There exists a very simple method and a perfectly legitimate one which I indicated a long time ago in the Pravda, one which it is particularly opportune to remember on this memorable September 12.[1] The workers ought never to lose sight of this means because it is almost certain that they will be compelled to make use of it when they have the power.
This method is the State monopoly of newspaper advertisement.
Glance at the Russkoye Slovo, the Novoye Vremya, the Ryetch, &c., and you will see a large number of advertisements bringing in enormous returns, which represent the clearest source of profit of the capitalist publishers of these papers. This is how they enrich themselves while they poison the people. This applies to every bourgeois newspaper in the whole world.
In Europe there are newspapers of which copies are printed equal to a third of the inhabitants of the town where they appear (for example 12,000 for a population of 40,000); and which, though they are distributed free to every house, nevertheless give an excellent income to their publishers. These newspapers live on advertisements paid for by individuals, and free house-to-house delivery is the best way to assure the success of this form of publicity.
Why is it that a democracy, calling itself revolutionary, cannot carry through a measure like newspaper advertisement monopoly (for the profit of the State)? Why can it not forbid the printing of advertisements except in papers published by the Soviets in the provinces, or by the Central Soviet in Petrograd for all Russia? Why must the revolutionary democracy tolerate the fact that only the rich, the partisans of Kornilov, who scatter lies and calumny against the Soviets, should make themselves still richer by private advertisement?
This measure would be indisputably a just one. It would give enormous advantage to those who print the advertisements as well as to all the people, particularly to the most oppressed and the most ignorant portions of the peasant class, who would then be able to receive for a very small price, or even gratis, the Soviet newspapers with special supplements for the countryside.[2]
The day of the summoning of the Democratic Conference.
