banks belong to a small group of the wealthier capitalists, their work is seen in the last analysis to consist merely in the extraction of surplus value with the aid of their own capital and that of their depositors.
But the banks are not merely spiders sucking up the surplus labour of the workers and peasants. They have an additional significance. Let us suppose that I have some money and deposit it in the bank. This means that I had certain commodities which I sold, transforming them into money. The flow of new and ever new sums of money through all the banks, an increase in the total amount of capital in any society, signify that new and ever new masses of values are passing into circulation. Money represents a product; it is, so to speak, the certificate of a product. From the general circulation of money, we can approximately infer the general movement of products. Inevitably, therefore, the banks become, as it were, the book-keeping offices of capitalist society.
The foregoing considerations show us the function which the banks can perform in capitalist society, and what the proletariat must do with them as soon as it has seized power.
After the socialist revolution, or, rather, during the socialist revolution, the working class must seize all the banks, and, above all, the central State bank. This is necessary, in the first place, simply in order that the workers may confiscate all the monetary deposits of the bourgeoisie, all the share certificates, and all the monetary obligations of the capitalists. This act of confiscation will strike capitalist exploitation to the very heart.
We adopted this course after the November revolution, and our action was a crushing blow to the capitalist class of Russia.
What should the proletarian Power do with the confiscated banks? It must turn to account everything that is of value in the capitalist banking system. This means that the workers must preserve the banks as apparatus for keeping account of production, and as instruments for