THE TRUE ROAD TO VICTORY
   
The figures given above show that Soviet power has achieved important successes in matters of food; these successes have been achieved in conditions of unprecedented, unheard-of difficulty. Even the clearest figures and the most indisputable facts are either challenged or passed over in silence when it comes to defending the selfish interests of the bourgeoisie, capitalists, profiteers and kulaks.
   
An exact study of the food situation of the urban worker shows that he obtains only a half (approximately) of his food from the state, from the Commissariat of Food, and the other half he buys in the "free", "open" market, i.e., from the profiteers. Furthermore, for the first half he pays only one-tenth of the total amount spent on food and for the second half he pays the other nine-tenths.
   
The profiteers skin the hungry worker nine times over.
   
The profiteers plunder him unbelievably: We all know that an orgy of profit-making, robbery and crime, that the torments of hunger for the masses of the workers and the enrichment of a few scoundrels are connected with this notorious "freedom to trade " in grain.
   
Notwithstanding this there are people who advocate freedom to trade!
   
Our workers' and peasants' government, the entire Soviet Republic, all the socialist society of ours now being born, are in a state of war, a brutal, desperate, savage war for
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survival against capitalism, against profiteering, against freedom to trade in grain. This is the most profound, most radical, daily and truly mass struggle between capitalism and socialism. The fate of our revolution as a whole depends on the outcome of this struggle. But people who call themselves "socialists", Social-Democrats, Mensheviks, "Socialist-Revolutionaries" are helping capitalism in this struggle against socialism! Even the best of these people, those most hostile to Kolchak, Denikin and the capitalists, go over to the side of capitalism when it comes to the question of the food policy of Soviet power, and demand minor concessions in favour of the "private commercial apparatus", "individual enterprise" and so on, and so forth.
   
If you study this carefully, if you think deeply about why, actually, there is a struggle against Soviet power, you come to the conclusion that the enemies of Soviet power may be divided into two big groups both of which defend capitalism against socialism. One of them acts brutally and with the crudest selfishness; this is the group of landowners, capitalists, kulaks, Denikins, Kolchaks, Black Hundreds and Constitutional-Democrats. The other group defends capitalism "ideologically", that is, unselfishly, without any direct, personal profit, but out of prejudice and cowardice in face of the new; this is the group of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. These are the last "ideological" advocates of capitalism. And it was by no means an accident that the Kolchaks and Denikins, the Russian and all foreign capitalists march under cover of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, behind their banner, behind their flag, and repeat their slogans and phrases about "freedom" in general, about "democracy" in general, about "private" (commercial, capitalist) enterprise, etc., etc.
   
Clever capitalists realise that the "ideological" position of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries is of service to them, to their class, to "their " capitalism, but the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, like all petty-bourgeois socialists everywhere and at all times, do not realise this. They fear a life-and-death struggle against freedom to trade in grain, they want to make concessions to it, to recognise it at least in part, to be in "peace" and agreement with it.
WHAT IS FREEDOM TO TRADE IN GRAIN?
   
Freedom to trade in grain is a return to capitalism, to the full power of the landowners and capitalists, to a savage struggle between people for profit, to the "free" enrichment of the few, to the poverty of the masses, to the eternal bondage we see in all bourgeois states, including the freest and most democratic republics.
   
If we ask any person who works for his living, any factory worker, peasant or even intellectual, whether he wants such a "system" he will certainly say "no". The whole trouble and the whole danger is that a very large number of working people, especially a large number of peasants, do not realise that freedom to trade in grain is connected with the universal power of the landowners and capitalists.