"For the purpose of realizing the socialization of land, all private property in land is abolished, and the entire land is declared to be national property and is to be apportioned among husbandmen without any compensation to the former owners, in the measure of each one's ability to till it. "All forests, treasures of the earth, and waters of general public utility, all implements whether animate or inanimate, model farms and agricultural enterprises are declared to be national property. "As a first step toward complete transfer of ownership to the Soviet Republic of all factories, mills, mines, railways and other means of production or transportation, the Soviet law, for the control by workmen and the establishment of the Supreme Soviet of National Economy is hereby confirmed, so as to assure the power of the workers over their exploiters.... "Universal obligation to work is introduced for the purpose of eliminating the parasitic strata of society and organizing the economic life of the country. "For the purpose of securing the working class in the possession of the complete power, and in order to eliminate all possibility of restoring the power of the exploiters, it is decreed that all toilers be armed, and that a Socialist Red Army be organized and the propertied class be disarmed.... "The Russian Republic is a free Socialist society of all the working people of Russia. The entire power, within the boundaries of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, belongs to all the working people of Russia, united in urban and rural Soviets.... "The Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic considers work the duty of every citizen of the Republic, and proclaims as its motto: 'He shall not eat who does not work.' "The following persons enjoy neither the right to vote nor the right to be voted for, even though they belong to one of the categories enumerated above, namely: "Persons who employ hired labor in order to obtain from it an increase in profits. "Persons who have an income without doing any work, such as interest from capital, receipts from property, etc. "Private merchants, trade and commercial brokers. "Monks and clergy of all denominations."
This Bolshevist Constitution shows that the Lenine government has decreed the socialization of all the land, factories, mills, mines and other means of production, as well as the railways and the various means of transportation. This program has been carried out, though as yet probably not completely. Conditions in Russia were deplorable under the regime of the Czar, but the Socialist government has made them a thousand times worse. Industry has been reduced to an almost negligible minimum, property has been destroyed on every side and possession made a crime. The country has been reduced to chaos, for no one cares to sow where others will reap; and unemployment is widespread, for employers are outlawed, and the government has not enough satisfactory positions to offer. The right to hold property is one of the binding forces that holds civilization together and supplies incentive to labor. Some of the evil effects of the confiscation and socialization of property in Russia are shown from the following articles, published by the Socialists-Revolutionists, a faction of the Marxians opposed to the Bolsheviki. Their paper, "Vlast Naroda," declares: