Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/65

 ment, and why the greatest scoundrels and sweaters often stand at the head of risings against the Soviets in small provincial towns. Workers should understand once and for all that salvation is not to be attained by a return to the old order, but by ways which lead forward towards the destruction of speculation towards the annihilation of private trade, towards the social distribution of products by the workers' organisations.

The same holds good concerning a whole series of other products. The working class ought not to suffer in order that the rich may get everything for extra prices, but, on the contrary, must put an end to the profiteering speculators who, like the hungry ravens, come flocking from all directions. A just, regulated distribution of products, on the basis of registering the demands and reserves, is one of the fundamental tasks confronting the working class. What does this mean? It means the nationalisation of trading, that is, in other words, the abolition of trading, for the transition to social distribution cannot exist side by side with dealers and agents who live like parasites and completely upset the work of supply. Not back to "free private trading," that is to say, to "free" robbery, but towards an exact, regulated distribution of products by workers' organisations—this should be the watchword of the intelligent workers.

In order to execute this plan more .successfully a compulsory union of the whole population into co-operative communes must be aimed at. Only then can products be justly distributed, when the population that is to get them is united and organised into large groups, whose demands can be exactly estimated. If the population, instead of being united and organised, is scattered, it becomes extremely difficult to carry out this distribution in a more or less orderly way; it is difficult to calculate how much of each article is needed, what and how much is to be delivered, and through what agency the distribution is to be effected. Let us imagine that the population is united into co-operative communes according to their parishes. Every town or parish, say, is united into one co-operation which is in its turn united with the house committees. Then a given product is first distributed to such communes, and these, having calculated beforehand what product and of what quality they require, they distribute it through their agents, amongst the different consumers.

In uniting the population into such co-operative communes