Bills of Exchange, shares, bonds, &c. … It only remains to unify the book-keeping; and if a revolutionary democratic State were to command the immediate convocation of assemblies (in every town) and congresses (in every province and for the whole country) of directors and officials for the purpose of immediately merging all the banks into one State Bank, this reform could be accomplished in a few weeks. It goes without saying that the directors and higher officials would offer resistance and would attempt to deceive the State and cause delay, for these gentlemen would see themselves being deprived of their sinecures and would lose the opportunity for all sorts of specially profitable shady operations; for this reason, and only this, they would sabotage the measure.
But the fusion of the banks does not present the slightest technical difficulty; and a power which was revolutionary in more than words (that is to say, which would not be afraid to break away from inertia and routine) and democratic not in phrases only (which would act, that is, in the interests of the majority of the people and not of a handful of plutocrats)—such a power could realise this measure in the twinkling of an eye if it decreed that directors, administrators and big shareholders who tried to protract the business and to conceal documents and abstracts of accounts should be imprisoned and their property confiscated.
Nationalisation would have immense advantages, not so much for the workers (who rarely do business at a bank) as for the mass of peasants and small industrialists. It would mean a colossal saving in labour; and supposing that the State kept the same number of officials as there were before, it would result in a much larger number of people making use of the services of the banks, which could increase their branches, extend their operations, and make them more accessible to the mass of the public. Small proprietors and the peasants would have a better chance of obtaining credit. As for the State, it would be able, first, to have knowledge of all the big financial operations and to obtain an exact record of them; and then to regulate economic life; and finally in the big operations it undertakes itself the State would save millions and milliards by not having to pay fabulous "commissions" to the capitalists. It is because of this, and this alone, that all the capitalists, all the bourgeois economists, all the bourgeoisie and its valets, Plekhanov, Potressov and Co., are ready to fight furiously
