V. I. Lenin

Freedom To Trade In Grain

The Basic Condition For Victory

How are we to consolidate our victory over Koichak?
How to complete it by destroying Denikin? How to make it
impossible for the landowners, capitalists and kulaks to make any
further attempts to regain their power, their land, their capital
and their rule over the workers and peasants?

These are the questions that are actually identical with the
question of the fate of the socialist revolution in Russia. Every
politically-conscious worker and peasant has given some thought to
this question, and it is not difficult to come to the conclusion
that the food question now lies at the bottom of all socialist
development.

Collecting all grain surpluses in the hands of the Soviet
central authorities and correctly distributing them means making
our Red Army invincible, it means the final rout of Kolchak and
Denikin, it means the rehabilitation of industry and guarantees
proper socialist production and distribution, guarantees the
complete victory of the socialist system.

We now have enough experience of food supply work and socialist
organisation to get a clear picture of its dimensions and the
means of doing it. We know all the difficulties involved, we also
know from experience that we have found the right way to surmount
them and that by concentrating on this task, by applying greater
energy, by mustering our forces and improving the apparatus we can
solve this problem in its entirety.

Between August 1, 1917 and August 1, 1918, the state pro-cured
30 million poods of grain. Between August 1, 1918 and
August 1, 1919, we procured about 105 million poods , i.e., three and a half times more, although in this latter period
we did not have the Don region, the North Caucasus and Western
Siberia, and had a very small part of the Ukraine-we did not have
the main grain-growing regions.

With a good harvest in 1919 we shall be able to procure very
much grain, perhaps 400 million poods or more. Then we shall increase tremendously our output of fuel, timber, coal,
etc. Then we shall restore industry and take the broad road of
planned socialist development, firmly and irrevo-cably. Then we
shall completely defeat profiteering and shall destroy this
disgusting survival of capitalism that is today everywhere
damaging the young beginnings of socialism.

The True Road To Victory

The figures given above show that Soviet power has achieved
important successes in matters of food; these suc-cesses have been
achieved in conditions of unprecedented, unheard-of difficulty. Even the clearest figures and the most indisputable
facts are either challenged or passed over in silence when it
comes to defending the selfish interests of the bourgeoisie,
capitalists, profiteers and kulaks.

An exact study of the food situation of the urban worker shows
that he obtains only a half (approximately) of his food from the
state, from the Commissariat of Food, and the other half he buys
in the “free”, “open” market, i.e., from the profiteers. Furthermore, for the first half he pays only
one-tenth of the total amount spent on food and for the
second half he pays the other nine-tenths .

The profiteers skin the hungry worker nine times over.

The profiteers plunder him unbelievably. We all know that an
orgy of profit-making, robbery and crime, that the torments of hunger for the masses of the workers and the
enrichment of a few scoundrels are connected with this notorious
"freedom to trade” in grain.

Notwithstanding this there are people who advocate freedom to trade!

Our workers' and peasants' government, the entire Soviet
Republic, all the socialist society of ours now being born, are in
a state of war, a brutal, desperate, savage war for survival
against capitalism, against profiteering, against freedom to trade
in grain. This is the most profound, most radical, daily and truly
mass struggle between capitalism and socialism. The fate of our
revolution as a whole depends on the outcome of this struggle. But
people who call them-selves “socialists”, Social-Democrats, Menshevi ks,
“Socialist-Revolutionaries” are helping capitalism in this struggle against socialism! Even the best of these people,
those most hostile to Kolchak, Denikin and the capitalists, go
over to the side of capitalism when it comes to the question of
the food policy of Soviet power, and demand minor concessions in
favour of the “private commercial apparatus”, “individual enterprise” and so on, and so forth.

If you study this carefully, if you think deeply about why,
actually, there is a struggle against Soviet power, you come to
the conclusion that the enemies of Soviet power may be divided
into two big groups both of which defend capi-talism against
socialism. One of them acts brutally and with the crudest
selfishness; this is the group of landowners, capitalists, kulaks,
Denikins, Kolchaks, Black Hundreds and
Constitutional-Democrats. The other group defends capitalism
“ideologically”, that is, unselfishly, without any direct, personal profit, but out of prejudice and cowardice in
face of the new; this is the group of Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries. These are the last “ideological” advocates of capitalism. And it was by
no means an accident that the Koichaks and Denikins, the Russian
and all foreign capitalists march under cover of the Mensheviks
and Socialist-Revolutionaries, behind their banner, behind their flag, and repeat their slogans and phrases about
“freedom” in general, about “democracy” in general, about “private” (commercial, capitalist)
enterprise, etc., etc.

Clever capitalists realise that the “ideological” position of the Menslieviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries is of
ser-vice to them, to their class, to “their” capitalism, but the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, like
all petty-bourgeois socialists everywhere and at all times, do not
realise this. They fear a life-and-death struggle against freedom
to trade in grain, they want to make concessions to i, to
recognise it at least in part, to be in “peace” and agreement with it.

What Is Freedom To Trade In Grain?

Freedom to trade in grain is a return to capitalism, to the
full power of the landowners and capitalists, to a savage struggle
between people for profit, to the “free” enrichment of the few, to the poverty of the masses, to the eternal bon-dage we
see in all bourgeois states, including the freest and most
democratic republics.

If we ask any person who works for his living, any factory
worker, peasant or even intellectual, whether he wants such a
“system” he will certainly say “no”. The whole trouble and the whole danger is that a very large number of
working people, especially a large number of peasants, do not realise that freedom to trade in grain is connected with the universal power of the landowrers and capitalists.