Page:Lenin - The Soviets at Work (1919).pdf/19

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SOVIET GOVERNMENT
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are unable to get rid at once of the evil heritage of capitalism; that the Soviet Republic can be freed from "tribute" of 50,000,000 or a 100,000,000 rubles (a tribute for our own backwardness in the organization of accounting and control from the, bottom up) only by organization, by increasing discipline among ourselves, by getting rid of all those who "keep the traditions of capitalism" i. e., the loafers, parasites and grafters. If the enlightened and advanced workers and peasants succeed, with the help of the Soviet institutions, in organizing and disciplining themselves, and in creating a powerful labor discipline in one year, then we will in one year do away with this "tribute" (which may be reduced even earlier) depending on the measure of success attained in creating labor discipline and organization among the workers and peasants. The, sooner we ourselves, workers and peasants, learn better labor discipline and a higher technique of toil, making use of the bourgeois specialists for this purpose, the sooner we will get rid of the need of paying tribute to these specialists.

Workers Must Learn Problems of Management

Our work of organization, under the direction of the proletariat, of state accounting and control of production and distribution, is considerably behind our work of direct expropriation of the expropriators. We understand this is fundamentally necessary for understanding the peculiarities of the present period and of the problems dictated by these to the Soviets. 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 concerning the nationalization of banks, monopolization of foreign trade, state control of currency, the introduction of a satisfactory wealth and income tax from the proletarian standpoint, 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),