Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - The Chief Task of Our Times.djvu/12

 task. We have nothing to impart to these engineers [this word is used in Russian in a more restricted sense than in English; a Russian engineer is a man with a higher education, equivalent to a four or five years University course], business men, and merchants. If we had a bourgeois revolution they could not teach us anything: unless it might be how and where to grab; that is all we could have learned from them.

The landowners and bourgeoisie must be overthrown. History will fully justify all the acts of the Bolsheviki—their entire struggle, the coercion and expropriation of the landowners and capitalists, and the repression of their opposition. This was only the first step towards a stupendous historic task. In this task we shall learn from the Trusts, because our knowledge is limited.

We know all about Socialism, but we do not know how to organise on a large scale, how to manage distribution, and so on. The old Bolshevik leaders have not taught us these things, and this is not to the credit of our Party. We have yet to go through this course, and we say: Even if a man is a scoundrel of the deepest dye, if he is a merchant, experienced in organising production and distribution on a large scale, we must learn from him; if we do not learn from these people, we shall never achieve Socialism, and the revolution will not get beyond its present stage. Socialism can only be reached by the development of State Capitalism, the careful organisation of finance, control, and discipline amongst the workers. Without this there is no Socialism.

It is not our business to undertake the ridiculous task of teaching the promoters of Trusts; they have nothing to learn, They must be expropriated. This can be done, and we have shown that the task does not present any great difficulties. To every deputation of workers which has come to me complaining that a factory was stopping work, I have said:

"If you desire the confiscation of your factory, the decree forms are ready, and I can sign a decree at once. But tell me: Can you take over the management of the concern? Have you calculated what you can produce? Do you know the relations of your works with Russian and foreign markets?"

Then it has appeared that they are inexperienced in these matters; that there is nothing about them in the Bolshevik literature, nor in the Menshevik either.

The workers who base their activities on the principles of State Socialism are the most successful. It is so in the tanning, textile, and sugar industries, where the workers, knowing their industry, and wishing to preserve and to develop it, recognise with proletarian common sense that they are unable, at present, to cope with such a task, and therefore allot one-third of the places to the capitalists, in order to learn from them. When I read in the Press of the Communists of the Left the ironical words, "Who knows who will make use of the other," I cannot help wondering at their shortsightedness. If, after assuming power in October, and after a victorious campaign against the whole bourgeoisie from October to April, we can have any doubts as to who will make use of the other—the workers, or the promoters of Trusts, or vice versa—then let us strike our tents at once and let us retire, making room for the Miliukoffs and the Martoffs! But there is no doubt in this matter. The class-conscious workers would not believe you if you expressed such a ridiculous fear until the dictatorship is in the hands of such opponents.

Naturally, the difficulties of organisation are enormous, but I do not see the least reason for despair and desponding in the fact that the Russian Revolution, having first solved the easier task—the overthrow of the land-owners and the bourgeoisie—is now faced with the more difficult socialist task of organising national finance and control; a task which is the initial stage of Socialism, and is inevitable, as is fully understood by the majority of class-conscious workers.

Yes, the majority of the better-organised workers, educated in the school of trade unionism, are wholly on our side. Long before the Soviet assumed power, these trade unionists had worked out a system of management and discipline. These people have shown that they understand the conditions of labour in factories, and they have grasped the essence of Socialism better than those who were full of revolutionary talk, but who in reality were stooping, consciously or unconsciously, to the low level of the small bour-