Indubitably this question is far more complicated than the problem of large-scale trade, for the fate of large-scale trade was settled by the mere fact of the general expropriation of capital. It would be absurd for the Soviet Power to prohibit petty trade when it is not itself in a position to replace the functions of this trade by the activity of its own organs of distribution. In certain cases, and above all in the regions from which the White Guards had recently been cleared out, local soviets and revolutionary committees prohibited private trade without providing their own apparatus for the supply of necessaries; or, even if such an apparatus existed, without ensuring that it should function regularly for the adequate supply of the population. As a result, private trade was driven under ground, and prices rose enormously.
Petty trade will cling tenaciously to life. Its extinction will be possible only in proportion as there passes through the hands of the State a larger and ever larger quantity of the products needed for the supply of the population. If to-day the Narkomprod [the People’s Food Commissariat] exists side by side with the Suharevka [a Moscow market], this implies that the war between capitalism and socialism still continues in the domain of distribution. The struggle now rages round the positions occupied by petty trade. It will not cease until the State authority becomes the chief buyer of the products of petty industry; or until, as will ultimately happen, the State has itself become the manufacturer of all these products. Of course we are not here considering the cases in which petty traders sell products which are already supplied by the distributive organs of the State; we are not concerned with cases which are simply forms of the struggle against pilfering and against other defects of the soviet mechanism of distribution. In any case, petty trade will continue until, first, large-scale production has been adequately organised in the towns, and, secondly, there is proper provision for the supply of all such necessaries as are not yet produced by State monopoly.