before Kautsky, was leveled at it by all the philosophers of the social harmony. During simple economic strikes the workers consume, and do not produce. Still more powerful, therefore, are the blows inflicted upon economic life by the class struggle in its severest form – in the form of armed conflicts. But it is quite clear that the civil war cannot be classified under the heading of Socialist economic methods.
The reasons enumerated above are more than sufficient to explain the difficult economic situation of Soviet Russia. There is no fuel, there is no metal, there is no cotton, transport is destroyed, technical equipment is in disorder, living labor-power is scattered over the face of the country, and a high percentage of it has been lost to the front – is there any need to seek supplementary reasons in the economic Utopianism of the Bolsheviks in order to explain the fall of our industry? On the contrary, each of the reasons quoted alone is sufficient to evoke the question: how is it possible at all that, under such conditions, factories and workshops should continue to function?