Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/70

 real labour discipline. But for this very reason must those in the vanguard of the revolution, pioneers and labour organisations, grow more and more determined to establish and strengthen such discipline. If this is a success it will become possible to organise everything else and for the working class to emerge victorious out of the difficulties created by the war, by disorganisation and sabotage, and all the barbarity and atrocities of the capitalist order.

 

Money at the present time represents the means of obtaining goods. Thus those who have much money can buy many things; they are rich. However low the rate of money falls, it is always easier to live for the man who has much of it. The rich classes who even now have an abundance of money can live at their ease. In towns, traders, merchants, capitalists and speculators: in the country the "kulaks" (rich peasants), the sharks and sweaters who have fattened on the war to an incredible degree, having saved hundreds of thousands of roubles. Things have reached such a pitch that some buried their money in the ground in boxes or glass jars.

The workers' and peasants' State, on the other hand, is in need of money. Additional issues of paper money depreciates its value: the more paper money is printed the cheaper it gets. And yet the works and factories must be maintained by these paper tokens; workers must be paid, the administration must be kept going, the employees must get their wages. Where is the money to come from? To get the money it is necessary first of all to '''tax the rich. An income and property tax, that is to say, a tax on''' big profits and on large property, must be the principal tax; a tax on the rich, a tax on those who receive a surplus income.

But at the present time, when everybody is living through a revolutionary fever, when it is difficult to arrange for the regular imposition of taxes, any means of obtaining money is reasonable and admissible. For instance, the following is quite