sumption; to make it compulsory; and there to stop. Objects of luxury are not touched, for they are so dear that they are inaccessible to "the people."
That is why in all the belligerent countries, without exception, even in Germany, where the regulation of consumption is, without doubt, most careful, most vigorous and the least slipshod, you can see the rich continually avoiding the "rations." Of that everyone is aware, and of that everyone speaks with a smile on the lips: in the Socialist Press and also everywhere in the bourgeois Press, notes on the "menu" of the rich are to be seen, in spite of the rigour of the censor. In such and such a health resort, they receive white bread in quantity (these resorts are frequented by those who have the means, on the pretext of illness): they consume, instead of the simple products of the people, the most rare, the most "recherché" and the dearest of commodities.
A reactionary Capitalist State, which dreads the sapping of the foundations of Capitalism, the foundations of salaried slavery, the foundations of the economic domination of the rich, which fears the development of initiative on the part of the artisans and the workers in general; which is afraid of their covetousness flaring up and of their demands increasing, only needs to introduce the bread ticket. It loses sight not for one instant of its reactionary aims: to fortify capitalism, not to let it be undermined; to limit as much as possible the "regulation of economic life" in general, and of consumption in particular, only to take absolutely indispensable measures to make sure of the subsistence of the people, and to keep well on guard against really regulating consumption by exercising a control over the rich, by imposing on the rich, placed as they are, in the most comfortable circumstances, privileged and overfed in times of peace, greater burdens in time of war.
In every country, we repeat, even in Germany, and most clearly in Russia, there exist a whole lot of methods of avoiding the law: the people tighten up their belts, and the rich strut in the health resorts, supplementing the meagre pittance, called "national allowance," by every kind of means, and do not in any way allow themselves to be controlled.
In Russia, which has just effected its revolution against Tsarism in the name of liberty and equality; in Russia, which has just in one blow become a democratic republic, what comes immediately
