Date: 1919
Source: ru:PSS/v38
Source: CW vol 38

Plan: The program consists of the following parts:

1. Introduction. The proletarian revolution began in Russia and is rapidly growing everywhere. To understand it, one must understand the nature of capitalism and the inevitability of its development towards the dictatorship of the proletariat. – 2. Capitalism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This should reproduce our old, Marxist program, composed by Plekhanov, in its main part, to clarify the "historical roots" of our worldview. – 3. Imperialism. From the draft program of V. 1917. – 4. Three Trends in the International Labor Movement and the New International. Revision of the draft from V. 1917. – 5. Basic Tasks of the Proletarian Dictatorship in Russia. From the draft of XII. 1917 – I. 1918{26}. – 6. Concretization of these tasks in the political sphere (new). – 7. The same in the national, religious, and pedagogical spheres (new). – 8. The same in the economic sphere (new). – 9. The same in the agrarian sphere (new). – 10. The same in the sphere of labor protection (written by Schmidt). – 11 and 12. Additions on other areas (not written).

In this rough draft, much remains unfinished, especially in terms of editorial work, and sometimes a commentator's formulation has been temporarily used instead of a programmatic one.

(1) The revolution of October 25 (November 7), 1917, in Russia established the dictatorship of the proletariat, which, with the support of the poorest peasantry or semi-proletariat, began to build a communist society. The growth of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in all advanced countries, the universal emergence and development of the Soviet form of this movement, i.e., such as is directed straight towards the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally, the beginning and course of the revolution in Austria-Hungary and Germany, in particular, have clearly shown that the era of the world proletarian, communist revolution has begun.

(2) A correct understanding of the causes, significance, and aims of this revolution requires, first, an elucidation of the essence, the basic nature of capitalism and bourgeois society, the inevitability of their development towards communism, and second, an elucidation of the nature of imperialism and imperialist wars, which have accelerated the collapse of capitalism and put the proletarian revolution on the agenda of the day.

(3) The nature of capitalism and bourgeois society, which still prevails in most civilized countries and whose development inevitably leads and has led to the world communist revolution of the proletariat, was characterized in our old Marxist program in the following points:

(4) "The main feature of such a society is commodity production based on capitalist production relations, under which the most important and significant part of the means of production and circulation of goods belongs to a small class of people in terms of numbers, while the vast majority of the population consists of proletarians and semi-proletarians, who, due to their economic position, are forced to constantly or periodically sell their labor power, i.e., to hire themselves out to capitalists, and by their labor create the income of the upper classes of society.

(5) The domain of capitalist production relations is expanding more and more as continuous technical improvements, increasing the economic importance of large enterprises, lead to the displacement of small independent producers, turning some of them into proletarians, narrowing the role of the rest in social and economic life, and in some places placing them in a more or less complete, more or less obvious, more or less severe dependence on capital.

(6) The same technical progress also gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to use female and child labor on a larger scale in the process of production and circulation of goods. And since, on the other hand, it leads to a relative decrease in the need for the living labor of workers, the demand for labor power necessarily falls behind its supply, as a result of which the dependence of hired labor on capital increases and the level of its exploitation rises.

(7) Such a state of affairs within bourgeois countries and the constantly intensifying mutual competition between them in the world market make the sale of goods, produced in ever-increasing quantities, more and more difficult. Overproduction, manifesting itself in more or less acute industrial crises, followed by more or less prolonged periods of industrial stagnation, is an inevitable consequence of the development of productive forces in bourgeois society. Crises and periods of industrial stagnation, in turn, further impoverish small producers, further increase the dependence of hired labor on capital, and even more quickly lead to a relative, and sometimes absolute, worsening of the condition of the working class.

(8) Thus, the improvement of technique, meaning an increase in the productivity of labor and the growth of social wealth, in bourgeois society leads to an increase in social inequality, an increase in the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and an increase in the insecurity of existence, unemployment, and various deprivations for ever-widening layers of the working masses.

(9) But as all these contradictions inherent in bourgeois society grow and develop, so does the dissatisfaction of the working and exploited masses with the existing order, the number and cohesion of the proletarians grows, and the struggle between them and their exploiters sharpens. At the same time, the improvement of technique, concentrating the means of production and circulation and socializing the labor process in capitalist enterprises, creates the material possibility for replacing capitalist production relations with communist ones, i.e., the social revolution, which is the ultimate goal of all the activities of the international communist party as the conscious exponent of the class movement of the proletariat.

(10) By replacing private ownership of the means of production and circulation with social ownership and introducing a planned organization of the social production process to ensure the well-being and all-round development of all members of society, the social revolution of the proletariat will abolish the division of society into classes and thus free all oppressed humanity, as it will put an end to all forms of exploitation of one part of society by another.

(11) The necessary condition for this social revolution is the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the seizure by the proletariat of such political power that will allow it to suppress any resistance of the exploiters. Setting itself the task of making the proletariat capable of fulfilling its great historical mission, the international communist party organizes it into an independent political party, standing in opposition to all bourgeois parties, guides all manifestations of its class struggle, reveals to it the irreconcilable opposition of the interests of the exploiters to the interests of the exploited, and clarifies to it the historical significance and necessary conditions of the impending social revolution. At the same time, it reveals to the entire working and exploited mass the hopelessness of their position in capitalist society and the necessity of a social revolution in the interest of their own liberation from the yoke of capital. The party of the working class, the communist party, calls into its ranks all strata of the working and exploited population, to the extent that they adopt the standpoint of the proletariat."

(12) World capitalism has now reached – approximately since the beginning of the 20th century – the stage of imperialism. Imperialism, or the era of finance capital, is a highly developed capitalist economy in which monopolistic unions of capitalists – syndicates, cartels, trusts – have acquired decisive importance, banking capital of enormous concentration has merged with industrial capital, the export of capital to foreign countries has developed on a very large scale, the whole world is already territorially divided among the richest countries, and the economic division of the world among international trusts has begun.

The export of capital to other countries has developed on a very large scale, the whole world is already divided territorially among the richest countries, and an economic division of the world among international trusts has begun.

(13) Imperialist wars, i.e., wars for dominance over the world, for markets for banking capital, for the suffocation of small and weak peoples, are inevitable under such conditions. And this is precisely the nature of the first great imperialist war of 1914–1918.

(14) The extremely high degree of development of world capitalism in general; the replacement of free competition by monopolistic capitalism; the preparation by banks, as well as by capitalists' associations, of an apparatus for the public regulation of the production and distribution process; and the growth, in connection with the rise of capitalist monopolies, of the cost of living and the oppression of syndicates over the working class, the enormous difficulty of its economic and political struggle; and the horrors, miseries, ruin, and barbarism produced by the imperialist war—all this makes the stage of capitalism that has now been reached the era of the proletarian, socialist revolution.

This era has begun.

(15) Only the proletarian, socialist revolution can lead humanity out of the impasse created by imperialism and imperialist wars. Whatever the difficulties of the revolution and the possible temporary setbacks or waves of counter-revolution, the final victory of the proletariat is inevitable.

(16) The victory of the proletarian revolution requires the fullest trust, the closest fraternal alliance, and the greatest possible unity of revolutionary action by the working class of all advanced countries. These conditions cannot be realized without a decisive principled break and relentless struggle against the bourgeois distortion of socialism, which has triumphed at the top of the vast majority of official "social-democratic" and "socialist" parties.

(17) This distortion is, on the one hand, the trend of opportunism and social-chauvinism, socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds, covering up with the slogan of "defense of the fatherland" the defense of the predatory interests of "one's own" national bourgeoisie, both generally and especially during the imperialist war of 1914–1918. This trend arose because almost all advanced countries, by plundering colonial and weak peoples, provided the opportunity for the bourgeoisie to bribe the upper strata of the proletariat with a share of such superprofits, ensuring them a decent petty-bourgeois existence in peacetime and enlisting their leaders into their service. Opportunists and social-chauvinists, being servants of the bourgeoisie, are direct class enemies of the proletariat.

(18) On the other hand, a bourgeois distortion of socialism is the trend of the "center," equally broad and international, which wavers between the social-chauvinists and the communists, defending unity with the former and trying to revive the bankrupt and rotten Second International. The only truly proletarian and revolutionary force is the new, Third, Communist International, actually founded by the formation of communist parties from former socialist ones in several countries, especially in Germany, and gaining more and more sympathy among the masses of the proletariat of all countries.

Basic Tasks of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Russia

The basic tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia at present consist in completing the expropriation of the landlords and the bourgeoisie, transferring all factories, plants, railways, banks, the fleet, and other means of production and circulation to the ownership of the Soviet Republic; using the alliance of urban workers and the poorest peasants, which has already led to the abolition of private land ownership and the law on the transitional form from small peasant farming to socialism, which contemporary ideologues who have sided with the peasantry that supports the proletariat have called the socialization of the land, for a gradual but unswerving transition to common land cultivation and large-scale socialist agriculture; consolidating and further developing the federative republic of Soviets, as an incomparably higher and more progressive form of democracy than bourgeois parliamentarism, and as the only type of state, based on the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871, as well as the experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917–1918, corresponding to the transitional period from capitalism to socialism, i.e., the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat; making full and comprehensive use of the torch of the world socialist revolution lit in Russia to paralyze the attempts of imperialist bourgeois states to interfere in the internal affairs of Russia or to unite for a direct struggle and war against the socialist Soviet Republic, and to spread the revolution to more advanced and, in general, to all countries; through a series of gradual but unswerving measures, completely eliminating private trade, organizing a regular and planned exchange of products between the productive and consumer communes of a single economic whole, which the Soviet Republic should become.

Developing the general tasks of the Soviet power more concretely, the RCP defines them at present as follows:

in the political sphere

If, before the conquest of political power by the proletariat, the use of bourgeois democracy and, in particular, parliamentarism was (necessarily) necessary for the political education and organization of the working masses, then now, after the conquest of political power by the proletariat, with a higher type of democracy implemented in the Soviet Republic, any step back to bourgeois parliamentarism and bourgeois democracy would be an unconditionally reactionary service to the interests of the exploiters, the landlords, and the capitalists. Only the interests of the exploiters are served by the slogans of supposedly universal, national, general, non-class, but in fact, bourgeois democracy, and, as long as private property in land and other means of production remains, even the most democratic republic inevitably remains a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a machine for suppressing the vast majority of the toiling masses by a handful of capitalists.

The historical task that falls upon the Soviet Republic—a new type of state, transitional to the complete abolition of the state—consists of the following:

1) the creation and development of comprehensive and mass organization of precisely the classes oppressed by capitalism, the proletariat and the semi-proletariat. A bourgeois-democratic republic, at best, allowed the organization of the exploited masses in the sense that it declared it free, but in practice always placed countless factual obstacles in the way of their organization, and these obstacles were inextricably linked with private ownership of the means of production. Soviet power, for the first time in history, not only comprehensively facilitates the organization of the masses oppressed by capitalism but also makes it a permanent and indispensable basis of the entire state apparatus, from bottom to top, local and central. Only in this way is democracy, i.e., the actual participation of the vast majority of the people, specifically the toilers, in the management of the state, actually realized, instead of the actual management of the state, primarily by representatives of the bourgeois classes, as is the case in the most democratic bourgeois republics.

2) The Soviet organization of the state gives some factual advantage to that part of the working masses which is the most concentrated, united, educated, and hardened in the struggle by all the preceding capitalist development, i.e., the urban industrial proletariat. This advantage must be used consistently and systematically to counterbalance the narrow guild and professional interests that capitalism has fostered among the workers, dividing them into competing groups, and to more closely unite the most backward and scattered masses of rural proletarians and semi-proletarians with the advanced workers, to tear them away from the influence of the rural kulaks and the rural bourgeoisie, to organize and educate them for the construction of communism.

to shake off the dust from the masses of rural proletarians and semi-proletarians, to wrest them from the influence of the rural kulaks and the rural bourgeoisie, to organize and educate them for communist construction.

3) Bourgeois democracy, while solemnly proclaiming the equality of all citizens, in fact hypocritically concealed the domination of the capitalist exploiters, deceiving the masses with the idea that it was possible to have actual equality between the exploiter and the exploited. The Soviet organization of the state destroys this deception and hypocrisy by realizing genuine democracy, i.e., the real equality of all working people, and excluding the exploiters from full membership in society. The experience of world history, of all uprisings of oppressed classes against oppressors, teaches the inevitability of desperate and prolonged resistance by the exploiters in the struggle to preserve their privileges. The Soviet organization of the state is adapted to suppressing this resistance, without which there can be no talk of a victorious communist revolution.

4) A more direct impact of the working masses on the structure and management of the state, i.e., a higher form of democracy, is also achieved under the Soviet type of state, firstly, because the procedure for elections and the possibility of holding them more frequently, as well as the conditions for re-elections and recall of deputies, are much easier and more accessible to urban and rural workers than under the best forms of bourgeois democracy.

5) Secondly, because the primary electoral unit and the basic cell of state building, under Soviet power, is not a territorial district, but an economic, production unit (factory, plant). This closer connection of the state apparatus with the masses of advanced proletarians united by capitalism, in addition to creating a higher form of democracy, also provides the opportunity to carry out profound socialist transformations.

6) The Soviet organization has made it possible to create an armed force of workers and peasants that is much more closely linked to the toiling and exploited masses than before. Without this, it would have been impossible to achieve one of the fundamental conditions for the victory of socialism, namely: the arming of the workers and the disarming of the bourgeoisie.

7) The Soviet organization has developed incomparably further and more widely that side of bourgeois democracy which marks its great historical progressiveness compared to the Middle Ages, namely, the participation of the population in the election of officials. In none of the most democratic bourgeois states have the working masses ever exercised the right to vote, formally granted to them by the bourgeoisie but actually restricted by it, even approximately to such a wide extent, so often, so universally, so easily and simply, as under Soviet power. But at the same time, the Soviet organization has discarded those negative aspects of bourgeois democracy which the Paris Commune had already begun to discard, the narrowness and limitations of which Marxism had long pointed out, namely, parliamentarism, as the separation of legislative power from executive power. By merging these two powers, the Soviets bring the state apparatus closer to the working masses and remove that barrier which the bourgeois parliament was, deceiving the masses with hypocritical signs, concealing financial and stock exchange machinations of parliamentary dealers, and ensuring the inviolability of the bourgeois apparatus of state administration.

8) Only thanks to the Soviet organization of the state could the revolution of the proletariat immediately break and destroy the old, bourgeois, state apparatus, and without this, it would have been impossible to begin socialist construction. At present, in Russia, the bastions of bureaucracy, which everywhere and always tied the state power to the interests of landlords and capitalists, both under the monarchy and in the most democratic bourgeois republic, have already been completely destroyed. But the struggle against bureaucracy is far from over with us. Bureaucracy is trying to regain some of the positions it has lost, using, on the one hand, the insufficiently high cultural level of the mass of the population, and on the other, the extreme, almost superhuman strain on the most developed layer of urban workers in military work. Therefore, the continuation of the struggle against bureaucracy is absolutely and urgently necessary for the success of further socialist construction.

9) Work in this direction, inseparably linked with the implementation of the main historical task of Soviet power, namely, the transition to the complete abolition of the state, must consist, first, in making every member of the Soviet perform a certain amount of work in the administration of the state; second, in systematically rotating these tasks, covering the entire range of matters related to state administration, all its branches; and third, in gradually and carefully selected, but consistently carried out measures, to involve the entire working population in independent participation in the administration of the state.

10) In general, the difference between bourgeois democracy and parliamentarism, on the one hand, and Soviet or proletarian democracy, on the other, boils down to the fact that the former shifted the emphasis to the solemn and pompous proclamation of all kinds of freedoms and rights, in fact, not allowing the majority of the population, workers and peasants, to make use of them to any significant degree. On the contrary, proletarian or Soviet democracy shifts the emphasis not to proclaiming the rights and freedoms of the entire people, but to actually ensuring that precisely those masses of workers, who were oppressed and exploited by capital, have practical access to the administration of the state, actual use of the best buildings and premises for meetings and congresses, the best printing presses and the largest stocks (reserves) of paper for enlightening those whom capitalism stupefied and numbed, and to ensure that these masses have a real (practical) opportunity to gradually free themselves from the yoke of religious prejudices, etc. It is in this direction of actually providing the toilers and the exploited with the opportunity to actually enjoy the benefits of culture, civilization, and democracy that the most important work of Soviet power lies, which must be unswervingly continued.

In the national question, the policy of the RCP, in contrast to the bourgeois-democratic proclamation of the equality of nations, which is unattainable under imperialism, consists in the consistent implementation of the rapprochement and fusion of the proletarians and working masses of all nations in their revolutionary struggle to overthrow the bourgeoisie. The distrust of the Great Russians, inherited from the era of tsarist and bourgeois Great Russian imperialism, is rapidly disappearing among the working masses of the nations that were part of the Russian Empire, under the influence of acquaintance with Soviet Russia, but this distrust has not completely disappeared among all nations and all strata of the working masses. Therefore, special caution is necessary in relation to national sentiment, careful implementation of equality and freedom of secession in practice, in order to deprive this distrust of its ground and to achieve a voluntary, closest union of Soviet republics of all nations. Assistance to backward and weak nations must be strengthened by aiding the independent organization and education of workers and peasants of each nation in the struggle against medieval and bourgeois oppression, as well as by aiding the development of the language and literature of hitherto oppressed or formerly unequal nations.

In the field of organizing and enlightening workers and peasants of each nation in the struggle against medieval and bourgeois oppression, as well as in promoting the development of the language and literature of hitherto oppressed or formerly unequal nations.

In the field of religious policy, the task of the (RCP) proletarian dictatorship is not to be content with the already decreed separation of church from state and school from church, i.e., measures which bourgeois democracy promised but nowhere in the world carried out to the end, due to the multifaceted factual ties of capital with religious propaganda. The proletarian dictatorship must carry through to the end the destruction of the connection between the exploiting classes, landlords and capitalists, and the organization of religious propaganda, as a support for the ignorance of the masses. The proletarian dictatorship must consistently achieve the actual liberation of the working masses from religious prejudices, doing so through propaganda and raising the consciousness of the masses, while carefully avoiding any offense to the feelings of the believing part of the population and reinforcing religious fanaticism.

In the field of public education, the RCP sets itself the task of carrying through to the end what was begun with the October Revolution of 1917, the transformation of the school from an instrument of class domination by the bourgeoisie into an instrument for the destruction of this domination, as well as the complete abolition of the division of society into classes.

During the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., during the period of preparing conditions that make possible the full realization of communism, the school must not only be a propagator of the principles of communism in general, but also a propagator of the ideological, organizational, and educational influence of the proletariat on semi-proletarian and non-proletarian layers of the working masses, with the aim of educating a generation capable of finally realizing communism.

The immediate tasks on this path at present are:

1) The introduction of free and compulsory general and polytechnic (acquainting in theory and practice with all the main branches of production) education for all children of both sexes up to 16 years of age.

2) The establishment of a close connection between education and socially productive labor.

3) The provision of food, clothing, and teaching aids to all students at the expense of the state.

4) The intensification of agitation and propaganda among teachers.

5) The preparation of a new corps of teachers imbued with the ideas of communism.

6) The involvement of the working population in active participation in the cause of education (the development of councils of public education, the mobilization of literate people, etc.).

7) Comprehensive assistance from the Soviet power in self-education and self-development of workers and laboring peasants (the establishment of libraries, schools for adults, people's universities, lecture courses, cinemas, studios, etc.).

8) The development of the broadest propaganda of communist ideas.

Developing more concretely the general tasks of the Soviet power, the RCP defines them at present as follows:

in the economic sphere the task of the Soviet power at present is as follows:

(1) To continue resolutely and to carry through to the end the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, which has been started and in its main and fundamental aspects already completed, the transformation of the means of production and circulation into the property of the Soviet Republic, i.e., the common property of all the working people.

(2) Special attention should be given to the development and strengthening of comradely discipline among the working people and the comprehensive increase in their initiative and sense of responsibility. This is the most important, if not the only, means of finally overcoming capitalism and the habits created by the dominance of private ownership of the means of production. Achieving this goal requires persistent, slow work on the re-education of the masses, and such re-education not only has now become possible when the masses have seen in practice the elimination of the landlord, capitalist, and merchant – this re-education is actually proceeding now through thousands of channels, through the practical experience of the workers and peasants. Work on the development of the professional association of the working people, which has never and nowhere in the world grown so rapidly as under the Soviet power, but which must be brought to the point of uniting all the working people without exception into organized, centralized, disciplined production unions, is of extremely great importance in this respect. In no way limiting ourselves to the old pattern of the trade union movement, we must systematically, checking every step by the results of practical experience, transform the unions, on the one hand, into organs of management of the entire national economy; the rapprochement and close connection of the trade unions with the Supreme Council of National Economy, with the Commissariat of Labor, and then with all other branches of state administration, must grow and strengthen; on the other hand, the trade unions must increasingly become organs of labor and socialist education of the entire working mass, so that the practical experience of participation in management, under the control of the worker vanguard, encompasses the more backward strata of workers.

(3) Increasing the productivity of labor is one of the fundamental tasks, for without this the final transition to communism is impossible. Achieving this goal, in addition to long-term work on the enlightenment of the masses and raising their cultural level, requires the immediate, broad, and comprehensive use of science and technology specialists, who have been left to us as a legacy of capitalism and who inevitably usually turn out to be imbued with bourgeois worldviews and habits. The party must, in close alliance with the professional associations, pursue its former line: on the one hand, not making the slightest political concession to this bourgeois layer and ruthlessly suppressing any counter-revolutionary attempts on its part, and on the other, also ruthlessly combating the pseudo-radical, in fact ignorant, conceit that the working people can overcome capitalism and the bourgeois system without learning from bourgeois specialists, without using them, without going through a long school of working alongside them.

Striving for equality of remuneration for all labor and for complete communism, we cannot in any way set as our task the immediate realization of this equality at the present time, when only the first steps are being taken towards the transition from capitalism to communism. Therefore, it is necessary to leave for a certain period a higher remuneration for specialists so that they can work not worse, but better than before, and for the same purpose, it is impossible to do without a system of bonuses for the most successful and especially for organizational work; bonuses will be unacceptable in a system of complete communism, but in the transitional era from capitalism to communism, it is impossible to do without bonuses, as evidenced by both theoretical considerations and the year-long experience of the Soviet power.

At the same time, it is necessary to work persistently to surround the bourgeois specialists with an atmosphere of comradely joint labor, shoulder to shoulder with the mass of rank-and-file workers, led by conscious communists, and patiently, not being disconcerted by inevitable individual failures, to strive to awaken in people with scientific training a sense of the baseness of using science for personal enrichment and for the exploitation of man by man, a sense of the higher task of using science to acquaint the entire mass of working people with it.

Awareness of the full vileness of using science for personal enrichment and for the exploitation of man by man, awareness of the higher task of using science to acquaint the entire mass of workers with it.

(4) The realization of communism, undoubtedly requiring the greatest possible and strictest centralization of labor on a nationwide scale, thereby presupposes overcoming the fragmentation and division of workers, professional and local, which was one of the sources of the strength of capital and the weakness of labor. The struggle against guild narrow-mindedness and limitations, against guild egoism, closely linked with the struggle to abolish the opposition between town and country, presents great difficulties and cannot be started on a large scale without a preliminary significant increase in the productivity of the people's labor. However, work on this must nevertheless begin immediately, even if at first on a small, local scale and as an experiment, for comparing the results of various measures that will be undertaken in different professions and regions. The conscription of all able-bodied population by the Soviet power, with the participation of trade unions, for the performance of certain public works, should be applied much more widely and systematically than has been done so far.

(5) In the field of distribution, the task of the Soviet power at present is to continue unswervingly replacing trade with planned, organized on a nationwide scale, distribution of products. The goal is to organize the entire population into production-consumption communes capable of distributing all necessary products with the greatest speed, regularity, economy, and with the least expenditure of labor, strictly centralizing the entire distribution apparatus. As a transitional means to achieve this goal, cooperatives are used. Their use, to the extent that it represents a homogeneous task with the use of bourgeois specialists, since at the head of the cooperative apparatus, inherited from capitalism, are people with bourgeois habits of thought and management. The RCP must systematically continue its policy: obliging all party members to work in cooperatives, guiding them, with the help of trade unions, in a communist spirit, developing the initiative and discipline of the working population united in cooperatives, striving to cover the entire population with cooperatives and to merge these cooperatives into a single, top-to-bottom, covering the entire Soviet republic, cooperative; finally, and most importantly, to ensure that the predominant influence of the proletariat on the other layers of the working people is constantly secured and that various measures facilitating and implementing the transition from petty-bourgeois cooperatives of the old, capitalist type to production-consumption communes, led by proletarians and semi-proletarians, are tested in practice everywhere.

(6) It is impossible to immediately abolish money during the initial period of transition from capitalism to communism. As a result, bourgeois elements of the population continue to use the remaining privately owned monetary signs, these certificates for the right of exploiters to receive social wealth, for speculation, profit, and plunder of the working people. Nationalization of banks alone is not enough to combat this relic of bourgeois plunder. The RCP will strive for the fastest possible implementation of the most radical measures preparing for the abolition of money, primarily replacing them with savings books, checks, short-term tickets for the right to receive public products, etc., establishing mandatory holding of money in banks, etc. Practical experience in preparing and implementing these and similar measures will show which of them are the most expedient.

(7) In the financial sphere, the RCP will implement a progressive income and property tax in all cases where this is possible. But such cases cannot be numerous after the abolition of private ownership of land and the majority of factories, plants, and other enterprises. In the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat and state ownership of the most important means of production, state finances must rest on the direct allocation of a certain part of the revenues from various state monopolies for the needs of the state. Balancing income and expenditures is only possible with the correct organization of commodity exchange, which is facilitated by the organization of production-consumption communes and the restoration of transport, which is one of the main immediate goals of the Soviet power.

In the agrarian sphere after the abolition of private ownership of land, [almost] complete expropriation of the landlords, and the enactment of the law on the socialization of land, which recognizes the preference for large-scale common farming, the main task of the Soviet power is to find and test in practice the most expedient and practical transitional measures in this direction.

The basic line and guiding principle of the RCP's agrarian policy under such circumstances remains the aspiration to rely on the proletarian and semi-proletarian elements of the countryside. They must be organized into an independent force first and foremost, they must be brought closer to the urban proletariat and freed from the influence of the rural bourgeoisie and petty-property interests. The organization of committees of the poor was one step in this direction; the organization of party cells in the countryside, re-elections of the Soviets with the exclusion of the kulaks, creation of a special type of trade unions for the proletarians and semi-proletarians of the countryside—these and similar measures must be carried out unswervingly.

Regarding the kulaks, the rural bourgeoisie, the RCP's policy consists of resolute struggle against their exploitative tendencies, suppressing their resistance to the Soviet, socialist, policy.

Regarding the middle peasantry, the RCP's policy is one of cautious approach; it is necessary to separate them from the kulaks and in no way extend to them measures of suppression; the middle peasantry, by its class position, can be an ally of the proletarian power in the transition to socialism or, at least, a neutral element. Therefore, despite inevitable partial failures and vacillations of the middle peasantry, it is necessary to persistently seek agreement with it, carefully considering all its wishes and making concessions in determining the methods of carrying out socialist transformations. One of the top priorities here is the struggle against abuses by those representatives of the Soviet power who, fraudulently using the title of communists, actually carry out not a communist but a bureaucratic, bossy policy, and the ruthless expulsion of such, with the establishment of stricter control through the help of trade unions and other means.

Regarding the measures of transition to communist agriculture, the RCP will test in practice three main measures already created by life: Soviet farms, agricultural communes and societies (as well as associations) for the collective cultivation of land, taking care of their broader and more correct application, especially the ways of developing voluntary participation of peasants in these new forms of comradely agriculture and the organization of the working peasantry for the implementation of control from below and comradely discipline.

on methods of developing the voluntary participation of peasants in these new forms of cooperative farming and on organizing the toiling peasantry for the implementation of control from below and comradely discipline.

In the field of food policy, the RCP advocates the strengthening and development of state monopoly, without rejecting the use of cooperatives and private traders or commercial employees and the application of a system of bonuses under the condition of Soviet authority control and for the purpose of the best organizational setup. The partial concessions that have to be made from time to time are caused exclusively by particularly acute needs and never lead to a renunciation of the persistent effort to implement state monopoly. In a country of small peasant farming, its implementation is very difficult, requiring long-term work and practical testing of a series of transitional measures, leading by various paths to the goal, i.e., to the universal organization and proper functioning of production-consumer communes with the transfer of all food surpluses to the state.