Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/72

 exchanged between the different departments simply by a process of book-keeping without the need of using money at all. This method is actually in process between the different branches of capitalistic trusts or combines.

Combined enterprises are those which embrace several varying branches of production. In America, for instance, there are enterprises which own metal works, coal mines, iron mines, and steamship companies. One branch of the enterprise supplies the other with raw materials or transports its manufactured products. But all these separate branches represent but parts of one enterprise. It is, of course, understood that one part does not sell its products to another branch of the enterprise, but distributes it according to the orders of the central head office of the various departments. Or let us take another example: the works of one department transfer the half-finished product to another, yet within the works no kind of purchase and sale transaction takes place. The same sort of thing will be established in the general plan of production. The main branches of production will be organised into huge social enterprises under the management of the workers. A systematic distribution of the necessary means of production will take place between the different branches; this will include fuel, raw materials, half-finished products, auxiliary materials, and so on. And that will mean that money will lose its importance. Money is important only when production is unorganised; the more organised it becomes the smaller becomes the part played by money, and the need for it gradually decreases.

What about the workers' pay? we shall be asked. The same thing will hold good here. The better production is organised by the working class, the less will social workmen be paid in money and the more they will be paid in kind, that is to say, in products. We have already spoken of co-operative communes and of labour registers. Products required by workers will be issued without any money whatever, simply upon the evidence that such an such a man has worked and is working; they will be given out by the co-operative stores in accordance with such entries in the labour registers. This, of course, cannot be organised all at once. It will be long before we arc, able to organise this into proper working order. It is a new plan that has never been worked before, and is therefore exceptionally difficult to carry out. But one thing is clear: in proportion as the workers come into possession of production