Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/43

 "balance" has accumulated, a sum big enough, let us say, to build a new factory or set up a new plant. Until that happens he deposits his money into the bank so as not to have "dead" capital on his hands. He deposits it and gets definite interest on it. The question now is, does this capital remain in the bank, increasing there of itself? Certainly not. The bank transacts business with this money. It either establishes enterprises, making solid profits, or purchases shares of existing enterprises, or shares of enterprises just being formed. The dividend it obtains on its shares are considerably higher than the sums it pays to its clients.

The difference goes to form the profit of the bank. This difference accumulates, is again involved in transactions, and in this way the capital of the bank increases. Gradually the banks become the real heads of industrial enterprises; some enterprises are entirely owned by them, others, only partly. Experience has shown that it is enough to own thirty or forty per cent. of the total shares to become practically the controller of the whole enterprise. And that is what really happens. For instance, two bank manage and direct the entire industry of America. Tn Germany four banks hold in their hands the whole economic life of the country. The same thing to a certain extent held good for Russia. The great majority of big enterprises in Russia were limited companies.

Russian banks, too, were the owners of a large number of shares of these enterprises, so that the limited companies were in the closest union and in complete dependence on the bankers—were, in fact, under their heel. Seeing that one bank rules over many industrial enterprises, it is evident that a number of the largest banks are in reality the main directors of industry, the centre as it wore, in which the threads of various enterprises meet. That is why confiscating the banks, depriving private persons of control over banks, and transferring them into the hands of the workers' and peasants' government, in a word, the nationalisation of banks, should become a question of paramount importance to the working class. In response to this, the bourgeoisie, together with its press and the rest of its suite, have, of course, raised the cry of alarm: "the bolsheviks are robbers! The bolsheviks are thieves! Do not allow them to plunder the national wealth and the national savings!" But the reason for all this clamour is self-evident: the bourgeoisie felt that the nationalisation of banks was a transfer to the working