Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/19

 between everybody, and thru all will be well. Everyone, the say, would have just as much as everyone rise; all would be equal, and freed from inequality, oppression and exploitation. Thanks to tills equal share-out, general division and allotment of all the riches amongst the poor, every body will look alter himself, will own all things convenient for his use, and the domination of man over man will vanish.

But this is not the point of view of the Communist Party. The Communist Party considers that such equal sharing would lead to nothing good, and to no other result than confusion and a return to the old order.

Firstly, there are quite a number of things which are impossible to divide. How, for instance, would you divide the railway? If one man gets the rails, another the steel plate, a third one of the screws, and a fourth begins smashing up the carriages to light his stove, a fifth breaks a mirror, to have a piece of glass for shaving purposes, and so on—it is plain that this kind of division would not be fair at all, and would only lead to an idiotic plundering and destruction of useful things. It is just as impossible to divide a machine. For, if one takes a, pinion, another a lever, and the rest, other parts, the machine will cease to be a machine, and the whole thing will go to ruin. And the same thing holds good with regard to all complicated machinery, which is so important as a means of further production. We have only to think of telegraph and telephone apparatus, and the apparatus at chemical works, etc. It is evident that only an unintelligent man or a direct enemy of the working class would advise this kind of sharing.

This, however, is not the only reason why such a sharing is harmful. Let us suppose that by some kind of miracle, a more or less equal division was attained of everything taken from the rich; even that would not lead to any desirable result in the end. What is the meaning of a division? It means that instead of a few large owners there would spring up a large number of small ones. It means not the abolition of private ownership, but its dispersion over a larger area. In the place of large ownership there would arise ownership on a small scale. Hut such a period we have already had in the past. We know very well that capitalism and largo capitalists have developed out of the competition between one small owner and another. If we bred a number of small owners as a result of our division, we should get the following result: part of them (and quite a considerable