Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 26 - From Marx to Mao

THE TASKS OF THE REVOLUTION65in the absence of such control all the promises of reformsand attempts to introduce them are powerless, and famine,accompanied by unprecedented catastrophe is becoming agreater menace to the whole country week by week.It is necessary to nationalise the banks and the insurancebusiness immediately, and also the most importantbranches of industry (oil, coal, metallurgy, sugar, etc.),and at the same time, to abolish commercial secrets and toestablish unrelaxing supervision by the workers and peasantsover the negligible minority of capitalists who waxrich on government contracts and evade accounting andjust taxation of their profits and property.Such measures, which do not deprive either the middlepeasants, the Cossacks or the small handicraftsmen of asingle kopek, are urgently needed for the struggle againstfamine and are absolutely just because they distribute theburdens of the war equitably. Only after capitalist plunderhas been curbed and the deliberate sabotage of productionhas been stopped will it be possible to work for an improvementin labour productivity, introduce universal labourconscription and the proper exchange of grain for manufacturedgoods, and return to the Treasury thousands of millionsin paper money now being hoarded by the rich.Without such measures, the abolition of the landedestates without compensation is also impossible, for themajor part of the estates is mortgaged to the banks, sothat the interests of the landowners and capitalists areinseparably linked up.The latest resolution of the Economic Department ofthe All-Russia Central Executive Committee of Soviets ofWorkers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (Rabochaya Gazeta No. 152)recognises not only the “harm” caused by the government’smeasures (like the raising of grain prices for the enrichmentof the landowners and kulaks), not only “the fact of thecomplete inactivity on the part of the central organs set upby the government for the regulation of economic life”,but even the “contravention of the laws” by this government.This admission on the part of the ruling parties, theSocialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, proves once morethe criminal nature of the policy of conciliation with thebourgeoisie.