under one's notice, what particularly excites the discontent, irritation, indignation and fury of the masses, is the ease with which the rich evade the discipline of the bread-rationing. Nothing is more easy than for them to avoid the law. Secretly, and at particularly high prices, especially when one has "connections" (and only the rich have "connections "), one can find everything and in great quantity. The people suffer from hunger. The regulation of the food supply is confined within the strictest limits—limits most bureaucratically reactionary. The government is not in the least occupied with establishing this regulation on a truly democratic and revolutionary basis.
Everyone lines up in a queue before the shops, except the rich, who send their servants to line up for them, and often engage a special servant for this one purpose. After that, we talk of democracy!
A truly revolutionary and democratic policy, in the face of the unheard-of plight of the nation, would not limit itself to instituting bread-rationing cards in its struggle against the approaching catastrophe: it would, to begin with, decree the compulsory grouping of all the population into "social units of consumption," for without that it is impossible to obtain any control over consumption: in the second place, obligation to work for the rich, who should be compelled to give their services free in such societies, as secretaries or in some other employment: in the third place, the equal distribution of commodities amongst the people, so as to divide in an equitable manner the burdens of the war: in the fourth place, an organisation of control by means of which the control of consumption by the rich should be carried out by the poor.
A real democracy in this sphere of activity, a real revolution in the organisation of control by the least fortunate classes, would powerfully encourage the application of all the intellectual forces and the development of the revolutionary energies of the people.
Now, however, the ministers of Russia, republican and democratic-revolutionary, just like their brothers in the other imperialist countries, keep on uttering mere phrases about the "universal obligation to work," or "the application of all energies," but the people see and feel and testify to the hypocrisy beneath these words. The result is that there is no progress, and disorganisation is growing at an incredible speed, the catastrophe is approaching, for our
