p . .. Workers and peasants, toilers and exploited! The land, the banks, the factories and works have now become the possession of the whole of the people! You yourselves must set to work to take account of and control the production and the distribution of products-this, and this alone is the road to the victory of socialism, the only guarantee of its victory, the guarantee of victory over all exploitation, over all poverty and want! For there is enough bread, iron, timber, wool, cotton and flax in Russia to satisfy the needs of all, provided only labour and its products are properly distributed, provided only the businesslike, practical control over this distribution by the whole of the people is established, provided only we can defeat the enemies of the people: the rich and their hangers-on, and the rogues, the idlers and the hooligans, not only 55 in politics, but also in everyday economic life.

p No mercy to these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the toilers! War to the bitter end on the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals; war on the rogues, the idlers and hooligans! Both, the former and the latter, are of the same broodthe spawn of capitalism, the offspring of aristocratic and bourgeois society; the society in which a handful of men robbed and insulted the people; the society in which poverty and want forced thousands and thousands into the path of hooliganism, corruption and roguery, and caused them to lose all semblance of human beings; the society which inevitably cultivated in the toiler the desire to escape exploitation even by means of deception, to manoeuvre out of it, to escape, if only for a moment, from loathsome toil, to procure at least a crust of bread by any possible means, at any cost, so as not to starve, so as to subdue the pangs of hunger suffered by himself and by his near ones.

p The rich and the rogues are two sides of the same medal, they are the two principal categories of parasites which capitalism fostered; they are the principal enemies of socialism. These enemies must be placed under the special surveillance of the whole people; they must be ruthlessly punished for the slightest violation of the laws and regulations of socialist society. Any display of weakness, hesitation or sentimentality in this respect would be an immense crime against socialism.

p In order to render these parasites harmless to socialist society we must organise the accounting and control of the amount of labour performed, of production and distribution, to be exercised by the whole of the people, by millions and millions of workers and peasants voluntarily. 56 energetically and with revolutionary enthusiasm. And in order to organise this accounting and control, which is fully within the ability of every honest, intelligent and efficient worker and peasant, we must rouse their own organising talent, the talent which comes from their midst; we must rouse among them-and organise on a national scale-competition in the sphere of organisational successes; the workers and peasants must be brought to see clearly the difference between the necessary advice of an educated man and the necessary control by the “common” worker and peasant of the slovenliness that is so usual among the “educated”.

.. . The Paris Commune gave a great example of how to combine initiative, independence, freedom of action and vigour from below with voluntary centralism free from stereotyped forms. Our Soviets are following the same road. But they are still “shy”, they have not yet got into their stride, have not yet "bitten into" their new, great, creative task of building the socialist system. The Soviets must set to work more boldly and display greater initiative. Every “commune”, every factory, every village, every consumers’ society, every committee of supply, must compete with its neighbours as a practical organiser of accounting and control of labour and distribution of products. The programme of this accounting and control is simple, clear and intelligible to all; it is: everyone to have bread; everyone to have strong boots and decent clothing; everyone to have warm dwellings; everyone to work conscientiously; not a single rogue (including those who shirk their work) should be allowed to be at liberty, but kept in prison, or serve his sentence of compulsory labour of the hardest kind; not a single rich man who violates the laws and regulations of socialism should be allowed to escape the fate of the rogue, which should, in justice, be 57 the fate of the rich man. "He who does not work, neither shall he eat"-this is the practical commandment of socialism. This is how things should be organised practically. These are the practical successes our “communes” and our worker- and peasant-organisers should be proud of. And this applies particularly to the organisers among the intellectuals (particularly, because they are too much, far too much in the habit of being proud of their general instructions and resolutions)... .