capacity of this money capital to a fraction of that which it formerly possessed. It can readily be understood, that the issue of paper money cannot in the long run constitute a means of revenue for a State which aims at the ultimate abolition of money altogether. We are faced with this problem: What is the best foundation upon which the proletarian State can build up its revenues?
Such a secure foundation is furnished by production. If the issue of paper money has hitherto proved to be a successful method of collecting State revenue, it is because this sort of tax can be collected without the taxpayer being aware that he is paying anything of the sort. No less inconspicuous is it when we secure revenue indirectly by means of State monopoly. This form of State revenue is, in reality, perfectly just. The cost of production of any articles which are produced by the State must include all the administrative charges requisite for the particular branch of production. The proletarian State apparatus actually realises such a form of administration. In practice this means that if the transport of passengers costs one milliard of roubles per annum, the State can fix the fares at such a figure that it will receive from this source the sum of twelve hundred million roubles. If the total cost of all manufactured articles is five milliards, they can be sold for six milliards, and so on. The excess is devoted to the maintenance of the State. Of course the revenues from monopoly are not to be conceived solely in the form of money, but also directly in the form of a definite quantity of goods.
If the proletarian State becomes transformed into an organ for the administration of the socialist economic system as a whole, the question of its upkeep, that is to say our old question of the budget, is greatly simplified. The affair is merely one of assigning a definite portion of goods to a definite item of economic expenditure.
But whereas the question of the State budget is now very simple, far less simple is the problem of how we are to determine precisely what portion