mean that the "Red Guard" assault on capital is always appropriate, appropriate under all circumstances, that we have no other methods of struggle against capital? To think so would be childish. We won with light cavalry, but we also have heavy artillery. We have won by methods of suppression; we will be able to win also by methods of administration. One must be able to change methods of struggle against the enemy when circumstances change. We shall not for a moment renounce "Red Guard" suppression of Messrs. Savinkov and Gegechkori and all other landlord and bourgeois counterrevolutionaries. But we shall not be so foolish as to put "Red Guard" methods in the foreground at a time when the epoch of the necessity for Red Guard assaults is basically at an end (and has ended victoriously), and when at the door there is knocking the epoch of the proletarian state power utilizing bourgeois specialists for such a thorough ploughing of the soil that no bourgeoisie whatsoever could grow on it.

This is a peculiar epoch, or, more precisely, a peculiar phase of development, and in order to defeat capital completely, one must be able to adapt the forms of our struggle to the peculiar conditions of such a phase.

Without the guidance of specialists in various branches of knowledge, technique, and experience, the transition to socialism is impossible, for socialism requires a conscious and massive forward movement toward higher productivity of labor compared with capitalism and on the basis of what capitalism has achieved. Socialism must, in its own way, by its own methods—let us say more concretely, by Soviet methods—accomplish this forward movement. But specialists are inevitably bourgeois in the mass, by virtue of the entire situation of that social life which made them specialists. If our proletariat, having seized power, had quickly solved the task of accounting, control, and organization on a nationwide scale—(this was impossible owing to war and the backwardness of Russia)—then, having broken sabotage, we would have subjugated ourselves completely the bourgeois specialists by means of universal accounting and control. Due to the considerable "delay" in accounting and control generally, we, although we did manage to defeat sabotage, have not yet created the conditions that would place bourgeois specialists at our disposal; the mass of saboteurs "go into service," but the best organizers and the greatest specialists can be utilized by the state either in the old way, in the bourgeois way (that is, for high pay), or in the new way, in the proletarian way (that is, by creating that atmosphere of universal accounting and control from below which would inevitably and of itself have subjected and attracted specialists).

We have now had to resort to the old, bourgeois means and agree to very high remuneration for the "services" of the greatest bourgeois specialists. All those acquainted with the matter see this, but not all reflect upon the significance of such a measure on the part of a proletarian state. It is clear that such a measure is a compromise, a retreat from the principles of the Paris Commune and all proletarian power, which require the reduction of salaries to the level of the wages of an average worker, which require the struggle in deed, not in words, against careerism.

Moreover, it is clear that such a measure is not only a halt—in a certain sphere and to a certain degree—in the offensive against capital (for capital is not a sum of money but a definite social relation), but also a step backward by our socialist, Soviet state power, which from the very beginning proclaimed and pursued the policy of reducing high salaries down to the wages of an average worker.

Of course, the lackeys of the bourgeoisie, especially the small-time sort, like the Mensheviks, the Novaya Zhizn supporters, the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, will titter over our admission that we are taking a step backward. But we have nothing to pay attention to their tittering. We must study the peculiarities of an extremely difficult and new path to socialism, not concealing our mistakes and weaknesses, but trying to correct in good time what has not been completed. To hide from the masses that attracting bourgeois specialists by extraordinarily high wages is a retreat from the principles of the Commune would mean descending to the level of bourgeois politicians and deceiving the masses. To explain openly how and why we have taken a step backward, then to discuss openly what means are available to us to make up for lost time—this means educating the masses and learning from experience, learning together with them how to construct socialism. There has scarcely been a single victorious military campaign in history when the victor did not happen to make individual mistakes, suffer partial defeats, and temporarily retreat somewhat here and there. And the "campaign" we have undertaken against capitalism is a million times more difficult than the most difficult military campaign, and it would be foolish and shameful to fall into despair over a particular and partial retreat.

Let us approach the question from a practical side. Let us assume that the Russian Soviet Republic needs 1,000 first-class scientists and specialists in various branches of knowledge, technique, and practical experience to direct the people's labor for the purpose of the most rapid possible economic recovery of the country. Let us assume that these "stars of the first magnitude" have to be remunerated—most of them, of course, the more corrupted by bourgeois morals, the more eagerly they cry out about the corruption of the workers—at 25,000 rubles a year. Let us assume that this sum (25 million rubles) must be doubled (assuming the payment of bonuses for particularly successful and rapid completion of the most important organizational-technical tasks) or even quadrupled (assuming the attraction of several hundred more demanding foreign specialists). The question arises: can we recognize as excessive or beyond the capacity of the Soviet Republic an expenditure of fifty or a hundred million rubles a year for the reorganization of people's labor according to the latest word of science and technique? Of course not. The overwhelming majority of conscious workers and peasants will approve such an expenditure, knowing from practical life that our backwardness causes us to lose billions, while we have not yet achieved such a degree of organization, accounting, and control as to call forth the universal and voluntary participation of the "stars" of bourgeois intelligence in our work.

Of course, the question also has another side. The corrupting influence of high salaries is indisputable—both on Soviet Power (especially because with the rapidity of the upheaval a certain number of adventurers and rogues could not but attach themselves to this power, who together with the talentless or unscrupulous among various commissars are not averse to becoming "stars"... of embezzlement of state funds) and on the working masses. But all that is thinking and honest among the workers and the poorest peasants will agree with us, will recognize that we are not capable of at once freeing ourselves from the evil legacy of capitalism, that to free the Soviet Republic from the "tribute" of 50 or 100 million rubles (tribute for our own backwardness in the matter of organizing universal accounting and control from below) is possible only by organizing ourselves, tightening discipline among ourselves, cleansing our midst of all those who "preserve the legacy of capitalism," "maintain the traditions of capitalism"—that is, of loafers, parasites, embezzlers of state funds (now all land, all factories, all railroads are the "treasury" of the Soviet Republic). If the conscious advanced workers and the poorest peasants succeed, with the help of Soviet institutions, in a year's time to organize themselves, discipline themselves, tighten up, and create mighty labor discipline, then within a year we will cast off this "tribute," which can even be reduced earlier... precisely insofar as we make progress in our—the workers' and peasants'—labor discipline and organization. The sooner we ourselves, workers and peasants, learn better labor discipline and higher technique of labor, utilizing bourgeois specialists for this learning, the sooner we shall free ourselves from all "tribute" to these specialists.

Our work on organizing, under the leadership of the proletariat, universal accounting and control of production and distribution of products has seriously lagged behind our work of direct expropriation of the expropriators. This situation is fundamental for understanding the peculiarities of the present moment and the tasks of Soviet Power that flow from it. The center of gravity in the struggle against the bourgeoisie is shifting to the organization of such accounting and control. Only proceeding from this can one correctly determine the immediate tasks of economic and financial policy in the sphere of nationalization of banks, the monopolization of foreign trade, state control of monetary circulation, the introduction of a satisfactory, from the proletarian standpoint, property and income tax, the introduction of compulsory labor service.

In socialist transformations in these spheres we have lagged extremely far behind (and these are very, very essential spheres), and we have lagged precisely because accounting and control in general are insufficiently organized. Of course, this task is one of the most difficult, and amid the devastation created by war it admits only of a prolonged solution, but one cannot forget that precisely here the bourgeoisie—especially the numerous petty and peasant bourgeoisie—gives us the most serious battle, undermining the establishing control, undermining, for example, the grain monopoly, recapturing positions for speculation and speculative trade. What we have already decreed we have far from sufficiently carried into life, and the main task of the moment consists precisely in concentrating all efforts on the practical, business implementation of the foundations of those transformations which have already become law (but have not yet become reality).

In order to continue further the nationalization of banks and to go unswervingly toward the transformation of banks into nodal points of public accounting under socialism, it is first of all and above all necessary to achieve real success in increasing the number of branches of the People's Bank, in attracting deposits, in facilitating for the public the operations of depositing and withdrawing money, in eliminating delays in catching and shooting bribe-takers and swindlers, and so on. First actually carry into life what is simplest, organize properly what exists—and then already prepare what is more complex.

Strengthen and put in order the state monopolies (on grain, on leather, and so forth) which have already been introduced—and thereby prepare the monopolization of foreign trade by the state; without such monopolization we shall not be able to "get rid of" foreign capital except by paying it "tribute." And the whole possibility of socialist construction depends on whether in the course of a certain transition period we shall be able by payment of some tribute to foreign capital to protect our internal economic independence.

In the collection of taxes in general, and especially in the collection of property and income tax, we have also lagged extraordinarily far behind. The levying of contributions on the bourgeoisie—a measure that is in principle absolutely admissible and deserving of proletarian approval—shows that we still stand in this respect closer to the methods of conquest (of Russia from the rich for the poor) than to methods of administration. But in order to become stronger and to stand more firmly on our feet, we must transition to these latter methods, we must replace contributions from the bourgeoisie with a permanent and properly collected property and income tax, which will give more to the proletarian state and which requires from us precisely greater organization, greater establishment of accounting and control.

Our delay in introducing compulsory labor service shows once again that what now comes onto the agenda is precisely preparatory organizational work which, on the one hand, must finally consolidate what has been conquered, and on the other hand is necessary to prepare the operation that will "encircle" capital and force it to "surrender." We ought to have begun introducing compulsory labor service immediately, but we ought to introduce it with great gradualism and caution, testing each step by practical experience and, of course, making the introduction of compulsory labor service for the rich the first step. The introduction of a work and consumer-budget book for every bourgeois, including the village bourgeois, would be a serious step forward toward the complete "encirclement" of the enemy and toward the creation of truly universal accounting and control of production and distribution of products.