Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

342V. I. LENINoverthrow the central authority, or to change it radically;all we have to do is simply to secure the “municipalisation”of all the big items of revenue, and the trick is done. Oh,wiseacres!In Europe, and in every bourgeois country, municipalrevenues are those revenues—and let the good Maslovremember this!—which the bourgeois central authority iswilling to sacrifice for cultural purposes, because they aresecondary items of revenue, because it is inconvenient forthe central authority to collect them, and because the principal,cardinal, fundamental needs of the bourgeoisie andof its rule have already been met by the vast sums ofrevenue. Therefore, to advise the people to secure new vastsums, hundreds of millions from the municipalised lands,and to make sure the money is spent for cultural purposesby handing it over to the Zemstvos and not to the centralauthority, is the advice of a charlatan. The bourgeoisie ina bourgeois state can give nothing but farthings for realcultural purposes, for it requires the large sums to secureits rule as a class. Why does the central authority appropriatenine-tenths of the revenues from taxes on land, commercialbodies, etc., and allow the Zemstvos to keep onlyone-tenth? Why does it make it a law that any additionaltaxes imposed by the Zemstvos shall not exceed a certainlow percentage? Because the large sums are needed toensure the class rule of the bourgeoisie, which by its verybourgeois nature cannot allow more than farthings to bespent for cultural purposes.** A study of R. Kaufmann’s highly comprehensive work, DieKommunalfinanzen, 2 Bände, Lpz. 1906, II. Abt., 5. Band des HandundLehrbuches der Staatswissenschaften, begr. von Frankenstein,fortges. von Heckel, will show that the division of local andcentral state expenditures in England is more in favour of thelocal government bodies than it is in Prussia and France. Thus,in England, 3,000 million marks are expended by the local authorities,and 3,600 million by the central government, in France,the respective figures are 1,100 million as against 2,900 in Prussia,1,100 and 3,500. Let us now take the cultural expenditure, forinstance, the expenditure on education in the country most favourablysituated (from the standpoint of the advocates of municipalisation),i.e., England. We find that out of the total local expenditure,of £151,600,000 (in 1902-03) £16,500,000 were spent on education,i.e., slightly over one-tenth. The central government, under