cases, however, enterprises were nationalised because their owners were especially hostile to the workers. It was natural that in the days of the civil war there should be a great many such enterprises; but it was equally natural that among these there were not a few which were in bad order and practically unworkable. Quite a number of them, in especial, were mushroom growths of the war period, inaugurated for “defensive” purposes; having been hastily put together, they collapsed with equal speed during the revolution. All this inevitably led at first to increased disorganisation.
At the outset, the Soviet Power and its instruments had no accurate reports of what was going on. There was no list of undertakings; there were no tabulated statements of the supplies of raw materials, fuel, and finished commodities; there was no account of the productive possibilities, no definite idea concerning how much the undertakings that were being nationalised were competent to produce. The bourgeoisie was dying, but it was dying intestate. The proletariat became the “heir” to the wealth of the bourgeoisie — but it became the heir in virtue of a seizure of the property in an embittered civil struggle. Obviously, therefore, in these early days, there could be no talk of any general economic plan. The old organisation, the capitalist system, had collapsed; the new organisation, the socialist system, had not yet come into being.
NEVERTHELESS, ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL TASKS OF THE SOVIET POWER WAS AND IS THAT OF UNITING ALL THE ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COUNTRY IN ACCORDANCE WITH A GENERAL PLAN OF DIRECTION BY THE STATE. Thus only is it possible to retain productivity at such a level as will permit a subsequent farther development. We have learned in Part One that one of the great merits of the communist system is that it puts an end to the chaos, to the “anarchy,” of the capitalist system. Herein lies the very essence of communism. It would of course be absurd