hunger lead them to abandon the towns, when the working class crumbles to pieces. This must be prevented at all costs. The organised expropriation of the means of consumption is in such a case the best way to protect living labour power. Communism of the articles of consumption is thus no more than an indispensable preliminary to our real aim, the organisation of production. The bourgeoisie everywhere wishes to impose upon the proletariat all the costs of the war, all the poverty which arises out of it, all the cold, all the hunger. For the sake of its own future, the proletariat must force the bourgeoisie to shoulder the burdens of the post-war period. But of course our leading task is the organisation of production and the development of productivity.
95. The purposive Organisation of economic Life.
The break-up of capitalism left as its legacy to the proletariat, not only a widespread lack of the means of production, but also widespread confusion. Russia was utterly disintegrated; the connexion between the various regions of the country had been destroyed; intercourse between one industrial district and another had become extraordinarily difficult. As a result of the revolution, the factory owners had dropped the reins of administration, and at first, in many places, the factories were simply masterless. There then ensued an unsystematic seizure of the enterprises by the workers, who could wait no longer. A local “nationalisation” of this kind had begun before the November revolution. Of course it was not really nationalisation, but only the unorganised seizure of enterprises by the workers who had been employed in them; not until later did the seizure become transformed into nationalisation. Even after the November revolution, nationalisation was at first conducted at haphazard. Manifestly, the primary need was to nationalise the largest and best equipped enterprises; but things did not always work out this way. The general tendency was to nationalise those enterprises which the owners had abandoned and which could not be left uncared for. In many