Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/74

 We repeat that that time is a long way off yet. There can be no talk of it in the near future. For the present we must find means for public finance. But we are already taking steps leading to the abolition of the money system. Society is being transformed into one huge labour organisation or company to produce and distribute what is already produced without the agency of gold coinage or paper money. The end of the power of money is imminent.

 

At the present time every country is surrounded by other countries on which it depends to a considerable extent. It is very difficult for a country to manage without foreign trade, because one country produces more of one product than another, and vice versa. Blockaded Germany is now experiencing how hard it is to do without a supply from other countries. And should England, for instance, be surrounded by as close a ring as is Germany, it would have perished long ago. The Russian industry, nationalised by the working class, cannot possibly dispense with certain goods from abroad, and on the other hand, foreign countries, especially Germany, are badly in need of raw material. We must not forget even for a minute that we live in the midst of rapacious capitalist States. Naturally enough these plundering States will try to obtain everything that they require to further their aims of plunder. And the Russian bourgeoisie, that has been so hedged in and persecuted in Russia, will be very glad to enter into direct contact with foreign imperialists. There is no doubt whatever that the foreign bourgeoisie could pay the Russian speculators even more than does our own home-made, true-Russian patriotic bourgeoisie. A speculator, as we know, sells to him who pays the most. And so we have only to give our bourgeois the chance of exporting goods abroad, and foreign plunderers the possibility of arranging their little business affairs here, and the Socialist Soviet Republic would have little cause to rejoice at the results.

Formerly, when the question of foreign trade arose, the discussion confined itself to two points; whether high import