IX

The foregoing pages were written before No. 31 of Rabochy Put appeared with Comrade Y. Larin's article "The Labour Demands of Our Programme". We welcome this article as the beginning of the discussion of the various draft programmes by our Central Organ. Comrade Larin dwells especially on that section of the programme which I had no occasion to work upon, and the draft for which is in the possession of the editors of the "Subsection on Labour Protection", the subsection was formed at the Conference of April 24-29, 1917. Comrade Larin proposes a number of additions which seem to me quite acceptable but which, I am sorry to say, are not always quite accurately expressed.

One point seems to me to have been ineptly formulated by Comrade Larin: "The correct [?] distribution of the labour force on the basis [?] of democratic [?] self-government by the workers in deciding how to employ [?] their persons [?]". In my opinion this is worse than the formulation of the subsection: "The labour exchanges must be proletarian class organisations", etc. (see Materials, p. 15). Comrade Larin, moreover, should have gone into the problem of a minimum wage much more thoroughly. He should have formulated his proposition with greater exactness, and should have related it to the history of the views of Marx and Marxism on this subject.

Furthermore, Comrade Larin thinks that the political and agrarian parts of the programme should have been "more carefully edited". We do hope that our Party press forthwith begins to discuss the question of editing this or that demand, without waiting for the congress, since, firstly, we shall not have a well prepared congress, and secondly, everyone who has had occasion to work on programmes and resolutions knows how often a careful editing of a certain point discloses and eliminates vagueness and disagreements of principle.

Finally, concerning the financial and economic part of the programme, Comrade Larin writes that "it is almost a blank, no mention is made, even of the annulment of war loans and the state debts contracted by tsarism [only tsarism?] or of the struggle against the fiscal utilisation of state monopolies, etc.". It is extremely desirable for Comrade Larin not to postpone his practical proposals in anticipation of the congress. He should bring them up immediately, or we shall not be well prepared for the congress. On the question of the annulment of state debts (and of course, not of tsarism alone, but also of the bourgeoisie) we must give considerable thought to the question of small bondholders. As to the question about "the struggle against the fiscal utilisation of state monopolies", we must see how things stand with the monopoly production of articles of luxury, and what connection the proposed point has with programme demands for the abolition of all indirect taxes.

I repeat: in order to prepare our programme seriously, to ensure the actual co-operation of the entire Party, all those interested must immediately get busy and publish their suggestions as well as precise drafts of points already edited and which contain additions and amendments.

Source: Marxist Internet Archive.