Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/409



Our work, under the direction of the proletariat, of organizing a universal accounting and control of production and distribution is considerably behind our work on the direct expropriation of the expropriators. To understand this is fundamentally necessary for a comprehension of the peculiarities of the present period and of the problem dictated to the Soviets by these peculiarities. The centre of gravity of the struggle with the bourgeoisie is shifted to the organization of accounting and control. This must be taken into account in order to determine correctly the urgent economic and financial problems with regard to the nationalization of the banks, nationalization of foreign trade, state control of currency, the introduction of a satisfactory (from the proletarian standpoint) wealth and income tax, and the introduction of obligatory labor service.

We are extremely backward in regard to Socialist reforms in these fields (and they are very important fields), and we are backward for no other reason than this—that accounting and control, in general, are not sufficiently organized. Of course, this problem is one of the most difficult, and in view of the economic disorganization produced by the war, its solution must take a long time, and it should not be overlooked that just here the bourgeoisie—and especially the numerous petty and peasant bourgeois—gives us a good deal of trouble, disturbing the establishment of control, disturbing, for instance, the grain monopoly, making opportunities for speculation and speculative trade. What we have already decreed is yet far from adequate realization, and the main problem of today consists precisely in concentrating all efforts upon the actual, practical realization of the measures which have already become law, but have not yet become reality.

In order to continue further the nationalization of the banks and to move steadily toward the transformation of the banks into centres of social bookkeeping under Socialism, we must first of