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#0200 POLITICAL THOUGHT
1. Property in land should be abolished and rents used for public Purpote,
2. A progressive income tax should be established.’
3. Rights of inheritance should be abolished. .
+4. The property of “emigrants and rebels” should be confiscated.
5. ‘There should be state control, centralization, and monopoly of credit,
6. The state miust control and centralize transportation and communication,
7. There shouldbe expansion of state control of production and state in
provemen' e. ‘

Se rn
8. There should s
be enfor >
cemen t of the obligation of all personsL to work ,
agriculture
the formation of “industrial’ armies,” to be used especially in
be combined, togethe,
9.. Agricultural and manufacturing industries ought to
with a population resettlement, with a view to the elimination of y,
. urban-rural division. .
10. Child labor must be abolished, and a system of free public education estab.
lished.

‘The point that comes most immediately to mind in reviewing this re¢,
ommended program of action is that many of its features, in greater or
lessér degree, have long since been adopted by countries whose economic
‘systems are essentially capitalistic. The changes, moreover, have come
through the “bourgeois” democratic process—a development which Marx
would have believed impossible.
In this transitional stage of the proletarian dictatorship, as a new so.
ciety emerges from the ruins of capitalism, rewards for labor will not be
equal for all. This inequality is regrettable but inevitable because the
new society is marked by the ideas of the old. In this phase of develop-
ment, labor remains only a “means of life.” It is still something men have
to do in ordér to subsist, rather than an activity undertaken because of
the enjoyment found in it. In the capitalist society the division of labor
had developed asa technique of production. In the interests of efficiency
men had become automatons, each performing a single task repetitiously,
and this loss of individual identity was one of the most degrading aspects
of the capitalist system. The worker had no pride of accomplishment, no
sense of satisfaction in viewing the product of his labor. The result was
a growing “antithesis between mental and physical labor.” Men, in short,
hated what they did when their entire working life was concentrated on
a single and meaningless task. One of the goals of the transitional stag¢
between capitalism and communism is the establishment of a system of
production which will eliminate the division of labor and will thus make
possible the development of well-rounded individuals who will take
pleasure in their labor. Then:men will work because they want to do so,
not because they have to! It will then be possible to equalize rewards, for
incentives will be unnecessary. In che final stage of communist develop-
ment each will ‘contribute “according to his ability,” and receive “accord-
ing to his needs.”