Michael S. Farbman

“ It was augmented by a hellish intensification of labour, combined with an absolute neglect of the physical and moral needs and civic interests of the workers. These were years of a mad race, when, in addition to the most excessive overwork, the workers were perpetually underfed, almost to the extent of starvation. They were years of the most merciless terrorisation of the workers' life in all imaginable and unimaginable directions. ”

“ The Soviet foresees that the exhaustion and disintegration of the national economy, which is progressing with every day of the war, will inevitably lead to economic catastrophe, to social and political anarchy, and to the devastation of the country by the external foe; unless the State is firmly and decisively resolved to intervene at once in the social and economic relations of the country. "The State must intervene immediately, on all sides, and most energetically. ”

“ The army of publicists and correspondents who raised such an outcry against the workers after the Revolution, sat silent during all those terrible years when Russia was wearing herself out and the manufacturers were ruthlessly exploiting the industries for their own ends. Thus they produced the impression in Western Europe that the disintegration of Russia began with the Revolution. ”

“ In this country, where people are becoming more and more conscious of the danger of economic exhaustion and of the imperative need of applying drastic measures of State control and State organisation, there is no need to emphasise that the above programme of the Soviet was not Socialism. ”

“ And throughout the whole of industry there must be State control and State distribution of fuel and raw materials, coupled with a fixation of prices. A maximum output is demanded, particularly a control of supplies in munitions, and an increase of the supplies for the civil population. There must be State control and a rational distribution of the resources of the country in labour. All workers who are needed for the important industries must be combed-out from the army, but there must also be a drastic revision of the lists of exemption in order not to deplete the army. ”

“ The free play of economic interests, whereby the minority was enriched in proportion as the majority became impoverished, was to be replaced by a new order, under which the State would take control of the economic activities of the country, setting a limit to the increasing wealth of the few, and guaranteeing a minimum of existence to the many. ”

“ The revolutionary democracy was in a position to formulate a complete programme of economic reconstruction literally on the next day after the Revolution. Their foresight in this instance is probably less surprising. For the best economists of Russia—the truly creative school of Russian economists—belonged to the Socialist Party. The Economic Department of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates included some of the best-known economists, with a research section consisting of many of the younger economists of the Russian school. ”

“ Categorically they were required to work, and to work unceasingly, night and day, week-days and Sundays, all under the pretext of the lofty ideals of national self-defence. It was a merciless waste of the physical forces of the working classes; of adults and children, men and women alike. Those were indeed terrible years for the working classes. ”