Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/335

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THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY
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ance, as also all living and other property, and all agricultural enterprises will be declared national property.

2.—To confirm the Soviets' law concerning the control of working conditions, the highest Council of National Economy, which is the first step in bringing about the ownership by the Soviets of the factories, mines, railroads and means of production and transportation as property of the Soviet Republic.

3.—To confirm the transferring of all banks over into the hands of the Soviet Republic, which is one of the steps in the freeing of the toiling masses from the yoke of Capitalism.

4.—To enforce general compulsory labor, in order to destroy the class of parasites and to organize economic life. In order to make the power of the toiling masses secure and to hinder the restoration of the rule of exploiters, the toiling masses will be armed and a Red Guard, composed of workingmen and peasants, formed, and the exploiting classes will be disarmed.

III

1.—Declaring its firm determination to free society from the claws of Capitalism and Imperialism, which have drenched the country in blood in this, the most criminal of all wars, the Constituent Assembly accepts completely the policy of the Soviets, whose duty it is to publish all secret treaties, to organize the most extensive faternization among the workers and peasants of the warring armies, and to bring about by the use of revolutionary methods a democratic peace among the nations without annexations and indemnities, on the basis of free self-determination of the nations—at any price.

2.—For this purpose the Constituent Assembly demands complete separation from the brutal policy of the bourgoisie, which is furthering the well-being of exploiters among a few selected nations by enslaving hundreds of millions of the toiling people, in colonies generally and in small countries.

The Constituent Assembly accepts the policy of the Council of People's Commissaires, which has given complete independence to Finland, begun the transferring of soldiers from Persia, and declared for Armenia the right of self-determination.

A first blow to international bank and finance capital, declares the Constituent Assembly, is a law which annuls those loans made by the governments of the Czar, of landowners and bourgeoisie; and that the Soviet Government is to continue firmly on this road