Page:Nikolai Lenin - On the Road to Insurrection (1926).pdf/71

 proudly styling themselves "revolutionary democratic" has taken no serious steps to meet disaster and famine? We are rushing to destruction; the war goes on and the disorganisation to which it gives rise in every branch of the national life spreads with ever-increasing rapidity.

And yet, only a little care and reflection are needed to convince us that means exist of combating disaster and famine; that these means are clear, simple, completely attainable and quite within the power of the people, and that if these means are not adopted it is only because their adoption would affect the huge profits of a handful of large landed proprietors and capitalists.

One would be hard put to it to find a single speech, a single newspaper article of no matter what complexion or a resolution of a single gathering or institution of any kind which does not clearly realise the fundamental and essential measure needed to avert disaster and famine. This measure is central inspection, registration, State regulation, reasonable redistribution of labour and the products of labour, the suppression of all waste, economy of the strength and labour of the people. To control, to inspect, to register—these are the ways to fight disaster and famine. No one denies this and everybody recognises it. And it is precisely what is not being done for fear of encroaching upon the unlimited power of the large landed proprietors and the capitalists, and upon their unlimited, unheard of and scandalous profits, profits resulting from the high cost of living and military supplies (who does not work directly or indirectly for the war?) profits of which everyone is aware, which everyone can calculate, and which everyone deplores.

And the State is doing absolutely nothing, however half-hearted, to institute control, inspection and registration.

Everywhere there is a systematic and ceaseless sabotage of all control, and of every attempt at the organisation of control by the State. One must be either an extraordinary simpleton or a hypocrite not to understand, or to pretend not to know, the origin of this sabotage and the forces by which it is maintained; for this sabotage by the bankers and capitalists, this