The Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party pointed out that the systematic regulation of production and distribution would require the nationalisation and centralisation of the banks and of a number of trusts. The industrialists were hostile not only to the nationalisation of industry but even to compulsory trustification—amalgamation into large enterprises. The Provisional Government had timidly proposed such trustification, but dared not insist on it, and, owing to the pressure of the manufacturers and industrialists, very soon withdrew the proposal.
Only a dictatorship of the proletariat could put nationalisation into effect. The nationalisation of banks and businesses would destroy the foundations of capitalist rule. At the same time, the taking over of the banks, large industries and transport by the dictatorship of the proletariat would create a basis for planned Socialist economy.
Lenin attributed great importance to the nationalisation of the banks. The banks were the centres of capitalist economic life. A blow at the banks would be fatal to the entire capitalist system. In his article “The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It,” Lenin explained to the working people in detail the advantages to be derived from the realisation of this point in the Bolshevik programme:
“The advantages from the nationalisation of the banks to the whole people, and not especially to the workers (for the workers have little to do with banks), but to the mass of peasants and small industrialists, would be enormous. The saving of labour would be gigantic, and assuming that the State would retain the former number of bank employees, nationalisation would signify a highly important step towards making the use of the banks universal, towards increasing the number of their branches, the accessibility of their operations, etc. etc. The accessibility and the easy terms of credit, particularly for small owners, for the peasantry, would increase immensely. The State would for the first time be in a position first to survey all the chief monetary operations, which would be unconcealed, then to control them, then to regulate economic life, and finally to obtain millions and billions for large State transactions, without paying the capitalist gentlemen sky-high ‘commissions’ for their ‘services.’”(1)
The nationalisation of the banks would facilitate the nationalisation of the insurance business. The centralisation of the insurance business would also help tremendously to improve the position of the working population. Insurance rates would be reduced and a number of conveniences and facilities provided for the insured.
The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks advanced a host of objections to the nationalisation of the banks and other enterprises, believing that the proletariat was incapable of administering the economic life of the country. But the nationalisation of the banks and the large enterprises was in every respect a timely step towards Socialism. It was immediately carried into effect by the proletarian dictatorship after the October Revolution.
The profoundly vital Bolshevik slogans, dealing as they did with the daily material interests of the working population in the towns and the poor peasants in the countryside, were couched in clear and simple form and were easily assimilated by the people. In the fight for the realisation of these slogans, the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary windbags, who did not lift a finger to alleviate the lot of the masses, were completely exposed.
[1] Lenin, “The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It,” Collected Works (Russ. ed.), Vol. XXI, p. 166.
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